Joanna

Trish had been on her own for about nine years. ‘On her own’ meaning without husband, with children. She delivered the local paper once a week, with her son who rides a battered bike and carries the papers in his Canterbury Raiders backpack. She looked like she was doing penance for the sin of being … For the sin of being.

Trish, Daniel and Joanna live in The Bay. Any one of those small coastal settlements called Something-or-other Bay that becomes, to its residents, The Bay.

Joanna was throwing a stick for someone's golden retriever. She put her whole body into it, in a way that girls her age have usually forgotten to do—one leg back, weight resting on it, front leg forward, ready to take the weight. Her throwing arm with the stick pointing energetically behind her as though she were casting a spell on someone creeping up behind her, the other arm, the free arm waving about shoulder height. She throws, weight onto the front leg, throwing arm pitched forward, wavering free arm jammed back, head and torso thrust forward. She does this over and over. The dog salivates and bounces in excitement as he waits for the next throw. Her white face with the brush strokes of red on the cheeks is held towards the sun, her green eyes water.

Some girls from Joanna's class were walking on the road above the beach. They hop down the small bank, over the fat succulent sea daisies, the stiff locks of seaweed, the pock-faced pumice. They stand around Joanna because they look lovely and graceful beside her, because she doesn't know what to do or how to talk to them, and she is lumpish with her arms hanging at her side and the dog bouncing against her and nosing her crotch. In the end she walks away from them, and their giggling and their curious, pitying looks, and all she can hear, above the talk, above the waves, above the car driving along page 89 the road, is the sound her thighs make, chaffing one against the other, as she walks.

Further down the beach Joanna takes off her shoes and socks and paddles in the icy water; stepping the numbness out of her feet she walks up and down the shoreline. In her head she says her name over and over again, Joanna, Joanna, Joanna. With each step she says her name until it means nothing, just a collection of sounds. She frightens herself like this, but enjoys how her name is no longer her name, here she is: body, heart, cold feet, and there is that collection of sounds, floating away from her. Joanna may as well mean ‘water’ or ‘splash’ or ‘cold’ or nothing. And then she repeats the word ‘nothing’ and in the end, after a hundred or so incantations, it too tears away from the nothing that it represents.

Joanna liked to keep moving and thinking. Her brother, Daniel, hassles her about her restlessness, but he too watches television standing up, with a ping-pong bat and ball and a constant airy pat pat pat, a glance at the TV and a glance at the ball. When the TV gets compelling he stands with his cheek against the ball against the bat and watches like that, head on one side, standing up.

Daniel was light and fast and quick tempered. She was heavy and thoughtful and moody. When they swung out over pinetree stumps and mingi mingi and grass on the rope, above the knot, flying out really far. Joanna's hands slid down the hairy rope, the knot bit painfully between her legs, she swung like a pendulum.

It had rained for five days, solid. The small houses across the gully looked fuzzy through the constant sweep of rain. The house where the old lady lived, the white stucco house that had windows like sad eyes, looked as though it was crying. Joanna felt as though she would go to sleep in her ordinary bedroom and wake up and it would be lined with moss, bright green earthy moss. Nothing was dry.

Trish did yoga while Joanna sat at the table looking outside into their garden. The flowers seemed to be stretching down to their toes like her mother was, heavy with rain. As though they were saturated and tired and quiet. Daniel and a friend were playing table tennis in the damp room under the house, the taut noises of them playing cut through the rain.

page 90

Trish wondered if their guests would arrive through all the rain. It was her birthday and she had invited some friends for drinks after dinner. She spread a table cloth on the table; it was soft cream linen with fuzzy red and yellow flowers. Joanna offered to set out the dips and corn chips and put some flowers in a vase. She chose a fat little cut-glass vase and put on her oilskin jacket to go out and pick some yellow roses and ferns.

The rain was so light you couldn't hear it land; it sat on the fine hairs on Joanna's wrists as she cut the woody stems of the roses. Everything smelt clean. Joanna remembered the smell of the river at Reikorangi which was like cold iron. Her father had taken Daniel and her there for a picnic. Joanna had felt completely happy and completely powerless at the same time. Not able to prolong the day, not able to keep him there. She felt his eyes on her, on them, and they had been the best they could be, in the water, eating the picnic lunch, packing up and going home. She had felt young, like a little girl, and perfectly good enough, but not, in the end, good enough. None of them good enough to keep him.

