by Bowes, K T
Hana reached Logan at a run, burying her face in his shoulder. Logan put his arms around her and felt the tension in her body. “I’m pretending I’m not scared, but I’m terrified. Please can you come with me?”
Having established Hana was coming back, the phlebotomy technician went to his bottles and tubes, a smile playing on his lips at the cute scene he just witnessed.
When Logan entered the room behind Hana, he was encouraged to stand in the corner of the tiny room, where he spent the next ten minutes trying not to look at the red blood pooling slowly in the tubes and Hana’s arm swelling under the influence of the blood pressure cuff.
“You’re not generous with your blood, are you?” the man complained. It took a while for him to fill the requisite tubes and two different vein sites. Her blood pressure was low, complicating matters. By the time it was over, Hana had two sore arms and felt rather faint.
The technician smiled at her and let Logan lead her from the room, advising, “Have a sugary drink or cup of tea as soon as possible.”
They meandered back across the car park and into KFC, where Shaun was as good as his word and made sure Logan got a portion of food far too big for him to manage in one sitting. Hana sipped lemonade and tried not to worry about her results.
They slipped back to Ngaruawahia, careful as usual to check behind regularly for any vehicles following them. Hana felt extraordinarily tired and laid on the sofa with a hot cup of tea. Logan seemed twitchy and unsettled and Hana knew he wanted to get on with the baby’s room. “Start if you want to,” she conceded, conscious of his need to do something useful with his weekend. She soaked up the peace of the living room and partially absorbed the black and white movie on the TV. To her surprise she dozed off a number of times, enjoying the unusual sensation of falling asleep during the daytime and giving herself permission to move in and out of consciousness.
Hana woke up around five o’clock, her stomach telling her it was empty by gnawing on itself uncomfortably. She stumbled down the hallway, searching for Logan and guided by the sound of music coming faintly from the last bedroom on the left. It was difficult to get into the room owing to the old curtain, which covered the rimu floorboards. The single bed, originally the only piece of furniture in the room, was leant up against the far wall on its side with the mattress balanced against it. Logan had painted two walls and the ceiling already and a small portable radio sat on the floor playing to itself. The room looked bright and cheerful compared to its previous sorry state, of light brown plaster and filled cracks.
Hana smiled encouragingly at Logan, rewarding his hard work with a light kiss on his paint-speckled face. “It’s nice,” she said. The eggshell texture was unusual but added another dimension to the walls and hid a multitude of dents and fissures in the elderly plasterboard.
“Look,” Logan explained, showing her two colour charts with blue and pink tints, either of which would blend perfectly with the cream. “Oh, but I suspect your friend at the Huntly Hardware shop is now fully aware of your pregnancy. Sorry.”
In fact the man remained suitably professional throughout his efforts to help Logan choose a base colour which would go with either pink or blue.
There was something important about getting the room ready which had an effect on Hana’s confidence in her pregnancy. It suddenly seemed a real possibility in some future time, she may really stand in this room clutching to herself a small person, clad maybe in a hand knitted cardigan and sleep suit.
The image was comforting and happy and gave Hana an injection of faith in her ability to bring it into reality. The scripture from Matthew chapter 10 sprung into her mind from nowhere, “For only a penny, you can buy two sparrows, yet not one sparrow falls to the ground without your Father's consent. As for you, even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth much more than many sparrows!”
Although she felt completely unworthy of it, Hana knew her Father was indeed watching her and her baby and undertaking for them. She hugged the knowledge to herself and enjoyed Logan’s enthusiasm as he dragged the mattress back down onto the floor and encouraged her to sit down and talk to him while he painted. Later Hana drifted off to make a sandwich for them both, bringing it back into the room where they sat together on the mattress to eat. She felt content and rested. By bedtime the room had been given a complete coat of paint, requiring probably another one the following day. Logan was happy and full of the energy which comes from achieving a goal.
