Losing the plot

In this extract from her memoir, NZ poet and author KATE CAMP goes to Washington certain she will witness a historic presidential victory.

- KATE CAMP

Our bathroom had dark-blue wallpaper with birds and flowers on it, like the wallpaper in an English country house. The paintwork was putty-coloured, with a putty-coloured bath shelf that Dad had built for Mum. As well as room for Mum’s mug of Nescafé, it had a sloping holder with a lip to hold her book, or the latest issue of the Bulletin. Once I was having a bubble bath with a jar of hard-boiled sweets on the shelf, and Dad called me a little sybarite. In the bathroom cupboard was a wide-mouthed orange plastic jug. Its lip was shaped like an upper lip, with a cupid’s bow. This is the jug Mum would use to wash our hair, and as I write that, I can see my sister’s fine, straight hair being washed with it, hanging down her back while I sit in the bath behind. I used to like to force the jug under the bath water, filled with air, then let the air out in huge, transparent bubbles.