Authors: Bianca Zander
Auckland
1989
A
FTER THE LIGHTNING VISIT
with Elisabeth, Zachary and I drifted around the streets of Freemans Bay, resting awhile in a small park, drinking water from a fountain, until I started to feel like a homeless person. Somewhat reluctantly, we arrived on the front porch of the lesbian house, where a women’s symbol, with a clenched fist inside it, had been woven into the doormat.
In the front door was a letter slot, and after I had knocked, the metal flap covering it swung open, and a pair of wary eyes peered out. Despite this initial caution, the owner of the eyes turned out to be a cheerful woman with a buzz cut, and after she had let us in, she ushered us into the hallway. I recognized her from the protest. “I’m Pat,” she said, stepping out onto the porch and glancing up and down the street before bolting the door behind us. “There’s only women in here, and we like to be safe.” She pointed down a long, dingy corridor, crowded with cardboard boxes, piles of leaflets
and posters stacked on top, a few suitcases too. “Susie and Katrina are in the kitchen.”
At the back of the house was a narrow room with a sloped roof, not much more than a lean-to with walls. The carcass of an old coal range comprised the bulk of the kitchen, and the gappy wooden floorboards sloped ever so slightly toward the garden. A graying, emaciated woman stood at the sink, peeling a mountain of potatoes. “You made it!” exclaimed Susie, bounding over from the Formica dining table and peering into the sling at Zachary. “Ruddy hell, I am sorry about the protest. I got carried away. Pat and Linda gave me a right telling off when we got home.”
“Technically, he isn’t even your grandson,” I said, chiding her, but smiling, so she would know I had forgiven her.
“I don’t know about that,” said Susie. “We love him like one. Same as we love you like a daughter.” She pulled me into a no-nonsense hug. “How was Elisabeth? Does she miss us? Is she dying to come back?” She laughed—not wanting an answer, only to be facetious.
“She looked good. Didn’t say anything about coming back . . .”
“Imagine it,” said Katrina. “Elisabeth and Shakti in the same room. Hunter wouldn’t know where to look.”
“Is Shakti coming to the commune?”
“Apparently,” said Katrina. “But her movements are always mysterious. She likes to keep Hunter guessing.”
“When are we heading back?”
“Tonight,” said Susie. “After a quick meeting.” She turned
to the emaciated woman at the sink. “Linda? Do you mind taking care of my daughter and grandson?”
Linda put down her knife. “I’d be delighted.” She had finished peeling the potatoes and was slicing them into thin, shiny ovals. “How old is the wee fella?”
“Nearly six months.”
She came over and squeezed his cheek. “He’s a bonny one, isn’t he?” I had learned that “bonny” was the word people used to describe a baby with fat rolls and no neck. At his age, it was a compliment.
“He’s got a big appetite, always hungry.”
“Maybe he’s ready for solids.” Linda held up a teapot. “Chamomile, peppermint, or gumboot?”
“Gumboot, thanks.”
The partition walls of the villa were thin, especially the one behind my head, which separated the kitchen from the lounge, where the women had gone to have their meeting. Through it I could hear Susie’s voice, not muffled but clear as a whistle. I tried not to listen but when she mentioned Gaialands my ears pricked up. Linda had been giving me advice on how to start Zachary on solid food, but I was not much interested, and my ears kept tuning in to the meeting next door. They were definitely discussing the commune, something about there
being enough of us to reach a consensus.
“Be careful mixing Farex and banana,” said Linda. “It turns to concrete in their stomachs. Really bungs them up. When your little one gets constipation—boy do you know all about it!”
Thanks to Linda, I had missed the crucial part of the con
versation next door. “Do you have children?” I asked Linda, trying to be friendly. She looked too thin, almost wizened, and it wasn’t unusual for the childless to give screeds of advice.
“Four,” she said. “All boys.”
“Four?”
I was so taken aback I forgot to censor my thoughts. “No wonder you ran away to a house full of dykes.”
Linda smiled proudly. “They’re all grown now. The youngest, Stephen, just finished school.” She told me about each of them in turn, their accomplishments, her hopes for their future, but as I tried to listen, I was distracted by the increasingly impassioned conversation through the wall. I heard Hunter’s name mentioned several times, then Paul’s and Sigi’s, before someone exclaimed, “After thirty years, they won’t just pack up and leave, you know!”
