Page 50 of Kiwi Sin
She didn’t sound anxious. She just sounded interested. Priya always got her equilibrium back before I did. Even this palatial old house, high on a hill and looking out on Dunedin city, Otago Harbour, and the Otago Peninsula beyond, hadn’t rocked her much for a girl who’d lived her entire life with no idea at all of “private spaces.”
Your private space at Mount Zion wasn’t three floors of enormous rooms with stone fireplaces and crystal chandeliers and rich, jewel-toned carpets, not to mention a kitchen that could have fed twenty. It was your bed cubicle, with its single drawer beneath for your extra set of clothes, your caps and aprons. Until you were married at sixteen, and your private space became your marital bed in the room assigned to you. Or not exactly, because you shared that with your husband. Your children’s bed cubicles were added to that room, one by one, year after year.
There’d be beds then, and heaps of them. A table, too, though not for eating. And that was just about it. Laundry, cooking, dining, bathing, child-rearing, teaching? All of that was done in the communal space, and that space, like your room, was owned by Mount Zion. The very clothes in your drawer belonged to the community, and so did your work. You gave to the community, many hours a day and seven days a week, and in return, the community supported you.
I knew it was wrong, but it was so much simpler. And it was what Iknew.
People thought the biggest shock, leaving Mount Zion and coming Outside, would be something like the clothes, or that you could marry the person you chose. In fact, the biggest shock was … everything. Every day. The noise of the city, and the anonymity. Nobody watching you, but nobody knowing you or looking out for you, either. The completely foreign idea that you could have a house like this, or you could have no home at all, and that it was down to you to house yourself. The idea that you could choose how to behave, what to wear, what to do with your day, even your very name. The idea that a woman was equal to a man, and could speak freely to him. Coulddisagreewith him. That sheshouldspeak freely to him. That she shouldlookat him, and judge him.
Daisy and her twin, Dorian, seemed so easy with life Outside, it was hard to believe they’d ever been as rattled by it as I was. Daisy wasn’t afraid of anything, while it seemed sometimes that I was afraid ofeverything.Including Poppy’s house, and the idea that I could relax here, could even stretch out on one of the comfortable couches in the lounge and watch a movie instead of cleaning her bathrooms, because you weren’t required to stay busy and productive Outside. That I should help myself to the endless amounts of food in the fridge, instead of giving it a good clean-out. There was, of course, no eating between meals at Mount Zion, not that it would have occurred to anybody but the boldest boys to try.
I knew that my favorite part of Outside should be exactly that. The freedom. Freedom to say what I liked, to look at whomever I pleased. To go to school and work in the garden at home—at Gray’s, rather—or with the babies for Laila instead of filling my days with whatever rotation I’d been assigned to: cooking for hundreds in the kitchens, taking care of babies in the nursery, cleaning endless bathrooms. Or my least favorite: the drudgery that was a day spent in the enormous laundry, dragging heavy loads of cotton garments from washers to dryers, then ironing until my face was red, my hair curled into spirals under my cap, and the sweat soaked my dress under my apron.
Obedience was a value in Mount Zion. It was more than that. It was avirtue.And it was what I’d always been. Obedient, and safe in knowing I was.
I didlike my job, and the babysitting, and the gardening, so much better than those chore rotations. The truth was, though, that the decisions Outside were endless. All day, every day, you were deciding, and often, you didn’t even know what was the right thing to do. It was sotiring.Maybe that was why almost my favorite part of Outside, other than the babies and the animals and the garden, was still movies. Everything was perfect on the screen, not confusing and messy and involving so many choices that I didn’t know how to make, and everybodylookedperfect, too. I studied films like they were historical documents, searching for clues about how to look, how to act, how tofeel.
Also, I could knit while I watched TV, which meant that I didn’t feel like somebody would give me a hiding at any moment for being so useless. Just now, I was knitting something that I wouldn’t sell. It was a blanket for Poppy’s new baby, in a beautiful sage green with a ribbed edging made of a blend of white merino and angora. Buddy, Poppy’s black-and-white dog, wasn’t curled on the couch beside me, but only because he’d gone off to bed with Poppy’s eldest, Hamish.
Dogs not only lived in the house here, they sometimes got on the furniture, too. I was only surprised they didn’t sit at the table at mealtime. When I’d checked on the kids half an hour earlier, Buddy had raised his head from his spot curled up at the foot of Hamish’s bed and tapped his tail at me as if to say, “Hello. Nice to see you. How’re you going?” I could almost hear his squeaky little voice saying it, like an animal in a fairy-tale movie.
And then there was Priya, who’d pounced on the idea of trousers and red underthings like she reallywasthe Jezebel the Prophet had warned us about, and who couldn’t wait to start school again. At the moment, she was curled up on the couch in those jeans, watching a fairy-tale movie.Cinderella,because it was my favorite, and I was older and got to choose.
