Baby

by Annaleese Jochems

  Cynthia walks away, to wait for Anahera.

  She sticks her head through the door of a bakery and sees she’s half an hour early. She could go back now, to watch him meet the kids, but she doesn’t. He’d see her looking, and she’d distract the children from petting him. He might run in the wrong direction, and what could she do to help, call him? No, she waits. She walks up and down the street and looks through the windows of a series of ridiculous shops. There are so many scarves for sale these days. Anahera arrives three minutes late. Cynthia knows, because when she sees Anahera coming she ducks her head through the door of a tourist shop and checks the time on a big paua-encrusted clock. Counting the time it takes them both to get back to the designated spot, Anahera might even be late by seven minutes. When they do meet, she knows better than to ask how it went. She’s carrying seven huge bags of groceries, but she doesn’t gesture for Cynthia to take any of them. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, seeing Cynthia’s face. ‘You can go back and get him?’

  They walk in silence back to the dinghy, and on the way Cynthia takes two of the bags.

  That afternoon there’s another text from Cynthia’s father, split into five parts. It’s the same one he sent before (‘Hello, Cynthia. Now, I see that you have stolen $16,400 from me, and some of my clothes . . .’) but he’s added the words very, and humiliating so that the message now says, ‘Without even mentioning the very intensely hurtful and humiliating nature of your behaviour, I must emphasise that I consider this a serious issue,’ before continuing on to inform her that he expects to receive contact in the near future. He’s also included a postscript stating that he’s ‘sorry if she ever felt he didn’t support her in whatever career ambitions she had’.

  This time, he’s sent the message as an email as well as a text. She’s got to have courage, so reads it in each format only once and deletes his number. She doesn’t say a thing for the rest of the day, and Anahera watches her cautiously, touches her gently, and doesn’t ask any questions.

  15.

  The next day, before Anahera goes for her swim, she says, ‘I thought because I liked sunbathing with you so much, and reading those books’—and she hands Cynthia a stack of pink-edged paperbacks. Four of them. ‘This guy’s on a horse’—she shows the cover of one—‘and this one’s a Wall-Street wolf.’ She makes a little growling noise at Cynthia, leans down, and bites her gently on the ear. Cynthia shivers from the bite, and jumps a little in excitement. After a moment lifting up and down on the balls of her feet, she growls back. Being in the sun with Anahera, and under the sunsets, knowing they’re both reading books the other has read, or will read—what could be more beautiful? The men on the covers are all shirtless.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you so much.’

  Anahera beams back, and retrieves a packet of Tim Tams. ‘I don’t need to swim this morning,’ she says. ‘I just want to be with you.’

  They take blankets around the edge of the boat and lie on them. They have cups of cold tea and of rum, and even though it’s a bit warm it’s cooler than the air around them, and sweet. Anahera reads from the blurb of her book, ‘His face is that of a millionaire magnate, yes—but heavy and low in his Armani trousers lurks the cock of a lumberjack.’ Her voice is sharp and cool, like a knife in water, and she laughs. Cynthia’s probably in love. She laughs too, and unsticks her sweaty legs. Anahera pats them and says they’ll read a bit, then go in for lunch.

  Cynthia gets stuck on one page for an hour, and what she’s imagining is Anahera saving her from drowning.

  Anahera’s stirring whatever lunch is on the stove. Cynthia’s lying on the bed, and she sticks her foot up in the air. ‘What do you think of this?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My foot.’

  Anahera turns. ‘It’s alright.’

  Cynthia raises her eyebrows and waggles it. She worms her body on the warm, sun-heated bed, into the blankets. With her eyebrows raised, she waggles it faster and faster till Anahera says, ‘It’s good.’

  Cynthia stops then. ‘Thanks. It is, yeah.’

  Anahera turns the heat down on the stove and stands looking at Cynthia, at her body. ‘I had bunions,’ Cynthia tells her, provokingly. ‘You wouldn’t think it, but I did.’

  Anahera leans back on the bench. ‘Bunions,’ she repeats.

