Bugs

by Whiti Hereaka

  ‘But this is a nice place to work.’ Trace pulls the bed sheets tight. ‘A nice place. Quality. Some places I’ve worked …’ She shakes her head. ‘Some of the places, Bub.’ Trace keeps talking as she races around the room – it’s hard to keep pace with Trace.

  ‘I was about your age.’ She’s cleaning a mirror, so it looks like she’s having a conversation with herself, which really, she is. ‘I got a job at this bed and breakfast in town. I won’t say who because walls have ears.’ The walls wouldn’t need ears; her words are so loud and clear and cutting that they press themselves into the fibre. She speaks so loud that I think maybe I was right about her not hearing my name right; maybe she can’t hear anything at all. ‘The woman who ran the place was crazy. She cleaned her CDs with Brasso like this.’ Trace rubs the mirror in tight, hard circles like it’s supposed to mean something to me. I just nod.

  ‘So do you want to know what she did?’ Like I have a choice. ‘If someone stayed just one night she’d pull down the sheets –’ Trace mimes this on our bed – ‘and just bend over and give them a good sniff. Not in a funny way or anything, but to see if they were dirty. Then she’d just spray them with air freshener and pull them back up. To save on laundry. Terrible, eh?’ Trace bats at a cushion so it sits straight and plump on a chair. ‘If I was ever to go on holiday I’d take my own sheets, knowing what I know. But not if I stayed in a nice place like this. We change the sheets every time a guest leaves – even while a guest is here, if need be. A nice place, this. Mind you, I’ll never stay in a place like this. Did you know one night here is more than my rent for a week?’ Trace stops, in the middle of folding her toilet paper point. ‘Imagine, eh? All that money. No wonder the beds are always a mess; they must be tossing and turning thinking about the bill at the end.’

  Trace closes the door behind us and pushes the cleaning trolley to the next room – it rattles along, and so does she. ‘Maybe if I won Lotto, eh? Maybe if I had a million dollars. Mind you, I don’t think I could stay in a place like this even if I did have that kind of money, eh?’ She swipes the key card in the lock and we carry our gear in. ‘Because I’d still know how impossible a million dollars is, eh? For me. I’d still be thinking about how many toilets I’d need to scrub, how many beds I’d need to turn down.’ Trace stands in the middle of the room with her arms outstretched as she slowly turns around in a circle. ‘To stay in a place like this. It would still be a waste of money to me, no matter if I had heaps of money, you know? Easy come, easy go, they say. I don’t know about everybody else but it’s always been easy go for me, and it’s never been easy at all to come by; you know what I mean?’

  I’m wiping down the basin in the bathroom, and Trace looks over my shoulder. ‘Now, Bub. You want to make sure you follow behind with a nice dry cloth and give the tap a good rub to get off any water marks.’ She rubs it hard enough that she’s a bit breathless. ‘See? See how nice the chrome looks now? You’re lucky; we’ve got nice new bathrooms to clean with these nice surfaces that just wipe down. I worked in a motel that had stainless steel shower pans, and my supervisor was real fussy; liked those shower pans to shine. We had to use this powder stuff, which set my asthma off and ripped my hands up, but the shower pans would come up really nice. They’d shine like mirrors.’

  ‘That must have been a shock,’ I say. ‘When the guests looked down in the shower.’

  Trace laughs and nudges me. ‘So you do talk, Bub. I thought you might be dumb …’

  I stop cleaning and pick at the cloth in my hand.

  ‘I don’t mean dumb like me.’ Trace is flustered. ‘I meant, dumb like you can’t talk, y’know?’

  I hate it that she thinks of herself that way, because she isn’t dumb. She’s friendly and chatty and kind. I know someone told her that she was dumb once, and it’s stuck in her head, playing over and over like that stupid mixtape of mum’s in Stone Cold’s car.

  ‘I was never that good at school, but your mum tells me you’re going to university. Are you working to save for your fees?’

  I’m working to save my arse. But Trace doesn’t need to know that, so I just nod.

