Jane Bloomfield
Lady Writer on The TV
When my mum was freshly separated from my dad my
sister and I went with her on job interviews in downtown Auckland
we sat in our mustard-coloured VW beetle on Queen Street and waited
I guess we were given instructions | be good don’t touch the knobs or
turn the key don’t talk to strangers don’t spend the bridge toll money
one time we did talk to a stranger
a tall thin bearded hippy dude in a muslin shirt and cross-body tasselled bag
we’d locked the keys in the car
Mum had taken too long
we needed help to pop the lock
Jesus and his patchouli vibes were still hanging about with his imaginary coat hanger
when she appeared apologetic and guilty and grateful
he had one of those permanent 70’s stoner smiles
and was soon in our Bayswater villa adding a heaped teaspoon of salt to mum’s once
delicious now ruined pea and ham comfort in the big soup pot on the stove
I can still see on tip toes that white sodium bomb hovering over the sea of sweet green
he wasn’t her type at all long unbrushed hair bare feet as slow as a sloth in denim flares
while she your Mary Quant minis patents and blonde hairpieces on black velvet combs
just the way that her hair fell down around her face those wigs lived on stands
she must have eventually told him where the bus-stop was up at the Belmont shops or
drove him down to the Devonport ferry so he could drop one and dissolve back to the city
Mum got the job as in-house model for Everard Rogers Knitwear
she was the ultimate solo yummy mummy of two before they were a thing
hey man she wasn’t even twenty-seven
our rabbit eared TV was black and white and played Disney movies
once a week on Sundays
Rapunzel Tie Up Your Golden Hair
In preparation for leaving home for boarding school
at aged 12 rising 13, a sort of coming of age took place.
My Mum booked me into Luigi’s Hair Salon, Hastings
I had a mouth full of wire, train tracks and rubber bands
hauling a row of bucked teeth back into my face no
modern mane makeover would disguise.
I wept silently as my long blonde last summer of freedom
hair and lash skimming fringe fell to the checkerboard vinyl
black and white, plain as day, I emerged mouse brown
a short wedge accentuating my round face cheek dusted
freckles and fangs.
I wondered if Luigi took pleasure in my metamorphosis
everyone but me declared my uglification a success
I didn’t need a short back and sides, hair ties were cool in ’77.
A photographer was promptly booked, Mum now keen
to record the occasion of her pixie coiffed daughter.
I hunched in shame in my newly sewn apricot linen shirt
against a sad mottled brown backdrop as the camera flashed
in memory. And sat on the mantlepiece for years in tragic testament
to this painful adolescent period until a silent concession took
place and that portrait, still in its studio monogrammed
cardboard frame disappeared to a box in the garage
where it belonged.
Jane Bloomfield is a newly published poet based in Queenstown, New Zealand.
