Page 5 of Kiwi Sin
“Looks like they’ve got somebody caring for them,” she said. “Show me your car, because you’re getting into it. Seems you were a hero, because I saw that happen. Time to sit down and let somebody else take a turn to be the hero for a while, and here I am volunteering, if only with water. Besides, you’re going to draw a crowd of your own if we let you stand about here half-naked, looking like that. Like a film star, aren’t you.” And smiled again.
I breathed easier once the doctor turned up. He was the one who’d taken Raphael and Radiance, so there I was, with my brother again. Raphael looked bloody shocked to see me with my shirt off, as if I’d walked through the gates of Mount Zion and immediately descended into nakedness and sin, and for another confused moment, I wanted to laugh. My brain didn’t know what direction to go here, and that was the truth.
The doctor told us that the pregnant woman seemed OK, so that was the worst thing set to rights. He smeared some stuff on my back and put dressings on, and the sting lessened. Pity I still didn’t have a shirt, that people were still staring at me, and that I had to speak to the police like that when they arrived.
Eventually, the ambos came, and they put Susannah on a stretcher. She took my hand and kissed it when I said goodbye, which was possibly the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me, but then the ambulance doors closed behind her and the husband, the towies got to work on the wrecks, and it was over.
And Drew and I drove on to Dunedin.
So, you see, I left Mount Zion, and I burned.
The wages of sin, possibly.
* * *
Oriana
It was late afternoon by the time we drove back to Dunedin. Honor, Gray’s mum, had wanted us to spend the night, but Frankie had said, “I can’t be this close to Mount Zion right now. I have to get out.” Her eyes looked sunken in her bruised face, and she was moving stiffly, because she’d been whipped with Gilead’s belt, so much harder than our dad did even in the worst of his anger. I’d seen the raised red wheals on her buttocks, her thighs, and they were awful.
I’d learnt things today that I’d never wanted to know, and I’d thought I knew all about Mount Zion. Maybe it was seeing it again after the contrast of being Outside all these weeks. Maybe it was seeing my dad again, the rage and contempt on his face, or, worse, seeing my mum, seeming to have shrunk even further into the tiny frame that declared her Indian heritage, all the expression wiped from her face, standing so small, holding Dove’s hand. Dove, who was the youngest of us, who got scared sometimes like me, and who was years away from being able to leave.
Or maybe it was seeing our sister Prudence, halfway to the gate, standing straight, her arms at her sides, watching Frankie go. Not even fifteen, which meant more than a year before she’d be able to walk through the gates herself, and she had to know she’d be punished tonight. She’d got Frankie out when she’d been locked into Gilead’s room, interfering between a husband and wife, and she’d pay the price for that. In the Punishment Hut, and worse.
Leaving them behind felt so bad.
I shivered, sitting in the warmth of the big ute behind Daisy and Gray, holding Frankie’s hand. She was asleep, her head on a pillow squashed against the side window, and wearing clothes Daisy had brought for her from Dunedin, because this time, we hadn’t burnt her cap and apron in Gray’s firepit. We’d burnt her dress.
The clothes were soft things, because she hurt. She’d been given pain tablets in hospital, and she said they helped, but I wasn’t sure what you did about the pain in your heart.
I wasn’t tough, not like my sisters. Would I have risked what Prudence had to get Frankie out? I longed to think the answer was yes, but I wasn’t one bit sure it was true.
A person could change, though, couldn’t she? I’d left Mount Zion, and if I’d thought sometimes, in the dark hours before dawn when I couldn’t sleep, that it would be easier just to go back there, not to have to make all these terrifying adjustments—well, today had shown me why that wasn’t possible. What had happened to Frankie, and to Daisy before her, with Gilead—that was evil. The Prophet said evil was Outside, but I thought it was in that room where Gilead had locked Frankie, where he’d hurt her. In the dark, cold, stinking Punishment Hut, where both Daisy and Frankie had spent too many days and nights.
It couldn’t be right to be treated like that just for wanting to be a person, and it couldn’t be right to hurt the person you’d promised to love and cherish, either.
And my name wasn’t Obedience anymore.
3
BEEFBURGERS
Gabriel
When Drew announced, not even two hours out from the accident site, “Cup of tea, I reckon,” then glanced at me, pulled to a stop outside a small, tidy building in a tiny settlement, and added, “and lunch,” I balked.
Yesterday, I’d worked fourteen hours. Today, I’d worked none. I didn’t need rest, I didn’t need food, and I especially didn’t need Drew paying for something else before I’d even got a chance to start work. When I did those runs with my dad, we took sandwiches and a thermos flask, but I’d seen the price lists in the windows of cafés. How many hours’ pay wouldtwoof those meals amount to? I had no idea how much you got paid Outside.
“I’m not wearing a shirt,” I pointed out.And I don’t know how to act,I didn’t say. That was the weakness talking, and the pain of those burns. Not too badly blistered, the doctor had said, so the pain shouldn’t be bothering me, except that it was my entire back, and I’d had to rest at least some part of it against the seat. That must be it, because Ididknow how to act. Ihadbeen out all those times with my dad, and nobody had stared.
They’d stare at me if I wasn’t wearing ashirt.
Drew said, “Easily fixed.” He pulled off his own shirt, a flimsy, short-sleeved gray thing that provided wholly inadequate cover. It had a small triangle printed on the chest.Adidas,the lettering below it read. What were Adidas? He handed it over. “We’re about the same size.”
“I can’t take your shirt,” I said. This was awkward. More than awkward. Also, without the shirt, I could see that he was even more fit than I’d thought. Men Outside definitely weren’t soft, or at least not all of them were, because Gray had looked this fit as well.
“Nah,” Drew said. “I’ve got a jacket. And a hat. Good anyway, as it’s started to rain. And that soft shirt will be easier on the burns.” He pulled on the jacket and zipped it up. The hat wasn’t much use for keeping rain off, because it had no brim at all other than in the front. Once he had it on, he climbed down from the car and said, “You coming, or planning to have a sook in the car? Nobody’s going to bite, mate. Better eat now, while you have the chance of it, because once we get home, we’ll be mobbed,” and grinned at me as if nothing out of the way had happened.
I climbed out and dashed through the rain with him. No choice, though I still felt half-naked. I was showing nearly all of my arms, and the shirt was much too snug across the chest and shoulders for modesty.
