six
The hospice looked totally different to the hospital. Nana had a room all to herself. It was a pretty big room too. They had cots that the staff rolled in for whatever family were staying overnight. The walls were painted a warm yellow and the bed sheets were regular colours—no gross clinical blues. Even the nurses had colourful mismatched scrubs. I guess it was all a very deliberate ploy to lull you into a false sense of security before you died.
I sat on a cot with Fi and Hannah. The little cousins were playing with bits of board games that had been excavated from cupboards at Nana’s house and brought along by one of the aunties. The kids were doing the kind of group play that little kids do where they mutter and shout bits and pieces of lore to each other without looking up from the scenes they’re building in front of themselves. None of the kids appeared to be playing the same game, as far as I could see, and the stories they were telling each other didn’t seem to match up, but as long as one kid didn’t press the other for direct compliance then their physical proximity to one another was enough. Obviously, that sort of peace is only temporary. Eventually, the kids’ narratives would butt up against each other and a conflict would arise and then the tears would come and someone would get taken outside for a walk in the gardens, or one aunty or another would crack open a Tupperware container of apple slices or rice crackers or raisins or whatever. And then the whole thing would start all over again.
Nana made a sound now, when she breathed. It was a kind of dry gurgle in the back of her throat. I hadn’t heard a person make that sound before, but Nana made it with every breath. I guess that’s what they call a death rattle? You don’t get that on TV.
Fi rested her head on my shoulder. ‘Do you want to stay with Nana tonight?’
I thanked the gods that Fi wasn’t looking at me directly. I did not want to stay with Nana tonight. I wanted to be Daddy’s good girl and get into my bed and do my homework, or, failing that, I wanted to get on a bus straight back to Te Whanganui-a-Tara. I snuck a look at Hannah. Hannah just gave me this wide-eyed raised-eyebrow big-sister expression and I knew I was fucked.
‘Of course I do.’ I gave Fi’s hand a squeeze, and asked Hannah, ‘Are you staying with us too?’ If Hannah was there, maybe I could do this.
‘Me and Fi stayed last night.’ Hannah gave me a little frown. ‘While you were out.’
‘Oh.’ I felt sick.
‘Aunty Deb is staying tonight,’ said Fi. ‘Her boys are overseas, so we thought it’d be nice if you could keep her company.’
Aunty Deb. Okay. Me and Aunty Deb. Oooooookay. I nodded. I didn’t know what to do with my face.
My family has a kind of vitality hierarchy for ranking women. It’s fatphobic and it stresses me the fuck out, but it is there, whether I like it or not, and I’m so fucking sorry, but basically the fatter you are, the sadder and more abject you are perceived to be. I don’t know where this comes from. All of my aunties grew up hungry. They were a big family with fuck-all money. Fatness for them should, by all rights, be a measure of success. I’m pretty sure they’d all describe themselves as feminists, but I guess nineties diet culture just did a real number on them? I don’t know. I hate it.
Anyway, Aunty Deb was at the bottom of this hierarchy, so I always thought that she was sad. Not that there was any other evidence for this. Now that we were all gathered around Nana’s deathbed, she was the most okay-seeming of all the aunties. She made cups of tea, she played with the kids, she listened to her teary sisters—like, she seemed really lovely, to be honest?
It reminded me of that movie Melancholia. You know how Kirsten Dunst is that super-depressed woman, and her sister is nursing her, giving her baths and feeding her and all that stuff. Like, she’s supposed to be a big burden on everyone, but when that huge meteor or rogue planet, or whatever it is, starts its collision course with earth, and everyone else is melting down, Kirsten seems totally fine. She’s playing games with her little nephew in the shadow of the rogue planet, which is massive in the sky, bearing right down on everybody, but Kirsten is fine because this is her territory, right? She wakes up with death every day; dread is nothing new to her. She’s thriving.
If there was anything to the vitality hierarchy, then maybe Aunty Deb was like Kirsten? Maybe Aunty Deb was comfy with sadness? Or maybe she’d just always been like this, and I hadn’t noticed. It’s kinda hard to say. Either way, I didn’t want to stay here with Deb or anybody else, but I couldn’t say that to Fi, and I couldn’t say that to Hannah, or John, or the aunties, or anyone here, and it was getting so hot in the hospice room and Nana was rattling, but I had to stay put, and look normal, and the air was so thick and so stale in that room, and then my phone lit up with a notification and it was Thorn, and I leaned back on the cot, against the wall, and opened the message.
