Page 69 of Kiwi Sin
“Yeh, I did. But …” I struggled to get the ideas out. I’d never been asked for my ideas, and I’d had no practice expressing them. “Some of the things that are important here in order to be … to be respected, are the same as at Mount Zion. Working hard, for one thing. Doing what you say you will. Doing your job well, so people trust you. That’s what Daisy does. It’s what Gray does, too. He’s working again today, after working so hard every day this week. He works harder even than people at Mount Zion. And that’s why he’s hired the men from there, too. Because they know how to work hard. Look at … look at Gabriel.” I felt the red creeping up my cheeks, and went on anyway. In for a penny, in for a pound. “He’s in charge of the job, even though he’s not the eldest. That’s because of the way Uncle Aaron is, and the wayheis.”
Priya flashed back, “I know you’re madly in love with Gabriel, and you think he’s perfect. Everybody knows. It’s obvious. That’s why you’re so nervous about making dinner, isn’t it? Because he’s coming?”
“I don’t …” I tried to say.
“All the girls at Mount Zion looked at Gabriel, any time they could get away with it,” Priya reminded me, as if I could’ve forgotten. “Everybody hoped they’d be joined with him, because everybody knew it was past time. We all wondered what the Prophet was waiting for.Whohe was waiting for. For somebody to turn sixteen, but who? Well, that’s obvious now, isn’t it? Patience. Why else would Uncle Aaron have taken her to live with them? For Aunt Constance to train her to be his wife. It may not work, though, because I think girls here must wish the same thing, and they don’t have to wait to be joined. They have relations with men all the time and dress in sexy ways and talk to them andaskthem to have relations, probably, and you don’t do any of that. So he’s got Patience, and he’s got sexy girls, and he gets to choose whoever he wants now. Why would you be in love with somebody who doesn’t want to marry you? What’s the point?”
I was trying to answer, and I couldn’t. My face was burning, and so was my neck. My mouth was dry, and all I wanted was a glass of water.
So get one.
I grabbed a glass, poured the water, drank it, and took some breaths. Then I put the cool glass against my cheek and tried not to cry.
Priya said, her voice sounding not nearly so sure, “Obedience?”
“Or-Oriana,” I managed to say.
“Sorry. Oriana. Are you OK? Sorry. I …”
I nodded and tried to smile. “Yeh. You just … it made me feel bad. I know it’s true, what you said. I know it. And it …” I hauled in a breath and felt the hot tears pressing at the backs of my eyes. “Never mind.” I tried another smile, and this one worked better. “It’s OK. I know it’s true. Anyway. What were we saying?”
I wasn’t Daisy, that was sure. I didn’t have her command, let alone Gray’s, or her toughness, the way she fought back. Maybe you got more of that as you got older. I hoped so, because I didn’t seem to have any at all. Also, I needed to make this custard sauce. I still had to go down to the garden for the vegies, and …
I was thinking it, and then my hands were busy again. Pulling down the bowl, separating the eggs, one in each hand, into a bowl, then rocking the cracked portions back and forth in my hands until only the yolks remained, orange and glistening, after which I dumped them into their own metal bowl and took out two more eggs to repeat the process.
I might not be good at command, but I was good at eggs. I was good at gardens, too, and good at babies. Surely that gave mesomeauthority.
Priya had her elbows on the benchtop, watching me. Now, she said, “Are you sorry you left?”
My hands paused, then resumed their motion before I added the cornflour, then grabbed the whisk and started to beat the yolks. “No,” I finally said. “Gabriel asked me that, too. Maybe he asked because I’m only good at Mount Zion things, and I onlylikeMount Zion things, so why would I leave?”
“I think he asked,” Priya said, “because you’re more like Mum. You know. Obedient. The way people there think is good, and nobody Outside does. But all that about hard work—are we meant to keep on not having any fun, then, because women don’t deserve to rest? I thought that was the point, that we get to do fun things, and not just have fourteen babies and barely get to hold them, because they’re in the nursery and we have to work all day in the laundry instead. What should I do, then, if I’m not meant to watch TV with the girls? And whynot, anyway? Why is it bad?”
My hands still wanted to shake, because this was still a confrontation, and confrontations did make me shake. Fighting wasn’t allowed between women at Mount Zion, but it happened anyway, just more quietly, all hissed words and poisonous glances and bitterness expressed behind somebody’s back, and I hated it. It made me sick inside. I turned on the stove, got out milk and sugar, and began to beat them together in a pan with my whisk, and that helped. And then I ventured into that unexplored territory. “Well,” I said, “if they were your girls, would you want somebody watching TV with them, in the middle of summer, for two or three hours a day? I mean, really? Would you?”
“I …” Priya said, then stopped.
“Why do you watch TV with them at all, besides that you like it? I like it, too, but how does it help them?”
Priya’s own cheeks were a bit flushed now. “Because when they’re tired and Amira is being naughty, it calms them down. When they’re watching, they’re quiet, and Laila likes them quiet!”
“But why are they quiet?” I asked. “Because they’re thinking? What are they thinking?”
Priya opened her mouth, shut it again, opened it again. And shut it.
I said, “When I watch TV, it’s because I don’t want to think.”
“Everything’s so different Outside, though,” Priya said. “It’s so much easier just to watch TV.” Exactly what I’d thought myself, much too recently.
I tried to think what to say next, and Priya said, “And what else would I do with them?”
I said, “Maybe do some housework for Laila? You could teach the girls to sort the washing, and to fold their clothes. You could wash the sheets and have them help you put them back on the beds. Some … some little task like that, every day. If you’re there all day anyway, why not?”
“That’s your brilliant suggestion? That we all workmore?”
“Well, it’s one of them.” I wasn’t Daisy, so positive in every situation, and I definitely wasn’t Gray, who was the boss and always seemed like it, but I knew some things. I knew this. “That’s how you get to be the babysitter she wants fornextschool holidays. I try to think, what can I do to help her? And I do that. It makes me happy, too, because I know I’m doing the right thing, and she appreciates it.”
My mind was working as fast as my whisk now, and my thoughts were coming together along with the custard. I poured the milk mixture slowly, a pale, thin ribbon, into the rich yolks, whisking all the way, then put the bowl over the water that was barely simmering in the double boiler and kept stirring. “Work doesn’t have to be just … grueling,” I tried to explain. “It doesn’t have to be horrible. Hanging out wet sheets and towels, ironing in the heat until your hair’s dripping wet under your cap and your scalp is itching. Chopping three dozen onions that make you cry. Scrubbing rows of awful men’s toilets. You could scrubonetoilet, then go to the supermarket for Laila, and start dinner for her. You could teach the girls how. It could even be fun. Because the way kids’ lives are here … I think it must be a little exhausting sometimes. They’re always going places. Doing things. Having so much … so much noise all around them all the time. It’s nice to stay home sometimes, too, and do quiet things, and having playtime is more fun after you have work time. If you neverhavework time, doesn’t playtime start to feel like work? Because I think it would.”
