Huia Short Stories 10 (24 page)

‘Hop in,' he almost sang, pushing clothes and papers off the bench seat beside him onto the floor. Eva pulled at her right ear lobe and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. He patted the seat beside him, but we ignored him and climbed into the back seat, pushing aside empty beer bottles and cardboard boxes to make room.

‘Suit yourselves,' he said, turning to us with that weird smile again.

He started the car on the second go and drove up over the hill leading out of Waitapu. A few kilometres further on he flicked the indicator on and turned into the pub on the outskirts of town.

‘Just need to stock up,' he said. ‘Won't be long.' Half an hour later we were still waiting for him. We couldn't risk going in to look for him. Everybody knew everybody in Waitapu. Someone in there was sure to know us and ask what we were up to. Eventually he came out, carrying a wooden crate of DB and smelling of beer. He pulled a bottle out of the crate, took the lid off with his teeth and sucked on it as we drove towards Plymouth.

It took us half an hour to get to the next pub, stuck out in the middle of nowhere, its car park full of stock and logging trucks. Dirty plate glass windows on one side of the building framed the restaurant and the truck drivers seated inside, wearing their checked shirts and jeans like some sort of uniform. This time we did get out, the smell of fried food too hard to resist. A haze of cigarette smoke hit us as soon as we walked in and the whole place felt like a B-rated cowboy movie.

Our driver bought us a shandy each and two scoops of greasy chips drowned in tomato sauce. We watched him play pool in the public bar, missing almost every shot he played, guzzling on his bottle of beer the whole time.

Eva rolled her eyes at me. She started speaking to the truck drivers while we waited.

‘Any of you going to Plymouth?' she asked, leaning with her back against the bar, one arm stretched along its length as though posing for a photograph. When Eva smiled her whole face lit up. Her long, brown, sun-bleached hair hung over one eye and her shirt gaped in places it probably shouldn't have. I'd seen this before with Eva, the effect she had on men without even trying. The combination of her
knowing smile, the one that made her look as though she had a secret she might or might not tell, and those jade-green eyes surrounded by long dark lashes had them hooked straight away. The men at the bar couldn't help themselves, but there was a reluctance too in their glances as though they knew they might be out of their depth. Eva was young enough to be the daughter of some of those men.

‘No. Sorry, love. Going in the other direction.'

Some of the drivers were sleeping the night in their truck cabs or had rooms booked, wanting an early start in the morning. Others were heading back towards Waitapu.

Our driver wandered over from time to time to check on us, and Eva kept dropping hints.

‘It'll be dark soon,' she said. ‘How long does it take to get to Plymouth from here?'

‘Don't panic. One more game,' he said and wandered off again.

‘Can't wait to find Robbie,' she said to me. ‘I think I know the name of the street he lives in. We could knock on all the doors.'

Our driver disappeared into the toilets at one stage for what seemed like hours, but eventually came out again, pulling at his fly.

‘Come on, girlies, we're outa here.'

A few heads turned as we followed him out of the public bar to the car park. It was starting to get dark. His car looked much older and rustier in the dusky light parked way out here in the middle of nowhere. I doubted it would ever get us to Plymouth.

He drove on, the headlights picking out flattened possums in the middle of the road. Sinister black clumps of gorse and broom rushed into view on the corners and disappeared again. The hills surrounded us, like menacing animals crouched beneath a dirty grey sky, waiting to pounce. He turned the car lights on and cat's-eyes on white posts at the side of the road lit up like neon flares as we passed. Eva leaned forward, watching the road like a hawk.

‘We want to get there in one piece, mate,' she said whenever the car started veering towards the ditch or across the white centre lines.

‘Watch the frickin' road!' she yelled at him more than once, poking him in the ribs from behind. Further on, a roadworks sign gleamed in the headlights and just past that, barriers had been erected with iridescent strips blocking entry to an unopened section of new road. He pulled over, stopped the car and got out. We watched him remove two of the barriers, then climb back in to drive us through.

‘Need a piss,' he said. He opened the car door, stood outside for a moment, then leaned back in. ‘Want to come and hold it for me?' he said, smiling that weird smile again. Eva rubbed hard at the bridge of her nose.

‘Definitely not,' she said.

‘No thanks,' I blurted out at the same time.

‘Bloody ungrateful bitches,' he spat, and stumbled into the darkness.

