Parramatta Girls Read online

  MARLENE: The Burramattagal clan of the Dhurug. Burramatta.

  CORAL: Parramatta.

  Pause.

  KERRY: 1796 they built a place here for the female convicts.

  GAYLE: Yeah, I knew that. The Female Factory, right?

  MARLENE: That’s the one next door, Gayle.

  KERRY: Turned that into a loony bin eventually.

  CORAL: Took their convict babies away and put them in the orphanage when they turned three.

  MELANIE: And that was our building. From when?

  KERRY: You wanna know?

  GAYLE: Yeah. I wanna know.

  MARLENE: Be careful what ya ask for.

  MELANIE: ’Cause Kerry’ll tell ya dates.

  KERRY: 1841.

  CORAL: Government orphanage.

  KERRY: 1844? [Pause.] Catholic orphanage. 1887?

  MELANIE: Girls Industrial School.

  KERRY: 1912.

  MARLENE & CORAL: [together] Girls Training Home.

  KERRY: 1925.

  GAYLE: Parramatta Girls Home.

  KERRY: 1946, Girls Training School Parramatta. 1974, Kamballa Girls Institution. 1980, Norma Parker Detention Centre for Women… to the present day.

  MARLENE: And why do you think they kept changing the names, Gayle?

  KERRY: Because they’d have an enquiry that would say shut it down. So they would shut it down. Technically. Just change the name and you’ve shut it down.

  GAYLE: Bloody hell!

  MELANIE: Watch it, ya foul mouthed little bitch, or we’ll wash your mouth out with soap.

  There is a moment, then it relaxes when MELANIE pulls a face.

  GAYLE: Why do you know all that?

  KERRY: They’re the facts.

  GAYLE: But that’s…

  KERRY: … what comes of not bein’ believed.

  GAYLE: When have you not been believed?

  KERRY: Start yesterday and work backwards.

  GAYLE: By who?

  KERRY: No one important, really. Oh, there’s the government enquiries into this place that did nothing. And you may as well throw in the courts that have never charged no one associated with this place with any crime. Just them. Unless you want to add every person who doesn’t want to hear how bad it was. Yeah, if you counted all of them then I’d say this, today, is the first day I ever been listened to about this place.

  MELANIE: Fancy you got yourself a bit of an ‘historic occasion’, Kerry. Have ya?

  They laugh. Pause.

  GAYLE: That what you think, Marlene?

  MARLENE: Me? I just think it’s an opportunity to shake hands with them ol’ demons.

  MARLENE shakes hands with MELANIE.

  CORAL: Nearly every ‘delinquent’ girl in the history of Australia has been through here at some time or another.

  MARLENE: So it’s gonna be one helluva fun reunion, eh!

  They laugh. A long silence.

  I really wanted to just…

  GAYLE: See it.

  CORAL: See it again. [Pause.] The first day I was here I heard a girl screaming and they told me that the other girls… that something was being done to her with a toilet brush and I shouldn’t get involved. So I didn’t. And I kept my head down from then on.

  GAYLE: So you were all right.

  CORAL: Well. Except that that’s how I then went through life.

  GAYLE: You mean never… protesting, like.

  CORAL: [bitter] Protecting myself.

  Pause.

  MARLENE: How long do we have to stand out here, do you think?

  CORAL: Oh, they’ll keep us waiting, Marlene. Just to remind us.

  KERRY goes over to the ‘gate’.

  KERRY: I would have come up to about there on this.

  CORAL: We was smaller then.

  MARLENE: I was thirteen when I first went in.

  GAYLE: I was fourteen. But I was a scrawny bugger.

  JUDI: Just a little girl, really.

  MELANIE: Just a pack of scrawny buggers.

  KERRY: Thought I knew everything.

  CORAL: I bloody did know everything.

  MARLENE: I bloody still do.

  They laugh.

  MELANIE: Thought I could escape.

  KERRY: But even if you climbed the wall, there was still the gate.

  CORAL: There was.

  MARLENE: Big spikes on top of it.

  They all stand looking at the ‘gate’.

  GAYLE: Come on. They’re lettin’ us in.

  KERRY, JUDI and GAYLE and CORAL exit.

  The lights change. MARLENE and MELANIE huddle on stage.

  MELANIE: What’s your name, then?

