The white muslin blackened around the edges, then crumpled, and nobody said a word.
The aprons had been big, covering the entire front of the ugly brown dress, and the cotton burned for a good long while, all the way down to gray ash. The flame was warm in the chill, and I held my hands out to it and said, “Gilead used to grab me by the strings at the back and pull me in.”
Something I had confessed to no one, because it had felt shameful. My helplessness, and his enjoyment of it. I could feel Fruitful’s gaze on my face, and she said, her voice low, “Me too.”
“Not anymore,” I said.
“No,” she said. “Not anymore.”
Gray
The sun came up as we drove through the Cromwell Gorge.
Somewhere past this next curve, Daisy’s car was in the Clutha. Possibly being pulled along with the current to the sea, or possibly sinking into the mire. If she recognized the spot, she didn’t let on. She just kept singing.
They had good voices. They also had loud voices. For small people, they could project, and if they didn’t understand the words, they had no problem making them up.
I hadn’t had a migraine when we’d started, anyway. The dog was probably back there covering her ears.
To make it worse, some of these songs had a definite disco vibe. When Daisy had played the first one, something about having a new dress, new shoes, and a new attitude, I’d said, “Before your time, isn’t this?” And she’d answered, “I love it. It’s so peppy and positive.”
We’d had “peppy” all the way east, the only break when I’d made a detour to return the farmer’s jacket. After that, we’d had Beyoncé, and, yes, the can’t-wait-to-see-the-back-of-you discography of Taylor Swift. Now, an insistent drumbeat started up, and Daisy turned up the volume and shouted, “This is the best one. Look at the sun coming up. That’s us. That’s our lives. Sing.”
They did. Belting out the chorus, rocking back and forth, clapping their hands overhead on the downbeat like they’d been born with rhythm.
Pretty soon, we were going to have the one about “I Will Survive,” and “Let It Go” couldn’t be far behind. Right now, out of the speakers and sitting right here in my truck, sisters were doing it for themselves. Aretha Franklin, Annie Lennox, and Chastity, Fruitful, and Obedience.
Breaking the locks. Jumping the fence. Burning their white caps and starting again.
No aprons. No strings.
What the hell. I sang along, too.
21
If I Had a Hammer
Gray
I followed Daisy’s directions to get to her flat. It wasn’t hard. We arrived from the south, like always, past sheep-dotted green paddocks and the swell of hills, the calm silver of Lake Waihola on our left, passing the odd oversized house set in the middle of somebody’s lifestyle block, their back-to-the-roots escape from life in the not-very-big city. A gentle land, and a peaceful one.
Fruitful said, “It’s so normal.”
I had to laugh. “You sound disappointed. Were you expecting Sodom and Gomorrah? Sorry, it’s just Dunedin. Heaps of churches, too, you’ll see.”
“There can’t be,” Fruitful said.
“Well, most people don’t go every Sunday,” I said, “so that can comfort you, maybe. And the Uni students, the scarfies, can be pretty outrageous, at least if drinking too much beer, swearing too much, and crowding too many people into a flat for a house party qualifies. Other than that—not much wickedness, I’m afraid. The place was settled by Scots. Very non-outrageous people, Scots.”
“Does everybody wear makeup?” Obedience asked.
“Well, just the girls, normally,” I said.
Silence from the back seat. “And some boys,” I added. “If they want to. No law against it, and it’s not hurting anyone, so why not?”
“They’ll have been told,” Daisy said, “that it’s hurting their souls. Painted women, hard and willful. And nobody’s even mentioned painted boys.”
“Nothing better than a willful woman,” I said. “What does that mean, after all? Just a woman who knows what she wants.”
“Careful,” Daisy said, “or you’ll make their heads explode. Baby steps, Gray.”
“My head’s not going to explode,” Fruitful said. “I’m ready. Obedience may not be, though.”
“I am too,” Obedience said, proving, I guess, that ugly dresses or not, sisters were the same everywhere.
We were entering the city proper now, and everybody got quiet. It wasn’t like it was a forest of skyscrapers, but I guessed if it were the first city you’d ever seen, it could feel that way. I asked Daisy, “What will you do about your car?”
“I’ll have to get a new one,” she said.