We waited, staring at the looming darkness through the windscreen, not talking. It wasn't meant to be like this. We had plans, big plans, and he didn't feature in any of them. Ages later he came back, opened the car door and turned on the interior light. The dull yellow glow was enough to show up his round flushed cheeks, his bushy eyebrows, the dampness above his top lip and the bloodshot eyes behind his glasses. He sat for a while in the driver's seat, staring straight ahead, both hands resting on the steering wheel.

‘This is the deal,' he said after a while, turning to look at us. ‘You two girlies come up the front and give me a kiss, or I'm dropping you off here.' From inside the car, everything outside looked pitch black – scrub and hills for miles, no house lights anywhere, and we hadn't seen another car since leaving the last pub.

I waited for Eva to give me a signal, but for a while she just sat there. I could almost see her thinking, working out what she would have said if we hadn't been stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.

‘Get stuffed,' she might have said, then maybe, ‘Sleazy old bastard,' for good measure. My mother said she had the mouth of a gutter tramp but that was one of the things I liked about Eva, the way she swore. I felt exhilarated when she used words I only ever thought about but never had the guts to say.

She slowly pulled at her right ear lobe with one hand then rubbed the bridge of her nose with the other.

‘OK,' she said, ‘but after this you take us straight to Plymouth.'

I knew all she wanted to do was find her brother and get us back on the road to Plymouth.

He leaned across the bench seat of the car to open the front passenger door.

‘That's more like it. Come on girlies,' he said. ‘Up here by me.'

We climbed out of the back seat. Eva sat next to him on the bench seat, and I sat squashed up against the passenger door. As soon as we were in the car he took off his glasses and started pushing his face towards Eva, but she beat him to it and leaned up to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

‘Not good enough,' he said. ‘On the kisser, here.' He pointed to his drooping mouth. Eva looked at him as though he were a pile of dog turd, the same stuff we tried to avoid while walking to school in Rata Street, back in Waitapu, where all the stray collarless dogs roamed. She leaned across anyway and pecked him quickly on the lips.

‘That's better,' he smiled that creepy smile again. ‘You too girlie, come on.' I leaned across Eva in the front seat, closed my eyes – anything to get us out of there. I could smell his stale, beery breath, feel the bristles of his chin, his damp lips searching for mine, and I started to gag. It was then I felt his hand come up and slide inside my shirt, but Eva was too quick.

‘Filthy old bastard,' she spat, and whacked at his crotch beneath the mound of his swollen belly.

‘Jesus fucking Christ! Bloody cock teasers!' he yelled, grasping at his privates with one hand, punching the steering wheel with the other. ‘Should've left you where you belonged – in the gutter on the side of the bloody road! Get out! Garn! Get out!'

We slipped out of the front seat, and Eva clicked the car door shut behind us. We stood for a while in the silent darkness, the jagged, sooty black outline of the hills and valleys just visible on the horizon against a backdrop of darkening sky. A few stars glittered and way over in the distance the warm yellow glow of house lights sat isolated against the hills.

After a while, he got out of the car and staggered away, swearing into the darkness. With nowhere else to go, we slipped back inside the car, leaned our heads against the back seat, closed our eyes and waited. When he came back he sat hunched over the steering wheel for a long time, his head resting on his arms.

He must have dozed off because it seemed like hours later he finally came to and fumbled with the keys in the slot. He started the car on the third go, then gunned the engine before spinning the car in a wide loop. If he knew we were still in the back, he didn't let on. He stared straight ahead and drove back to the start of the new road deviation. The car skidded sideways a few times in loose shingle and small stones thudded up underneath like machine gun volleys. He turned hard right at the main road then drove up, over the summit of the ranges and down the other side.

His eyes were wide open, barely blinking as he concentrated on the road ahead, all traces of the beer he'd been drinking gone. He never said another word until we approached a truck stop, ten kilometres this side of Plymouth according to the road sign.

He switched the blinker on and slowed the car.

‘This is where you two get out. I live here,' he said. His voice was quieter now and he seemed nervous, unsure of himself. He pulled up across the road and down a bit from the truck stop, lit up on the side of the road like a Christmas tree, coloured lights strung along its roof and verandah. He stared straight ahead, gripping the top of the steering wheel with both hands.

‘Must have been the booze,' he said. ‘Don't tell the wife. She'll have my guts for garters.'

He left us on the side of the road and drove on towards the truck stop car park. We waited until he'd parked the car and walked through the yellow glow of the truck stop door before following him inside.

