Page 53 of Kiwi Sin
It was exciting, and it was terrifying. Nobody chose your wife for you, for one thing, and even if you did find a girl you liked, somehow or other, by yourself, and managed to … ask her, because that was what you did here, she didn’t have to marry you. She could say no, which meant you had to go find somebody else and try to like her that much.
And you had relations first, before you even asked her to marry you. That one, I still couldn’t get over.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know it happened. Some blokes bothered unmarried girls at Mount Zion. It wasn’t a good thing, though. It was a shameful thing, and if I’d seen it, I’d stopped it, because that was what any decent man would do. How could I bother some girl like that myself? Especially if she was meant to be the girl I would love?
It was called “having sex,” here, or other things. It wasn’t that I didn’t know the words. I’d heard the others say them, even at Mount Zion. And since then? It was in those books, and even if it hadn’t been—it was all some blokes ever talked about.
It wasn’t something that was right to tell other men about, though, I was sure of that. You didn’t describe a girl’s body like that, or talk about the things you’d done together. The things you’d donetoeach other. Or the things you wished you could do. I didn’t want to have those thoughts. The problem was, when the others talked, the pictures stayed there in my mind, even if I tried to shut my ears.
Oriana was still focusing fiercely on her driving. She looked pretty as a flower garden in midsummer, as always, in loose trousers like a bell-shaped skirt and a gauzy buttoned shirt that outlined her figure in a way I tried not to notice. She’d been the prettiest girl at Mount Zion, with the sweetest smile, the prettiest mouth, the softest skin, and the nicest … curves, and she’d had the gentlest hands with the babies, too. When I’d looked at her even then, I’d known I had to stop looking, or I’d be having lustful thoughts. And now? Now, it was worse.
Before she’d run away, I’d hoped that when the Prophet chose her husband, he’d choose me, and had known he wouldn’t. Even though I wasn’t really her cousin, it was still too close to wrong. She was soft and sweet, though, and she needed a husband who’d be kind to her. Or maybe that was the Devil talking and that was just my excuse, because I wanted her.
Now, she’d be the one choosing, which was right. I could see that. Marriage made too big a difference to a woman, and forcing them to be with a cruel husband, or a careless one, had never sat right. Girls didn’t choose out here, though, until they were older. Until they were nearly thirty, or even older than that, whereas a woman in Mount Zion would have six or eight kids already by then, and her husband might have become one of the Elders if he had mana enough. When he’d be running his own construction crew, no certificate or school necessary, because he’d been doing this work for twenty years now, and he knew how.
And when he’d be going to bed every night with his wife, undressing in the dark and hearing the rustle of cotton as she did the same, then pulling back the blankets and sliding in beside her, feeling her hand come out to touch him on the shoulder, to tell him that she was glad to be going to bed, too.
Kissing her lips.
There the thoughts were again, no matter how I tried to push them away. Oriana said, “It’s in here,” and pulled into a brightly lit drive.Emergency,the sign said.
“Thought this was for broken legs and all,” I said, because I needed to say something.
“It is,” she said. “And for this as well.” She was pulling smoothly into a carpark, slotting herself neatly in between two larger cars. Oriana was good at physical things. Cooking. Sport.
Dancing.
We’d had music nights sometimes at Mount Zion, for a treat. The married couples would dance together, but not too close, because intimacy was private, and the girls would dance with their friends and laugh and look pretty.
The boys and unmarried men? We’d watch.
When I climbed out of the little car, I saw that I hadn’t been successful on the non-blood-dripping. There was heaps of blood now on my shirt and trousers, and blood on the seat, too. I said, swallowing to keep the sick down, “I should’ve asked for a towel. I’ll clean the car for you tomorrow.”
“Gabriel,” she said, and laughed. A little breathlessly, and all the way sweetly. “It’s not your fault that you cut yourself. I’ll clean it for you.”
I would have answered, but I was getting a bit wonky.
She said, “Are you all right?” Then, more sharply, “Gabriel! You’re weaving. How much blood did you lose?”
“I … I’m all right,” I tried to say. “I don’t … like blood. Sometimes. Normally, I’m … fine. I’m fine now. Fine.”
This could not be happening. I wasn’t going to pass out because I’d cut my hand on acan!What was she going to think?
“Here.” She was beside me, pulling my uninjured hand across her shoulders. “Lean on me, and you’ll be all right. Only a few steps. Nearly there.”
She walked beside me, her arm around my waist, all the way into A&E. When we got there, she sat me down in a chair and marched off to the desk by herself as if she did it every day, and then she came back with a towel, wrapped my hand in it, held it above my head, heedless of the blood she was getting on her pretty pale-green shirt, sat beside me still holding my hand up, and said, “I heard you’ve been studying at night to get your certification. That must be hard work. Going to classes, too. Is it … all right, the classes? I always feel left behind at school, honestly, because it’s all things I haven’t learnt. The things the rest of them already know, I mean. You’re so clever at building, though, so maybe it’s not the same. You probably know more than all ofthem.”
She made me feel, somehow, like things had tipped back the right way again, and I was the man I wanted to be. Strong. Sure. She was pressed up beside me to hold up my arm, and looking me straight in the face for once, her own pretty face, with its gentle brown eyes, the honey-colored skin and soft mouth, the faint spatter of freckles on her cheekbones and nose, open and innocent and trusting.
I thought,Stop it. She’s not yours, you can’t ask her to be, and there’s nobody else you can ask for her, either.And wondered once again—
How did you do this, get a woman to like you enough to marry you, when it was all down to you?
How?
21
NEW ROAD, NEW RULES
