Page 81 of Kiwi Sin
She sat absolutely still. She was silent for so long, in fact, I thought I’d overstepped. I thought I’d misinterpreted. I thought everything. Then she said, “Really?” and clasped her hands between her knees as if they weren’t entirely steady.
I wanted to take her hand, but I couldn’t, because I still didn’t know for sure. I said, “I wanted to ask the Prophet for you, back in Mount Zion. I knew he’d say no, though, because you’re my cousin, and because asking would be setting myself above his wisdom. But you’re not my cousin, not by blood, and I’ve been in love with you for ages. For years. I couldn’t help it. If you’d been promised to Valor, I was going to ask you to …”Now or never.“To run away with me,” I finished. “I couldn’t think of any other way to keep you safe.”
She put her hands to her face, and I realized they were shaking. I said in alarm, “Oriana. No. If you don’t want it, if you don’t want me, if you can’t love anybody from Mount Zion, if it’s too soon, and you’re too young, and you want to … to do the things young people do here. Whatever it is, you can tell me. I know you’re too young, Outside. I know people here don’t do it like this, and I don’t know when the right time is, or how to ask, but I need to ask anyway. That doesn’t mean you have to say yes. Both people have to choose each other, or it doesn’t work.”
She turned her face to me, then, and said, her voice shaking all over the place, “Of course I choose you. Of course I do.”
It took a moment to sink in, and I knew why she’d had her hands over her face. I couldn’t control my own face, and I also felt like I could float away.
“Really?” I asked, feeling tongue-tied. Feeling stupid.
“Yes,” she said.“Yes.”And smiled her radiant smile. She was the sun, and she wasn’t. She was the moon, because her light would always be gentle, but the power of that gentleness could pull the tides.
“Oh,” she said. “Except that I don’t know what you’re asking. I mean, I realize it may not be about … about marriage, like I thought. It may be going out. Being my … my boyfriend. Or whatever.” She tried to laugh, and then she had her hands over her face again. “This is so embarrassing,” she said from behind them. “So … so scary. I don’t know whether I can … what to hope for. Or how to do things. How to be a girlfriend.”
“Oriana. No.” Now, I did take her hand. I took it away from her face and held it, and she turned into me like a sunflower. I put my arm around her, the same way I had on that evening with Valor, and completely differently. Now, it wasn’t just protection I was offering. It was love, and I could give it, because she wanted it. Her head was on my shoulder, her hand was still in mine, and there was almost too much feeling there to speak. I said, “I want to marry you. I want to make you happy. Being with you, having you make a home for us, the way you do—that would be everything. That would be all I could want. I don’t know how, either, on any of it, but I reckon we can try.”
She nodded against my shoulder, then pulled away and looked up at me, her eyes shining, and said, “That’s what I want, too. And I don’t believe it’s wrong to want that. I don’t. If it’s not wrong to wait to get married until you’re thirty, and to have relations with different people before that, how can it be wrongnotto do those things? Why isn’t it just a different choice?”
“It is,” I said. “It can be. I’m bad at words, but I’m good at … at knowing. And I do know. I’m sure. You need to finish school, I understand that, and you probably have plans after that, too. I can work with your plans. I just couldn’t go any longer without asking.”
“And I couldn’t go any longer without telling,” she said. “That I love you. If it’s wrong, I’m wrong, and I’m going to stay wrong. I love you, and that’s all.”
33
FIVE FLAMES
Gabriel
I woke to the alarm at five-thirty the next morning, just like always, and I didn’t. That is, I didn’t roll out of bed immediately as I’d done all my life. I lay there a minute more, remembered that Oriana wanted me, too, and felt the spreading joy of that flowing like warm water through my veins.
That’s not a good enough way to describe it, but I didn’t have a good way to describe it. I just knew that when I’d gone to bed last night, my prayers had been different.
Gratitude mattered, but you couldn’t thank God for pleasure without thanking him for pain, maybe. I’d gone through my life set on “medium,” but ever since I’d walked through Mount Zion’s gates, I’d been set on five flames. It was like my senses had sharpened, or maybe like I’d walked through life before this half-asleep. It wasn’t comfortable living on five flames, but it was definitely living.
Right. If you don’t get up and get to work, though, you’re going to be living without your job.I threw my bright-green sheets and light-purple duvet off me and rolled out of bed, then stopped stock-still, because what I’d just flashed on … it wasn’t my bedroom, with its dingy not-white-anymore walls and its terrible metal window frame. It was that blanket Oriana had knitted out of alpaca wool. The six colors of it in big, contrasting blocks, all of it ready to be pulled over you when the night got chilly. When you were in bed.
I always feel cold, otherwise, even when it’s warm, without somebody to … to touch,she’d said. After that, she’d cut my hair, her face a mask of concentration, her clever hands wielding comb and scissors as if this mattered. Standing in front of me, between my legs, because there was no other way for her to reach me, and I’d been looking at her breasts in that yellow dress, at the curve of her waist and the swell of her hips. I couldn’t have avoided seeing them without closing my eyes, and I wasn’t closing my eyes. I’d had to fold my hands in my lap, and it had been all I could do to control my breathing.
Best haircut of my life.
Get dressed.I did, and I made breakfast, too, in the not-quite-as-dirty kitchen, since I’d been able to do the washing-up properly at last once the stitches were out. And then I washed up the frying pan, hoped the others would wash it after they used it, knew they wouldn’t, climbed into the ute, and went to work.
Saturday. A short day. Done by three. My dad was helping us today, because we were only a couple of weeks from that deadline now, and I didn’t see how we’d get it done without more help, now that Gray had sacked Valor. I could come in tomorrow, on Sunday, to finish the wiring, but …
I’d wanted to kiss Oriana last night. I hadn’t, partly exactly because of Valor, who’d touched her when she hadn’t wanted it, and partly because she’d said, “Laila will be home any minute,” in a distracted sort of way, and I’d guessed that meant, “And it wouldn’t be right for her to find me out here with you when I’m supposed to be watching her kids.”
After that, though, she’d said, “I’m telling you that because I want you to kiss me. I’m afraid I may be … fallen. Maybe Gray and Daisy are sinning,reallysinning, after all. Maybe that’s why I have too many thoughts. I need to say it, because you need to know it.” And looked up at me, even though I could tell it was costing her an effort. In her pink shirt, with her soft hair and soft mouth and that tremble under the surface of her skin.
I’d wanted her so much, I’d thought I’d burst into flames.
I’d said, “I have thoughts, too.”
“You do?”
“Yeh. About you, and about … I’ve seen some things now. I’m not sure how real they are. I’ve tried not to put you into the stories, but sometimes, it happens anyway.” It was confession time, apparently.
“You mean …” Her cheeks were pinker now, and she had her hands up by her face again. “It’s a sin, though. For both of us.”