Even fairy-tale movies could be scary, which was why I lovedCinderellabest. AfterBeauty and the BeastandFrozenboth,I’d shivered in bed remembering the red glow of the wolves’ eyes, their slinking bodies and snarls and the way they gathered themselves to spring. And the even worse thing: people being chased, and caught, and locked up. In cages, sometimes, alone and helpless.
I knew about people being chased and locked up. I didn’t see how it could be fun to imagine, or fun to feel scared, either, but people Outside must love it, or why was it in every film? Then there were the other movies, the ones thatweren’tmeant for kids, where people reallywererunning from somebody who was chasing them and wanting to hurt them, or where they were taking off their clothes and sinning with people who weren’t their husband or wife, in front of a camera. I tried not to watch those anymore, not since that night with Gabriel. It seemed too dangerous, stirring feelings I was trying not to have.
Priya didn’t need to know about that, though. My older sisters knew I was timid, but with Priya, I could be the older one, the brave one, the one who knew things, Priya’s comfort and guide at school. Now, I told her, “It’s New Year’s Eve, so the big part is at midnight. People dance and drink too much champagne and kiss each other like mad when the clock strikes midnight. Exactly likeCinderella,except it lasts longer, because you don’t have to leave when the clock strikes, so they stay and stay. And theydon’twake up early the next morning. People Outside don’t have cows. Most of them don’t even have chooks, and heaps of them don’t have kids, because of birth control and … and pursuing your dreams, and all that. They don’t care about having meals at the right time, and at the weekend, they sleep as late as they like. They don’t mind if you fall asleep, either, babysitting, if they stay out late.”
I actually had no idea about New Year’s Eve, of course, but itseemedlike it would beCinderella,with the dancing and midnight and all. As for the champagne and kissing, I’d seen it in a film that had New Year’s Eve in it.
Fortunately, Ididknow about babysitting, because I still did as much of it as I possibly could, new job or no, knitting business or no. I wished I had the courage to tell Daisy, who’d gone to all this trouble to get us out so we could be educated and have all those choices, and who was so sure about everything, that I didn’t like school. I loved my job, but it was temporary, and you couldn’t support yourself all the way by gardening. Men did the heavy work here, exactly like Mount Zion, and for anything else, for growing flowers, or vegies, or growing an alpaca herd, you needed land. Land cost money, and I couldn’t live with Daisy and Gray forever. That was another thing you didn’t do, Outside: stay with your family once you were grown. So that was gardening out for me.
I wasn’t clever, except maybe with my hands and with kids, and another year of struggling with things I’d never learnt, of being prodded to speak up after a lifetime of being told to be quiet, was so hard to face. And what came after it—yet another year of school, and then university? That felt impossible, and like such a waste, when I could be working.
I’ll be doing it for Priya,I reminded myself, but it didn’t help that much.
Priya was the one staring at me at the moment, though, and I tried to remember what we’d been talking about. Oh. New Year’s Eve, andCinderella.There was no television at Mount Zion, of course. No computers. No worldly picture books for kids, and no worldly music of the kind that everybody around me played on their headphones endlessly, so you couldn’t talk to them even if you’d had the courage. Definitely no fairy tales, with rebellion against your parents and kisses to break the evil spell. When I’d first got out and learnt about all of that, it had felt like I’d see the Devil at any moment, prancing in on his woolly legs and his cloven hooves, grinning out of the black mask of his face as he came to join the festivities.
“You mean Poppy and … and Matiu will kiss each other?” Priya asked. “Inpublic?”
“You’ve seen that already,” I pointed out.
“Not with people withfamilies.Not when they’re not at home.”
“Well, yeh, they will,” I said. “And they haven’t been married long. They lived in this house for nearly two years before being married, the same way Gray and Daisy are doing. Sleeping in the same bed and all, and making a baby. You don’t have to be married, Outside, to have relations with somebody. You don’t have to wait at all, and you can have relations with anybody.” I tried to say it airily, the way Daisy did, but it didn’t work.
“Oh,” Priya said faintly. “I just thought Daisy was … fallen.”
“No,” I said. “It’s normal here to kiss men. All different ones. Besides, Daisy says women have needs, too.”
It wasn’t often I felt worldly. This world went too fast for me, or I went too slowly for it. I just couldn’t seem to adjust, and if it was normal to kiss all sorts of men, or boys, or even to hold their hands, I hadn’t reached “normal” yet. It seemed normal for other people, though.
A voice piped up from the staircase. It was Olivia, Poppy’s five-year-old daughter, saying, “Mummy and Matiu kiss all the time.Everywhere.Like this.”
She danced into the room in her pink nightdress making kissing noises, and Laila’s daughter Amira, who’d come downstairs with her, giggled and said, “No, they don’t. Kissing is private!”
Olivia said, “It isnot.”
