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By Root 477 0

of a brickworks or the first butcher shop. Long ago meaning half a century. Nothing is old here, but it looks old. The timber houses age fast, and even the brick looks worn down after fifty years of blizzard winters and blistering summers. They’re put to shame by the new bungalows like a bakery’s pastel cakes, identical, fresh, tasteless. This is known as a good part of town. Not like the other side of the tracks, where the shacks are and where the weeds are let grow knee-high and not dutifully mown, and where a few bootleggers drive new Chevrolets on the strength of home-made red biddy. No – that’s as it used to be when I was a kid, and I would go with Stacey sometimes, because she was never afraid. I don’t know what it’s like now. Half my children live at that end of town. I never go there, and know it only from hearsay, distorted local legend, or the occasional glimpse from a child’s words.

How cold the wind is becoming. I should have worn a scarf and my woollen gloves. I’ve just managed to get rid of that nasty hacking cough. I certainly don’t want it back again. If I could put on a little weight, I wouldn’t feel the cold so. But I’ve always been too thin, like Dad. Stacey takes after Mother, and in consequence has a good figure. Or had. I haven’t seen her since the last two were born. I haven’t seen my sister for seven years. She never comes back here. Why should she? She’s lived away for years. She has her own home, and wouldn’t be bothered to visit here, not even so Mother might see the children. She’s very decisive, is Stacey. She knew right from the start what she wanted most, which was to get as far away from Manawaka as possible. She didn’t lose a moment in doing it.

My great mistake was in being born the younger. No. Where I went wrong was in coming back here, once I’d got away. A person has to be ruthless. One has to say I’m going, and not be prevailed upon to return.

But how could I? I couldn’t finish university after Dad’s death. The money wasn’t there. None of us ever suspected how little he had, until he died. He’d had a good business, or so we thought. Mother said, “I hate to say it, but there’s no doubt where it all went.” If she hated to say it, why did she? Then it was – “Only for a year or so, Rachel, until we see.” See what? She couldn’t be the one to move – I do see that. She’d be lost any place else. Stacey was already married, and with a child, and Mac selling encyclopaedias at the west coast. She said I must see how impossible it would be for her. Yes, I saw, I see. Seesaw. From pillar to post. What could I have done differently?

I’ve been teaching in Manawaka for fourteen years.

A faint giggle. I’ve been walking with my eyes fixed downwards. Who is it?

“Hello, Miss Cameron.”

“Oh – hello, Clare. Hello, Carol.”

I taught them in Grade Two. Now they’re about sixteen, I guess. Their hair is incredible. Piled high, finespun, like the high light conical mass of woven sugar threads, the candy floss we used to get at fairs. Theirs is nearly white and is called Silver Blonde. I know that much. It’s not mysterious. It’s held up by back-combing, and the colour sprayed on, and the whole thing secured with lacquer like a coating of ice over a snowdrift. They look like twins from outer space. No, not twins necessarily. Another race. Venusians. But that’s wrong, too. This is their planet. They are the ones who live here now.

I’ve known them nearly all their lives. But it doesn’t seem so. Does thirty-four seem antediluvian to them? Why did they laugh? There isn’t anything to be frightened of, in that laughter. Why should they have meant anything snide by it?

I have my hair done every week at Riché Beauty Salon. It used to be Lou’s Beauty Parlour when I got my hair done first, at sixteen. They’d find that amusing, probably. I say to the girl, “As little curl as possible, if you can.” So it turns out looking exactly as it’s always done, nondescript waves, mole brown. What if I said some week, “Do it like candy floss, a high cone of it, and gold?” Then they would really laugh. With my height. How silly