‘Aunty I want to …’ She stood up holding Bubba, jigging, and her aunty stopped in the doorway, turned with the knife.
‘Sorry Mata … May … Out here.’ She took the baby and pointed the knife along a path that went through long grass, ‘There, at the end you can see.’
The grass was cold against her ankles and she was scared of snakes, wanted to run but thought she might pee herself. Pee was a swearing word. She hurried, keeping her muscles tight until she came to a little tin shed with a door hanging open.
Dark inside. Stinken. She wet into a big hole where you could fall. Drown and choke in people’s wee and poo. There was newspaper to wipe with. Flies, spiders — perhaps snakes. She pulled her pants up quickly, smoothed her dress, shoved the door. Wanted to go home, running along the grassy, snaky path.
Then she stopped running. She was ten years old, nearly eleven. She liked her aunty and there were grandparents who were returning the day after next to take her home with them. At her grandparents’ place there’d be pretty chairs and cushions, curtains and bedspreads. They’d want to keep her and she’d have dresses, skirts, a dressing gown, slippers and dolls. The cousins were cheeky brats, but what did it matter?
Under the tank stand was a tin of water and a box with basins and scraps of soap on it. There were buckets of washing and an old tub, and on a crosspiece of the stand there was a piece of mirror, a cup with a razor and shaving brush in it, a wire hairbrush, a big green comb with missing teeth and a greasy jar. Two stringy towels hung over a piece of wire that stretched from corner to corner. Aunty had sent Missy to show her what to do. Missy, ginger and scabby. Ginger face, ginger stripy hair, ginger scabby arms and legs, raggy ginger dress. Skinny, toothy, scabby and ginger.
Ginger eyes, too, watching, ginger eyelashes flicking as she stood on one leg scraping her other ankle up and down it. ‘Makareta been on a train. Got a pie and a raspberry drink,’ she said, then turned and listened. Ran, calling, ‘Dadda, Dadda.’
When May returned to the yard her aunty and cousins were there looking at the cut-up thing on the board, the snake, and there was a ginger man there with wire hair. ‘See, Bobby, it’s May,’ her aunty said, and the man hugged her and kissed her cheek.
‘I thought it’s something else, her name?’
‘Mata, but she said she’s May.’
‘May-bee, May-bee …’he sang.
‘Shut up, Bobby, she’s shy.’ Her aunty’s face was red and smiling as she sat herself down on the stump by the axe.
May-bee my girl,
What are we waiting for now?
He picked Bubba up and leapt about on the dirt yard with her, singing.
It wasn’t a real house but it was warm inside, better than the School boys’ fort because you could stand up in it. It smelled like a pot cupboard. Her Uncle Bobby had lit the lamp but it didn’t make much light and she could see only the table spread with newspaper and the things on it — salt in a cup, butter on a saucer, jam in a jar, bread that looked old, like the Wednesday bread they had at the Home. Wanted some. It was a long time since she’d had breakfast, which she hadn’t wanted to eat at all because she’d felt too excited at the thought of going on holiday. But she’d made herself eat the porridge and had taken one bite out of her piece of toast before sneaking it to Jean.
Her aunty was by the stove putting food out for them, standing to one side so that light could reach the pot. Potato, and not snake, but eel. She hadn’t heard of eating eel but it must be all right because they all liked it, picking at it with their fingers because they didn’t know their manners, wiping sticky hands on the newspaper tablecloth.
There was only a spoon to use so she broke the potato with it and scraped a piece of eel flesh from a row of bones skinnier than pins, remembered they hadn’t said grace. Tasted it — worse than turnips and tripe.
Aunty and Uncle smoked. Earlier, when they were outside, Aunty had sat down on a stump with an axe struck into it while her uncle had gone hoppy walking to the tank stand for a wash. While he was away, Aunty had made two skinny cigarettes with tobacco from a blue tin and Manny had brought her a stick from the fire to light them with. The two of them had sat there without saying anything, just smoking. She’d say her own grace in her head if she could remember how it started.
