Whenever It Was

Our Lady's Primary School, South Melbourne
There was Miss Quinn with her pearls and exactitude
and fuzzy wuzzy jumpers
and nuns who were angels or hyenas
and, in my lemon taffeta dress with sparkly stuff,
me, at the school ball, wetting myself
and being told, in front of the whole school,
"You look like you've got a balloon under your dress,'
when we were practising the balloon dance
out in the yard, and I wished the asphalt
would open black jaws and gobble me
and there was the baiting of Sister Gerardus —
blushingly shy in middle age — as she sat,
crippled with tears, in her sewing class,
and they worked away till her soul lay bare
as an unpicked seam
and there were the check tablecloths I edged
in rickrack and patterned with cross stitch,
and the sampler — warm yellow, the colour
of sanity — I threaded with silken runes:
my first poem;
there was Sister Dorothea, as sweet
as spring light — too gentle to survive elsewhere,
but strong here, in the way freesias
or lilies of the valley are strong
and others like tanks or zeppelins draped in black
warning a captive chapelful against bad thoughts,
before Benediction with Father So-And-So —
the meat in a chasuble sandwich —
and weirdly sensual spiritual incense
swung towards us, a fading cloud
seeking each of us out with amorphous fingers;
there were the doctors who — with careful,
masonic nods — laughed at the holy medal
tied to my belt with twisted hat elastic
when we were lined up to be inoculated
and the Hansen girls from an abusing home
with their shame at rusty, holed underwear
when other doctors came and we had to undress
and have stethoscopes, and nurses who
looked down our pants (a search for hermaphrodites?)
and there were the convent girls with chilblains
and bold ways and crushes on nuns. They got the strap
most often, called the rest of us, "yews girls',
and said we were bold, and would get into trouble
and there was listening to Bing Crosby read
"The Little Prince' ("Oh, swallow, swallow,
little swallow'), and trying not to cry
and learning by rote "The Tarantella', and the one
about Mar-ga-ret, and "The Wreck of the Hesperus'
to be futilely tested each day after lunch;
there was falling on cobbles as I ran home
and having Bates' Salve, hot, that my father swore by,
with its funny brown smell, melt into my knee
and there were swap cards (my favorite,
"The Blue Boy') — their incandescence
a promise of other worlds — friendships
were gained and lost in fights over them
and sticking up for Barbara, who was fat,
and always, myself, feeling outside things
even when I was in them
and there was the strapping from Sister Gilberta
when she lost control, and I could not
stop crying so that, in panic, she sent me home
and I started walking with blotched face
and unearthly pauses between sobs
though there was the day I broke
the diamond blue glass round Our Lady's candle,
and she took it like a saint —
her one moment of restraint is at my door
and there was the liquid scrambled egg
at my First Communion lunch after kneeling
in church trying to feel religious
and singing oozy, bleating hymns
then trying to unstick jesus-in-the-host
from the dry roof of my mouth:
if it was a sacrilege at least no one knew —
except You-Know-Who…
At the height of a hot summer, I see us
kneeling on the floor, bone against wood —
grades five and six, in our double room —
chanting decade after decade of the rosary,
watching the pictures some of us had painted
turned round and round in a wooden box.
I always waited for mine, "The Crucifixion',
which I thought the best.
In the first three grades when there were
boys, I remember the one called Mickey Mouse
they let be cheeky, and myself
standing apart and looking, and not being
one of the favorites of Sister Angela
with her golden tooth and golden smile.
I remember the red chalk apple on the board —
A for APPLE, and my mother's squashy
tomato sandwiches, and being so unhappy
I went to St Peter and Paul's, and did
a jam jar covered in wet newspaper pulp,
but returned to Our Lady's because
I was still unhappy: I did this twice.
I never painted the jam jar.
Towards the end, thinking I was
inventing something, I drew strange
vectors and tangents on a page
in my geometry book, and Sister Dorothea,
a patient woman, lost patience,
but I got a scholarship anyway —
one of three who would go on…
Joan and Gillian were the others.
Childhood ended with hallucinations
of a great black dog with lantern eyes
roaring up from hell through the shadows
beside my white wardrobe.
Between the paralysis
and the hand's agonising crawl
to reach wet forehead and invoke,
with famous words, the homosexual
trinity, I lived an eternity.
Volition wrested from nightmare.
In one of my books an old philosopher
in prison staved off blindness
by bathing his eyes each day
with drops of water. So he read on,
could go on being who he was.
Could go on and on…