by Anita Heiss
‘Speak for yourself,’ Ellen said.
Veronica ignored Ellen and for the first time kept the focus on herself. ‘I can’t remember the last time I was happy. I just want to be happy again. I think I’ve done a good job keeping my depression at bay by exercising and being healthy. I don’t want to take medication. And I’ve given up caffeine; it seems to exacerbate every emotion, in a negative way.
‘You will be happy, Vee, it’s just going to take some time.’
‘But how long? How much time does it take? I can’t keep going on like this.’ Veronica started weeping. ‘Bloody hell. I’m paying this woman and I sit there and cry, and then I go home and cry, and now I’m here crying.’
‘What does the therapist say, Vee?’ Izzy hoped Veronica was getting some decent advice.
‘She thinks I might be bipolar . . .’ Veronica broke down in tears again.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, you’re not bipolar, or ADHADBDFEFG or whatever the fuck they call it these days,’ Ellen said, exasperated.
‘That’s not the politically correct term, Ellen,’ Xanthe said. ‘And what do you know about being bipolar, or having ADHD?’
‘The point I am trying to make to our dear friend,’ Ellen looked directly at Veronica, ‘is that you’re just sad and emotional. Crying isn’t a bad thing. It’s a way of releasing what you feel.’
‘Tears are the cleanest water you can wash your face with,’ Nadine added. ‘That’s what your mother always tells the kids anyway,’ she said to Izzy.
Ellen glared at Nadine. She was trying to have a serious, sensible conversation with someone who was clearly sad, perhaps suffering from depression, but who should not be diagnosed by someone not qualified to do it. ‘I’m so over people labelling everyone with a medical condition when sometimes it’s just about heartache or pain or sadness. I see sad people every day. They are overcome with grief. Sometimes it takes years for them to recover. But they are not sick, they do not have a mental illness, they are just fucking sad.’
‘It’s like adults are bipolar, kids have ADHD and every second person is allergic to something,’ Nadine agreed, surprising the others. ‘None of us had anaphylactic fits at school. My kids can’t even take peanut butter sandwiches for their lunch anymore, did you know that?’ Nadine was over the limit in her usual fashion but the other women did their best to ignore her and focus on Veronica.
‘I’m fine, I’m going to be fine,’ Veronica said. ‘I just need to keep busy, I need a new focus.’ She blew her nose. ‘The boys are all doing their own thing, they don’t want to be hanging out with their mother. You are the only other people in my life, my only real friends and I’m feeling really socially isolated now. That’s what happens when you focus all your energy on your family and have no outside interests. I really need to change that.’
‘You know what they say, Vee, the quickest way to get over a man is to get under another one.’ Ellen’s words were outrageous.
Nadine wanted to slap Ellen. ‘For fuck’s sake, she doesn’t need another bloke.’
‘I don’t need or want another man, I just want a life, a meaningful life, for me!’ Veronica put her hand on her chest, acknowledging that her commitment over a solid two decades had been about creating meaningful lives for her children and husband. He’d walked out on her two years ago for another woman and she’d been grieving ever since. But it was time to stop. It was her turn to live, her turn to be supported, and her turn to be loved.
‘Anyway, I’ve never been with another man. I don’t even think I could trust another one.’
‘Amen to that!’ Ellen said. ‘We don’t need men to be happy, Vee, and some of us don’t need children either.’ Ellen could feel Xanthe’s look but said nothing more. She knew only too well that happiness came from within. No man or kid could be expected to make a woman happy if she wasn’t already mostly there.
‘You’re right, Ellen, and even just talking about this with you is making me feel better. Thank you,’ Veronica said gratefully.
‘Do you need to go to the therapist though, Vee?’ Izzy asked. ‘I mean we can listen if you just want to talk.’
‘And we can cry with you too,’ Xanthe offered.
‘Honestly, I am feeling a bit better, but I will go back to her because I promised myself at least six sessions. I’m committed to giving it a good go. She did come highly recommended.’
As if on cue the waiter returned to clear the plates from the table.
