Chapter Thirty Seven

 July 2003

We go to Piha Beach with its dark sands and Lion Rock. At the right angle it really does look like a giant lion turned to stone. Maybe if I stay here long enough I too could turn to stone and never have to face the future.

   I think my heart might already be stone.

   In Waitomo we see the glow worm caves. I am claustrophobic, afraid the caves will fall on me, but they are lit up like a night filled with stars. 

   I walk in the farm near the hostel, following a path by a field of bulls. They hurl themselves at the fence as I pass. I am afraid they might break it and trample me to death but I keep going. I wonder if they smell pregnancy hormones on me, if that is somehow enraging them.

   Of course not. I'm not pregnant. Whatever is happening to my body, there must be another explanation. I can not have a baby with Steve.

I make a sort of friendship with an Irish woman and two English women. I don't know why they're being nice to me. I think they can tell something is wrong. They let me be with them without expecting anything.

   Their kindness makes me want to cry.

   I think Steve was wrong. People don't hate me. He was wrong about everything. He is wrong. 

   I need to break up with him. So far from him I can see everything he did that was wrong. He hurt me. With his words, his teeth, his hands, his penis.

   But I can't break up with him.

   He promised himself he would never fall in love again after his break up with his ex. 

   And then he did.

   With me.

   If I break his heart, just when he's allowed himself to love again he'll never be able to love again.

   Why can't I just love him back? Maybe I'm a narcissist, incapable of loving anyone but myself. Maybe we are just both in love with me. At least that's one thing we have in common.

   I stare out of the bus window, the Longpigs' On and On playing over and over in my head. I wish Steve would leave me.

Bus drivers keep pronouncing the Irish woman's name wrong. Cat-tree-onna instead of Cat-treena. One tells her her she doesn't know how to spell her own name.

   Catriona and the two English women don't mention my stomach but the bus is full of people talking about friends or relatives who have had unplanned pregnancies.

   'Why do you keep talking about being pregnant, are you pregnant?' I hear a man ask a woman.

   'My friend's having a baby,' she says.

    'Are you sure you're not pregnant?' I hear an insult, a sneer in his voice. He's calling her fat.

   She doesn't seem to get it. 'If I was pregnant I'd be at least three months,' she says. 'It would show.'

   He doesn't say anything.

   It's cold. So cold here.

On and On by the Longpigs

Chapter Thirty Eight