Chapter 7
It’s a couple of weeks before anything actually happens. I fill my time reading the books I nicked from the library and taking walks through the neighbourhood. I overhear Lyyssa having arguments on the phone. I think she’s arguing with Mr Brentnall, and I think they’re arguing about me. Lyyssa’s voice gets all shrill and she keeps saying things like ‘importance of balanced and structured education’ and ‘healthy interaction with her peers’. I’m dead certain that whatever plans Lyyssa has for me would be a total disaster. Does she want me to go to Ramsay, where most of the kids are even worse than Bindi and Cinnamon? Does she want me to go to that snotty girls’ school up the road, where the mothers drive up in Land Rovers and Mercedes to pick them up when school lets out?
Fortunately, Lyyssa loses. I can tell she didn’t get her way by the tightness around her mouth when she calls me into her office, forces a smile and tells me that ‘an arrangement has been agreed upon’ where I’ll be tutored privately, and intermittently tested by the Department of Education to monitor my progress.
The arrangement goes like this. Three days a week I see Renate Dunn. She’s Mr Brentnall’s partner, which is how he got the idea for her to teach me. Miss Dunn is a professor of educational psychology at the University, where her office is. Miss Dunn is tall, maybe about thirty-five years old. She usually wears a black calf-length skirt with Doc Martens, a black jumper and a heavy silver necklace. I can’t decide whether she’s pretty or not. She has a straight nose, a firm jaw line, clear skin, and dark blue eyes, but she never wears any makeup. If she did wear makeup, get contacts instead of those glasses, and lost a bit of weight, she could look like one of those old-time actresses who made movies when they were black and white.
Miss Dunn’s office is lined with bookshelves, and she has posters on her wall, but that’s where the similarity with Lyyssa’s office ends. Lyyssa’s bookshelf is a brand-new metal one from OfficeWorks; Miss Dunn’s is a huge old wooden thing that takes up a whole wall. Lyyssa’s office is painted pale yellow; the walls of Miss Dunn’s office are a nondescript off-white. Everything on Lyyssa’s walls is meant to be instructive or inspiring; the stuff on Miss Dunn’s walls is there because it’s interesting or beautiful. The meaning of every single framed poster on Lyyssa’s walls is always summed up in a cheesy slogan. ‘Pot hurts’. ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere . . . else’. ‘One Day at a Time’. God grant me the strength to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference’.
There are no slogans on Miss Dunn’s pictures, and the point of the pictures isn’t always obvious. There’s a Japanese kimono on a hanger suspended from the ceiling behind Miss Dunn’s desk, filling the space between the two windows. On the wall opposite the bookshelf, there’s a framed Chinese character. I have no idea what it means, and there’s no slogan or caption to explain it. There’s also a pencil sketch of a building that looks like a church, and a photo of a sign taken in some tropical foreign country. The sign says ‘Commit no Nuisance’ in English, but above the English is writing in another language that has totally different letters. I bet it’s something funny, but you’d have to understand what the foreign writing says before you’d get the joke.
Lyyssa wouldn’t know any language except English. Miss Dunn would.
I take the bus by myself now, but first Lyyssa had to bring me here and introduce me to Miss Dunn. It was pretty embarrassing, bumbling into the parking lot in a van with ‘Inner West Youth Refuge’ written on the side. Then we had to walk across campus with everyone looking at me like, what’s a kid doing here? Naturally, Lyyssa took us to the wrong building and we had to ask directions from a mean-looking secretary who didn’t like being interrupted while she was photocopying.
Finally, we made it to Miss Dunn’s office, ten minutes late. I remember Lyyssa breathlessly gabbling an apology to Miss Dunn, and Miss Dunn sizing up Lyyssa in one shrewd, penetrating glance. Miss Dunn handed Lyyssa a list of the books I needed, then gave me a page explaining what she wanted me to read before our first lesson. Lyyssa and Miss Dunn talked about lesson plans and such, but I didn’t listen too closely to what they said. What they said to each other with their eyes and body language was more interesting. Lyyssa, with her stiff back and her fake smile, was saying, You think you’re better than me because you teach at university, but you’d better remember that I’m officially in charge of Len. And Miss Dunn, with her cool blue gaze taking in Lyyssa’s twee plaid tunic, was saying, You’re just a dumb social worker. All you do is put your nose in other people’s business.
We had to rush to the bookshop before it closed, then hurry back to the van so we could be back home before Bindi and Cinnamon. After we left, Lyyssa turned to me and asked brightly, ‘So, Len, what do you think of Miss Dunn?’
What’s the point of a question like that?
‘She seems really smart,’ I replied. ‘I’m glad she’s going to be my teacher.’
Lyyssa kept quiet for the rest of the short drive back to the shelter.