Tiddas (5 page)

The little-town-girl-done-good was proud of what she had achieved as an adult in the big smoke – Brisbane being big smoke compared to country New South Wales, even if still ‘little smoke' compared to London, as Spencer had pointed out. And they'd agreed that Brisbane was warmer than both their hometowns, and aside from each other, that's what kept them there. They'd worked hard to buy their house and had done most of the interior renovations themselves to make it
their
home. Xanthe had studied diligently at uni, and worked even harder now that she was running her own business. She
did
own her lot in life and wasn't apologising to anyone. It was a mantra that she often repeated to herself, especially when working with people who brought their stereotypes into the room and suggested she had to be poor, welfare dependent and uneducated to be Aboriginal. She was never going to fulfil someone else's stereotype of being Black in Australia in the twenty-first century. It was why she was so good at what she did as a career: she walked the talk.

‘Actually, we're saving for a Queenslander,' Xanthe said proudly. ‘Spencer is already looking around here for one.'

‘That'd be right, the coloniser wants the manager's quarters; the worker's cottage isn't good enough, is it?' Ellen was only half-joking. She couldn't imagine ever hooking up with an Englishman, let alone having the means to fund a Queenslander in Paddington.

‘Don't be so ridiculous.
Or
mean!' Xanthe said seriously, pulling Ellen back into line. ‘The Queenslanders are on top of the hill, they get all the breeze!'

Xanthe shook her head; she knew that Ellen didn't approve of Spencer with his posh, plummy English voice, but she didn't imagine her friend could be jealous of her success, could she? They were tiddas, and tiddas were happy for each other's achievements. They may have lost touch for some years when studying, moving and having families, but once they re-connected in Brisbane in their twenties, they had been as tight as they were in their teens. And they knew each other's flaws – and fabulousness – inside out. Keeping that in mind, Xanthe knew that whatever the issue was, it was Ellen's problem, not hers.

And while her tiddas joked about Spencer being ‘the coloniser' she never took it seriously. She could laugh about it most of the time. Besides, Spencer liked Xanthe's tiddas, and they liked him because he adored Xanthe. But at the end of the day it didn't matter what they thought; all that mattered in her world was that she loved him; he was gentle and kind, they had the same world views, and they wanted to share views across Brisbane from the wrap-around veranda of a house on a hill.

‘Why wouldn't I want to live in a Queenslander? I want to be able to look across town at the gorgeous jacarandas and the silky oaks and the azaleas in bloom.' Xanthe looked out the front window towards the house across the street. ‘Right now, I have to go to Eurovida and sit at the window at the back of the restaurant to get a good view.'

‘Oh, I love that back window, I haven't been there for ages. We should do breakfast one day,' Veronica finally spoke, although sounding flat. The girls all nodded. ‘Easter perhaps?' She reached for her iPhone to log the date in her calendar. It was an outing to look forward to, and time away from her now mostly empty family home.

Izzy, Nadine and Ellen all looked at Veronica, each registering her unusually sullen mood, but Xanthe continued with where she'd left off. It wasn't unusual for the hostess of the monthly book club to have the most to say when they met in their own home. Izzy liked that it took the pressure off to be, as she called it, ‘on duty'. Her job meant she was constantly either talking or listening or smiling for the camera. At least with her tiddas she could just chill. Or so she thought, until Xanthe started talking pregnancy.

‘When we get pregnant, we'll need a bigger place than this anyway, of course. And I don't want to be moving while I've got a bellyful, or worse, already have a baby. I just want to focus on being a mum.' Xanthe was completely unaware that she'd fallen into talking about babies without even intending to do so. Every topic somehow became a natural progression to discussing them.

‘Won't you miss Armstrong Terrace?' Nadine asked. ‘You love this place. You've spent years doing it up. Richard is so proud of how he helped Spencer with the back garden.'

‘I'll miss it, of course, and we love the garden too. Hopefully Richard can help with the new place as well.' Xanthe passed a bowl of pistachios to Nadine. ‘But you know we originally moved here not just because I loved the layout but
because it was where the Blackfellas used to camp in the old days when it was Armstrong's Paddock.

