From the Ashes

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘That’s it,’ Mrs Harris said, washing her hands in the basin of water. ‘You should expect things to start moving in twelve to twenty-four hours. Rest up. If anything goes awry, and I don’t expect that it will as I have a very good track record, get medical help but do not mention my name. And don’t come back here. Do you understand?’

  Donna nodded as she struggled to sit up.

  ‘Good girl. I’ll make you a cup of tea to drink while you get dressed.’

  I don’t want tea, I just want to go home, Donna thought. She took her time putting on her clothes. She had to — her belly felt as though someone had jumped on it. Mrs Harris brought the tea, along with four squares of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate, melting against the cup.

  ‘Eat the chocolate, dear,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘Sugar’s good for shock, and you’ve had one. It’s not easy, sometimes, being a woman.’

  Donna ate the chocolate, then drank the tea, which must have had at least three teaspoons of sugar stirred into it, and did actually feel a bit better. On the way out she said thank you to Mrs Harris and paid her the thirty-five pounds. Mrs Harris said thank you back, and it was over.

  *

  Nothing had happened by the next morning and Donna was starting to fear that the abortion hadn’t worked. All she had were some vague aches in her lower belly, like a very mild period, and no show at all. She literally broke into a sweat on and off all morning at work worrying about what would happen if she had to have the baby, and the hideous damage that might have been done to it by Mrs Harris’s knitting needle.

  But by early afternoon the pain was getting worse and she realised, with immense relief, that things were finally moving. She also realised that once again she’d been incredibly stupid and should have gone home. She couldn’t have this happen in the middle of a medical institution — everyone would know it was a miscarriage or the effects of an abortion and she’d lose her position anyway.

  So at five o’clock she simply walked out and caught the tram into town. By this time she was gritting her teeth against waves of pain, and had had to pinch two sanitary napkins from the hospital as she was bleeding quite heavily. Her first thought had been to go to Allie’s house, but there was Hana and now Allie’s trouble getting pregnant again, so it would be cruel of her to turn up there. It would have to be her parents and they would be livid, especially her mother, but she had nowhere else to go.

  As she stood on Customs Street waiting for the bus that would take her across to Orakei she was suddenly overwhelmed by a violent surge of nausea and had to vomit into a rubbish bin outside a shop. No one stopped to help but she got plenty of disgusted looks. She wondered if people thought she were drunk. Finally the bus came and she got on, hoping she didn’t smell of sick, and sat hunched over in a seat, her arms wrapped around her belly, to ease the dragging cramps in her womb.

  After a few miles of the bus stopping and starting and jerking her uncomfortably all over the place, a woman in the seat opposite leant across the aisle and said, ‘Are you all right, love?’

  ‘Monthlies,’ Donna whispered.

  ‘Ooh, I know, they can be a bugger, can’t they? You get home and put a hot water bottle on your middle, that’ll help.’

  Donna nodded her thanks, grateful for her kindness.

  At last the bus reached her stop on Coates Avenue and she got off, barely able to stand now. Shuffling along she wondered fearfully what her mother and father were going to say. Her mother would be so disappointed with her. As she walked slowly down the garden path she could smell food frying, and almost threw up again. The back door was open but she knocked anyway.

  ‘It’s only me.’

  Startled, her mother looked at her from the stove. ‘Hello, love. What are you doing home?’

  Her father was at the kitchen table, reading the paper as usual, and looked equally taken aback.

  ‘I’m not feeling the best. I thought I’d come home for a bit.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong?’ Colleen asked, taking a sizzling frying pan off the element.

  It was too much for Donna. She dashed for the sink and vomited again.

  ‘Oh my bloody godfathers,’ Sid said.

  ‘It’s just a bit of sick, Sid,’ Colleen said, patting Donna’s shoulder.

  ‘No, the back of her dress, look at it.’

  Colleen looked. The skirt of Donna’s white uniform was covered in blood. ‘Oh my God, Donna. What’s happened?’

