My mother’s voice shrills in my mind. I dig
my fingernails into my palms.
I promise myself I will look, but not touch.
As I climb the stairs to the library, the house creaks
furiously in the cooling night air. My bare arms and legs
pimple with gooseflesh.
In the front of the carved panel that hides
the bar, I press the secret switch and punch in the security
code. The panel slides up to reveal a teakwood cabinet.
Track lighting highlights bourbon, rum, and vodka on the
shelves to the left, mementos of my lovers in glass-fronted
cubbyholes to the right, and a wine fridge in the centre.
I press my fingertips against each
cubbyhole’s glass door. Sarah’s forefinger beckons. Karen’s
fingers point to mine. Rana’s and Linley’s hands are
outstretched, pleading. Surely, like mine, they long for a
gentle caress.
I pour a tequila shot, down it in a single
gulp, and stroke the door to Rana’s cubbyhole. My mother’s
voice goes silent. Everything fades but the memory of our
night together. Clean, dirty, it doesn’t matter. We
touched, we laughed, we loved.
Behind their magnetically sealed glass door,
Linley’s hands tremble for a moment under my fascinated
gaze. The Ruapehu area is prone to frequent, minor
earthquakes. I strain to feel a matching movement in the
floorboards, but sense nothing.
Of its own volition, my arm reaches moves to
flip open Linley’s door. I snatch my hand back. Linley’s
hands were dirty once, as dirty as mine. They’d touched me.
Thrust into me.
Firmly, decisively, I march back down to the
kitchen. At the sink I wash my hands once, twice, then a
third time, scrubbing them with the steel pad I use to scour
pans.
Sitting at the kitchen table again, I tell
myself that I can remember enough. There is no need to look,
let alone touch. I can even remember Sarah, who was as cheap
and pissy as a tepid can of Tui beer. She was my first, and
everything went awry; yet there came that pure, shining
moment when the pleasure felt as clean as it was blissful.
And I remember Bertina.
I press my hands flat against the kitchen
table and bite my lip. The wind freshens, and the tree
branches conspire against me. I hear a tap-tap-tap against
the kitchen window. Ber-ti-na, it chants
rhythmically. Ber-ti-na. Beneath my T-shirt,
my nipples harden.
Bertina was as perfect as a late-harvest
semillon. She worked in a Marlborough vineyard, or so she
told me, and I wanted to believe it as I kissed skin turned
gold by the New Zealand sun and tasted the honeyed sweetness
between her thighs. It seemed impossible her hands could
ever be dirty. Yet she touched me, adored me, created a
pleasure that was almost holy in its perfection.
My hands have left greasy, sweaty palmprints
on the kitchen table. Dirty girl.
My mother’s voice will stop again if I drink
to Bertina and our most perfect of memories. Cautiously I
creep back up the stairs to the library. I won’t touch. I
won’t even look. I’ll just get a clean glass of dessert wine
and return to the kitchen.
My gaze locks on a bottle of Hawkes Bay
semillon, but a flicker of movement out of the corner of my
eye distracts me. I glance at Bertina’s hands inside their
cubbyhole. Did her fingertips twitch?
I open her glass door a crack and leap back.
Nothing. Opening the door fully, I lean down and admire the
leathery texture of Bertina’s brown skin, her bleached
nails, the drawn, puckered tissue around her severed wrist,
her fresh crisp scent. Looking brings pleasure, just as
drinking brings pleasure. I remember the even greater
pleasure of touching.
Dirty, nasty girl.
But Bertina’s hands are clean, cleaner even
than mine, though I scrubbed them raw just moments ago.
Immersion in ethanol for six months has preserved Bertina
perfectly. Ah, the many beauties of alcohol.
Defiantly, I lift Bertina’s right hand from
the velvet-lined cubbyhole for the first time since I placed
it there nearly nine months ago. Her knuckles press against
my palm. Our hands curl around the bottle of semillon. I
can’t tell if it’s her fingers or mine that tremble from the
glassy chill of the wine bottle. We lift it out of the
fridge. It’s a screw-top, not a corked bottle.
I squeeze Bertina’s right hand around the
bottle, then pick up her left hand and press it down on the
cap. We twist counter-clockwise. The cap seal makes a
cracking sound as it breaks loose.
I sip the wine and lick a dribble off my
lower lip. My mouth waters. I give in to my deeper craving.
After dipping Bertina’s desiccated finger into the wine
bottle, I suck the sweet muskiness from her fingertip.
My breathing comes faster. I press the cold
bottle against my cheeks. My fingers lace with hers, clean
intertwining with clean. Are the others envious, or shocked?
I open all the glass doors. Let them watch.
My mother’s voice falls silent.
Let her watch, too.
Bertina’s hand curves around my breast,
brushes my nipple. I shuck off my T-shirt and stand naked,
leaning against the bar to keep myself from buckling to the
floor. Her hand slides lower, between my thighs. Clean
touches dirty. My eyes flutter shut.
Something clunks my temple. I whirl. Again,
something cracks against my forehead. I recognise Sherri’s
fist with its heavy gold thumb ring. Then jealous hands --
Rana’s, Karen’s, Linley’s, I can’t tell whose -- tighten
around my throat. My fingers gouge at theirs, trying to pry
them loose. I gasp for air.
Sarah’s severed forefinger sails into my
mouth and jams my windpipe. The traitorous bitch! The bottle
of semillon crashes to the floor next to me. The room
darkens. Hands clench more firmly around my throat. Sarah’s
finger plugs my windpipe more tightly.
One leathery brown hand approaches my face. I
smell my own desire on the fingertips. The scent is clean,
not dirty. Fingers press against my eyes, then my lips,
closing them forever.
Bertina! I always loved you best. |