  MARLENE: Marlene.

  MELANIE: We’ve got to get out of the car.

  MARLENE: No, this place must be for you.

  MELANIE: What?

  MARLENE: This place.

  MELANIE: Come on, she’s telling us both to get out, Marlene.

  MARLENE: I’m not getting out.

  MELANIE: You’d better.

  MELANIE stands. MARLENE stands as if wrenched to her feet.

  Told you it was both.

  MARLENE: But there must be a mistake.

  MELANIE: Save it.

  MARLENE is backing back.

  MARLENE: I’m not going in there. [She reacts as if she has been struck.] Ow!

  MELANIE: Come on.

  MARLENE: I’m not going…

  MARLENE continues to struggle, reacting as if she’s getting dragged along, screaming.

  I want to see my mum.

  The two girls exit.

  The lights find LYNETTE, breathing deeply. After a moment she begins to take everything out of her bag. She is making a pile of rubbish papers, folding up receipts, sorting out her money. MAREE enters. She wears a Parramatta Girls uniform.

  MAREE: Do you have to do that now?

  Pause.

  LYNETTE: I just thought… while we’re waiting to go in… I’d…

  MAREE: You shouldn’t be flashing your money around.

  LYNETTE: I’m not.

  MAREE: You are. And you shouldn’t around these sort of women.

  Pause.

  LYNETTE: You weren’t in here with the rest of us, then?

  MAREE: I was in here. That’s why I’m saying it.

  LYNETTE: Lynette.

  MAREE: Maree.

  LYNETTE: I was in here with a Maree. [She looks into the middle distance, as though remembering her past.] So you think they’d…

  MAREE: They didn’t come from the North Shore then and they don’t come from the North Shore now.

  LYNETTE finishes putting the things away in her purse.

  You coming, Lynette?

  LYNETTE: Nah. I’m just gonna stay here for a bit, Maree.

  MAREE: You sure?

  LYNETTE: Yeah. I’ll be in in a mo.

  MAREE: See ya in there, then.

  LYNETTE: Yeah. See you in there. [Beat.] I’d never come across girls like that before. I mean, I went to St Catherine’s at Waverley and all the girls there were very posh… and, you know, good backgrounds, and my background was very solid in that way as well… I just had never come across girls like that before. I mean, their knowledge of sex, their knowledge of drugs and alcohol and abuse, the things that they’d been subjected to by their families. I sort of felt that I was not so much better, but just completely different to them, so it was really hard for me to relate to anybody as well. And then this girl Maree befriended me. She was a friend to me. She really was.

  LYNETTE sits on stage, fussing with her purse.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  SCENE TWO

  A group of women enter the home.

  CORAL: This way, ladies. DOCS would like you to sign in the visitors book. Then you can go exploring around the home wherever you like.

  MARLENE: I’m not signing their book. They got enough records on me. [Beat.] Oooh.

  CORAL: Can you smell it? It’s the old processing cell.

  MARLENE: They dragged m
e through here. Out of the black car. Black tinted windows. Into that processing cell.

  The group exits.

  On another part of the stage, GAYLE and JUDI enter, as older women.

  GAYLE: My file had two lines on it.

  JUDI: What’s that?

  GAYLE: That’s the number of fingers the doctor was able to insert.

  JUDI: Maybe it was something else.

  GAYLE: It wasn’t something else. It was the number of fingers. Two lines, two fingers. If he could get two in that meant you were still a virgin, if he could get three in you’d had sex, if he could get four in, well. I’ve never met anyone with four lines on their file. Have you?

  JUDI: No, and I don’t believe—

  GAYLE: My daughter said don’t go down into the dungeons. It won’t do you any good. But I want to go down and look at them. I want to see those dungeons. I want to see them again with my own eyes.

  JUDI: There weren’t any dungeons. And there’s no way guards could have assaulted anyone. They wouldn’t have jeopardised their jobs. And they were always with another guard. There was no place down below, no dungeon. It’s memory playing tricks on you.

  GAYLE: There were.

  JUDI: Well, I was in here for four years and I don’t remember ’em.

  GAYLE: What would you know?

  Pause.

  JUDI: I’d know.

  GAYLE: Yeah, you’d know. You’d know everything.

  JUDI: What did you say?

