Free Hope Farm by Peggy Frew Page B

the shape, kept her hand there. I will tell you some thing she said,  You dont have to sign. They tell you you do but you dont. When she drew on the cigarette she looked much older like a grown up woman. The thing is she said, They say its for the best that you can forget about it and get on with your life. But you dont. I said What will you do this time? She dropped her hand then. She had peroxided her hair and there was a stripe of dark at the parting. Oh I will sign. Course I will. What choice have I got realy? Where would I be otherwise on my own with a kid? Id be on the street just ask my mum and dad.
    I told one of the nuns I needed to ring my parents. She took me in to the office downstairs and I dialled the number on the heavy black telephone. My mother answered. Is everything all right? she said. Yes I said. Well what is it then? said my mother. The nun was standing behind me near the door and I had to speak quietly. What if I want to keep it? I said. You cant. Why not? Couldnt you — You cant she said, Dont ask me again. My father said some thing in the background. Nothing, she said to him, Shes just being silly. To me she said This is a respectable family, if you cant be respectable then you are not welcome in this house.

School started.
    Across the shining, wet road I clomped in my op-shop shoes, my frozen hands pulled into the sleeves of my jumper and my breath sharp in the early air, over to where Ian waited at the bus stop. He was always there first, tall and skinny in his green and grey uniform. Side by side we stood, steadfastly ignoring each other, taking it in turns to peer up the road.
    Cockatoos rasped and shrieked high in the facing wall of bush, and sometimes a beaten-up car would chug out from the Hope turn-off, windows misted, the blurred figures waving as they passed, the dry-throated bleat of a horn sounding. I never waved back.
    The bus, with its tough, craggy driver — smelling of instant coffee and cigarettes, and ever-ready with his yell of, ‘Pipe down or yer can get off and walk’ — took us, sliding on our vinyl seats, past soggy-looking paddocks that erupted every now and then into sudden, bald hills. Ian and I sat separately, of course. At intervals we stopped to let more kids on — all the same kinds of kids that were at every school. There were the bully-boys, loud and dangerous, spreading themselves across the back rows and being shouted at by the driver. Then there were the prissy girls, grouped in twos or threes, with neat hair, who all wore their uniforms, I knew, in mysterious, significant ways, like another language. Then there were the freaks. All sitting near the front. An enormously fat boy. Two girls almost as big — sisters — both with orange curly hair. A boy with glasses, who breathed heavily through his mouth. And me, of course, and Ian. Finally, there were the others, the in-between kids. Ordinary kids with freckles or buck teeth or sticking-out ears, sitting in pairs and talking. I snatched secret looks at them. These were the ones I envied, and always had.
    The hills and paddocks were eventually interrupted by increasing numbers of houses and then, all at once, rows of shops and low-rise office blocks; and finally, the tall, ugly orange-brick school buildings, flanked by an oval on one side and a vast car park on the other.
    â€˜She’s from that place, I bet.’
    I sat at a desk by the window, pretending to be interested in the view of the oval below.
    â€˜What place?’
    â€˜You know, that hippie place. Near Kooralang. Hope Farm, or whatever they call it. I saw her get on the bus.’
    Other voices joined in.
    â€˜Awww! That place!’
    â€˜What farm? Where?’
    â€˜You mean Dope Farm.’
    â€˜You know, near the Munros’. It’s a commune.’
    â€˜What’s that?’
    â€˜It’s where a whole lot of lazy bastards sit round taking drugs in the nude, that’s what my dad