Origins Inc. Qld
Saturday Nights at Holy Cross.
A Song, A Memory, A Place Of Sadness.
A song, triggers my memory and I am taken back in time, to a place of incredible sadness. It's Saturday
night and I am locked away from the world at Holy Cross. It is the saddest part of my week, there are no sheets to fold, or
television to watch, to take my mind off the happy Saturday nights I spent not so long before I was locked away.
Sitting around the old wooden radio with some of my friends we would sit and listen to the latest
songs. We would tell each other about other Saturday nights when we were outside enjoying life. "Did you ever go here, did
you ever go there?" Telling each other of the exciting places we used to frequent.
We had heard the same stories over and over again and yet it was like hearing them again for the first
time. By remembering every happy minute, we were going beyond the walls and transferring ourselves into a place full of music
and dancing. We were singing and having fun being what we were, young girls enjoying ourselves not hurting anyone, not the
bad girls that had been locked up and forgotten.
Then Sandy Posey's voice singing from the radio, "I've got a boy who is waiting for me, waiting for
me to come home, watching the clock all alone". And there I was back to reality. "Where is Steve now?", I would wonder. "Is
he playing his guitar for someones party? Is he thinking of me? Is he with another girl who is looking at him the way that
I did".
I could feel my heart sobbing. Then I would think of my baby. The little round ball that was growing
inside my stomach, wondering what was going to happen to us. And then the radio would blast out the Beatles and I was back
to the disco again drinking make-believe rum and coke, shaking my tamborine and dancing with my sister Jenny.
"Ten o-clock" say's the nun watching us, "time to go to bed". Up the stairs, into the long dormitory
and the iron gate slams behind us and the key is turned. In the dark I can cry, cry for all the happy Saturday nights gone
and for the lonely ones to come.
