Leon was waiting at the school gate. A friend punched him on the arm. I had pins and needles down my leg, and the fingers that stole the money were numb. Leon’s hair needed washing. I thought about going home. I could pretend to be sick, then slip the money back in her purse and lie down on the floor to relieve my sore back.
But Leon held my hand. It felt as if the whole school watched us leave.
My family had moved every two or three years. From Napier to Invercargill to Upper Hutt to Westport, back to Upper Hutt and to Whanganui. I was always the new girl, always the outsider, always moving on. We’d been back in Invercargill a few months and I had no friends. I knew going with Leon would mark me and not in a good way. We walked to the bus depot and changed out of our uniforms. I looked in the toilet mirror and mouthed hello as if I was someone I’d just met.
Outside I took his hand, wet from slicking back his hair. ‘I’m adopted, you know,’ I said as the bus arrived. We slung our school bags over our shoulders and stood at the end of the line.
‘What does that mean?’ Leon asked.
‘They chose me.’ I saw babies lined up like fruit and Mavis squeezing their chubby thighs. Our turn came to board and Leon let go of my hand.
‘Let’s get a milkshake,’ he said. ‘My favourite is strawberry.’
We walked to the dairy as though we were foreigners, tourists from afar. Leon told me things. About being in the band and how inside himself he could play anything. But in the garage it came out wrong. About his parents and his younger sister who got all the attention. And the operation that meant he could not play cricket.
We walked around a park near the school. When I went to drink from a tap, he cupped his hands and I sucked the water from his palm. We found a hidden recess of branches behind a gardener’s shed. I remember the lacey foliage and how weightless I felt, the grass beneath like a Lilo floating over a pool.
He kissed me, his lips dry, the moisture sucked away. I gave myself up to it, the Lilo floating out to sea, the water warm and gentle around us.
Leon rolled off before I knew what his weight on me had meant. He placed his hand on my belly where he had pushed up my top. Later in my notebook I wrote that if you added up the hours, we’d known each other for less than a day. I wondered out loud if we could only tell our secrets to strangers.
‘So the more you know someone, the less you tell them,’ Leon said.
I thought about how my parents communicated by looks over our silent dinner table.
‘What should we tell people?’ he asked, all his bravado gone.
The floating feeling turned to heaviness. ‘Nothing. That way it will always be a mystery.’
The school bell rang in the distance and we changed back into our school uniforms. Needles of pain shot down my leg. The discomfort had begun the year before. Growing pains, Mavis said every time I complained.
I walked home along the wide and treeless street, trying not to limp. I planned to put the money back in her purse when she was in the toilet before we went shopping. As I neared the house, I could see the windows shut tight, despite the warmth of the day. Inside the light seemed dusty, diffused through the net curtains. I walked down the hall, arms extended, fingers tingling as I traced the wallpaper pattern. For the first time, I thought the place lovely.
She was at the kitchen table, the ashtray full. The teacup in front of her was stained with lipstick, half-empty, filmed over and cold.
They say losing your mother at birth encodes trauma in your pituitary sensory system. You become hypervigilant. To stay safe, you observe and copy your new parents’ behaviour. I was adept at following the mood of any room, the slightest whisker shift enough to put me on high alert.
But that day there was no need for hypervigilance. Mavis stared at me without a trace of warmth. I was too afraid to speak. ‘The school called. You were absent all day. The principal said you were planning to go to Australia. With a boy.’
I remember crying and how warm and pleasant the tears felt. I denied it all, gulping, caught up in my own wounded tone. I spread my fingers over the Formica and wondered about the money.
The slap came as I glanced toward her purse. My face stung. ‘You’re a liar.’ She grabbed my fingers and squeezed them till I thought they’d break.
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘No. It is you who are hurting me.’ She dug her nails into my wrist till I yelled. When she let go, she opened her handbag and held it open in front of my face.
‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ I must have smiled then as she slapped me again.
‘Your father will have something to say about this.’
‘You wouldn’t blame me if I weren’t adopted!’ I kicked a chair and sent it spinning across the polished lino. The words that had piled up inside me came spilling out. ‘I’m not like you. You tried to force me, but I’m someone else.’
She turned as Max stood in the doorway. He walked past me and took his wife’s hand as if I was not there, and led her from the room.
In my bedroom, I closed the door and