The next morning Hana got up and went across country to church, feeling more secure than she had for a long while. Ivan and Anka were there together and Hana sat with them after the service for coffee. Ivan stuck close to his wife, but the atmosphere between him and Hana was still strained and awkward. She stayed to update the pastor about Logan’s health.
“I’ll contact Logan again soon,” he promised. “But we probably shouldn’t drink quite so much this time.” He shot a guilty look at his wife and Hana smiled.
Hana arrived home to find the old bed and mattress blocking her space in the garage, ending up reversing up the slope with difficulty. She was irritated by Logan’s apparent thoughtlessness but when she saw the room, any annoyance was dissipated by pleasure. “It’s so beautiful.”
The room was clean and fresh looking, having gained a personality in the transformation. The window frames and skirting boards were the same colour as the walls and ceiling, only in smooth gloss. Logan borrowed the Honda and went back to the hardware store to purchase a set of wooden slatted window blinds, a large rectangular cream rug and a chandelier style shade for the one central bulb. Despite the dullness of the winter’s day, the room glittered and sparkled with texture and light. Logan was like a schoolboy, pleased with his efforts in class and desperate for his wife’s approval. Hana gave it willingly. The room was stunning. All it needed now was furniture and Logan seemed happy to wait to buy it. “I’m really not ready to buy stuff,” Hana warned him. “Not things I might have to…get rid of…if.” She bit her lip and Logan gulped unhappily. His face clouded as she forced reality into his happy bubble and Hana felt momentarily guilty.
Despite her misgivings, Hana went to bed that night happy and hopeful for the future, sleeping deeply and well and waking the next morning to discover she felt no trace of the morning sickness plaguing her for the last few months.
As they were leaving for work, Logan’s mobile phone frantically trilled. He answered it as they ran down the back steps to the garage, stopping in his tracks at the bottom. “Oh really? Crap!” He looked concerned and pressed the button on the wall to raise the garage door, going outside and round the back of the house. Hana followed him, curious about what was going on, fear starting up its familiar drum tattoo in her heart. Logan climbed up the sloping lawn, stopping at the post and rail fence which kept the garden section separate from the paddock behind.
“Oh!” she gasped.
The previously empty space was filled with around one hundred milling, distressed, Friesian cows pushing and shoving to get away from a large bull, which rampaged around the top half of the paddock. The side fence was broken and tendrils of split wire coiled meaninglessly into the air, its useful life over. The boundary fence to the left of that paddock was stampeded to a pulp, lying redundant on the ground, a broken post sticking up like a finger. In such close proximity the cows were huge, their dull eyes frightened and their bodies tense and moving recklessly amongst each other, barging, pushing, hurting.
Logan climbed up onto the rails, indicating to Hana she should move back and stay away. “I want you to go round the front of the house and get in the car!” he ordered her. Hana backed up quickly, seeing him wince as his trousers caught against his sore leg. He stayed on top of the rail surveying the landscape while the cows turned to face him, almost as one unit, pairs of eyes shifting and focusing on Logan.
Hana heard the quad and the motorbike before she saw them. Maihi was on the quad, her face one of distress. Hemi went ah
ead of her on the bike, negotiating his way through the broken wire and over the fence. The cows lowed and mooed but moved reluctantly out of his way. He and Logan spoke quickly and Logan climbed back down from his vantage point.
“No!” Hana’s shriek alarmed them all. She pointed wordlessly towards a cow standing prone and rigid against the fence. Its body heaved and strained. Hemi and Logan followed her gaze as the tiny, breathless body of a calf slipped to the ground with a small thud. It was far too small and dead before its furry body slid into the grass and Hana felt her hand go up to her mouth. The mother moved towards it and began licking, but it was a fruitless task. Her baby would never raise its wobbly, ungainly head, or feed from the milk in her udders. She nudged and lowed at it while the other cows watched, transfixed by her confusion.
Logan saw the look on Hana’s face and came over to her quickly. “No, Hana. It’s just nature. It’s Papatuanuku’s way. Don’t let this affect you like that. They don’t see things like we do.”
