by Anita Heiss
Veronica had spent the afternoon cooking up a storm for John and had eaten some of the massive beef lasagne before leaving home. While Xanthe, who arrived straight from the airport following a training session in Bundaberg, had reluctantly eaten a snack on the flight back to Brisbane. She was stressed by the time she got there. Not that it was unusual for her to be on the road presenting to mining companies, government agencies and community organisations. She was happiest when she was helping to write and implement social issues policies and training packages for the workplace, even though the work was challenging and often caused her sleepless nights. It was normal for her to lie awake rethinking what a redneck employee had thrown at her during a session on Australian history in which she’d covered the Coniston massacre, the Tasmanian Line and the Stolen Generations. Even after the mainstream release of the film version of Rabbit-Proof Fence and Kevin Rudd’s national apology in 2008, she couldn’t believe there were still Australians who knew so little about their own history and still needed to be convinced of the value in saying sorry. Heading to see the play Stolen, she was already emotionally drained.
Izzy scratched her belly.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Ellen asked.
‘I’m fucking itchy all the time. The more my boobs and belly stretch, the itchier I feel. It’s weird, I hate it.’ She reached down to her feet. ‘My soles are itchy, my palms are itchy and I can tell you, it’s not for money.’ She scratched some more.
‘How many weeks are you now?’ Veronica asked.
‘Twenty-two,’ Izzy guessed, not wanting to look like she didn’t know exactly how far along she was.
‘That sounds about right,’ Xanthe offered. ‘I think they’re standard symptoms at that stage, I’m sorry to tell you.’
‘Well, at least you know what you’re in for when it happens,’ Izzy said, positive her tidda would soon fall pregnant.
‘My fingers are numb, my mouth tastes like it’s full of metal and my eyes are dry.’ Izzy started to cry. ‘Whoever said pregnancy was a beautiful thing was fucking lying.’
Xanthe tried not to let the comment affect her. She wanted to experience for herself all the things Izzy was going through. She had done a pregnancy test two days ago, and had another in her handbag. She’d now bought take-home tests from every chemist in a ten-kilometre radius of her home, and even when she was in different towns and cities.
‘Oh,’ Izzy grasped her chest.
‘What is it?’ Veronica jumped up.
‘Fucking heartburn, I’m falling apart.’ As a pregnant woman, Izzy was like a fella with a man-cold, a terrible ‘patient’.
‘You do realise the first word your child says is going to be “fuck” if you don’t stop swearing all the time,’ Ellen said, laughing.
‘See, I’m already a fucked mother!’
Xanthe said nothing.
‘Your hair looks really pretty, Ellen,’ Veronica said, admiring the extra length Ellen was sporting, but also trying to change the subject. She could tell Xanthe was sullen.
‘Yes, I’ve decided to let it grow.’ Ellen ran her fingers through her marginally longer locks. ‘Craig likes women with long hair.’
Izzy raised an eyebrow. ‘Wow, we’re changing our style for a bloke now? Never thought I’d see that happen,’ she grinned.
‘No I’m not!’ Ellen said defensively, screwing her face up as if to say, What are you talking about? ‘I’d never do that!’ she said adamantly, but fooling no-one.
‘You’ve had short hair for as long as I can remember,’ Xanthe said, thinking back to their days in Mudgee. ‘Even through school. God, remember the school photos?’
‘Yes, yes, but maybe I want a change. Maybe Nadine was right, maybe I do look a bit blokish.’
‘If that’s the case, then you’re telling us that at the age of forty you’ve started listening to what Nadine has to say about you.’
‘As if I’d ever admit to that. Come on, the bells are ringing, let’s head in.’
They made their way to the doors of the Cremorne Theatre along with throngs of other theatregoers: reviewers, drama aficionados, school and uni students, and members of the Stolen Generations themselves. There’s an unusual number of Murris here tonight, Xanthe thought to herself, but perhaps that was because she’d been so busy travelling for work the past couple of years, she rarely got the chance to see plays.
For the next hundred minutes the women underwent a range of emotions, as students from the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts used music, dance and drama to tell stories of children removed from their families under the Protection policies that once existed in Queensland. The finale had them all in tears as each performer sang out their character’s own experience of removal.
As they sat in the bar of QPAC after the performance, the energy was electric; patrons debriefed and dissected what they’d just seen. The tiddas were no different.
‘This is the first play I’ve actually read and seen,’ Izzy said, thinking back over years of theatre-going.
‘We did Hamlet at school, remember?’ Veronica asked. ‘And then there was that amateur performance at the old Regent Theatre. Remember how we all wanted to kiss Matt who played Hamlet, and then Nadine was caught pashing him backstage.’ The women all smiled. Matt had been the biggest spunk at Mudgee High.
‘Oh, that’s right, my mind is like mush sometimes,’ Izzy said, annoyed at how things were slipping her mind of late.
‘Baby brain,’ Xanthe added with authority. ‘There’s been studies done that prove there can be weakened memory due to iron deficiency during pregnancy. If you’re not getting enough iron to fuel haemoglobin production for you both, Izzy, then you can develop iron-deficient anaemia.’