The woman at the counter, who must have been his wife, served us without speaking. She had dark pencilled eyebrows on her forehead, way above where eyebrows should be. They made her look surprised, animated almost, and at odds with the rest of her face. She scuffed behind the counter in fluffy slippers and wore a large grease-stained apron over a faded floral dress. Her hair was two-toned – bright red ends and silvery grey roots. There was a black and white photo of a young girl in school uniform on a shelf behind the counter. She wasn't smiling and for some reason the look on her face made me feel as though I might have known her.

Eva and I sat watching him while he stocked the shelves and served customers. Every now and then he'd glance pointedly across the room when his wife was busy, as though willing us to go, but we ignored his silent hints. I was secretly pleased with how uncomfortable he looked.

We eventually got a ride out of there with another truck driver. A friendly man who told us he had daughters our age and what did we think we were doing hitching around the countryside. Didn't we know it was dangerous – even in pairs?

‘Do your parents know you do this?' he asked. Eva and I looked at each other across the table and shrugged. ‘What about that girl down south?' he said. ‘The one they found weeks later buried in that shallow grave in the bush, half her clothes gone. Bloody tragedy.'

He bought us both a mince pie. When we sat down, he pulled his wallet out to show us photos of his daughters, his eyes crinkling with pride. I envied those girls. It was obvious from the way he spoke that he loved them, in a way a father should love his daughters. He talked to us as though we were important, as important as anyone he'd ever met, not just a couple of scruffy teenage girls on the run. He dropped us off in Plymouth at the end of Robbie's street and scrawled his phone number on the back of one of the truck stop receipts.

‘If you get stuck, phone this number. The wife and I will look after you. See you right.'

Staying Alive

Helen Waaka

My mother, Rowena, is a social worker. She helps people. LOL. She needs to sort her own shit out first before she helps other people, like for instance, her wine problem. She buys red wine on special at the supermarket – Merlot and Cab Sav at $9.99 a bottle – and drinks it like water.

‘For the wine rack,' she says whenever she brings another clinking plastic supermarket bag of wine home. ‘Just in case we have visitors.' Whatever. There
are
no visitors. Hardly anyone visits now my olds have split and my mother's excuse for this is her job.

‘I have to deal with people all day,' she says. ‘I need space in my own home.' Yeah right. ‘Look at Pearl's mum,' she goes on, ‘working on computers all day. You can't tell me she'd want to go home and sit in front of one at night. Same thing.' My mother's excuses could sometimes sound so reasonable. Pearl's been my best friend since kindergarten.

The wine though, never has a chance to touch the wine rack, let alone rest in it, maturing or whatever it is that wine does. The lid of one of those clinking bottles is unscrewed as soon as Mum walks in the door, and she slops red wine into a glass that waits permanently on the bench.

My mother has a strange way of looking at the world. If only she could be like other mothers, like Pearl's mum, Grace, for instance. Grace is always laughing, telling jokes, dressing up and going out to the pub or the movies with her friends, and she's got heaps of friends, not like my mother who uses her job as an excuse for this too.

‘It's hard to have close friends in small towns, especially if you're a social worker,' she says. ‘I know too much about the people in Waitapu. I have to be careful who I mix with. I can't just waltz into the pubs like Grace does. Half my clients are probably drinking there.' Yeah, right.

Even though my mother works with people, she doesn't seem to actually like them. Pearl's house is always full of laughter and noise. Grace's friends call in for coffee all the time and she always has family staying, but our house is silent. My mother likes ‘Silence with a capital S.' It helps her think, she says. She's so old. The only music she plays is classical. Some blind dude singing in a foreign language. Why can't she listen to ABBA or even the Bee Gees like Grace does and dance around the lounge to ‘Stayin Alive' in her bare feet? I have to use my iPod to listen to music, even at home, and I've given up playing my own CDs. The volume has to be down so low it's not even worth it.

My mother has no real close friends, and she hardly ever talks to her family. How sad is that? Aunty Ruby lives in Australia now, and I have no idea what she looks like anymore. I haven't seen her for years. And my grandfather lives right here, in Waitapu, but we never see him. There's something seriously weird going on there, but my mother has never told me what. There's so much I don't even know about my own family.

I've tried drinking myself to fit in, because most of my friends do, but once after I drank four RTDs in a row then two shots of tequila, I puked and hated the feeling. I could never be anorexic. OMG. Spewing is the worst thing in the world. Hugging a toilet bowl with piss stains down the side, but not even caring because all I wanted to do was get rid of whatever it was in my stomach, making me heave. Gross as.