Wish I was holding you, baby girl
yes please, Daddy!! I hit send, bit my cheek and typed, I feel NOT GOOD!! and then felt immediately bad for telling Thorn that I felt bad, like I shouldn’t be bothering xem with that, like it wasn’t very hot-tgirl-sex-kitten of me, was it?
But xyr message came back almost immediately. Oh no! What’s wrong, kitten? Tell Daddy
My thumb hovered over the keyboard. What’s wrong? I was squeezing my phone so hard my fingertips had gone white; I could barely feel my hand. I tapped numbly at the screen.
can’t think straight 
hard to explain
Panicking?
mmhmm
Are you a good girl?
I paused. Hannah was saying something to Fi, but I couldn’t make out the words. I pictured Thorn’s crooked grin, xyr steady and confident voice, and typed back, yes Daddy.
Take a deep breath to the count of four. Hold it for four. Breathe out for four. Count to four, and repeat. Okay?
yes Daddy
I kept my gaze fixed on the little rectangle in my hand and did the breaths, counting them out, just like Thorn said.
Keep breathing, kitten. I don’t know what is happening at your end of the line, but I need you to know, you have nothing to worry about, because you’re my good girl, aren’t you?
yes Daddy
Because you follow your rules, don’t you, princess?
yes Daddy
With each yes Daddy I felt my breath coming easier and slower. The room was shifting back into focus around me.
Doing your breathing?
yes Daddy
Feeling better?
Uh huh. I really am 
And I did feel a lot better, but I also felt kinda embarrassed.
Sorry for being such a freak 
You’re not a freak! At least, not in a bad way 😈😈 If you’re feeling calm enough, do you wanna talk about what’s going on?
I didn’t know where to start with that, plus I really didn’t want to burden Thorn with all my family bullshit, so I sent, uh uh Daddy, I’m all good now! You don’t need to worry!
I’m always gonna worry about u, kitten. But if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine too. I’m very proud of you for asking for help. You’re such a good girl 
I stared at that: I’m very proud of you for asking for help.
There was a knock at the door and a small woman with short grey hair poked her head into the room. I say grey hair, but actually it had streaks of purple dye in it too. I love it when older ladies do that. I took one last look at Thorn’s message before tucking my phone away into my tote.
‘Hello, family.’ The woman spoke in a voice that was low and kind. ‘I’m a volunteer. My name is Catherine. I can give foot or shoulder rubs, if any of you would like one?’
The aunties shot a look around at each other. There was a pause, and then Jane laughed. ‘You know what? That sounds fantastic.’
I felt Fi let out a little breath. I knew her shoulders ached at the best of times, between lifting boxes of books at her part-time job, pulling weeds from the garden, and working at the pottery wheel in her studio.
Catherine settled on the ground at the foot of Nana’s bed.
Hannah nudged Fi forward.
‘Jane’s first,’ whispered Fi. Then she grinned, for the first time in days, like a naughty kid.
Jane sat cross-legged on a little cushion in front of Catherine. Jane was the skinniest aunty, so she had the greatest licence for spontaneity and fun. She slipped off her merino cardigan and Catherine got to work. Catherine didn’t talk much, just checking in occasionally, Sore there? That’s better, eh? I am inherently suspicious of volunteers and their motives, but I liked Catherine. The aunties gathered round while she did her work on Jane, and it looked like something out of The Red Tent, you know? Have you read that one? It’s like a retelling of the Old Testament with a focus on the women. The title comes from this idea that when you’re on your period, you can go sit in the titular red tent with all the other women and just rest and eat figs and honey and olives and generally take care of each other. I guess women who didn’t bleed missed out? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure dolls like me ended up in the bottom of pits with shattered bones and blood soaking into our miniskirts of many colours.
I couldn’t work out whether Catherine was a dyke or not. Like, in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a woman like Catherine, of her age, reads as a butch lesbian. She was wearing stonewash Levi’s, a plain tee, short hair, no make-up, and no pretty earrings, just a plain silver chain, and that was tucked into her shirt. At the same time, it’s not like she was wearing flannel, a single hoop in her right ear, or a carabiner key chain hanging from her belt loop.
Basically, everywhere in the country that isn’t Te Whanganui-a-Tara, this was just a practical look, right? Pretty much across the gender board, the dress standard here leans towards masc. So unless someone is flagging somehow, it’s just impossible to tell.
Even in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, it’s getting more and more difficult, especially with younger women. Straight fashion looks so gay. When I’m on campus, as far as I can read the signs, every single girl is gay. Statistically, I know this can’t be the case. It’s, like, getting ridiculous.
Not that it mattered with Catherine. I just liked her. So I wanted to imagine she was a queer. Is that so wrong?