Xanthe rattled off the information as if she were a G.P. She had clearly done enough reading for both of them. Izzy tried to take it all in.
‘Some common symptoms of anaemia include fatigue, weakness, irritability and forgetfulness. So it’s important to keep up your greens too,’ Xanthe continued, happy to be able to offer the advice she wished she needed to follow herself.
‘Seriously, if I eat any more broccoli, I’ll turn green!’
Just then, some of the cast walked by – young, enthusiastic, pleased with their work.
‘It’s awesome Stolen was here at QPAC, that’s top shelf,’ Ellen said to her tiddas.
Xanthe shook her head.
‘Is everything okay, Xanthe?’ Izzy asked,
Xanthe was on the verge of tears. ‘I’m okay. The play made me incredibly angry though, and sad.’ She reached for a tissue in her handbag. ‘It made me think about Mum and my aunties who were removed to Coota Girls Home. One of the things they always missed the whole time there was hugs from their mums.’ Tears started to fall down Xanthe’s flawless cheeks. ‘It’s why she always hugged me so much growing up. She still hugs me a lot. And Noon hugs me a lot too.’ Xanthe thought back to her last visit in Mudgee and the long hug her mother and grandmother gave her in the doorway the moment she arrived. ‘I know you girls probably think I’m obsessed with having a baby.’
‘No, not at all,’ Veronica said, although like the other tiddas she did think Xanthe had lost some perspective in recent months. But her revelation now made them all more sympathetic.
‘Part of me sometimes wonders if my yearning for a baby is simply so I can be a good mother, be the kind of mother that my mum and aunties never had, or didn’t have very much. Does that sound insane?’
‘Actually, Xanthe,’ Izzy said. ‘That makes a lot of sense.’
Brookfield was only twenty kilometres from Brisbane city but it could feel isolated. Some called it semi-rural but for Izzy, Ellen and Xanthe, it was completely rural.
‘Anywhere without kerb and guttering is country to me,’ Ellen once said, thinking about her apartment right on the Brisbane River with a view of the city skyline and all its brilliant lights to drift off to every night.
Nadine had never really been a city girl, more a co
untry tomboy, even as a teenager getting around in jeans in winter and trackies and a T-shirt in summer. It was lucky that Richard never wanted a girly-girl; he would’ve had to date another of Izzy’s friends had that been the case. His wife liked the smell of nature, the scent of the pine, cedar, silky oak and eucalyptus trees that surrounded their house and protected the property from the outside world. She wore patchouli-scented oil instead of Chanel, Dior or YSL. She owned all the expensive fragrances, often gifts from her publisher, but rarely wore them.
To her tiddas, it would look like Nadine was back to her usual routine: sitting on her veranda with a glass in her hand, staring into the black night. It wasn’t as dark as she remembered the Mudgee sky to be, but the nights were definitely warmer in autumn and winter where she now lived. It was during these times alone that she felt most vulnerable, most inadequate. She didn’t feel compelled to read to her children tonight, or to help Richard clean up after dinner. She was like the men in her family back home, where the women did absolutely everything round the house because they had to; because that was their identity, their role, their lot in life. This was her lot.
Nadine was glad she had got out of Mudgee where the eyes of the locals were always on her, frowning, not understanding, always judging – or so she thought. Now she felt like her friends were judging her too. She didn’t realise it was worry her tiddas felt; about her drinking, her insularity and her lack of interest in anything apart from her own day, the plot of her next novel and the time of her next drink.
Given Brookfield had less than half the population of Mudgee, Nadine was happy she and Richard settled where they did. The acreage allowed them to get some horses for the kids to ride and raise chooks for eggs. It was all coordinated by Richard though. Given that she didn’t drive, it was important to Nadine that there was some form of self-sufficiency for her if Richard was not at home. She wasn’t a great cook, but even she could do scrambled eggs.
A bat’s high-pitched squeak shook Nadine from her blurry gaze. She wondered what Richard was doing, not realising he stood only metres away, watching her.
As she continued to sip her wine, she thought about her family back in Mudgee, the one she rarely had any contact with now she had put herself into writerly seclusion. She was still proud of how they’d been pioneers in the dairying industry and owned hundreds of acres back home. Then they bought a winery, and the rest was her financial security history. The land had been passed down through the generations but increasingly fewer of her relations wanted to live on or work it, and fewer still wanted to live in the hills. Nadine was the last ‘hillbilly’ in her clan, but an incredibly wealthy one at that.
Before moving to Queensland as newlyweds in their early twenties, Nadine and Richard had talked about what it might mean to uproot their life in Mudgee. But it was time for Nadine to make the move. Her career had taken off immediately with her first best-selling novel, followed by a second and third in quick succession, and she felt increasingly under the microscope of locals who frowned on her eccentric writerly life and what many thought was her neglect of her husband. She didn’t want to raise the children she would eventually have under the same judgemental spotlight. And she never got on with her mother-in-law. It was no secret that Trish wanted both Richard and Izzy to marry Black. Not only did Richard marry a white girl, but in Trish’s eyes Nadine had also managed to take the man out of her son by making him stay home and do the laundry. ‘Your father would turn in his grave,’ she had said to Richard more than once.
