Cousins

by Patricia Grace

  Seven

  Manny came down the slope on the drum, his arms like two thin wings, flying. He leaned, and his feet beat faster and faster as the drum picked up speed over the holes and bumps. At the bottom of the hill he chose the moment, then threw himself sideways into the long grass before the drum hit the fence. After that it was someone else’s turn — Missy’s, Chumchum’s, Alamein’s, Jacko’s or Billyboy’s.

  That morning all the aunties and uncles had come to see her and she’d had to greet each one while they cried over her and made strange sounds. She wasn’t used to it.

  Now all the cousins were having turns coming down the hill on a rolling drum, their feet running backwards, propelling it forward faster and faster, eyes sticking out like tops. Sometimes they could stay on until they reached the bottom, but sometimes the drum would leave them behind with their feet running in air and their bodies arching and falling. Nobody gave her a turn, but anyway she would’ve been too shy.

  Nobody gave anybody a turn. If you wanted to ride the drum you had to get it yourself, had to wait and call as the drum came, rider flying, rider leaping and kicking a foot sideways, landing hard and springing out of the long grass. You had to guess where the drum was going to end up and be the first to put a hand on it calling, ‘Mine’s, mine’s.’ But she was too shy to call, or to grab the drum and push it up the hill. Too shy to run on it and probably wouldn’t be able to do it anyway. If she could do it they might like her.

  Looking back towards the house she could see Makareta watching from the step and wondered if her cousin was going to come and have a turn. That morning the old grandmother had helped Makareta make her bed and had laid out her clothes for her, peering and poking at each garment, smoothing them out on the bed with picky fingers. When Makareta was dressed, the woman had sat her down on a stool and begun brushing her hair. Seen through the doorway from the kitchen where they were having breakfast, it was like looking through an opening to a room full of hair. After the brushing, the grandmother had made fat plaits, which became narrower and narrower down past the stool seat, almost to the floor, tying with bows as neat as butterflies.

  Manny and Jacko were coming down the hill together now, their feet slap slapping. They leaned and straightened, leaned and straightened and their terrified faces jutted from their long, stretched necks. The other kids were dancing in the grass and yelling, ‘Go, go, go,’ and as it neared the bottom Alamein ran to claim it, calling Billyboy to be her partner. ‘Mine’s, mine’s,’ she called as Manny leapt off one side and Jacko off the other. The drum plunged forward and boomed against the fence.

  Yes it was funny. It was fun. She wanted to dance in the grass too, run and shout, claim the drum and ride it down the hill, but she was too shy, too scared. She sat down and began scratching at the ground with a stick while Alamein and Billyboy pushed the drum back up the slope.

  That was when she found the marble.

  It looked like a perfectly round stone at first, but when she rubbed some of the dirt off it she saw that it was a marble. She rubbed it in the grass until it was clean. Then she saw how beautiful it was. It was a big glass marble with blue, yellow, red and green ribbons swirling inside it. There were some mauve, smoky patches in it as well and some gold-brown speckles. It was as though there was a new little world right there inside the marble, and as though she was holding the new coloured world in her hand. She held it to her eye and to the sun’s eye to let the light shine through, and it seemed she was in that new little world surrounded by whirling light and colour. Anyone could’ve found it, but she, Mata Pairama, was the one. She was Mata Pairama with a name of her own and she was the one who had found the marble.

  She thought of showing it to someone, knowing that Jean would’ve liked it and wanted it. All of the Home kids would’ve wanted it and would’ve crowded round her trying to swap it for a half a piece of toast. The School kids would’ve wanted it too. They would have given her a pencil or a penny for it, or wanted to win it from her or fight her for it, even though they had marbles of their own. But none of their marbles had a four-colour ribbonning world, with a smoke sky and golden footsteps inside it. They would’ve called her names.