‘I’ll be back in a second,’ Veronica said. ‘Just going to the ladies.’
‘You want me to come with you?’ Ellen asked, half raising herself from her seat.
‘No, sit down. I’m fine. I just need to pee.’ Veronica glanced at the waiter and smiled. He had heard her.
As soon as she had left the table, the other tiddas expressed their concern – and their guilt – at not supporting Veronica in her time of need.
‘She’s always been there for me when I need to debrief after a really draining service. I usually call her on the way home and just off-load,’ Ellen said.
‘She lets me talk about pregnancy like she’s never even heard me mention it before,’ Xanthe admitted.
‘As the other white woman in this group, sometimes she’s the only one who knows what it’s like,’ Nadine said to the surprise of the three Koori women who each wondered whether it was the booze talking now or if Nadine actually did feel there was some kind of separatist action going on.
Izzy put her hand on her belly. ‘I really just love her. I feel awful that Vee doesn’t feel supported enough.’
‘I think we should organise a fortieth for her,’ Ellen said.
‘I’m in,’ Nadine said. ‘I can do some research on it.’
‘I’ll be there too, of course,’ Xanthe said, with slight hesitation, always thinking about her baby plans, whether or not she’d be doing IVF when Veronica’s birthday rolled around.
5
RENO-DATING
As the weather turned cooler during May, Ellen found it a little harder to get up and go running in the mornings. But as she made her way to the river she still found an unexpected appreciation for urban life. It had hit her in the face like a refreshing wind on a hot day when she first moved to Brisbane, and the feeling didn’t wane with the falling temperatures. Looking across the river to the towers that peppered the city streets, Ellen was surprised that such a landscape could nourish her spirit at all after growing up on lush Wiradjuri country. Even during the floods she chose to focus on the magic and strength of the river rather than the devastation.
Every morning she ran from one end of Kangaroo Point under the Story Bridge to the Friendship Bridge at South Bank and back. She passed groups of joggers, boot campers, mothers with prams, strolling retirees and cyclists talking to each other about subjects she sometimes didn’t want to hear about.
Of an evening she would walk in the other direction out of the heat of the westerly sun. There was a different crowd at night and it was less hectic. Ellen was one of those who walked to soak up the moment, smell the roses, or the mangroves, as it were.
Today, Ellen picked up her pace along the boardwalk at Kangaroo Point. She’d followed the same routine every morning for years, and even when she was crashing on other people’s couches in other suburbs, she always found her way to a place on the river, somewhere, anywhere that gave her a sense of peace. As sweat trickled down the back of her dark red singlet and onto the waistband of her black running shorts, she pounded the pavement in time with the sounds of Michael Bublé blaring through her iPhone. She knew it was loud because those who ran past her smiled in acknowledgement of each song. This can’t possibly be good for my ears, she thought to herself.
Although it was autumn, it was still warmer in Brisbane than it was in Mudgee at this time of year, and she didn’t miss the frosty mornings one bit. It was the year-round warmer weather and the buzz of activity along the river that had allowed her to fall in love with Brisbane within weeks of arrivin
g. And it was the river, her tiddas and the fact there were more men in the city than the country, that had kept her content ever since.
Ellen paused to stretch her calves and for the umpteenth time to admire the public artwork. As far as she was concerned, Brisbane was way ahead of some other cities with its integration of local art into the environment. Athletic as a teenager, Ellen had remained the fittest of her tiddas, getting outdoors and exercising whenever she could. On weekends she’d cycle as far as the Eleanor Schonell Bridge in St Lucia, always stopping to consider the words of Murri poet Samuel Wagan Watson inscribed beneath, glad to see some local Indigenous art getting a start as well.
‘If only they’d thought about commissioning a local Blackfella to do something, they might not have ended up with this,’ she’d said to Izzy when they checked out the elephant sculpture outside GOMA together. They both wondered how the Maori mob would feel if a Murri artist had won such a commission in Aotearoa. Ellen doubted that would ever happen.
