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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sister Heart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonial Violence
The Bonds of Kinship
Resilience
Freedom and Bondage
The Healing Power of Nature
Summary
Analysis
Someone escorts Annie to the office of a government man, who sees that Reverend Dale has assigned her the name Anne and suggests “Annie” instead. Annie remains mute. The government man confidently assures himself that she’ll be talking soon, as she settles into her new home. He dismisses her to go make new friends as she furiously thinks to herself, “This is not my home.”
The government authorities clearly think that what they’re doing is not only okay, but also in the best interests of children like Annie. Readers, who have experienced the terror and trauma of Annie’s journey alongside her, know better. But despite all she’s suffered, Annie still clings to the truths she knows: her home is elsewhere, and although people have taken her away from her home, they can never truly take her home, her memories, or her identity from her.
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Outside children flock around Annie, asking her name and where she’s from. One, a girl with light hair and eyes, shoos the other children off. As the dinner bell clangs—startling Annie as it calls the children to eat—the girl introduces herself as Janey. She offers Annie her friendship and her hand. Uncertainly, Annie takes Janey’s hand and follows her to the dining hall.
The flock of children illustrates how many families in addition to Annie’s have fallen victim to separation. This isn’t an isolated or uncommon occurrence, which makes the practice all the more horrific. Janey has presumably suffered the same thing as Annie, and she stands ready to help a fellow child.
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In the dining hall, the children eat hungrily. They don’t talk. The strange-smelling food makes Annie even more homesick. When she sees Janey looking longingly at her serving of bread, Annie offers it to her. Gratefully, hungrily, Janey gobbles it down. She promises to share the next fish she catches with Annie. And she promises to teach Annie all the tricks to keep hunger at bay. Annie just wants to be left alone.
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Annie receives a uniform and follows Janey to the dormitory where Janey assigns her to the bed that used to belong to Margy, before Margy was sent out to work. An older girl, Nancy, stalks up demanding to know whether Annie is a “nor’wester or sou’wester.” Janey answers, saying she reckons by Annie’s appearance that she’s a nor’wester. Nancy shoves a fist close to Annie’s face. Annie doesn’t flinch. Nancy tells Annie that the nor’westers stick together but that Janey is pretty good for a sou’wester. After she leaves, Janey tells Annie that Nancy likes to fight the big kids—especially sou’westers—but that she’s usually nice to the younger ones, like them. Annie lays down in the strange bed and pulls the blankets up over her head, trying to shut out the noise of the other girls and Janey’s incessant friendliness. She weeps.
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Janey shakes Annie awake the next morning. The dormitory stinks (the toilet is overflowing) and the air is freezing. Annie doesn’t want to get out from under the blankets, but Janey warns her that she’ll get in trouble for sleeping in. Bedbug bites cover Annie’s arms. Janey hands Annie a broom, explaining that they all have morning chores. Plus, sweeping will get her blood flowing and warm her up. Then, in a whisper, Janey asks if Annie wet the bed. Annie resents Janey for bossing her and asking such embarrassing questions. But Janey explains that lots of girls wet the bed, especially on their first night. As Annie starts sweeping, she remembers helping Aunty Adie with this chore in Boss’s house. He always noticed if they neglected the corners.
Too heartsick to eat, Annie stares at her plate of breakfast. Janey whispers that she must eat something; if her stomach growls in class, Teacher will think she farted. Teacher hates farting, snorting, and laughing. Laughing most of all, especially when she thinks it’s directed at her. The other children hiss at Janey to be quiet; they don’t want to get in trouble for talking. But Janey replies that someone has to teach the new girl what she needs to know. Annie nibbles at her bread, dropping crumbs onto the table. Janey picks them up and licks them off her finger.
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Outside, Janey asks Annie if she’s ever been to school before. Maybe, Janey suggests, Annie will finally learn to talk! Annie turns away, and Janey tries to soothe her sore feelings. She says that she likes the “stories and singin’” part of school, and visitors, because then the children get better food. Annie forlornly thinks about the songs and stories she learned from her Mum and aunties. Nancy interrupts to introduce Annie to two other nor’westers, Emmy and Dot. Nancy reminds Annie that the nor’westers and the sou’westers keep to their own kind, but Janey interrupts to say that she has nor’wester and sou’wester friends. Janey reminds Nancy that the older girl owes her for the “stuff” she’s helped Nancy acquire. But Nancy warns her to shut up lest they all get in trouble. And all the children, nor’wester and sou’wester alike, run toward the classroom.