Remember. Everything you’ve been told, May. Pray at the beginning and end of each day, before and after meals. The Lord is our shepherd, remember. Give thee thanks, Lord, for which that, or that which thee or thy has set here … Pulled more of the eel flesh away from the bones and chewed it with a piece of the bread, the way you could eat turnips and tripe. Hungry.
Her aunty was dipping eel water from the pot and putting a mug of it down by each of them. Her uncle and the kids dipped bread into theirs because they didn’t know their manners, eating the sloppy bread as though it was nice. We don’t let bad-mannered girls go for holidays, remember. Eel was pie, eely water was raspberry drink. That’s what she was having, a pie and a raspberry drink, like the boy and girl in the train.
Wires looping from lamppost to lamppost, wires stretching from fencepost to fencepost. Leaning against the window, she’d seen the black engine with the thick white smoke streaming.
Across from her were a mother and father with their two children. They’d had bags and pillows and had changed one of the seat-backs over so that they could all face one another as they went on holiday together. Back where they’d come from would be their house with locked windows and doors, but if you could go in you would find a kitchen with blue walls, blue linoleum, daisy curtains and white cupboard doors. In the sitting room there’d be a carpet-square with flowers and leaves on it, flower-patterned wallpaper, lacy curtains, a fireplace surrounded by brown bricks, a brown sofa and two easy chairs.
The girl’s bedroom would have pink curtains and brown blinds, a bed with a shiny bedspread and a floral eiderdown on it. There’d be a polished dressing table with a brush and comb set, cat doilies and a trinket box, and on the floor there’d be a fawn-coloured lino and a pink mat. The girl would have a dressing gown and slippers with pompoms on them.
In the boy’s bedroom there’d be green lino and a stripy bedspread with curtains to match. There’d be cream-coloured wallpaper and brown blinds. A set of drawers, painted green, would have boys things on top of it — a cap gun, a ball of silver paper, a cross with a nail in it, plasticine armies facing each other behind plasticine barricades. The boy would have brown slippers and a brown dressing gown.
The mother and father’s bedroom? But no, you weren’t allowed. Betty had said no, no, not allowed to turn the knob, push the door, look in.
Then she and Betty had sat on the pink mat and dressed the dolls, which had frocks, singlets, pants, hats and cardigans. They’d made bead bangles and necklaces for them, then Betty’s angry mother had come in.
Beads, beads, pattering, tinkling, scattering on the linoleum. Jumping up nearly pissing, running out the door and down the path. Betty, you bad, bad girl.
Bad boy and girl in the train. He’s kicking. I’m not. Look, look, Mum … We’re stopping very soon for refreshments. ‘Ten minutes for refreshments,’ the guard had said, coming through.
‘Be very good and we’ll get you a pie and a raspberry drink,’ the mother and father had said. ‘Sit there and be good until we get back.’ From the window she’d watched father running to the refreshments counter with mother following. The children had waited, waited, jumping up every now and then to look out of the window. Ten minutes. Five minutes now. Three or two. The train could … Coming.
Father had had plates stacked one on top of the other with all the pies on the top plate, balancing all on one big hand. He’d had two red drinks in the other hand, the necks of the bottles gripped between his fingers, straws bobbing in the fizz. Mother had brought cups of tea, fat white cups on fat white saucers. She had smiled and smiled coming into the train, and Father had reached into his pocket, taking out knives and forks.
‘Have so
me more soup, May, there’s more.’
‘No thank you.’
‘Missy, take Bubba from Dadda so Dadda and me can have kai. Wipe your hands.’
‘Come on, Bubba,’ Missy said.
Her aunty lifted the middle ring from the stove and a flame shot up as she scraped the eel bones in. There was a hissing sound and a fishy stink and the ring clattered back over the hole.
‘May I leave the table please?’
‘Yes, May dear.’
‘Got any tablecloths like this one, ha ha, at that place where you come from?’ her uncle asked.
She didn’t know what to say.
‘Don’t, Bobby, she’s shy of you, silly,’ her aunty said as she handed a plate of food across to him.
Ah, Maluna,
I love my
Silver-belly tuna.
‘Take no notice, May, he’s silly.’
