Bleeding Heart by Nicola Winstanley
2022 Winner
When Paula gets home late, her dad is standing in the middle of the kitchen in his work shorts and singlet, covered in sweat and dirt, swigging from a pint bottle of DB. Tina sucks her thumb and stares wide-eyed at cartoons on TV, oblivious to her sliding-down diaper. Matty sits in the corner on the floor, smashing trucks into the wall and making loud explosions.
“Where were you? You’re supposed to be looking after these kids.”
“Matty’s eight and old enough. I was playing.” But she doesn’t really play anymore. She’s almost eleven. She’s been sitting on the edge of the pavement with Hemi, throwing stones across the road. Hemi has eight older brothers and sisters and doesn’t talk much, and Paula likes to pretend he listens.
“What’s that?” Her dad flicks his head towards her middle.
Paula looks down at the smooth, pale roll between her t-shirt and skirt. “My tummy?”
“Cover it up, will ya? Christ.” Paula’s dad looks away, burps, and drops the bottle in the crate of empties by the back door.
Paula yanks on her t-shirt to cover her exposed belly button, but it just pops back up. She folds her arms around her middle. “You want another one?”
Her dad sinks into the ratty Lazy-Boy close up by the TV, shoos the kids and changes the channel to the stock-car racing. It usually puts her dad to sleep, but Paula needs to talk to him, so she forgets about the beer, sidles up, and hangs on the back of his chair, but not enough to rock it and annoy him. The sticky upholstery smells like beer and smokes and mold – nasty, but sweet, sort of, too.
Paula waits until a jingle blasts from the TV, and there’s the soothing voice of a TV mum who is happy about Vim and cleaning the toilet, not like her mum who swears about it when she ever does the cleaning, which isn’t very often.
Paula’s dad throws his head back, annoyed at the interruption. “Gawd.”
Paula tiptoes around until she’s in front of him. “I need some money for school.”
“Think I’m a bloody millionaire?”
“It’s educational though.”
“I don’t have it.”
“It only costs one dollar.” She holds up one finger to demonstrate.
“One dollar,” Matty repeats, and keeps driving.
Her dad scratches over his right eye. It’s how he thinks. “Where’s my beer?”
“Can I though?”
“Now.”
“If I don’t go, I’ll get into trouble.”
“Ask your mum.”
“She’s never here.” Paula’s mum is asleep when Paula gets up for school and working when Paula gets home. There’s the weekend, but then her mother drinks all afternoon and night. Paula makes rum and cokes and keeps her mother entertained by pretending. “Pretend to be your stuck-up teacher,” her mum says sometimes, but Paula won’t, and then there’s trouble.
“Yeah, bloody late shift.” A deep sigh, then her Dad reaches into the pocket of his shorts and pulls out a scrunched-up one-dollar note. He holds the money just out of Paula’s reach.
“Dad!”
“Beer first.”
There’s no food in the fridge, just beer. “What’s for tea?” Paula sucks in her tummy and feels the waistband of her skirt loosen. She could be skinny, like a movie star, if she tried.
“I’ll get us chips. Later.”
“Chips, yeah.” Matty is now lying listlessly on the floor next to Tina who watches the stock cars with the same concentration she had for cartoons.
Paula half dances into the lounge and blocks the screen, waving her arms to get her dad’s attention. “I can walk to the shops. Then you don’t have to go. Dad?”
“Later.” He exchanges the dollar for the beer.
“But you still gotta sign the form.” Paula runs to her backpack and takes out her pencil case and the folded permission form.
Her dad’s eyes are half closed now, the full bottle of beer drooping in his hand. “Dad!” She thrusts the paper at him and taps the dotted line with her pen.
“Can’t you do it for fuck’s sake?” Her dad groans, yawns hugely and rubs his face until his cheeks are pink, and his eyes are streaming.