‘Not living on my own country, the history mattered to me. I mean, it still does. And if I was going to be in the apparently “gentrified” part of town,' Xanthe grinned at Ellen, ‘then I wanted to at least have some connection to the Turrbul mob.'

Izzy nodded. Being close to the local community and the stories of a place mattered to her too. It was the reason she loved West End so much – for its history, the ongoing political presence of the mob in Musgrave Park, the local organisations and simply seeing Blackfellas on Boundary Street any time of day or night.

‘Oh God, these are delicious,' Ellen swooned, biting into a rice ball.

‘They're from a new place not far from here. We do a lot of our shopping there, all their products are organic.' Xanthe handed a bowl of Mexicana corn chips and a bowl of dip to Izzy, who, not being able to handle the smell, passed it straight on to Veronica.

‘We're trying to be as healthy as we can, now we're trying to have a baby.'

‘You are the healthiest person I know!' Nadine declared. ‘Look at Xanthe's calves,' she said to the others, as she stood and headed to the kitchen. ‘And while you do that I'll just pop into the kitchen and make another batch of this fabulous aperitif!' She looked to Xanthe for approval, but wasn't going to stop even if she didn't get it.

‘Well,
you
climb these hills every day and you'll have them too,' the hostess called after Nadine. ‘Seriously, it doesn't
matter what direction I go in, there's a hill. It means I can eat just about anything I want.' She grabbed a handful of corn chips and pretended to be a glutton.

‘You've always been tiny,' Veronica reminded her, a look of envy on her face. ‘I remember how little you were at school. Your dad could put his hands around your waist when you were ten, remember, you were so small.'

‘And I was the giant.' Nadine strolled back into the room with a full jug, recalling how she used to slouch because she was always a head taller than her friends. ‘All legs, no boobs. I was like a bloke! Can't believe Richard ever looked at me.'

‘But when your boobs
did
come in, they
really
came in, didn't they?' Izzy grabbed a handful of her own ample breasts, and laughed, recalling the rapid growth spurt Nadine had at fifteen and how her brother started taking notice of her best friend.

‘Speaking of good bodies, Miss Aboriginal Athlete, are you still doing that hot yoga thing?' Izzy asked Xanthe.

‘Yes! Do you want to come with me?' Xanthe seemed excited at the prospect of one of her tiddas going with her; she was always looking for an exercising buddy. ‘I notice you're not drinking, are you on a health kick now or what?'

‘Oh God, you're not detoxing again? How boring!' Nadine was onto her third drink.

‘I'm not detoxing,' Izzy said, thinking that Nadine was the one who needed to get off the grog.

‘Because Bikram is great for detoxing, you sweat all that crap out.' Xanthe was still trying to solicit at least one tidda.

‘I couldn't think of anything worse than sweating like that around strangers,' Veronica said quietly.

‘Nor I, Vee,' Izzy admitted. ‘And I really don't like the heat
that
much.'

Izzy wondered if she should just take a sip of something so she didn't appear to be out of sorts, but she didn't feel like a drink. She was seven weeks' pregnant, and while she had buried herself in work as usual, she had also allowed a sense of denial to replace the urgency of having to ‘do something' about the situation. She wasn't so much undecided as she was inactive. Izzy didn't want the baby, but she didn't want to have to do the unmentionable about it either. As she sat there in Paddington, she knew that with Xanthe dominating the night's yarn with her talk about babies, there was no way she could confide in her tiddas. Not right now, anyway.

‘What about you, Nadine? Do you want to sweat out some unnecessary fluids?' Xanthe was being diplomatic, but the other girls knew what she was getting at. Except for Nadine, who let the real intent of the question fly right over her head.

‘I love your sense of humour, Xanthe, it's so endearing.' Aside from having her personal Pilates trainer come to her house, the only exercise Nadine did was lifting her glass.

Xanthe was a little hurt by Nadine's comment, as if she'd been spoken to like she was a cute child.

‘I was serious, I thought you might get something out of it.' Xanthe wished she'd been more blatant about Nadine's toxic waste needing to go.