  GAYLE: You’d know everything. Little Miss Smarty Pants.

  JUDI: Do I know you?

  GAYLE: I didn’t twig to what was happening at all. Did not twig. You used to get taken away into the building and we’d wonder. I can remember your attitude of being superior than everyone. I thought if you showed your face here today I’d have—

  JUDI: What’s your name?

  GAYLE: Don’t pretend you don’t know. You know who I am. Like I know who you are.

  JUDI: My name is Judi.

  GAYLE: I know who you are, Fay McKell. Don’t think I don’t know you. You were his favourite. [Loudly] She was giving it away to the Superintendent. At fifteen. Knew how to work it to her advantage even then.

  GAYLE sort of pushes JUDI. JUDI pushes her back.

  JUDI: Don’t you dare push me.

  CORAL, as older, comes over.

  CORAL: Come on now. Stop this. This reunion is for all of us.

  GAYLE: She knew what she was doing, Coral. She was smart. And she was stuck-up.

  JUDI: I don’t know what she’s talking about.

  GAYLE and JUDI exit. CORAL watches.

  MELANIE and MARLENE, as children, are in the admissions cell.

  MELANIE: [singing] Charlotte the harlot lay dying,

  Three pisspots supported her head,

  Three poofters around her lay crying,

  And she turned on her left tit and said,

  I’ve been fucked by the Germans and Russians,

  By the Chinese and Japanese too.

  But I come back to good old Australia

  To be fucked by old bastards like you.

  Know any jokes?

  MARLENE: What?

  MELANIE: Jokes. Preferably dirty ones.

  MARLENE: That’s disgusting.

  MELANIE: Not as disgusting as this place. Trust me.

  MARLENE: Have you been here before?

  MELANIE: Do roos shit in the bush?

  MARLENE: Don’t say shit.

  MELANIE: [singing] So roll back your dirty old foreskins

  And give me the juice from your nuts.

  So they rolled back their dirty old foreskins

  And whitewashed the walls of her guts.

  MARLENE: Stop it.

  MELANIE: Why? It upsets the guards.

  MARLENE: Why do you want to upset them?

  MELANIE: I just do.

  MARLENE: Well, I don’t. I shouldn’t even be in here.

  MELANIE: You won’t last ten minutes in here.

  MARLENE: Good. Then they’ll put me somewhere else.

  MELANIE: Yeah, like the asylum next door. That’s where they put you if you don’t fit in here.

  Pause.

  MARLENE: What’s your name?

  MELANIE: Melanie.

  MARLENE: Just be quiet, Melanie. Just stop your filthy mouth.

  MELANIE: And who’s going to stop me?

  MARLENE: I am.

  MELANIE: I thought you weren’t even supposed to be in here.

  MARLENE: I’m not.

  MELANIE: Then stop acting like you run the joint.

  MARLENE: Then stop trying to scare me more than I already am.

  MELANIE looks at her. MARLENE looks like she’s going to start crying.

  MELANIE: Don’t.

  MARLENE: What?

  MELANIE: Lose your bottle.

  MARLENE: My what?

  MELANIE: You know. Don’t let it drip out your arse.

  Pause. MARLENE laughs despite herself.

  MARLENE: Where’d you hear that stuff?

  MELANIE: Me dad’s a wobbly.

  MARLENE: A wobbly arse?

  MELANIE: Not a wobbly arse. They’re anarchists. Anti-state.

  MARLENE: The what?

  MELANIE: Just anti. [Beat.] Anti, you know. Anti.

  MARLENE nods.

  MARLENE: So, did they come get you?

  MELANIE: Nah. I ran away from home.

  MARLENE: You ran away?

  MELANIE: Yeah. So?

  MARLENE: I’d never do that. [Pause.] How long do we have to stay in this room?

  MELANIE: Until they assign us a dorm.

  MARLENE: Then what?

  MELANIE: Then you get to meet Doctor Fingers.

  Pause.

  MARLENE: Why do they call him that?

  MELANIE: Because he’s got dirty, great big fingers that he sticks into you.

  MARLENE: I don’t believe you.

  MELANIE: First thing he’ll say to you is, ‘Get up on the table. How many times have you been fucked?’

  MARLENE: A doctor would never say that.

  MELANIE: Then he shoves it in.