  Donna burst into tears, at least partly at the thought of having got off the bus and walked along the road with blood all over the back of her. ‘I got into trouble and I . . . I had to fix it.’

  Colleen went white. ‘Oh Lord, not one of those backstreet people?’

  ‘She was reputable.’

  ‘Sid, get some towels, now,’ Colleen snapped.

  She turned off all the elements except one, and set the kettle on it. Sid was back almost immediately. Colleen set a folded towel on a chair and sat Donna down.

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘And how long have you been bleeding?’

  ‘Since after lunch.’

  ‘Are you in pain?’

  Donna nodded.

  ‘Well, it won’t be far away, then.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Sid asked.

  ‘Never you mind. We need to get you out of these clothes, love. Sid, get a nightie and Pauline’s robe out of her room.’

  ‘Wait on, I want to know who got our Donna into this mess!’

  ‘No one, Dad,’ Donna said. ‘Really, he was no one.’

  ‘Not worth it?’ Colleen asked.

  Donna knew then that things would be all right. ‘No, he wasn’t.’

  ‘All right, you hold her hand and I’ll get the nightie,’ Colleen said, and marched out of the kitchen.

  Donna let her mother lead her into the bathroom, undress her, sponge the blood from her buttocks and thighs, and dress her in Pauline’s nightie, a pair of big ugly pants and another sanitary napkin. She felt as though she were five years old again, and she was grateful for it. Her mother and father still loved her, they would look after her, and she was safe.

  ‘Where’s Pauline?’ she asked.

  ‘Probably out with that boy of hers,’ Colleen muttered. ‘I’ll have to put these in to soak, though we’ll be lucky to get all this out.’

  ‘What boy?’

  ‘Oh, she’s got a new boyfriend, some Maori lad.’

  Sitting on the edge of the bath, Donna doubled over in pain, holding her breath until the spasm passed. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been busy. Why don’t you lie down in your old room?’ Colleen handed her a couple of towels. ‘Put these under you, just in case. I’ll be in in a jiffy.’

  Donna shuffled down the hall past Pauline’s room, which she’d once shared with her when she and Allie had both lived at home. It looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Her old room, once Allie’s, was unnaturally tidy — her mother’s work.

  She lay the towels over the pink bedspread then eased herself down, wishing that whatever was happening inside her body would hurry up. She didn’t know how much longer she could tolerate this pain. Also, if giving birth was anything like this, she definitely wasn’t going to be having any babies.

  Her mother came in with a hot water bottle. ‘This might help. Your father’s really upset.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum, I really am.’

  Colleen sat on the end of the bed, and Donna felt her hand settle on her ankle. ‘Why didn’t you come to me when you knew you were in trouble?’

  ‘I thought you’d be angry.’

  ‘I am, but not with you.’

  ‘I was really stupid, Mum. I made a really stupid mistake.’

  ‘Shush. We’ve all made stupid mistakes. It’s how we put them right that matters.’

  They were silent for a minute, then Donna said, ‘You haven’t even had your tea.’

  ‘That can wait.’


  Donna groaned and curled up around the hot water bottle. ‘God, it hurts.’

  ‘That’ll be everything coming away.’

  ‘I feel like I need the toilet.’

  ‘That’ll be the cramps.’

  ‘No, I really need the loo,’ Donna said. ‘Help me up?’

  Her short trip from the spare room to the toilet off the back porch was a nightmare, convinced as she was with every step she was about to shit herself.

  ‘All right, love?’ her father asked as she shuffled through the kitchen, bent at the waist.

  ‘She needs the loo,’ Colleen answered for her.

  Her mother helped Donna raise her nightie and pull down her pants and napkin, which was soggy with blood, and to sit down.

  She wrapped her arms around her middle, opened her legs, leant forwards and groaned, head down, as something slid out of her. There was an audible ‘plop’ as it landed in the toilet.

  Astonished, she said, ‘I think that was it.’

  ‘The baby?’

  Donna nodded. ‘I think so. I thought it was going to be a poo.’

  ‘Sid!’ Colleen called, ‘bring some more towels.’

