The Fair in May

This is Nana and you can call her Erin. Do you like dogs because Nana has two and they are poodles with curly black hair and their names are Paddy and Blue. And two cats called Jack and Storm and they can’t hear anything because they are deaf. It is ok though because they can feel you are coming when you stomp. Or they get a fright and scratch everyone. Jack is the meanest cat like Scarface Claw and he jumped on the painting man’s face once because he got patted the wrong way and the man was screaming and Nana says ha here is Jack the ripper when he does that. Nana has lots of pretty ladies at her work and they all have dresses and shoes and see through tights and nice skin. Their friends come and visit them. Also Nana has a shop of furniture with stickers telling you how much money the stuff costs. One time I found some gold and green ducks at the old people shop and Nana put them in her nice smelling shop and they have a new circle sticker on the bottom and if someone buys them she will give me the money. Nana is rich but not like Scrooge McDuck who has a swimming pool of money.


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I am in the room with the dresses and peacock feathers and tall shoes and I am sitting on a stool with a spinning top. It is so tall. One of my hands has to hold the drawers because the stool likes going in circles. The drawers are brown and taller than me and have special things in them like hair clips and sparkly jewellery and good smelling bottles, except not My Little Ponies or colouring things. I have colouring things in my school bag all the time because that’s my favourite thing I like to do. There is a black hairbrush on the drawer and I want it. Stealing is bad even if you really really really want something to be yours. I know the black brush would be good at brushing my hair because my hair is the same colour black and I have blue eyes and white skin and freckles and I am nearly six. But we went to the doctor about my eyes because they are not the same blue from when I started school and the doctor said he didn’t know why they are changing colour but they are. Mum said my Dad has green eyes but I don’t remember that and I don’t know where he is to look at his eyes to check she is right. There is no Barbie that looks like me and sometimes I am sad about it and wish I looked like the blond Barbie. I am looking at the brush again. ‘Is this your brush’ I am asking to a person. ‘I don’t know Laila, but I’m sure you can use it.’ That is the person. Gigi. She is pretty. I take the brush and use it because Gigi said I can and that means it’s not stealing. Do you know Gigi is behind me and in front of me when I look in the mirror? She is meeting her friends soon and is putting on a perfect dress. It looks like a party dress and is green like a mermaid or maybe like shiny leaves. If my eyes go green I want them to be that green and not a yucky green like snot. Sometimes green is my favourite colour. The mirror lets me watch Gigi zip her dress at the back and she can do it all by herself. That dress is the slippery kind and a really pretty one and when she moves around I think of a ballerina because she looks like she might be good at dancing if she wanted to. I can look and brush at the same time. Now she is wearing shoes that make her tall. The shoes are gold and sparkly and I’m not allowed to wear ones like that. They make her look just like a real Barbie because she goes on her tiptoes. ‘Can I brush your hair Gigi?’ ‘No thanks darling, but your hair looks lovely.’ I smile. She’s nice to me. I know she can’t play elastics in her dress or jump on the trampoline because it’s too long. ‘I have a party dress that just goes to here.’ I use my hand to chop my knees and the stool does a spin and I lose the brush and I nearly fall off but I don’t. ‘Laila, come here and do your reading.’ That is Mum using her strict voice. Gigi does a wink at me and I like that because I can see the sparkly stuff she coloured over her eyes. My friend has a Barbie that looks like Gigi with brown skin and brown hair that is straight. I like playing with that one sometimes. I climb down and then up in the chair in the kitchen next to Mum and a Milo in the see-through glass mug. Gigi comes and kisses my head and says she will see Mum later and goes out the swinging door and it swishes in and out and in and out and stops. It is still smelling like her nice perfume in here and I sniff a big sniff and maybe Gigi is invisible or floating like a fairy that is living in the kitchen. Now I have to do my reading and Mum is always doing a good job listening to me.


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Whore, husband-stealer, prostitute, slut, manipulator, bitch, homewrecker, sinner, good-for-nothing, dirt, gold-digger, hoe, filth. All of these words have been used in conversation about or towards Nana, Mum and Nana’s staff, even if I was present.


