You know what happens when I start telling the stories…

…it is like a little word sized window is left open at night and stories hop in, one after the other, while we are sleeping.  Before you know it there is a litter of stories giggling on the floor  just waiting to trip you up when you get out of bed. I grabbed this short one before it went and hid under a chair with the others.

I was 18 years old, 3 months pregnant and wearing a stunning white hand me down wool dress, when I bit the arm of the man with the newspaper.

We were on a plane. I was being sent to Auckland to live with the nuns.  Through an error of judgement, too much fun and too little sense, I was pregnant and unmarried.  Being a teenager and just a wee bit wild, my parents had decided that I was better off living in a convent with a very large laundry that took in girls like me and helped us adopt out our babies. There is a fierce amount of  sadness in that sentence. But actually the convent  was not that bad.   The time I spent living in the Home for Unmarried mothers is an extraordinary story all in itself.  But not today.

Today we are in a small plane flying from the beach up the island to Auckland. The fog had delayed the flight for six hours. Our home was only five minutes from the airport so I had spent the six hours in the big chair at home watching the sea.  I remember absolutely those hours sitting. I left myself in a way. To cope with what was to come,  as I sat watching the tide move back out, I allowed My Self to lift into a bubble and float along above me like a helium filled balloon. I was totally detached except for the most transparent of strings.  Dad got the call that the airport was open again and I was shuffled off. My mind bumbling along behind me.  My hands clutching the incongruous macrame bag.  My Mother’s friend’s older daughter’s beautiful white wool dress smoothed down over my small teenage body to my knees. Leaving home in disgrace meant a good dress, stockings and my good shoes. So I could be somebody else for my Mother.

In the plane, amidst the muted hum of silent passengers and smooth motors, I  was seated beside a man who was given a newspaper by the beautiful tall air hostess. She did not offer me one, I guess I looked too young to read or something. God knows people make the most dreadful assumptions about the young. Anyway this man was in the aisle  seat and I was sitting looking out the window. My Balloon Me still floating way above my body bumping gently on the luggage rack. My Balloon Me also had an eye so I was drifting up there watching myself and watching the man unfold his newspaper.

Now in those days the newspapers were about twice as wide as they are now. To open a newspaper fully you had to be a bit careful not to knock things over or hit people in the face. These newspapers were in fact best read at the table. Preferably after the butler had ironed each page for you. I had seen this in a movie and it had always amused me, I was thinking.

This man  was all newspaper. Holding the news by its two edges, he reached both arms out to the full width of the paper, spreading his arms, then he would shake the paper a little so it flattened,  bring his hands together to grab another page, spread them out again, shake again,, then he would turn it back out and down, fold it again into a manageable size and read the chosen section. Then he would open it up again, wide as he could go, shake it, close it, open it, turn it and then fold it back in.   Then he would do it again. And again. Well you get the picture. Out in.  Out in.  In a tiny plane flying to a big city.

What he did not realise of course was that there was a bubble girl sitting next to him and every time he opened the newspaper right up and shook it, he shook his arm right in front of my face.  Like a challenge. Again and again he did this, I could smell  his skin and count the golden hairs on his arm.  Every time he reached his arms out wide, I shifted my body as close to the window as I could, holding my own hand in front of my face to protect it, but as he got more space he stretched wider. He had no sense of personal space. No sense of the girl beside him with her Self doing a slow boil in a balloon above her head.  Trying to be polite. Poor fellow.

His aisle arm began clipping passengers and hostesses as they swayed up the aisles. The hum of the planes engines changed as it settled and still he shook and rattled his paper, clonking passing people with grunted apologies, and smashing his arm through the air in front of me.

After a while, I put my hand back down, slowly took off my convent girl gloves and laid them in my lap on top of the sensible book my Mother had chosen. I crossed and recrossed those long gangly girl legs under the perfect white wool dress, my stockings slipping against each other, my sensible heels dangling.  My tiny teenage mind reached up for my balloon self and she and I connected.  I turned to look at the man behind the newspaper. He was oblivious. He unfolded his paper, stretched it out wide, joined the paper together to turn the page, his paper flapping in and out like huge wings, he shook it a little, and as his arm was presented to me once again, without even moving very much  or thinking terribly much (as usual) I just gave him my teeth.  A decent but tiny bite.  Well a nip really, but a good sharp nip. A puppy warning. With my sharp white untried teeth. I bit ever so gently, just teeth, then pulled my head back and inspected with satisfaction the little teeth shaped dents in his arm as they puffed and subsided.

The man froze, the plane engines throttled back, the air hostess glided by. He did not even glance at me or say a thing.  He was quite still. He looked straight ahead. Then he just inexorably shrunk into himself, his arm was carefully retracted, his elbows slowly clicking in beside his body.   He moved his bottom ever so slowly in his seat until he was as far away as possible from me. By then the newpaper was folding itself into a small rectangle, while he still stared at the chair back in front of him. Making no sudden movements he settled his hand with his paper in his lap and carefully retrieved a pen from the little plastic sleeve in his shirt pocket.  He stared at the crossword for the rest of the short flight. And at last it was safe.

I picked up then re-placed my gloves on top of my book, returned my eyes to the window and disengaged my balloon Self again. Then I went straight to sleep, like children can.

cecilia

Good morning. I hope you are all going to have a super day.  The roosters are crowing and the sky has allowed that first glint of navy that heralds another dawn.  It is time to start work.   Oh dear I wonder if I should have told you that story.  Ah well. I was young.  I never bite people now.

This baby is the one flying in on Sunday to help around the farm for a week. Not such a baby anymore!!

celi