In the schoolroom, the children sit by age. Janey points out Teacher, the stiff and pinched-looking woman who runs the school and rarely smiles. The nicer teachers never stay for long, and the children fear they’re doomed to be stuck with Teacher because no one else will employ her. Teacher wears her glasses around her neck by a ribbon, because once some of the boys contrived to steal them—a crime for which they were whipped. As class begins, Teacher introduces Annie, who slouches in her chair, embarrassed by the attention. Janey is happy to have finally learned her new friend’s name—although Annie thinks angrily to herself that it isn’t her name. It belongs to the government.
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Teacher approaches Annie and taps on her desk with her pointing stick. She appreciates Annie’s quietness, and she tells the girl that she’ll succeed in school if she tells the truth, pays attention and works hard. And if she remembers the most important rule: at the school, everyone speaks English rather than “native gibberish” because English is “the language of kings.” Children who speak their native languages “get whacked,” according to Janey. The other children titter nervously, drawing Teacher’s ire for laughing. She shouts for “silence!” and glares at Janey, who bites her lip to keep from smiling. Annie realizes that Janey doesn’t like Teacher.
Teacher spells out a big word: obedience. It’s important, she tells her students, because if they’re obedient and “respect [their] betters,” they will succeed. Then she gives Annie a small word to spell, cat. Annie refuses to repeat the word or its letters after Teacher—English hurts her head and is hard on her tongue and makes her miss speaking to Mum in her own language, Teacher learns from Janey that Annie can understand English, but that she cannot—or will not—speak it. She sighs because the government has sent her “another backward child.”
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After lessons, Teacher keeps Annie and Janey in the classroom. She doesn’t like the wild look of Annie’s curly hair, which she worries might harbor lice. Janey lies, assuring Teacher that the grumpy lady checked Annie’s head when she arrived. Teacher tells Janey to help comb Annie’s hair and to make sure that she does her after-school jobs properly. Janey says she will. Out of the classroom, she asks if Annie likes school. Annie shakes her head no, and Janey agrees with her. The only parts she likes, she says, are writing stories and singing songs.
Doing chores keeps Annie’s homesickness at bay, at least for a little while. But it comes flooding back as soon as they’re done, something that Janey quickly notices. She tells Annie that ruminating on bad things will just make her feel worse. So will going hungry, which she assumes Annie must be after how little she ate at dinner and breakfast. Janey asks Annie to help her find her little brother, Tim. Annie nods that she will, because she knows Mum would want her to help and because she knows that little kids get into trouble easily. Janey leads Annie into the bush, describing some of Tim’s misadventures. Once he picked up a snake. Another time, he climbed too high into a tree while pretending to be a mudlark, and then he fell out and broke his leg.
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This time, Tim is safely watching mudlarks from behind a bush. He reminds Annie of her baby sister. She starts to cry, and Janey asks who she misses. Annie only nods or shakes her head, but eventually Janey works out that Annie has a baby sister. Janey tells Annie how sad and homesick she was when she arrived. But then she found Tim, who she is convinced is her long-lost baby brother. When her brother was a baby he got sick and Janey’s mother took him to the hospital. She never got him back. When Janey saw Tim at the school, she felt certain he was her brother because of their similar freckles. Janey assures Annie that new kids come each month—maybe she will be reunited with her sister that way someday. But Annie doesn’t want her sister to come here. She wants to go home.
The mudlark flies away, and Tim chides Janey for being noisy. She apologizes for comforting Annie. Tim asks if school made Annie cry. The old instructors were kind, but not Teacher, who uses her ruler to viciously punish the children. Janey stole her old ruler and buried it, but Teacher just got a newer, sharper-edged one. Janey tells Annie that she and Tim have a trick to make themselves better. Sometimes, when they feel like crying, they laugh instead. Tim picks up a pebble and hands it to Annie, solemnly telling her it’s a laughing stone. When she feels sad, she should squeeze it and laugh—just not in the classroom. One time Tim did that accidentally, and Teacher whacked him for being a “rude, stupid boy.”
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Janey offers to show Annie her and Tim’s “crying tree.” On the way, they see more birds—magpies and a kookaburra. Janey draws a snake in the dirt with a stick, and Annie makes the outline of a goanna (a lizard native to Australia). Janey points out more wildlife: birds called honeyeaters and the redback spiders whose poisonous bite can make a child sick. She also warns Annie about the plentiful (and deadly) dugite and tiger snakes that live in the marsh around the school. Annie wonders if Janey ever stops talking.
