BNZ Literary Awards 2104
Novice Writer Award Winner
I Hope You Have a Wonderful Day
Beth Rust
I didn’t realise how much clothes would weigh me down. My shorts are pulling at my hips.
My T-shirt’s ballooning out on the surface of the sea. I’d gone for a walk along the beach and
now I’m in the water. It was cool at first but now it’s warm. All I can hear is the sloshing of my
limbs through the water as I swim towards where the sea blends into the sky. It’s so still,
feels almost wrong to be in here. Like I’m disturbing something, poking sticks at a hive. It’s
too deep to stand. I can feel my shoes like seaweed around my ankles, dragging me down.
So I pull them off, and then my shorts too, imagine them hitting the sea floor, making clouds
of sand puff up and out.
Something about the flatness of the sky makes me think about this boy I used to know. His
name was James. James was black coffee, he was strands of hair caught in the corners of
mouths. He was looking out windows at stark skies, at trees stripped and trembling, at the
goosepimpled skin of the city. I liked struggling up hills in the cold with him, my breath hot in
the scarf that was pulled up over my nose. I liked the brown knit sweater he would wear; the
way he would twist his fingers into mine. I liked that we would still be up those hills when the
light started draining from the day. When we had sex he’d press his thumbs into my
hipbones, sometimes so hard I’d find little thumbprint bruises across my skin in the shower.
I’d run my fingers over them, reading the night before like flattened Braille.
James taught me how to roll cigarettes but not how to smoke them. I never saw him smoking
but he was always rolling them and lining them up on the windowsill. Had a stack about five
centimetres high. Sometimes we’d just sit on his bed in our underwear, rolling cigarettes. I
liked watching him breathe in the fog of his room, his chest stretching out and collapsing
back in as the air escaped between his lips. One evening he told me what they were about.
The cigarettes. We both cried that night. I went and held him, putting my hands up into his
hair because I didn’t know what else to do. He pushed me backwards onto the bed and
pressed his face into my chest. He made noises that rattled through my ribcage.
After James there was Mathilde. We met in a club. I was drunk on bourbon and Coke and I
liked the way her skirt spun out around her when she danced, I liked how her mouth was
dark red like merlot. We danced together. She had a half-drunk whisky in one hand; her
other was pressed against the back of my neck. I kept getting distracted watching the drink
slosh around in the glass. I kept thinking it’d slosh right over the lip, but it never did. We
made out in a toilet stall. ‘Call for a good time’ someone had scrawled above the cistern, and
then a number underneath. She had thick dark eyebrows that crumpled together when I
caught her lip between my teeth. When we stumbled out of the cubicle I saw in the mirror
that my lips were dark red and she’d left mouthmarks all over my face. I’d never kissed a girl
before. You’d think girls would be softer and gentler but she kissed me like we were in a
fistfight.
I roll onto my back and feel my hair float out around my head. With my eyes half-open the
whole world seems milky, like the taste of English Breakfast in the living room of a relative
you don’t know well enough to say anything other than so I saw your flowers out front,
they’re looking nice. That taste going down your throat, sticking, too thick at the back of your
tongue. The shore has become very far away. I didn’t tell anyone I was going for a walk,
didn’t know it would become a swim. I don’t know if I can swim all that way back to the
beach.
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BNZ Literary Awards 2104
Novice Writer Award Winner
When I was younger I would sometimes walk to my grandmother’s house after school. She
only lived two blocks away. She would make me lime cordial and we’d eat chocolate chip
biscuits. I was only ever allowed two at home but she always let me have three. We’d go into
her garden and she’d show me how to pick lavender without upsetting the bees. She had
mint growing just outside her back door and she’d always let me pick a leaf or two to chew.
We’d pick cherry tomatoes (only the ones that are the most red she’d say), find grapefruit
under the tree, among the dead leaves and mush. She had this picture of her and my
grandfather on top of the cabinet in her sitting room. He was standing behind her, there was
white sky behind them, they were both squinting into the light. I was eighteen, she’d tell me.
