I was very relieved when Sister Mary Enda kept smiling at me the first morning, I entered her class. I smiled sweetly back at her each time that she smiled at me. Just before little lunch, she called me out to her desk. I was more worried than surprised, because she hadn’t actually said, Amelia, will you come to my desk please.
Her exact words were, ‘Long get out here.’
I stood at her desk and she picked up a feather duster with a cane handle, she held the feathered end in a vice-like grip and whacked the cane across my left arm three times and told me, ‘That should wipe the smile off your face.’
She then told me to get back to my place and pay attention. Everyone in the entire room was in total shock. I went back to my desk with tears welling in my eyes and my jaw set determinedly. I sat there willing the tears to go back to wherever they had come from. I could feel every pair of eyes looking at me and I was more than relieved when the bell rang for us to go out to play. I think everyone from class came up to me to ask me what I had been doing to cop the cane. ‘Nothing, I did absolutely nothing. She kept smiling at me and I smiled back at her and that’s all I did.’ We all found out that same day that she wasn’t smiling she was snarling and grinding her teeth.
Worst of all, she not only taught the seventh grade (the class we were in), she also taught the eighth grade at the same time as well. That meant I had her as my teacher for two whole years. I never found out why she singled me out to vent her hatred, I can only assume it was because I had wagged school the year before or the fact that I was a Protestant or perhaps a combination of both. I won’t say I did nothing in those two years to warrant punishment, but truthfully, I was wrongly accused of many things during that time. I copped the cane on a regular basis and if she couldn’t grab the cane quick enough, she’d punch me in the back with a closed fist or grab me by the shoulders and she would shake me like a rag doll. I wasn’t the only one in the room who copped her verbal and physical abuse though. Quite a few of us did.
Nancy’s sister, Quinn, who was in the eighth grade, did something wrong one day. Sister Mary Enda got hold of her and shook the living daylights out of her then flung her about twenty feet (six metres) across the room and through the doorway onto the veranda. Fortunately, Quinn skidded to a stop against the brick wall that surrounded the balcony. If she hadn’t stopped, she would’ve no doubt gone over the wall and down about twenty feet, to the cement below.
Everyone absolutely detested Sister Mary Enda. She was definitely a mean evil witch of a woman who should never have been a nun let alone a teacher. She made me sit amongst the boys as punishment, at first, I hated it but we learnt to accept each other. All the boys treated me as one of them instead of being the enemy. The one thing I didn’t like about sitting amongst them, I had to sit next to Timothy Finch. Timothy used to pick his nose and eat it and it would make the flesh on my back crawl. Even thinking about it now, I get a cold shiver running down my spine.
A few years ago, I heard that he became a doctor. I just hope he mastered hygiene. God help his patients if he didn’t.
I had been a bit keen on Leo Wyatt, whose family owned an extremely well-known business. The Wyatt’s were not only prominent business figures, they were also known for their kindness and generosity. What a pity they didn’t teach Leo a few more manners. He took great delight in spitting in my face one day in the playground and he lost all affection I had for him. I met him a few years ago, he became a barrister and his body odour was putrid.
Someone sitting behind me had been talking in class one morning and Sister Enda accused me. She flew down the aisle and punched me between the shoulder blades. I got such a shock, that without thinking I said
‘What was that for?’
She ground her teeth at me
Sister Enda ‘Talking’
Amelia ‘You’re wrong again, because it wasn’t me.’
She ground her teeth again, curled her lip up like a monkey and sneered,
‘Long, you’d give cheek to the Pope.’
Amelia ‘Well bring him along then.’
The entire room erupted with laughter, so I was sent out to stand on the verandah for the entire day. Whatever interest I had in schoolwork went out the window the day I entered her classroom. As far as I was concerned, I was there solely as her punching bag. She said a very curious thing to me one day, which took me at least five years before I worked out what she meant. She said, ‘Long, in years to come, no doubt you’ll be holding up the street corner.’ I thought she meant I’d be a lazy bugger, leaning on the wall watching the world go by.
Obviously, she meant that she thought I’d become a prostitute.
We walked into the schoolroom one morning and she was in a mood fit to be tied.
Whenever we entered the classroom, the first thing we’d do after looking at her to see how frothy her mouth was, we’d check the blackboard for the lesson. On this particular day, the board was almost wiped clean. The letters A.M.D.G. were still there which were a permanent fixture and meant All My Duty to God, but some wag had written in bold writing directly underneath, Aunt Mary’s Dead Goat.
No prizes for guessing who got the blame. The funny part was even if I had stood on a chair with at least two cushions, I wouldn’t have reached the writing.
On the first morning of the eighth grade, she put me in the back row at the top of the class. It definitely wasn’t because I had finally become a genius. She had obviously no desire whatsoever of teaching me, and this was her way of keeping me as far away from her as possible, but it didn’t stop her from throwing the blackboard eraser at me. Actually, I think she probably thought I was an easier target there and the chances of me ducking, and her hitting another kid was reduced. She’d also get her exercise by walking up behind me, and giving a good clout wherever her hand landed, just for practice. Sitting next to me was Diane. She was a nice girl and I’m very ashamed to admit that I pinched sixteen shillings (one dollar and sixty cents) of her raffle money from her desk one day. I hid the money (all in coins) in my sock and I had a hell of a job walking to the tram terminus shops where my friends and I bought our favourite lollies and drinks and stuffed ourselves senseless. I was under suspicion but nothing was proved. I bumped into Diane’s mother about eight years later and she told me that she knew it was me who’d stolen the money and hidden it in my socks. Obviously one of my friends who had enjoyed sharing the ill-gotten gains, had dobbed me in.
In recent years, I was stunned to learn that Diane’s brother was one of the barristers in charge of conducting the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Which was the biggest Queensland Government scandal that caused a number of politicians and the police commissioner to be sent to jail.
There was a newspaper honour box at the tram terminus it was a rickety old tin contraption that was very unstable. One afternoon we were running around playing tiggy, and me being an awkward little bugger, ran headfirst into it and knocked it over. Apart from all the Telegraph newspapers blowing around the street, all the money inside the money box section went spilling all over the footpath. At first, we were all embarrassed at the accident and we scrambled to pick up all the coins to replace them into the moneybox. Then we realised how easy it would be to keep some for ourselves. So, we counted it out thus, one for the tin one for us, one for the tin four for us, none for the tin and the rest for us. It was really strange how we all took it in turns to accidentally knock that honour box over on a regular basis after that. Good little Catholic school girls we were.
Sister Mary Leonard, the music teacher, had not been very popular in my books. She was not a cruel woman like Sister Mary Enda, but she wasn’t too frightened to give her pupils a good clout or a push if she thought they deserved it. Most of us didn’t think we deserved the amount of clouts and pushes she dished out. We were all practicing for our annual concert on one particular occasion and we were singing our little hearts out. All of a sudden, she stopped playing the piano and jumped up and called out rather aggressively, ‘Who