  ‘And I’ve got a sensitive tummy,’ Cynthia adds quickly. ‘Weird ankles, too. Sometimes I just fall right over.’ She rests her foot down on the bed and pulls her shirt up to reveal her tummy. ‘I can drink those big bottles of apple juice, but I’ll tell you what—I shouldn’t. If I drink a small bottle of apple juice I can’t jog anywhere, or even walk quickly, or have sex with anyone for four hours afterwards, minimum.’

  Anahera looks down tenderly, as if Cynthia’s belly were a kitten, and nods.

  ‘You can touch it,’ Cynthia tells her. Anahera squats down, beside the bed, and puts her fingers lightly on Cynthia’s stomach. ‘My body’s a real disaster, in some ways,’ Cynthia tells her, not showing off, just stating a fact. Anahera nods, and shifts her fingers like a whirlpool around Cynthia’s tummy button. ‘Anyway,’ Cynthia says, ‘you can touch my armpits, through my shirt.’

  Anahera looks at her and her fingers pause.

  Cynthia feels her lips pull in, but she’s making sure not to be embarrassed. ‘I like it sometimes,’ she says. ‘I touch my own armpits sometimes.’ It’s hot, the blankets are so hot under her, and her face must be like a capsicum. She lifts her arm up above her head and smiles playfully. ‘Come on, love,’ she says in a fake man’s voice. ‘Get to it.’

  Anahera pauses a moment, but doesn’t laugh. She leans over Cynthia, and with the long fingers of both her hands touches Cynthia’s armpit. It tickles splendidly, like Cynthia’s a pet rabbit, but she makes sure not even to smile. She can feel her eyes and lips opening, and she touches the inside of her bottom lip with her tongue. Anahera pauses her fingers, and Cynthia nods for her to keep moving them. ‘It’s sexual,’ she whispers bravely.

  Anahera nods, puzzled and hopefully pleased.

  ‘Okay,’ Cynthia says. ‘That’s enough, they lose sensitivity after a while.’

  They gaze at each other. Cynthia notices again four or five stray hairs at Anahera’s eyebrows, and her long blinking eyelashes, and realises: she’s in love, definitely. Anahera stays close for a moment longer, then goes to circle the spoon around in the pot. She shifts from foot to foot, like dancing.

  16.

  They’re having a fabulous conversation, where words mean more than they do, and everything is true. ‘We don’t always understand each other,’ Anahera has said, very frankly, and Cynthia has nodded.

  Now Cynthia adds, ‘We don’t, no, no, we don’t,’ and she laughs. ‘We’re very different, but I try, and you try, and that’s what counts.’

  Anahera sips her rum, and nods. They look at each other, and this is what Cynthia has always wanted to feel—that by making eye contact with a dear, special person, she might become eternal. She feels herself expanding, and the enormous water laps at their boat from below.

  The sun returns to them stronger with each day, and Cynthia stops counting them. Quickly, they finish the first bottle of rum, and Anahera produces a second. They lie close, nearly on top of each other, and at every full stop, between the sentences in Cynthia’s romance novels, she imagines rolling over against Anahera, and telling her the dirty, truthful facts of her desire. Sometimes, Anahera herself rolls over and she says nothing, but Cynthia thinks her eyes press forward, like fingers. She’s sure they both know, and are both waiting.

  Cynthia could list her needs, and all of them are love. She could list what she’s paid, given and sacrificed to Anahera, and it’s so much more than money now. It’s everything.

  Anahera’s swims are longer, twice as long. But Cynthia’s happy for her—she must be even fitter!—and the time between them seems to have expanded. When Anahera’s gone, Cynthia remembers Snot-head and wonders where he might be. She pluc
ks herself, looks in the mirror and feels sad, but each time Anahera returns she’s always pleased, and beautiful again.

  17.

  They’re re-reading their books now, which is a bit boring, but in a lovely, predictable way. Anahera gets up, slowly and hardly using her arms to lift her weight, and goes around the side of the boat and into the toilet. Cynthia sits still and watches the door once she’s shut it. It takes Anahera less than three minutes to re-emerge. When she does, instead of returning to the sun and to Cynthia, she sits down at the table and looks into her phone, then types something. A message, she’s sent it. Then she looks up and sees Cynthia watching through the window. She looks back, and sets her shoulders.

  This is the third time this has happened, but Cynthia knows that, if asked, Anahera will assert her right to text whoever she likes. So, Cynthia rearranges her book in her lap, and peers down into it.