Nadine didn’t think about it that way, and nor did Richard. They both worked hard in different ways and money was seen purely as a means for buying necessities, not a motivation in itself. Writing was work, but that too came easily to her. She had a gift for unfurling stories in her mind and then sitting at her computer and writing without distraction for days, weeks, months on end. All the while her devoted husband kept the wheels of the family life turning and her must-have-for-creative-thought glass of wine topped up.
The idea of mixed-marriages in Mudgee was about race – Black and white – but in Brookfield a mixed marriage meant the joining of two different religions.
‘Mixed marriages haven’t always been welcomed in Brookfield,’ Nadine said out of the blue one morning when they first arrived.
‘What? Are they rednecks up here?’ Richard had been naively surprised.
‘Probably, if you consider that up here marriages between a Catholic and a Protestant were once frowned upon, so I’m imagining a Blackfella and whitefella won’t go down too well either.’
‘Oh, you get me going sometimes, Nads.’ Richard had put a potted palm on the veranda near the back door. He was the only person who called her Nads.
‘But like Patrick and Ann Pacey – the Catholic and the Protestant who pioneered the way for inter-faith relationships – maybe you and I have done the same.’
Richard had stood up from tending the plant and pinched her on the arse.
‘Hey,’ she said, ‘don’t start something you can’t finish.’
‘I can finish it all right,’ he’d laughed, pulling her into a tight embrace.
The affection between the school sweethearts had never waned. An onlooker might think they were an odd match; she was an inch taller than him, lean and pale as vanilla bean ice-cream. She drank, swore, criticised, analysed and only seemed content when she’d had a glass or four. Richard, on the other hand, was dark like the coffee beans he would grind to wake them both up properly in the morning. He was stocky and always smiling. ‘Happy wife, happy life’ was his motto. And when Nadine was happy the whole house was happy. Whenever the pair passed each other they would touch: a finger along an arm, a kiss on the forehead, a cuddle just for the sake of it. They still liked each other even after twenty plus years. They had what Veronica had always longed for.
It was not unusual for Richard and Nadine to make love in the middle of the day. When the kids were at school and Richard had finished feeding the animals, collecting the eggs and watering the vegie patch. Nadine didn’t have to be asked twice; the one thing that alcohol had not done was lower her libido. She found sex helped her think more clearly of an afternoon and she could take to the keyboard again. They’d shower together afterwards before he left to collect the children from school.
‘Darling,’ Nadine called to Richard as the dew set in.
‘Yes, my love.’ He stood behind the wicker chair and kissed the top of her head.
‘If you’re going out on the mower tomorrow, can you put some sunblock on please?’
Richard laughed. ‘It’s August and I’m Black!’
‘Don’t laugh at me. It’s going to be hot tomorrow. UV rays and climate change, you know.’
‘I don’t need sunblock.’ Richard pulled up a seat and put his hand on her thigh.
Nadine took a deep breath and stood up. Richard knew he was in trouble, kind of; they never really fought.
‘Do I ask you for anything, ever?’ She was serious.
‘Well, yes, you ask me to drive you everywhere, do most of the cooking and cleaning . . .’ He smiled as he pulled her down onto his lap.
‘And I’ve also just asked you to wear sunblock,’ she continued, nuzzling into his neck as if a child.
‘The things I do for you, my love,’ Richard chuckled, kissing his wife on the cheek.
‘Life could be much worse than having a wife who worries about your wellbeing. But you go, get melanoma, see what I care.’
She broke from his embrace and picked up her glass of wine.
‘Don’t be like that.’
It was the perfect moment for him to say how much he worried about her too, to begin to talk about her drinking. And that was his plan.
‘I love that you worry about me,’ he said, taking her head in his hands and kissing her gently.
The gentle kiss turned passionate. Nadine felt light-headed, not from the wine but from lust, and without thinking about the likelihood of Cameron or Brittany stumbling u
pon them she straddled her husband, rutting until they both climaxed.
12
A POSITIVE NEW JOURNEY VS DAMAGING BAD HABITS
Ellen felt around for her phone with her eyes closed, hoping for a text message or missed call from Craig. It had been a few days since she’d last heard from him and she was feeling agitated. Even though neither of them acknowledged they were technically dating, she knew she’d been affected by his presence, his interest, his communication – or more specifically of late, his lack thereof.
She lay in bed, the sound of peak hour traffic humming in the background. She smiled, knowing she could let her mind relax a little after the two draining funeral services of the day before. The next, thankfully, was two sleeps away. Two days off mid-week was another reason Ellen loved working for herself; she thrived on the independence and control, having a say about her everyday life and routine. In fact there were few things that Ellen didn’t love about being a self-employed career woman as her fortieth birthday approached. She mightn’t get four weeks’ paid holidays, or sick leave or automatic superannuation, but the luxury of lying in bed later than usual on a Tuesday morning, the joy of taking a nap on Wednesday afternoon, and even having time to head out to QUT in the middle of the day to support Veronica – well, they were good enough reasons for her to be a sole trader.