The Styx. Patricia Holland

for her job of ensuring things were done her way.

      “How are you settling in, Sophie?” she quite genuinely asked me.

      Miss Ellis was not patronisingly asking as if there was no way I could answer. She sought my answer in my eyes, and knew there was something wrong. She looked at Mrs Stephens.

      “How are the students going? Learning the ropes of the computer?” Miss Ellis asked.

      No kids had touched it, not even me. It was still in the box.

      “We are going to set it up in the staffroom.” Mr Stephens sounded a bit defensive.

      “We will be very careful to make sure it stays safe,” Mrs Stephens said.

      Miss Ellis was having none of it.

      “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It belongs in the classroom. All the students should be using it, taught to use it. Sophie, of course, has priority, but the others need to be able to use it too, so they can share skills and enjoy it as a class—all the classes. There are drawing programs, games, quizzes, cartoons. The programs are exceptional, but some take considerable learning time.”

      By the look of her, you’d never have thought Miss Ellis was so groovy.

      But she hadn’t finished. “It’s endless,” Miss Ellis said, “and it will change the way we do things. When you get it set up, Brad will show Sophie and the aides how to be Sophie’s hands and read her eyes. Then he’ll run through a few things with some of the other students, and then with you and the remainder of staff. It’s a resource primarily for Sophie, but one to assist in integrating and involving her with the others. It’s imperative it’s used to death. If anything breaks, the funding includes a provision for maintenance and updating. Just ring Brad. He’ll sort you out.”

      And that’s exactly how it happened. That’s exactly what happened, how I went from vego victim to having freedom and friends and power. And the sweet, sweet taste of revenge.

      Chapter 5

      Rememory 26

      All three whiffs of jasmine greet me on this first day of freedom.

      Raylene, my favourite teacher’s aide, unpacked the computer and set it all up. God, the energy expended to get the box opened and the computer thing up and running. She spent hours over the weekend working it all out. Her partner, Ruth, had parent interviews last Friday night, so Raylene stayed on, way past her assigned five and a half hours at $15.75 an hour remuneration (no sick leave, no holiday pay). She came back “in her own time”, “for her own interest”, I heard Mr Stephens say, on Saturday and Sunday.

      Ray and Ruth are a perfect match. Raylene has huge boobs and a cowboy ringer’s waist—reed-thin in a converging lines way, hey. Ruth has no boobs up top but heaps from the waist down, booby bulges bulging out just about everywhere. Even her feet have booby bulges. They are very nice to each other, Ruth and Ray, and to their two kids. Ruth is full of four-year trained teacherness, while Ray is the quiet teacher-aide-achiever. They’re both lovely, but.

      Miss Ellis’s Brad came and gave everyone at the school the once-over computer-wise. He was very impressed that Ray managed to get it all set up and working. Ray was nice to him, but she didn’t go all gaga in his close proximity like most of the other women did. Raylene is her own woman, and is real smart.

      “Look at the keys, Soph,” Ray said. “Then look at me when my finger is on the key you want. It’s going to be slow, but let’s try it. Okay?”

      “Two blinks if I’m right.”

      “Okay?” Ray said.

      “Blink, blink,” my eyes said.

      Sharon, “the nanny” Sharon, wasn’t looking happy. She wasn’t the patient type.

      “There’s no way I’m going to be able to do this,” she said to Raylene. “It’s ridiculous.”

      “It’s tedious, but it’s a link for her,” Raylene said. “She can talk to us for Christ’s sake; it’s got to be worth it.”

      Ray ended up taking on the role as my scribe. Sharon didn’t see it as her brief. It wasn’t in her interest for me to become verbal.

      Rememory 27

      I hate being patted on the head. I hate people over-enunciating and peering into my face as if it’s a window to see if anyone’s home. I love it when people talk to me as if I’m a person. Gus always does that. He doesn’t see twisted limbs, staccato movements and the drool drip­ping from my mouth. I don’t know what he sees, but to him, I’m real.

      It took a long time for the Education Department to get their act together ramp-wise. (This did not fall under Miss Ellis’s control.) So, for the first couple of years, Mrs Stephens let Gus have the job of hauling my chair up and down the school steps. There are forty-five and a half of them, but to Gus it was not a chore.

      “It’ll be part of my day,” he told Mrs Stephens when he volunteered for the job on my first day at school.

      “And, as a bonus, I’ll get extra muscles,” he said, and included me in his smiley eyes.

      Every school morning, after full-school (seventy-three students) morning parade, singing the national anthem on the tarmac beside the Australian flag and pledging hand on heart (Sharon would hold my hand over my heart for me) to love God and the Queen, Sharon carried me up to our classroom. For us it was normal, a ritual of dignity, this daily procession of us, Gus and the chair, the teachers, and then all the kids starting with the grade oners—all nine of them. Back then, I didn’t realise how humiliating the chair and me carrying procession was, and that soon it would be legislatively and workplace health and safety-wise unacceptable. Political correctness floated through even our school, and on my third year there, we got a ramp—a long, long ramp.

      At first I missed our routine of Gus carrying my chair; I just didn’t feel as special when Sharon pushed me up the ramp. I love Gus for insisting I was important. For insisting I was part of the kids. Now I wonder how things would have been without him. Sooo different. Maybe I would have lost hope and conformed to vegetablism. Maybe none of this would have happened.

      Rememory 28

      Who would have thought that our teacher’s aide Raylene would be such a total wiz with computers? It was a bit disconcerting for the computer illiterate “four-year trained” teachers who greedily sucked up her knowledge as she showed them how to work the programs and school email and Internet. She was so helpful to them, yet they seemed to resent that she knew more than them—which wasn’t hard.

      Ray helped me start a journal. I just added stuff each time we were at the computer. She had endless patience with me. She’d say, “Okay, Soph, would you like to do this, would you like to do that?” She never tried to boss me around. Everything was fresh and nothing too much trouble for Raylene. My disability issues were simply facts of life, nothing to get upset about, nothing to be made an issue of. For Ray, they were all part of life’s rich tapestry, and to be taken in one’s stride.

      Raylene was under-appreciated. Her teacher’s aide status stood in the way of the principal formally recognising her contribution. At least that’s all I can think it could be. Everything she did was professional and full of flair.

      One year, when I was about twelve I think—it was her first year producing and directing the school Christmas concert pirate play—she involved every student in a feature role. Jaden, a grade fiver with Downs Syndrome, had a major, major role where he wielded his sword and yelled, “Make ’em walk the plank.”

      Raylene made sure his lines had no “sss” because he was self-conscious of his lisp.

      I was super-scary pirate Captain Long John Silver, and little Cindy Haddock,