Coconut Wireless

by Nicola Baird

  Loads of love to you, as ever - Suzy

  PS: Having a new phone installed - hope it works better than the last one.

  CHAPTER 10: FRESH START

  THIS RECONCILIATION SCENE is not going as the Minister for Women, Youth and Children anticipated. He's done them before - the set up: one bashed wife, blaming herself for losing her husband's love (why else would a man hit a woman after all?). He's held bruised hands, stroked sores and healed his domestic problems with a twist and a turn of his formidable vocabulary. And back comes the battered thing, a defeated, worried woman - prone on an expensive, private, hospital bed - straight back into his control.

  This is a sick way of showing love isn't it?

  Stella, has been here before. She's heard the meaningless whispers, listened to this man who doesn't have the word sorry in his vocabulary, suffered the ignominy of being hit for fantastical inventions of jealousy and infidelity in his stupid head. And she's had enough. She would go to the police if she thought they'd help her, but nothing would happen. Wife beating is a domestic issue. If the police brought charges on a MP (unthinkable) she'd just shame her family (not desirable) and her brothers would be wary of giving her a place to stay (precarious).

  If she was religious, she would go to the church, but those men dressed as women don't think much of her anyway - after all she's not church married to this man, just through the custom exchange of old-fashioned shell money, and she thinks wryly his wretched sperm.

  The priests don't really approve of man-living-with-woman if it doesn't involve a white lacy dress, real Western get-up, and of course no sex before marriage - which in Stella's case was her absolute undoing. If the MP hadn't made her pregnant (no, she mustn't think that, she does love her daughter), then she wouldn't have been made to go and live with him by her eldest brother. If only she hadn't been lured into his world by his sweet talk (he can, he practised at MP school); by his offers (he lied, another skill at MP school); by her family (they encouraged too much, hoping for something out of it - they hadn't been to MP school); by her friends (giggling they'd leave her alone whenever he approached the basketball courts); by her teachers (she was expelled once her belly started to show). And then when things began to go wrong, about the moment Ellen was born, no one could hear her problems - although they must have done, she heard them whispering about her. Those neighbours could see all her troubles (the nightly fight, a life of dodging blows) as if it was washing hung out on the line but no, they wouldn't say they saw. Maybe they thought worse of the MP, but they did nothing.

  Stella blinks back tears, she feels she's in the middle of a conspiracy, and a conspiracy come to this - another stupid hospital bedroom showdown. This time she's not going to believe his lying words, the "Come home, sweetie," the "I'll look after you if you're good". No, she doesn't want to cry about this injustice. Doesn't want the MP to think her will is weakening. She doesn't love him, she's never loved him, and she's certainly not going back to the gilded prison he's made for her up on the hill.

  She turns her face towards the wall.

  The MP looks at this thin dark woman - too skinny these days for his liking. Stella irritates him. She's too proud, too strong minded. The only way to control her is to beat her - at least she can understand something, too stupid for words, too ignorant to behave. Thank goodness he never married her properly. The moment this business settles down he'll send her back to his mother's house in his village, as far as possible from him. She'll be happy there cooking and playing with the children, and if she promises to behave maybe he can visit at Christmas. Better still, if scandal can be avoided he can marry his girlfriend, the sweet (fat!) girl who welcomes him with smiles and fresh soaped skin. Who asks to marry him, and promises she'll be the best wife in the world. Who thinks he's a king. Who says he deserves only the best. Yes, he misjudged this bitter woman lying prone, he'd have made her a queen if she'd played her part right, but she's too ignorant to learn. Stella questions his authority and she argues like a man. It's not right, it's not fitting for a busy MP like him. He's glad he hit her, show her who is boss.

  "Come back home my sweet." It's insincere this talk, sweet - seven hours ago he was beating her with a stick, accusing her of crimes she never knew existed.

  "Never!" It's venomous this reply, is it right for a woman to talk back like this?

  "Your daughter misses you." That's emotional bribery - only used by emotional manipulators.

  "Give my daughter back to me then." An unwise reply. That MP's going to get angry again. The room's temperature gauge starts to soar.

