Parramatta Girls Read online

  LYNETTE: What numbers?

  JUDI: Eighteen-and-a-half to twenty-four. That’s when I worked in the brothels. And five. That’s how many terminations I’ve had.

  LYNETTE: Right.

  JUDI: I carried one baby full term, but it was stillborn. Which was a shame because I was going to keep her. Probably just as well for her that I didn’t.

  LYNETTE: I’m sure that’s not true.

  JUDI: After that, I cut myself off from the scene. I just wanted to get on with my life and have a baby and be looked after.

  LYNETTE: That’d be nice.

  JUDI: By now I was twenty-five. Got married, tried everything to get pregnant. Tubes were blocked. So I said, can we adopt? No way, he said. But then he changed his mind. So we got the papers and you fill ’em out and you send them off. And I remember down the bottom it said, any criminal records, and if so what are they? I just put yes. So the chap came out and he’s sitting in the lounge. And he had the papers and he was only a young bloke and he looked really embarrassed and he said, ‘Ah, you’ve put down you’ve got some criminal records and we looked it up,’ and he says, ‘Do you know there’s a number of them?’ So I said, ‘What number?’ And he said, ‘Six hundred. There’s more than six hundred charges.’

  LYNETTE: And what did you say?

  JUDI: I said, ‘Really, that’s terrible.’ So I said, ‘But I haven’t had any for six years, you know.’ So this guy says, ‘If you still want to adopt, you’re going to have to get people who knew you then and know you now, to speak up on your behalf.’ So I did. Cops. And we brought her home in September. Third of the ninth, 1972. And that was the loveliest number of them all. [Pause.] I would have liked to see some of the old girls. Just to see how many of them came up with the same numbers.

  LYNETTE: And have you seen anyone?

  Pause.

  JUDI: Yes.

  LYNETTE: Who?

  JUDI: Someone who recognised me. Who remembered what I’d done with the Superintendent. Being his favourite.

  LYNETTE: And what did you do?

  JUDI: I told her she was mistaken.

  Pause.

  LYNETTE: You have to talk to her.

  JUDI: No. I really can’t, Lynette. I really can’t.

  LYNETTE: You have to.

  JUDI: I don’t and I won’t.

  JUDI exits.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  SCENE FIVE

  MELANIE: After they took Coral away, I guess I sort of jumped the rails. I made up these drinks, sorta cocktails, out of Brasso and some other stuff, and got all these girls to drink it. Sort of made us dizzy and that. But when it came to punish us they only had six isolation cells so they got us to do a loft job. That was above the laundry, the loft. [Looking around] Imagine this without the walls, just the beams. And the roof, with no roofing on it, just the beams. And all these pigeons and pigeon shit everywhere, right, and a wooden floor. You had your breakfast and then you went up there at seven o’clock in the morning.

  MAREE enters.

  MAREE: Stand.

  KERRY stands in front of a wooden beam.

  Dip your brush.

  The girls dip their brushes.

  Scrub.

  The girls all scrub. They scrub and scrub.

  MELANIE: You would scrub in this position for half and hour. And it’d be a beam that was this far in front of you. You weren’t allowed to brush the shit off your hands. If she said dip your brush, you just had to let all the shit run down your arms for half an hour while you scrubbed. I didn’t mind. Because I deserved it. I was a bad girl and I deserved it. I’d wished my father dead, see, and soon after that he got sick. Really sick. And because everyone in Parramatta told me I was bad. One day Matron said to me, ‘Well, it’s no wonder, really, a daughter like you. You’d drive anyone to an early grave.’ And I bought it. I was bad, powerfully bad, and I needed to be punished. And the more violent I was, the worse I was punished. Which is what I wanted. Because I had to create the kind of badness that might be able to make someone sick just by hating them enough. Children. You tell them they’re animals, you treat them like animals. And they become.

  MARLENE enters and sees KERRY is back.

  MAREE: Stop.

  KERRY stops scrubbing.

  Brush down.

  KERRY puts her brush down.

  Half an hour.

  MAREE exits. MARLENE throws her arms around KERRY.

  MARLENE: Kerry!

  KERRY: Hello, Marlene.

