Women of a Certain Age

by Jodie Moffat

‘Yes,’ I said, coming to his rescue, ‘that’s me, the Wiradjuri woman from the Murrumbidgee River near Gundagai.’

  Professor Zed glanced at his papers and back at me again – faint furrows rippled across his brow. ‘Take a seat, please,’ he gestured to the vacant chair and resumed his place on the other side of the desk. He waved at the pile of papers he’d been reading and placed them in front of him, ‘Zara will be here in a minute. We’ve just been reading about you.’ He looked back at the papers. ‘An impressive PhD indeed – amazing engagement with the settler canon too … the title though, Tracking, led me to believe that it was something completely diff–’

  ‘Hello!’ beamed a voice from behind.

  ‘Oh … Zara,’ Zed looked up at the smiling woman carrying coffee and doughnuts, ‘this is Jeanine.’

  Zara placed the cardboard tray on Zed’s desk. ‘Lovely to meet you – Zed and I were just looking over your research folio.’ She handed me a coffee. ‘Impressive – lots of um … interesting literary analysis – a little different from what we thought though,’ she pursed her lips, ‘I expected to read something about trekking and tracking through your country.’ She was still smiling, but it was becoming blank – bemused.

  ‘Yes,’ Zed came to her rescue, ‘I was thinking I was going to encounter the game and the traditional gathering and …’

  ‘Well, no actually,’ I jumped in, ‘it’s a reference to a traditional practice but it was me tracking whitefellas representing us in national literature.’

  Zara sat back on her chair – her brow puckered. Zed stared blankly across the desk. I tried again.

  ‘It’s metaphorical – I used tracking the way it was explained to me by my Nanna as a tool of literary analysis to track the whitefellas’ consciousness of us in the national narrative.’

  Silence. I pushed on. ‘Gathering too – it’s a traditional practice carried out by women and I’m looking at how that translates to writing and …’ I trailed off. Zara was staring out the window behind me. Zed was looking back over the pages in front of him. The boxes – those neat, tiny white squares.

  They told me my work didn’t ‘quite fit’ with what they were doing at the moment, but that they had my details, and maybe there would be a space for me a little later in the year. They would let me know if the situation changed.

  I walked out and the sun was still shining. I wandered across Washington Square Park to where the old Black guys play chess in the corner with tourists for money and the chance to talk. After only a month in New York they already knew me. I gravitated there a few days a week with my notebook or my laptop to write. I made them laugh because I couldn’t play chess and told them stories about Australia. They liked stories about blackfellas from home. I gave them all lapel pins of the Aboriginal flag that I brought with me. They wore them on their baseball caps and liked to point them out to me when I stopped by. They got it when I explained that the black on the top of the red is our people on the land even though we don’t all look black on the outside. On that day, I sat in the sun with them and watched them move big plastic pawns across black and white squares.

  I dream of a future where the space in which you sign your life away for whitefellas is a soft-sided circle – something not so angular and rigid that changes the shape of the expectation. I dream of a brave new Australia where my children can rock up to an interview where the only expectation will be that they are qualified to do the job they are applying for, and they will not have to spend time qualifying why they don’t meet the boxed expectation of the interviewer in the first place.

  I dream on – outside the box.

  Memories that shaped me — Tracey Arnich

  I was born in Tasmania from a long line of tough women of convict heritage. They were strong and powerful in their love. From an ancestral and present point of view, the women in my family are the glue that binds us together.

  In the nineteenth century, two of my ancestors were deported to Tasmania. One brother owned a hat, a man tried to steal it and both brothers fought him. The man died and the brothers were deported, one to Maria Island, the other to Norfolk Island. The brother that was sent to Norfolk Island had a wife who refused to abandon her husband and boarded the ship as a free settler to follow him. She was the first white female to own farmland on Norfolk Island, and her husband was billeted to her.

  At the age of sixteen, my mother brought me into the world. My father was a handsome man who loved to gamble, womanise and create debts. He was a carpenter and not considered a good prospect because of his past; he’d been to jail.