Her mother said how lots of families these days were single-parent families, it wasn't unusual any more, it was just how things were. But Daniel and Joanna were sullen, wouldn't be appeased. This was their family. Their father who walked away and drove in his car to a life they didn't know. They hated how their loss was watered down by all the others who had lost. They hated all those others, shied away from them, didn't want to know.

The moon pressed its thin yellow eye against the dark window of the sky, and Joanna stood in the garden, remembering. She thought it was their fault their mother was quiet and sad, because they could not say it was all right. Daniel was thirteen years old and he still had tantrums, sobbing yelling rages. He would go into his bedroom and slam the door and kick the bed, the door, over and over until he was quiet. Then he lay on the bed with his face in the pillow until he was bored and he picked up a comic from under his bed and read until he was ready to face them again. Joanna would want to go to him and hover around outside his door until Trish would snap at her to just leave him. There was nothing she could do.

The moon pressed its thin yellow eye against the dark window of page 91 the sky, and Joanna was cold. The hood of her oilskin cut out her peripheral vision when she stared straight ahead, and blinded her in one eye when she turned her head one way or the other. Her mother yelled for her to come inside, standing in the yellow oblong of the doorway, her head tipped to one side, and her hair blowing up and against gravity with the warm push of the hairdryer.

Inside, Daniel had been trying to help, but had unthinkingly set the table with salt, pepper and mustard. Joanna put the condiments away and arranged the flowers in the vase. Trish put a candle on the table and lit it. The flame hissed and sparked and then stood straight and still from its translucent bowl over the wick to its brilliant yellow point. Daniel arranged the bowls of dip and chips and then pulled the curtains closed, the little room looked welcoming and hopeful. They all stood quietly looking at their ordinary table that had been transformed into a sort of offering, or shrine.

Daniel hovered around Don, as he did around any man who visited their house, whether it was a repair man or a husband of one of Trish's friends. Don and Lynda had bought a bottle of wine and a prettily wrapped present for Trish, a deep purple scarf with tiny flowers on it. Trish was shy and grateful to be given such a personal gift. Elaine gave her an encouraging book about women coming into their own in their forties and Jill gave her a pot plant. They sat around sipping wine and talking and laughing. Trish was flushed and looked relaxed and happy. Joanna handed around the dip and chips and the small pastry savouries, and Daniel engaged Don in conversation about the yacht he was making out of balsa wood.

Trish had just read the autobiography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner and was remarking in a wine-amplified voice about the beautiful sand sculptures and chalk pictures that Sylvia had made. She was damn sure that if she was artistic she would make something that lasted, something that could hang in a gallery or on the wall. Something that she could go back to and look at, be proud of. Joanna watched her mother's face flush excitedly. Don asked Trish if she had ever tried painting. Daniel and Joanna looked at their mother as if she was someone they had never seen before, appraising her, looking for the talent that she just hadn't had time for yet. Trish laughed and told Don not to be silly, she wasn't artistic and hadn't painted a picture page 92 since she was about ten. Don told her she should have a go. Trish said ‘why?’, the smile dropping from her face. Joanna held a piece of solid wax above the flame of the candle, and the candle spat angrily. Trish told Joanna to stop messing with the candle. Don poured more drinks, and Joanna was still and unnoticed again, inside the flowing conversation.

Joanna imagined the sea scooping up the unusual intricacies of a sand sculpture. Or spiders dropping down the walls of an old shed, over the dusty reaches of a chalk picture. Making webs that dulled the colours and the flow of the lines. She imagined a tall serious woman walking away from her work as though it were a line of freshly hung washing, or a cupboard of folded sheets and pillowslips. She felt confused, and tired. She wished she were beautiful, or practical or artistic. She thought she was none of those things, she was just some webby daydreams dropping silently down over something she thought might be good but surely wouldn't last ever after.