that’s in hindsight. I have to let it go.
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8
Despite eighteen months of pills, a scheduled sex life, and
thousands of dollars spent on naturopathy and acupuncture,
I still wasn’t pregnant. In mid-2004 we booked in to do
IVF—I was both excited and uneasy, but definitely ready.
I opened the fridge door and crouched down to pull the
neat package containing syringes and bottles of clear liquid
out from between the yoghurt and chutney, and handed it
to Benny. I closed the living room curtains and lay on the
couch while Benny unzipped the package and studied its
strange contents.
‘Just don’t let me see any needles.’ I turned my face to
the wall. Benny loaded the syringe as instructed and held
it poised over a spot to the side of my belly button.
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‘Ready?’
‘Yes. Just do it.’ Jab. ‘Ouch!’ Voices and a muff led
Crowded House song came from next door.
Benny read the instructions for the next injection.
‘Ready?’
‘Don’t tell me when you’re going to do it!’ I said, irritated.
‘Okay.’ Jab.
‘Ow!’ I leant on an elbow to rub the reddening spot.
‘One down,’ said Benny, packing up. A woman laughed
next door.
‘One down,’ I sighed.
After two weeks of this evening ritual my stomach
bloated and I developed a fierce and permanent headache;
changes to my hormones made me teary, cranky and dog-
tired. We didn’t tell anyone we were doing IVF and we
kept to ourselves. That might have been mostly Benny’s
idea—he’s a private person. But we also didn’t want to
become the subject of Alice Springs’ thriving gossip circle.
So we became isolated, and quickly developed cabin fever.
I was working on a career conference for Aboriginal
women. The job was based at the women’s council, which
swarmed with smart, earthy women. But the headaches were
getting worse by the day, and my emotional state was intense
and unpredictable. One afternoon I sat facing my computer
with my eyes closed and the vice on my temples squeezing
tight. Two Aboriginal women in coloured skirts appeared
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in the doorway. I smiled at the toddler standing between
them: ‘Hello, little boy!’ He came towards me with arms
outstretched and slapped his dimpled hands down onto the
bright blue exercise ball I was using as a desk chair. But
I was hit by the rancid smell from his nappy and turned
involuntarily away to gag.
We needed to be in Darwin for eight days while the eggs
were collected, fertilised and put back into my uterus. The
dates were going to clash with the conference, so I went in
to my boss’s office. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
Piles of paper and folders spread across Angela’s desk. I was
comfortable with her smart, messy ways.
‘Sure, Ingrid—have a seat.’
I moved a handful of torn envelopes, and sat on the
small couch facing her desk. ‘Thanks. Um . . . I’m actually
going to have to go to Darwin for some medical treatment.’
‘Right. Is everything okay? Are you okay?’ She cocked
her head.
‘Yeah, I am—I’m fine. It’s just . . . Well, I won’t be able
to attend the conference because the dates clash. And I can’t
change the Darwin dates.’
‘Aah . . . I see,’ she said gently, a look of recognition
passing over her face. ‘Sometimes women need to go to
Darwin for fertility treatment.’ I looked at her, then away.
I did not want to have this discussion. ‘We’re very supportive
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of women in those sorts of circumstances. That’s fine,
Ingrid—good luck.’
The plane slammed down on the runway and shuddered
along until coming to a stop, and Benny and I stepped
out into a thick, balmy Darwin morning. It was October
2004. We moved into a poky grey-walled apartment up
several impossible flights of stairs before making our way
to the hospital.
‘Oh my god, Ingrid.’ The doctor was holding a probe
between my legs and studying the ultrasound screen.
‘What’s wrong?’ The room smelt like disinfectant and
reminded me, inexplicably, of a babysitter we grew up with.
‘We’re going to have to cancel—your body’s over-
responded.’
‘What?!’ I lifted my head to look at him through my
parted knees.
‘You’ve over-responded.’ His eyes f lickered over the
screen and his expression was one of real concern. ‘We have
to stop immediately. It’s no wonder you’ve been unwell.’
‘But . . . I don’t believe it!’
‘I’m sorry.’ He was shaking his head now. ‘It’s far too
dangerous to continue.’ I lay devastated and disbelieving,
with tears rolling down my cheeks.
‘After all those needles! It’s been weeks of . . .’
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‘I’m sorry.’
We decided to stay in Darwin anyway, and moped
around. It was stinking hot and humid. I floated on my back
in the warm hotel pool and told myself it wasn’t over—we
would just have to try again. Warm salty tears slid down
my cheeks and into the clear blue water.