Paula has some practice at forging her dad’s signature: Rob Blaine. All the letters round and curly, not like him at all. He’s small and sharp and wiry. Tough, not soft. “We’re going to the –” She stands between her dad and the TV again and pretends to read off the paper in her hand like a newsreader in a posh voice. “Auckland War Memorial Museum in the city,” she says, even though he hasn’t asked.
“You’re in the way,” Tina whines.
But they aren’t going to the museum. It’s not an educational trip – they’re going to the movies to see Watership Down at the Civic. It’s nearly the end of their last year of primary school, and Mrs. Sladen says that’s special, and they should celebrate with a trip. It’s not one dollar either. It’s only seventy-five cents for the ticket. Mrs. Sladen said to ask for a dollar so they could spend the change at intermission.
Paula loves Mrs. Sladen. She has short blonde hair, blue eyes like a baby doll, and she smells like talcum powder. Sometimes she lets Paula bang the dusters, and when Paula makes a mistake, she doesn’t yell; she says, “Why would you do that?” because she wants to help, she says, she wants to help Paula be better. After the teacher interview, Paula’s mum called Mrs. Sladen a cow, and her dad said, “Sticking her nose in. Bloody bleeding heart.” Paula doesn’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good, and after that she keeps her feelings about her teacher to herself.
*
On Friday at ten, the mothers with cars arrive, and the teacher gives each one a sheet of paper with a list of the children they’ll be driving. The she reads the master sheet out loud.
Paula can’t believe her luck. “We’re with Mrs. Sladen,” she whispers to Hemi.
Hemi shrugs and folds his arms. “’Cause we’re the naughty kids.”
“Shut up,” Paula says, “Am not.” Mrs. Sladen looks right at Paula and raises one finger to her lips.
Paula and Hemi and Sally-Ann and Felicity and Caroline and Bruce will all be going in Mrs. Sladen’s lime-green station wagon.
“May I sit in the front?” Sally-Ann is a goody-two-shoes.
“Yes you may.” Mrs. Sladen talks to Sally-Ann in a sing-songy way and smiles at her twinkly eyed. “You other girls on the back seat, boys in the wagon.”
“But can’t I?” Paula asks. “I wanna sit in the wagon part. Or the front. Next to you.”
“No shoes today?” Mrs. Sladen shakes her head sadly. “For the trip?”
Paula wiggles her toes, then points to Hemi. “But Hemi didn’t either.”
Hemi glowers at Paula, pushes out his bottom jaw and shows his teeth.
“Everyone on their best behaviour please.” Mrs. Sladen hustles the children into the car.
There is golden dog hair all over the back seat. Mrs. Sladen doesn’t have children of her own, she has told them, only two retrievers called Peaches and Cream. She takes them to the beach in her car and walks up and down the sand. “It’s important to get some exercise,” she says, “to stay trim.”
In the front seat, Sally-Ann swishes her long blonde bunches, brushed smooth and tied over with pink ribbons. Paula has tried to make bunches in her own hair, but it’s impossible to do it yourself, the part ends up crooked as a dog leg. Sally-Ann’s mother parts her hair every morning and brushes it 100 times. It would be so easy for Paula to lean forward and pull the end of one of the ribbons and undo the bow, just like Hemi did in class yesterday, but she doesn’t because she isn’t naughty. Hemi had to go to the principal’s office. Paula drags her gaze away from Sally Ann and looks over her shoulder, but Hemi and Bruce are both turned around and l making hand gestures through the back window at the driver in the car behind them.
On the motorway, Paula winds down the passenger window and leans into the speeding air. Orange-legged pukekos prance in the road’s swampy edges, and beyond them, boats in full sail slide across the harbour. Hemi says only rich people have boats, but she has been in her dad’s fishing boat – when he used to take them out, before Tina was born and her mother started drinking.
“No thank you, Paula.” Mrs. Sladen glances at Paula in the rearview mirror and frowns, and Paula half- winds the window, sits back against the warm vinyl, and wishes Hemi would turn back around and pull on one of the tangled black strands of her hair that flies in the wind.