She didn’t know what to say and didn’t know what to do now that she’d stood to leave the table, because there was nowhere else to go. Missy was sitting on the floor with Bubba on her lap and Manny and Chumchum had gone outside. Bubba had stopped grizzling and looked as though she might go to sleep. It was quiet now except for the sound of her aunty and uncle sucking bones and an occasional crackle and a rumble from the stove. She’d never heard a quiet like it.
‘Sit down again, May,’ her aunty said, ‘We clear the table after and get the lamp down.’
Three
Undark dark.
Light enough to see the blisters by as she sat in the middle of the black road, turning each foot. She leaned on one hand and rolled to her knees, rocked back on to the balls of her feet, pushing to stand.
Walking again, to where? To the wherever, the nowhere, the no ever, the ever nowhere, away, away. The long road curved.
There were houses which were only shapes in the night light, layers of shapes on the hill slopes, angled, turreted, fluted, stacked and domed. She used to dream of houses.
Walking, from where?
From there. From the very centre of the kitchen floor, on the worn linoleum spot, where she had stood that morning looking down at her feet, saying to them, ‘You are what I have and you can walk me. You can walk me to the wardrobe where I put on my coat, walk me to the stool by the bed where I pick up the photograph, walk me to the cupboard where I put you into two shoes, walk me to the door which I open, out onto the step, down the path to the street and away. You can walk me from street to street to street.’
Away.
So she’d walked through early morning when the first buses and trucks went by and the early workers hurried along the footpaths, when vans were loaded and unloaded, doors were slammed and engines started, when street lights went out and building lights came on.
In the early morning she had passed warehouses, spaces and places to let or lease, railyards, factories and mini-markets. She’d come to the shopping centres as the footpaths filled, as vacuum cleaners were manoeuvred about stacks and between rows, as windows were rearranged, signs put up, put out, taken down, changed.
At mid-morning she’d gone along a pink arcade into a video parlour where the machines had stood unattended while the rat-tatting sounds pitched and volleyed off the black-painted walls. On the screens red and blue machine people waged war, gunfire clattered down the streets of Crime City, stadium heroes flickered backwards and forwards over fields of violent green and red-mouthed dragons stormed down Monster Lane. Past Ax Battle, Robocop, Shinobi, Wonder Boy, Black Ray Boy, Swat, Secret Service, Winning Run, Sword of Fury she’d gone, before coming back down the pink alley and out again, blinking into hard light. There’d been food smells — coffee, new bread and fries.
The shoppers browsed and she’d made her way amongst them, at first not stepping on cracks, but after a while treading where each foot put itself, not asking herself ‘Where to?’ ‘Where from?’, but seeking the sights, the sounds, the words, the smells, that would keep her from asking.
At midday, past Bargain Bookcase, Unisex Fashion, Cut Price Wines, Discount Meats, Josie’s Patisserie, Lion Brown — on a long street of yards where flags and streamers announced cars for sale, service for cars, car wash, parts and accessories for cars — joggers emerged in clothing that said Bali, Hawaii, Love Your Heart, U.S.A., Rheineck, Nike, Tauranga, Canada, Lion Brown, Petone, Poneke, Italia, Masterton, Sydney, New York, Rage Without Alcohol, Kiwi, Ultra, Railways, Don’t Worry Be Happy, Aotearoa. She’d gathered the words to her to keep thoughts and thinking away, walking on to early afternoon, to late afternoon, to evening, to night, to the middle of the night, to the middle of the road, going nowhere — until her feet had stopped.
So she’d sat, a shoe in each pocket, on the new tar seal, where earlier a bus had gone by with a woman looking from a window. Sat until the thoughts came knocking, turning themselves into questions: What will happen Something or nothing Nothing or something. And then she’d stood.
Walked again, letting her blistery, dirty feet take her along the middle of the road where trams once went, between an avenue of poles from which orange light seeped down. Hungry.
Yes, but without longing. She felt neither sad nor glad and wished not to examine feelings or have thoughts that lead to thinking, wanted only her hunger and herself.
