Baby Read online

  Anahera waits for two more waves to disappear before wiping her eyes and looking down as if puzzled. ‘Another time. Let’s watch your show.’

  ‘You’re cute,’ Anahera had said, and it made Cynthia happy, but now she can’t find her show because it keeps distracting her, playing back in her mind in a dull voice. The air’s gone cold, but Cynthia feels if she gets up to dress something will be over, so she snuggles in towards Anahera’s warmth, and eventually finds the link.

  She points out the couples who’ve matched their clothes; they’re the ones you have to watch. Another thing: ‘They call sex “making whoopee”!’ Cynthia repeats it a second time. ‘Making whoopee!’

  Anahera laughs then says, ‘Okay.’

  Cynthia’s hungover, so maybe she’s not thinking properly, but it feels like their bed’s gone saggy. She waits for the feeling to pass, but it doesn’t. She presses play.

  Bob, the host, asks the husbands, ‘What percentage of your wife’s body is jawbreaker, and what percentage is jello?’

  Anahera gets squinty at the little screen, at Bob. The men all answer, laughing, but Anahera doesn’t seem to get the fun of it, so Cynthia turns it off.

  ‘Aw,’ says Anahera. ‘Why?’ But Cynthia feels the space in the bed between them, and Anahera’s body already readying itself to stand up.

  ‘Never mind,’ Cynthia says, and goes for her clothes.

  That night Cynthia sits out late, with more rum, under the washing-line and the stars, putting Burger Rings on her fingers and eating them off. She’s thinking, if you stop waiting for something to happen it won’t, and if you start wondering if it will happen, you’ll stop waiting.

  She goes back inside, and Anahera’s lying with her eyes open. ‘Excuse me?’ Cynthia says.

  ‘Yeah?’ Anahera barely moves.

  ‘I saw your husband in town, and I know you’ve been texting him.’ Cynthia shifts her feet, but keeps her head up.

  A noise comes from Anahera’s mouth, but it’s a time before she speaks. ‘My husband will never talk to me again, because I took his car and sold it to buy this boat. And because—Cynthia, as you know—he caught me having sexual intercourse with another man. Now, I can tell you very definitively that I have not been texting my husband, and that you did not see him in Paihia.’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ Cynthia says, shrinking.

  But Anahera leans over and tugs Cynthia by her arm into bed. They don’t touch, not properly, but Cynthia thinks of how their bodies are lying in parallel lines, and feels tremendous relief at knowing there’s no one else, anywhere, equivalent to either of them.

  18.

  The following day Anahera’s swim takes longer than any other. The waiting drags. Even when she’s back the hours feel limp. They lie on the deck, reading in the sun, but spend more time not reading, and not doing anything else. Cynthia joins Panty Utopia, uploads pictures and writes the listing. She can’t tell Anahera, because Anahera thinks she’s already done it. ‘You think we need jobs,’ she says instead.

  Anahera’s hands stay far away from Cynthia, and her body far away from Cynthia’s hands. They go inside, then Anahera goes back out. Cynthia turns the table into the bed and gets in. It’s shaky and wrong, she’s never done it before, but she won’t get out and fix it. She watches a Catfish episode about a guy who thinks he’s dating Katy Perry. Anahera comes back through, looks at her, and goes to pee. Cynthia turns off her show—she doesn’t need to see him click any more faulty links to know his Katy’s false—and turns to face the wall.

  Anahera opens the door. ‘What do you want?’

  Cynthia wets her lips then blows air through them. Anahera always acts as if things are simple.

  ‘I’ll watch the rest of your show with you? I thought it looked really interesting.’

  Cynthia makes another noise with even more moisture, and her spit lands on the wall in front of her face.

  ‘I’ll make biscuits,’ Anahera says.

  Cynthia rolls over to look at her.

  ‘Okay,’ Anahera says, then disappears back into the bathroom, and releases the water from the sink. ‘Alright.’ She re-emerges and sets about the biscuits. Cynthia sits up on her elbows to watch.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ Anahera turns and says, ‘at all.’

  ‘I don’t need you to say that,’ Cynthia grumbles. But the biscuits already smell good. It doesn’t take long, and they’re in the oven. Anahera gets on her knees on the bed above Cynthia, and touches her forehead with a thumb.