  Mum’s family wanted her to terminate her pregnancy, but she refused and married instead. She gave birth to my brother twelve months after me, and my sister quickly followed.

  Mum and Dad separated when I was six. At the time I was in hospital having my tonsils out. When I left hospital, I stayed with Dad. I don’t remember going with him, I just remember I didn’t want to leave him and my golden labrador, Chick the chicken killer. Mum left with my siblings. I don’t recall much about living with Dad, but I remember the day Mum came and took me away from him.

  We moved to a hovel of a house, built in a dug-out pit on the side of Mount Lyell, the back of the house sunk in clay. We had no furniture except an old meat safe in the kitchen and a mattress on the floor. There was no hot water; we had a copper outside that heated water for the bath, alongside an old laundry mangle.

  Mum had two jobs and we didn’t see her often. As the oldest, I’d look after my siblings, cook and care for them. I had a brilliant imagination and would constantly invent games and stories. We ran free and wild, the bush was our backyard, and the iridescent quick sand of the Queen River was our playground.

  Mum’s second relationship was with a South African. He was a violent man. I remember the beatings we got from playing Tarzan by swinging on the curtains and breaking them. When that relationship dissolved, I was happy, because it meant we weren’t going to South Africa where there was apartheid and I would be unable to play with whoever I chose, black or white.

  Once, Mum let our dad visit. He took us shopping and bought us giant pandas – mine was white and blue. I recall my siblings and I in his car, driving to the top of a hill in the dark. We were hungry, upset and afraid. Dad had a gun. He phoned my Mum and told her we wouldn’t see her again. I remember a police officer holding my father at gunpoint, and then we were returned to Mum.

  We moved to Hobart and rented a two-storey house. They were happy days, just Mum and us kids. We each had a room on the top floor with sloping walls. We were so excited to have our own rooms, but it didn’t last. Mum took in a lady as a boarder to help pay the rent. Then my brother got very sick and needed urgent heart surgery in Melbourne. Mum had to leave me and my sister in the care of the boarder while she went with my brother; she had no-one else. They were gone a long time, and the boarder took away our rooms before they returned.

  Then my mother met the man who would become my stepfather. He was Croatian. At first, he seemed wonderful. Mum went to university, and then worked for the attorney-general’s office. She grew her own fruit and vegies and bought offcuts of meat to make soup.

  My siblings and I formed a group of friends, sometimes two, sometimes four, so we were the Famous Five or the Secret Seven, and we would go on adventures picking blackberries and stealing cabbage leaves, hiding under the house to eat them. We used to trade blackberries with an elderly lady who would let us play in the historical courthouse where she lived. Once she went on holiday but didn’t tell us and we thought she’d been murdered and called the police. The old building had a moat, cellars and prison cells underneath.

  At Christmas, Mum would give us our year’s supply of clothes and a few toys. She’d buy throughout the year and store it all in a suitcase under her bed. She’d make us clothes. One year I got a mini sewing machine, which I hated. Another year I got a typewriter and the others got bikes. One year she went out with my stepfather, and we snuck into her room and unwrapped o
ur presents (I was the only one who could read the tags) and played with them. That year we didn’t get anything – Mum said she gave our presents to an orphanage.

  My great-grandmother had given Mum a deposit to buy a Housing Department house, which we lived in with my stepfather. Mum laid new carpets and wallpaper. There was an open fire in the lounge room, and one cold night, when we were fast asleep tucked in our beds, a spark jumped over the fire screen and ignited Mum’s autumn leaf–patterned couch. Workmen from an early bus broke down our door, and we escaped, standing across the road, watching everything we owned disappear, engulfed by flames.

  I felt free.

  My stepfather was a house painter who did not like to work much. He preferred to drink. He was a giant of a man, a volatile bully who dealt out emotional and physical abuse. Once he didn’t speak to me for a whole year; it was a hard thing to handle. During this time, my little brother, his son, was born.The household fell silent when his car entered the driveway. We’d wait for him to come in the door and look at his face:

  How are his eyes today?