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I am sitting in the cupboard under the stairs. Nana changed it into a wardrobe but I know it’s really a cupboard. My body is all pulled in like a turtle that made its arms and legs and head disappear. Sometimes I practice being a turtle at gym or when I play crack the egg on the trampoline. Mum is vacuuming for Nana because it is cleaning day and we are the only three people in this whole place. I have been hiding here for so long my eyes start getting closed by themselves. Then they are shut. Something begins to touch my hair, and my arms don’t move because they have fallen asleep, and then I am heavy and my hair is feeling the thing really trying to stick to me. It could be legs of a spider or a sticky web. A voice calls out and it is Mum, and my arms and legs all come out and I’m not a turtle anymore. The sticky thing is the plastic wrapping on the dresses hanging up, and my hair is reaching out to the plastic and making sounds. I remember this from a party when I rubbed a balloon on my hair and that was fun. But the plastic wrapping is still pulling me by my hair so I have to get out of here and I get the door handle and I twist it and get out. Then I run with fast legs like a tiger and not a turtle, and I am in trouble because I don’t listen all the time about not hiding. I am not having good ears for listening because some of my hair is still grabbing at my face. Even though Mum is telling me we are going home I am wanting to run around fast to prove forever I’m not a dumb turtle but am fast like a tiger.


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Nana had a cream V12 Jaguar and always had a reason to take us out for a drive. Wanting a strawberry milkshake from MacDonald’s was enough of a reason, so was going to the garden centre but you can’t do that at night. The passenger seat was a little chewed up, which was unfortunate as the red leather seats had been pristine before the dogs. But I don’t recall Nana minding about the seats, or anything the dogs did. She did mind people though. Across the road from The Mayfair was her antique shop Valencia. If she didn’t like a customer she told them nothing was for sale and that they should leave. Or she just said the shop was shut and ignored them.


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Mum made me a chart with pictures of my bed and a tooth brush and a reading bag and my uniform, and every morning I have to do the action of the picture. If it is not a school day I watch My Little Pony and it is 6am and I know that because when I wake Mum up she said it’s 6am and it’s too early and to go and play or watch TV. If it is a school day I catch the bus with my 50 cent coin and the driver says hi to me and bye to me and that’s all our talking until it’s really raining or really hot or really something outside. I go to St Patrick’s Primary School in Kilbirnie and my best friends are Rachel and Erin. Me and Erin were born at the same hospital and she is two days older than me and she knows it too. I am good at reading and art and playing sports and drawing. Usually I get in trouble for talking, but I don’t steal like Renee who stole my kite one time. One time I got in deep trouble for making paper pancakes. What you do is wet some toilet paper and make a ball and throw it really hard at the roof. If it’s a good throw it makes a pancake shape and sticks. The bad ones fall off and are so gross. Mum was angry because my teacher asked her to come to the school, and I had to bring some toilet paper because I used up so much for pancakes. That was embarrassing. In my class I am the third fastest at running, and I have a secret fairy house in a rosemary hedge under the teacher’s window. I know it is called rosemary because my Nana and Mum grow rosemary and it is also a name for a girl but names have a big R like this: Rosemary. Rose and Mary are the girl names from when you break it in half. After school I catch the bus home or Mum is at my school and we get the bus to town. Nana’s work phone number is 8016779 and The Mayfair address is 59 Ghuznee Street and her whole name is Erin O’Brien and my middle name is Erin too. On the building is letters spelling Albemarle but Nana called it The Mayfair after a fair that happens in May. I asked her about the fair once and she said it was a special fair but people in New Zealand didn’t know about it much. I said ‘Why not?’ and she said, ‘Because some people like secrets.’ I am trying to be good at secrets but sometimes they burn really hot in my chest so I tell people to make it stop burning so bad. Mum doesn’t like being at Nana’s work when all the friends are there and so after school we go to Moore Wilson’s with the Jaguar instead. I want to meet Mr Wilson because he has nice nougat bars and I think he should know. We buy Nana so much toilet paper and stuff for cleaning, and hard peppermints, and tea and the yummy nougat bars and milk, and drop them back to Nana. She has a fast car. Jaguar is the name of big and scary wild cat that has no other animals that can kill it. Just people kill it and now there are not many left, but I think they could also be good at hiding. I learned about the jaguars at school in the encyclopaedia. I also looked up May Fair in M and F but it wasn’t there. Too many people like keeping secrets. M and F are also where the toilets are and if you are a girl like me you go in to F and if you are a boy you go in to M. I went in the M at school one day and it smells like bugs. I always read after school. Sometimes it is homework and sometimes it is because I want to. At school I can read fast and the teachers got mad one day and they told Mum I was distracting because I said all the reading answers. I know distracting because I get in trouble for doing it in the car. Nana reads too. She makes big towers in the hallway with her books because she doesn’t throw things away. Mum said she is a hoarder and I think I want to be one because I want all of the books to make towers too. Mum said she likes sewing more than reading, but she reads to me and her voice makes me feel the same nice feeling as when it is cold and I am in a cuddly jumper. And she even made my jumper with a My Little Pony on the front, and it even has a rainbow tail. Every day when it’s cold I wear my pony jumper after school. On the inside it is like a scribbly drawing, but on the outside it is a really really good pony picture. Other things I do is have sleep overs, eat peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon, jump on my trampoline, go to parties, play elastics, listen to music on my yellow tape deck, colour, and go to Greek dancing classes with Kelly and Maria. Oh, and I can use the microwave by myself.