  KERRY is a shadow of her former self. Really flat and quiet and broken.

  MARLENE: What are you doing back?

  KERRY: Caught me.

  MARLENE: Where’d you go?

  KERRY: Cross.

  MARLENE: Yeah?

  KERRY: Hung out with Lizzie and Kay. Only Kay’s an albino.

  MARLENE: A what?

  KERRY: Albino. Pure white. White hair, white eyes.

  MARLENE: Ya coulda picked someone a bit less conspicuous.

  KERRY: Yeah, that’s what the cops said.

  Pause.

  MARLENE: How’d you get to the Cross?

  KERRY: Hitched.

  MARLENE: So now what?

  KERRY: Original nine months, plus another nine months for the escape.

  MARLENE: Reckon they’ll want you back in the kitchen.

  KERRY just sits rocking, broken.

  Kerry? [Pause.] Kerry?

  MAREE enters and overhears MARLENE.

  MAREE: Leave her.

  MARLENE: What?

  MAREE: I said, leave her.

  MARLENE: What’s wrong with her?

  MAREE: She’s been given a good going-over.

  KERRY looks at MARLENE. Her eyes are like a wounded animal.

  Stand.

  The girls stand.

  Dip your brush.

  The girls dip their brushes.

  Scrub.

  The girls scrub. MARLENE looks at KERRY but KERRY is scrubbing with a vacant stare.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  SCENE SIX

  MARLENE, trapped in a living nightmare, is surrounded by girls dressed in sheets. They run around her, except for KERRY who remains small and shattered on her seat.

  KERRY: Come on, I’ll look after you.

  GAYLE: It was surgical steel wool.

  JUDI: The court will come to order.

  MARLENE: They can’t do that.

  MELANIE: She won’t get to keep it.

  MAREE: She’s been given a good going-over.

  MARLENE: If I behave myself.

  KERRY: Nine months.

  MELANIE: They take them.

  KERRY: Plus another nine months for the escape.

  CORAL: He’s busted my teeth.

  MARLENE: They can’t do that.

  MELANIE: That’s what happens when the boogey man comes and gets you in the night.

  JUDI: Silence in the court.

  MARLENE: This place doesn’t scare me.

  MELANIE: Don’t cry.

  GAYLE: Look him in the eye.

  CORAL: He kept kicking me.

  MAREE: She’ll have to go to Dorm Four.

  JUDI: You wanna be drugged with Largactyl?

  KERRY: Come on, or I’ll go without you.

  The girls throw the sheets at MARLENE. MARLENE screams uncon-trollably, all the loss and pain and grief and anger coming out in one massive raging scream of fury and humiliation and frustration. Then she runs off.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  SCENE SEVEN

  MAREE enters. She closes a door and stands with her back pressed against it. She gets a chair and jams the door shut. Then she takes a small rope out of her pocket and looks at it. She begins to hum the tune of ‘The Singing Bird’.

  On the other side of the stage, MELANIE enters and sits down. She takes a sharp object and cuts herself with it.

  MARLENE gets up from the corner and goes over to MELANIE. They look at each other.

  MELANIE: Have you cut yourself before?

&
nbsp; MARLENE: Not really.

  MELANIE: You can’t go too deep. Just enough for it to sting.

  MELANIE cuts down her leg. Blood begins to seep out of the wound.

  MARLENE: What does it feel like?

  MELANIE: Just… like it releases the pressure or something.

  MARLENE: Give it here.

  MARLENE cuts down her arm.

  MELANIE: How’s that?

  MARLENE: Yeah. Good.

  On the other side of the stage, LYNETTE is rattling the door knob. After some moments, there is a knock on the door.

  LYNETTE: Maree. [She knocks again.] Maree.

  MAREE stuffs the rope back in her pocket. LYNETTE tries to open the door but it’s jammed.

  MAREE: Yeah.

  LYNETTE: Open the door.

  MAREE moves the chair and opens the door.

  MAREE: What?

  LYNETTE: You’re not supposed to jam things against the door like that.

  MAREE: I didn’t. It was stuck.

  LYNETTE: If I was Matron…

  MAREE: So. What?