  Fear

  Silence

  He ate his dinner at his own separate table. If he didn’t like what was on the plate, he turned it into a flying saucer –

  Whoosh!

  Plate flying; food smashed up the wall. One of us would be singled out to clean it and the others couldn’t help, we’d be bashed if we did. He liked to hit us with a belt, using the buckle end. My sister and I tried not to cry, and would laugh at him instead, refusing to give in.

  It was very bad for a long time. One night I was standing at the kitchen sink. He was belting Mum; she grabbed my hair to stop herself from falling. I went down too.

  Panic!

  Curled on the floor

  Mum’s blood on the lino, him kicking her in the guts, her face his football

  I got up, crept away, gathered my brothers and sister, and we quietly climbed out a window and ran to a safe house.

  I wanted to die at that point, but I couldn’t leave my brothers, sister and Mum. The police used to patrol our house, the neighbours knew but no-one did anything. Mum didn’t have the option to escape; he always knew where we were. She went to a woman’s shelter once. When she came back to get us, he’d nailed up the windows and doors, with us inside. And so we stayed, and the violence continued.

  My father used to send me books with my name inscribed inside, but none for my siblings, his son and daughter. Sometimes I’d cross out my name and write in theirs, so they had something from him as well. When I was nine, he came to visit from Queensland. He took us out and bought me a radio. Then he took me to a field where there was a pony, and he told me it was mine. I was so excited. But it was a lie. I refused to believe my mum when she told me. So, she took me to meet the pony’s owner.

  Dad said he wanted me to live with him in Queensland. Mum said if I went with him, I could never return to live with her. I saw my father three times in my life after that.

  The violence escalated with my stepfather. I wanted to sedate the giant; we were safe when he slept. Mum and I crushed valium tablets into powder, adding it to his salad. I thought I’d become a murderess, just to make it stop. One day I tried something that foamed up green in his coffee and I just got it down the sink before he saw it.

  He flew to Croatia for his mother’s funeral. We packed up the house overnight.

  Escape! No goodbye to friends; tell no-one!

  Get on the plane!

  Change your name!

  Arriving in Perth dressed in my woollies was a shock. It was as if I’d landed on another planet; the weather was so hot and sweltering. The trees were different, alien to me. There was no real dirt, just sand. The absence of gutters surprised me. We drove for what seemed an eternity, and arrived at Scarborough Beach. The ocean was extraordinary. I was so happy to be alive with my family, but I missed my Tasmanian mountains and clear seas.

  I lived a colourful existence as a young woman in Perth; I went to art school, worked at various pubs, and dated a few people before I met the father of my son. He was a taxi driver and I met him by dialling the cab companies to see who was quickest to respond. When he left Perth for Sydney, I decided to follow, so I hitchhiked across the Nullarbor with my cat in search of him.

  I arrived in Sydney with ten dollars to my name; I met an old friend on the street who said I could sleep on his couch for fifty dollars a week. I dropped my cat and bag there and went out to buy a sandwich. I overheard two girls talking, one asking the other if she could do her pub shift that night, but she couldn’t. I said I could, and they told me to go to a leather shop on Oxford Street and ask for Glenys.

  I worked that night at a pub and made about a hundred and fifty dollars in tips and wages. Later I caught a cab into Kings Cross and ended up at a nightclub. I asked for work and started then and there as a drinks waitress. I took my first drink order to the bar and the person that served me was the love I had followed to Sydney.

  I got a job managing a club in the Cross, downstairs from my partner’s flat. I recall hanging Chinese paper lanterns in the windows of his bedroom and lighting candles in them, looking out at the night workers. Ours was also a night life, working in clubs, eyes adjusting to morning, sleeping at noon.

  After a year or so we moved to a share house in Auburn. It was a quieter lifestyle; on our weekends we’d watch Rage and David Attenborough videos. I got a job working at an auction house, valuing antiques, and I got my partner a job working in their vehicle yard.