As she reached the steps at the base of the Kangaroo Point Cliffs, boot camp clients were doing their routines up and down the stairs. Ellen took note of the mostly fit, mostly pale people. As both her parents were Wiradjuri, Ellen and her siblings were all much darker skinned than the other tiddas, including Xanthe, whose father was Greek. Hanging out in Kangaroo Point, Ellen had realised she was also darker than many of the locals she passed in nearby streets. Although it was complicated when it came to native title, it was largely accepted among Murris that north of the river was home to the Turrbul mob before the British colonisers arrived. These days, Kangaroo Point had the highest population of Brisbanites living in flats, with a slightly higher percentage of males than females, according to the last census, at least. This statistic alone was enough to keep Ellen loyal to the area.
Ellen felt that Brisbane was still a very white city in many ways. She often thought about her own ancestry as one of the Wiradjuri mob, the largest in New South Wales. ‘And with the best looking people,’ Izzy would always joke. She thought about how living on country growing up, knowing her family lines and still working with the mob, had instilled in her a strong sense of Aboriginal identity. And while she never thought about her father, she knew he was a good-looking bloke when he was young; her mother had said so. In fact her mother never spoke harshly of the man she had six children to, not wanting her kids to hate their father. If they chose to do so, it wouldn’t be because they’d been brainwashed. Ellen didn’t need brainwashing though; she simply believed that any man who would leave a woman with six kids was a prick and an arsehole, someone worth hating.
Mudgee was full of beautiful Wiradjuri women, and Ellen’s mother was gorgeous. ‘We breed them good out this way,’ her mum would often say.
But when Ellen was old enough to date, it was different. The boys didn’t seem as good looking as the women, or maybe it was that they just didn’t appeal to her. Apart from that, she was related to every second Koori in Mudgee. It was simply too small a town for the life she wanted. She missed out on so much in her teens helping to raise her siblings, but she knew enough to know she had to get to the city to not miss out on anything in her twenties.
In some ways, Ellen’s unusual career was a blessing. She never imagined she’d end up as a funeral celebrant: ‘the accidental celebrant’ was how she often defined herself at parties. Truth was, it wasn’t a hard gig to get for a Blackfella. There was plenty of experience to be had attending Aboriginal funerals of family and friends. For her mob, deaths happened too regularly to ever make plans very far ahead.
After delivering a few eulogies for cousins who died young, and uncles and aunties she adored, Ellen became known as the ‘eulogy giver’ in Mudgee. Soon she was being asked by extended family across Wiradjuri country to help pull together services that were inclusive of cultural elements, while fitting into whatever denomination the deceased had been. It didn’t take long for Ellen to learn that Blackfellas were ‘practising’ everything. Many were Christians: Catholic, Methodist and Baptist. And while she knew few Kooris or Murris who went to church on a regular basis, most of them wanted a religious service as a send-off. Many also wanted to get married in a church, regardless of having no faith, as if it was simply a venue for hire. Ellen didn’t judge though, that wasn’t her role. Hers was to help the family give the best send off and find as much peace for themselves on the day as they could.
Ellen’s days were full of the pain that loss, tragedy, death and mourning carry. But she had a gift for making those suffering feel better about their own lot, and about the future of those they were farewelling. It was at the sixth funeral in a week that Ellen decided she wanted to dedicate herself to making the experience of saying goodbye better for her people. With some urging from the local florist in Mudgee, who had connections in the ‘funeral circuit’, Ellen enrolled in and completed the Australian funeral celebrant training by distance. Once certified, she could conduct services herself, legally and professionally. She set up her own business and when she was twenty-three became the first Aboriginal funeral celebrant in the country. It was big news in town at the time, even making the Mudgee Guardian. She became a popular choice for many, not only because she was Black, but also because she was one of the few women offering such a service.
Ellen loved working for the mob; she carried out her duties with care, with consideration, with cultural sensitivity. But constantly being at the centre of other people’s grief and burying community members every other day soon took its toll, and there was little reprieve in Mudgee. Surrounded by wineries and living in a place where little else provided ‘fun’, Ellen was a little like Nadine had become in recent years. The only way to unwind was with a glass of red each night; a glass that often turned into a bottle.
