Page 105 of Kiwi Gold
“I dotoo,”Amira said.
I didn’t address that, just went on. I hadn’t realized I’d memorized this story, but that tended to happen when you heard it forever, the same way Laila could sing that song.I belong to my love, and my love belongs to me. O, white bird, do stop asking why.I hadn’t understood that bit, but maybe I did, now. Maybe it meant that you never knew why, and you couldn’t really explain it. Love just happened, and when it did, you could either let it wither, or you could spend your time and your effort growing it.
I went on, “The second daughter is Tupu-a-rangi, and she loves to sing. Papatuanuku takes her to sing for all the children of the forest, and her beautiful voice makes the trees and the birds and the lizards happy and helps them grow, and the birds sing back to her in return. Tupu-a-rangi teaches us to share our gifts with others, and to let them share with us.”
“I like birds,” Yasmin said. “And I like to sing.” Amira said nothing.
“The third daughter,” I said, “is Waipunarangi. She goes with her grandmother to visit all the waters: the oceans, the lakes, the rivers, and Papatuanuku teaches her how the water spills down from the heavens, from Ranginui, the sky father, into those oceans and lakes and rivers, and how it’s carried back up to him on the mist, into the clouds, so it can come down again. Waipunarangi teaches us that if we give to others, the kindness comes back to us, over and over again. I’d say that’s your mum, because that’s how she gives. Like how she helps you when you’re sick.”
“Thank you,” Laila said quietly, and I held her a bit tighter.
“Is there one about me?” Amira asked.
“I think so,” I said. “See what you think of this. The next two daughters are twins, Waiti and Waita. They know about being a team, so together, they can care for the smallest and fastest creatures. What do you think those are?”
“Rabbits,” Yasmin said.
“Birds,” Amira said.
“Insects,” I said. “Bees are small, and so are ants. They work together, all of them focused on one goal, and they can do awesome things. Bees do dances for each other to say where the flowers are, and then they all fly there and pollinate the flowers so the plants can grow. Ants build huge tunnel cities under the ground, and carry things that are so heavy, they’d be like you carrying a giant rock.”
“Like superheroes,” Amira said.
“Definitely,” I said. “When you see Waiti and Waita in the sky, you remember to join together and support each other, the way you two do, because you’re twins, too.”
“But that’s still notme,”Amira said.
“Ah,” I said. “You’re the last sister, maybe. Ururangi, who likes to race all her sisters to get to her grandmother first, because she’s so excited. She wraps herself in her grandmother’s arms and asks for her favorite stories, and she loves to hear them. When we see her in the sky, she reminds us that you have to believe and have enthusiasm and try your hardest to succeed. If you can’t read as well as you want to, you can try hard to learn, and if you want to run faster, you can practice that, too. If you try hard, you can always get better.”
“That’s a nice story,” Amira said. “I like the sisters.” She finally sounded sleepy, at least. Yasmin, I thought, had already fallen asleep, because somebody was snoring a little, and it wasn’t Laila. Of course, it could have been Long John.
“And that’s everybody but the mum,” I said. “Matariki. She does what all good parents do. She encourages her kids to use their special gifts and do their very best. That’s why she shines the brightest, because she has so much love in her heart.” I gave Laila another squeeze with my arm, then lifted up and kissed her cheek, beyond the thick plait that fell over her shoulder.
She made a motion with her hand as if she were brushing away a fly, but it fell to the duvet again, because she was asleep.
46
PERMUTATIONS
Laila
I arrived with Lachlan on Sunday to the most bizarre family barbecue ever, feeling a little guilty. Lachlan had checked in with his sisters and mum the day before, and I hadn’t checked in with my dad since Wednesday night. Of course, the girls had still been ill all day yesterday, featuring ravenous downing of rice and applesauce and toast and claims of, “I feel better!” interspersed with bouts of sickness. By the time they’d fallen asleep in their own beds last night and actually stayed asleep, all I’d wanted to do was fall across the bed myself. In my clothes.
Lachlan had gone for groceries and sick-kid supplies on Saturday morning and again for takeaway pizza on Saturday night, during which time I’d once again scrubbed down the bathroom before taking another disinfecting shower. When I’d come out of there in my decidedly unsexy normal dressing gown, he’d been finishing scrubbing down the kitchen.
“Better to do this, too,” he’d told me. “Heaps of surfaces in here to pick up that virus.” And that was all. He’d eaten said pizza with me, then, both of us staring at a stupid comedy on TV and barely taking it in. After that, he’d taken his own shower at his place, changed to a T-shirt and rugby shorts, and come back to climb in bed with me again. And, naturally, I’d already been asleep.
It had been so comforting, though, when I’d woken in the night and felt his solid, warm presence beside me, that I’d just rolled over and gone to sleep again, and hadn’t even thought any of the,What are you doing?sorts of things that one might be expected to think in this situation.
“This probably wasn’t the way you were planning on sleeping with me,” I’d told him this morning while he was helping me make the bed, which we hadnothad to share with my daughters. “But thank you. It’s not enough to say, but … thank you.”
“Nah,” he said. “I was happy to do it.”
“Lachlan.” I tried to laugh, but wanted to cry instead. Have you ever had so much emotion, you can’t even feel it anymore? That was where I was, as if my circuits had blown out. “You can’t have been happy to do it.”
When he looked up, his face was harder than I’d seen it for days. Since that confrontation with my dad, in fact. “Why not?” he asked. “Because I’m not capable of caring for somebody? Loving somebody?”
“No!” I said. “Of course not.” I pressed a hand to my forehead and sighed. “Sorry. I’m just …” And there I went. Weepy again. I did not have a terrible life! I had agoodlife! Why couldn’t I remember that? Or maybe it was that this part of itwasgood, and it had never been before, and I wanted it too much. Like I said—I couldn’t tell.