Still at home. My parents never liked him, she’d say. When I found out your mum was on the
way, my mother grabbed my hair and screamed at me to get out. So I went to your
grandfather and he said let’s get married, so we did.
Whenever I think about that story, I imagine him picking her up from outside her place. Her
with her eyes red, her face raw, her scalp still stinging from where her mother pulled so hard
some of her hair came out. They go for a drive, way out of the city, all the way out to the sea.
He gets out a pack of cigarettes, lights one for both of them. I can’t she says. And she tells
him why. And she tells him about her mother’s spit spraying across her face. And he looks
across at her. He’s got one hand still resting on the steering wheel, the other out the window,
holding the cigarette. Let’s get married, he says. And she says, okay.
I put my head under the water. I like the feeling of my hair floating out around me. I open my
eyes but I can’t see much. The light above, wishwashing over the surface, making patterns
like veins. And down below me, nothing. Blackness. I breathe out my nose and mouth at the
same time. A rush of bubbles. A hush. I could let myself sink down. I don’t have to come
back up. My lungs are starting to hurt. The salt water is starting to sting my eyes.
One day there was a fight. My mother standing by the window in the lounge, yelling into the
receiver. They’re not your kids are they, she said. I could hear my grandmother’s voice
coming out of the phone, hard and fast. After that my mother stopped talking to her so we all
had to as well. I wasn’t allowed to walk over to see her any more.
My mother in the garden digging leeks, potatoes. My mother saying don’t play with the hose,
please.
My mother in the kitchen saying shit, shit, these potatoes still aren’t cooked. I would go
around the house saying shit, shit, shit until one day she overheard me and slapped me on
the wrist. I remember a lot of big wide afternoons, thick air, clouds of mosquitoes that rose
up when I ran around the backyard. I’d be an airplane, slicing through the sky. Slicing open
the sky. I had pink jelly sandals, I loved their plastic smell.
Then later. One morning at breakfast, my mother was spreading jam on her toast. It was
always blueberry, and she would always spread it right out to the corners. I was late for
school, I was trying to make a coffee but I couldn’t, I spilt sugar on the bench, sloshed milk
all down the sleeve of my jersey. The jug was boiling. I don’t feel very well Mum, I said.
What’s wrong she said, how do you feel?
That’s the problem I wanted to say, I don’t feel anything. I didn’t realise I was crying until I
felt warm drips hitting my feet.
My mother looked up at me. Oh for god’s sake she said.
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BNZ Literary Awards 2104
Novice Writer Award Winner
The jug clicked off and I went to pour the water in my cup but my eyes were swimming, I was
shaking too much, I couldn’t see. The water sloshed over the side of the cup and down onto
my feet and I screamed and Mum was screaming too. For fuck’s sake she screamed at me.
Fuck’s sake.
I don’t stay under. I let myself break back through the skin of the sea. I breathe in, in, in: my
lungs fill up and it feels good. I can hear seagulls. I roll onto my back and float, and see them
all overhead. They’re flapping at the air like they don’t quite know how to fly.
After Mathilde there was Sophie. Sophie had blonde hair patched with pink that she wore
chopped to a bob. The ends would float around her chin as she walked. Sophie’s lips were
red like firetrucks. She grabbed me by the hand one day and said come on and we ran
through the streets and she didn’t let go even though my palm was sweaty. We climbed over
fences and I ripped my pants. She jumped in a stranger’s pool with all her clothes on. With
Sophie there was never any start or end. There was only the middle, the jumping into the
stranger’s pool (shh, what are we doing, we’re so fucking dumb, we’re going to get caught),
falling off the sofa with her mouth at my hips (your nails are digging into my back/sorry/don’t
let go), her writing in Sharpie on the back of my neck (you are not one of those girls that
buses splash with rain).