  MARLENE: He does not.

  MELANIE: We call it the duck’s bill. He really shoves it, too.

  MARLENE: Why would he do that?

  MELANIE: Checking for crabs.

  MARLENE: What sort of crabs?

  MELANIE: Public lice.

  MARLENE: What?

  MELANIE: VD. Don’t you know anything?

  MARLENE: What’s VD stand for? Victory Day?

  Pause.

  MELANIE: Very Dumb. Did I say you wouldn’t last ten minutes in here? Make that five.

  MARLENE: If I behave myself I’ll be fine. If I follow the rules they’ll treat me fairly.

  MELANIE exits, laughing.

  MARLENE is repeating ‘If I behave myself I’ll be fine; if I follow the rules they’ll treat me fairly’ like a mantra. She walks forward and, still wearing her dress, removes her underpants. She lays down on the floor and parts her legs. Then she turns her head to the side and cries as her legs move further apart. GAYLE comes on, dressed as the DOCTOR, in a white sheet. All the other girls surround her and chime in as the DOCTOR ‘examines’ MARLENE.

  DOCTOR: This is to certify that I have examined Marlene Kenneally and find her to be of sound physique and free from signs of active organic disease, or of venereal disease. She is non virgo intacta and the appearances suggest frequent penetration.

  MARLENE: That’s not true. That’s just not true.

  GAYLE: The doctor says you’re a little slut.

  MARLENE: Get away from me. Get away.

  MARLENE stands. GAYLE is struggling with her when the girls all turn to enact a mock trial which is part Alice in Wonderland and partly the reality of the Children’s Court in Darlinghurst in the 1960s.

  One of the girls has a judge’s gavel and she bangs it on something hard. They wear sheets as gowns and mop heads as wigs.

  PLAYER: Children’s Court,
Darlinghurst, is in session.

  PLAYER: The court will come to order.

  Two of the girls grab MARLENE and hold her. The JUDGE is sitting on a chair.

  PLAYER: You are charged with being uncontrollable. And there’s only one place to send you to make you properly disciplined.

  The two girls holding her call out.

  PLAYERS: Send her to Parramatta!

  MARLENE: No. I haven’t done anything wrong. They took away my brothers and sister, they told me I would have to be charged.

  PLAYER: With neglect.

  MARLENE: Who did I neglect?

  JUDGE: You are charged with being neglected.

  MARLENE: But how can you charge me with neglect?

  PLAYER: I think you can see, Your Honour, that this girl’s mental capacity is one of the impediments to her understanding simple moral concepts.

  JUDGE: Yes, I see that.

  PLAYER: She is, and I quote from her official file, ‘She is somewhat mentally retarded’.

  MARLENE: I am not mentally retarded.

  JUDGE: Silence.

  MARLENE: But I’m not—

  PLAYER: Your Honour can see what happens when a rebellious spirit is housed in the female body and that is coupled with the disadvantage of a none-too mentally acute mind.

  JUDGE: Yes. Yes. I see.

  PLAYERS: Send her to Parramatta.

  MARLENE: No.

  PLAYERS: Send her to Parramatta.

  MARLENE: Stop it. Stop it.

  She continues crying out ‘Stop it’ and then stands on stage, tears in her eyes.

  The women remove the sheets and mop heads. They are wearing white nightshirts and carrying small white bed sheets.

  GIRLS: [singing] The water is wide, I cannot get o’er,

  Neither have I the wings to fly,

  Give me a boat that can carry two,

  And both shall row, my love and I.

  A ship there is and she sails the sea,

  She’s loaded deep as deep can be,

  But not so deep as the love I’m in,

  I know not if I sink or swim.

  MELANIE has a mop and an iron bucket. While staring at GAYLE, she hands MARLENE a mop. MELANIE drops the bucket with a bang.

  MARLENE: What?

  MELANIE: Just do it.

  MARLENE: What?

  MELANIE: Mop.

  MARLENE takes the mop, squeezes out some water and mops the stage. GAYLE moves in front of her and spits on the floor where MARLENE has just mopped.

  Leave her alone.

  GAYLE turns to look at MELANIE.

  GAYLE: Says who?

  MELANIE: Says me.

  GAYLE: Your number’s not even dry yet.

  MELANIE: I don’t care if me new number’s not even dry.