Anahera Gildea

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The Queen’s Chain

Eventually the view from the road became of lilies curving up around the path and shooting heavenward, like it was them that held up the walls, the stamens yearning forward inviting the touch that got coloured fingermarks pasted across clothes.

‘Never a dull moment round here, Te Ao,’ my mother would say, with the air of someone who could cultivate an intricate work of art out of seeds and dirt. ‘Women born under the auspices of great happenings can handle anything. We can rise and walk about in our lot, wear it like every dress we ever bought that looked great but that we had no occasion for.’

And at the end of every day, as if it was the signal to the world that she was off, she would pick a few stems in payment, using scissors to clip the flowers at just the right length, snip off the stamens and let their mustard dust fall down around her feet. Inside the house, in a long glass cylinder half-filled with murky water, she would display the fresh ones, folding the old bunch in her hands of steel and taking them back down to the pile.

Crises weren’t really her forté, my mother. It was the cycle of life she understood – growing things and then letting the dying ones go on the pile, draped in sunlight, with every edge, every lip, every leaf, curling in on itself.

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