Rona

She had flame-red hair and worked as an electrician. It seemed strange that she should choose to work with electricity and currents but when you got to know her you realized that it was almost a self-parody. Sparks flew.

She had a husband and three kids but her body was flat and hard and she didn't act like somebody's mother. She often suggested that a few of us should go to the pub after work and she never seemed uneasy about the time, never acted like she should be somewhere else. She was always laughing and smoking and chatting, telling jokes, but she left by herself and was gone by ten at night. And she had a temper. I saw her deck a bloke who put his hands where they weren't welcome and we had to pull her off him or his eyes would have gone.

I don't know that she ever thought about me because of my being in accounts and fairly new but I never found out for sure. She'd already gone missing by the time that I had become really accepted at work, although she was often the subject of conversation.

She'd married a Maori fellow named Joe. He had a pretty rough time of it with Rona. She wasn't averse to a physical fight and the neighbours were always complaining about the screaming or abuse or the wild kids, all boys, and the three mongrel dogs that they kept. But they were still together after twelve years with much of their life falling into a pattern of domesticity. Rona acted as the main breadwinner and only picked a dinkum fight about once a month.

Joe supplemented their income with a bit of night fishing, mostly just out in the Bay, and the rest of the time he looked after the kids and the house and generally acted as a house husband. He had a pretty well set up vegetable garden.

The police had him in the frame from the very beginning. There was no one else that would seem to want her out of the way. The poor fellow was hardly in a state to be arrested and he ended up in psychiatric care. In the final days, he could only keep muttering a phrase in Maori, saying the phrase over and over; they worked out that it translated to cooked head.

I really miss Rona. It's not every day that you meet a woman with such spirit and energy. She became a woman of mystery, with so many unanswered questions about the whole thing. So i started asking around and putting the facts together. I've plenty of time on my hands; I don't have a girlfriend and whilst I like a drink, I get terrible headaches if I have more than two drinks, usually beer.

I went to see Joe. I saw him a few times, actually, before he hanged himself with those blue striped pajamas they made them wear. Just as well to put himself out of misery really. From the visits, I believe that the police made a serious error getting Joe committed. I put together the whole story and I know what happened. You see, the moon did it.

Joe had gone out fishing on the night in question and Rona had come home after having a few drinks at the pub and was slightly off colour. Joe figured that out pretty quickly. Joe also knew that Rona was a bit of an insomniac and that she liked to get up early to make him breakfast when he came home in the early hours from fishing. Those were their best times when they'd have an early meal of fresh fish with the kids sleepy and quiet and then Rona would go off to work after hugging Joe and telling him she loved him. But this night something seemed awry and Joe was short with her, seeing that she had drunk a bit more than usual and complaining about a terrible cramping pain.

He told her he was taking the kids fishing with him and that the full moon was a good sign that the fish would be running and he'd likely sell the entire catch. He asked her to have a decent cuppa waiting for him when he got back because there would be a lot of work preparing the fish for the local shop which bought Joe's catch. She said she'd try her best but she was going to bed early. She slept fitfully and only just dragged herself out of bed when the alarm went off at four the next morning.

Rona stumbled around the kitchen for awhile, smoking and then coughing wondering where the teapot had been stored. Joe not being much of a housekeeper there wasn't a usual place for anything. She put the kettle on to boil after finding the teapot but realised that there was no milk in the fridge. The nearest twenty four hour place was a short jog away. Joe had taken the family ute, so snatching up her large handbag, Rona ran down the path into the morning dark. All the street lights were out so she was grateful for the full moon which lite her way with a waxy, yellow light.

Suddenly, the moon was obscured. Rona stumbled, and grabbed at a neighbor's geranium plant, falling headlong into their garden when the plant came away in her hand. She'd bloodied her knees and a wave of pain and tiredness hit her. She looked up at the moon and cursed, She took all that pain and hot blood and let it out. She shouted at the moon at the top of her voice: "Pokokohua! You bastard Pokokohua, cooked head."

The moon heard her and was enraged, such disrespect. It shrouded itself in clouds and came down from the sky. The moon grabbed Rona and began to carry her away into the blackness. She still held the geranium plant in one hand and her handbag in the other as the moon swept her up into its bosom and planted her and her geranium on it surface.

It was a strange arrival home for Joe and the three boys. There was the kitchen with its usual mess but no Rona. She wasn't in bed asleep. She wasn't at work out the back where she sometimes tinkered with an ancient Triumph motorbike. No, Joe and the kids knew as soon as they looked up at the full moon that Rona had angered the gods. They saw her with geranium bush in one hand, handbag in the other sitting on the moon, scowling.

It was too much for Joe, especially when the police accused him of dumping Rona's body in the Bay and they just would not see what their very eyes should have revealed: Rona sitting on the surface of the moon. They just thought Joe was crazy without really taking detailed photos of the moon or checking out his story through a police artist who would surely have been able to trace Rona's outlines. I consider their approach most unscientific.

But at least it has brought Rona and me together. Oh yes, I see her once a month, I see her all right. She will always be with me now because Joe has gone and I'm the only one that can truly see her outline. There she is when the moon is full, those crimson flickers on it round cream-yellow face. There she is for me to stare at and remember: the beautiful red-haired Rona doomed by her curse to sit forever on the moon.