Between that cycle and the next I lived on hold, waiting
for another chance at getting pregnant. Over Christmas,
we went to Mum’s place on the south coast of New South
Wales. Benny calls it the Promised Land, because it’s all
bush and beach and space. On Christmas morning, Mum
hitched her nightie into her knickers to walk through her
garden, feeding her geese, guinea fowl, bantams, ducks and
pigeons—like a Pied Piper of birds, grabbing and tossing
fistfuls of weeds along the way.
‘Come with me, Inky,’ she said. Gardens and birds aren’t
my thing; but I was miserable, so I tagged along.
‘Will they peck me?’ I asked, stamping my feet to scare
off snakes.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! How did it happen that a daughter
of mine is scared of birds?!’
‘ And snakes,’ I added. We passed screaming peacocks and
three donkeys. A batch of geese and ducks were waddling
fast towards us, and I stayed close behind Mum.
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‘Shit, Mum . . . they’re coming!’
When we got back to the house, Mum’s partner Alan
was standing on the veranda, examining two bolts between
his grease-covered thumbs and forefingers. He had a
matching grease smudge across his cheek, and there was
a plunger of coffee and an odd collection of ceramic cups
on the table in front of him.
‘Madeleine—your bloody peacocks!’ Both Alan and
Mum were established artists and gardeners, but Alan had
his fingers in other pies as well. His p
izza ovens had recently
been featured on TV’s Better Homes and Gardens, and he had
been wearing the t-shirt the crew had given him for four
days straight. ‘They shit all over the veranda . . . and they’re
driving the neighbours insane.’
Mum sat down at the table. ‘Oh, Alan!’ she retorted.
‘You can’t complain—your dog pisses all over the house!
Now kiss me!’ Alan leant down, and for a moment they
pressed foreheads.
‘Mmm . . . Coffee smells good,’ said Mum, pouring
herself a cup. Sitting back, she frowned at a pile of blankets
lumped into a corner of the deck. ‘Alan! Can you take that
pile of rotting electric blankets off the veranda!’ Alan growled
and walked off in the direction of his shed, with bolts in
one hand and coffee in another. Mum turned to me. ‘In
his mind he’s the most organised person on the planet,’ she
said. ‘But in reality, he’s pure chaos.’
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Later that morning I visited Mum in her studio. The
air around her baking kiln quivered like a mirage, and a
woman on the radio held a high-pitched operatic note for
an impressively long time. Mum was pinching a coil of clay
onto a tall pot, surrounded by curly half-animal, half-person
ceramic pieces with expressive eyes and eastern European
jackets and shoes. One had wheels and another had a dish
for a candle.
‘I’ve got an open studio weekend coming up,’ said Mum.
‘I hate talking to all those boring people.’
‘You always say that, Mum,’ I said. ‘But when they’re
actually here, you love it, and talk your head off.’
Mum laughed, stepping back to assess her work, her
head to one side. There was grass stuck to her boots, and
dirt or clay under her fingernails. Incense was burning on
the windowsill, and the smoke wafted our way. ‘Mmm . . .
God, that makes me want to travel,’ said Mum.
Benny and I were staying in the studio that Christmas.
One morning, as I walked through the garden and up to
the house for breakfast, Mum sat on the couch holding Alex
and Nicky’s baby girl, Milla; in a bassinet another baby lay
gurgling—the daughter of Andy, my stepbrother’s partner.
‘Ga . . . ga . . . ga,’ said Milla.
‘Ga . . . ga . . . ga,’ said Mum, standing Milla on her lap.
Ka-kaaa, cried a passing peacock. Radio voices talked in
soothing, intelligent tones.
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Andy stood in front of the fireplace, talking to Nicky:
‘Oh, and how about those last weeks . . . Weren’t they
terrible!’ said Andy. ‘I felt like I was the size of a truck . . .
And my hips and legs were killing me!’
‘Oh, I know—I was just so over it by the end. I was
like . . . Get this baby out!’ They laughed.
I smiled weakly in their direction, mumbled an excuse
at the carpet, pulled the door shut quietly behind me and
bawled my way back to the studio.
I can see how self-centred my behaviour might have
looked to an outsider, and I can’t explain it. Wrong or right,
the company of women with babies—whether they were
family, friends or strangers—just hurt, and I couldn’t even
pretend to be fine with them.
‘It’s alright, darlin’,’ said Benny, tipping me towards him
with his weight on the saggy bed.
The door creaked and Mum came in. ‘The Candelo
Markets are on today,’ she said. ‘I think you should go
immediately and get me two bantam chooks . . . off you
go!’ Good on you, Mum.
I sniffed, rubbed my eyes and looked at Benny: ‘Do
you want to?’
‘Yep . . . let’s go.’
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I started working full-time with the town council in a
sprawling, low-ceilinged grey building splat on the grass
at the end of the mall. The work was diverse, but for the
most part the events and projects themselves left me flat.
