Cousins

by Patricia Grace

  For a short time, a time she could barely remember, she’d had a mother who had left her and who had then died. At first she’d remembered only her mother’s clothes and her hands, but not her face.

  She’d been taken to live in a children’s home where there was night crying and bedwetting, and where she was always bad and strange — where she’d had a dirty skin and the kids had called her dirty. Her bad hair had been chopped with large scissors by Matron every time the curls grew and she’d had two long clips to keep the hair close to her head, but always her bad hair had loosened the clips and sprung into wrong twists and waves and curls. How could they keep the Home free from nits and lice when there was hair like that?

  She had never wanted to be bad so she’d scrubbed her skin, watered her hair down and prayed to be good, tried to be obedient and to work hard, yet all the time there was evidence that she was bad — other children would not walk with her to school and they didn’t let her join in their games. At school she was called names that made her feel ashamed. Once she’d made a mother angry.

  Sometimes on the way home from school, kids had hidden in wait for her, running out and attacking her with their school rulers. She would swing her bag at them and try to run but there were always too many of them and they’d hold her and hit her. As soon as they saw blood they’d run away, turning every now and again to shout.

  If she knew they were waiting for her she’d go the long way home, which meant going through the pine plantations where there were bad men who could tell that she was bad too. They’d open their coats and trousers and hold out their bad things to her, and she’d run away feeling sick with the knowledge of her own sinfulness.

  She’d had a friend once, who hadn’t been a friend for always. Jean told lies and swore, giggled in the dark and told her secrets that were rude and awful. Sometimes Jean would take all of her clothes off and jump and dance around naked in their room, just to be bad. Her skin was as white as cups and saucers and her hair was terrible and red.

  Once she’d gone for a holiday to a place where there were people like her, but she wasn’t like them. They hadn’t sent for her again but she’d been given a photograph that showed her mother’s face.

  She’d had a diamond ring once that Sonny had given her. It was a band of thin gold with a single large diamond held by a platinum claw. The women at work had come to her, red-faced and greedy, to look at the ring and to ask her one thing after another. Her answers had made them look at each other, winking and blinking their eyes. And after that there was the wedding ring. She’d thought that it meant she had someone of her own.

  So she’d waited. She’d examined the faded patterns, the cracks, the marks. She’d listened to the dripping tap and watched the clock hand moving, wanting to make something her own. Felt the ache of it spread through her in wide beams.

  Sometimes at night she would hold the photograph of her mother against her as though it would pull the ache out. She thought of the hard waiting thing inside her being softened and loosened and drawn out of her through her mother’s eyes.

  Then one day she had put on her coat and her shoes, put the photo in her pocket, opened all the doors and windows of the house and gone out following her feet, wanting nothing and going nowhere.

  MAKARETA

  Eighteen

  I waited until Keita and I were alone before I told her I wanted to leave. I said nothing, at first, about taking Makareta with me. ‘I’ve heard from my sister,’ I said. ‘She’s sick and wants me to come and stay.’

  Keita dabbed the brush into the blacking and began spreading it over the top of the stove. ‘For how long, Polly?’ she asked.

  ‘To stay, Keita, to live.’

  She didn’t look up or stop what she was doing. I feared her eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong with here?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing wrong.’ I took the kettles and teapot from the stove, anxious to have something to do, and began wiping them down at the bench.

  ‘Then this is where you stay.’

  ‘My sister …’

  ‘You’re talking about Cissie,’ she said, working down the stove’s front, sweeping the brush over and around the hatches, ‘who lives in two rooms on top of a shop with a no-good husband and three children.’

  ‘She’s sick.’ The words came out louder than I intended.

  ‘So then you must go and look after your sister a while. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘On Saturday,’ I said. ‘I want to go this Saturday to my sister’s, to live.’

  She stopped then and put her hard eyes on me. ‘I won’t agree with it,’ she said, returning to her task as though there was no more to be said.

  I had to pull words up from inside myself. ‘I promised my sister.’ It wasn’t easy when I’d always been treated as a daughter.

  ‘Promised your sister? No, Polly, it’s not your sister begging you to come. It’s you wanting to go. That’s why I’m asking you, what’s wrong with here?’

  ‘Nothing wrong.’

  ‘Too quiet here for you? No men here. That’s the truth, that’s the reason. Your sister lives in a big town so there must be plenty of men there to want you. Plenty of soldiers coming back from Italy, so you want to go to Wellington.’

  ‘No, Keita …’

  ‘That’s the truth of it.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten Rere,’ I said.

  ‘We had other plans for our son but he wanted you and we allowed it. We didn’t turn you away. Now our son’s dead, two years dead …’

  ‘And four, nearly five, since he went to war.’

  ‘So there,’ Keita rattled the gratings and banged the flaps. ‘It’s what you’re saying. Four years or five, now you want another husband.’

  ‘No, no … But I just think there could be more, there could be work. Women go to work now. And Makareta …’

  ‘Makareta? Don’t talk about Makareta. Our son’s child stays here.’

  ‘She’s my child too. Soon she’ll be five.’

  ‘We’ve got our little school here and this is where she stays, right here with her family.’

  ‘I’m her family too.’ But Keita wouldn’t hear me. ‘Our granddaughter was born right here, she’s lived here until now and this is where she stays, with her father.’

  ‘But he’s not here,’ I said, ‘Rere’s not …’

  ‘The father’s the family, the family’s the father.’

  ‘And I’m her family too.’

  Keita turned away from me, putting the brushes on the rack and wringing out a cloth, ‘You want to go, want to forget, then you go,’ she said. ‘If you stay then you are our daughter and we will look after you always. As for Makareta, you can cry all you want but you’re not taking her. You can’t take her from Kui Hinemate, the one that baths her, washes her clothes, cooks special food. The one who, when our granddaughter was a baby, massaged her, treated her colds, got up in the night to stoke the fire and keep the kitchen warm.’