I wondered if Linda had heard this too, but when I turned to look at her, she had gone back to arranging the potato slices in a roasting dish, still wearing the proud smile. The meeting in the next room fell silent for a moment, before starting up in a more muted way. Whatever they had been discussing, the heated part of it was over. A few minutes later, Susie appeared in the kitchen. Her face was flushed, but she gave nothing away about what had gone on in the room next door. “That smells great,” she said to Linda, before asking if I needed a break from Zachary. “It’s been a bloody long day. You must be knackered.”
“Yeah, I am.” I was grateful when she picked him up and dandled him sweetly on her knee. Susie was so unpredictable. Explosive one minute, kind and thoughtful the next.
Whatever Linda had made for dinner, we would not be
eating it. The women wanted to hit the road, and had procured hard-boiled egg and stringy Swiss-chard sandwiches to keep us going on the journey. A third woman had materialized at the house, and when I went out to the car with Zachary and my rucksack, she and Pat were already seated in the back.
“This is Barb,” said Pat. “Want me to hold the baby while you climb in?”
“Sure.” I handed Zachary to her, and she and Barb clucked over him. They were much younger than Susie and Katrina, perhaps in their early thirties. The boot, their laps, and every available leg space were crammed with crates and duffel bags and pillows, but the couple had left a small wedge of the backseat free. I slotted into it, molded by the gear all around us, and settled Zachary on my lap. We set off, Susie at the helm and Katrina in the front passenger seat. No one explained the presence of Pat and Barb, or their worldly belongings, and the first hour of the trip passed in near silence, as though everyone was holding their breath until we had left the city limits behind. A little way after the Thames turnoff, Susie loudly cleared her throat. “Pat and Barb are coming to live at Gaialands,” she said, seeking eye contact with me in the rearview mirror. “The commune needs new blood. It’s becoming like an old folks’ home.”
Katrina turned around in her seat to face me. “It’s been heading that way since you kids left. No one under the age of fifty.”
I could see her point, but I didn’t know what to say.
“We’ve heard so much about the place,” said Pat, who
seemed to be the spokesperson of the couple. “We can’t wait.” She laid a hand on Barb’s stomach and beamed. “Barb’s expecting.”
I wondered how the news would go down with the others on the commune, not just the addition of two residents but in a few months’ time, a third. Did they already know, or was it a surprise? I suspected the latter.
Susie shot me another glance, either daring me to say what I was thinking or warning me not to.
“I’m sure you’ll love it there,” I said, thinking what a shock they were in for if they had always lived in the city.
We still had a long way to go, and shortly afterward, Barb fell asleep on Pat’s shoulder, and Pat tucked a pillow under her neck and leaned against the headrest. Katrina stared vacantly out the window, while Susie kept her eyes on the road. It was unusual for the two women not to chat. Something was up, that was obvious, but I had other things to worry about. Since the visit to Elisabeth, I had been thinking a lot about Lukas, about our relationship and what it would take to save it. I could see very clearly how we had arrived at this point, the fracture, and faults on both sides, but I was less clear about whether, going forward, we could make it work. Would Lukas always wonder if I loved him enough, and could I ever prove to him that I did? What if Elisabeth was right and we were too damaged? The prediction, in its way, had been a far simpler obstacle than this.
On the winding road from Thames to Tairua, I dozed off once or twice, though with Zachary rolling around in my lap, I could not fall properly to sleep. I had tried, with the
seat belt, to tether him to me, but it wasn’t an especially safe or reliable setup. We made a toilet stop at a service station in Tairua, then wished we hadn’t. Getting out of the car had displaced all our gear, and we could not fit comfortably back in. For the rest of the journey—still another three-quarters of an hour—Pat’s guitar case was jammed into my leg, and a renegade suitcase kept nudging me in the head, threatening to escape from the boot.
For the last twenty minutes of the journey, with no clue how close to our destination we were, Zachary thrashed his little arms and legs and screeched about being cooped up in the car for so long, giving voice to how we all felt. I had tried to put him on the breast, but the car was bouncing too much to get a proper latch. It was dark when we arrived at Gaialands and we parked up by the chook house and got out and stretched our legs. I didn’t realize how cramped, airless, and downright stinky it had been in the car until I got out and breathed the virgin night air, pure and fragrant. I had forgotten how vital this place smelled.