*
They park in the lot beside the town hall and gather on a grassy patch. The other kids are showing off with loud voices and pretend wrestling, but Paula stands quietly. She has never been into the city before. “Boys and girls!” Mrs. Sladen claps her hands twice and the excited chatter stills. “Stay with your leader. No wandering off.” Paula nods her head up and down like it’s on a hinge.
They begin to walk. Paula half-skips to keep Mrs. Sladen right beside her, so she can pretend she’s holding her teacher’s hand. With her other hand, she fidgets with the change she got from her dollar. A five-cent piece and a twenty-cent piece. A tuatara and a kiwi. She rubs the coins together in her damp fingers, around and around. All hers, for whatever she wants.
*
When they walk into the dim theatre, Paula stops dead and stares. On either side of the velvet-curtained screen sit two life-sized gold lions, maybe even bigger than life size, their eyes flickering red. And above the lions are towers with swirling turrets that point to a domed, indigo sky filled with tiny lights that twinkle like stars. Paula tips her head back to gaze at the sky and her skin goosebumps in the miraculously cool and damp air. “It’s like a palace, aye?” she says, and Mrs. Sladen and one of the mothers smile at each other as if she has said something funny.
“Keep walking,” Mrs. Sladen says. “Paula and Hemi, you come and sit on either side of me.” Hemi sighs and kicks the ground, but Paula is ecstatic.
Road Runner plays before the intermission, but Paula doesn’t laugh once; she’s still overwhelmed by the theatre’s grandeur and her awareness of Mrs. Sladen’s arm on the arm rest, nearly touching her own.
*
When the intermission starts, the stars brighten again, and the kids tumble out of the rows, disorderly, pushing and shoving, but Paula has to wait for Mrs. Sladen to stand, and she is waiting for the children to go first, so that by the time Paula gets to the concession stand, she is at the end of a long line. Sally-Ann is already walking back to her seat, licking the chocolate off a Topsy, a packet of chips in her other hand and a box of sweets under each arm. She had fifty cents extra to spend from her mother; she had showed it off in the car. Now, some of the Topsy’s chocolate coating has smudged on her upper lip, and the sight of it makes Paula disappointed, as if Sally-Ann has let her down. She could tell her to wipe it off, but somehow that would make her feel worse, and anyway, Sally-Ann acts like she doesn’t understand her when Paula speaks. She says, “What did you say? You speak funny,” and wrinkles her nose, like Paula’s speaking smells bad.
Others stream by Paula after spending their change, and she squirms impatiently as she inches forward until she is finally at the counter. Right then, the bell rings. The movie is about to start. “I want a Topsy,” Paula blurts to the man serving, “and a bag of chips.” She stops. “But how much is that?”
He tells her and she has enough, but when she puts her hand in her pocket for the coins, there’s nothing there.
The man’s hand is stretched over the counter holding the ice cream and chips, the treats dangling just out of Paula’s reach. She drops down and pats the carpet around her feet. Only litter. She digs in her pocket again. Still empty.
The bell stops, and Mrs. Sladen opens the door to the theatre. “What do you think you’re doing?” she hisses. “Take your seat now, or you’ll disturb everyone.”
Paula faces the man again. “I’ve lost my money.” But he only shrugs and withdraws his hand. “Maybe it fell under the seat? I could look?”
“Movie’s started,” he says. “I’m closing shop.”
“But I had it in my pocket. It was mine.”
“Paula,” Mrs. Sladen says in her powdery voice. She stares at Paula’s middle. “You might be better off without ice cream, in any case.”
Now Paula feels sick and doesn’t want a Topsy anyway.
*
In the dark theatre, the movie bursts from the screen. Mrs. Sladen holds the back of Paula’s shirt, like a harness, and pushes down the dark aisle and into the row. When Paula squeezes past Hemi’s legs, he says, “Get outta the way, pig,” and Mrs. Sladen shushes him, but doesn’t even tell him off, and then she tells Paula to sit, even though Paula was going to anyway, and says, “Remember, don’t talk through the movie,” even though she wasn’t.