‘Oh relax, I was kidding. You know me well enough to know I couldn't cope with all those people in a room and
no bar in sight. That's my idea of torture, really. Really!' She shook her head, crossed her legs and sipped her drink. Izzy and Ellen shook their heads as well, but for a different reason.

Hating any form of conflict, Veronica spoke up. It was time to change the subject. ‘April really is a lovely time here in Brisbane, isn't it? The humidity drops, it's easier to sleep and I love walking around The Gap at dusk. Everything is just more comfortable.'

‘Oh yes! Definitely! Thank God!' came the chorus of agreement after the steamiest summer on record.

‘Spring is gorgeous here too. I have this great bloom of dark and light mauve outside the back window come late September,' Xanthe shared her passion for the calmer weather.

‘The yesterday, today and tomorrow flower,' Nadine stated knowingly.

‘That's it,' Xanthe said, remembering hearing its name from a neighbour not so long ago.

The women had settled in comfortably for the night with their usual banter regarding what was going on in each other's lives. The book could wait, as it often did.

‘Well, I have some news,' Ellen chimed in enthusiastically.

‘You've met someone?' Xanthe asked.

‘Why do you all think any news I have is always man related?'

‘Because it usually is!' Izzy said with a chuckle.

‘Which reminds me,' Ellen continued. ‘Why hasn't Spencer set me up with one of his friends? It's a recession; I don't care if he's a coloniser. I told you last month I was
about to do something drastic. I might just take on a reconciliation project with a pom!'

‘I think suggesting you'll date someone as a last resort based on where they come from is racist, so why don't you just get on with your news?' Nadine who was, like Xanthe, in an inter-racial relationship, had a very short fuse when it came to people who joked about mixed marriages. And as she got more sloshed, Nadine's fuse got shorter.

‘Fine,' Ellen said, rolling her eyes like a chastised teenager. ‘My news is that after a year of post-flood sleeping on other people's couches, including yours, Nadine – thank you very much – I am finally moving into my
own
place. I've settled on a property!' She clapped her hands as if applauding her own achievement.

‘Yay! That's great! Finally!' the tiddas responded in a chorus, most of them out of the property-buying loop that Ellen was in. Her sex life
was
usually her main topic at book club get-togethers.

Ellen burst into song, crooning the chorus from one of her favourite Stevie Wonder songs, ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours'.

‘Not that ugly place in Kangaroo Point?' Nadine slurred, remembering when she went house hunting with Ellen and they found an old building that they imagined had previously been nurses' quarters for St Vincent's Hospital.

‘Yes, the ugly place on Main Street. But it's not going to be ugly for long, just on the outside. I'm going to go full steam ahead with some serious renos and turn it into my own little paradise. Just like Xanthe and the col– I mean
Spencer
did here.'

‘Cheers, it's great to hear good news.' Veronica raised her glass in a genuine toast to Ellen, although inside she was crying. Her divorce papers had been delivered that day and she hoped she wasn't weighing the entire room down with her mood. She didn't want to ruin the moment with her own misery. ‘You're a first home buyer, congratulations.'

‘I can't believe it's been more than a year since you were evacuated,' Izzy said. ‘Or me, for that matter. At least it was only the garage that got flooded.'

‘Personally, I can't believe how the clean-up was done so quickly.' Xanthe passed around roasted eggplant, garlic bruschetta and some grilled vegetables with tarragon vinaigrette as the women all thought back to their own flood stories.

‘Well
I
can't believe that someone said to me that they'd hoped we'd beat the 1974 flood,' Ellen said. ‘I think their words were, “If we're going to flood, we may as well break the record.” '

‘What? Who said that? That's just fucked!' the women responded over the top of each other, having resumed their normal way of sharing.

‘Some dickhead cab driver I had, yet another reason why I ride a bike or get the City Cat most places!' Ellen didn't own a car, preferring to lessen her carbon footprint when she could.

‘And you're staying in Kangaroo Point, so that's good.' Izzy knew how much her tidda liked living close to the river, and the Story Bridge Hotel.