  If Aunty Gloria was there she could’ve shown the marble to her, but Aunty Gloria, Uncle Bobby and Bubba had gone home. ‘Goodbye, Mata,’ Aunty Gloria had said. Then in a quiet voice she’d said, ‘Keita might show you the photos if you ask.’ She’d gone then, looking back and saying, ‘Wave Bubba,’ flapping Bubba’s hand at her. She and Aunty Gloria could have talked about the world.

  Back along the path she saw Makareta coming towards her and decided she’d show her the marble even though she felt shy and couldn’t think of words to say. She waited until Makareta came close, then she held out the marble and said, ‘I found this marble.’ It was the first time she’d spoken to anyone since she’d come to her grandparent’s place, ‘Just there by the path.’

  ‘Things come up out of the ground,’ Makareta said. ‘The old house used to be there.’ It was the first time Makareta had spoken to her and she couldn’t tell from Makareta’s voice whether her cousin liked her or not, whether she liked the marble and wanted it, or not. ‘Show it to them,’ Makareta said.

  The kids were resting, two of them sitting on the drum, the others lying in the grass. They were talking about bread and who should go to the house and get some for them.

  ‘Missy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jacko.’

  ‘Not me, Keita be wild.’

  ‘Chumchum, you and … Makareta, Makareta …’

  ‘She found a marble,’ Makareta said.

  ‘Bread, Makareta, six bread.’

  ‘Eight, eight bread.’

  ‘Show them.’ So she held the marble out for them to see and they became quiet, coming close to look at it. There was a circle of eyes looking into the little swirling world in her hand. Only that. No breathing, no sound — until the eyes shifted. Then the kids stood back, all their eyes on her face, and she felt shy of them. ‘From the old house,’ Makareta said. No one else spoke and she knew that they did like the marble. They wanted it or wanted to hold it, but no one spoke and they didn’t shift their eyes from her face for a long time. At last they turned back to the drum. But she felt as if she had stolen something from them, or was to blame for something, but didn’t know what.

  Makareta went back to the house and Mata was by herself again, not talking to anybody, nobody talking to her. Didn’t know if she could go inside or if she would get a growling from Keita, didn’t know if she could go and see Aunty Gloria and show her the marble, talk about the world. Didn’t know if she would sleep in Aunty Gloria’s bed again with Aunty cuddling her as if she was her own daughter, telling her things as though she was a grown-up girl.

  Soon afterwards Makareta returned with a pile of bread on her hand and the kids started shouting again. Makareta gave the the last piece to her. ‘You’ve got to come and say goodbye,’ she said.

  Hungry, and the bread was good. She ate it slowly and noticed the others were eating slowly too, making their bread last a long time. They were all sitting except for Manny, who was jigging from foot to foot as he ate. He had fast feet and was the best drum rider of them all. All morning he’d been riding the cracks and bumps and hadn’t been thrown off once. He was the first one to take the drum to the very top and was the longest stayer, never jumping off until the drum was almost hitting the fence. He was the one who should get the prize and she wasn’t too shy to give it to him. She handed him the marble.

  The kids all went quiet again and stared at her. Then Manny took his shirt off, wrapped the marble in it and put it on the ground, turned away and began rolling the drum. Missy climbed on to the fence wires and called to Makareta, who was on her way back to the house. ‘Makareta, Makareta, she give it to Manny,’ she called, the fence wires squealing. Makareta turned. ‘She give it to Manny. She give Manny the marble.’

  Eight

  Her first job at th
e factory was to wrap bundles of exercise books in brown wrapping, which she gummed down with strips of sticky paper. She would stack the wrapped bundles on the skid, glue on the labels, and when the skid was full Jerry would come with the trolley.

  Jerry was a small man in a big overall and his hair was slicked back like two oiled wings above his white monkey face, bright monkey eyes. ‘You’ll get the hang of it in a day or two,’ he’d said, eyeing the stack on her first day. Then he’d called to the other packer above the roll and rumble of the trolley as he trundled off to the store room, ‘Back a winner on Saturday, didja?’

  ‘No, did my dough, lost two pound five.’