  We came back to Perth one Christmas on a Greyhound bus, and bought a Morris Minor to drive back to Sydney. Somewhere on the Nullarbor it started overheating. We picked up a young hitchhiker who had no water. We returned him to his Adelaide family, but the Morris was struggling and we were stranded.

  We sold the Morris, but had very little money, not enough to get to Sydney. We went into a pub and I started playing the pokies, winning enough to feed us. I began talking with a man who part-owned the 4WD shop over the road from the pub. He said we could stay in his shop if we cleaned up the workshop area. We slept in a different 4WD every night, it was quite romantic, and I learned to drink beer, as Adelaide water was undrinkable.

  One day I won a coin toss and the prize was the chance to buy a 1962 Datsun Bluebird ute, pulled from a paddock, for four hundred and fifty dollars, which we did. So, workshop cleaned, we drove back to Sydney.

  We had many adventures in the ute. It had great big fenders and had to be hand-cranked to start. We slept in the back with a carpet of stars above us. If it rained we put a tarp over the top. The car moved slowly and bits of it fell off along the way. They were happy days, no radio and a partner who sang Johnny Cash.

  I fell pregnant when I was twenty-seven, but I lost the baby. That loss was hard. We went like rabbits till I got pregnant again. We quit auctions and flew back to Perth for the birth.

  My beautiful son was induced at thirty-seven weeks because the doctors thought his heart rate was too low. He was so tiny, perfect, looking like a wise crinkled old man. I could cradle him in my forearm. I could dress him in doll’s clothes.

  We lived in a cheap house in Lathlain, and I didn’t know anyone. I think I had postnatal depression, but it wasn’t talked about then. I developed mastitis; I had Incredible Hulk boobs, huge and deep blue veins. I lost my milk and really had to work to get it back. But I did.

  I tried to find my father when my son was born. That’s when I discovered he died of a punctured spleen under suspicious circumstances, when I was about sixteen. He was left by the side of the road; I have the newspaper clippings. I was deeply saddened because I would have liked him to meet my child.

  My partner and I separated when our son was about two. Even though our relationship had dissolved, we remained united in raising our son. After we separated, my son and I moved to a house closer to the heart of the city. I started meditating and practicing tai chi, reiki and chi gong. I joined a spiritual group that met at a church in Subiaco. />
  I met my daughter’s father in a nightclub. He was backpacking through Australia. We soon moved in together and then set up a co-op that sold antiques and collectables, but he cheated on me. I packed his bags, rang the woman he was cheating with and told her to come and get him. I deserved more.

  We dissolved the co-op and he moved back to his home country, but by then I was already pregnant with his child, my beautiful daughter. I got a job in the markets while I was pregnant, and I went back to work at the markets the day after her birth; I felt fantastic. She was born a strong big baby, inside her placenta, which was a heart-shaped pouch.

  I spent ten years selling clothing and gifts at the markets, firstly for someone else and then for my own business. There was a real sense of community in the markets. My children were known by all the stall holders. This was an extremely happy time in my life. The markets were only open three days a week which allowed me to have a very active role in my children’s schooling; I cooked for the canteen, taught art classes and ran book fairs.

  Then the markets closed due to redevelopment, and I started working as a florist. This has been my employment ever since. I work with colours, scents and textures, helping people celebrate their special moments in life.

  My mother lost her fight with cancer few years ago. My sister and I took turns looking after her in her last days. It was quick and it was heart-breaking. I made Mum’s funeral casket beautiful, covered in her favourite flowers, a celebration of her difficult life, and her strength.

  Then when my beloved cat died after twenty-one years, I cried an ocean of tears.

  My mother instilled strong family bonds in her children and we have all remained close. My children are also close; to me, to each other and to the other siblings they both now have.

  I look back on my life and I am filled with gratitude because I have been given hope, mercy and compassion. I am grounded, resilient and ready, moving into my new self as I age, experiencing menopause, embracing my curves, greying hair, glasses. I feel I will someday return to Tasmania. But in the meantime, I try and live my life in the best way I can, helping others when they need it, bringing the strength of my past into the present; being strong.