Photo by Annie Spratt.

‍

‍

Apartment Building of the Self

‍
On the ground floor are all our pets that died: Moggy tossed from a car at high speeds, ginger stripes flat on the highway. Moggy two, a tiny ball of fur jammed in the outside toilet door, an accident since he followed everywhere. There is my father in the backyard and those endless cabbages clouding the garden in white butterflies. Cabbages that Mum boiled til the chlorophyll drained out like sea lettuce crisping in the sun. One winter after weeks of smelly cabbage slime I hacked them up with the hoe. The cat did it, I said. He’s got really sharp teeth. Funny that a cat would get so angry at cabbages, Mum said. Yeah, he hates them.
‍

There are the endless summer days at the lawn tennis courts beside the Public Gardens. We’re in the dark stream down the slope from the courts, capturing koura, those black beady-eyed freshwater crays that are too slow to scurry away. Once, in a concrete campground kitchen in Dargaville, Dad lifted the lid off the Danish lads’ bubbling pot. He turned to us, his face filled with glee, bout $500 worth of fines boiling up in there. The Danes, in their sandals and socks, looked at us kids for help. They’re protected, my little brother said, as Dad lifted him up to take a look.

There are all the long days when we played on the street, up the hill, or in the ghost house; sprinting home, jandals slapping through the empty dusk, shouting, Dad’s gonna tan your hide! Mum’s at the washing machine feeding washing through the roller. Cloth nappies extruded like flat, steaming stingrays. There are the tide pools and bushy beach and orange sand. There are giant brushes of Toe toe whose sublime softness whispers into your palm. There’s the way a white goose’s feather both holds a secret and tickles your nose. There’s Mrs Tutty and how it wasn’t fair that God plucked her right off the pew in church. How dare he? I cried, clenching my little fists. She was my first death. I’m still mad now, forty-two years later. I never got say goodbye.

There’s my elephant fish at Moeraki, escaped off the line, its gibbous, jellied eye haunting me from below the water accusing, how could you? Moeraki, of sliding down the hill on upturned fishing crates to the musical squeals of my little brother as he flashed by, his blond curls a stream of light. There would be Mum, beautiful, tired. No time for teaching me things; fed up with my curiosity, but always and forever there. The fights we had those few times she went away. How hard I tried to make it good for her.

On the middle floors wafts the nutty, savoury scent of pipian cooking. On a warm night, in a backyard, in a barrio named Las Cebollas (the Onions) Mariachi music peeks over the stone walls. White plastic chairs are set in an oval and each occupant holds in their lap one polystyrene tray, a section filled with pipian—pumpkin seed mole, rimmed by a layer of chilli oil—another section is piled with peach-coloured rice and in the final rectangle a lobe of corn tortilla. A force of electricity runs between you and I, so strong it’s almost visible in the darkening night. We’ve been invited to my student’s house to celebrate his birthday. He’s the kind of kid who turns eleven and is immediately thirty for the rest of his life. As the night creeps on, sneaking behind the moon, preparing to change into day, you and he tell jokes. We turn the sky blue with our laughter. We might cycle down the calzada to the dry lake, to look over the horizon where spirits wait for dust storms and spaces between moments to send a shiver over our skin. Feel that, you say and without looking, I do, I reply. There would be my classroom and the way it feels to anticipate a need and to want everything for them.

You invite me to a bautismo, a big celebration with pink and blue balloons, presents, a Mariachi band wearing traditional trajes, black with silver scalloping lighting the legs and arms. There are wide-brimmed sombreros and one white stallion. Your mate is dwarfed by his tuba—bom, bom, bom! At the end of the evening we stop for a snack at Doña Ana’s. She tells me to sit at one end of the table so she can get a look at me. She glances from you to me. Y ustedes son novios? (are you together?) At the same time you answer, todavia no (not yet) and I respond, trabajamos juntos (we work together). You watch me and say assuredly; ask me again in a month. Me invitan a la boda (invite me to the wedding), she says, smiling. I feel my life slide towards yours.

Later, there is an abortion, a betrayal and a death that is too hard to mourn from so far away (in a language I no longer speak). There is your sister in a video falling to the ground; No puedo! No puedo! I can’t! I can’t! she cries. Your mother holds her arm, si yo puedo, tu puedes (if I can, you can) and they march on with the Mariachis, to the graveyard, the notes of your favourite song winding high through the blue streets.

A few floors up the heat is hotter than breath. It sits in waves above the salt pans. I am picking oranges, rolling them over the grass till their thick skins are loose, breaking into all that juice. Flies ring our eyes, trying to land with their little feet. Oceans blister silver in the sun. City streets are streaked pink and blue after rain. Grace shines in the faces of strangers, days weave stories, inking in new tones, expanding ways of looking. Rivers of red dust sparkle over the floor, in my hair, on the soles of my white feet. Eastern blue-tongues scatteron the highway verge like shreds of blown-out tyre. The sky is so vast you can wander in it.White light plays tag through the red river gums. The smell of eucalyptus signals home.

And here’s me, in from the rain, taking the lift to the next level, moving in again.

‍

‍