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One of my first memories of Nana is in our back garden. She was wearing a Navy and black stripped top, with a padded black and gold fabric headband that pulled all of her dyed black hair off her face. In her hands were secateurs, and next to her lay a pile of our garden. It was hot and I was sitting under a tree digging in a patch of grassless dirt. I would have been a handful of years and a half as summer was my half birthday. 3 ½. 31 ½. Mum went inside to boil the jug. Nana pushed me on the wooden swing and it broke. I fell. I was not hurt but cried anyway. ‘For goodness sake, you didn’t hurt yourself Darling.’ That broke my performance. I sulked in the dust and resentfully waited for Mum to return. Nana did not indulge sentiment, despite her collection of books and antique furniture that suggested she might. She was the most complicated person I knew. Maybe even she still is, because I still deliberate on what kind of woman it takes to illegally open a brothel, then successfully run it for years until you eventually have to stop because of breast cancer and old age.


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Lots of beautiful ladies with long hair work for my Nana. I think they are ladies but Mum and Nana call them the girls. I don’t know why they call them girls because I am a girl and they are more grown up than me. Amanda plays cards with me like Gigi. Camilla has a bracelet the same as Amanda’s necklace. They had the hugest fight about them one time and Nana went and was asking about who has the earrings and I got so confused. Camilla and Amanda are mean to each other and are not friends. And Patricia gave me some butterfly hair clips and they have glitter on them and her job is talking on the phone. Me and Mum and Nana like Gigi so much and Gigi comes to my house for dinner. The ladies have two names sometimes but I am just Laila even though my Mum calls me Leilani sometimes. I think people have two names because they fill up one name and spill over so need a new one to catch the spill. My Mum must think I’m really special and have filled up my name, so she uses two names for me and that’s cool. The ladies with two names always come in regular clothes and change into dresses and wear makeup and lipstick and that’s when they use their other name. If they are painting their nails sometimes I can do mine too. Pink is nice, and glitter. Amanda is always changing the colours on her nails. I don’t know if Gigi has another name though. She is always Gigi. She is always my favourite. She is good at saving money to buy a house Mum said and so I have been saving my $2 pocket money every week for 35 weeks and now I have $70. Next week I am going to buy Meadow a house and it is costing $68 and everyone can see her sleeping like a princess cat. I asked Gigi about coming to the new house and she is half-way to buying it and I will take my shoes off before I go in. Maybe she needs my $2 left over after I buy Meadow’s house and she will know I want her to buy a house too.


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It’s late summer 2015 and I’m going to a party at the Albemarle, formally called The Mayfair Gentlemen’s Club. The interior was gutted a few years back and the inside of the building is in a state, damaged by the elements and inhabited by rats and pigeons. I write ‘Laila O’Brien’ on the health and safety waiver and put down the blue ball point pen. How many times have I written my name in here on homework sheets? Every inch of the building is now fair game for me. On the second floor on the right I find one of the few rooms that still resembles a bedroom. The walls are covered with identical paper to the one that adorned my room as a child. Pale, with thin vertical red stripes interspersed with tiny pink flowers. Torn in parts but still pretty. Rather than go in I lean against the door frame. Under my feet is the same carpet I padded across years before, both barefoot and in school shoes. It’s dirty. A girl lights a cigarette. The part of the lips, the tilt of the head, the exposed wrist. Camilla did that downstairs years ago while I watched, but she was only wearing stockings, heels, and a silk kimono. Palms open I reach out and place one on each side of the hallway; the last time I was only able to touch each wall with the tips of my fingers.


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It is after school and we are playing Go Fish and I’m not doing a good job because I forgot Amanda had a 6 when I had a 6 so I have to go fishing. Uncle John calls me rats-guts sometimes and he would yell it now. I hate it. My school uniform is itching me so I scratch. Amanda is 19 years old and is wearing the sparkly necklace and does a smile with red lips for me and today she picked a blue dress and I am waiting for her to fish my 6 and I am not having fun, but she says 4 and I don’t have one. So then I get her 6, and I make a pair, and I really like playing cards and winning.


