CHAPTERONE
ROSA
“You’re such a good girl,”my mother says as I curl onto the bed next to her, trying to hold her in a way that doesn’t knock a vital component free.
There are a dozen different attachments I need to steer clear of. The saline drip keeping her hydrated, the gastrostomy tube keeping her fed, the colostomy and catheter bags draining everything away. The lines to draw blood, the port to inject drugs. The EKG stickers spotted across her chest and ankles.
To give her a hug is like embracing an android, part human, part machine, all of her slowly turning grey and dry.
Despite it all, the love she injects into each touch, each kiss, is one hundred percent my mother. The warmth from each piece of praise edged now with the terrifying thought it will be the last.
If it is, I want to wring these occasions dry, slurping up every drop.
“How’s your course going?” she asks, her voice cracking on the last word.
I reach for some balm to coat her chapped lips; no matter how many bags of saline they pump into her, none of it ever seems to make it through to her skin. Her lungs are clogged with an ocean of fluid while her skin flakes every time she changes position in bed.
“It’s good.” I’m studying engineering and design with a focus on textiles. Clothing design would be the absolute dream but even with a hefty dose of reality playing its part, interior design is a good second-best landing place. “The lecturer is so enthusiastic about textile processes you can’t help but be excited. Even listening to the stuff that’s dull as dirt.”
“You’re not too overloaded?”
“Nah. Sleep’s overrated,” I state, following it up with a gigantic yawn because if there’s one thing my body likes to do, it’s betray me. “I’d rather go without for the next eighteen months than rack up another year’s worth of fees.”
“And your flat? How’s it going with your flatmates?”
“Finley’s a doll, as usual. Did I tell you about Aroha?”
I have, but my mother shakes her head.
“She found a better job up north and left us for the greener pastures of the Kapiti Coast.”
“Are they replacing her?”
“We have our fingers crossed the caseworkers are so overloaded they forget. The past week, with just the two of us, we’re actually getting a decent length shower every morning before the hot water runs out.”
She laughs along with me, then moves to the next item in her rota. “What about work?”
I press my forehead against her shoulder, smiling at the question. The first time I told my mother about the sex work I was doing to pay for university, my heart had been in my throat. But instead of disappointment, I got acceptance and an overload of advice—most of it sorely outdated.
My main impetus in telling her had been the worry another of her friends would beat me to the task. Better it came from me with context than from a gossip, even a well-intentioned one.
Now, I’m glad I told her. She’s one of the few people I can talk to about it. Someone to share commiserations when things are awful or rejoice with me when I have a good day.
“It’s fine.”
“You’re staying safe?”
That prompts a small laugh. “Yeah. You know it.” After a pause weighted with her expectations, I add, “The other girls there look out for me.”
‘There’ is a share house in a poor but tidy suburb, currently repurposed as a brothel.
Nothing you can tell with a passing glance, but the neighbours know. No matter how tidy we keep the front garden and driveway, we can’t hide the multitude of cars that pull up and leave with regularity throughout the day.
“No one’s getting rough?”
I laugh for longer at that one. The client list I bought from a retiring worker is mostly middle-aged submissives with a few vanillas on the side. Being domineering without crossing the line into an actual domme is something I practised beside the retiree for a month to ensure it was a good fit.
The control over another person was something I’d never experienced before. The need to put myself in their place, think about their wants, their tolerance, their boundaries, exposed me to an intimacy far beyond my previous sexual encounters.
