The Shape of Us

by Lisa Ireland

  ‘Don’t talk to me about being tired. I am absolutely exhausted at the moment. Mia’s teething, I think. She keeps waking up in the middle of the night. And the boys are always up at the crack of dawn, seven days a week. I’d forgotten how much early pregnancy takes out of you. My feet are swollen by the end of the day and I’m only in the first trimester.’

  It was always about Sofia. Didn’t matter how the conversation started she somehow managed to bring everything back to her. Jewels wanted to scream and tell her how lucky she was to be pregnant. She wanted to tell her sister to shut the fuck up. But she didn’t of course. Instead she said, ‘No more bleeding then?’

  ‘No. Seems that was just one of those things. I’m fine now. I’m booked in for a scan next week so that will double-check everything’s okay. That’s part of the reason I’m calling. Do you want to come with me?’

  Jewels’ mouth was suddenly dry. ‘Doesn’t Pete want to go with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think he’s terribly anxious to come to this one. He doesn’t want to take time off work for every little test or check-up. He’ll probably want to come to the next one, because we’ll be able to find out the sex at that one. We’re kind of hoping for a girl. It’d be nice for Mia to have a sister.’

  Christ, Sofia could be insensitive at times. Did she really expect her to sit there looking at the screen while Sofia’s baby came to life before her? Did she honestly not realise how that might be upsetting to someone – her own sister, for crying out loud – who was proving to be reproductively challenged? And what was wrong with Pete? If Jewels were pregnant Matt wouldn’t want to miss a moment of that journey, but the two of them were so ambivalent about their fourth child that they were treating this appointment as an inconvenience rather than a privilege. As for wanting a girl, that just seemed completely ungrateful. She and Matt wouldn’t care what sex their baby was if they were lucky enough to be expecting.

  ‘Jewels, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes. Look, I don’t know if I can come. I’ll have to see how busy we are in the shop.’

  ‘Luckily I booked it in for Wednesday, so that should work, shouldn’t it, seeing as you’re giving yourself Wednesdays off?’

  Jewels screwed up her face in frustration. Thank goodness Sofia hadn’t FaceTimed her. ‘Probably. I’ll let you know. Was there something else?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I almost forgot the main reason I called. I was talking to Jackie, you know, from Mothers’ Group? Well, her sister is getting married in December and she’s toying with the idea of a cupcake wedding cake. I told her you could do it and we should all get together for coffee to talk about it.’

  Jewels rolled her eyes. ‘Did you bother to get online and check the orders for December before you committed me?’

  ‘No, we were at Mothers’ Group, so of course I didn’t. But you can squeeze her in, can’t you? Jackie’s parents are totally loaded. The who’s who of Melbourne will all be there. Very good for business. We can meet Jackie and her sister at Brunetti’s for coffee next Wednesday if you like, seeing as you won’t be working. I’m having my scan just up the road so we can kill two birds with one stone.’

  What Sofia wanted, Sofia got. There was no point fighting. ‘Okay, but don’t make it too early. I plan to sleep-in on Wednesdays. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve got another call coming in,’ she lied.

  ‘Okay. Love you.’

  So much for her self-indulgent ‘me’ day. It was only ten a.m. and already she felt more stressed than if she’d gone into the shop. She really should get out of these pjs and do something constructive but really all she wanted to do was have a mug of tea and a good sook. Maybe later she’d watch a movie to cheer herself up.

  She used her foot to drag over the kitchen chair opposite her so she could put her feet up, and poured herself another cup from the pot. Once she was comfy she flicked back to the open blog tab in her browser and was surprised to find two more replies.

  FAT CHAT | Wednesday Sept. 9 2015 | Mezz

  Just quickly popping in so you know I’ve accepted the invitation. I’m at work and shouldn’t really be online. The receptionist here is nice enough but she could easily get a job for ASIO, she’s that stealthy! I don’t want to risk getting caught. I’ll write a long reply later tonight.

  Mezz ☺

  FAT CHAT | Wednesday Sept. 9 2015 | Kat

  Hello everyone! I’m here too. I’m very excited about having this place of our own to communicate our feelings.

  Ellie, thank you for setting this up and thank you for sharing some of your life with us. I applaud your honesty and I can really relate to feeling like an outsider. I’ve lived in this country for over half my life but a lot of the time I feel that way too.

  I came to Australia from Bosnia when I was fourteen. I left my town, Doboj, long before that with my mother, my aunt and uncle and two cousins, after my father and brother were taken away.

  I don’t remember when all the trouble started really. My memories of Doboj are of my dad teaching me to swim in the lake and my mum cooking up big feasts that our whole extended family would attend. But at some point things changed.

  My dad sent my mum and me off to stay with her brother and his family who lived in a rural area not that far away. He was worried that his absence from work would draw unnecessary attention to our family so he planned to join us on the weekend and then we would make our way to Sarajevo. My older brother, Aleks, stayed behind too.

  That was the week the Serb forces took over our town. My uncle took Mum and me to Sarajevo along with his family. But my dad and my brother never made it there. We tried for many months to find out what happened to them. Sometimes we would get word that they had escaped and were in a camp somewhere or that they were hiding out, but that didn’t turn out to be true.