  ‘Same here, did my fiver.’ Sometimes Jerry winked at her as he backed away and she thought he might like her.

  Most of the women didn’t. Stared at her clothes, her shoes, her bad hair, her black face, raised their eyebrows at each other, and at morning tea and lunchtimes didn’t move over at the tables so she could sit down. They had smocks to put on over their dresses and flatties to put on in place of high heels, and in their handbags they had sticks of lipstick, powder compacts and jars of face cream. Just before the whistle went at four thirty they’d have turns at sneaking out to the wash room to cream and powder their faces and redden their lips before they went out on to the street, into the trams and buses, and home.

  She liked listening to them talking about money, clothes, dances, parties, quarrels, earrings, stockings and make-up and many other things. Liked the hot-pie-and-smoke smell of the smoko room. The women all had husbands, boyfriends, children, friends to like or love, who liked or loved them — except perhaps for Ada, who had such a stern face and didn’t talk much. She didn’t know if Ada had anyone.

  For some time she hadn’t known Ada’s name, but one day Jerry had come in and called, ‘That’s the story, Ada. That’s the story, Morning Glory,’ as he’d swooped the trolley under the stack of paper she’d counted, and Ada had laughed, briefly, her face quickly becoming stern again. It was an old hard face with quick eyes. She had large brown hands that slid down the paper stacks with fingers scarcely moving — fanning and counting, fanning and counting. Mata didn’t know if Ada liked her or not, but Ada was Maori too, which might mean that she had to like her. When they went into the smoko room Ada would move over on the seat to let her sit down.

  A long time ago she had gone to her grandparent’s place to stay. There were cousins and a lot of relatives there who had had to like her, had to kiss her and give her things. There was an aunty there who had cuddled her to sleep as if she were her own daughter and had talked to her and told her things as if she were grown up, as if she really did like her.

  There was a grandmother called Keita, who was strict and crabby and had a stern face too. All the kids were scared of her, but Keita had bought her a coat and given her a photograph of her own mother. ‘You look after it,’ Keita had said. ‘Put it in your bag. There’s more for you when you’re older … if you’re a good girl.’

  The photo was of a dark young woman with a wide, serious face and two thick plaits wound round her head. There was a little flowery hat sitting towards the back of her mother’s head that couldn’t be seen properly in the photo, and she was wearing a bridesmaid’s dress and carrying flowers. She’d thought her mother was in heaven, but she’d found out she was really in the ground.

  ‘It was at my mother and father’s wedding,’ Makareta had said about the photo. ‘Your mother was a bridesmaid at my mother and father’s wedding.’

  ‘So where are they?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your mother and father.’

  ‘My father Rere was killed in the war. My mother Polly lives in Wellington,’ Makareta had said in her exact way.

  There were things that she had wanted to ask Makareta, but most of her cousin’s time was spent with Kui Hinemate and the other adults talking in another language, having her hair done, her clothes looked after, her food cooked for her. Then Makareta had said, ‘My father has a memorial stone by where your mother is buried but he’s not buried there, he’s buried in Egypt.’

  Makareta had gone then, led away to the garden by Kui Hinemate, who had a blanket for her to sit on and a sunhat for her to wear.

  She hadn’t known what Makareta was talking about, hadn’t known why Makareta was talking about her mother, who had either died and come alive again as an angel in heaven, or was away somewhere and would come back to her one day. She’d thought Makareta was silly with her old creeping granny who treated her as though she was still a baby and talked to her in a silly language.

  Mrs Parkinson had come to the Home to see her when her mother died and she’d had to put her school cardigan on, have her face and hands washed and her bad hair brushed down hard. Then she’d been shown into the visitor’s room where Mrs Parkinson was waiting for her. ‘It’s about your mother, May,’ Mrs Parkinson had said, and she’d thought she was going to be taken back to the room with the brown door where her mother would be. ‘Two weeks ago your mother died and now she’s gone to heaven to be with God. I’ve brought this for you, to help you,’ and Mrs Parkinson had taken a book from her basket. ‘It’s the Lord’s word, May. Read from it every day and the Lord will help you. Pray every day and the Good Father will hear you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you say then May?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And May, do you know who I am?’

