Towards twilight I was woken suddenly by a loud flapping noise, and could see in the far distance something that looked like a mechanical mosquito. It seemed to be searching for something. I became excited and jumped up, forgetting I was in the tree, and slipped off the branch, knocking my head at the same time. I felt something coil around my neck and a sensation of hanging and that sensation lasted a long time, like being in a hospital straitjacket. Eventually I fell to the ground. I heard a sound like thousands of lightly fluttering angel wings, and I felt myself being lifted gently up and taken over the trees to the top of the cliff overlooking the campsite. It was the butterflies.
I looked around me. It was dusk, to the spiritual leaders of the local tangata whenua, the time when the gap between the two worlds opened. In the waning light there was a twittering, shimmering scene of biblical proportions. Like the giant tail of a multi-coloured kite there was a swirling footpath of giant butterflies and their smaller counterparts, leading to what seemed to be a small hole in the sky. My arms felt leaden and constrained, as if still in the straitjacket. Suddenly I felt them lift as if of their own accord like a hot air balloon on its side being filled with hot air. I looked around and behind me. I had wings. I felt blood flow through their veins, pumping, expanding and hardening them. I gave some tentative flaps, delighting in their strength and lightness. My new friends urged me on. I moved to the edge of the cliff. The world was laid out before me with the iridescent deep rich clarity of vegetation after heavy rain. I could see dark figures with strange glowing heads moving around the campsite, and further over behind the trees the yellow shape of the bubble car with a flash of blue on the front seat. Farewell little one. I felt a touch on my arm. My wife. Beautiful and angelic, with wings stronger and more used than mine. She smiled and leapt off the cliff, hovering and beckoning for me to join her. I leapt. The leap of faith. Lover’s leap. It was exhilarating. She grabbed my arm and with powerful strokes, we flew in unison with the others high above the world, and then in and through the welcoming gap. We were the last. A hatch cover was bolted into place. I was in heaven.
A State of Sleepfulness
Marama Salsano
News of my mother’s death reached me via cellphone in Salerno. It was still early in the evening and the promenade was bustling. Elegant, tanned Junos wearing floaty dresses and bracelets twinkling with Murano glass wove their pushchairs across cobbles, passing older Bacchus impersonators who gesticulated to each other over scopa cards and espresso – or perhaps vino, or birra. I wasn’t sure which. Nearby, twenty-somethings in jeans and sneakers slouched over Vespas, emulating Eros, while flocks of shrieking teens debated with the intensity of UN politicians, though they might very well have been discussing make-up and shoes or Justin Bieber. I didn’t know. I watched and simulated smiles, dream-like, at Juno and Bacchus and Eros, as my feet, set at automatic, carried me by.
From an apartment above, a television blared. Loud, shouty words, and then the universal jingle: ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ My mother and I had often played the game; the online version though. She’d lie on her bed and close her eyes and I’d repeat the questions from my laptop and put forward answers and she would either say, ‘Lock it in, Bub,’ or ‘Kararaina, are you sure that’s right?’ One time, we even got to the ninth question without using up any of our lives.
An evening breeze blew dark strands of hair that had come loose from my ponytail around my face. It puffed the hem of my tunic outwards, and wafted around the seams of my three-quarter leggings before rising upwards and over my collarbones. I’d taken my cardigan off; it was too warm, even for the cotton one I’d slung over my arm. But I felt exposed and put it on again anyway, folding my arms and pulling the material tight across my chest.
Outside the trattoria, the tables were nearly full; families mostly, with children who would pick at a piece of fish or slurp a tomatoey strand of linguine and then dart off and play chase across the way or swing in the love-seats set up along the boulevard. I sat, waiting for Michele, at a small table on the edge of the courtyard, and ordered a cola. Instead, the waitress brought me a glass and a large carafe of white wine, then twirled around and disappeared without a word.