I still drink, but only ever one RTD, and after that I pretend, sucking on the same bottle all night, while everyone else gets wasted and what I see, OMG. It's enough to put anyone off drinking for life. The guys start mouthing off after a few shots and swearing, taking their shirts off, prancing round like dicks and shouting as though everyone around them is deaf and what they say half the time is nothing but a crock of shit. If only they could hear themselves. I recorded Jason once on my cellphone, and he went psycho afterwards. Didn't speak to me for days. He thought I was going to dob him in, but I would never do that. I just wanted him to hear the crap he was talking. Make him realise. At the time he thought he was seriously funny, but all he did was tell the dumbest jokes and stuff up the punch lines.

Then he got real aggro, wanting to punch out his best mate. Afterwards he pissed over the deck, spewed in a corner and fell asleep in the garden.

It's the out-of-it girls though that are way worse. Screaming and squealing like hyenas, not caring or even knowing what happens to them. That's the scariest thing, their not knowing and then not remembering the next day.

But sometimes, I feel as though
I'm
the one with the problem because I so don't want to be part of that scene. That's because I see enough of what drinking does to my mother.

At parties I'm the one who usually ends up being the sober driver, the boring one, some of my friends say. I usually end up looking after everyone else, the next day, too, sometimes.

The thing is, my mother might be rat-shit at looking after herself, but as soon as I started getting periods, she told me everything I needed to know about contraception and ‘safe sex', even how to access the ECP, the Emergency Contraceptive Pill.
Way
too much information, I thought at the time, but now everyone comes to me for advice, and I'm the only one in our group who has a full licence. My father made me learn to drive, in fact he bribed me and made me sit my licence as soon as I was old enough. ‘Better to be the driver than the driven,' he's always said. And better, too, to access the ECP in Plymouth rather than Waitapu where everyone knows what you've had for breakfast before you've even eaten it. Some of my friends are on the pill, but they forget to take it. There's a school nurse who's supposed to sort all that stuff, but she's Kate's mother for God's sake, and no one fully trusts her to keep her mouth shut.

I've been on the pill myself for two years. Not because of the sex thing but for my skin. My skin's sorted now though, no more zits, but Mum's made me stay on the pill.

‘You never know what might happen,' she says. As if. She totally expects the worst from everyone, including her own daughter, but nothing like that will ever happen to me. The whole sex thing is so overrated. I went through a stage once of imagining couples I knew having sex together, and that was enough to put me off for life. The biology teacher, Mr Bryant, with his beer keg pot belly and Mrs Bryant, his wife, the history teacher, OMG. She's like one of those stick insects the class pulls apart in biology. And what about my own parents? Not that they live together anymore, but they did once, and the thought of them getting naked together just doesn't cut it. The thought of
anyone
having sex puts me right off, and when you think about it, the term ‘
having sex'
is a totally dumb way to describe it. Why
having
? If someone sleeps or eats, they're sleeping or eating, not
having
sleep or
having
food. Whatever. There has to be something seriously wrong with me, though, because I'm just not interested in boys, not at all. Not in that way. Some of my best friends are guys, but the thought of getting up close and personal with any of them makes me want to puke.

There's something I've never told anyone before, not even Pearl, definitely not Pearl. The thing is the only time I've ever felt what could be anything vaguely sexual is when I accidentally touch certain
women
. Not any woman, not like Pearl, for instance, or any of my friends at all really. Just
certain
women like Miss Ebbett, the PE teacher, who works out in the college gym and smells of Dove deodorant. Or sometimes it happens with women I hardly know, like shop assistants across a counter in town when their hand accidentally brushes against mine. A touch, that's all it takes, but it's enough to set off a queer tingly sort of feeling, and if they gift-wrap anything for me, I stand there watching, mesmerised. It's got something to do with the way their hands work, the way they smooth out the coloured paper and tie the silky ribbon.

‘Will there be anything else?' they ask. ‘Excuse me. Is there anything else?' There has to be something way wrong with me. Nothing like that ever happens when I accidentally touch a guy.

In fact there are days when I feel as though I don't fit in anywhere. Not with my friends, who I know think I'm a goody, or either of my parents who are both totally wrapped up in their own problems. I often think there has to be more to life, way more. Something I haven't discovered yet, something meaningful and deep. Some days this is the only thought that keeps me going through all the crap with my parents and my own crazy feelings.

I'm the sensible one, everyone says, the practical one, the one who's good at solving other people's problems – but not my own. My mother's drinking, for instance, is something I have no idea what to do about.

