The Wake
Renée

The four of them are there behind Father Pederson.  He says good morning but they don’t say good morning or even hello.  They stare at Souvie.  They see a tall thin woman with dark short hair, shadowed eyes, pale face, wearing blue jeans, cream jersey, stylish brown boots.  There is a strong smell of wine.  Her jersey of course.  And she’s carried her glass with her.  Their darkest convictions about her will now be confirmed.  Eleven in the morning and she’s drunk.  Smell her a mile away.  Souvie looks at them carefully.  Resa lands softly on each head like one of those balls of light which used to dart from word to word in singalongs at the pictures.  They don’t feel her. 

This tired-looking grey-haired man and woman in their early sixties, carrying suitcases, made love one night forty-three years ago and it has come to this.  Did they laugh with pleasure when they came?  This other younger man and woman with cold faces carrying cardboard cartons played, fought, argued with and loved their sister and it has come to this.  Facing a woman they despise to pick up detritis they refused to set eyes on when Resa was alive.  All of them hated what she was and made no secret of it.  Communication had been non-existent for the last ten years.  Nothing at christmas or birthdays.  Now she’s dead here they are with their cases and cartons. 

Resa settles on the doorframe.  Her smile has vanished.  Is this why she’s been so determined to stay?  Will she go now?
Through here. 
No-one moves, it’s as though Souvie hasn’t spoken. 
Souvie stands aside and they enter, see Resa’s gear.  The older woman blows her nose.  She uses a hanky with a lace edge.  The younger woman pats her back.  Father Pederson walks over to the window and stands looking out.  The others set to work.  Souvie leaves them.  Goes back to the kitchen and Lydia.  Hands her the glass and Lydia fills it.  Souvie’s hand shakes.  Resa has come back with her, has settled on Lydia’s head.

There are sounds from the sitting-room, suitcases have been opened, cartons placed on the floor, flaps opened.  Clothes are being folded, shoes wrapped in newspaper, books packed.  Souvie stares defiantly at Resa.  You’re not wanted, her eyes say, I don’t want you, just go away.  After a while Lydia lifts her wine in a toast, taps the table. 

Souvie takes her hands down from her ears.  Lydia leans over and holds them.  Souvie gives a deep shuddering sigh, swallows.  Lydia pats her hands, murmurs encouragement. 
There are shuffles in the passage.  Souvie sips her wine, tears pour down her face.  Resa shimmers behind a waterfall.  Footsteps sound, things are carried through, there are more shuffling movements, it’s a narrow passage, more things are carried through, then steps start down the stairs.  Souvie lets out the breath she’s been holding, wipes her face with the tissues Lydia thrusts at her, puts the glass of wine down carefully, runs to the door. 

I’m here!  Look at me!  I’m bloody here!  She shouts in their statue faces.  I’m here!  I’m here, look at me, I’m here! 
After the first startled turning of heads, they ignore her, they go back to carrying the cartons, the suitcases, easing them down the stairs as though there’s no-one crying at the top, no-one saying the same thing over and over.  I’m here, I’m bloody here.  Look at me, I’m here!

They’ve gone Souvie.  Lydia puts an arm round her.  They’ve gone.

The stairs are empty.  Everything’s quiet.  Lydia leads her back to the kitchen, hands her the glass of wine.  Souvie looks at it. 
Hang on.  Hang on.

Had my first drink the day I left school at fifteen.  Bought a bottle of Blackberry Nip from the Porohiwi pub and some lemonade and plonked the bottles on the kitchen table.  Let’s celebrate, I said to Gertrude and Mem, I thought I was christmas.  Mem was shocked, wanted to know who sold it to me, Gertrude said hormones should be banned. 
Souvie shakes her head as if to clear it.
My failure came as a great relief to everyone at Porohiwi High.  Like most schools it was run on the wheels of intimidation, humiliation and setting up one kid against another and when these tried and true methods didn’t make much of a dent in me they couldn’t wait to say goodbye.  They had a good academic record and one of the ways they maintained their reputation for academic excellence was to get rid of pupils who might tarnish it.

Let’s get comfortable. 
Lydia carries a bottle and her glass, leads the way through to the sitting room, unaware that Resa’s head is gleaming behind her.  Souvie wonders how many bottles have been opened but doesn’t ask.  Lydia lies on the couch, Souvie sprawls on one of the big chairs and hangs her feet over the side, Resa shines up on the back of the couch. 
Go.
I got a job as a waitress in a cafe called Mexicali Rose in the main street of Porohiwi.  The owner was Vincent Dix.  He made the pies, sausage rolls and cakes and I waited on tables, kept the shop and the glass-fronted food cupboards clean and shelves full, unpacked the orders of flour and sugar and tomato sauce, wrote down any supplies we needed and out the back Chrystal Brown made the sandwiches, put cream and jam on the sponges, iced the butterfly cakes and the chocolate cake, washed the dishes and in between times fucked Vincent. 
Lydia grins.
I left there to get married.
Shows thinking is not as constructive as it’s cracked up to be. 
Me and Hug Wright were really meant to be good friends, marriage put too big a strain on that.  The sex was okay, not great but at least he didn’t get dressed up in military uniform and sing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy when he was in the sack and then get snotty when I wouldn’t harmonise like another guy I went out with for a while.  When I say a while it was two nights.  The second time was just to prove to myself I hadn’t been dreaming or drunk.  Chrystal said at least Vincent didn’t make a song and dance about it.  She said he got very chirpy and whistled afterwards but he didn’t expect her to join in.  You can’t help wondering.  Chrystal was a lot older than him, didn’t look all that sexy, didn’t treat him as though he’d done her a favour or anything and he just couldn’t get enough of her.  I came face to face with one of the great mysteries of life Lydia, something that no amount of thinking will ever solve.  Why someone falls in love with someone else.  I’ll never crack that one. 

