Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories Read Free

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    We are at the beach, Tessa and I. She walks as she talks: fast. I seldom see the ocean and when I do, I like to watch the colourful sails bob-bobbing where the blue meets the blue, and to savour the sand beneath my feet. I like to listen to the waves, but today I hear only her words as she kicks at the shells and seaweed, and she talks and she talks.
    â€˜So what I am doing that is wrong? Tell me, my friend. Is my fault that we have nothing left of our marriage? Chris, he says is my fault. He say I am too fat, I wearing wrong clothes, I doing my hair wrong. He buy the diamond earrings and I don’t wear them, because I know why he is buying them. All day I am working. What for do I need earrings? I want to walk on the beach with him and hold hands with him. Do you think I am talking like a crazy woman?’
    I shake my head, shrug, and she tosses her hands in the air and hurries on as I stoop to study a piece of green glass worn smooth by the sand and the years.
    I study it for longer than necessary, until she is well ahead, for I have no answer. There is no answer. Like so many of our generation, she has been seduced by the happily ever after myth of childhood, and I am now watching her become a statistic of reality. As she forges ahead I see her staring at her hands. She seems obsessed now by her empty hands.
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    â€˜My father, he wanting me to marry old man with a bald head,’ Tessa confides one cold afternoon. ‘Marry him? No, I tell to my father. That old man is too ugly. I choose Adonis instead. I choose that bastard. You see how his hair is still very thick? There is no grey in him. And his skin is so . . . so soft and young. Is it because he is living his life by the night. No sun is burning him? Maybe I buy a rinse, eh? I will be young again. What you think, my friend?’
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    I am stitching seed pearls onto a bridal gown. I hold them in my mouth, my tongue an extra finger. My firstborn will marry in spring.
    â€˜I have finished with work,’ Tessa says. ‘I tell him today. I say, you can have the fugging shop, you so bloody young and smart, you see how good you can make money with no Tessa to make your fugging books and pay your bills. You see this.’ The sleeve of her heavy cardigan is dragged high and a bruised forearm forced between my eyes and my work.
    I spit seed pearls onto the floor and swallow one. ‘Not Chris?’ I murmur.
    â€˜Who you think does this thing? You think I got toy boy to belt me round while we make good sex? Here. You like this one?’ In my lounge room, she unzips her jeans and exposes her buttock and a hip. It’s black and blue. Then jeans up, her cardigan is off, and I see her shoulder has been gouged deep by contact with a sharp edge.
    â€˜Is my fault.’ She shrugs her clothing back into place. ‘He says I am a bad wife because I do not give him a son.’ She nods, zips her jeans. ‘Shit lying man . . . I am a bad wife for him because I am more smarter than my husband. He likes the silly blondie womans with the bleach hair who spending his money then makes lying to her husband. Well, I am finish with work, my friend. Maybe he will sell the shop, ah? Maybe he will come for holiday with me and we will fall in love again, eh?’
    Tessa is weeping. In all the years we have been neighbours I have never seen her weep before today.
    â€˜Yesterday I try to remember if Thea says Greek words or the bloody Australian word first. I have no . . . no memory of my babies’ words. Was I a bad mother to work so hard so I cannot remember my babies’ words? Now my Marina will have her baby and I am crying because I can’t remember when was the last time Chris kiss me goodnight. He has the other woman, you know. She is a blondie bitching woman and she is too young . . . or I am too old, my friend. Today I have a knot in my heart and it is squeezing it in two pieces. I don’t want to