‘This is the best place ever,’ a tall woman, reeking of jasmine, leaned over to tell me as she sashayed past. She’d eyed the English-language guidebook poking out of my bag, and assumed perhaps that I’d only just arrived, and hadn’t been trawling the Amalfi Coast for the past two weeks with my friend Michele, who used to come in to the Polytech library where I worked, every weekday, to Skype using our free wireless. ‘The food is great,’ the woman continued. ‘Order what you like, it all tastes sublime.’ She left, and the candle in the middle of the table began to emit a sickly sweet smell. I contemplated putting it out, but the tiny flame felt calming, so instead, I pushed it downwind to the corner of the table.
Opposite me, a young girl, maybe eleven, sat feeding a toddler in a stroller. The back of the stroller faced me so I couldn’t see the baby’s face, but a chubby fist and a play-dough leg protruded from the side. And every now and then fingers would unfold from the fist and tiny fingernails would sparkle like pink probes in the candlelight; so small and secretive, impatient to get to work.
My hands trembled as I poured liquid from the carafe into my glass, the stream wavering slightly. I glanced around, half expecting my mother to appear. She didn’t, and I drank.
I hated alcohol. Hated any reminders of my mother and her drinking and her men. Though try as I could to forget, I never did. Never forgot the time she fell asleep on the toilet in the early hours of the morning. How, at thirteen, I banged on the bathroom door for half an hour. And then, with no sign of life from my mother, how I removed the frosted panes from our bathroom window so I could climb through the tiny opening – in the middle of winter while it was pouring outside. How I’d been crying and panicking and yelling at my mother to keep her awake after I pulled her knickers up and dragged her to my room, which was closer, but then couldn’t lift her on to my bed. And how the man my mother had brought home that night had been totally fucking useless as he lay on my mother’s bed like some rubbery gargoyle with his dollop of fatty tissue drooped unashamedly over two fluffed-up balls.
I’d found the man when I went looking for my mother’s cellphone so I could text my aunt. I couldn’t stop looking at him. At his disgustment. It hung there, pretending to be all innocent like. My head told me to move, run even, but my body refused. And as I stood there, brazenly staring, I noticed that his floppy flesh had a wide berth of red around it. Inching closer to the snoring beast, I saw that it was lipstick, and half threw up into my hands. Then he moved. He flopped over to one side, his leg covering his inner flesh and exposing his dark brown anal crack.
As the retching of my mother’s alcohol poisoning announced itself from my room, I retreated. For a long time I refused to kiss my mother. And I never told her, not ever told her, that for months afterwards, every time I looked at her, I imagined I saw the odd wiry pubic hair hanging out of her mouth.
My eyes watered and my cheeks felt hot. The liquid burned my throat. I sipped again. Eventually, the burning subsided. I smiled at a man sitting next to me. He frowned as I raised my glass, said ‘Saluti,’ and drank. When I looked back at the table, he’d gone, as had the bustling Junos and Vespa-riders. Had I imagined them all? I poured the remnants of a second carafe of wine into my glass, or maybe it was the third, and pulled the tatty photo of my mother from my wallet. For no reason at all, giggles began bubbling up my throat, like a sour aftertaste.
‘I don’t drink,’ I said, defiantly, elongating my words and feeling like a cartoon version of myself. ‘I was just thirsty, that’s all.’
‘I should take you home. Si?’ Michele said, passing the waitress some euros and then holding out his hand to me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Your flatmates drive me nuts.’
‘Then, andiamo, we’ll go for a walk.’
‘Can we go for a
drive instead?’
I’m not sure how long we drove around in Michele’s Seicento. I wound the window down and Michele retrieved his jacket from the back seat and draped it over me, delicately, I thought. We drove past cliff faces illuminated by the cramped dottings of homes, and then up through the mountains and flickering lights of those same village-upon-village-upon-villages.
‘Can we stop?’ I asked, after a while. ‘Just for a minute?’
‘The roads are too narrow,’ Michele said. ‘But I’ll stop as soon as I can.’ His hand grazed mine as he changed gear and I shivered, now acutely aware of his presence and of the prickling energy inside me.
I dozed off. It seemed like mere minutes. I couldn’t even remember whether I’d dreamt or had a nightmare, and normally I woke up with the distinct feeling of either.