  LYNETTE: Matron wants you to take the food to girls in the admissions room.

  MAREE: Why me?

  LYNETTE: Well, I didn’t exactly ask, did I? Are you all right?

  MAREE: I know why she wants me to do it.

  LYNETTE: Why?

  MAREE: She wants everyone to see me. That’s why.

  MAREE straps a white hospital bedpan onto the back of her pants and exits.

  On the other side of the stage, MELANIE cuts her leg again.

  MELANIE: I love it.

  MARLENE: Why do you?

  MELANIE: All the pain is just there. Just there on your leg, stinging. All there.

  MARLENE: I do know.

  MELANIE: I love seeing the blood come up, too. Like it always comes up. Like a little command. I cut and up comes the blood.

  MARLENE: Like a little command, ‘Come up blood’.

  MELANIE: ‘Front and centre blood.’

  They are laughing.

  You want to do one more?

  MARLENE: Yeah.

  MELANIE: A little bit deeper this time. Some real red, red blood. And it will really sting.

  MARLENE takes the knife and is about to cut her arm again. She looks up at MELANIE. She throws the cutting implement away.

  MARLENE: We can’t let them win.

  Pause.

  MELANIE: That’s what my dad always said.

  MARLENE: Yeah, mine too.

  MELANIE: I want to go home.

  MARLENE: Then let’s go home. See your dad.

  MELANIE: He hurts me.

  MARLENE: Does he?

  MELANIE: He’s great. And he’s not. And I still want to go home.

  MARLENE: Let’s just get out of here.

  MELANIE: How?

  MARLENE: Escape.

  Pause.

  MELANIE: You didn’t run out when the gate was open.

  MARLENE: I know. So now I wanna.

  MELANIE: Kerry tried.

  MARLENE: Kerry hung around with an albino. We’re smarter than that.

  MELANIE: We can’t escape. We’re locked in.

  MARLENE: Come on, let’s try.

  MELANIE stands where she is. MARLENE walks forward and becomes her older self.

  We went around to the side, right past the school, and we were gonna try and climb over the wall there, over this big gate. But when we got there we realised we couldn’t do that. We could hear everyone singin’ out sayin’, ‘They’re getting Jones,’ and he really scared me.

  MARLENE has been enacting her confusion and terror. She comes to the side of the stage. She looks behind her, concerned, then climbs up a ladder onto the mezzanine.

  So there was nowhere else to go except up on the roof and so we went onto the schoolhouse roof. And that was the first time anyone ever went on the roof. And when he came around… struttin’ around… what’s he gonna do? He’s started yellin’, ‘Get off that roof or I’m gonna kill you… you pair of bastards, you wait ’til I get hold of you, Marlene… get down off that roof now.’ And I said, ‘No, fuck you’… and he went to climb up and that’s when I thought, ‘Oh, what are we gonna do?’

  She pulls up one of the roof tiles and throws it down onto the stage. She continues throwing tiles (or paper files) onto the stage through the following speech.

  I realised that you could pull the tiles up. So I pulled a tile off the roof and aimed it at his head and threw it at him. Because I really thought… I thought if he’s gonna kill me… he’s already said it… I’m gonna kill him first. And I threw the tile at him. Well, he scurried back down off the roof and he was standin’ over there sayin’, ‘You come down, you little bitch,’ and he was really wild. But he was too frightened to come back up. I just grabbed more tiles off then, and all the girls were all laughing because we pulled it off the roof. And they were all shoutin’, ‘Give it to him, give it to him.’ And I pulled another one off and he was getting madder and madder but I knew he couldn’t do anything. After about half an hour, and this went on, this screamin’, and in the end he got one of the older girls to come around. She yelled up to us… ‘He wants to make a deal if you come down, Marlene’… ‘What will the deal be?’ And I said, ‘That he won’t bash us. I know we have to go to isolation but he’s not to bash us.’ And she said, ‘Okay, then that’s what we’ll make the deal… but come down because he doesn’t want to have to call the fire brigade and he doesn’t want to have to call the police.’ So I said, ‘Okay, but you’re the witness to that he’s said he won’t bash us,’ and I yelled that out. ‘He’s made a deal that he won’t bash us but we’re goin’ to isolation.’