  When Anahera’s settled back onto her belly and elbows to read, Cynthia gazes down into the parting of her hair, and sees it as a crevasse. She asks, ‘Where do you swim to?’

  ‘Oh,’ Anahera shuffles up, and points in the direction of an island. ‘There.’

  ‘To that beach?’ Cynthia asks.

  ‘Sometimes just towards it.’

  Cynthia settles down to read then. She will not be unreasonable, she takes a glug of rum. Anahera has every right to send text messages, and visit a beach. ‘Do you want to watch The Newlywed Game with me tonight?’ she asks.

  ‘Yup, what’s that?’

  The Newlywed Game is Cynthia’s current favourite. Some couples even got divorced because of it. They answer questions about each other, and have to predict each other’s answers to win. It’s good to watch on a phone, because the definition’s bad.

  For lunch, Anahera boils two-minute noodles and canned tomatoes together in a pot, and the result is good. While eating they drink more rum. Afterwards Cynthia does some dancing. ‘Wiggle it!’ Anahera shouts at her. Cynthia bends and shakes her bum harder. Laughing, nearly wheezing, Anahera takes her head, holds it still, and puts some raisins in her mouth.

  Cynthia dances her plastic cup up to Anahera and it’s filled right up. She drinks half, and she drinks more while undressing for her midday wash-swim. ‘I’m too drunk,’ she tells Anahera, laughing. ‘Too drunk for swimming.’

  ‘I’ll watch you,’ Anahera says, and Anahera is watching her.

  Cynthia strips down to her underwear, like usual, to wash. But she can feel Anahera’s eyes pulling her body, sucking at her, and she can feel her own desire prickling, trying to escape her skin. It’s hot. She swallows more and watches Anahera gulp back twice as much, and even flinch a little after doing so. Then, she puts her glass aside and leans forward with her elbows on her knees. Cynthia turns around, in a circle, unthinking, looking for nothing. Then she stops. She’s facing a little to the side of Anahera, looking at the island. ‘What do you do there?’ she asks.

  Anahera shrugs. ‘Sit, mostly.’

  ‘And, are you watching me still?’ Cynthia asks, but she can’t turn the rest of the circle, she can’t look at Anahera while she speaks. Instead she leans over the edge, to feel the water. Its coolness reminds her of her body, and how smooth it is. She wants to shift her hand and touch herself, her hip, her waist, her ass, but she can’t, Anahera’s looking. She touches her wet hand to her throat, waiting for an answer.

  ‘Yes,’ Anahera says, ‘I’m still watching you.’

  Cynthia will slip in, underneath the water. She’s about to. She can see the ladder, and the shampoo tied to it where the water foams against the side of the boat. She will, but she can feel Anahera’s eyes holding her, and all of her body tingles, ready to be filled up and loved.

  ‘I’m still watching you,’ Anahera says.

  Cynthia puts two of her fingers under the elastic of her underwear and wriggles them, wriggles them down, then kicks her two feet out of the holes. Trembling, she unclasps her bra. She can’t hear it, not quite, but Anahera is breathing behind her, sitting with her eyes open. It’s good, standing there in the cool light wind, under the sun. That’s all you have to do to find yourself; tear everything else away. The air shifts against her new wilderness hair and her hardening nipples. She won’t be ashamed. She turns to look back at Anahera.

  Anahera’s eyes shift away first, and she says, ‘You know,’ then gestures to the other boats around them.

  ‘So?’ Cynthia stands for one moment. Then, in her usual slow way, she gets in the water, wetting herself in very small portions at a time. Anahera’s still watching her, she must be, but when Cynthia turns back to see her she’s drinking more, and staring down at her hands.

  Cynthia’s careful not to do anything faster than she normally would, to get the roots of her hair washed properly, and not to miss any sections in conditioning the tips. When she’s clean and a little cold, she shifts to the ladder and hovers on it, halfway up.

  Anahera’s untangling her hair. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. It’s very tangled today, a huge poof on her head, and she pulls a strand through the larger mass thoughtfully.

  ‘About what?’ Cynthia says, touching her nipple and trying to adopt a similar, contemplative expression.