Catherine finished with Jane, and then Fi—the next skinniest aunty—hopped off the cot and knelt in front of Catherine. Catherine worked her thumbs into Fi’s shoulders. Fi sat very still. She closed her eyes. Catherine worked quietly. At the corners of Fi’s eyes, tears formed. She didn’t sob or anything like that. There were just tears, steadily tracking down her face and falling onto her hands, tightly clasped in her lap. All the aunties went quiet too.
Catherine worked and Fi wept, and we just sat there. Hannah squeezed my hand. I wanted to go to Fi but I could sort of tell that, even though we were all watching, it was kind of a private moment.
And then the door swung open again. A man stepped through it. It took me a minute to work out where I knew him from. He was wearing a long and dark oilskin and Blundstone boots, a cowboy squint and a scowl. He was from the photos on Nana’s wall. Fi used to point him out and tell me that if he ever tried to pick me up from school or anything like that, it didn’t matter that he was my uncle, I was supposed to run away or scream or get a teacher. I looked from Uncle Mark to Fi. She was oblivious. Catherine was still working and Fi was still crying and then Mark said, G’day, and Fi froze. The aunties held their breath.
Uncle Joseph cleared his throat. ‘Hello, Mark.’
John got up and sat down beside Fi. Hannah gave me a sideways look. The aunties stood and Mark took the seat beside Nana’s bed. John was whispering something to Fi, and then they left the room together.
At this point I was, like, basically freaking out, and Hannah was giving me the widest eyes, so we both gapped it too. We checked the hospice kitchen and the lounge for Fi and John, but they had disappeared. Fi had looked like she was gonna properly freak out, so maybe they’d left or holed up in a bathroom, or something? I just followed Hannah and she walked around the garden for a bit before settling on a bench beneath an oak tree. I sat down too.
‘Are you okay?’ I tried.
‘Yeah, of course. Are you okay?’
‘Uh-huh.’ I swung my foot at an acorn. I had no idea why we wouldn’t be okay. Fi never talked about it. But I knew that anytime we pulled up Nana’s driveway and a brown sedan was already parked there, Fi would hit reverse fast, and we would fly home in her Corolla, with a stop at the super for a bottle of wine and, if I was lucky, fish and chips for dinner.
Hannah wasn’t looking at me. She had her shoulders up in a we don’t need to talk about this kind of way, but I felt like if I didn’t say something I was gonna scream, so I took a deep breath and spoke.
‘Do you know what happened between Fi and Mark?’
Hannah kept her gaze fixed straight ahead. ‘It’s not our business.’
That shut me up for a full thirty seconds before I realised Hannah hadn’t actually answered the question. I tried again. ‘Did Fi ever talk to you about it?’
‘No. Fi never said anything to me about it. To be honest, I thought maybe she would have said something to you.’
Why would Fi have told me, if she hadn’t told Hannah? I was the fuck-up. Hannah had a real job and money and everything. Plus, she was the oldest.
‘Why me?’
‘Because you’re the baby. Fi’s obsessed with you.’
I shook my head. ‘What?’
Hannah rolled her eyes.
Fi had never said anything to me about her and Mark. I did have a theory though, obviously. I wasn’t sure about it, and it had gotten sort of tangled since Hannah had told me about Linus, and I knew she wouldn’t like it, but if I couldn’t talk to Hannah about it, then I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I cleared my throat and ploughed ahead. ‘I think, maybe, when they were little, Mark did something to Fi that she didn’t want. Something sexual, I mean.’
Hannah sighed. ‘First it’s Linus, and now it’s Mark. Why the obsession with that? Of all things?’
‘Because it’s what happened to me.’ All of a sudden I was panting.
Hannah was staring, and I couldn’t read her face, but I couldn’t stop either. I was suspended above my body, watching someone else talking to my big sister.
‘When I was little, it happened. With Hamish.’ I was dropping back into my body, catching my breath. ‘I’m fine now, though. I’m, like, totally fine.’ I was practically whispering at the end, and I was waiting on Hannah, because I had to believe she would know what to do, now that I had finally said the awful stupid thing.
Hannah opened and closed her mouth. ‘Do Fi or John know?’
I shook my head. ‘Nobody knows. I think. I don’t think anybody knows.’
‘Come on.’ Hannah stood up and made for the car park.
I followed her, like always.
Hannah didn’t talk much as we drove. For once, I was just head-empty. Now I’d gone and said it, I felt exhausted. Like I’d run a marathon or something, or like, what I imagine you feel like after you run a marathon. I closed my eyes and sank deep into the seat. I could have slept. I felt Hannah pull in somewhere.
