Helen had aimed to set aside ten dollars a week, although five was more realistic. She’d fudged and dodged reminders to pay the key deposit until Judith, who’d never known a day of hunger in her privileged life, had accosted her between the beans and the cabbages. Helen had handed over fifty dollars, feigning ignorance of the full fee. Unfortunately, Con had paid her the night before and Judith’s beady eyes had noticed the extra cash in her wallet and promptly demanded the other fifty. Helen’s fingers had cramped tightly around the note that represented petrol and her phone recharge, but Judith had plucked Dame Edith Cowan out of her hand with the precision of a magpie pulling on a worm.
It was a group of bored and drunk teenagers and their spur-ofthe-moment decision to raid the garden that had changed Helen’s life. If they’d acted ten minutes later, she would have already left to spend the night in the park across the river—one of seven haunts she randomly rotated to avoid detection. As it was, she’d been reading in the garden’s shelter when they’d tumbled in. The upshot was the police gave the kids a verbal shellacking, the shire offered Helen the position of caretaker, and when she mentioned her graduate diploma in community services they made her the coordinator of the garden.
Her first job had been supervising the teenagers’ community service. It turned out that two of them had green thumbs. Ignoring the mutterings of some of the committee, Helen had given Trent and Jax their own plot on a three-month probation. Jax was still gardening.
Her second argument with the committee was reducing the key deposit for people on Centrelink payments. The old guard had dubbed her a bleeding-heart leftie. Far from being offended, Helen wore the moniker with pride.
And the icing on the cake? The caretaker role came with an old and rundown Victorian cottage at the bottom of the orchard block. Helen didn’t care that the floor sloped, that the stove was the original wood-fired Metters or that the water hammer almost deafened her whenever she turned on the hot tap. The cottage was home, and her car was thankfully only a means of transport.
Today, with half an hour before the committee meeting, Helen took advantage of the unusual quiet to dig compost into the soil in preparation for new strawberry plants. It was surprising to find the garden empty at this time of day. Normally there was at least one other person tending their bed and Helen was used to being interrupted with questions and complaints.
She was pushing some hair out of her eyes with the back of her gloved hand when she noticed a woman hovering by the gate. Although she was too far away for Helen to make out her facial features, her vivid clothing of bright greens and blues and the turban on her head made her unmissable.
Helen loved the way so many women from the African diaspora embraced colour. ‘Hello!’ she called.
The woman glanced around as if she assumed Helen was talking to someone else.
Helen waved a soil-covered glove and smiled encouragingly. ‘Come in.’
The woman took a couple of tentative steps and, at Helen’s nod, strode over. ‘Is this your garden?’ Her accent combined with wonder, giving the rise and fall of the words a lyrical beat.
‘This bed is mine to use but—’ Helen waved her arm to encompass the large lot, ‘—it’s a community garden so it belongs to the town.’
The woman’s eyes sparkled. ‘I live in town. So I can grow things too?’
The committee made the answer to that complicated, but Helen didn’t let complicated overly concern her. For most of her life she’d rigidly followed the rules, too scared to break a single one—until her experience of homelessness taught her that following the rules didn’t protect her one iota. The realisation had generated a profound philosophical shift.
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘I’m Helen. What’s your name?’
‘I am Fiza.’
‘What sort of things would you like to grow, Fiza?’ Helen had no idea what constituted African food, and given the continent had—what, forty countries, fifty?—she imagined the food could vary a lot from north to south.
‘Maize!’
‘That’s like corn, isn’t it?’
‘It grows on a cob but it is not as sweet as corn. We use it for dura, asida …’ Her hands flew up, golden rings flashing in the sunshine. ‘Many things!’ Her previously cautious expression was suddenly animated. ‘Do you think I can grow maize here?’
‘Maybe. Is it hot enough?’
‘I hope so. We moved from Melbourne for the sunshine.’ She shivered. ‘In the camp, they asked us, “Where do you want to live?” We didn’t know Melbourne was so cold.’
Helen could relate. Up here on the Victorian-New South Wales border, they experienced more sunshine and heat than in the big southern city. ‘You’ll definitely be warmer here. Where are you living?’
‘We are in a small flat, but I have three children. I am looking for a house in a nicer part of town. They are not easy to find and when we do …’ She shrugged, the movement loaded with resignation.
Helen filled in the gaps. Fiza’s lack of success in the rental market was probably due to the combination of price with an overlay of racism. There were plenty of houses for rent in Boolanga, but increasingly more and more were geared towards tourist rentals. Even the old weatherboards, once the backbone of the rental market for locals, were being thrown up on Airbnb, leaving little in the way of affordable housing.
‘May I come to the garden?’ Fiza managed to combine reticence with determination.
Helen smiled, recognising some of herself in the other woman’s manner. ‘Sure. I have to go to a meeting soon, but can