‘How's your Mum?' Grace often asks me. I think she only asks to be polite, but sometimes Grace looks at me funny, as though she knows way more than she's letting on. Waitapu is a small town. I trust Pearl but not Grace. Grace works at the newspaper office. The worst place ever for gossip.

‘Yeah, good thanks,' I always say.

Things are far from good though when I arrive home later that week from indoor basketball and find my mother on the floor. When I open the back door, it's the stench of vomit that hits me first. The sight of my mother in her bra and knickers on the floor hits me second. She's trying to stand up. She knocks an empty wine bottle with her foot, and it rolls away across the polished wooden floor.

‘What the f—?' I say.

She stops struggling and we both watch as the bottle rolls slowly across the floor, like a time bomb ticking, until it hits the TV cabinet with a clunk.

The noise of it brings my mother to her senses, and she grabs at the side of the couch, tries to haul herself up, but her feet keep sliding in spilt red wine and her hair is wet. With wine? Or is it vomit? Her mascara is badly smudged down both cheeks.

I'm used to my mother drinking, but not like this, never like this. I'm used to coming home and finding her with a glass of wine in her hand, an empty wine bottle on the table, talking round and round in circles.

‘I'll tell you everything one day,' she said after drinking two bottles of red wine one night, ‘then you might understand why your mother is so weird.' Two seconds later she fell asleep at the table in a pool of spilled wine. At the time I thought there was no way my mother would ever make it to work the next day, but that's just it. She can drink like a rugby player but still wake up without a hangover, have a shower and walk out the door to work as though nothing has ever happened.

‘What were you going to tell me one day?' I asked the morning after that particular binge.

‘I've got no idea what you're talking about. Must have been the wine.'

Tonight, though, is the worst I've ever seen her, and I feel scared, and being scared makes me lose it.

‘You're my mother!' I yell at her. ‘My bloody mother and look at you.'

There's blood coming from somewhere. Shards of broken glass are scattered on the floor. My mother stares at splinters of it, stuck in the palms of both her hands and starts to whimper as though seeing the damage suddenly makes it real.

‘You're disgusting,' I tell her. ‘You need help. I'm not doing this anymore.' I grab a dressing gown draped over the back of a kitchen chair and throw it at her. ‘I'm phoning Dad.'

‘No. Don't,' she says. ‘I'll be OK in a few minutes.' The television flickers on in the corner, giving her face a spooky glow with the lights half dimmed.

‘I'll be at Dad's. You need to sort your shit out.'

‘Anna. Don't go. Please. Let me explain.'

I slam the door behind me, shutting out the disgusting sight of my drunk mother.

I text Dad
I'm comin ova. Is it OK to stay?
and he phones back straight away.

Everything all right?'

‘It's Mum. She's drinking again. It's disgusting. I'm just so over it.'

‘Don't be too hard on her,' he says.

‘
Me
hard on
her
? Dad, you should see her!'

‘OK, OK love. Do you want me to pick you up?' he asks.

‘No, I can drive over. Can I stay with you for a while? I'm not staying here while she's like this.'

‘Of course. No need to ask. Will she be OK to leave?'

‘To be honest, Dad, I just don't care.'

I hang up and text Pearl.

U still up
L

Yup U OK?

Jst mum OMG So ova it.

Cme ova. Stay here if u want

Nah Thnx anywy Goin 2 dads tonite

C U tomoro?

Yup C U tomoro

Luv U hun
J

U 2
J

I like being at Dad's. When I stay there, we watch movies on week nights, eat takeaways from Thai City and go down to the pub on Friday nights to play pool. Nothing is ever a big deal with my father. But later that week my mother phones to tell me my grandfather has been admitted to Plymouth hospital. Dad suggests I go back home.

‘There are times in life when you need to step up,' he says, ‘and this might be one of those times.'

‘But I don't even know him,' I say.

‘That's not the point,' he says. ‘It's your mother who's going to need the support.'

Who's supposed to be the parent here?, I feel like saying, but even though my mother pisses me off at times, I can see Dad's point. Someone needs to make sure she doesn't drink herself to death. Even though she promised me over the phone she wasn't going to drink again, I don't trust her.

That night I think briefly about knocking on the door of my own home before going inside. I've never in my life had to knock before, but I have no idea what I am going to find on the other side. I've already made up my mind if my mother is drinking tonight, I'll leave and go and live with Dad for good, but when I finally do open the door, she is standing at the kitchen sink busy slicing onions and carrots.