She got out. ‘One minute, okay?’
With my eyes still closed, I nodded.
I startled awake when Hannah opened the car door. We were in a supermarket parking lot. She had a six-pack of Bavarias. I recognised them as a staple of my serious drinking times. They’re 440ml, five percent alcohol, and cheap as dirt—pretty much the most bang for your buck, short of box wine. Hannah cracked one open and handed me another.
‘I don’t drink anymore.’
Hannah just nodded. She was looking at me real carefully. ‘That’s a good idea. I just can’t help drinking when I come back home, I think?’
I laughed. ‘That tracks.’
‘Yup.’
I sat quietly while Hannah drank her beer. Hannah burped, grimaced, and dropped the empty can into the passenger footwell.
‘Okay.’ Hannah took a deep breath. ‘When did this happen to you?’
‘I don’t know. When we first met Hamish, I think. And then lots of times after that.’ I could feel myself blushing, because it was so fucking embarrassing to not actually know this, you know? It felt like a huge hole in the story.
‘Well . . . you would have been four, if it happened around then.’
Hannah had a stony look on her face, and I figured she was getting ready to unload on Hamish, so I just blurted out, ‘I don’t think it was his fault, though. Hamish, I mean. Like he was just a kid too—’
Hannah shook her head. ‘Of course it’s not his fault!’ She barked at the windscreen. ‘It’s John’s fucking fault!’
I had not considered that. I stared at my hands.
‘I’m sorry. I know you love him. He’s your dad, after all.’ Hannah let out a long strained breath. ‘Listen. I’m really really fucking sorry this happened to you. It’s awful.’ She looked right at me. ‘I love you, Rosemary.’
I felt the sob in the back of my throat, and then I was just crying, like properly ugly crying, and Hannah leaned over and wrapped her arms around me, and we made a little tent of two that smelled like salt and beer and my nervous sweat and my Juicy Couture and whatever Hannah wore now, something expensive and subtle and like really nice, properly grown up, and I just sobbed and sniffled and Hannah rocked me and for a while that was it.
When I was done, Hannah started the car and headed back towards the hospice.
‘Are you gonna tell John and Fi?’ She flicked on the indicator.
‘Maybe. Someday I will.’ I lied because I knew that that was the correct answer. You’re supposed to talk to your parents about this kind of thing, after all, especially if they love you. ‘Not for a while, though.’
‘Do you think it’s related to, like, you being trans?’ Hannah was clearly just spitballing, but I was still sort of surprised by the self-evident stupidity of that question. One in five kids in Aotearoa are molested, and that’s just the reported cases of abuse. If getting diddled made people trans, we would be a literal nation of transsexuals. I didn’t say that. Because I was already exhausted, and because I loved Hannah right now in a way that forgave any cissexual nonsense she might say to me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think that it made me trans. If anything, my shame around what happened stopped me coming out before I did.’
‘You don’t have to be ashamed, Rosemary. It wasn’t your fault.’
Which was nice of Hannah to say. And obviously it was also true. But I wasn’t ashamed that it had happened to me—like, I knew that what had happened wasn’t my fault. I was ashamed that when it happened to me, I liked it. It was an initiation, what Hamish did to me. It was exciting and overwhelming, and I’d wanted more of it. Like that was it, for my childhood. When I went to sleepovers, there was almost always another kid who’d been diddled too, and we would find each other, and do stuff that we really shouldn’t have been doing, or there wasn’t another kid like me, and I was an actual fresh danger to these actual other kids, kids who had actual innocent childhoods and, like, teenage sexual awakenings and all the fucking stuff that I never had, and every day I have to live with that and hope that I never really hurt anybody, because at least I didn’t do what Hamish did, like with me it was just kissing or whatever, and the other kids were my age, but it still shouldn’t have happened and that’s why I’m ashamed: I’m ashamed because I was gross and dangerous and I don’t think there is anything I can ever do to make any of that right. But I definitely didn’t say that to Hannah. There was no fucking way. So I just said, I know, and did a stupid brave little smile and kind of wished I hadn’t told anyone, even Hannah, any of this at all.
I had to reassure Hannah that I was fine like a thousand more times, and then we both went back into the hospice. Mark was gone, and Fi and John were back, gathering their bags and cardigans and reading glasses from around Nana’s room. Other than Deb, the kids and the aunties were gone. I figured the aunties would already be tucking their babies into their own old childhood beds.
John raised an eyebrow and grinned. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Uh-huh!’