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Janey picks up a few soft twigs and plops to the ground in a clearing. Annie sits, too. The thick, shady bush is a relief after the school, but it isn’t home. It isn’t familiar. It would be easy to get lost here. Janey twists the twigs into a little bush doll. It isn’t at all like the doll Annie once saw a visitor bring to the station. But it feels “smiley” and comforting. Janey tells her to put it in her pocket and carry it around like a mother kangaroo carries its joey. Or like Annie used to carry her baby sister.
The crying tree is large and old with a child-sized hollow in the trunk. Janey offers to share it with Annie, because she and Tim are the only ones who use it for their crying place. Everyone else considers the tree unlucky because it’s the one Tim fell from when he broke his leg. But Janey says that maybe the fact that he didn’t hurt himself worse actually makes it lucky. Annie and Janey sit side by side in the hollow. Janey says that she used to share the tree with her friend Margy before Margy turned 14 and got sent to work on a farm. And after a while, sitting in the tree and watching the wildlife around them, Janey falls silent.
That night, Nancy lends Janey her comb so Janey can braid Annie’s hair. Like a lot of the other kids, Nancy owes Janey a favor for some object that Janey acquired for her. As she works, Janey tells Annie about Margy, whom she misses terribly. Margy once told Janey that their chores were training so they could enter Service when they turned 14. Janey doesn’t want to enter Service, though: she wants to go home. Annie wants to go home, too, but she doesn’t want to wait until she’s 14, either! She shivers in the unfamiliar cold. Janey promises that after a while, her blood will thicken up and the cold won’t bother her so much. Other girls grumble from their beds, telling Janey to shut up. Janey snaps that she can talk if she wants to.
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In the dark, as she braids Annie’s hair, Janey whispers bad news: Mum won’t be coming for Annie. Of course, Mum wants to, but how can she? She won’t know to ask for “Annie,” and she will look for Annie under her old name. The government will keep Annie’s fate a secret from her mother. But the girls can keep secrets, too. Janey’s secrets include what she remembers of her family and her language and her life before she came to the school. And her real name. For how awful their circumstances are, at least Annie and Janey have an advantage over those like Tim, who were taken from their families at such a young age that they don’t remember anything. Annie remembers her family. And when her hair is combed smooth, she gives Janey a grateful smile.
Annie wakes from a nightmare to vomit the disgusting soup she ate for lunch all over the floor. Janey hears her crying and starts crying too. In the morning, Nancy gives Annie rags to clean up her vomit. Janey, Emmy, and Dot help. Nancy doesn’t—she has a weak stomach—but she does braid Annie’s hair before school. Teacher doesn’t like braids, but in the night, Annie’s hair has gone all bushy again, and Teacher likes that even less.
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Teacher stares but doesn’t say anything about Annie’s hair, and when a boy laughs at Annie’s fat braids, Teacher quickly punishes him with several sharp whacks of the ruler against his hands. Teacher hears a snort, and she turns on Tim, accusing him of laughing at her. Janey interrupts, saying that Tim has been coughing—everyone knows he has a weak chest. Annie isn’t sure that he wasn’t laughing, but Teacher doesn’t whack him. Instead, she reminds him to keep his sweater on against the cold. Of course, the sweater isn’t going to do very much as it doesn’t fit. But there’s been no yarn this year for Janey to make him a new one.
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After class, Janey demands to know whether Tim was laughing or coughing, and he confesses he was laughing over the mean boys’ comeuppance at Teacher’s hands. She’s still worried, noting that his breath sounds “wheezy,” but he tells her not to “fuss.” After he runs off, Janey points out the blooming wildflowers to Annie. Warmer weather is coming, which will be better for Annie’s thin nor’wester blood and Tim’s bad chest. The children call one flower “bacon and eggs” because it looks like the food. Annie has never had it, but Janey did once. It was delicious.
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The braids weren’t good enough and the school authorities shave Annie’s hair. She feels ashamed, even though Janey tells her that this happens to all the new kids. But the little kids cry out “Baldy! Baldy!” as they run past, and some of the girls in the dormitory tease Annie too, at least until Nancy beats them up to keep them quiet. Annie hides under her blanket. Janey tells her it could be worse—she had her hair shaved in the winter, and she wasn’t even given a hat to wear while it grew back. Soon, in the summer heat, Annie will be happy to have short hair. Janey offers to check Annie’s scalp for freckles, but Annie doesn’t care about that.
Janey promises Annie that her hair will grow quicker than she realizes…if she stops worrying about it. She promises to tell Annie when two weeks have passed so she can see how quickly it’s grown for herself.
