Chapter Forty One

2.8.26

July/ August 2003

I hike on the Franz Josef Glacier. I am told that the Maori name for it means "tears of the avalanche girl." I feel like an avalanche girl right now, my life tumbling down a mountain with a force and momentum that will destroy anything in its path.

I have no tears though. My feelings remain locked inside me, refusing to flow from my eyes

I struggle to keep up on the hike. I am tired and fluey and unbalanced. My stomach, once so small, so flat I was barely aware of it is now pushing at the waistband of my jeans. It's heavy, weighing me down.

I always pictured glaciers as smooth, flat blocks of ice floating in the sea, but this is white with snow and full of crevasses and ridges.

As I trudge through a crevice, legs aching from carrying the extra weight of my stomach, from forcing my feet through the snow, the icy walls seem to close in on me. This is how it feels to be loved by Steve, I think, to be trapped inside his cold heart.

Steve emails. He's so lonely in the caravan in Cable Beach, he says. He's got no one to talk to and nothing to do except lie on the beach all day.

I tell him it sounds like he's living a hard life.

I go on a boat trip in Milford Sound. I don't get sick. Whatever is happening in my stomach, and it can't be pregnancy, it can't be, it can't be, it seems to have cured my sea sickness.

On a tall, narrow rock jutting out of the sea, a small penguin stands as if on guard. It watches the boat glide by. The tour guide says it's unusual to see penguins here.

We float past rocky peaks with waterfalls thundering down them. There are seals basking on rocks and twirling through the water. I am surprised when we see dolphins, I always associated them with warm waters, like in Byron Bay and Monkey Mia, but they seem just at home here, in this icy environment. They leap and cut through the water.

My flu gets worse. Queenstown and Christchurch pass by in a blur.

I email Steve and tell him I'm excited, soon I'll be on the beach in Hawaii and I won't be cold any more. He says he'll dream of me in a grass skirt and he wishes he was with me having lots of great sex.

Is that the only reason he wishes he was with me?

In Christchurch a woman is singing Stevie Wonder's Ma Cherie Amour. Her voice is high and sweet. I remember reading that Stevie Wonder wrote that song for his baby daughter. The title, My Darling Love, will I feel that way when- it won't happen- because I don't now and- it won't happen- how am I supposed to feel now?

I fly back to Auckland. I have a twelve hour wait over night for my flight to Sydney. I drink coca cola, so the caffeine will keep me awake.