  ‘Your mum must be really proud of you, Bub.’ Not lately. ‘It’s a good thing to be educated; better than cleaning rooms. You get an education and you pay someone like me to clean them for you, eh? Just don’t turn into a little shit while you’re at university, OK?’ She leans closer to me. ‘They’d all come here, for Easter Tourney, those university kids – this is when I was at the motel – and they’d make a hell of a mess, yahooing around the car park. We had to replace the butter knives in all the units they were in. They were all black from being heated on the elements for …’ She pauses; looks straight into my eyes. ‘Well, I don’t need to tell you what they were doing, do I, Bub?’

  Oh great. Thanks Mum, now the whole world thinks I’m a junkie.

  ‘Your mum made me your supervisor.’ Trace is back to cleaning; not even looking at me any more. ‘Wants me to keep an eye on you. So as your supervisor, let me give you some advice: mind who you hang around with.’

  Where was Trace a few days ago? What would she have made out of a mate who just stands by while her dad yells at me?

  And then of course Shelley comes in and starts to cry, and someone has rung Mum, and so she arrives, and looks like she can’t decide if she’s angrier at me or at Mr Fox, who is saying all sorts of fucked-up things, like he’s trolling in the comments section:

  I suppose you let this happen at your home, do you?

  Well, the apple doesn’t fall far, does it?

  Your daughter brought drugs into my home!

  If she was properly supervised …

  I bet Mum just wants to throw that last one back at him – Where were you, then? She was here, not at home. But, all credit to her, Mum isn’t here to score points. She isn’t there to prove that she’s a better parent – because she doesn’t need to. In between Shelley’s blubbering and Mr Fox’s blustering, Mum is the only one who cares about us, ‘the kids’. She’s the one who stands between an angry middle-aged man and a freaked teenage girl. Mum stands up straight, and keeps calm. It seems as if she can look Mr Fox squarely in the eye (even though that’s impossible, because she’s where I get my short-arse from).

  Mum deals with this type of dick every day – irrational, entitled people who think the whole world ought to be perfect for them. The gutting thing for her is that usually she has to make that happen: she’s the one who smoothes the wrinkles away from their dream holiday; takes their shit and stores it in the safe for them to collect when they leave.

  ‘Now, let’s just talk about this calmly,’ Mum says in a soft, clear voice; soft enough that Mr Fox has to lower his own to hear her.

  ‘Yes, we will, at the police station.’

  ‘Over a little weed?’

  ‘You people might not think that this is serious …’

  ‘You people’? Is he for real?

  ‘Well, of course it’s serious. But involving the police would have consequences for both girls …’

  ‘Charmaine,’ Shelley hiccoughs through tears, ‘would never …’

  Mum nudges the bucket bong with her foot. ‘It looks like she would, Shelley.’ And Shelley starts off again, snivelling.

  ‘Kids experiment. I’m sure this was a one-time thing, right, girls?’ Me and Stone Cold both nod: the first time we’ve been in sync since this whole thing blew up.

  Mr Fox rolls his eyes, so Stone Cold has inherited that too. ‘Are you that naive?’

  ‘Let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt, eh?’

  Mr Fox tilts his chin and looks down at Mum. It’s that word benefit. His mind automatically connects it to: drug taking, drug dealing, pokie machines, breeding for money, uneducated, unemployable, special privileges, parasite … and because Mum’s there in front of him that’s how he sees her: feral bitch.

  But he won’t say this to us, to our faces; oh no. He’ll wait until he’s had a couple at a dinner p
arty or at a pub and then he’ll say, Y’know the problem with those people – they think they’re entitled. All those special privileges the government gives them – gives them over us, mind you – makes them uppity. She just stood there and told me that it wasn’t her daughter; implied that Charmaine had something to do with it. Look at how we bring up our daughter and then look at hers. It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? But you’ve got to be careful around those people, don’t you? Because of all the PC bullshit.

  ‘I’m sure Bugs is sorry. Aren’t you, Bugs?’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Mr Fox.’ Sorry we got caught.

  ‘Sorry? You can’t just do something wrong and then say sorry and all is forgiven.’ Actually, I think that is the definition of an apology. ‘She has to learn a lesson.’

  ‘She will; she will be punished.’

  ‘What, are you just going to take her Wii-box away?’ God, I want to laugh so bad. This guy has no clue how actual people live. But I know it will fuck up what Mum is trying to do, so I keep my mouth shut.