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One day after class, Janey can’t find Tim. She gets worried, even though Dot and Emmy remind her that he’s not a baby anymore and likes to hang out with the other boys sometimes. Nancy swears that she saw Tim with his friends. She tells Janey to stop worrying and have some fun of her own. The girls make themselves flower crowns and garlands. Nancy declares herself a queen—which is like a boss, Janey explains to Annie—then says that they’re all queens. The strut around until the dinner bell rings. There, Janey sees Tim, safe and sound, with his friends—just as Nancy said.
In the classroom, Annie keeps her head down and tries to shrink from view every day when it comes time for Teacher to pick someone to read aloud. But one day, Teacher slaps Annie’s desk with her ruler. Angrily she confronts Annie about knowing English, which Teacher recently learned from looking in her file. She accuses Annie of lying about not knowing the language and of being rebellious because she refuses to speak. Teacher asks Annie to repeat a nursery rhyme, and when Annie can’t make her voice work, Teacher slaps her—hard—across the hands with the ruler. When Annie refuses to cry, Teacher continues the abuse, hitting her across the back of her legs. Annie shoves Teacher off and runs from the classroom to the crying tree.
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Later, after class and chores, Janey and Tim find Annie at the crying tree. As Janey inspects Annie’s injuries, Tim tells Annie how much he hates Teacher for bullying the children. He gives her a mudlark feather as a tiny gift. Janey warns Annie that her legs will hurt a lot the next day, but that pretending they don’t hurt will help her. Annie knows they’ll hurt no matter what.
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As punishment, the school authorities don’t let Annie have dinner. She’s in trouble for lying to Teacher about knowing English, for laughing behind Teacher’s back (which she didn’t do), for shoving Teacher, and for not “know[ing] her place.” She knows that if touches Teacher again, she’ll be whipped—or worse. Janey, Nancy, Dot, and Emmy sneak food and cool, wet rags into the dormitory. They encourage Annie to eat, to keep up her strength. And they warn her that Teacher will be on the lookout for any chance to beat Annie again. Annie feels her voice rattling inside her like a trapped animal that can’t get out. She lost it when the policeman took her away and she doesn’t know when—or if—she will find it again.
That night, Annie dreams of cleaning Boss’s house with Aunty Adie. She remembers being sent there from the out-camp. Aunty Adie taught Annie how to keep her feelings to herself—how to hide her “inside” face behind a blank “outside” face. Annie wakes from the dream in tears. She tried to put on a brave outside face when she left the ship. She wonders if having a tough face will eventually make her tough enough to survive the awful school.
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In the morning, Janey warns Annie not to try running away—nearly everyone gets caught and viciously punished for the attempt. Annie wonders how Janey always seems to know what she’s thinking. She wants to run away so badly. But she doesn’t know how she can run home across the water. As they leave the dorms for breakfast, Janey promises to pay Teacher back for hurting Annie.
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Annie’s legs slowly heal, but now Janey’s are hurting. She got “the strap” for stealing Teacher’s glasses—her revenge on Teacher for shaming and beating Annie. She stole the glasses openly, without even bothering to hide them, as if she wanted to get caught. When Nancy, Dot, and Emmy ask her why, she says that getting away with it wasn’t the point. She stuck Teacher’s glasses in her shirt and got them so sweaty gross that Teacher refused to even touch them. The next day, despite the pain of her bruises, Janey finds pleasure in mocking Teacher’s ugly loaner glasses—Teacher won’t even touch the ones Janey polluted. The loaner glasses neither correct Teacher’s vision nor flatter her. Instead, they magnify her eyes, making her look like a bug.
One morning, it’s so cold in the dormitory that Janey and Annie can see the fog of their breath. Janey suddenly remembers that it’s been more than two weeks since Annie’s head was shaved. She tells Annie to check her hair. It’s grown, but it will take a long time to get back to its original length. Annie wishes she had a hat to protect her head from the cold air. Or a sweater. Janey knit her sweater—which has a baggy neck and one sleeve longer than the other—herself. If the school gets any wool—or any old sweaters she can unravel for the yarn—Janey promises to make a sweater for Annie.
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Annie shivers and Janey pulls one of her arms out of a sweater sleeve, offering it to Annie. Linked by the sweater, the two walk clumsily toward the dining hall. Dot and Emmy link arms and stumble after them, teasing them for how funny they look. And suddenly, Annie is laughing and crying at the same time. She trips and falls, pulling Janey down with her. And as they tumble to the ground, she hears her own voice sobbing, “Janey, Janey.”
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