  "I'll give you everything, but you need to behave, be a fit wife for a Big Man." He moves closer to her, gently tries to take her hand. Stella winces. Is this imagined pain? No, she sees real pain in the future. Today she knows her own mind - and she means to tell him.

  "You can give me what you like, but it'll make no difference. What is the difference between you and me, between man and woman? The difference is good sense, I cherish my daughter, I don't whip her when I think she's done something wrong. You have no idea how to work with people. If you think I've done something wrong you beat me. If I see my daughter truly doing something wrong, I explain to her that some behaviour is acceptable and some isn't. She's still little, but when she is older I'm going to negotiate with her, show her there are a thousand paths in life, but the one to take is the one where you have self-respect; a road that lets you breathe; a path that doesn't mean you have to harm others; track with enough space to guide those people weaker than yourself.

  "Once I thought a lot of you, I thought there's a big man, but still he takes time to talk to a young girl like me. I realised too late you were only handing around, giving my team new basketball shirts, just to take me and spoil me and then lure me into your home to be your football. Why is it that you have to kick around the thing you say you love? What kind of a man does that? Yes, you needn't answer me - because the truth is it's fashionable for men in this rotten country to think women are second rate, the worst pieces in the worst bags of stinking copra. Even though my mother's sister is a chief, my own parents are educated overseas, even though women inherit and care for the land in Guadalcanal and in Ysabel and in your own province, the West, you think women are nothing. You forget to respect me, and you forget to respect my sisters too. That is really why I hate you. That is why you are nothing to me now. Nothing! And still you think you can hit me, as if I was a dog, and that will make me obedient, follow your senseless rules. Well, you are wrong. You are so wrong you don't even know what's the difference between right and wrong anymore.

  "Look at you! You are the boss of this hospital, 'Mister Honourable Minister of Health', and to test it out what do you do? You just beat up the mother of your child and send her to try the beds in your hospital wards. Do you really think the doctors don't guess? All the nurses know I didn't walk into a wall. They're professionals, they know I'm not epileptic. They know what you've done to me - and you're losing popularity, believe me. Next election you'll see, you'll be out looking for a job. You're not even good enough to sweep the streets of Honiara. And the way you treat me is the way you treat this country too. I know the lies you spin, the tales you weave, this myth of important 'official' business meetings is just a good way of acquiring new cars and private deals with these rich foreigners.

  "And you're so stupid, so content in your pride, that you don't see you are selling your own birthright, just giving it away. And giving away a birthright that doesn't belong to you. It's our land you know, land is the mother of all of us: men and women.

  "And then some little devil gets inside you and you think ... yes I think this is what happens, you find this glimmer of self-doubt in your belly and you ignore it, try to drink it away but it gets bigger, and bigger and bigger. So big it's squeezing at your soul. So what do you do? You turn on something smaller than you and you hit. And that something is me. Look at my eye, look at my head. You're an evil man. You're a bastard. BASTARD," Stella is s
creaming now, "Do you hear? I want everyone to hear. I'm sick of suffering in silence."

  The MP turns crazy with rage. He doesn't even bother to shape a sentence to reply to this witch of a woman. He just picks up the bedside light (at least you get something for the money you spend for a private ward) and attempts to silence Stella by bashing her with it. She struggles back, but he's standing and hitting, and hitting again and she really is being hurt. He hears this thin, unearthly cry. Can't tell where it's coming from, and then there's a smash of glass, a yell and there's an arm being wrapped around his throat, half-choking him. Another takes the lamp away. Doesn't knock him to the floor though. Just stops him.

  Stella starts to throw up as a nurse appears. She is embarrassed by the theatricals in this room - and him a big man and all. She goes to Stella, mops her forehead with a large yellow sponge, holds her as she spits out blood, and a precious tooth. She's crying now this bold woman, and the nurse holds her and lets her cry, waits until the blood stops, wipes the sour taste of sick from her mouth and then turns on the men, angry, really angry with them for disturbing the hospital's peace.