  ‘No, she’ll work all holidays and donate her wage to a charity.’ Mum squints at him like a cowboy in a shoot-out. ‘She will be completely supervised.’

  Mr Fox is just shaking his head. I guess he wanted me on the rack, or my head on a pike. Finally Shelley steps up and takes his arm. ‘I think that’s fair; don’t you, love? It was just a silly mistake.’

  ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘No, it won’t.’ Mr Fox is just itching to get in my face – to stab at me with his pointed finger pushing me back into a wall. He wants to say these words so close to my face that it gets wet from his spit. ‘You are not welcome in this house. You are not to see my daughter again.’

  I nod, and Mr Fox and Shelley go – probably to count the silver or something.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Mum asks Stone Cold, not me.

  ‘Yeah, I better …’ Stone Cold points to the house. ‘I’m sorry, Bugs.’ And she’s gone, and it’s just me and Mum.

  ‘Get your stuff.’ At least when Mr Fox was here Mum was pretending to be on my side. ‘Get your things and get in the car.’

  Mum waits until we have pulled out of the Foxes’ drive and onto the street before she really starts yelling. ‘What were you thinking, Bugs? Don’t you know what drugs can do to you?’

  Oh great. The ‘drugs-are-bad’ lecture. Like anyone my age hasn’t learnt this off by heart. Yes, I know what they can do to me. Yes, I know they’re illegal. But it doesn’t make them any less fun, does it? What really gets me is that people are so hypocritical about it. How’s that cup of coffee? How’s that glass of wine? And it’s not just a human thing, either. Monkeys look for fermenting fruit. Elephants get wasted. And I’ve read that reindeer look for magic mushrooms and then go and stare at trees for a few hours. That’s what makes Rudolph’s nose so bright, so there’s no frickin’ way I’d let him guide my sleigh. Mum shouldn’t be weirded out, because this is natural; every creature on this planet is looking for a little time out from reality.

  ‘Where did you get it from? Who sold it to you?’ Mum doesn’t really expect an answer; she knows I won’t narc. I shrug and look at the street that me and Jez used to walk up every day, flick flick away and behind us.

  ‘Do you realise how much trouble you could have been in? You’re old enough to be arrested.’

  ‘So I should have done drugs when I was fourteen then?’

  ‘You are not making jokes. This is not funny, Bugs. You could have been arrested and fucked up your whole future. That’s it, poof. Gone up in smoke.’

  If she wants me to take this seriously why is she making puns?

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, OK?’

  ‘No, it’s not OK. You’ve got to think about the future, not just now, because every decision you make now will affect your future. You kids just don’t understand.’

  But she’s wrong. I understand. The future is all we ever think about. It’s all we’re ever allowed to think about. What will you be? What’s your five-year plan? What do the stars hold for you? It’s like the future me is holding the real me to ransom, knife to throat, gun to head. And if I ever get there to this future I’m working my way towards, there will be another me ahead, still demanding that I think of her.

  Think about the future, think about the future.

  ‘Think about your future, Bugs. You can’t muck around with petty crime and be a lawyer.’

  ‘A lawyer,’ Mum says to Trace as she stirs her tea. ‘One more year at high school and then off to uni to study law.’

  ‘A lawyer,’ Trace says, in the way that people do; like you need to be some sort of genius to go to law school. ‘You must be very smart, Bub.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Mum says, her lips smiling but her eyes not.

  This is the gap between the rooms that checked out early and those that will check out soon. It is filled with tea. I look in my mug. The tea is strong and milky and sweet. I wanted to have a Milo, but everyone has tea here. It is made in a huge pot and left so that the teabags stew. They dump a whole lot of sugar in the pot too, so everyone has it sweet or doesn’t have it at all. Mum’s come down to have morning tea with us, which seems awkward for everybody. I don’t think front of house usually has tea with the cleaners. We’re all here in sneakers and polo shirts, and Mum’s in leather court shoes and a tailored white shirt. Even Trace is having difficulty finding something to say after the weather and how busy the hotel has been dries up. We sit around trying to drink our tea quickly, even though it burns with each sip.

