ANAHERA GILDEA
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White Tail
Kura jumped as he leant over, his face at the floor and his hands waving her off her chair. A small black spider was making its way from between her father’s feet towards her. She backed deeper into the room at his urging. He picked up the chair and, with callous precision, placed the leg of it over the tiny body. When it was dead he retrieved the wet mass, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. He carried it past Kura, out the back door, and onto the concrete retaining wall in the sun.
‘Looked like a white tail,’ he yelled out, rubbing his paunch. ‘Don’t want one of those to bite you, could lose a limb. They amputate where you’ve been bitten.’
He stretched a bit before looking back at her and nodding toward the photo. ‘Don’t want it to bite baby. This your garden?’ And he was off up the small path that led behind her house.
Kura grabbed her camera for a photo that she could add to the heads on her window sill. The garden itself was sheltered by houses on either side and usually she would wave at the windows of the neighbours but today she didn’t bother. The risk of having them come out and prolong her father’s visit was more than she could bear.
She positioned him in front of the slope of the hill with the late morning sun full in his face. He took a pair of driving sunglasses out of his pocket, straightened his back and folded his hands under his arms again, a true bandito.
‘Cheese,’ he said, without smiling.
Kura turned back to the house, the picture would be a good one. He didn’t visit often and he was Pono’s grandfather, Pono should get to know his face. She found him suddenly endearing; in her childhood version of him, a much younger father laughed a lot more and slapped his knee. She wondered if he was better in a group setting than a one to one. Perhaps she could encourage him to visit more often and they could get to know each other better.
She smiled as he called out something from behind her, his voice muffled.
‘Pardon?’ As she turned she saw him standing, his back to her, facing the corner between the slope of the hill and the criss-cross trellis of the garden fence.
‘I’ll just take a pee.’
Kura turned away to stare out in the opposite direction over the roof of her house, and the house of her neighbour, and the neighbour beyond that. The wind was still gusting occasionally and she pulled at her cardigan, drawing it closer.
‘I may as well head off.’
She nodded.
They walked back down the garden path, bypassing the house, and went straight to his car. Her father leaned in for a goodbye brush on the cheek, keeping his hands at his sides.
‘Thanks for coming. Drive safely.’
He adjusted his hat.
‘You and baby come up home for a visit. Steff and the girls want to
see him.’
‘We will.’
He raised a final hand as he disappeared out of view. Kura waved back, standing on the side of the road until the car was out of sight, the same vitriol that had besieged her mother’s face entrenched in the wrinkles around her own mouth. Her moko.
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