  ‘Poor Dad,’ Donna said.

  And poor me, she thought. And poor, poor little baby. But she was so relieved that her body suddenly felt as though it were filled with air, light and bright and free no matter if there was still pain to come. It was finished. It was done. And it would all be all right.

  The towels were handed through the door on the end of a disembodied arm. Donna stood gingerly, wadded a towel between her legs and stepped away from the toilet.

  ‘Don’t look,’ Colleen warned.

  But Donna did. All she could see was a toilet bowl full of blood.

  ‘Come on,’ her mother said, taking her arm, ‘I’ll sort that out. Let’s get you to bed, shall we?’

  *

  Once Donna was taken care of, Colleen returned to the toilet and stood looking down at the bloody mess in the bowl. Then she went back into the kitchen.

  Sid was back in his chair at the table. She could see from his reddened eyes that he’d been crying, but she didn’t say anything. He didn’t like it when he knew he’d been caught weeping.

  ‘I need your help,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to do this by myself.’ She opened a drawer and dug through the contents until she found her ladle with the holes in it for straining.

  Sid blew his nose mightily. ‘What do you need me to do?’

  ‘That’s our grandchild in that toilet. I’m not flushing it away like a . . . a ruddy dead goldfish. I want to give it a decent burial.’ Colleen burst into tears.

  Sid went to her and put his arms around her. ‘There, there, love. Donna’s all right, we’ll give the poor scrap a proper little send off, everything will be all right and we’ll put it behind us, eh? You’ll see. This’ll pass. These things always do. We’ll manage.’

  Colleen nodded against his nice, comfortable, familiar-smelling neck. ‘I know. It’s just that . . . she could have come to me and she didn’t.’

  ‘You’ve had your own worries, love. And they’re not kiddies, now, the girls. They’re all grown up, even Pauline. They’re young women. And she came to you in the end, didn’t she?’

  ‘But still. And when I think of the misery she must have gone through finding out she was in trouble and trying to decide what to do all by herself.’

  ‘I know, but that’s done, and if our Donna can cope with it so can you.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Good. Now, what else do we need?’

  It took a few minutes more to collect the items Colleen wanted and then they were ready. Fishing around in the toilet bowl with the ladle she lifted out the small mass of tissue that was the placenta. It had tears in it, but was more or less in one piece and was still attached to the tiny, lifeless foetus. She decanted both onto the towel Sid was holding. He gagged.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Colleen finally flushed the toilet, which didn’t get rid of all the blood.

  Then they wrapped the foetus and towel in an Irish linen tablecloth that had belonged to Colleen’s mother and carried it in the dark down the garden to a spot under the apple trees. While Sid dug a hole, Colleen held — cradled — it, then they buried it and she said a prayer.

  After that they went inside again and Sid sat with Donna while Colleen knelt before the toilet with a brush and a bottle of bleach, scrubbing and scrubbing at the bowl and seat until not a single drop or smear of blood remained.

  *

  Allie sat in the front room of her rent-free home and looked around at the fresh paint on the walls (warm cream, not pink), and thought about her new bathroom with its shiny porcelain bath and chrome taps, and felt terrible about her miserable mood. She didn’t like the house and had been unsettled — even more than usual — since they’d moved in. At first she’d thought it was just the fuss of shifting but it had been nearly two months now and she still felt at odds. Sonny was happy, and Mr De Valera definitely was, but she wasn’t.

  The nightmares were still coming, filling her nights and now this house too with black smoke, flickering, grasping orange flames and screams of terror. And even after nights when she didn’t have the bad dreams she was exhausted because she’d lain awake for hours anticipating them. She would give anything for a proper night’s sleep, to wake feeling refreshed and not like a wrung-out dish rag. The other night Sonny had suggested a good-sized whiskey before she went to bed, which she’d tried even though it had nearly burnt a hole in her gullet, but that had made the dreams worse — far more vivid and terrifying — so she was never doing that again.

  She’d shouted at him for it too. She’d slept really badly, on and off all night, and in the morning when they were getting ready for work she’d been in a rotten mood and picked a fight, though, at the time, she’d thought he’d started it.