  Eventually we got the chance to leave Bosnia and come to Australia as refugees. My mum didn’t want to leave without her husband and son but my uncle convinced her that it was her duty as a mother to do the best she could for me. He said that’s what my father would want her to do.

  First we came to Melbourne and we stayed in the immigration detention centre for a few weeks. Then we moved to Deer Park to be close to another family my uncle knew. I really liked it there. We had one house with all of us living together across the street from my uncle’s friends. There were quite a few Bosnian families in the neighbourhood. I went to school there. I started to feel happy again.

  When I was fifteen we got confirmation Dad and Aleks had been killed. They’d died on the very first day the town was taken. All those years we’d been hoping for no reason.

  As you can imagine this news was very hard on me, but it was devastating for Mum. She stayed in bed for months. She wouldn’t get up even to cook. None of us knew what to do. I was so worried that I confided in one of my teachers at school and she organised for a counsellor to visit Mum. It took a long time but eventually she started to come good. Looking back I don’t think she ever fully recovered but she started to do things for herself again. I was just a kid and figured she was better.

  Eventually my uncle decided it was time my mum remarried and he started setting her up with men he knew in the Bosnian community. To cut a long story short, my mum married a man I didn’t like. He was a bit more religious than my mum and he had expectations of me that I couldn’t or didn’t want to meet. To be fair he didn’t force us to do anything but he made his wishes very clear. My mum wanted to please him so she started to wear a hijab and expected me to do the same. I rebelled against this and I’m ashamed to say I did some things I regret now.

  When I was almost eighteen I left home. I stayed in Melbourne for a little while and then I decided to travel to Queensland. The thought of living near the beach appealed to me. I’d never seen the beach until we moved to Australia. I spent about six months in Coolangatta cleaning motel rooms for pitiful pay until I heard about a j
ob picking bananas up north in Tully. That sounded like fun, and it wasn’t too bad. But when the season ended I decided to head south again to look for work. I moved around a lot, working in pubs, mainly, before settling in Emerald River. I guess I never really found a place that felt like home. There was never anything or anyone important enough for me to put down roots until I got pregnant with Ami. Once I knew she was coming I decided I would stay here with Josh and we would make a life together.

  But that’s proving to be harder than I had hoped. Before Ami was born Josh and I were really close, but now we both work at different times so we can save money on childcare. He is a builder’s labourer and he works about thirty hours a week, starting early each morning so he’s usually home by lunchtime. I head off to work in the afternoon. Sometimes he gets extra hours and I have to get Mrs P to have Ami for an hour or two, but for the most part it works out.

  We’re saving up to buy a house. We don’t see as much of each other as we used to and we hardly ever go out. Josh goes out to the pub a bit with his mates. He used to ask if I wanted to come, but he probably got sick of me saying no so he doesn’t ask anymore. I just don’t think it’s an appropriate place to take a baby and, to be honest, I don’t really like Josh’s mates. None of them have kids yet so they don’t have the same responsibilities as him. A couple of them are married, but I don’t really feel comfortable with their partners. They’re thin and gorgeous and spend the whole time talking about clothes and getting drunk. Anyway, the pub isn’t my idea of a nice evening out.

  Maybe I should be making a bit more of an effort to spend some time with Josh, though. Things are a bit tense between us lately. I’m not really sure why, but he seems more bad tempered than he used to be. Things seem to have changed between us somehow. Before Ami was born we’d often get a bottle of wine and spend the evening sitting in the backyard just talking or we’d head off to the beach together for the afternoon. We don’t seem to do those things anymore. But I guess that’s life with a baby.

  Wow! I didn’t mean to write such a long post! That’s pretty much my whole life story. I guess I really needed someone to talk to.

  Mezz, I hope you didn’t get caught out by your receptionist. Where do you work? I don’t remember you telling us before.

  Jewels, looking forward to hearing from you.

  Kat x

  Oh god. What a life poor Kat had led. It made all Jewels’ resentment of Sofia seem petty and selfish. She sipped her tea and contemplated answering. It would be nice to have somewhere safe to complain about Sofia, especially now she was pregnant. Jewels knew that her sister didn’t set out to upset her. Sofia loved her and wanted her to be happy. And likewise she loved her little sister and wanted the best for her. It wasn’t Sofia’s fault Jewels was reproductively challenged, and it wasn’t Sofia’s fault she’d accidentally fallen pregnant. But the situation was bound to get tricky over the next few months and Jewels didn’t want to risk damaging their relationship with her envy. Maybe it was time she developed some friends of her own. Friends who didn’t know her family, who belonged just to her. Maybe Fat Chat could be a place where she could confess all her petty jealousies and horrible thoughts. That way she could get things off her chest without hurting Sofia, or anyone else. And maybe being friends with people like Kat would make her realise just how lucky she was to be surrounded by a beautiful family who loved her.

  She put down her tea and began to type.