Looking back at Hemi, he communicated everything with a look, before leading Hana back down the side of the house. She kept trying to stare back at the distressed beast, but Logan wouldn’t let her. He forced her into the Honda and drove down the driveway towards the road. Hana twisted in her seat trying to see up the hill but it was pointless and they were down on the main road before she knew it. Logan tried to take her hand but found it cold and still under his. Hana spent the journey sat in silence, getting out of the car and walking towards the office in a daze. Logan looked after her with concern in his face but when he caught her up, he found her unresponsive and blank. “It was too early, Han,” he tried to tell her. “They’re not like people. That won’t happen to you.” But she shrugged away, burying terrible fears as frantically as she could before they were able to get out of control and overwhelm her completely.
She worked like an automaton all day, communicating little and achieving even less. At the end of the fourth period when the bell sounded, she went to the bathrooms and looking at herself in the mirror, recalled the tiny, defenceless body slipping to the floor amidst the grass seed and flowery heads of common weeds, its little eyes shut in its furry, mucus soaked head. She resisted the parallels in her own life, those which taunted and threatened at her most vulnerable moments and her heart ached for the mother, doing its best to revive the lifeless baby in its own pathetic way. She dared to lay her hands over her own belly and felt the nakedness of terror.
The tears began to fall and that was how they found her. Sheila came to look for her after a half hour absence from her desk. Hana’s morose silence worried the normally oblivious Pete and he texted Logan.
“You poor girl. Whatever is wrong?” Sheila tried to mop up the tears, but it was a waste of time as more replaced them on Hana’s cheeks and blouse.
“I can’t do this!” Hana’s face was frenzied as she gripped Sheila’s forearm and cried silently. Seeing Logan pushing his way into the ladies’ toilets regardless of propriety, caused something else to snap inside Hana and she broke down completely. She wailed like a child. Her husband led her carefully down the back steps and through Q Block to the car, while Pete scurried behind carrying her handbag across his forearm like a girl.
Logan stuffed Hana into the passenger seat and ran around to the driver’s side, pulling himself quickly in and starting the engine. He was half way through the gates onto the main road when he glanced in his rear view mirror to find Pete’s face staring back at him. The handbag was still fixed firmly over his right arm and he even belted himself in. Noticing that fact made Logan realise Hana’s seat belt lay uselessly across her body, trapped under her arm but not plugged into the socket. He disturbed her by grabbing hold of it and belting it up at the traffic lights onto Wairere Drive.
Pete had never been up to Culver’s Cottage before. He seemed interested in the house and now he was here, less interested in Hana. “Oooh,” he kept saying as he wandered curiously around outside. While Logan led his fragile wife up the steps and into the hallway, Pete scouted around the property, poking and prying to his heart’s content. Logan put Hana in the bedroom. He didn’t really want to leave her but abandoned an English class and also had a faculty meeting to get back for. “Don’t move!” he told Hana, nipping quickly to the roof garden to check the paddock.
Hemi had moved the stillborn calf and the mother could no longer be distinguished from the rest of the cows moving around grazing. Logan often wished people were like stock. They got on with the business of living after a tragedy. They didn’t try to reason it out, or over complicate it, they started eating and life seemed to sort itself out after that.
The fence had been repaired and a steady ‘thwack, thwack’ sound, echoing off the mountain range behind, indicated Hemi was still at it. Logan checked on Hana again. She was laid on the bed staring at the wall. “Can I get you anything?”
Hana shook her head. Logan kissed her gently on the forehead. “I don’t really want to leave you. I promise not to be late home.”
He locked up and went outside to find Pete, who was poking at a piece of firewood with the head of the axe. He still wore Hana’s handbag over his arm and Logan sighed as he took it off him, unlocked the front door again and left the bag on the kitchen table. Shoving his friend into the passenger seat, he made the drive back to town, hoping his class had not played the student teacher up too much and the faculty meeting wouldn’t be a waste of time.
