Free Hope Farm by Peggy Frew Page A

significant smile to Ishtar’s lips. I wasn’t as young as Jindi. I had no puppy-dog charm — I’d long since passed the age where any adult might want to sweep me up, to hold me in their arms. I was scrawny, my limbs were too long; my face, when I caught sight of it in the small, dark mirror that hung from a nail on the bathroom wall, appeared to have been outgrown by its features; my hair had neither Ishtar’s chocolate-and-caramel sheen nor Jindi’s babyish silkiness, but snaked heavily in all the wrong directions. That could have been the reason: my adolescent awkwardness, and the untouchability that went with it — although it’s hard to believe Miller would notice any such thing. Perhaps he did pick up something of my reaction to him, my hatred, strong as it was. Perhaps that was it.
    If he’d seen me as at all significant, as any kind of threat, then he might have put some effort into winning me over — but he didn’t. He ignored me. And that might have been his biggest mistake.

In the Home there was only work and prayer time and sleep. High brick walls and a circle of lawns like a moat. I fell in to the busyness, lost myself in it levering sheets out of the giant boiling vats in the laundry chopping piles of carrots in the kitchen scrubbing floors kneeling with the others while a nun said prayers. I forgot everything and became a dumb beast that worked and worked and never thought. My back ached the skin on my hands cracked my mind sank in to a murk. There were some girls pregnant like me and some just in for punishment, those ones were pretty tough. I kept to myself. I was scared, I didnt even talk to the other pregnant ones not even at night when we went in to our tiny bedrooms with there partitions so thin they were like curtains. Some times I heard other girls crying and some times my belly jerked with the kicks like calls for help but I was always so tired I just fell in to black sleep. A girl who was getting big would just vanish and nobody said any thing a new girl arriving to take her place. I didnt know how long Id been there the days stretched endless in both directions. It got harder to reach over the laundry and kitchen benches and to get up and down off my knees with the scrubbing brush or at prayer time but I barely noticed when we were told to have a wash I didnt look down or touch my belly. I didnt think about the people from the park or Evie Dyer or my mother or any thing, the past and the future didnt exist in this place. Some of the girls got visitors some times and phone calls or letters but not me. Then a girl came who was different. Pat she was called or any way that was the name she used some girls kept there real names a secret. She was pregnant she went around behind the laundry to smoke cigarettes and when the nuns caught her she just took a last drag and threw the butt away smiling and went back to work like she could just as easily choose not to. They cant do any thing she said to me We are fallen already we cant be punished any more. She had been there before, this was her second time, she was all the way from Adelaide. There were girls from everywhere, most people sent the pregnant ones as far away as possible just in case any one saw them and found out although how any one could see you in side this prison I didnt know. This is my last chance Pat said and laughed but it was not a happy laugh. Once I followed her out when she went to smoke. Whats it like? I said. It hurts she said Like hell and the nurses are all mean old bitches. And then they take it off you straight away before you even see it and then they make you sign the papers. What papers? I said. She grinned and blew smoke. The papers that say youre giving the baby up for adoption. So it can have a good life. I tried not to look around when she said the word baby, it made me nervous and I kept expecting a nun to come. She ran her hand down her front, smoothed her dress so I could see