Paula sits up straight and looks hard at the screen, so she won’t cry. All around her, other kids are licking ice creams or clacking boxes of Jaffas. No one offers to share. Paula finally takes a peek around Mrs. Sladen and sees that even Hemi is stuffing his face with an ice block, trying to get the whole thing in his mouth at once.
She decides to check under the seat for the money, so she can spend it later, on the way home, but when she starts to wriggle, Mrs. Sladen puts a hand on her arm and holds it down to keep her still until Paula yanks her arm away and slides as close as she can to Aroha, who punches her in the shoulder and tells her to move back over.
Mrs. Sladen had told them that the movie was about bunnies and had beautiful music, but it’s the worst thing Paula has ever seen. It’s mean and terrifying, and she can hear Sally-Ann, behind her, sniffling all the way through, and the boys down the row laughing because they think it’s scary too but don’t want anyone to think they’re sissy. Paula had asked Mrs. Sladen if they could see Grease, but Mrs. Sladen had told her it wasn’t appropriate and made a face as though Paula had done something wrong.
When the rabbits start tearing at each other’s flesh with their sharp teeth and claws, Paula can’t watch anymore. She watches Mrs. Sladen instead and sees that she is wiping under her eyes, but has a half smile too, as if she likes things that make her feel bad. Maybe it’s because she feels so good all the rest of the time. Or maybe it’s because she thinks bad things don’t happen in real life. Then Paula begins to wonder why she ever liked Mrs. Sladen at all, and she’s glad Sally-Ann’s face is smeared with chocolate.
*
When the lights come on, Paula can see the golden lions are only plaster, and the curtains are shabby and stained at the bottom. Paula wants to run out of the ugly place, but Mrs. Sladen makes her and Hemi wait while all the other children file out first with their mothers and mothers-for-the-day.
“That sucked big time, except for the ice block,” Hemi says. “Whatd’you spend your money on?”
“I lost it.” Paula starts to cry, sobbing loudly, even though she doesn’t even care about the money anymore. “It’s not fair.”
“Sucks, bro,” Hemi says. He shuffles for a minute, as though he’s about to say something, then runs ahead to catch up with Bruce.
“You’ll learn to be more careful,” Mrs. Sladen says. “It was only twenty-five cents. Stop crying now.” She pats Paula on the shoulder. “You can ask your mother to buy you an ice cream when you get home.”
*
At the car, Hemi is holding something out towards her. “Take it, dick.” He pushes it into her hand. It’s a raspberry ice block. “Found five cents, aye? Maybe yours.”
“Might not be.” Paula accepts the ice block anyway and notices her deep thirst for its sweetness. She tears the paper off. It’s a beautiful, deep, love-heart red, already softening in the heat.
“You can’t eat that in my car, dear,” Mrs. Sladen says and the others begin to clamber into the station wagon.
For a moment Paula holds the dripping ice-block, unsure what to do. Finally, she stuffs the ice-block in her school bag.
On the drive home, it melts and oozes out of the bottom of her bag and bleeds into a puddle on the floor by her feet. She won’t be able to eat it. But it is still something. Still hers. A gift.
Sally-Ann winds down the window, and the air blows back and sends Paula’s hair flying. She feels her hair tug and turns. When she smiles at him, Hemi lets go and smiles back.
*
Later, after her father has fallen asleep in his chair, after she has made cereal for the kids for dinner again, after her mother has come home from work and slammed her bedroom door, Paula lies awake in bed, the ice-block stick in her fist.
Mrs. Sladen will find the dark sticky patch on the carpet in the back of her car one day soon. She will be going to the beach, and she will open the back door for her dogs, and she will see the stain. First, she will wonder if it’s blood. Then she will lean in, smell the sweetness, and know.