My Place by Sally Morgan Read Free Book Online

looking extremely sceptical. ‘Sally … are you
really
sick?’
    Nan always interrupted, ‘Course she’s sick, Glad, look at the child’s face.’
    â€˜I’m not puttin’ it on, Mum, honest. I feel real crook. Maybe I’ll be better by lunchtime. Nan can send me to school then.’
    â€˜Don’t be stupid, Sally,’ Nan countered, rising to the bait, ‘you can’t go to school, you’ll pass out.’
    â€˜All right,’ Mum relented, ‘you can stay home, but don’t eat anything and stay in bed.’
    Jill wandered in after Mum and Nan had left and said, ‘You’re rotten. You’re not really sick, are you?’
    â€˜Course I am! Go away, you’re makin’ me feel sick.
Mu-um
, tell Jill to go away, she’s makin’ me feel worse.’
    â€˜You come out of there, Jilly. You let Sally sleep.’ Jill gave me a disgusted look and walked off.
    Once Jill and Billy had left for school, and Mum had left for her part-time job in Boans’ Floral Department, I called out to Nan, ‘I’m feelin’ a bit better Nan. Do ya think I could eat something?’
    Nan pottered in, with her old tea towel slung over her shoulder, and said, ‘Oooh, you still look white, Sally. I don’t think you eat enough, your mother can’t expect you to get better if you’re not going to eat. You stay there and I’ll bring in some toast and a hot cup of tea.’
    After six or so rounds of toast and jam and a couple of mugs of tea, I said to Nan, ‘Gee, it’s stuffy in here, Nan.’
    â€˜Yes, it is, go and sit outside, there’s nothin’ like a bit of fresh air when you’re sick in the stomach.’
    Nan only spoke to me after that to tell me when lunch was ready. I spent the rest of the day outdoors, playing all my usual games and climbing trees.
    I was sitting on the back verandah step, inspecting the cache of small rocks I’d collected, when Mum returned home from her day at work.
    â€˜How’s Sally?’
    â€˜Hmmph, she’s all right,’ Nan grumbled. And then, with a giggle, she added, ‘Been sittin’ in that tree all day.’
    Mum wandered out. ‘Another miraculous recovery, eh Sal?’
    â€˜Yeah, dunno what it was, Mum, but I hope I don’t get it again.’
    â€˜Don’t hope too much.’
    Apart from learning different ways to feign illness, there wasn’t much to school that year. All my lessons seemed unrelated to real life. I often wondered how my teacher could be so interested in the sums I got wrong, and so disinterested in the games I played outside school, and whether Dad was home from hospital or not.
    The best thing about school was that Grades Two and Three shared the same room, so this meant I saw more of Jill and we sat near one another.
    One afternoon, our teacher asked if there were any children in the class who could sing in a foreign language. Four children immediately raised their hands, Jill and I included. At the teacher’s instruction, the first two kids got up and sang ‘Frere Jacques’ one after the other. Then it was Jill’s and my turn. We were both very shy and embarrassed and walked to the front with our eyes down.
    We linked arms and then, swaying energetically back and forth, loudly sang ‘The Internationale’ in Italian.
    Mrs White was as stunned as the rest of our class at our sudden show of theatrical talent. We usually shunned any form of public display. ‘Lovely, girls,’ she finally said, ‘lovely.’
    Dad was in hospital at the time so we were unable to tell himhow we’d performed, but we knew that he would have been proud of us.
    Whenever Dad was in hospital, Mum and Nan went out of their way to make home a nice place for us. We were allowed to stay up late, and we didn’t have to worry about keeping quiet. It was much more relaxed.
    Sometimes, Mum even scraped