Stephanie Wilson, left, John McKinney, Fred Te Maro, Trish Veltman.
As part of the 2020 Readers and Writers Programme, Friends of the Kapiti District Libraries ran a creative writing competition in which the challenge was to write an original story or memoir of 500 words inspired by a time or moment of crisis. Twenty-seven entries were received.
As she awarded the prizes, author, poet and writing tutor Adrienne Jansen said: "I thoroughly enjoyed reading all these small stories."
"From past lives, from present lives, from the imagination, and with such a range of stories – about donkeys, canal boats, earthquakes, junk, illegal plants, there's a long list.
"There were sharp dramatic crises, and the slow-burning crises of change, and of course the current Covid-19 situation.
"I selected the first two stories, then I could have selected another eight for an equal third place.
"In the end I selected two for third place, and one of those won me over because the ending was so unexpected.
"It wasn't a funny ending, but it was so surprising it made me laugh."
First prize went to Trish Veltman for her story Broken Plates, second prize to Fred Te Maro for his story The Baby is Coming, and two third prizes to John McKinney for Coffee to Die For and Stephanie Wilson for her story Crisis.
Kāpiti News sponsored the competition and is pleased to showcase the stories.
Friends of the Kapiti District Libraries has published all the entries in a volume called Times of Crisis which will be available soon.
Broken Plates
By Trish Veltman [first prize winner]
The first week, they break and snip and glue.
"The magic of mosaics is ..." the tutor says, flinging her arms out wide like a preacher. "Regenerative art."
Laura snatches a tissue out of her pocket, camouflaging a snort. She gazes around at the other women sitting in a horseshoe at the plastic trestle tables, searching for an echo of her reaction. They are nodding, serious, all eyes on the tutor.
"Take this plate," she says. She plucks a cracked and chipped china plate from a box and holds it up, waving it like a fan. Laura sees a blur of pink and gold. "It's an ugly, unwanted thing, but we are going to transform it into a thing of beauty when we make our house numbers."
Laura sighs. She had grander plans in mind than a decorative 12 when she signed up for the course. After Italy, she wanted to mosaic the concrete floor of her front porch.
She'd envisioned girls in flowing dresses and garlands of flowers pirouetting across her hall floor in a perpetual dance of welcome.
The tutor's box is a graveyard of broken china. Laura picks a blue mug with no handle, and a cracked orange plate. The colours remind her of Italy. They break into pieces with one sharp tap of a hammer. In the end, that's all it had taken with her and Marco, to shatter their relationship into angry shards. She snips the china into smaller pieces, and glues them to a board. Two orange islands grow in a sea of blue.
"See," the tutor says when they stop to pack up. "See how beautiful your work is looking already."
Laura shrugs. It's not dancing girls.
The second week, they grout. Laura chooses black. It reminds her of Marco's eyelashes.
The third week, they seal the grout, and start a new piece. The tutor has brought a box of tiles.
"The tile shop throws away any they can't sell." She shows them how to add depth with tonal changes. Laura picks two greys and starts a tree. A slender silver birch, stretching up to the sky like a dancing girl. She doesn't think of Marco.
At home, she hangs the blue and orange 12 on her gatepost. She doesn't have a hammer, has to bang the nail hard, twenty, thirty times, with a block of wood she finds in the garage. She thinks of Marco as she hits the nail.
A box arrives in the mail from Italy. Everything she couldn't carry. A blue porcelain vase Marco gave her, the coffee set with the green vines curling around delicate white china. They'd bought it together that weekend in Florence, before he told her. She rips open the flaps, peels back the top layer of bubble wrap.
All her precious things lie in a shattered, kaleidoscope mess of china shards.
Three weeks ago, Laura would have cried.
Today, she smiles. Regenerated. She knows how to make beautiful things out of broken pieces.
The Baby is Coming
By Fred Te Maro [second prize winner]
"Heta, Heta, come quick, Bella says the baby is coming."
"What? Holy cow." Heta charges past Mere, his little sister-in-law.
"Geez, Bell, couldn't you pick a better bloody time? It's bucketing down out there and the road's closed."
Bella, stretched out on the couch, glares at Heta. "It's not me that picks the blimmin' time you drongo. Go get aunty Mo and be quick about it." Heta glances round, panic stations. Bella sighs with frustration. "God I wish Mum was here," she mutters. "You as useless as tits on a bull."
"I wish Mum was here too,"says Heta. "I never seen a baby born before. Jesus, Mary and Joseph."
Bella sits up. "And don't be taking the Lord's name in vain, you heathen."
"OK, OK. Mere, go get aunty Mo please, and tell her to come quick." Mere squints up at Heta as if pondering the request before replying. "No, Heta. I can't. It's raining cats and dogs outside and I'll get the flu." Bella gives a little moan. "You better hurry, Heta, I think my water's about to break." Heta spins around in terror. "Water? Break? Hell's bells, what next!"
"Get outta here," screams Bella, "fetch aunty this bloody instant." Heta is out the door. Bare feet, no jacket in the pouring rain. In his hurry he slips in the wet and is splattered with mud by the time he arrives at aunty Mo's. "Aunty, aunty," he shouts as he bangs on the door. "Come quick, the baby's coming."