‘Where are we?’ I asked with a yawn and a yelp, sleep crusting at the edges of my eyes.
‘Going back to Salerno. You fell asleep so I carried on to Cava. You were snoring.’
‘I don’t snore,’ I said.
‘Yes, you do.’
The photo of my mother was still clenched in my hand. ‘I don’t feel so good,’ I said.
‘We’ll be in Salerno in twenty minutes.’
‘I can’t wait that long.’
‘It’s not far.’
‘I feel sick.’
Michele looked at me several times while he drove and finally said, ‘Hang on, I’ll stop somewhere else.’ He pulled off the road and drove up a steep driveway, parking in front of a dark building with closed outside shutters. I forced my legs out of the door, stood up and put my hands on the roof of the car, dropping my torso forward to ease the dizziness in my head. I felt Michele’s hand patting my back.
‘You alright?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s gone.’
‘Comé?’
‘Mum,’ I said, pushing the photo into his chest. ‘They buried her yesterday. Didn’t even let me say goodbye. She’s gone, Michele, she’s gone.’
‘Oh, Kara,’ Michele said, shaking his head, hugging me. ‘She didn’t deserve cancer, eh? You sure they’ve had the funeral? Your aunt wouldn’t do that to you.’
‘She said it was Mum’s wish. To leave me be, having a good time. Do I look like I’m having a good time? It was only for a month. She said it was all good. And now?’
Michele stooped slightly and brought his face to my level. Eyes glistening flecks of pounamu. He took my hand and rubbed the tips of my fingers. ‘Things will work out,’ he said.
Red somersaults in my belly.
‘Kara, I like you, a lot,’ Michele said.
Tremors in my hand.
Muscles on the sides of Michele’s jaw tensed as his shoulders rose to meet his ears, or perhaps it was his head that now hung somewhat lower. Gently, I smoothed back flicks of hair above his ear with my fingertips, and felt the tension in his jaw dissipate. ‘Michele,’ I said.
He leaned forward and downwards and kissed me, delicately. I tasted the inside of his mouth and then felt his stubble against my cheek as he kissed the side of my face, the lower lobe of my ear and the shiny space between my neck and chin. I willed my eyes to remain open, but they, and every other sense I thought I owned, refused to comply.
I’d never been kissed before. Not really. Hated the thought of being used, for that. I had, or course, been kissed by whānau. And kaumātua and random people who expected a hongi and hariru and peck on the cheek at the marae – and we went to every land hui, committee meeting, tangi, wānanga and twenty-first birthday. Although, as much as possible, I stayed in the kitchen with the ringawera, cooking and doing dishes with my iPod to keep me company, or I hung out with the nannies, sitting and stitching tāniko in silence. Avoiding, at all costs, the herd of obnoxious men who’d charm my mother with their kōrero, when what they really needed was a woman to cut them off with a quick, sharp haka. So, who spoke for her then, yesterday? Who spoke for my mother, if not me?
Michele and I shuffled along sideways as we kissed; his keys jangled somewhere in the distance. When I finally opened my eyes, we were inside the building.
‘What are you doing?’ I whispered into the stillness. ‘You’re breaking and entering.’
‘It’s my house,’ he said, pointing to the shadow of his keys still swinging in the open door, before turning on a light to reveal a dim entranceway with doors and a large staircase leading away from it, and the ancestral smell of lived-out lives.
‘But you live in Salerno,’ I said.
‘This is my family home, but it’s empty and I don’t like being here.’
‘I’m not sure about this,’ I said as Michele kissed me again.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself on a bed, with Michele draped over me.
‘I can’t do this,’ I said, and pushed him off.
He lay next to me on his side and said, ‘We’re just kissing.’
‘Michele, you know I haven’t had a lot to do with relationships and stuff,’ I said, sighing.
‘Is that all?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing. I just thought that maybe it was me.’
We sat in silence for a while before Michele said, ‘Kararaina?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you saying you’re still a virgin?’
I blushed and then felt stupid for blushing. ‘Does it matter?’ I said.