Fancy gyms, health centres and zumba classes were not part of Ellen’s life back then. And bikram yoga, like Xanthe did, hadn’t even been thought of in Australia. As for dating, it was difficult to get a discreet lay in Mudgee; the place was too small, country New South Wales was too small. And even though she met some deadly fellas when she was doing community funerals, she rarely hooked up with anyone. The Koori grapevine would punish her and her business if word got out that she helped lay people to rest and then got laid herself.
Ellen struggled to charge family and friends, most of them known to if not related to her. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t easily make ends meet. Only when she started doing services for whitefellas did she understand that she needed to treat her role as a business. When she started to realise how good she was at her work, she appreciated herself even more.
Even though Mudgee was her country, her home with its rolling hills, peaceful countryside and historic buildings, she needed a change of scenery and a different personal challenge. There was more to her life than other people’s deaths. She needed a bloke to play with, and she needed to pay her bills, if nothing else. She really wanted a Koori boyfriend, thinking he’d understand better what she did and the issues within the community, but therein lay the problem for her, for all Blackfellas: to hook up with someone in Mudgee who wasn’t your own mob was hard enough, but to find someone who wasn’t related and you found attractive was near impossible.
So, at twenty-six Ellen left Mudgee for the big smoke of Brisbane, and with her other tiddas already living there by the time she arrived, it was an easy transition. She’d been happy ever since. She went home a few times a year, mainly to see her family for Christmas and birthdays, and when she could afford to get there to perform funerals. It was those visits and her memories that left her feeling still connected to her true home, even as she climbed the stairs at Kangaroo Cliffs.
Ellen took two steps at a time, her quads taking all the weight, her arms swinging to give her lift, all the while smiling to herself, knowing she was building buns of steel. It was the café and coffee at the top that really inspired the final burst of energy following her three-kilometre run.
On reaching street level, she adjusted the baseball
cap that sheltered her latest haircut and colour – almost a short back and sides with red highlights. ‘People think you’re a lesbian because you change your hair colour every other week and you look like a boy,’ Nadine had once said, to Ellen’s horror. Not to be mistaken for a lesbian, but a male. She always fancied herself as a pretty girl; it was just too hot in Brisbane for her to manage a long mane.
Having short hair hadn’t affected her dating though. Ellen had had a string of flings in recent years, nothing lasting more than two months. A hazard of the job, she told herself. Anyway, she didn’t want to be committed to spending Sundays with someone else and that’s when most couples, apparently, saw each other. And while many a man had smiled at her at the Cliffs Café, she never indulged any of them either. That was her private thinking place – private in public, that is. Unlike in Mudgee, where she had a no-dating policy in relation to her work, Ellen had been kept entertained in the bedroom largely by the family members of those she’d buried in Brisbane; the ‘sympathy shag’ was a real plus in the job. As an undiagnosed commitaphobe who thought the concept of love was overrated, Ellen was never looking for something serious, just something – or someone – to do. But outside of her ‘industry-related lovemaking’, dating in Brisbane was difficult.
Her coffee finished, Ellen walked back down Main Street to the ‘ugliest building on the planet’, the apartment block she now called home. She thought about the service she was going to perform that day: a young Murri woman had died in a car accident. The family were devastated, in shock, grief-stricken on too many levels to make all the decisions for the service. Ellen had helped with some suggestions for prayers and poetry, sitting with the older brothers and father while the mother was sedated.
Much of the work she acquired now was through word of mouth, and her unique inclusion of words of Aboriginal wisdom set her aside from the standard, albeit dignified, memorial services offered by her peers in flash offices in the city. Ellen went to great lengths to ensure each service was unique, just as every person buried or cremated was. Before meeting with a family she would take time out at the Cliffs Café overlooking the city skyline and the river. Sometimes she’d sit in this ‘office’ for hours, thinking and going through collections of poetry, breaking only to examine the slow movement of cranes poised atop the building sites to her left near South Bank. She wondered who owned the sailing boats moored in the river, and how many had actually ended up in Moreton Bay during the floods.