‘Here!’ He whipped a kebab wrapped in foil from behind his back. ‘And for your long watch tonight . . .’ He produced a bag that was dusted with icing sugar and could only contain Turkish delight. Which was very fucking cute of him, to be quite honest. Turkish delight is my favourite.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘You’re welcome, sweetheart.’
I took both parcels and tore the foil off the kebab. I felt unbelievably hungry. I was eating like my life depended on it, like Mr Fox in Fantastic Mr Fox—just going ham on this kebab. John said something else, but I was all mixed meat and falafel—the works! I carefully caught the juices in the bottom of the foil and twisted it off as I swallowed the last gobbet of lamb and flatbread. And then I had the mandatory moment of post-kebab terror: had I eaten tinfoil? Was that foil cutting into my stomach right now? Would I receive a stomach ulcer that would develop into an infection and then blood poisoning and then death? I took several slow breaths.
Everyone had left. It was just me and Deb, plus Nana obviously. Deb was sitting by the head of Nana’s bed, so I set up camp on the opposite side of the room. I rolled a cot over to a wall socket and plugged in my phone charger. I had one message from Thorn.
Are you being a good girl and playing for Daddy? 😈😈
I looked up at Aunty Deb. Her eyes were fixed on Nana’s grey face. A nurse popped into the room to dim the lights and pull the curtains.
Sorry Daddy!! I can’t tonight I’m stuck at a family function 
I hit send. It was only a little lie. Besides, I’m sure Thorn didn’t want to hear about my dying Nana, right? Hospice isn’t exactly a turn-on.
Nana was doing her rattle and Deb had a plastic cup of water and a small stick with a sponge on it. Deb was dipping the sponge in the cup.
You should have told me that kitten!! 
I would have made you wear a plug 
I crossed my legs. My little girl dick was soaking throug
I don’t have one Daddy Actually . . . I’ve never been fucked there before 
Aunty Deb was inserting the sponge stick into Nana’s mouth. I had heard a nurse explain that this was the best way to keep Nana’s tongue and throat comfortable and moist. I caught a glimpse of Nana’s gums in the near-dark, and I looked straight back down at my phone.
Oh no 
No! Princess, that is a TRAGEDY! 
I really HAVE to do something about that! 
More than anything, I desperately wanted Thorn to do something about that. What would it be like? I kept my eyes down and typed trans girl railed strap-on into the search bar of my phone’s browser. I slipped on my headphones, scrolled past the Safe Search warning, and clicked the third link. An animated futanari with huge tits and a throbbing cock came thick ropes towards the camera. Play now! Cum in 30 seconds! I x-ed the ad and the video started.
It was an amateur film, opening with a wide angle of a woman in a pink bra, garter belt, and thigh-high socks. Her girl dick was small and shaved, nearly invisible against her thighs. She lay on the bed. A cis woman stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her. The cis woman had harshly straightened scene-kid hair. She wore a purple strap over skinny black jeans. It looked like they were probably girlfriends. The pink girl got to her knees on the bed, put her mouth over the cis woman’s strap and swallowed it. The cis woman gathered the pink girl’s long blonde hair in her fists and thrusted. The pink girl gagged; her eyes turned up to her girlfriend. The girlfriend smiled. Her eyes flicked for a moment towards the camera (her phone on the dresser?), and then she pushed the pink girl onto her back and knelt between her legs. Neither woman made any sound; they were focusing on blocking the scene correctly. The cis woman lifted the pink girl’s ankles to her shoulders.
The shot changed. It was the cis woman’s POV now. Her straightened hair hung blurry at the edge of the frame as she pushed her strap into the pink girl below. The pink girl’s mouth dropped open as the strap filled her hole, but she didn’t make any sound. The girlfriend thrusted, pulled halfway out, and thrusted again. I could hear the bed creak as they fucked. The pink girl bit her lip. I realised she was straining to stay silent. She didn’t trust her voice. She didn’t want it to crack across the quiet room and then hear herself later, moaning back through phone speakers, making a sound that was just wrong. My chest tightened. In that moment I loved the pink girl. In that moment it was Thorn pushing xyr strap into her virgin hole. I was holding my phone tight in both hands and then something was happening, something big was happening to me.
My orgasm blossomed, and my phone dropped through my hands onto the floor. I bent forward, driving my teeth through my lip. I don’t know what kind of noise I made. My headphones ripped free from the side of my phone as it fell. The sound of a gently creaking bed blared through Nana’s room. I snatched my phone and flicked it to mute. I could taste blood.
I looked up through my hair, and Deb was looking over Nana’s form on the bed to me.
‘Bless you, dear,’ she half-whispered, with a soft smile.
Deb woke me up around 3am. I had eaten all my Turkish delights, and Nana was dead.