THE BEGINNING
This is the first story in an experiment involving two storytellers, daughter and mother. A Tale of Two Mothers is Tess's account of being raised by two mothers and ends with Tess meeting her partner, Karin. Her mother also has a story to tell and so to spice things up I've decided to do The Courtship of Rachel in parallel. First we have a chapter of A Tale of Two Mothers and then a chapter of The Courtship of Rachel, which would be Tess's mother filling in the blanks and adding meat to the bones. With that in mind I look forward to your feedback.
Shaima.
*****
The recent decision in Australia to allow same sex marriage was one of the bitterest and yet most laughable campaigns in Australia's political history. Karin and I witnessed it all from my new home in Copenhagen and I duly filled out my form and sent it in. One of the most memorable comments was one made by a conservative politician where he said that if people voted yes then people might be able to marry a bridge. It was a faux pas that couldn't go unanswered and a comedian married the Sydney Harbour bridge on camera, the video went viral on You Tube and when the vote was finally counted the Yes campaign had won. I had a lot of friends here in Denmark who asked me what the hell was so controversial and I found it hard to explain how a country with a reputation for openness could be so backwards as to think this should be a hard choice.
This tale is my response to the No campaign because over a decade before it all kicked off I was very conscious that I had two mothers, my biological mum and her same sex partner, Birgit, yet neither my brother, Paul nor I thought this situation unusual. We loved Birgit as if she was our mother and so here I am, sitting with a blank document in front of me and a bit of time to kill before Karin gets home from work.
I was born, May 30, 1993 in Monash Hospital, which is in the southeastern suburb of Monash in Melbourne. I was supposed to be born in Western General out in Footscray, which was much closer to Essendon but mum's waters broke when she was visiting her sister and because the contractions were so close together they decided to keep her there. Mum likes to say I was too impatient and in that respect she's right.
My mother is Rachel Barrett and my father was Lewis Murphy, I was their second child. Mum was from a middle class family in Bayswater. Born on February 6th, 1966, she was the oldest of three daughters and also the most headstrong. She was a good student at school and a school captain in her final year. When she turned eighteen and got her licence and a little Holden Torana to drive about in she began to spend more time away from home and spread her wings.
Her education continued with a four year course in Economics and in her second year she moved out of the family home and into a house with two other girls and it was in that house a few years later that she first met dad in the spring of '86 when their house was burgled. He was one of the cops who came to the house when they called the police. Mum says that at first she thought him a smartarse but in a cute way and when he casually asked her to meet up at the Whitehorse Inn she said no way and she was as good as her word but the following week she did turn up and he was there. At the time dad was still married to his first wife and when she found that out mum just refused to have anything to do with him. She was never that kind of woman. The fact that dad was coming onto her had warning bells ringing and they parted company with dad vowing that if his marriage ended he'd call on her.
Their next meeting was some eighteen months later. By then mum was working as a junior loans officer for the Commonwealth bank in the city and dad was now a detective out at St Kilda Police station. She was having lunch in a little restaurant in Chinatown when he approached her, although at first she didn't recognise him. His marriage had ended twelve months ago and this time when he asked her out she said yes. Dad was born in Belfast in 1962 and brought to Australia in 1971.
They were married some six months later on May 1st, 1988 at her old church. There was some controversy at the time over the church they were married in, dad's family were all Catholic, his parents wanted a Catholic ceremony but mum was adamant and dad only too willing to go along with her. They moved into a home in Essendon to begin their married life. Paul was born on October 15th, 1990 and you already know when I was born! From my mother I inherited blonde hair, grey-green eyes, and poor eyesight. I got my first pair of glasses when I was four and have worn them ever since. Paul on the other hand has dad's dark hair, brown eyes and his eyesight is perfect, so I got the short straw there.
Their marriage was destined to last just short of nineteen years and I'm trying to compress it all because there was a lot of tension between them due to the fact they were both strong-willed people. Mum has told me some things but I'm trying to put it in my own words here. I never saw physical abuse until that very last day, but there were plenty of arguments.
Dad never took anything out on either Paul or I but mum did cop it. A lot of it was over shared responsibilities. Mum was very modern and progressive and believed that men should take their turn with housework. Dad was old school and he wanted a wife who stayed at home to be a housewife, not a working mother. Mum had risen through the ranks and changed jobs as well. She was now working as a CPA at a Collins Street Accountancy firm, a job she'd held since 2000 and it was a job she loved. Not so much for the work but for the friendships she'd formed with her colleagues and of late her work ethic had been noticed by senior management.
However behind the immaculately dressed façade mum was struggling to maintain a marriage that had long descended into a dark place. One of dad's frequent barbs used to cut her to the quick, he'd point out her position and say, "what else are you doing to earn that kind of money?" He never outright accused her of infidelity but it was hanging out there for all to hear. What we only found out later on of course was that dad had a string of mistresses over in the eastern and southern suburbs of Melbourne. That only came out a couple of years later when one of his sisters broke the silence and ended up being exiled by her parents for a while. But I'm getting ahead of myself and so it's back to the story and that fateful day when dad took a knife to mum.
It was March 4th 2005 and dad had managed to get time off work for a long weekend and because it had been three or four months since we'd been out anywhere mum had tentatively suggested we head out into the Dandenongs for a bit of peace and quiet. Dad agreed with the idea and actually seemed enthusiastic about a trip on Puffing Billy. However that Friday night he came home from work looking as pissed off as usual and went straight to the bedroom to get changed. Mum was in the habit of just letting him sit in his man cave until he was settled but after she'd prepared the vegetables she went through with a beer from dad's beer fridge. Our old house in Essendon had two fridges, one for food and one for dad's booze. I didn't hear what was said but I definitely heard her scream.
"Get that away from me!"
Next I heard a thump and another cry and then dad roared.
"I've had about enough of your fucking shit!"
I stepped out into the hallway just in time to see dad push mum out into the passage, he had a hold of mum's hair and he slammed her head against the wall with such force that it dislodged a family photograph. It fell off the hook and clipped mum on the side of the face and then his hand dropped to a hunting knife in the scabbard on his belt. He whipped it out and rammed it with such force into the wall that it was buried up to the guard.
"Is this good enough, you fucking frigid bitch?" Dad yelled and then touched his fly, "or do you want to see more?"
I screamed at that point because until then I'd never seen him raise his hands to her. His fly was undone but I couldn't see anything else apart from underpants.
"No, dad, please stop!"
Mum did look frightened but it was his daughter's pleading that changed the situation in an instant, he released mum and she tried to pull away but the blade had cut through some of her hair and he had to pull the knife out before she could get away.
"Just go fishing," she pushed her glasses further up her nose, "just go."
"I'm sorry," he finally managed, "I didn't mean to," he stopped as she turned around.
"This marriage means nothing to you, please go."
Paul came in from outside then and dad looked slightly bewildered as he stepped back and slid the knife back into the scabbard.
"Fine, I'm going to Joe's place and this never happened," he glowered at her.
"It never happened," mum eyed him warily.
Dad spun on his heel and stalking into the bedroom, started gathering his fishing gear. Mum came back down the hallway towards me and I put out my arms for her.
"Let's go outside," she murmured, "you too Paul."
"What's going on?" Paul asked.
"Nothing to see here," mum replied firmly.
We stayed outside on the back verandah until dad left, he did come through to say goodbye to us kids but I couldn't look him in the eye and I was very conscious of that knife on his belt. It was the knife he always took fishing because it had the fish scaler on the back of the knife.