  ‘Sorry about yesterday,’ she says.

  ‘What part?’

  ‘They shouldn’t take long,’ Anahera says, of the biscuits. ‘I made little ones.’ She moves back on her heels to watch Cynthia.

  ‘You’re right, I’m totally fine,’ Cynthia mumbles. Anahera seems to be waiting for more, so she adds, ‘I only know how to be myself.’

  Anahera gets up then, to peer through the foggy window of their little oven. ‘First time we’ve used this thing,’ she says. While they wait she goes outside, and Cynthia watches her feet through the windows, walking around the edge of the boat in loops. On the fourth loop, Cynthia joins her, then they come back in together to check the biscuits. They’re nearly done. They walk three more loops together, and the biscuits are cooked.

  In bed beside Anahera, Cynthia pulls one apart in her two hands. It doesn’t crumble, it divides. The chocolate’s in big parts, and the biscuit’s fudgy. Anahera puts her arm up, near Cynthia’s head, so it’s touching the fluff of her hair. Cynthia can feel her in the static. She shoves both parts of the biscuit in her mouth and holds them there.

  ‘We do need to make a plan,’ Anahera says. ‘About what to do with ourselves.’ She kicks the blankets to the ground, away from their feet. It’s hot. The biscuit dissolves in Cynthia’s mouth, moving towards her throat and between her teeth. ‘I don’t know what,’ Anahera says, ‘but something.’

  Cynthia just feels tired. She runs her tongue between her top lip and gums, and she doesn’t mention her father, or her dog.

  Anahera can’t lift her legs straight up, because the ceiling’s low over the bed, but she stretches them with her knees bent.

  Cynthia reaches for another biscuit.

  ‘What do you think?’ Anahera asks.

  ‘I’ll get mussels with you,’ Cynthia says. This is something Anahera’s talked about more than once, but it seems brutal and scratchy; unfun. Still, Cynthia will do it.

  ‘Okay,’ Anahera says, but Cynthia can feel her still waiting.

  19.

  That night in bed, Anahera cries.

  ‘What is it?’ Cynthia asks, but Anahera pretends to sleep. ‘Please,’ Cynthia says, stroking her fingers down Anahera’s back, but the muscles stiffen. She waits, maybe for an hour, and then Anahera really is sleeping.

  She takes $20 from Anahera’s wallet in the drawer under the cutlery. She’s going to buy nice food things. Sweet buns, possibly. They’ll eat happily in the morning.

  With the money tucked in her bra, she gets in the dinghy and the darkness, then unties herself, holding tightly to the paddle. The moon is magical light on the water, every part of it glimmers and beckons. She’s not far from the wharf, and it’s lit. Still, it stays the same size for minutes and minutes despite her paddling. Sometimes the work is easier, and she forgets this means she’s holding the paddle wrong. Suddenly, the prickle of the money’s gone from her breast and she looks around—as if it will be the sole bright thing fluttering in the night, but it’s nowhere. Also: she didn’t pay any attention when she walked with Anahera, she doesn’t know where the shops are. They won’t even be open. She turns, thinking she’ll go back, and finds she’s moved farther from the boat than she thought.

  She struggles forward, and arrives. When she’s tied the dinghy up and retied it a second time, there’s the sound of people talking. Comforted, she squeezes her bra and finds the money there, as crunchy as when she first shoved it in. She wipes her sweat proudly, and gets out.
The wharf’s still under her feet, a peculiar feeling, and the surety of it strengthens her.

  At the top of the steel bridge she’s right by the tree Snot-head pooped under when they first arrived. It was the last one she ever watched him do on land, so she stands a while. There’s just enough wind to shift the leaves, silhouetted by the moon, and to touch Cynthia through her shirt, where she’s wet with sweat at her armpits. It’s cold, she’s wearing only her pyjamas, and she must move on.

  She thought she was leaving to buy nice food for Anahera, but then she’s in a pub. There are two men at the bar. She sees them, and sees them shift towards each other and see her. They’re not attractive, but Cynthia leans on something out of habit—a high table. One looks Samoan, about twenty-five, and his hat’s on backwards. He’s the better one. The other’s thirty, white, and he’s walking towards her.

