Chapter Text
The Journal of Rebakah Cooper
1928
Monday, September 3rd
Written on my first day of school.
Miss Fisher reckons that writing in a book like this will help me with my writing and schooling, and anything else that happens to me. She gave it to me last night, wrapped in a bit of silk, and it’s the finest thing I’ve ever owned besides the silk. The book is leather stamped with flowers and so pretty I can barely bring myself to write in it. It came with a nib pen that Miss Fisher promised to teach me to use, but now I use my pencil.
When I asked Miss Fisher what I was supposed to write, she gave me one of her queer smiles and said that I should write about me. There is not much to tell. I am small, with dark blonde hair and freckles. My eyes are so blue and so pale that people shiver when I look at them. Sometimes people curse when they see them, but Miss Fisher says that they are pretty and will be an “asset” when I get bigger.
(I will look up “asset” in the big dictionary in the study later.)
Dr. MacMillan, who is Miss Fisher’s friend and stayed for supper, said that it’s lucky that Mama made me eat my greens, else I’d have crooked legs from rickets and she’d have to cut my legs off. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not - for one, she wears men’s britches, and for another, her face is always very serious, seeing as she is a proper doctor - but Miss Fisher laughed and slapped her shoulder. I think she did that to make me feel better, but I looked in the mirror after and made sure that my legs were straight. They are.
There is not much else to tell, save that I do not want to go school. I like the books just fine, but when Miss Fisher brought me there last week to put me down as a student, the headmistress looked at me like I was scummer from the sewer. Miss Fisher’s lady Dot had plaited my hair specially, and I was wearing a new dress, but I reckon some folks can smell Mutt Piddle Lane no matter how much soap you use. She even told me my name was wrong, but it was the first thing Mama taught me to write.
(Mama meant to name me Rebecca, but the midwife at my birth was the one not to know how to spell it on the paper, and there was never a point in changing it later. So I am Rebakah Cooper from the part of Melbourne we call the lower city.)
Then she said, so sweet that butter wouldn’t melt in her gab, that all pupils had to have a paper from a doctor saying as how we’re free of things like worms and other things I cannot spell. Miss Fisher had it right there, from where Dr. Mac checked me over, only she didn’t say Dr. Mac’s first name. (Before I met Dr. Mac, Miss Fisher told me that not everyone respects a lady doctor, let alone one in britches, so she takes care not to mention it. I wish I could wear britches, and told her so. Besides, Mama would whip us if she heard us disrespect folks for their dress.)
The headmistress only stopped looking at me when Miss Fisher brought her clever little purse out with her chequebook. I think Miss Fisher knows as how that lady’s a greedy mot, because as much hinting the headmistress did about needing a new gymnasium, Miss Fisher didn’t give her a penny more than what my fees were. Then Miss Fisher stood up like she was the queen and gave me a sort of tilt of her head that means “we’re going”, and we went.
I will write about my Mama and brothers and sisters later.
Written at Day’s End
Miss Fisher was still abed like a fine lady when I went to school, but Dot kissed my head like Mama would and Bert and Cec promised to drive me. Their car is not so fancy as the one Miss Fisher owns, and the walk is not far, but Dot told me that I might get dirty on the way. I never reckoned the red dirt all over Melbourne was a bad thing, but Miss Fisher got my things for school specially and I fear ruining them, especially on the first day.
My uniform is the same as everyone else (a long skirt that they call pleated, a white blouse, and stockings that go to the knees), but everyone stopped to stare when I got out of the car. I wish I had a temper and could shout, but instead I stared at the ground and tried not to think about what the others were thinking. (I think Miss Fisher wonders why I am so shy, but Dr. Mac says that I will be less shy when I am ready.)
I sat under a big tree in the yard until the bell rang, looking at my new primer and all the pictures. I have had some schooling - Mama taught me between the customers who came for her herbs and balms - but I am not such a good reader that it comes easily yet. That was when the first pigeon came to talk to me - or mayhaps at me, because I do not know if the ghosts make the pigeons carry out their wishes or not.
“They killed me!” The ghost on the pigeon moaned, and I sat up straight. It was a fine thing, to hear of murder on the first day of school. I’d always been able to hear the pigeons, and Mama thought me mad til she brought me to Granny Fern. She is my da’s mama, and she says that the ghosts what ride pigeons are the ones who have business to be settled. There are so many near where I lived on Mutt Piddle Lane that it was a real wonder I never went truly mad.