  FAT CHAT | Wednesday Sept. 9 2015 | Jewels

  Hi everyone. Lovely to see you all here. It’s my day off today, so what a great day to start off our Fat Chat blog. I’ve got heaps of time to chat to you all! Lucky really because I have a lot to say. It’s about my sister mainly.

  I’m not sure if I’ve told you that my family is Italian and we are all very close. Too close sometimes. All of my family, but especially my sister, think that every little thing I do in my life is their business. It seems I can have no secrets from them. Except for this. You, my lovelies, will be mine, all mine. Fat Chat is going to be my very own hidey hole where I can keep all my secrets and treasures without anyone in my family telling me I’m being stupid, or I don’t know what I’m doing.

  Take this morning for example. Sofia (my sister) rings me all huffy because she dropped in to see me at the shop and I wasn’t there. Once she gets me on the phone she proceeds to give me a lecture about how I can’t afford to be taking days off work. She’s so freaking bossy! The reason I’m taking time off is because the next few months are going to be super busy. Anyway, it doesn’t matter why. It’s my business and my life and if I want to have a day off I will.

  Sofia actually works for me, although you’d never know it to speak to her. She’s a qualified accountant and so she takes care of all the financial stuff for me, like the BAS and all of that boring stuff. Mind you, I go over the books with her once a month so I know where we’re at and what’s going on, so it’s not as if I have no idea. Anyway, she’s always bossing me around as if she’s the owner and I’m the employee. She takes big orders without checking with me and then acts as if I’m the one with the problem.

  Sorry. I know I sound like a bitch. Usually this stuff doesn’t get to me too much. I think it’s really her pregnancy that’s bothering me. Last week she was so careful when she told me, because she knew I’d be upset and, as you know, I was. But once she got over that initial, ‘I’m sorry, I know this must be hard for you’ bit, she reverted right back to her usual ‘I’m the centre of the universe’ self. She’s complaining about how tired she feels and how awful it is to be pregnant, when she knows that’s the thing I want more than anything in the world. I would love to be tired and have swollen feet if it meant that at the end of all that I could bring home a baby of my own.

  Jewels stopped typing for a moment to reread Kat’s entry and momentarily felt guilty for the things she’d written about Sofia. Compared to Kat’s life, it seemed hers was a picnic. Kat had lost her home and her family, and the father of her baby sounded like he was a bit of an arse. By comparison her problems seemed trivial. But nevertheless they were her problems and if Fat Chat was going to work, then she needed to be honest. Better to put her feelings on the page than to eat them. Besides, it sounded like Kat needed some friends, and friends were honest with each other.

  Anyway, that’s quite enough whingeing from me for one day.

  I’m trying to think of some lovely positive things to tell you about my life to counter-balance all that negativity! I’ve told you about my lovely man before, so I thought you might like to hear a little about where I live.

  As I said on the forum we live in Williamstown, which is a lovely bayside suburb just to the west of Melbourne. We’re only a hop, skip and a jump away from the city, but the suburb still has a ‘village’ feel to it. I love living here. I decided when I was very young that this was where I wanted to buy a house. When I was a kid we used to catch the train here from Werribee to visit some family friends of my parents. I loved the beautiful old homes and the wide, tree-lined streets. I made up my mind one day I would own one of the beautiful Victorian homes near the beach and now I do! Williamstown is a very popular suburb to live in and we also get lots of day-trippers coming to the beach or to wander around the shops near the bay. All those tourists are great for business! So, that’s a little about my world. Would love to hear about all of yours when you have time.

  Ellie, you are my hero making your own clothes! Plus-sized clothes are the absolute pits. I am tall, so at least things are usually the right length, but I’ve got a weird shape – big bum and a smaller top half, so getting dresses to fit is a nightmare. I buy a lot of my clothes online from the States, but the postage costs a fortune and it can be a bit hit and miss size-wise.

  Kat, I can’t believe all the terrible things you’ve had to endure in your life. I’m so sorry about the loss of your dad and your brother. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you. Yo
u’ve made me realise how trivial my complaints are. I know I’ve just spent ages complaining about my sister, but I love her to pieces and wouldn’t be without her.

  I’m also sorry that you had to leave home at such a tender age. I was SUCH a baby when I was eighteen. There’s no way I could have survived on my own. I so admire your strength.

  I’d love to hear more about your little girl, she sounds adorable. Please don’t think I’m not interested in other people’s children because of what I said about my sister. I love children and I’m in love with my nephews and niece. I’m just grumpy with my sister because she’s being an insensitive cow!

  Mezz, looking forward to hearing more from you when you’re able to pop in.

  Love to you all, my sisters in slimming!

  Jewels xox

  As she pressed ‘send’ Jewels realised the gloomy feeling that had engulfed her was totally gone. She felt light and happy and full of hope. Stuff sitting inside and watching a sad movie. It was a beautiful spring day. Time to get dressed and head outside for a walk in the sunshine.

  Chapter Seven

  FAT CHAT | Wednesday Sept. 9 2015 | Mezz

  It’s almost midnight and this is the first moment I’ve had to myself all day. I’ve read all your posts, though, and have loved getting to know you all a bit better. So now I guess it’s my turn to be honest . . .