TURBINE | KAPOHAU

May

May needed to buy more oranges.

She had an orange every morning for breakfast and this morning she had eaten the last orange. It was supposed to be a grapefruit in the morning, wasn’t it? Half a grapefruit with a red glacé cherry in the middle, and one of those special spoons. She didn’t have one of those special spoons and she didn’t like grapefruit. She liked to start her morning with sticky fingers and the fizz of orange on her tongue. But tomorrow there would be no orange for her breakfast, unless she walked down to the shop to buy a bag.

First, she had to find her purse but it wasn’t where she had left it. Her sister must have moved it somewhere. Why couldn’t Edie leave her things alone? She looked in her handbag but it wasn’t there. She looked on her bedside table. No. She looked in that silly basket that Edie insisted on tidying her mail and loose papers into.

It wasn’t anywhere and she was starting to feel panicky. What if she couldn’t find her purse until Edie came home? The shop would be closed. They would have secured the dark green roller door down, would have brought in the wooden trays of berries, the punnets of herbs. The basket of waxy fragrant oranges would be hidden away.

Would they take an IOU? They knew her, they knew she was trustworthy. It had been her fruit shop for so long, she had been buying fruit from them since she first bought her apartment in Mount Victoria. Could she write: I owe you for one bag of oranges? How much was a bag of oranges? She couldn’t remember.

Maybe they would just give her the bag. Maybe they would say: ‘You’re such a valued customer, May, of course you must take the oranges, we wouldn’t dream of an IOU, no, no, we insist.’ Maybe they would say: ‘Your money’s no good here.’ She had always wanted to hear somebody say that. An orange in the morning was a very delicious thing, but just think how delicious a free orange would be.

She hadn’t been able to find her key either but it wouldn’t matter if she left the house unlocked just for a little while, just while she collected her free oranges. It was very hot and she wished she hadn’t worn her big coat. She went to take it off and realised she only had her nightie underneath. That wasn’t good. She pulled her coat tight around herself. Surely no one would know. Just a quick trip for the oranges and then straight back home. No one would know that it was her nightie. It was a very nice nightie. Blue. More like a dress really. Yes, people would just think it was a very nice dress.

She kept walking and she thought about the way the orange would burst in her mouth as she bit into it. She had an excellent plastic utensil designed to peel the orange so she wouldn’t get the rind around her fingernails. It had a sharp tooth on one end that she could drag through the skin of the orange and the other end was rounded and curved in a way that was ideal for lifting up the skin of the orange without digging into its flesh.

May liked to take her time with her morning orange, each step of the process was a moment to be savoured, so much of the joy of the orange was its peeling. Smelling the puff of orange oil as the skin broke, the satisfying sound of the tear, and the inevitable squirt of juice despite her great care not to pierce the flesh as she lifted its rind. One time her orange had actually squirted her in the eye! That had been a funny morning and she laughed now, thinking about it.

‘You’re in for it now, Orange,’ she had told it. ‘Time for your punishment!’

And Edie had stood up from the table very suddenly and said: ‘Stop talking to your breakfast, May.’

She had left her own breakfast half-eaten and Mama would never have allowed her to leave the table when other people were still eating but maybe Edie didn’t care about that. Obviously Edie didn’t care about that.

May desperately wanted to be home, she wanted to be home with Mama and Pa and Edie and why was she walking, where was she walking, how much longer would she be walking? And she was so warm! She really was too warm! She shrugged her heavy coat off her shoulders and the feel of the air on her back was so delicious that she made a little noise.

Sweat was sticking her hair to the back of her neck. She should cut it short. Her friend Daphne had lovely short hair, bobbed above her shoulders, wavy and dark and beautiful. She would like to have hair like Daphne’s. Her own hair was too long, too heavy, too hot. She bunched it in her hand and lifted it away from her clammy skin and the breeze on the nape of her neck was like plunging into cold river water after lying in the sun. It was like being in Waikawa.

Her brain felt too big for her head and her lips were tingly. She starfished her fingers out and then squeezed them into fists. She was getting The Bad Feeling. Then she noticed a shelter. Thank goodness, a shelter! A bus stop with glass walls and a wooden bench, the perfect place to sit and catch her breath, somewhere to cool down, somewhere to figure out what she should do next.

She felt like she wanted to kiss the glass, like someone finding an oasis in the desert, but she remembered her nightie and she knew she shouldn’t be kissing bus stops in a nightie. Instead, she focused on her breathing until she started to feel calm. This was something called breathwork, something her doctor had taught her to do, something she could do when she was feeling very emotional, very sad or angry or scared. She closed her eyes, felt the late afternoon sun on her face, and she breathed in and out, in and out, in and out.

*

Daphne

The knock on my front door was very loud. It ricocheted through my veins and I held my breath. Silence. Okay. Okay, good.

And then, Gus, screaming.