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Did you see Mum’s tummy because it was getting huge since my birthday party and a baby was growing inside of it. I looked at her in the bathroom when she wasn’t dressed yet and her body was round, and her tummy was the size of a balloon, and her hair on her head was like a clown. I didn’t say ‘Oh my God’ because you’re not allowed to say that but I did say ‘I want a pink balloon.’ When I got that balloon I put it under my jumper and it popped. Then on a different day the baby decided it wanted to come out and now he is at home and he is a boy, and Lily likes him more than me and shows her gums to strangers who want to touch him. She is like a guard dog with spit coming out of her mouth ready to mush you. It is not good talking to strangers so I tell the strangers I am not allowed to talk to them so that they know I am not being rude. Now I have decided I like playing in my room even though Mum took my door off because I slammed it too much. I have a wooden gate so Lily and the baby can’t come in and eat my crayons and do rainbow poo.


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After Nana died her diamond ring was missing which was odd as it was usually on her finger. I was sitting on the couch in her bedroom with Paddy. Mum was lying on Nana’s side of the bed looking out across Wellington. I don’t remember why we were in there. Slowly Mum got up and reached her hand up inside the curtain valance and we heard a clunk. At home sometimes I see the ring sitting alone on a windowsill and am grateful that I don’t have to look for it yet.


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Some days in the morning we put on our cleaning stuff like pink gloves and old clothes. Mum does vacuuming and washes a hundred towels and opens all the windows because it stinks like cigarettes. Nana says smoking makes people look like a crocodile handbag. I like exploring and there are more bedrooms in there than I’ve ever seen in my whole life. The date I write at school is 1989 but some rooms look like the pictures in books of bedrooms from before I was born. Also one room has mirrors all over the ceiling and walls, and one room has a spa that I’m not allowed to play in, and some rooms are always locked when I try the handles. The open ones mean I can go in and I like jumping and doing flips on the beds and looking at things. I found some mint wrappers once, and a corner of a shiny green wrapper maybe from a lolly, and a sparkly hair clip, and a sock, and some plastic fruit, and a pigeon nest with eggs in it because someone left the window open and the Mummy pigeon wanted to have her babies in Nana’s building. I told Nana and she came up and went push to the nest and out it fell and the eggs went smash and she said pigeons are like rats and she wasn’t sad at all. Oh my eyes went so huge and it was not good in my tummy. I tried to pretend I wasn’t sad but I was because the Mummy pigeon would be looking for her babies and Nana had made them into scrambled eggs.


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Nana purchased a house in Brooklyn that sat on five sections, knowingly paying more than it was worth. A family investment, she told the agent. Over the years it was renovated in bursts, beginning with the bedrooms and lounge. Dust covered everything, and was considerably varied in colour and thickness. If home, Nana mostly spent time in the bath or in her bed. Her face was forever coming off and going back on. It was always on when she left the house. She taught me why a blue-based red lipstick will make your teeth look whiter, and the necessity of a good first impression. As an example of this, she maintained her black hair and red or pink nails even if she was just at home with the dogs. When I think of her now she is in one of five places: The garden, working; her four-poster bed, littered with dog hair and magazines; the bath, transitioning; the kitchen, social; The Mayfair, swishing around and making her own money.


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Sunsultania’s house is in the picture on the front of my sultana box. We are friends. She is bad sometimes but Mum doesn’t see her, and so she growls me for leaving out my crayons when Lily ate them, even though it was Sunsultania. I have to tell Mum to set the table for her, and to buy her chippies as well as for me. She has black hair and blue eyes just like me and likes skipping. I heard Mum and my Nana talking one day because Mum had asked the doctor about Sunsultania. I thought maybe she was sick so I listened, and I heard Mum tell Nana the doctor said it was normal. So she was not sick and that was good and I went back to colouring. Mum had a baby and I think Sunsultania is sad because I think about playing with him and I forget to play with her sometimes. I have to try and remember.


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This morning we said goodbye to Nana and our house in Lyall Bay and my friends at school and the boy in my class that I like cried. We can’t buy our fish and chips from his Mum and Dad and Sister anymore. We are going on an adventure and it is called ‘living in New Plymouth and looking for new friends’ and I will also look for a new animal that might be extinct or hiding. The bad thing is we don’t have a dog anymore because Lily sat down next to Nana and wouldn’t get back in the car and wasn’t listening to us. Sitting down means no and barking means yes. So she said no even though she didn’t say it like I say it. And that is a bad feeling not having a dog. But my trampoline is coming and my Meadow is meowing and I am feeling like the colour pink again and I’m going to draw my face and colour it in with the pink pencil called flesh and do green eyes because they are green all the way now.

About the Artist

Laila O’Brien’s practice is research and project based, uses a range of media, and engages with the points where artistic performance overlaps with everyday life. Laila's interests lie with the relationships individuals have with themselves, each other, and the community at large. Ongoing concerns within her practice include how we as individuals navigate private space with public space, and the value of these spaces and the role they serve.