  ‘Mrs Parkinson.’

  ‘Yes, but also I am your legal guardian, as arranged by your father after your mother left you. I am like a mother. I will visit you when I can.’

  Mrs Parkinson stood as matron came in and the two women had talked in low voices for a while before Mrs Parkinson left.

  ‘My mother died,’ she’d said to Jean later. ‘She’s gone to live in heaven.’

  ‘Mine too, when I was a baby.’

  ‘What do they look like? What do our mothers look like?’

  ‘Like angels in their nighties, with two big wings on their backs for them to fly,’ Jean had said. So she’d made up an angel’s face for her mother like the ones in the Sunday school pictures — a pale face with pink cheeks, blue eyes and long, gold hair. But even so she’d kept on waiting for her mother to come.

  For a moment she’d stood watching silly Makareta follow her granny to the garden and then she’d started to run to Aunty Gloria’s, calling along the track. ‘Mata, what’s wrong?’ her aunty had said, coming out of the little house and putting her arms round her. ‘What is it? Tell Aunty.’

  ‘Aunty Gloria my mother’s in heaven.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Makareta said she’s buried, in the ground.’

  ‘At the urupa …’

  ‘Makareta said … about my own mother.’

  ‘We’ll go there tomorrow.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘To the urupa, to the cemetery, where your mother’s buried.’

  Then Aunty Gloria had cuddled her hard and said, ‘Never mind, never mind. We tried to find you … Just remember you’re our girl, our own girl with your own name just like Keita said.’ Then Aunty had taken her inside and told her about her mother.

  ‘We don’t know how she met your father,’ she’d said. ‘He was round these parts keeping away from the cities because he was a seaman from England who ran off from his ship. Your Mummy was the big sister, the oldest, the one the old people had a special plan for. They watched her all the time, looked after her, so we don’t know how she met Albert.

  ‘One day she came home with him saying they were engaged to be married. Keita was angry, wouldn’t allow it. She told Albert to get out and not come back. “He won’t marry you,” Keita told her. “You think he wants to marry a Maori girl? Of course not. And of course he won’t do. We have better in mind for you.”

  ‘But two days later your mother left and there was nothing Keita could do. She wasn’t their daughter any more, Keita said. This wasn’t her home any more.
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  ‘Well, Albert wasn’t good to her and she had to leave him. Had to leave you too because she had no money, no place to go. She went to find work so she could get some money and a place. When she got money she’d get you back somehow, that’s what she thought. But she was already sick by then.

  ‘She did get a job that first day, in a sewing factory. Worked there two days and on the third day collapsed over the machine and ended up in hospital. We didn’t know she was sick. Didn’t find out until a long time after when she wrote to us. We brought her home and all the time she talked about you, didn’t know where you were. We tried to find you but your daddy was gone, already had a guardian for you and we didn’t know who.’

  At the cemetery there was a book made of white stone with words about her mother on its open pages. Some of the words she had been able to read: ‘Died November 4th 1946 Aged 25 years. Always remembered.’ But other words she couldn’t read at all.

  So everything was different from what she’d thought. Her mother was not an angel flying about the sky-heaven on gold-tipped wings, but was asleep in the ground instead with her angel’s wings folded, her angel’s face peaceful and her pale hands crossed on her angel chest. She’d helped Aunty Gloria to pull out weeds from her mother’s grave and they’d put some flowers in a jar by the book which was called a stone.

  Next to her mother’s stone was another, not shaped like a book but like a slice of bread. It was the memorial stone for Makareta’s father and she hadn’t been able to read any of the words on it at all. Aunty Gloria had tidied round it and put some flowers there as well. ‘These others here, they’re all your relations too,’ her aunty had said. ‘No time to do them all today.’ Then Aunty had shown her the different graves, saying who the people were.