Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

boys.”
    “Well, the only people you’ll meet’ll have sores all over them or be chundering all the time. Imagine kissing someone after you’ve emptied their bedpan!” says Ann. We hoot at this, no one willing to raise the really awful part—that nurses see men’s “privates,” and even have to touch them.
    “Dummies!” says Maureen. “Everyone knows nurses marry doctors, not patients.”
    “Why do you have to marry a doctor? Why not be one?” Isay. The others stare at me as if I’ve pulled a rotting fish from my lunchbox. Undaunted, I carry on. “I’m going to be a scientist. I haven’t really decided the field yet, but most probably biochemistry.” This doesn’t seem out of the question to me. My mother has told me I can do anything. I believe her.
    There is a hush first, as the others look at me, then at each other. Then they all explode in the raucous, untamed cackle of ten-year-olds.
    I haven’t yet learned that when you’re in a hole you should stop digging. Flushed and hurt, I blurt out my retort: “All of you won’t be laughing when you see the headline: ‘Sydney Scientist Discovers Cure for Cancer.’ ”
    To my fourth-grade classmates, I am hilariously out of line. Japanese have the saying that “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” The Australian equivalent is the “tall poppy syndrome”—any Australian who rises above the crowd risks being cut down by a storm of derision. I have committed the cardinal sin of “having tickets on myself,” or, more crudely, “being up myself”—an expression we use without knowing what it means.
    Across the playground, the girls spot our teacher and run off to share the joke with her. This young nun is the best teacher the school has. In English class, she has set aside the tedium of parsing and analysis and allowed us to try our hand at writing our own poetry. Recently, she has begun introducing us to “nature study.” These proto-science lessons are basic stuff to me—her chalk drawings of cells on the blackboard are a feeble reflection of the bright world I’ve explored through my microscope lens. I know the oozing form of the amoeba, the whimsical thrusts of its pseudopodia as it slinks across a slide. I’ve studied the matter of my own body; cells scraped from the inside of my cheek and the drop of blood squeezed from my finger. When she draws a simplified cell with nucleus and cell membrane, my hand shoots up. “Sister, you’ve left out the vacuoles and theplastids.” My know-all demeanor must have driven her crazy. Whatever the reason, she joins in my classmates’ laughter. I stand alone in the playground, my eyes stinging, my cheeks hot with the blush of humiliation.
    After thinking about it, I decided that it would be safe to confide my goal to Sonny. At Sonny’s school, no one made fun of ambition, or gave girls poor grades for art because of “bad types” in the art world. Most children in Sydney attended free government schools staffed by teachers well enough paid to make the career esteemed. My schoolteacher cousin was our family’s most conspicuous material success, living in a big house with a pool, traveling abroad every other year. Catholics paid modest fees to attend our own schools, a little more disciplined, a little more personal than the government option.
    And then there were a handful of schools like Sonny’s: expensive and unabashedly elitist. Abbotsleigh was known for its excellence. Its alumnae, such as Jill Ker Conway, had made their marks in many fields, from traditional academics to avant-garde art. To announce that one wanted to be “in Musical Comedy” would have been certain social death at St. Mary’s. But at Abbotsleigh it was a dream to be encouraged.
    Like me, Sonny had missed a lot of school during a childhood illness. In her case, a bout of hepatitis when she was ten years old had kept her home for three months. She had spent her invalid days watching midday movies and had developed