  ‘I don’t know if sex would really be good for us.’ Anahera drops her hair and watches Cynthia’s finger, moving in circles now. The sun caught in her hair is godly. She raises her eyebrows.

  ‘But why are you thinking about it?’ Cynthia asks. She shakes some water from her hair and climbs up into the cold, fresh air. ‘I play fast and loose,’ she says, ‘and I have since forever.’

  Anahera’s laugh is like biting, but she says seriously, ‘So you want—what?’

  Cynthia feels like a dashboard dog, nodding. Then she hears the question. ‘You,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not looking for anything.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, I’m something anyway.’

  Anahera touches her own neck, and Cynthia begins nodding again. When it doesn’t seem right to nod anymore she goes to sit on the bed, hoping Anahera will follow her. Anahera stands in the doorway, looking all over Cynthia’s body. She’s wearing Cynthia’s father’s pin-striped shirt and her workout shorts. Her feet are bare, and the muscles of her legs look almost tensed. The shirt’s not buttoned all the way to the bottom, and she’s holding one side from underneath, scrunched up in a fist. Cynthia can see her tummy button, a rude-looking slight outie. She shifts one of her feet, but doesn’t come forward or stop looking. Cynthia lies back and twists sideways.

  ‘What do you like, Cynthia?’ Anahera asks, with her voice quiet like she’s trying to be careful.

  Cynthia thought she knew this. They both wait for her to stop thinking, and say, ‘Come touch me.’ Just then something clangs outside, and Anahera looks up, but Cynthia says it again, and Anahera does. Cynthia fingers the collar of her father’s shirt, and then the buttons. Her fingers slip between them, and she’s touching Anahera’s breasts. Anahera laughs, but doesn’t move to remove the shirt. Blood rushes through Cynthia, and lands hard and thumping between her legs. She squirms against the pressure, then she’s squirming against Anahera’s hand, and her fingers. With her second hand, Anahera presses down on Cynthia’s chest, pushing her into the bed. Cynthia pushes back, and then she doesn’t.

  Anahera leans down and kisses her mouth, then, smooth and sudden, her fingers are in Cynthia. Cynthia moans and thrusts up, but Anahera’s hand is pressure on her chest, holding her down. Her eyes shut, and the feeling becomes bigger, and becomes everything she’s ever felt, or could feel. There’s nothing in her mind but Anahera’s eyes, looking down, with her pupils big and seeming to grow, then more, more, and Cynthia’s feels she’s lost her whole body inside them.

  She blinks, and feels she’s falling upwards.

  ‘You’re cute,’ Anahera says, and Cynthia wants to touch her nose. The air between them sparkles, or Cynthia has fallen into Anahera’s eyes.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Anahera asks, which is peculiar.
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  ‘I am, I don’t want to move,’ Cynthia says. There’s no blood in her head, only an enormous, expanding sense of meaning. She says, ‘I keep dreaming of Snot-head.’ She hasn’t been, really. She didn’t think of him at all yesterday, but now she hears his name the soft, wet memory of his face comes right back to her. His tongue licking her cheeks. She touches them, and they’re wet with tears. ‘I knew we were magic,’ she tells Anahera, ‘I knew everything would be worth it.’ She dabs some wetness from below her eye, and puts it to Anahera’s lips, hitting teeth. Anahera had looked fierce only a moment ago, while her hands worked on Cynthia and pushed her down, but now through Cynthia’s tears her face looks pliant and dewy. Confused, even. She shakes her head a little, so Cynthia’s finger is flung from between her lips, and she goes outside.

  Cynthia lies a moment, still deep in feeling, then follows her. The weather’s changed, the sun’s behind a cloud and there’s wind. The water’s a voluptuous mess. ‘You’re like my hero,’ she tells Anahera. She wipes her eyes with her wrists and looks up, but Anahera isn’t looking down at her. ‘I think it’s around the time of Snot-head’s birthday,’ she says. ‘Today might be his birthday.’

  Water is flung against them, and Cynthia remembers she’s naked. ‘It’s his birthday,’ she says, insistent that Anahera understand. But he wasn’t Anahera’s dog. ‘Let me do you,’ Cynthia says, but the wind takes her words before Anahera’s had a chance to hear them, and she can’t seem to repeat herself. They stand together.