I first saw Paddy back in the 1980’s. She came to a belly dance class as a bit of a laugh, a joke her city friend dragged her to. Paddy was from Broken Hill. She lived on a station with her husband and four boys. The only woman for twenty kilometres.
A doctor had sent her to Melbourne for tests. The result came in: too much stress in and on her small, wiry body. She was having an enforced rest at her best friend’s house.
Paddy wore and old pair of jeans, a man’s oversized shirt, and work boots. Her ‘uniform’ for the past ten years. She sat on a bench against the wall, elbows resting on knees as she stared hard at us. The teacher encouraged her to join in, but she shook her head.
“Looks girly,” she grunted.
We returned to our gyrations while Paddy watched us closely from behind a frown and under a crewcut.
It was another two weeks before she joined in.
“Only cos I’m cold,” she warned us, gingerly letting the teacher tie a pink hip scarf around her. “Does it have to be pink?” she said, only half-jokingly. “Don’t you have anything in black or denim?”
She was sweating by the end of the class. She bent over to ease a stitch in her side. “This is hard work!” she puffed. “I haven’t worked like this since shearing time last year.”
She came again the next week, and every week until it was time for her to go home. She went, armed with a video of practice exercises, and a black length of chiffon bought from Spotlight. When she wrote to her friend, her letter said that her boys made fun of her, so she practiced when they were doing School of The Air.
Paddy wrote every month, and at the end of the year, she was signing her name Pat.

Pat came to Melbourne once a year to visit her family. She, her husband, and all the boys stayed with her parents, and she made the weekly trek to our belly dance class. She had worked hard and practically worn out the video. Her ears were pierced.
“Bit of lark,” she said. “The chemist in Broken Hill was doing it, so I thought, why not. It was my birthday.”
She also had a new hip scarf in dark blue.
“The dogs got at the old black one,” she mumbled.
I noticed her hands. Still deeply lined and stringy-tough, they were no longer so callused. She wore gloves for heavy work on the station, and rubbed lanolin into them every night. Her husband called her ‘poofy’. She didn’t care. Her hair was two inches long.
She went home with a new video, a smoky blue veil, and a pair of dangly Indian earrings.

After a one-letter flirtation with “Patty”, which we all decided was awful, she was Patricia for several years. Even her husband forgot about ‘Paddy’ and would turn up at her yearly belly dance classes, asking for “Patricia”.
Her boys were reaching the end of School of The Air and she and her husband knew the station was going broke. They sold up, and moved to Melbourne to let the boys go to school. They swapped their Land Rover for a van and Patricia could be seen zipping all over the place, ferrying her boys to school, football practice, cricket, and basketball. Once a week now she could come to belly dance class.
I tried not to stare the day she arrived wearing a long skirt instead of her usual jeans or tracksuit pants. She fluttered it self-consciously around her legs.
“Got it at the op shop.” She grinned. “I haven’t owned a skirt in years. The A Team all stared this morning.” She shrugged. “But they’re used to my ‘chick stuff’ by now.”
At the end of the class, the teacher gave us free time to simply dance to music. I watched Patricia. When she thought people were watching, her movements were stilted, choppy. But as we all got more involved with our own interpretations of the musical piece called Habina, she shut her eyes and let the music take her.
Her arms relaxed and became two lazy snakes, moving almost independently of her shoulders. Her hip circles were sensuous. It was then that I noticed her hair was a good five inches long and had a wave to it.
Slowly, slowly, over time, Patricia had costumed herself in the trappings of women, the outward things that designate us female. But it was the inner vision that was now breaking free. All her life, Patricia had lived and worked amongst men, going from a home of brothers to a home of husband and sons, jackaroos and shearers.
Patricia became Trish. Trish’s boys grew up, and suddenly there were girls visiting the house, giggling, flirting, smelling of Impulse, then Chimere, and finally more expensive perfumes as part-time after-school work gave way to full time pay packets.
Trish acquired a daughter-in-law who loved to shop. Trish became the bemused owner of a soft apricot jumper, a pendant, and an ankle chain, all courtesy of Karen’s Christmas gifts. Her husband resisted for a long time, but when he saw his wife in an evening gown at the youngest boy’s school graduation ball, he threw up his hands and grinned.
He was the one who bought her the circlet of bells for her ankles, the many gold bands for her wrists, and the diamond and sapphire eternity ring to go with her plain gold, and very worn wedding band.
Trish was forty five when she decided she was ready to dance professionally. She was the third act in a belly dance review put on by the local Lebanese restaurant. Her whole family was in the audience, all cheering.
“Go Mum!” yelled the youngest of her A Team.
She was beautiful. Her hair swept past her shoulders. There was grey that she didn’t bother to hide. She wore very long earrings, brushes of make up, and the softest pink beledi dress you have ever seen.

***** *****
© H.Patrice 2003
e.rights H.Patrice 2003

HELEN PATRICE lives in Melbourne, Australia and has been belly dancing for the past 14 years, conducting classes and workshops and performing. Helen is also a Reiki Master, tarot reader and writer who is currently completing a fantasy/crime/comedy novel.

Visit Helen's website at http://sunstream10.tripod.com.

Phone: 0408 867 926.