Page 70 of Kiwi Sin
Priya was staring at me like I’d grown an extra head. I felt a bit that way, too. Who knew I had all these ideas, when I couldn’t come up with three sentences about the abolition of African slavery in Europe?
My custard was perfect now. Exactly right, smooth and just thick enough, and that pale yellow that looked as delicious as it tasted. I took the bowl out of the double boiler, stirred in the vanilla, covered it all with clingfilm, and popped it into the fridge, then checked the time on my almond cake. “You could make a timetable for them, maybe,” I told Priya. “A calendar for the week, with work time and reading time and playtime and adventures. You could draw it on a piece of paper, and help the girls read it. If you do little pictures, Amira will be able to read it better, too. Then they’d know what they were going to be doing that day, and you wouldn’t even have to tell them that they were going to watch less TV and have them be unhappy. I’ll bet they wouldn’t even notice.”
“See,” Priya said. “That’s why you’re good at this. You canthinkof it. Pity you can’t hold the babies and babysit at the same time.”
“Yeh. But I can’t.” I finished putting the dishes in the sink and wiping down the benchtops. “Thanks for letting me say.”
“Sorry I said the thing about Gabriel,” she said, looking down at her cutting board.
“That’s OK,” I said, filling the sink to clean up the mess before I got busy on my starter and the mains. Which were easy. As long as my cake turned out, I’d be all good. “I know you’re right.”
We could fit at home, together. My wife and I.
“Besides,” I said, “Daisy says it’s better not to think about men until you’re older. Until you’re educated.” I didn’t say,Do other girls’ bodies feel so … so insistent, though?Obviously not, because Daisy wasold.She was over thirty! How could she have waited all those years if she felt like me? And Frankie, too, who didn’t care about men.
I was sinful, obviously. That had to be it. I tried to make my mind do right, but I had a sinful body, and it kept betraying me.
I dried the double boiler and put it away, then looked at the time. Oh, no. It was five-twenty. I told Priya, “When you finish that, shell and devein the shrimp and put them in this bag with the marinade, would you? The recipe’s just here. I need to go get the vegies.” And ran out, grabbing a trug as I went.
I was coming back up again, my trug full of green stuff, thinking that I needed to start the fire under the barbecue, and that my cake was due to be done in less than ten minutes, so I’d better go test it, when I saw a man above me in the drive. Not that that was unusual, but …
He hesitated a moment, as if he were about to hurry away, then turned and seemed to catch sight of me, and my heart skipped a beat, because all that flashed across my mind was,Mount Zion.
Oh. It was Valor. Gabriel’s cousin.
Wait. What was he doing here now? The other men were long since gone for the day, and anyway, Valor wouldn’t have been the last man to leave. That would have been Gabriel.
He started toward me.
Wait.
28
SNAKE IN THE GARDEN
Oriana
I wanted to ignore him, to walk back into the yurt. How could I do that, though? Wouldn’t he just come inside? Valor wasn’t like Gabriel. He didn’t think about how you’d feel.
He set ice prickling up my spine, and he always had, ever since we were kids. He’d teased the little ones back then, dropping bugs down the girls’ backs and twisting the boys’ arms until they cried. He’d done all that to me, too, but he’d also cornered me outside once, when we’d been in the orchard picking up windfalls.
I’d been four, and was searching in a far corner away from the other kids, because I wanted to bring back the most fruit and have Sister Charity—who was my idol, so pretty and calm—exclaim over them. Valor came over where I was, but he didn’t pick up fruit. He told me that we were going to play a game instead.
I can still remember, as clearly as if it’s stamped on my brain, how he stood too close to me, there behind the gnarled trunk of an ancient pear tree, and how I wanted to run away. I didn’t, because he was older, and he was a boy.
He unfastened his trousers, then, and took a wee on the gray bark. I stared at the trunk as it darkened, at the stream of yellow liquid trickling down it and into the grass, and didn’t want to look at him, especially not at that part of him that I’d only seen on babies, that I was only meant to see when it was my husband.
Most of all, though, I remember him telling me, “Now you do it.” Standing so close, he was nearly touching me, and so much taller than me, which meant I had to do what he said. But how could I?
“I can’t,” I whispered, afraid to look around, to see if somebody was watching. If I couldn’t see them, maybe they couldn’t see me. “I’ll get in trouble.”
“Nobody’s looking,” he said. “Take down your undies and wee. It’s a game, and it’s your turn. That means you have to do it.” He stood there, then, and stared at me until I was squatting on the ground, my undies around my ankles, holding up my skirt. Knowing it was wrong. Knowing that if somebody saw, I’d be punished, and I’d deserve it.
The heat of the urine against my skin, and the way I’d struggled to keep my balance and hold my heavy skirt up, terrified that I’d wee on my dress, because Sister Charity would be sure to notice the wet spot, and I was too old to have accidents. You got punished for that, and I hated being punished. I always wanted to run the moment my dad took his belt out of his trousers, even though it had never been me it was happening to, not yet. I weed in the dirt like nobody but an animal should do, heard that belt whistling through the air, and shook.
After that day, whenever Valor looked at me, he smiled as if he were remembering, too. The shame I felt every time he smiled like that, because he knew I’d sinned, and I was still so afraid he’d tell.
It got worse, though. Whenever he had to move past me in some tight place—and somehow, that always seemed to happen—his hand would brush against my breast or my backside. Especially once my flat chest had turned into buds, because when that happened, he touched me more.
