Page 22 of Kiwi Sin
“Good on ya,” Gray said, “but I reckon you’d be wise to try a complaint first. After that, once everybody’s on notice?” He grinned. “Go for it.” He told the rest of us, “Self-defense lessons.”
“You taught her to hurt men,” Dad said, his voice not exactly condemning, but not approving, either.
“Men who are trying to hurt her,” Gray said, his eyes steely now.
Daisy said, “Gray didn’t teach her, though he played the part of attack dummy. He’s the best at that, because he’s so fast, he’s hard to hurt. But no. He didn’t teach her.Itaught her.”
Raphael said, “Youtriedto hurt him?” Radiance offered a hesitant comment I didn’t quite hear, Frankie’s voice rose in response, sounding as if her very vocal cords were tightening, and beside me, I felt Oriana stiffening in the same way. She and I were perched with Harmony on bar stools in front of the kitchen bench.
“Did Daisy teach you, too?” I asked Oriana quietly.
“She offered,” Oriana said. “But I …” She stopped.
“What?” I asked.
She hesitated so long, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. “I’ll try again later. It’s just that when violent things start to happen, I … don’t react right.”
“How?” I pressed. “What’s ‘right,’ anyway? You can run or fight, and there’s no shame in choosing to run.”
“But I don’t do either one,” she said. “I just sort of freeze, and my mind goes away, and after that, I feel shaky for ages. But I’ll try again later,” she assured me. “I don’t want to be a coward.”
That was all the time we had to talk, but it was better than the past times we’d done a lunch like this. I’d at least sharedwordswith her, even though the words bothered me for days.
If she was afraid I’d think less of her for not wanting to learn to fight, though? On Sunday, I wouldn’t wait until last to ask her about the ute. I’d ask her first. It would be better for her to think her opinion mattered, wouldn’t it?
I was going to do it, and never mind that it wouldn’t be easy, because she still wouldn’t look me in the eye. That was because she went to a girls’ school and lived with her sisters, and I worked with dozens of men. We both needed the practice.
Car colors. Neutral question. Perfect opportunity.
9
THE SIN OF PRIDE
Oriana
On a Sunday morning in late May, I could practically feel winter coming at the door when Daisy blew into the yurt with Gray and Xena, Gray’s Labrador, on a swirl of cold wind. I was fixing two pans of hasselback potatoes, enough to feed fourteen, slicing agrias almost all the way through and as thin as I could, then brushing the slices with melted butter and garlic before baking them. They’d come out beautiful as fans, the outside of each wafer golden-crisp and the inside fluffy and starchy, perfect with the enormous pans of browned lamb chunks, parsnips, carrots, and onions that were already in the oven, cooking slowly and getting tender. Even more tender thanks to the entire bottle of red wine I’d stirred in there, which didn’t taste sour and sharp when it was cooked with the meat like that.
Wine did something special to meat, because of chemistry. The tannins, Daisy had explained, softened the fat in the meat, which released more of the flavor, and the fat made the wine taste smoother and more like fruit. It would probably never be on an exam, but it was a thing I knew. Also, the alcohol cooked off, so it wasn’t sinful.
I’d do green beans, too, at the last minute, and Aunt Constance was making the sweet, which was an apple custard crumble in shortcrust pastry. She’d taken some of Gray’s Ballarat apples for it, because they were the most flavorful and went so tender when they cooked, and when she’d told me about the recipe, I’d wanted to be the one making that, too. The recipe said to use prepared custard, but it would taste so much better if you made it yourself, rich and creamy and vanilla-scented. I could also make extra for people to pour over their portions, and put it in the pretty little blown-glass pitcher I’d bought at the farmer’s market last month, which I kept on the bedside table in my room. The first thing I’d bought just because I wanted it, even though I didn’t need it. I was saving every dollar I could, but I’d wanted a pretty thing to look at, and to stick flowers in.
Do you want to do all that because you like to cook, or because you want to impress people? Especially Gabriel?It wouldn’t make sense, because people didn’t see cooking as impressive, and I tried not to think of Gabriel at all.
I’d read about “a schoolgirl crush” in a book. That must be what I had, because Iwasa schoolgirl now, even though I’d have been married for months in Mount Zion. And even though it was Gabriel, who wasn’t just beautiful, he was strong and kind and quiet as well. On the day he’d left Mount Zion, he’d saved somebody who would’ve burnt to death otherwise. He’d burnt himself in the process, and had never said anything about it. Gray had found out because Gabriel hadn’t been able to work much the first week, and had told the rest of us at the first of our monthly family lunches.
Gabriel hadn’t said anything when Gray had told us. He’d looked down at his plate instead, because he was embarrassed, so clearly waiting until people stopped talking about it, not thinking that he was a hero.
Even if Ihaddone the apple custard crumble as well as the rest of this dinner, it wasn’t going to make me a hero. Cooking was my best skill, but it wasn’t special. It was just something women did, like laundry and cleaning bathrooms and having babies.
Not everybody did it Outside, though, or they did it in fast ways that didn’t taste very good, which meant that if you did it especially well, they noticed, and they thanked you for it and, possibly,werea bit impressed.
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty soul before a fall.
Was it so wrong, though, to be proud that you’d made something delicious to feed your family, if youknewthat it wasn’t pulling people out of burning cars and you weren’t pretending it was? It wasn’t as if I went around being proud of myself in a general way. I wasn’t doing as badly in school now, but nobody was going to make me Head Girl anytime soon, or anytimeever.
Frankie was right. Cooking and gardening and babies. And cleaning bathrooms. That was what I had, not computer … engineering, or whatever it was. Frankie and I were on different paths, the kind that take you farther away from each other the longer you walk.
Things were a bit easier between the two of us now all the same, after that bad day when she’d told me to go away. She’d said on the bus home from school that afternoon, blurting the words out abruptly, as if she’d steeled herself to say them, “Petra says I was cruel. To you. That I was cruel to you.”