I raced to the stairs and down down down. I needed to see who was at the door. A package? Something I could collect quickly and then go to my baby?

But no, it was May’s sister Edna, standing there so tailored, her navy blue dress, her high heels, her chin, her eyes, everything so pointy and so sharp.

Her voice was the sharpest thing of all and she said: ‘Don’t leave him crying.’

I was in trackpants and my hair was unwashed and if she looked down she would see chips of nail polish on my toenails and my face felt tight because I hadn’t washed it and I looked at Perfect Polished Edna and I was furious. She was the one who had woken Gus! And then her horrible judgmental voice telling me not to let him cry. 

She said it again and her voice was so loud and angry that I burst into tears. I looked at her for a moment and then I ran back upstairs and into our room and I was scooping Gus up, his warm soft body solid in my arms, and holding him was such a comfort, even though he was crying and so was I.

‘Gus, Gus, Gus,’ I cooed. ‘You’re okay, oh baby, you’re okay, you’re okay.’ I held him close to me and I jiggled him and I smelled him and he smelled me and we were calming each other down, our proximity to each other was so calming to the both of us.

‘Gus, sweet Gus,’ I said.

He hiccoughed and then he gurgled and then he wasn’t crying anymore.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked and he looked at me and his fat hand waved through the air towards me and he touched my cheek and he was smiling at me.

I smiled back at him and I said: ‘Edna’s here for some reason.’

He looked closely at me and he said: ‘Ah-ah.’

And I looked back at him and said: ‘Yes. Exactly.’

I nodded at him and he watched me nodding. I knew that he would nod back at me if he could. The internet told me he wouldn’t start nodding until he was around 15 months old. That was okay, I could be patient. I kissed his precious head and we went to the top of the stairs where I could see Edna waiting in the open doorway.

‘Come up, Edna,’ I said. ‘You’re letting in the cold.’ And I didn’t bother to make my voice sound very welcoming and I didn’t wait to watch her come upstairs and I didn’t really want her to come upstairs but I also didn’t want to talk to her in the doorway in the cool night air with Gus in my arms.

Gus said: ‘Bb-bb-bb.’

I jiggled him and kissed his head.

‘Totally, Gus,’ I whispered into his perfect pink ear. I took the tip of his ear in my mouth and I nibbled it gently and listened to his gurgly chuckle.

Then Edna was there and she was looking around my living room in actually kind of an intrusive way and I looked around too. It was just as it always was, the couch with its blanket, the play mat, the clothes-horse with muslin cloths and tiny socks and brightly coloured bodysuits and leggings that had all been dry for days and that I was taking from the rack when dressing Gus because I couldn’t be bothered to fold them.

‘May is lost,’ Edna said.

Gus and I wanted to help look. May was our friend and I felt like we could probably be helpful. ‘We’ll find her, Edna,’ I said. ‘She has to be somewhere.’

‘She’s not a set of keys,’ Edna snapped. ‘Next you’ll be asking where I last saw her.’

I wondered how to reply to that and then I decided not to and I started the process of leaving the house. I secured Gus into his baby wrap, locating my centre, fixing the cloth over my shoulders and criss-crossing it at my front. I checked that Gus was comfortable in there, listened for his happy gurgles which told me that he was. I thought Gus would probably fall back asleep during the search. He liked sleeping in the wrap, was used to falling asleep in it when he was too agitated to sleep in his cot or when I was so agitated that I started thinking about a glass of wine. A walk soothed us, the feel of our bodies wrapped up close and connected.

Gus gurgled again.

‘Is he all right?’ Edna asked.

‘That’s a happy sound,’ I said. I pulled back some of the fabric so that Edna could see Gus.

He was smiling his gorgeous smile and I was so proud of him and he said: ‘Aah.’

‘That’s right,’ I replied. I stroked the top of his head with its soft dark downy hair and then I looked up at Edna but she was staring out the window. I looked back at Gus and I shrugged and I could see agreement in his eyes.

Edna thought she should drive around and I said that I would walk. I had been wondering whether May might be at the Botanic Garden, whether she might have gone to the Rose Garden.

‘Should we, like, should we call the police or something?’ I asked.

‘I think you have to wait 24 hours?’

I could hear the uncertainty in Edna’s voice and it made me feel more kindly towards her. I got my phone out and searched notify police missing person nz

‘It says you call the police if a person is missing and you have concerns for their welfare,’ I told her, reading off the website. ‘It doesn’t say you have to wait. I think you should call them. I mean, May’s missing right? And we’re concerned?’

I handed Edna my phone.

‘Do I just call 111?’ she asked.

I nodded and watched her shaky hands. Cool, calm, collected Edna, completely flustered.

‘I’m going to call outside,’ she said in a rush, thrusting my phone back at me and then she was racing down the stairs.

I looked down at Gus and I was sure he raised his eyebrows at me.

‘Uh,’ said Gus.

‘Uh-huh,’ I agreed.