It was almost winter and Sophie made my throat hot when she’d smile at me as we were
walking along, our noses bitten a little by cold, her hair outlined orange in the going-down
sun. Then it was winter and we drank twenty-four beers between us sitting on the back steps
of her flat. Her tights were ripped and she spilt her beer on her skirt as she fell back and
laughed into the grass. My ass got so cold sitting on those steps but after a while I didn’t feel
it any more. I held her hair back as she bent over with her face in the bushes. Afterwards
she wiped her mouth and said it’s better than the ground, doesn’t splash back. Later I was
sitting in the shower and trying to reach up and turn the tap on because, as I kept trying to
say past my heavy heavy tongue, I wanted to wash away down the drain. Sophie was
leaning against the shower door with her head down, she kept swaying and saying shhhh
shhh shh. I fell asleep there and she went to bed by herself.
I tread water. My skin is beginning to feel shrivelled like it does when you’ve been in the bath
too long. Only it isn’t doing that thing where it’s all pink and feels like you’ve just peeled a
whole layer off. It’s cold and has goosepimples. The sea is coming in my ears and kissing at
the corners of my mouth.
My first birthday after I moved away from home my grandmother sent me a card. It had a
picture of a bellbird on it, it was one of those ones done by artists who paint using their feet
or mouths because they don’t have hands. Hope you have a wonderful day, it said. Thinking
of you. The card went on my desk. I never replied.
I think about Sophie and me on the waterfront after dinner. Her hair whipping around her
head. Her scarf pulled up over her chin. Her hugging her jacket around her. How cold my
fingers were, how I kept having to wipe my nose with the back of my hand. And her leaning
her forehead against mine. The mascara smudged under her eyebrow as she said look,
I can’t
do this
any more.
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BNZ Literary Awards 2104
Novice Writer Award Winner
There was this one night. My brother had gone to a party. I waited up for him on the couch.
He came stumbling in after two in the morning, tripped on the step and fell down in the
doorway. Fuck he said. Fucking, fuck, fucking cunt. I went and helped him up and walked
him to the couch. He smelled of alcohol. Beer maybe. I’d never seen him drunk before. He
had his head in my lap and then he was struggling upwards, he fell down on top of me, his
body was heavy, I couldn’t move. He pulled his head up and looked at me. Unsteady eyes.
Bloodshot. Then he kissed me. I tried to pull away but he had a hand at my jaw. His tongue
pushed against my lips. His teeth bashed against mine. Then he pulled back and looked at
me for a second and vomited onto my shirt. Our parents were upstairs. The next morning at
breakfast he was dry-lipped, complaining of a headache, barely looking at me. I don’t think
he remembered.
The shoreline isn’t as far away as it was before. I’ve been half swimming back to the beach.
Dragging myself through the water. My body is wrinkled and sleepy. It almost doesn’t feel
like I’m doing any work. I don’t know if I’m in a current or a rip or something but I feel like I’m
being pushed back into the world. Like a shove in the small of my back. I can see dots
moving on the beach that I couldn’t see before and then the dots are people and then the
waves are breaking white foam and water noise over my head and then I’m on my back in
the shallows with the water going in and out around me and sand everywhere, in my hair,
and my head to the sky, and the sky is a blanket over me.
There’s more about Mathilde. I wrote my number on the back of her hand as I said goodbye
to her that night. Then months later she called me up saying hey, are you doing anything this
afternoon? It was a Sunday. We went walking all through the city. Gave money to buskers
and tried on clothes in the same changing room and drank coffee on the waterfront. We held
hands and drifted along. I felt like one of those things, you know those fluffy seeds that come
off dandelions, I felt like one of those. But it was the wrong time of year for dandelion seeds.
Mathilde had on this little round black hat and her hair was exploding out from underneath. I
took her home as the shops were starting to close. We drank pinot noir on my balcony
watching the cars and people go uncertainly by, and she said it tasted like the sea. We had
sex later, behind the sofa, but it was tired, our limbs moving like through treacle, and she fell
asleep on top of me halfway through. When I woke up the next morning she was gone, but
she’d left her hat behind.
I go home and I make a phone call. I am standing in the kitchen and my hair is still damp and
so is my T-shirt and I’m not wearing any pants. It’s getting dark. There are insects singing in
the still-hot grass. Beetles and sandflies at the window.
The phone picks up. Hello, she says.
Hi Gran, I say. I just wanted to see how you are.
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