  She remembers the sweet buns. His eyes are brown and his cheeks pouchy. He’s looking at her hard, through an odd soft face. There’s stubble on his cheeks, which should be good but somehow isn’t. Suddenly his hand’s out between them, and he’s still walking. She doesn’t move towards it. He hurries the last step and finally arrives too close.

  ‘Where have you run away from?’ he asks her.

  ‘I’m just looking for the supermarket.’

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘They’re probably all shut,’ she tells him.

  He nods, and moves to go back to his friend.

  ‘I’m having trouble with my girlfriend,’ she says.

  He looks right back at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I gave up everything to be with her.’

  He nods for her to follow him, and they go back to his friend. ‘Having trouble with her missus,’ he explains, and his friend adjusts his hat and nods. They wait for more information.

  ‘I had to let my dog go.’ She nods as she says it.

  ‘Ah,’ they say, as if they’ve lost pets to women too. It’s a poorly lit establishment. They sit there together, leaning on the bar and thinking. Cynthia orders a beer and drinks it. She goes to the toilet, pees, and comes back to sit with them and think some more.

  ‘Him and his girlfriend never have sex,’ the white guy tells her of the Samoan one. He doesn’t deny it, just looks glumly into his glass. Cynthia doesn’t say anything, but she does feel better, and warm in a way she misses. ‘He’s single,’ the Samoan guy tells her, gesturing at the white one. Then he says, ‘Love is difficult.’

  Cynthia nods. Eventually she says, ‘Okay,’ and leaves. On the way back she stops at a liquor store and buys two packets of biscuits.

  In the dinghy the tide pulls her in the right direction, and she doesn’t worry about finding the boat. That’s a whole town Snot-head can poo on she thinks, forgetting the regulations. Anahera was right, he’ll be happier on land. She paddles slowly and wriggles, mixing up the beer in her belly to keep warm. Then she sees it, in its splendid curling script. Baby.

  20.

  Anahera’s gone when Cynthia wakes. It’s still dark, and she stares hard at the ceiling, thinking. Her feet have always fit perfectly in her shoes, and her socks were always white, all of them, perfectly. Her handwriting’s as neat as her toes, and till less than two months ago her eyebrows were as elegantly articulated as the dots on her ‘i’s. Now everything’s slackening, she can feel it. She’s shed her father, her dog, and now she’s shedding herself.

  Things have been happening since before she was born, she understands, in places she’s never been, and Anahera seems to know everything. Cynthia must step forward or lose her.

  She’s reached a time and a place; Anahera will be back soon, and Cynthia wants only to be obedient.

  ‘I’m going to town today, to ask about jobs. You can come if you want.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Cynthia says. Anahera’s breasts are visible through Cynthia’s father’s damp All Blacks shirt, and Cynthia wishes they were touching each other, and that she didn’t have to speak. ‘I know you want stuff,’ she says.

  Anahera nods, and says, ‘Okay, that’s great Cynthia!’ but then she doesn’t say anything else. She makes jam sandwiches, and Cynthia sits thinking of Snot-head. Her dog, walking up to door after door, sniffing and begging. You can’t think about it sensibly. You can’t think of anything important that way. Someone will have taken him in, surely, and he’ll be in a room sleeping with them now, while they knit or talk on the phone. You can’t think about need.

  Anahera hands her a sandwich, and then two more wrapped in a plastic bag. ‘Lunch.’ The bread’s stale, but they’ll get more today. While chewing, Anahera says, ‘I think sometimes—why can’t I belong only to myself?’ She looks to Cynthia for confirmation, and Cynthia eats her sandwich. ‘My husband looked so aggrieved when he caught me, and I just think, he didn’t have the right.’

  Cynthia would like to argue, actually, but she chews.

  21.

  Cynthia watches Anahera paddle, trying to understand how she was getting it wrong the night before. How do you know where you’re going without turning to check? Anahera looks at Cynthia, who has dressed up very tidily. ‘Do you know how to ask for a job?’

  Cynthia adjusts her blouse where it’s tucked into her pants. ‘Can I have a job?’

  ‘No,’ Anahera says. ‘That’s wrong.’

  Cynthia stares up at the sun.

  ‘You say, “Hi, my name’s Cynthia.”’ Anahera puts out her hand and beams when Cynthia shakes it. ‘Then you say, “I was wondering if you happen to have any jobs going?”’