The lights in the mess hut were on, and through the window we could see everyone was still around the table, waiting for us to get back. “Let’s go and introduce you—and see if there’s any food left,” said Susie. “We’ll unload the car later.”
A long trestle table ran the length of the mess hall, but the adults only took up one end of it. Since we kids had left, they had never had a full table. They would have finished eating hours before and were now deep in conversation. They fell silent when we came in, all eyes on the newcomers, Pat and Barb.
“We brought a couple of mates back with us,” said Susie. “They needed a break from the city.” She introduced the women, and hands were dutifully shaken, though with none of the warmth I had received at my homecoming. “I thought we could put them in the children’s hut.”
“Oh,” said Loretta. “Tom and I have been sleeping in there.” She looked at Tom, and then at Zachary and me. “Just while Poppy’s here.”
“Good thing there’s so many bunks,” said Susie. “You don’t mind sharing, do you?”
“Not really,” said Loretta, looking peeved. “The more the merrier, I suppose.”
Easygoing Tom smiled. “No skin off my nose.”
I waited for someone to ask how long Pat and Barb planned to stay, but no one did, and the women themselves didn’t mention it, leaving me to wonder whether Susie had overlooked this information or left it out on purpose. Instead, she told Pat and Barb to take a seat, and began passing bowls of food in their direction. It was the commune way to share what we had, no questions asked, but even so, a few of the men gazed sadly at Pat and Barb’s plates, what would have been tomorrow’s lunch.
I noticed the seat next to Hunter was vacant but that someone had been sitting there and left behind an empty plate. I searched the room for Shakti, half expecting her to materialize, but she did not seem to be around. I was suddenly very tired, and immensely relieved when Paul offered to carry Zachary and our bags to the cabin.
Zachary, bless him, chose that night to sleep through for
the first time—a feat he did not feel compelled to repeat—and I hardly knew myself when I woke up the next morning. My head was bracingly clear, as though someone had got in there with a bucket of ice water and sluiced it out. On waking, I had risen from the bed and checked, with no little anxiety, to make sure Zachary was breathing, rejoiced that he was
still
asleep, then gone outside to listen to the birdsong on my own, a rare treat. So high was I on that eight-hour block of sleep that I wanted to sing too, or dance, or take up karate, but I was not the only one up. Far away across the still dewy field, a lone figure practiced yoga. She was no more than the brushstroke of a straight back in downward dog, but that was enough to accelerate my pulse.
Shakti.
After all this time, would I be able to stand up to her?
I was in the mess hut, eating breakfast, when she walked in, bold as anything, and sat down next to Hunter, kissed him, and slid her arm around his waist, as if he was her property. “Hello, Poppy,” she said, digging in to the bowl of porridge that Hunter had obediently fetched for her. “I hear you’ve got a little one. What a lovely surprise.”
Was she already toying with me—alluding to the fact that I had bucked her prediction? The animosity I felt toward her was difficult to hide. “His name is Zachary,” I said, checking to see the baby was indeed where I had left him, over by the window in Katrina’s arms. “He’s very robust.”
“Well, he is truly a blessing,” said Shakti, smiling with what was either genuine appreciation or audacious shit-kicking smugness. “I can’t wait to get to know him.”
I could not finish my breakfast.
“Excuse me,” I said, and walked out to the porch of the mess hut, where I struggled to control my emotions. I pulled on the first pair of gumboots I found, paced to the edge of the paddock, burst into tears, told myself to get it together, grow a spine,
harden the fuck up,
then sniffed like a drainpipe, wiped my face on my sleeve, and marched back to the mess hut to face my nemesis.
She was every bit as beautiful, damn it. Older but still the exotically plumed creature plucked out of a fantasy world and stranded on earth among dull and clumsy oafs. Around her I had always felt so ugly, so inadequately feminine, and nothing had changed. She still had the power to dazzle me.
I wasn’t the only one. When I looked over at Hunter he was awestruck.
Pat and Barb arrived in the mess hall looking tired and disheveled. They eyed the vat of gray, lumpen porridge warily, as if it wasn’t quite the whole-food smorgasbord they had hoped for.
Yes,
I felt like saying,
we really do eat that stuff three hundred sixty-five days of the year, even on Christmas morning; do you still want to stay?
I wondered what they had made of the long drop, not as monstrous as it had once been, but still dire enough, most mornings, to make your underpants retreat up your legs.