  She points to the door. “You both go. And you, malaria boy, you’ve caused far too much trouble. Get out and let this woman lie quietly so she can recover.” She points to the door.

  "No," says Stella to everyone's amazement. "Make him go," she points towards the man they call her husband. "That man there, he can stay. He saved me." Henderson looks embarrassed and the nurse, eyes raised skyward but still hoping for peace, agrees. "OK," she is polite now, all too aware that the MP is a big man, may even sack her for doing this. "Do you mind boss, er, Sir, if you go ... You can stay," she adds, as nonchalantly as she can, in the direction of Henderson.

  The MP turns on his squeaky shoe heel, marches out of the door and away.

  Stella is shaking and the nurse too busy (too angry for being duped into insulting a Big Man, these guys fund the hospital!) to stay with her - after all she obviously made the MP hit her by whatever she's being doing, or whatever she said. Stella keeps shaking; her heart races. "What's your name?" she asks between sobs, finally turning her head to look at the stranger squarely in the eye.

  Henderson thinks he's going to die of shock. It's Stella, the sad woman in the red dress, the one he danced with. This woman who was so beautiful last night, is now just a dot-to-dot of cruel colour. Hair mussed, make-up streaming mourning rainbows down the highest of cheek bones. The side of her face a blur of bruising. His heart jumps from protectiveness, to lust, to he knows not what.

  "Oh," says she, "I know you."

  "Did you know you were going to be my wife? Come back with me?" It's a question, not an order. The words are a surprise for them both.

  Stella has nothing to lose.

  Henderson doesn't know where such a sentence could have come from.

  Stella nods. Henderson takes her hand, a very quiet, comforting gesture. Boy, is this a reconciliation scene gone wrong thinks the nurse, a smile on her face. She passes the wet sponge to Henderson, and leaves this pair of idiots alone.

  Stella is too sore to leave the hospital that day. So Henderson waits until around noon before he tells her he's going - to catch up with some sleep back at the house. She groans, turns away towards the wall, and Henderson speeds up his goodbye with a stroke of her hair and a promise to return with a home cooked meal and drinking coconuts. Stella is one of the very few patients at Number Nine Hospital who has only one - and now no - visitor. Neither bothers to think about it, but the reasons are glaring: she's a woman who has completely stepped out of line. Even the nurses treat her with suspicion, entering the room as few times as they dare for the sake of her health.

  It's another hot one, far too hot even for the run up to Christmas time, but Henderson barely notices this as he dodges the traffic on the busy highway outside the hospital and heads up the main street in China Town. His head is so busy with the events of the past 24 hours that he barely notices the hoards of people heading towards the sports ground. Everywhere there is talk of who's going to win and offside debates. This is THE game of the year: the national side against Australia in the Oceania Cup. Kick-off is at 3.30pm, but the whole of Honiara, and some from the provinces too - who've made lucky trips to town or who've planned for this for months - are already searching for the perfect spectator spot. The dignitaries and ref's contingent in the stands; the employed inside the ground and the rest - a chattering, happy bunch until the first penalty Australia scores - are settling on the steep slope above the sport's ground. It's a place of free views and perfect shade from the hot sun achieved by willowy gums that are also precariously fixing the hillside to the spot town planners marked on the map two decades ago.

  Henderson is greeted by a couple of friends from the Mbokonavera house on his way. They mock knowingly. Ask how his head is. Ask how much beer he drank. Ask where that rascal Patte has got to. Henderson remembers, with a sort of shame, that his bed last night was a beach - pretty stupid as he had a much better place to sleep with his wantoks up with Anna and Adam's mobs.

  "Are you coming to see the game? The PM will be there you know," Henderson nods his head - it's a reluctant no.