The sitting room feels cold, empty.  Souvie begins to cry again.  Lydia reaches for more tissues. 

Cried a lot at first, used up boxes and boxes of tissues, a whole tree at least, soaked teatowel after teatowel, occasionally a bath towel.  Then I stopped.  Somewhere inside me a tap was turned off.  Now it’s turned back on.  Souvie scowls at Resa who smiles behind the green. 

I’m drunk, she thinks.  Surely not.  I’ve only had three glasses.  Maybe four.  Look here God, she pleads, you get rid of Resa and I’ll never drink again.  She doesn’t believe in God but she’s desperate. 

I always wished I was a twin. 

Lots of myths and mysteries about twins.  Mem and I read them all.  Or most of them.  We grew up enduring The Looks.  Either blatant or furtive. 
Yes they are, yes, look Harry, identical twins! 
Look Janet!  Look John! 
And the authorities.  Twins should be separated (Primary School).  Twins should not be separated (Secondary School). 
Mono - Monozygotic that’s what we were.  Because we both came from the one egg.
Monozygotic!  Lydia rolls her eyes.
Two sides, good and evil.  Romulus and Remus.  Jacob and Esau.  Twins are a bad omen so they must be abandoned.  The mother must have had intercourse with two men, one of whom was the devil.  How can a mother keep up with the rest of the tribe with two on her back?  How can she do her allotted work in the field with two on her back?
You’re right.  Lydia leans over precariously and pours another glass.  Whoops.  Some sloshes on Souvie’s jeans. 
Viola and Sebastian.
The Man in the Iron Mask. 
The picture of Dorian Gray! 
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde! 
Ronald and Reginald Kray!  Souvie puts her glass down, blinks at the two Resas and the two Lydias but they don’t disappear. 
Lydia gets up, lurches out of the room.  Souvie hears the thump of her hand against the wall on her way to the toilet.  She’s scared of this silence, frightened she might say the words she doesn’t want to say which are please, please, please, go away, leave me alone, please leave me alone, please just die.

She thinks of her desperation when she realised she’d fallen in love with Resa, her attempts to stop it.

Cold baths.  She ran a deep bath and threw about a thousand iceblocks into it.  All she got was frozen tits and a rigor that would have put a deep sea diver in the last stages of the bends to shame. 

Housework.  Gritted her teeth, scrubbed cupboards, walls, floors, shampooed the carpet in the main bedroom and the sitting room, washed curtains, bedspreads, loose covers, changed all the furniture around and cleaned windows.  Didn’t work.

Hard labour.  She chainsawed all ten dreary conifers, a wedding present from Chelle, her mother-in-law, to the ground, put in a fish pond, a waterfall and a bog garden down the back and a rose garden along the side.  Chelle refused to speak to her and Hug suggested she see a doctor. 

Things that had worked before.  She asked Mem could they go down to Gertrude’s and have a snowball waltz.  Mem looked at her as though she was crazy. 
Joanna’s been vomiting all night, Mark’s got measles and I’m buggered.  If you want to do something helpful look after them while I go to bed and have a sleep. 

Souvie knew when she was beaten.  So the next time Resa rang she invited her to come and see the roses.  If only she’d known she was heading for the biggest disaster of all.

Which one’s that? 

Shit, she must have said it out loud.  That’s the one where you jump off the roof of a blazing twenty-storey building into the safety net spread below you and halfway down you realise there’s a big hole in it. 

Oh that one.  Lydia reaches up and gets another cushion.  When do we start singing?
Singing?
Always sing at a wake or don’t you do that in Porohiwi?  She falls back on the cushion, asleep.  Her mouth opens and she begins to snore.

Souvie feels terrible but triumphant.  The room is going round, she needs to pee and will have to crawl to the toilet, but she’s done it.  She hasn’t told Lydia the worst of it.  Resa in her green mask has been willing her to tell Lydia that Resa’s still here, but Souvie hasn’t let on.  It’s still her secret.

Renée has written six novels and seventeen plays among them Kissing Shadows (2005) and The Skeleton Woman (2002). She lives in the Lower Hutt in Aotearoa / New Zealand.

From: Car Maintenance, Explosives and Love and other contemporary lesbian writings Eds. Susan Hawthorne, Cathie Dunsford, Susan Sayer
pp 338-344

Website: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au