This is an edited extract from Taboo by Hannah Ferguson, published by Affirm Press, RRP $34.99.
My mum’s mum – Susan – and my dad’s mum – Marlene – were both nurses. They were also both left to raise children practically alone, and they both eventually left their husbands after decades of poor treatment. One lived a life of wealth and of homemaking, having been forced to give up her career for a man whose expectation was that she served him. The other raised five children while her husband was away with the navy; he’d come home drunk and beat her in front of my dad and his siblings. Both my grandmothers pushed on, putting their children first until the world changed enough for them to leave these relationships. Their personalities, their communication styles and their homes could not have been more different, but they both loved card games, crime shows and making inappropriate comments.
My gran and nan met me when I was less than sixty minutes old. As a little girl, my understanding of my grandmas was summed up in one word: smart. Every crossword, puzzle, board game and chapter book was bought and mailed to me. Marlene lived, for my primary schooling years, in a caravan park five minutes from my house. Every three days she would bring over a lamington sponge cake with jam and cream and a new book I should try. By the time I was ten, Nan was banned from giving me any books without Mum and Dad seeing them first. She had given me a copy of a book on the Snowtown murders, colloquially known as the ‘bodies in the barrels’ serial killings, in South Australia. My parents discovered I had been making my way through these texts when I approached Dad after school one Wednesday afternoon, the pertinent page held open with my fluffy purple bookmark, to ask him what the word ‘sodomised’ meant. That was a great phone call to listen in on through the study wall of our house.
I realise this isn’t funny to most people, but anyone who knew my nan and me found this hysterical. When she died, this was a story my dad and aunty told in her eulogy. She just treated me like a small adult, a sponge who wanted to understand everything I came into contact with. Nan died last year, and we hadn’t been close in her last few years. She never got to read my book, which she would have loved and not agreed with most of. My nan was whip-smart and vulgar, which is part of the reason I am, too.
My gran Susan is well into her eighties and works as a tour guide at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She lives in a wealthy suburban area and doesn’t leave the house without her signature L’Oréal lipstick. Everyone knows her and everyone loves her: she is the most positive person you will ever meet, which makes her absolutely insufferable to be around. The sun truly does shine out of her arse – it’s exhausting. She hosts morning-tea fundraisers and wears enough hairspray to tranquilise a small horse. As a six-year-old, I begged Mum and Dad to let me go on trips alone to stay with her for a week in Melbourne (she lived there with her partner at the time). Straight off the plane we would drive to a bookshop and pick up something that fascinated me. In the space of six days Gran bought me every Judy Moody book I could get my paws on. Suse would think ‘suck’ is crass, but no longer flinches when I say ‘fuck’ three times a sentence. She gives every one of her friends a copy of my book even though most of them have voted Liberal for the last seven decades without fail. She texts me with eighteen irrelevant emojis at the tail end of every blue iPhone bubble: My friend gave your book back and said it’s not for her. I suppose she is ninety-four. Love always, Your Granny typed out directly underneath her name, phone number and profile picture.
I imagine her giggling as she puts the book in the mail for another friend, before breaking into the chesty cough that will never quite go away.
My grandmothers are two of the most exceptional women I know. They were my first friends. Women of the same era, but different classes. What we had in common was books, cake and intellect. They were interested in the world; they were interested in knowing things and talking about them with me. I never truly appreciated them for this: for how different they were, and for how they socialised me. They accepted, loved and cherished me without condition. This fact has stuck with me in recent years. I never truly understood these women who pushed me academically, who have hurt me, who love me, who have offended me and who are complex in all the ways women are. This is because for a long time I could not digest that they did not always agree with or understand my decisions or the way I lived my life.
‘I have choices now that you didn’t have,’ I would bash on every time they challenged my view on something (usually my will to get drunk and wear short dresses out every weekend).
But I had articulated the crux of the conflict within my frustration. As choices become available to women, as we are compelled to speak up about all the issues we face, it feels to me like older women were too often silent and subservient. I would judge them: they just ‘didn’t understand me’. To older women, I assume it can feel horrific that younger generations complain about lifestyles, opportunities and experiences that they never even had. Every single day I whinge about the side effects of a pill they didn’t have access to. I complain about hook-up culture, which they could never even contemplate participating in. I don’t want to work too hard; they wish they could have kept their jobs or even had their own bank accounts to be paid into. I see the taboo as the issue. That they were expected to remain silent, to be resilient in the face of oppression. I find this conversation most interesting, because it walks the line between ‘honest’ and ‘too honest’. I’ve had friends’ mums say they wouldn’t describe childbirth accurately in order not to ‘scare us off’, or, worse, denigrating those complaining with the old adage of ‘it isn’t that bad’ when presented with the reality of having sex with someone who doesn’t look at you, let alone pleasure you. I am grateful for the fights of the women before me, but their ability to suffer in silence is a symptom of patriarchy so many are still sick with. They shouldn’t have had to ‘get on with it’ but that doesn’t mean that I should, too.
When it came to my grandmas, the women who gave me every book and let me ask every question under the sun, it was always interesting that their political, feminist and social views didn’t always align with this messaging. They were proud of me, and they wanted me to have options and freedoms to choose from. When it came to their own lives, they remained conservative. What I once saw as a regressive state, I now understand is true love. My grandmas love me without always understanding me. It’s probably why I wept during Barbie when Ruth said, ‘We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.’ My grandmas talked to me about everything under the sun, and with this, they ensured I would never be silent in all the ways they had to be.
