Josephine Quotes

“My mother is pretty strict with me. My grandmother tries to put her two cents’ worth in as well, but Mama hates her butting in. The two of them are forever as loggerheads with each other. Like whenever school camp comes along, it’s fights galore. My grandmother thinks that if a member of our family isn’t looking after me I’ll get raped or murdered. She accuses my mother of being a bad mother for not caring enough and letting me go.”

“Religion class, first period Monday morning, is the place to try to pull the wool over the eyes of Sister Gregory. (She kept her male saint’s name although the custom went out years ago. She probably thinks it will get he into heaven. I don’t think she realizes that feminism has hit religion and the female saints in heaven are probably also in revolt.) ‘Would you like to explain yourself, Josephine?’ ”

“I bought this magazine in today, Sister, to speak to everyone about how insulted we are as teenagers and how important it is that we think for ourselves and not through magazines that exploit us under the guise of educating us.′ Sera, another friend of mine, poked her fingers down her mouth as if she was going to vomit. Sster and I stared at each other for a long time before she held out her hand again. I passed the magazine to her knowing she hand’t been fooled. ‘You can pick it up from Sister Louise,’ she said, referring to the principal.”

“I used to hear my illegitimacy mentioned during the first years at St. Martha’s, but nobody has spoken about it for ages. Still I wish someone else at school had a Bohemian mother who believed in free love back then. It’s an embarrassing contradiction when your mother’s get pregnant out of wedlock because her Catholic upbringing prohibits contraception. Even though the girls at St. Martha’s don’t mention it. I bet you they’re talking about me behind my back.”

“So not being able to go out a lot is one of my many problems. Mi biggest, though, is being stuck at a school dominated by rich people. Rich parents, rich grandparents. Mostly Anglo-Saxon Australians, who I can’t see having a problem in the world. Then there are the rich Europeans.”

“Life outside school, though, was a different story. The reaction of the Italian mothers to my mother being unmarried drove my crazy at times. There is nothing terrible romantic about my mother’s supposed fall from grace. She slept with the boy next door when they were sixteen and before anything could be decided his family moved to Adelaide. Although he new she was pregnant he never bothered to contact her again.”

“I could see the English guys who live on the bottom floor of our terrace house sitting on the front veranda, stripped to the waist and drinking beer. They used to be backpackers, living the youth hostel up the road, before deciding they wanted more privacy. I get on really well with one of them. His name is Gary and he’s from a place called Brighton in England. He always invites me for a cup of tea, which is so strange.”

“Joseph takes Mary on an underground journey following a path where she reads the geology as she finds her way to a spot where her father carved his stonemason’s mark. ”