  Lovelyn is more than curious: "Were you kept in prison last night then?" she quizzes her cousin in the middle of China Town. Henderson is truly shocked. "Of course not!" And then he remembers that she's just a young girl, albeit his cousin, and there's no need to explain what he did, or why. In fact he has a great deal of explaining to do, but he'd rather tell his aunt what's what - avoid this teasing from the kids. Lovelyn comes closer to Henderson, whispers in his ear: "Listen, Matron really is cross with you for stopping out, and for going off with Patte. She doesn't think Patte is a good person. You should try sweetening her, take some of that red cordial up to the house as a gift and she'll be easier ..." Henderson pats her arm, thanks her for the tip and goes straight into the shop. Lovelyn would've added: "... and Matron knows about the jeep, the gambling, the drunkenness and the fights with the MP." But Henderson is in a strange mood - he'll find out soon enough. Her inquisitive eyes follow his progress up the street until he ducks into a green timbered building.

  It's dark inside the store, after the bright street, but seemingly just as crowded. There are boys arguing about the best Nico sports shoe to buy (complete fantasy: none have money); there are boys leaning on the counter giggling - or is it staring - at underwear (complete fantasy: none have girlfriends); there is a woman holding the hand of a twin, who holds the hand of her sister, searching for the right-sized pan for soup making for the next family celebration; and that same white woman reading out loud a long list of goods to one of the store assistants - sesame oil, three large bleach, insect killer, big sack of rice, and the 'Do you have questions' - Kerosene? Colgate toothpaste? Small bottle of Southern Comfort? The assistant is moving around the store with some speed, saying yes, saying no, piling the objects into a cardboard box ready for them to be shipped to this Mrs' friends somewhere in the province. Henderson stands for a while, waiting to catch one of the assistant's attention. He looks down at the floor and sees a cockroach's antlers peeking out from behind a large flour sack: instinctively he moves his foot to stamp on it. The cockroach is not that stupid; it immediately ducks safely behind the sacks. The young man and the old insect now play a waiting game. Each alert. Each totally still, just waiting for the other's patience to break. Henderson loses, loses only because the Gilbertese assistant in the store hisses at him: "Hey, bro. Do you want to buy anything or are you waiting until tomorrow?" Henderson ignores the joke and points casually at the cordial on the shelves behind the man's head. "That's six dollars fifty." Says the employed young man. "That's very expensive," thinks the unemployed young man - but it might save his skin. He counts out his dollars very slowly and leaves with a bottle of sickly, coloured sugar wrapped in a strip of Chinese journalese.

  The walk back to the house is tiring. Henderson starts to feel thirsty again and wonders if he's done the
right thing. He could always pretend the conversation with Stella hadn't happened, just leave her alone in the hospital. He thinks of that beautiful woman of the night before, the way she danced, and he thinks of the broken body her husband gave her. What a wicked man! He is right to take her to a safe place. His aunt is sure to be kind to her, Anna is good to all the wantoks.

  "What have you done Henderson? What have you done?" This from Anna, who is crying loudly on the balcony. Her whispers turn into daggers, cutting Henderson's ears. "How could you bring this disgrace on our family? How could you be so selfish, so thoughtless?" She hugs Junior, the only other one in the house, tighter to her ample bosom. "You have done wrong, Henderson!" Henderson looks so offended, and so surprised that Anna relents. He's just a young man, not a town sophisticate like that idiot friend of his, Patterson. She sits down, on an uncushioned chair inside the house, sobbing. Henderson climbs the stairs up to the veranda reluctantly. He's not sure he's ever had any kind of showdown with anyone. He'd rather be quiet and say nothing, but very much respects his aunt and instinctively realises it'd be best to talk about this now, while everyone is out at the soccer game, and then never, ever again.

  "Henderson everyone has been talking about you. I hear you've crashed a truck, spoilt the MP's new jeep, got drunk and then gone and fought with the MP. Tell me this isn't true? It just doesn't sound like you." Henderson looks down at the ground, shrugs his shoulders. "It's true if you want it to be."

  Anna tries a new approach. Or rather Anna tries an age-old approach, she cries some more. Try as he might, Henderson cannot ignore it. He comes close to his auntie's chair, kneels down, so that he's a little lower than her. He takes her arm - he can't say sorry. But he can comfort his poor crying relation. Anna is not satisfied, she pushes his arm away, notices the wrapped cordial bottle and pushes that away too.