She was early. I heard the knocking as I was getting dressed. Bonnie raced to let her in and came running back. Two women in straight skirts and ill-fitting jackets stood in the foyer. They were from the Department of Social Welfare.
‘We’re following up on a complaint of child neglect,’ the smaller one said.
‘We’d like you to invite us in,’ the other said. ‘We need to see your children.’ They glanced in unison towards a white van in the parking area. It could have been for dog control or police work.
I swept my arm wide and worked to keep my voice neutral, careful not to spook them. They refused to say who’d complained, but I knew it was Bruce’s parents.
I carried Ruth on my hip. The older girls were drawing at the boardroom table. The women hardly noticed them. Instead, they opened kitchen cupboards and peered into each room. They studied my shoes. Had they found men’s sizes, they could have stopped my benefit. They noted the makeshift shower Christine had rigged after removing a toilet bowl. One of them handed me a card. ‘You’ll need to find somewhere else to live,’ she said.
My fear leaked out. ‘You can’t take my kids.’
‘Yeah, we can,’ the other said, and she snapped her fingers. ‘Just like that.’
It was raining when the social workers left. They were scurrying towards their van as Jeannie passed by. She walked with such confidence, oblivious to the rain, the two women turned to watch.
After sharing so much, this was our first meeting. Jeannie was taller than I expected. She wore trousers and a wide-shouldered jacket, and her dark brown hair was piled up. Her voice was even more arresting in person.
She held my arms and scanned my face and body. ‘Pam’s daughter. You could be no other.’
We sat on plastic chairs at one end of the boardroom table. She watched the children. ‘Oh my heart, she looks so like your mother,’ she said as Bonnie looked up and smiled.
Each time Jeannie said ‘your mother’ my chest constricted. I wanted to inhale every fragment of her. I wanted to know everything. And yet I was fearful she might say my mother left without a backward glance.
‘It was all Fred’s fault,’ Jeannie said.
I thought of the frail and broken old man who’d died in a locked ward. Jeannie leaned over and twisted a strand of my hair around her finger in the same way I touched my children. An instinctual mother’s touch. In those days, I slipped in and out of other worlds with surprising ease, never fully anywhere. Our psyche longs for narrative consistency. As Jeannie told me what she knew of the story, my imagination rushed to fill the gaps.
I see Jessie, my grandmother, patting the soft waves of her home perm. She and Pamela are sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Fred to return. As if they know this will be the day. Pamela hears him whistling down the road. She had not heard her father whistle until they moved from Manchester to Tawa. The sound gives her comfort.
Fred’s face is ruddy from the walk. He has tied the top of his painting overalls around his waist and his work shirt is damp under the arms. He removes his shoes and smiles at his family. ‘Ahh, my pretty ponies,’ he says, and ruffles his daughter’s hair.
And then he sees it. The swell of her stomach that she can no longer hide. Pamela holds her breath, the possibility of his redemption like a haze around them.
Jessie slides two fried eggs in front of him. He looks up, his eyes wide as though someone has switched on the porch light while he was admiring the stars.
Jessie turns away. ‘Eat your eggs,’ she says.
He holds his knife, studying the perfect yellow globes. ‘Tell her. Tell your daughter to leave my house.’ His voice is shard sharp. ‘She’ll be gone when I get home.’
Pamela has not heard this voice before, and it stills all hope. He sections the toast in precise strips and pierces the yolks. The midday sun forces its way through the nets. He gulps the food, then unties his overalls, slides his arms into the sleeves and leaves without a goodbye.
As soon as he is gone, Jessie goes to the hall. She makes a phone call, pushing the kitchen door closed with her foot. Pamela gazes at the yellow streaks covering her father’s plate.
‘They made her leave that day,’ Jeannie said. ‘Jessie had already organised it through her doctor. The one she saw in secret, for breast cancer.’
I imagine their house. The plain decoration, the net curtains, and the new suburb growing up around them.
Pamela places her suitcase on the single bed. She can’t think what to pack. Through all the months since her mother found out, they have not spoken about it. She stands outside her parents’ room and knocks as though she is a visitor. Jessie has left an envelope pinned to the door. The name of the doctor, his address and a train timetable. She has underlined the destination and departure time in red ink. Pamela realises she will have to hurry to catch the last train to Napier.
‘Bye, Mum. I’ll be off then,’ Pamela calls.
She takes her case through the silent house and along the path. At the corner, she looks back. Jessie is on the front step. She lifts her hand from the folds of her apron. Pamela wants to skip home, but her mother turns and goes inside. The baby shudders, and she wonders if the tremor comes from the earth itself.
The train is full, but no one sits next to Pamela. ‘Nothing,’ she says out loud, ‘will ever be the same again.’ Opposite, a woman in wrinkled stockings looks up from a book, her face expressionless. Pamela watches out the window. She has never seen the New Zealand countryside. The emptiness chills her. Eyeblink towns rush by, blemishes on the endless