The CEO came up with the idea of recruiting a town
crier for Alice. As directed, I advertised for applicants, and
a shortlist were called in to cry, ‘Hear ye! Hear ye!’ to a
panel of amused councillors while I shrank in a corner.
A natural-born town crier emerged as the winner, and
trekked the mall ringing a too-loud bell in an Akubra and
a vest printed in a traditional Aboriginal design, promot-
ing banal upcoming local events while passers-by ducked
and cringed.
I organised for BMX pros from Sydney to spend a
weekend with local kids at the skate park, and Deadly
Treadlies, a shop which maintains a stash of second-hand
bikes for general community use, brought bikes along for
the Aboriginal kids who didn’t have any. I sat against a
fence with a bottle of water in my lap, trying not to feel
intimidated by the hip young Sydney boys taking the
workshop. I yelled intermittently at the blur of bikes and
boys through the microphone of my hands cupped in front
of my mouth: ‘Keep your helmets on!’
Council had a presence at an expo, and it was my job to
facilitate a stall so the rangers could promote their work to
the wider community. ‘Do anything you like!’ I said. So,
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chuffed by their own initiative, they brought in a dog and
put up a sign with a picture of someone holding one on
a lead. Sitting through a meeting with them, I pretended
to take notes, writing in tiny letters in the corner of my
notebook: ‘Where are my people?’
We booked in to do another IVF cycle in March 2005 and
started with the nightly injection ritual before that, only
smaller doses this time. Alice temperatures were in the
forties and, before long, the headaches, mood swings and
painfully bloated stomach were back.
‘So when are you gonna have kids, Ingrid?’ Ranger Jim
sat opposite me at the lunch-room table, flipping through
the pages of a gossip mag. A surge of rage rippled up from
the pit of my stomach, and a fork loaded with last night’s
spinach pie stopped still at my lips.
‘Hmm . . . not sure.’ A phone rang on the other side of
a grey dividing wall. ‘Pretty happy with the way things are
at the moment.’ I put the pie in my mouth and forced my
throat to swallow.
Three weeks later I flew to Darwin by myself. Mum would
arrive later that day, and Benny would come in a few days,
when he could get away from work.
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‘I’m coming to cheer you on,’ said Mum. ‘ And to have
a look at Darwin!’ Thank god for Mum.
This time we splashed out and stayed in an upstairs
apartment with a balcony and fans in every room. There
were two shaded swimming pools, and the air was tropical,
balmy and warm, night and day. We waded through the
water, holding cups of tea in the early morning a
nd glasses
of wine at night. We played Scrabble on the balcony.
‘God, I love this place!’ I said, flinging my wet towel
over the balcony rail.
‘It’s great,’ said Mum, shuff ling her Scrabble letters.
‘I’m sorry about this, darling.’ She clicked down the word
Q-U-E-L-L-E-D, with the Q over a triple-letter word
square.
‘Mum! That’s seven letters! I hate playing Scrabble with
you.’ She raised her glass my way and ice cubes clinked.
‘Quell that smug look off your face,’ I added.
In spite of my tired and crabby state, we went on outings.
On a trip to the local shops, a chemist window mirrored a
surly, puffy person, and I quickly averted my eyes. At the
Parap Markets, Ben ate sweet sticky rice wrapped in banana
leaves, and pawpaw salad with chilli and peanuts, while I
devoured sweet Mongolian pancakes in coconut milk. Mum
and I trailed fingers through racks of batik dresses and silky
sarongs, and I bought hand-carved wooden earrings for
six dollars. We had coffees and cold water on a veranda
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overlooking the blue, blue croc- and stinger-infested water,
and sat outside for fishy dinners and fat red sunsets.
When the day of the egg pick-up finally came around,
I lay waiting on a trolley in a bright orange hospital gown.
‘Whoa,’ said Benny. ‘I need my sunglasses! Here darlin’ . . .
Something to read?’
Benny dumped a stack of worn magazines, their corners
grotty and curled, onto the bed beside me. The cover of the
top one showed a woman opening a car door, eyes towards
the camera, mouth distorted, under the heading: ‘I SLEPT
WITH TOM’.
‘Yuck! Don’t. I’m nervous.’ I imitated nail-biting.
‘Everything’s fine . . . you’ll be fine.’
‘Will you be in recovery when I get there?’ I pulled the
blanket up under my arms. ‘I mean . . . can you be?’
‘I’ll be around.’
The surgery went okay, and at the end of a suspenseful
week, we had one surviving embryo.
‘Lie down, Ingrid,’ ordered the nurse, indicating a strange
chair-bed with stirrups parked in a corner of the room. ‘I’m
going to put the embryo back into your uterus now.’ She
crossed the room, her shoes clicking neatly on the clean
tiled floor, then dimmed the lights and flicked on a Norah
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