By the time he arrived back home having bolted out of the meeting as fast as he could, Hana had slept most of the afternoon away. She looked out at the paddock sipping a drink of water, daring to peer down at the fence line. There was nothing there. The poor baby was gone. She searched for the mother in the bunch of grazing cattle, fancying that one lying down with its head on its hooves might be the sad and grieving dam. But it got up and started grazing, chewing the cud and ripping and tearing at the fresh grass without concern.
During the course of the afternoon in odd moments of lucid wakefulness, Hana realised she was making it worse by transferring the experience onto herself. Occasionally in life, something happened to shock a person into facing their own mortality or that of those they loved. It was there all the time but people blinded themselves to it, believing they could plan for tomorrow or next year without fear. Hana knew from Vik’s death how all life hung by a delicate and tenuous thread, given and taken away so easily and utterly catastrophically. No-one would ever understand the depth of the mess Hana’s first husband left for her to tidy up.
After Vik died, Hana acknowledged she kept Bodie and Izzie far too close. She stifled them in an attempt to keep them safe, stopped them getting lifts with other people just in case, stopped them going to birthday parties just in case, threw an absolute fit when Bo wanted to join the police just in case. But what good had it done her? Shortened her life and given her frown lines. Bless my little sparrow, she begged God, over and over and gathered herself together to make a meal for Logan when he got in.
If he was surprised at how collected she appeared he didn’t comment, just stuck close to her for the evening, following her around like a pet lamb. He wanted to tell Hana about Pete’s affinity with her handbag but didn’t dare mention it, in case he reminded her and she seemed calm now.
Logan pulled her in tightly to him as they watched inane rubbish on TV. Sometimes his wife was so like the fillies at the farm, skitty and afraid, needing his gentle reassurance and time spent talking her down. Other times she was fearless and terrifying, daring him to come close and threatening bites and kicks if he tried. He wondered if he would ever be able to work her out. He smirked into her hair; reminding himself he never yet met a horse he couldn’t tame but knowing this filly may well take him a lifetime.
Hana Du Rose
Chapter 27
Hana minded her own business, getting on with her work and enjoying the repetitiveness of her tasks.
There was something mindlessly blissful about photocopying and making packs for boys
who wanted to do university papers early. She stapled the forms together and slotted them into plastic wallets. Needing to do twenty, Hana got to eighteen when the huge speaker outside the room that sounded for period change began to make a different kind of sound. Fire alarm. Hana’s heart sank as she looked at the numerous sheets still lying on her desk ready to be sorted. If she went outside and left them she would be inconvenienced when she finally got back in, trying to remember where she got up to. That’s if they didn’t blow around with the doors opening and closing. She began to quickly sort the last two, hoping the noise would stop suddenly as it often did in a false alarm.
Sheila appeared in her doorway, her face enquiring as to whether they would go outside or not. “What do you think?” she asked. “It went off twice yesterday for no reason. It’s freezing outside.”
Hana shrugged and kept on stuffing the paperwork into the wallets. Sheila was still looking at Hana’s busy back when the noise burped itself off and was replaced by a human voice. Angus’s calm Scottish lilt spoke through the speakers, “This is not a drill. The school is in lockdown. Go into your classrooms and offices and lock the doors. Get under your desks and stay away from windows and open areas. This is not a drill.”
Sheila’s eyes grew wide like Jaffa oranges as the voice proceeded to repeat the message calmly and clearly. Hana kept stuffing her forms into the wallets like a madwoman, relieved when all twenty were safely stapled and contained. Turning towards Sheila, Hana saw she valiantly resisted the urge to run out to the foyer and peer out of the window to see what was happening. The school was strangely silent. The common room was empty and there was not a student in sight around them.
“I don’t really want to go under my desk,” Hana began to whinge, “there’s still mouse poo the cleaners didn’t get.” Her sentence was cut off in a squeak as the back door swung open, clanging horribly against the cupboard behind it.