Sooner or later she would have to sleep, one of the street people. There were the pale old men with whisky and wine to keep their torments away, there were the brown kids dazed by the glue and solvents they’d inhaled, and now there was herself — a woman of middle age with nothing in a bottle or a bag to comfort her, but who churned street words, street sights and smells and sounds through her head, to keep from thinking.
Now she wanted nothing more than what she’d always had, which was nothing. Nothing, and just to walk, foot in front of blistery foot, her paddle-hands paddling back hefts of undark night.
Four
Dark.
Her aunty, with Bubba hooked under one arm and a candle in her hand, led them through the dark doorway into the other room, which was like a box that had been joined on. There were three beds in the box and each had a grey blanket edged in red wool stitching spread over it.
‘You sleep there, May, with Missy.’
‘I want Bubba,’ Missy said.
‘Bubba sleeping with me and Dadda tonight.’
‘Bubba.’
‘Shut up and get changed. Manny, Chum, get changed out there.’
‘Me … I wanoo-oo.’
‘Missy, shut up.’
‘Bubba-aa.’
Missy shot out of her dress, put on a shirt and got in under the blankets complaining and sook-sook, like sucky-thumb Margaret and cry-baby Colleen at the Home.
The Home was far away, across paddocks, down a long white road, back along miles and miles of railway track, down one street after another, through a gate, across a yard, up four steps to a big wooden door with an egg-shaped handle. Inside there were a long passage and big rooms, big windows. Taps and pipes, lights hanging by cords from the high ceilings. A real house. Not just boxes joined, newspaper walls, lavatory that was only a deep hole. Sometimes her cousins didn’t even use the lavatory. Bad. Aunty had sent them out to do wee on the grass.
‘Come out for a mimi,’ her aunty had said, so she’d gone out with Aunty and the kids to see what it was, and the boys had hooked their diddles out from the legs of their shorts, Missy had’ taken her pants down and bobbed and they’d all peed in the long grass.
‘Come on, May, don’t be shy,’ Aunty had said, putting the lamp down and squatting. After a while she’d had to do it too because the lavatory was too far away in the dark. Her water had spurted into the grass smelling pissy and warm like Colleen and Margaret when they wet their beds.
Stinky, pissy. She and Jean would have to pull stinken Colleen and Margaret out of their beds, stand them on the floor and pull their damp nighties off them — naughty, grizzly, smelly crybabies, warm and sticky with snotty, bogey faces. Look, you wet your beds. They’d have to send Colleen
and Margaret to take their sheets and nighties to the laundry then help them to bath and dress and have their breakfasts. Naughty wetty-pants girls who stank and sniffed and grizzled, pulling them to school.
Manny and Chumchum stepped over sook-sook Missy to get to their bed, and Bubba was already asleep in Aunty and Uncle’s bed. So she had to get in with Missy because there was nowhere else to sleep. At the Home you weren’t allowed in anyone else’s bed. She thought it might be bad.
Her aunty went out taking the candle, and except for the little scrap of light that came from the kitchen, it was dark. The little fort house sat by itself, somewhere, on a dusty yard and there were no lit streets outside, no cars, trucks, trams going by. No door sounds, no water rushing in pipes or out of taps, along gutters and into the lavatory bowls. No dishes clacking in the sinks. No screaming, crying, sniffing, shifting, creaking. No whispering.
Whispering. ‘I’m going to my grandparents.’
‘They might want you and keep you and you might have dresses, brown shoes, new pencils in a box with a sliding lid that you can put a transfer of roses on.’
‘There’ll be flowers on wallpaper, curtains, floors.’
‘Gloves for cold days. Ribbons …’
‘Wardrobes.’
‘Mirrors.’
‘Dolls with dresses. I’ll write to you.’
Whispering. Her aunty and uncle had gone out with the lamp. She could hear them outside whispering in the dark.
Shouting. She woke in the dark to shouting. A match flared and her aunty leaned over to light a candle, ‘Wake up, wake up Bobby.’ Her aunty sat up in bed, took Uncle by the shoulders and shook him. She sat him up and he leaned forward, putting his head in his hands.
‘Give us a smoke, Glory,’ he said.
Cousins Page 2