‘Here. Sit.’ The woman thrust a cold glass of water into Helen’s hand.
‘Thanks.’ She pointed to the sign. ‘You still need help?’
The woman studied her, then called out in rapid-fire Greek. A man in his forties appeared from the residence behind the shop. His Greek wasn’t as good and this time Helen’s out-of-practice ear caught a few words, including ‘too old, yiayia’.
Having undertaken a graduate diploma in community services along with other compulsory retraining courses and enduring a year of job rejections, Helen honestly thought she was beyond reacting to the ‘too old’ label with anything other than benign resignation. But with last night’s trauma still foremost in her mind, dormant frustration surged. It was fast food, for God’s sake!
She stood and in faltering Greek—a language she hadn’t spoken in a very long time—managed to spit out, ‘You want someone who looks pretty, or someone who knows how to cook and count change?’
The man’s cheeks reddened.
His grandmother laughed and opened her arms wide. ‘You Greek?’
With her name, her dusky skin and dark brown eyes, and before age and grief had stripped her inky hair of its colour, Helen had easily passed for Greek. Taking Theo’s name had added to the illusion. Given everything he’d stolen from her, she may as well use one of the few things he’d left behind.
‘I’m Helen—Helen Demetriou—and I can cook everything on the menu.’
The elderly woman nodded thoughtfully before handing Helen an apron. ‘You cook. We eat. Then we talk.’
The grandson crossed his arms but stayed silent, clearly not prepared to go against his yiayia.
Helen checked the temperature of the oil and hoped with every part of her that cooking fish and chips was like riding a bike. Fortunately, it was a skill that required little dusting off and she’d been permanent part-time ever since. Her frying skills had even won the Acropolis Café a Golden Chip Award.
Con had no idea she’d arrived in Boolanga homeless and Helen had never enlightened him. He thought she shared the leftover food he offered with friends—only strictly speaking, the women in the parks around the district weren’t exactly friends. They were acquaintances whose shared experience was homelessness.
Helen had a sixth sense for these women. Their dignity, ringed by quiet desperation, called out to her. They didn’t want charity. They didn’t want anyone to know their car was their home or that all their worldly possessions fitted into a two-dollar-shop bag. It was enough just getting through each day without the added burden of crippling shame that others knew the truth. So twice a week at the end of her evening café shifts, she took food that would otherwise be thrown out, drove to a park and invited people to join her. It wasn’t much but it was one meal free of cost and concern.
It was also data collection in her fight to disabuse the community that homelessness wasn’t an issue for Boolanga. If she asked the residents of the town about the local homeless, she knew they’d say, ‘None here. It’s a city problem.’ Except it was very much a country problem too. These women were the invisible homeless, overlooked by emergency housing because children weren’t involved. Women like Helen herself who, at a time of their lives when they should be assured of secure housing, were unexpectedly couch surfing, being resented boarders in their adult children’s homes, forced to live in transition communal housing, or, worst case scenario, sleeping rough in their cars or on the street. Homeless.
Not that Helen ever considered women like Sue, Tracey, Agape, Roxy, Josie and others as numbers, but they came and went often enough for her to know their housing was unstable.
‘Drop in around seven. I might have some leftover chicken for you too,’ Con said.
Helen slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re a good man, Con.’
‘Don’t go telling anyone or I’ll have all the bleeding hearts wanting things for free.’
It was a short drive to the community garden and five minutes later, Helen was striding through the decorative gates, breathing deeply and feeling her tension draining away. It happened every time she stood beside her plot.
Ignoring an unwanted ache in her knees, she bent down and pressed her hands into the rich red-brown loam. Its warmth and power ran up her arms like vines before spreading across her chest and affirming life, just as it did with her vegetables. She silently acknowledged the traditional owners of the land past and present, and gave thanks for finding a haven in Boolanga. She considered herself a local, even though she knew to attain that status she needed a relative in the cemetery. That was never going to happen—she no longer had anyone left to bury.
Although Helen was grateful to the Papadakos family, it wasn’t her part-time job at the Acropolis Café that had lifted her out of poverty; it was the community garden.
Soon after arriving in town, she’d noticed a weed-infested garden bed and had boldly taken it over, weeding and harvesting the seeds, bulbs and tubers from the previous occupant’s plantings—garlic, spring onions, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, cabbages and herbs. No one had questioned the long hours she’d spent in the garden and she’d successfully hidden her homelessness in plain sight.
People had got used to seeing her in the café and they accepted her presence in the garden, happy she was tidying up the eyesore plot. Nothing got under members’ skin more than a weed-infested bed. It was one of few eviction sins.
As Helen got to know the other plot holders, she’d traded broad-leafed Italian parsley seeds for tomatoes, coriander seeds for broad beans, and potato sets for rhubarb crowns. Eventually, the committee told her she needed to officially join.
Finding the
