Disappearing Act (1997)
When they moved from America, New Zealand didn’t exist. None of the kids had heard of it (being five years pre-Fellowship of the Ring) and Emmy had to lug the globe from the activity corner to the front of her first grade class, spin it all the way round, and jab her finger so far down the bottom that the curve of the globe obscured the sliver. Could only feel it with the pad of her pointer like mosquito bumps at the lake house.
It was exotic, at first. And she got to make a book about the kiwi bird for show-and-tell, full of facts she’d made up, like their three-foot beak. She was used to telling little fibs for attention and it was satisfying to have a basis of truth for them to spring from. Zev and Shira were upset, because Zev had a girlfriend and Shira was 12. Emmy watched them feel gradually less listened to at the family meeting and decided for solidarity’s sake she should be upset too. Cathy and Ben said the contract was only three years, but Emmy knew about fibs.
There was a whole week of farewell parties, mostly at poppa-Solly’s, but at their crumbling duplex, too. At Shir Tikvah and the co-op, people pressed hands and wishes and boxes of cookies upon them, as if they could weigh them down enough to stay. Everyone knew that since New Zealand didn’t exist yet, they were never coming back.
Waimea Primary was full of farmers’ kids with rat-tails trying to ‘catch and kiss’ and no one knew how to double Dutch. But, there were trees everywhere and a school pool they got given the summer key to, so Emmy made blood brothers with the nerdy girls at the back of the playground within her first week. Zev was still moody and Shira was almost 13, so Emmy got in with the neighbour kids, learned how to catch eels in the creek and dutifully said ‘orange’ and ‘pyjamas’ anytime she was asked.
Emmy felt weightless. Took to picking up loose stones on the walk to school, and with the neighbour kids in the abandoned subdivision up the road. Pockets spilling, lined up on her windowsill. Graduating from creek smooth pebbles to scattered concrete chunks. She didn’t have to fib when the kids asked what’s up. How she could barely feel the ground beneath her feet.
When her body started to stutter she wasn’t surprised. Losing her footing at the creek or in the second row of Mrs Clifton’s class, Emmy winked in and out of existence like a glowworm. Shira started high school, Zev’s girlfriend broke up with him and Emmy couldn’t make it through lunchtime marbles without disappearing.
She kept filling her pockets and shoes. More determined to attend every sleepover and Spice Girls themed birthday party. Sewed rocks in the lining of her Postie Plus dresses. She couldn’t see them but she could run her insubstantial fingers over the bumps and ridges. Real as any mosquito bite.
Eliana Gray is a writer living in Ōtepoti. You can find their poetry and essays around the internet and in print, in places such as: The Spinoff, Landfall, Cordite, and Overland. Last night they dreamt about the orca wars. They’re still figuring out what that means.