  So by the time we got down all the girls were at the big tree where they all lined up because it was muster time and they’re all lined up there. And we’re walkin’ around past ’em and Melanie was that nervous that she nearly fell over, and I’ve always had a good sense of humour, so I just burst out laughin’… Well, he—an’ I’ve got a loud laugh—he turned and run at me. He was gonna bash me then and there but all the girls turned around and Gayle yells out, ‘Don’t touch ’er,’ and they all took a big step toward him and then he shit himself.

  He was scared. And, you know, when I remember this, that was the first time we’d been together. Looking back now, I can see it. He was actually scared of us. And er… he said, ‘No I won’t, come on then, I’m not gonna touch her,’ and he stopped. See, he stopped what he was gonna do. He was gonna bash me but because she yelled out and they took a step toward him… he knew that they would attack… he did… and he said, ‘Come on, you’re getting into isolation,’ and they put me in isolation and all the time I was in there I was thinkin’ wasn’t that fantastic… we really had it over him when we all stuck. What would happen if we all stuck like that all the time? The real hard thing was when we’d all stand there with each other and see the girl next to you knocked down and you can’t help. You’ve got to stand there and watch that and wait for your turn. That used to get to me. ’Cause when I saw us turn that time and seen that we could be a force to be reckoned with, that’s when I sort of got the idea I’m gonna talk to the girls about how we could get better conditions, and better clothes, and better food, and better facilities. You know, more blankets, we were only allowed one stupid cottony quilt and we were freezing. Hell, it was cold. We wanted blankets and we wanted to be treated not like animals. You know. These bashin’s all the time. And so I said to the other girls, ‘Why don’t we riot?’

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  SCENE EIGHT

  The other girls whoop and woo-hoo as they enter. To the sound of smashing and crashing and banging, the riot plays out on stage. Paper files fly into the air.

  There is, loudly, the sound of an ambulance siren.

  MELANIE enters with a long garden hose. She drags it across the stage, laughing.

  MARLENE: Now they’re listening to us.

  MELANIE: They sure are.

  MARLENE: What�
�s that for?

  MELANIE begins to ‘chop’ the hose into tiny little bits with a small axe.

  MELANIE: This is what they can do with their hoses that they hose us down with.

  She chops away. Behind them is the sound of a siren.

  And this is what they can do with their hoses that they cut up into bits and belt us with.

  KERRY runs on.

  KERRY: Hey, there’s an ambulance out the front. They’re trying to open the gates.

  MARLENE: What are they going to do to us?

  MELANIE: They’re not going to do anything.

  JUDI runs on.

  JUDI: Did you see that they’ve called an ambulance?

  MELANIE: Don’t worry about it. It’s just one more thing to try and freak us out.

  MARLENE: They sure know how to do that.

  JUDI: Well, what are we going to do now?

  MELANIE: Marlene?

  MARLENE: What?

  MELANIE: What are we going to do now?

  Pause.

  MARLENE: We’re going to keep rioting until they close this place down.

  All the girls whoop and woo-hoo.

  And if they won’t close it down, we’re gonna burn the little shithole down.

  They continue to whoop and woo-hoo. LYNETTE runs on. She is agitated, urgent. The whooping stops as they notice her.

  LYNETTE: Quiet. Be quiet.

  MARLENE: Lynette?

  LYNETTE: You have to let the ambulance in the gate.

  MARLENE: No way, that’s just another way to get at us.

  LYNETTE: [screaming] You have to let it in.

  MELANIE: What is it, Lyn?

  LYNETTE: Marlene, it’s not for us.

  MARLENE: Then who’s it for?

  MELANIE: Lynnie?

  LYNETTE: It’s Maree.

  MARLENE: Where is Maree?

  LYNETTE: I didn’t know that she had a rope.

  LYNETTE shakes her head and runs off. They all exit after her.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  SCENE NINE

  CORAL enters and begins to place upright the chairs that have been overturned in the riot.

  After a few moments GAYLE enters. She helps with setting up the chairs for the speeches.

  CORAL: How you going?

  GAYLE: Yeah, fine. It feels right to be here.