  Cynthia makes a joke. ‘This isn’t the kind of role-play I want to do with you.’

  Anahera pauses, pursing her lips as if she doesn’t get it, then says, ‘Say it back to me.’

  ‘Hi, my name’s Cynthia. I was wondering if you happen to have any jobs going?’

  ‘Sure,’ Anahera says.

  Cynthia squeezes her sandwiches in their plastic bag.

  Cynthia crossed this very same bridge only last night. Now, she trudges over it mutely, bringing up the rear. They go right past Snot-head’s tree, and she can’t remember how she hoped things would go today. She looks down the street before they cross it, and remembers the glow of the streetlights and how they led her to the bar like they were taking her home. They’re so high and dull now she’d miss them if she didn’t look up.

  They arrive in town, outside the tourist shops. ‘Back at the wharf in an hour and a half,’ Anahera says, ‘and focus on restaurants and cafés, I think.’ Then she goes off in a direction.

  Cynthia stands outside a café, and looks in the window. There’s a boy in there, grimacing and vigorously wiping a table. He looks up and smiles. She walks into a gift store next door and inspects a watch. A kindly grey-haired woman approaches, smiling.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Yeah, um.’

  The lady waits.

  ‘No.’

  The lady smiles and tells her to have a good day.

  Cynthia decides to go back to the school and have a lie down where she left Snot-head. Then she’ll come back, and go into more places. It’s a small town, and she doesn’t want to ruin all her chances in a rush.

  She settles on her back and eats her sandwich slowly. There’s a boy squatting low under the slide at the playground. He’s wearing very, very tight denim shorts, and a loose long shirt. She looks closely, and he’s holding a spray can. He turns and pulls the fingers at her, then waits, struggling to maintain his balance, to see what she’ll do. She pulls the fingers back. He’s a cute kid. He nearly topples, but rights himself and keeps spraying.

  This is where she let Snot-head go, and she wonders, where might he be? What might he have eaten this morning? She makes sure not to think of the shops, the people in them, or of Anahera. She closes her eyes and breathes in, then out.

  A breathing noise that isn’t hers. She looks up and it’s the boy, puffed from jogging over. She shuts her eyes into slits, and watches him.

  ‘Don’t call the police,�
�� he says.

  She opens her eyes completely. She’d never have thought to call anyone.

  He’s a bit tubby, and red from the short run. ‘I’m quick, I’d just sprint off. It’d be embarrassing for you,’ he says. His face is concerned, squinting.

  ‘You’re not quick.’

  His mouth falls open. She half expects a glob of spit to land on her.

  ‘What were you drawing?’

  ‘Aw.’ He’s ashamed. ‘Just a dick.’

  ‘I’ll come look at it,’ she says, and gets up. He’s much taller than her, but not yet properly formed. He doesn’t know how to hold his elbows, and they jut out like they might injure somebody. His face looks like putty.

  ‘Dicks are classic,’ she says, to reassure him.

  He covers his mouth with his hand, but smiles and lollops after her to the slide.

  ‘Now listen,’ she says while they walk, ‘have you seen my dog? He’s a French bulldog. Quite ugly, but you know—a sweetheart.’

  He listens closely. ‘Nah.’

  The dick’s black, and he’s barely started filling it in. ‘What does it mean?’ she jokes, pointing at it.

  He scrunches up his face, puzzled, and answers, ‘It’s a dick.’

  She laughs to let him know she was kidding, and he smiles. Cynthia doesn’t want to go and lie alone, guilty in the grass, and she certainly doesn’t want to go into more shops asking for jobs. ‘What hobbies do you have?’ she asks him.

  He starts spraying again. He’s at a difficult age, and she can see him deciding whether to trust her. He finishes the left ball, and says, ‘Creative destruction.’ The huge shirt he’s wearing has a picture of a dead duck on it. He taps the dick with his spray can to indicate it as an example of his activity. Then looks around, for witnesses.

  ‘Seems good,’ Cynthia says. ‘I don’t know too many people who’re into that.’

  He takes a big, proud breath and begins the second ball. ‘Yeah, well, me and my friend were supposed to pee over the wharf onto the tourist boats last night, but he didn’t show.’