‘Not to me,’ he answered, and kissed me again. I didn’t shy away after that. Not when Michele removed his t-shirt and Levis 501s, or clumsily lifted my cotton tunic over my head and ruched my leggings down to my ankles with a single slide of his foot. Not even when he half-lifted, half-pushed me under the sheets while I was in the middle of a giggling fit and nearly fell off the bed. And not even when he suggested I lie on top of one of his sweaters, a navy blue one. ‘Just in case,’ he said.
I giggled and smiled, but it was awkward and uncomfortable. Still, I didn’t want to stop. If this was going to be my first time, it might as well be with someone I actually liked. Surely that counted for something? But I couldn’t relax. I worried that I salivated too quickly, that I should have pulled away more often and given myself time to swallow. The whole thing was wet, and smelt weird, and it hurt.
Later, in the bathroom, I washed the blood from Michele’s sweater by hand. I scrubbed the stains with a small knob of soap, and even though the blood was fresh and came out almost immediately, I continued scrubbing. My knuckles turned white from clamping the soap so tightly in the running, cold water. The muscles in my arm tired, but I couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop scrubbing.
‘I’m just going out to the car,’ Michele yelled through the door.
‘Okay, see you soon,’ I said, hoping my voice sounded perky and bright and worldly. When the creaks of the staircase subsided, I slumped to the floor and wept.
Michele had tried to cuddle in bed afterwards, but the thought of blood droplets drying between my buttocks and seeping through his sweater and on to the bed had propelled me up and into the bathroom. I tried to remember whether Michele had used a condom or not, but only seemed to recall the pack of wet wipes he’d produced out of thin air and the reddish hue the wet tissues had taken on as they were tossed into a nearby plastic bag.
Back in the bedroom, I creaked open the window and peered through the cracks in the outside shutters. Michele sat on the hood of his car and dragged on one Marlboro Light after the other. My cellphone said that it was nearly three o’clock in the morning.
I willed my mother to materialise next to me and stroke my hair and say, ‘It’ll be alright, Bub. It’ll be alright, my girl.’ But I knew that from now on she would only ever exist in the golden bubble behind my eyes, somewhere between the twelve heavens and earth. I went back to the bed, lay down and tried to breathe. With scrunched-up eyes and a vision of my mother, I tried to coax myself into some sort of state of sleepfulness.
skin
Marama Salsano
1
On the night of my eighteenth birthday death bled through the walls of number 59 Hinemoa Heights. I’d felt its presence all my life – but in a subdued kind of way that seemed to shimmer around everyone, which, I guessed, was normal when you’re brought up on a potion of tangi and family curses and talking walking sticks and nameless half-brothers who kill themselves with the Drinking and the Driving and a German father who doesn’t want to know his bastard-freak-of-a-daughter yet hangs himself from a pōhutukawa branch to rid his mind of dead sons.
That night though, the night of my eighteenth, death felt markedly different. It shrouded the entire house. From every polished rimu floorboard and cobwebbed ceiling corner, from every Tui Teka album and signed All Whites poster, from every half-opened packet of wholemeal lasagne and Weight Watchers lime-flavoured jelly, from every pillowcase still sprinkled with Britney Spears or Gucci Rush, my mother’s wairua seeped and oozed. Makareta Te Waimarie Ngahiwa just wouldn’t let me be.
So I trashed the place: her place, Makareta’s place. I trashed my way through her book club books, which she’d never read, but dusted daily. ‘I’m gonna read them one day, Atareta,’ she’d say, and stroke their spines with a dry cloth as she kicked her coffee-stained Woman’s Weeklys into the void under the couch. She never did. I knew my mother. They sat there, dustless and creaseless and fused to their shelves, expecting me to uphold her stupid rituals.
And somehow, I found myself squatting near the fireplace with my mother’s death-lighter in my palm, the flame flickering fast, aware that it was searing the tip of my thumb though not registering the pain. And I squatted there, not knowing whether the flame was going to ignite the huddle of books in front of me, in front of the fireplace, on my mother’s polished floors. Cardboard covers spreadeagled and strewn about. I dropped the lighter and started over.
Huia Short Stories 9 Page 17