I’d not thought that they would be all the way near my new school, unless they followed me.
“Who?” I asked the ghost, keeping my voice quiet, but the ghost didn’t say another word. Its pigeon carried on pecking the hard ground. No one can make the ghosts talk, Granny Fern told me, not even its pigeon. We think the ghosts can’t hear anyone, and only go away when someone settles their final business.
Then two more pigeons landed, and I was about to hear what they had to say when the bell rang to show that lessons were about to start.
I do not like my school.
I was made to stand up in front of every class like a mumper, to tell the others my name and something of interest about myself. It is bad enough talking to one person that I know, but I could not make myself meet the eyes of a whole group. Instead I looked at the floor. I could feel my face burning, and all I could say was my name and that I liked geography best of all for the maps. When they saw that I had nothing else to say, or else that I could not say else, the teacher always sighed and had me sit down in the front row.
Mayhap it is a good thing that I could not look the others in the eye, because I heard plenty of giggles as I went back to my desk. It would have been worse to see their faces, I think.
My new teachers had all manner of things to say about me after that. One told me that my new book was covered in dirt, and was that how I treated my things where I came from? She smirked as she said it, and I knew the headmistress had told her where I truly came from. (If I was half as bold as Miss Fisher, I may have told her that we had no books in the Cesspool, and little sarden else to take care of. Instead, I just stared at the floor so that she could not see my eyes and mumbled an apology.)
Only one teacher, Mr. Pryce, took pity on me. He did not make me stand in front of the others, and at the end of class he lent me a book of fairy tales to practice reading. It is very pretty, with pictures of fairies all through that Miss Fisher would call ‘dainty’. The fairies seem very silly, sitting on flowers and giggling like crack-nobs, but I like the stories. Still, I almost gave it back, I’m that worrit about spoiling something so pretty, but he said that he knows I’m not so dirty as the one teacher said. That made me feel better.
Tomorrow, when the bell rings to let class go, I will go after the others. This time I was knocked all about in the hall with mean elbows and snickers, and hands pulled my braid. If I were braver like my friend Tansy back in the lower city, I’d’ve hit right back. There were plenty of teachers about, but they said naught about it.
Bert and Cec noticed my face right away when I climbed in the car, and had me tell the whole tale to them as they drove me home. They are very nice, nothing like Mama’s suitors or the hard men on the docks. Apart from Jack Robinson, the inspector, I’d not known men could even be nice. By the time we went into the house, both of them were so angry I thought they would spit right there on the floor, but then Dot and Mr. Butler came into the kitchen. Both of them would box Bert and Cec’s ears for doing something so barbaric.
(Barbaric is a good word. I learned it from reading a story in Miss Fisher’s study.)
Then Bert and Cec made me tell Dot, who hopped on the spot until Mr. Butler made us all a cup of tea. I am not so bothered to make such a fuss as all that, but I reckoned it made the grown-ups feel better to fuss, so I put up with Dot brushing my hair out and tying a bow into it.
I did make them swear to not tell Miss Fisher. She is a fine lady who, like as not, doesn’t know the meanness that some lads and gixies have in their hearts. Still, all through supper Dot kept squinting at me, trying to make me tell her. Dr. Mac, who was over for supper again, put up her eyebrows at Dot’s faces.
“Are your eyes hurting you, Dot?” She asked, and straight away Dot stopped squinting and pretended to be innocent as ever. I giggled into my milk, but that made Miss Fisher look at me then over her wine. (Though I have had small-ale plenty of times, she will only let me drink milk or water in the house.)
“How was your first day at school, Beka?” Miss Fisher asked, all interested-like, and I had to come up with something quick to say so she would not think aught was amiss.
“Fine.” I told her, once I had swallowed my mouth of vegetables. I could not look at Dot or Mr. Butler in case I glared, so I played as though I’d gone over shy again. If Miss Fisher knew I was play-acting, she didn’t say a thing, but she did pat my hand with her soft one and started talking about Mama and my brothers and sisters. They are all fine, she says, and Dr. Mac says I can visit Mama on Saturday. (Miss Fisher also said that her aunt Prudence had to hire a nursemaid, since Nilo and Willes kept making mud pies in her nice flowers. I am not surprised.)
Looking back on the mess I have wrote, I feel tired all over. I ought to put in what folks say more, but that’s more I have to keep in my memory. I will keep the dust-spinners for tomorrow.