Page 81 of Kiwi Gold
“Of course,” I said, and didn’t say,Please don’t quit.I only had another week of her full-time help before the end of the school holidays, and I needed that week, especially since there’d be two weeks after it before Ginger came back from leave. I’d crammed as many appointments as possible into our remaining time, including the two February weekends when Oriana had agreed to work and Priya had agreed to babysit. I already had the clients scheduled, and I needed them. Eight babies wouldn’t come close to paying all my bills, but it was at least something.
Never mind. Credit card next month, that’s all.I tried to ignore the flip in my stomach, the constriction in my lungs, and attempted to sing with the whales. Virtually speaking.Nothing you can do about it, so you may as well be supportive.“Cup of tea, maybe?” I asked.
“Oh,” Oriana said. “Yes, if we have time.”
“We have time,” I said. “That’s why I schedule so much time between appointments. You can’t relax parents and baby if you’re feeling rushed yourself. Cup of tea.”
I set off to make it, but Oriana jumped up and said, “I’ll get it. Would you like a biscuit?” The way she asked clients, throughout the day. She was so good at this job.
“Yes,” I said. “In fact, Iwouldlike a biscuit.” So that was five minutes gone before I had to hear the news.
Finally, though, we were sitting down, I was drinking tea and biting into a shortbread biscuit, and I could tell she was about to talk. About to drop her bomb, whatever it was.
She blurted out, “I want to know how you have sex.” And I sprayed biscuits and tea over half the studio.
For the next five minutes, Oriana apologized, wiped up spilled tea, swept up shortbread crumbs, waited while I changed my top, and finally said, “I’m sorry. I know sex isn’t appropriate to talk about with people, that it’s private, but I didn’t know who else to ask. My sister Daisy, of course, but she’s sosureabout everything, and …”
“And you thought I wouldn’t be,” I said. Well, she was right there. “So you mean, not howIhave sex, but ..”
“No!” Now, she looked horrified. “I mean … I thought youdidn’thave sex. Now. Because you’re a widow. Or … Lachlan … You went on a date, but … but you must have had it before, so …” She was turning red, but I probably was, too.
“I’m not sure how helpful I can be,” I said. “I was married, but I’m not an expert.”Trust me,I thought.I just learned how you’re meant to do it lastnight.If that reallyishow you’re meant to do it, but it sounded good to me.
“Oh.” She still looked confused. Small wonder. “I didn’t know you could be good or bad at it. Is it complicated, then?”
I said, “Let’s sit down.” In resignation. I should cut this off, but why was she asking me? I had all kinds of alarm bells ringing. “It’s the sort of thing where there’s more than one skill level,” I told her. “You haven’t read any books, then. Watched any … movies. Things on the Internet.”
“No,” she said. “You mean there are books that tell you how? Is that how people normally find out, then? Like school? Is there a … class?” More doubtfully than ever.
“Not exactly,” I said, thinking,I wish. “I don’t know how it is in Mount Zion, getting to know the person you marry, but …”
“How it is there,” Oriana said eagerly, “is that you don’t knowthe person at all, because you’ve never talked to them, but you’ve always known what … whatkindof a person they are. Whereas Outside, you can talk and talk, but you don’t know their parents, or their brothers and sisters, or how they were at school, and whether they have good mates, or how hard they work, oranythingthat matters, really.”
I hoped she wasn’t thinking about going back to Mount Zion. I treaded cautiously, though, because there was no certainty like seventeen. “That’s a fair point,” I said. “It’s why people normally wait a long time before they get married, so they do learn more about those things.” Not me, of course. I’d been all of nineteen, in school for graphic arts and a bare fifteen months into my great romance, but Kegan had been winning climbing contests already, collecting sponsorships and eyeing the world’s high mountains, his star so clearly about to explode, and I couldn’t wait to marry him and start my life for real, the same way my mother had. With her great love.
All of that against my father’s wishes, as you can probably guess. As a mum myself now, I could understand how frustrated he must have been.
That’s the trouble with seeing things from other people’s point of view. You end up not being able to blame them. Extremely annoying.
“If you do that, though,” Oriana said, “if you wait a long time to marry, you have relations while you’re waiting, right? Sex?”
I said, “I didn’t, but most people do.” There. That wasn’t too inappropriate, and she should know she had a choice.
Oriana said, “But what if neither of you knows how to do it? At all? All I know is that you kiss, which is just touching your lips together, and how the … the rest of it happens. I’ve seen it, with my parents.”
“With yourparents.”All right, I wasn’t expecting that one.
“Under the blankets,” she said. “So I know the position and so forth, but I don’t know what I’m meant to do while it’s happening. I thought it would just be lying on my back and being quiet, but I know now that some people make … noises. Maybe because your kids aren’t there.”
I was reeling. And I’d thoughtmychildhood was different.
“And if you’re making noises,” she went on, “there’s probably more than that happening. Than lying under somebody and him being the one that’s moving, since I never heard noises before, and the noises last longer than the moving did.” She was fairly pink in the face by this point, but she went on anyway. Points for tenacity. “When Idosee something in a … a film, it always looks like heaps moreisgoing on, because they’re doing things. Rolling around and so forth. And sometimes their … their heads aren’t together. I think they’re kissing each other in other places, too. Sometimes you see that. Him kissing below her shoulder. Him touching her leg. When they’re in bed.”
I pushed at my hair and thought,Talk about the blind leading the blind..“OK,” I said. “Wow. So you’re planning to do all this?”
“I don’t know,’ she said. “I feel like I want to wait until I’m married to have the real sex, I mean, have his … his, ah …”
“To have intercourse,” I said.Vaginal penetration. By me.