The door creaks open, a face peers out. "Crikey dicks, Heta, you look like a wet hen with no feathers. What you yelling about?"
"Please aunty, you gotta come quick, the baby's coming, Bella says the water is breaking. That's gotta be serious, aye?" Heta is almost crying with panic.
"Aue," mutters aunty Mo. "Always been the same, these young ones getting hapu, having tamariki and calling on their aunty Mo, no matter the weather, no matter the time. Oh well, better go help this one into the world." Backing away from the door she says, "You stay out there, don't want all that mess in my house. I'll just be a minute."
The time it took aunty Mo to get herself ready was the longest minute of Heta's life. Or so it seemed. He was ready to grab her and drag her running, to get back to his Bella, but aunty Mo was having none of that. "Bugger off."
Aunty Mo walks in the door, dripping wet. Mere says, "How now brown cow." Heta says, "Eh, what you call aunty?"
"Sorry, I'm practice my Engalish." She squints up at them and walks away. "The rain in Spain falls mainly ..."
With aunty Mo in charge little Heta popped out none the worse for wear, letting out a lusty squeal when his bottom was slapped.
"Cor blimey Charlie. I'm a dad!' was all that a mightily relieved Heta could think to say.
Crisis
By Stephanie Wilson [third prize winner]
It had seemed a sensible plan. An economical plan. Lockdown was over and normal supermarket shopping could resume. The pantry and freezer were still surprisingly well stocked.
"Eat it all," I told myself. "Every last crumb." Then replenish with a shopping list of fresh deliciousness! Today the pantry and refrigerator show bare. Wiped clean and sparkling. A shopping list, rather long, is waiting.
After lunch, off I will go to push the trolley up and down the aisles blissfully choosing. Not a Click and Collect for me. No more guessing how many mandarins to a kilogram or what size broccoli to choose. No more, one lonely potato when there should have been a kilogram, or ground coffee when it should have been granulated. Hands on I will be, calm and serene as I make my choices.
A ping heralds a text. I read with a smile that quickly fades to panic. 'R U home? C U in 5. Les, Phil and girls.' My love and wish to see my son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren is overridden by my urge to feed and nourish them all ... somehow!
Thesaurus tells me a Crisis is a dilemma, a quandary, an emergency or an embarrassment.
Somehow I was feeling all four. My happy little world was rocking and the problem unsolvable.
Would replying to the text with a "not home" message solve my dilemma and embarrassment?
Hide under the bed and solve my quandary? No, this was not an emergency. Surely
the arrival of one's loved family members could not be an emergency?
Opening and shutting cupboards hopefully does not ease this feeling. Another Covid effect I deduct. I have been too long a solo, isolated island.
And then, answering the doorbell to smiling faces and welcome hugs. Shouts of, "Hope you haven't eaten". Paper bags of pies and buns and orders to "put the kettle on".
Wonderful ... my moment of crisis forgotten. Tomorrow I will shop.
Coffee To Die For
By John McKinney [third prize winner]
It was red and it was shiny and it sat on the kitchen bench. It gleamed, this modern miracle that produced lattes and flat whites. Mary, bless her, was every bit as red and her face shone, too, with a sheen of sweat — it is strange, as they say, how humans grow to look like their machines! Be that as it may, Mary didn't care — the pride she had in her coffee machine practically made life worth living.
Except there was a problem. She called her husband. He would sort it out. "Alan! The coffee machine is hissing." Alan shuffled into the kitchen. He turned the machine off at the wall, made a few adjustments, and managed to fix it. Mary went pink with pleasure. "I don't know what I would do without you, love," she said.
All was well for three days, then to Mary's dismay it started to be hard to lock the handle into its connection. "Maybe it's the new coffee beans I bought," she thought. "With this lockdown I can't buy my usual ones."
The next morning it was worse. "Alan! Come quickly!" The red Italian coffee machine was not old, and had served them very well. Why was it now playing up? Mary felt herself going red in the face. "It's hard to lock, and now it's leaking!" Alan turned the machine off at the wall and tipped it backwards so he could look up into the connection. He gave it a good clean inside, lowered it, and asked Mary to "have a go now".
It worked perfectly! She gave Alan a big smooch on the lips. "You're wonderful!" she said, "I was really sure there was something seriously wrong this time." Two more days of coffee bliss were followed on day three with a cry from the kitchen: "Alan! Come quick!"
Alan made his way as fast as he could to the kitchen and was met by his frantic spouse. "It's leaking again! Fix it! Fix it!" she shouted. Again Alan turned the machine off at the wall and tipped it backwards to reveal the inside of the connection. A large finger was inserted, and out came a twisted piece of rubber.
"That's your problem! It's been that all along — broken seal." Mary looked at the broken rubber ring with a horrified expression, which turned slowly into a piteous one. "Can you fix it?" she asked, weakly.
"No!" Alan laughed. "You can't fix a broken seal — and we can't even buy a new one or get it fixed in this lockdown." Mary's face suffused with colour. She grasped the edge of the bench as the enormity of the crisis sank in. "Can't fix ... lockdown ... days, weeks, months even ... no coffee ... "
"I think I'm going to lie down," she said, her face now bright red, as Alan told us later. She tottered off down the hallway.
She lay on her bed, fully clothed and — with her head bursting with thoughts, problems and emotions — died.