  I reckon Mum’s just here to make sure that I’m not smiling, that I’m not having fun. Because it’s not really punishment – I’m not really learning my lesson – unless I’m miserable twenty-four seven.

  ‘Well …’ Mum’s mug is still half full. ‘I better get back to it. No rest for the …’ There isn’t a smile in the room. They’re all wondering if that means they have to finish their break, too. Five minutes early. ‘Please, you all finish your break. I just wanted to stop by.’ She puts her mug on the bench next to the teapot. ‘Trace, thank you for keeping an eye on Bugs.’

  ‘Bub is fine. She’s no trouble.’

  Mum leaves and everyone relaxes. The time is now filled with stories and gossip and laughter.

  Trace leans towards me in her chair, gesturing with her tea mug. ‘Bub. I have a joke for you. What do you call a million lawyers on Mars?’

  Like I haven’t heard these all before. Uncle pulled out all the lame lawyer jokes when I opened my fat gob and told everyone what I wanted to be. But I like Trace, so I smile and shrug.

  ‘A good start!’ And her laugh is as precise as her cleaning, finding every corner of the room.

  They all laugh, and I know that they will never think of me as one of them. I’ll never fit in because they’ve seen kids like me before: kids who breeze in during the holidays to play at being self-sufficient on minimum wage, when their rent and food and power is paid for by Mum and Dad. The ones who kid themselves that they know how hard it is because they spent one sweaty summer picking up after others. But they never stay here through the frosts of winter. They are always gone when the season turns to autumn.

  It must have killed Mum when she sat here, listening to the fair-weather cleaners and their plans. This is just a holiday job. Saving money for uni. You won’t believe how hard it is to be a student. As hard as working here all day? As hard as a baby when you get home? Or do you mean as ‘hard’ as it is when someone finishes off the milk and puts the empty bottle back in the fridge?

  ‘C’mon, Bub, time to get back to work.’ Trace takes the mug from my hands even though I haven’t finished. ‘The quicker we start, the quicker we finish.’

  And that’s kind of weird, because even though this sucks, ‘Aren’t we paid by the hour?’

  Trace laughs. ‘Yeah, but there’s only so many hours here. We’ll finish up around lunchtime, and then my next job in town starts at two.’

  ‘Y
ou have two jobs?’

  ‘How else do you survive?’ Trace pats my hand. ‘I’m OK, I get by. You should take your brain off to university and get a good job, like your mother.’

  You’d think a simple word like ‘good’ would mean the same thing to everyone. I’ve never thought of my mum’s job as good. Many, many other things, but … good? I suppose it depends where you’re looking from.

  We’re waiting outside a room for the couple inside to leave. Trace says this is the worst part of the day: waiting to clean while guests try to cling to the last minutes of their holiday, their dream life. ‘Or,’ Trace says, ‘the last few minutes of …’ She makes a ring out of the thumb and forefinger of one hand and pokes her other forefinger in and out of the hole. I’m shocked. Not because of the sex – I’ve seen too many condoms today to be shocked at that – but because it’s so crude and she’s so old. Older than Mum old. Trace tells me stuff about this town that I didn’t know. Like that it’s not just the mountains and the lake that fill our hotel rooms, it’s sex too.

  ‘Convenient,’ she says. ‘If you’re meeting a lover from Auckland and you’re from Wellington. Easy, if you’re having an affair. You just tell your other half you’re going to a conference. Or maybe you actually are going to a conference and you decide to make it a bit more … interesting.’

  The door opens and out walk a man and a woman, dragging small, black, wheeled suitcases and carrying matching branded satchels. Their smiles match too; the woman is slightly flushed, but they just stroll past us like we’re not there, because to them, we’re not.

  Trace leans close to me and whispers, ‘Networking.’

  I crack up, and the woman turns back and goes as red as her hair.

  Swipe, zap, we’re in the room. It is dark and musty. Trace opens the curtains and a window to erase every last trace of the couple from the room: the lingering perfume and cologne, the sweat, the stink of morning breath. Trace looks at her watch. ‘We’re a bit behind. We’ll do this room together and then we’ll need to split up, OK? You’ll be fine, smart girl like you, eh?’