  All he’d said was, ‘You look tired, love. You’ve got bags under your eyes.’

  And she’d said, ‘That’s because I didn’t get any bloody sleep, thanks to your stupid whiskey idea.’

  ‘You got a bit. I heard you snoring.’

  ‘Hardly any, though. I don’t know why you thought whiskey would help. I’m not used to hard liquor like you.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m a pisshead?’

  She’d seen then that he’d been trying not to laugh and it had infuriated her. She knew full well he wasn’t a pisshead but she’d said, ‘Well, you drink enough.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he’d agreed cheerfully.

  And that had only made her angrier. It was so hard to annoy him. ‘And you’re bloody useless round the house. I have to do everything and it’s not fair.’ This wasn’t quite true, either, but never mind. ‘I have to cook and clean and wash and do the shopping. I’m too tired after work. Why can’t we have a refrigerator? Why do we have to live in the stone ages?’

  ‘Because we can’t afford one,’ he’d said patiently. ‘We’re saving for a house, remember?’

  ‘But we’ve got a house,’ she’d said, waving her arms around at the bedroom.

  ‘A house of our own, not one lent to us by your mother.’

  ‘Well, that’s bloody ungrateful of you.’

  ‘I’m not ungrateful at all. I’m very grateful not to have to pay rent, but we agreed we want to buy our own house.’

  ‘Everyone else has got a refrigerator.’

  ‘No they haven’t.’

  She’d thoroughly lost her temper then. ‘Well, I bloody well want one!’

  It hadn’t been about a refrigerator, she’d known that. It had been about months — years — of poor sleep, and fear and tension, and grief and distress, and wondering if she was losing her mind.

  And all Sonny had said was, ‘Come on, love, get your things, we’ll be late for work.’

  He’d gone to the pub this afternoon with his mates because it was Saturday and now, as she sat alone in the house, she wondered if she was going to lose him.

&n
bsp; *

  Pauline had butterflies. Well, bats, really. She kept looking out the window of the front room for Johnny, though she knew exactly what time he’d be getting off the bus.

  ‘Pauline!’ her mother called from the kitchen, ‘come and do the cheese sauce!’

  ‘Can’t Allie do it?’ she shouted back.

  ‘No.’

  There were voices, then Allie called, ‘I’ll do it!’

  Pauline sent her sister a silent thank you, then wondered if the bus was late. She checked her watch. No, it wasn’t late. She was just having a nervous panic. Then a ghastly thought assaulted her: maybe he wasn’t here yet because he’d decided not to come. Maybe he’d decided he didn’t want to meet her family after all. Maybe he’d decided she wasn’t worth it.

  Then he came walking past the Leonards’, carrying a bunch of flowers, and she let out a huge breath. She waved at him through the window, tore through the house, down the steps and up the garden path to meet him.

  ‘I thought you might not come.’

  He kissed her cheek. ‘Why would I not come?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Pauline waited for him to give her the flowers, but he didn’t. ‘You look nice.’

  ‘Ta.’

  He did, too. He was wearing smart trousers (pegged, of course), a sports jacket she hadn’t seen before, a bright yellow shirt, half a tub of Brylcreem in his hair and a lot of aftershave.

  She linked her arm through his. ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Shitting myself.’

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  Johnny blew out his cheeks and nodded. At the top of the back steps he pecked her on the cheek and said, ‘Wish me luck.’

  ‘You won’t need luck,’ Pauline replied, but he wasn’t listening — he was staring over at the neighbours’. ‘What?’

  ‘Who lives there? That looks like my auntie hanging out the washing.’

  ‘The Leonards.’

  Sonny grinned. ‘Hang on a tick.’ He trotted back down the steps and over to the fence. ‘Hey, Auntie!’

  Ana Leonard looked round, spotted him and stared, a damp tea towel in her hands.

  Leaping up onto the fence, Sonny swung his legs over and sat there, perfectly balanced. ‘It’s me, Johnny Apanui.’