  ‘I looked after my baby, I cared for her.’

  ‘Nobody’s saying different, but Makareta is Kui’s whole life. You can’t take a whole life away.’

  ‘I’d bring her back …’

  ‘Do you remember, Polly, that Makareta’s whenua is buried up there with her father?’

  ‘He’s not there, Keita, not buried there, there’s only the place … ready for the stone.’ I had the courage to say the words even though they were not words that Keita would listen to.

  ‘This is her home always.’

  ‘It’ll be here still. I’ll bring her back.’

  ‘That’s what you think now, but the town has it’s way of eating people. If you want the town to swallow you, you go, Makareta will be cared for here. Cry all you want, you can’t take our granddaughter away.’

  Keita went out, taking the ashes, and because it was what I always did I laid the paper in the grate and set the kindling. I wondered what I would do now, knowing that Keita would never agree to my going and
taking my daughter with me.

  I was surprised when she came back in, and, taking off her headcloth and overall, came to sit down by the stove to talk to me. ‘I would wait to tell you this,’ she said quietly. ‘I would wait until next year or the year after that. But now, with you talking like this — about going to live with your sister — I want you to know that we have thought of you. I want you to know we have a plan for you.

  ‘When our son Rere brought you home we didn’t refuse you. We know your family and we were happy to have someone from that good family to be part of us. You’re a good-looking woman, you know the ways of the people, you know how to work and you’ve had an education. What more could we want for our son? Then Rere went to war and we lost him. We lost our son, you lost your husband, but you are our daughter still. We don’t expect our daughter to lead a life of loneliness, of course not. We don’t want our granddaughter not to have brothers and sisters. So this is it. We have planned for you to marry our son Aperehama. I wanted to wait a year or two before telling you because Aperehama is still young and it is only two years since Rere died. But now, because of what you’ve been telling me, it’s the right time to speak.

  ‘You and Aperehama will marry, that’s our plan, and this will be your home always. You’ll have other children with Aperehama, to be brothers and sisters for little Makareta. That way the whakapapa is not upset, the ancestry of the children remains the same. And Polly,’ Keita lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘you and your children will have land, plenty of land. You will have land through our eldest son and land through our youngest. We know your family. It’s a very good family, from a strong line, a family strong in the customs, but, Polly, they’ve got no land. Through no fault of theirs they’ve got no land. Never mind that, their daughter is our daughter.’ Keita stood. ‘That’s all, that’s our plan. We want you to know that you are our daughter and this is your home. We want you to know that although our son has died we don’t forget you.’

  It was difficult at first to take in what Keita was telling me. Marriage to Aperehama? I could understand how it made sense to her in that the lines of genealogies and inheritances would be kept. Also, if I married Aperehama it would mean that Makareta could not be taken away from them. It was true that Makareta was Hinemate’s life, the life indeed of the whole household. Taking Makareta away from Kui was the most difficult part of the decision that I had made. But my own life was a lonely one, an empty one in many ways now that Rere would never return. For me it was time to do something new.

  Aperehama was like a brother to me. I couldn’t stay there now that Keita’s intentions were known.

  I also knew that if I wanted to take Makareta with me, she and I would have to leave secretly.

  Nineteen

  During my pregnancy, the women of the household had taken over my whole life. Every morning Gloria was sent to the washhouse to heat water in the copper and prepare a bath for me. Kui Hinemate would come and wash me and massage my stomach and breasts, all the time talking about the feelings and thoughts of a baby in the womb — about its listening and its knowing, its love of good, its rejection of evil. ‘A baby curls itself to hide from bad things,’ she would say. ‘Hides its face with its hands. A baby is old. A baby knows.’

  I had to accept the bathing and to allow the towelling and the massaging, but I had my own ideas about the baby growing inside me. Kui’s voice was just a drone, an interruption across my own thoughts. I remember the looks of resignation that Gloria and I sometimes exchanged.

  At mealtimes I was given the tenderest pieces of meat, the first slice from the loaf, and sometimes special dishes were cooked just for me.

  Once, at the beginning of my pregnancy, Rere and Wi went into the bush to get two kereru, which Keita baked in the camp oven, frequently basting the juices over the fat breasts of the birds to keep them moist.

  At the evening meal they were brought to me on a large dish and I ate while the family watched. As I pulled the breast flesh away and parted the front bones, they commented on the size and fatness of the birds and exclaimed over the berries that filled them. Wi and Rere told stories about where they had gone to find them and in which trees they had searched. They talked about the size and ripeness of the miro that the kereru had been feeding on, described the noisy flight as the pigeons went from branch to branch, told of the heavy falling as they were brought down. I ate as much as I could, eating to please, before passing the dish to share what remained.

  I thought of those days as the best days of Keita. Keita, as sharp and as watchful as always, but gentle sometimes, excitedly awaiting the firstborn of the grandchildren. But in spite of all the attention that was given me, I was often lonely for my own family. My own parents were dead by then and my brothers and sisters lived in distant places.

  In the late stages of my pregnancy I was lonely for Rere too. In spite of Keita’s disapproval, he had volunteered for army service and gone into training camp. Not long after Makareta’s birth he went to war.

  One day when my baby was almost due to be born I went to the creek with Kui Hinemate, Keita and Gloria. They would not allow me to help with the washing so I made my way downstream, undressed, and sat in the water, cupping it in my hands and letting it run over my shoulders and down over my big, stretched body.

  Rere and I had come to that place often, just to be alone. I remembered that our baby, soon to be born, could have been made there, under the big manuka tree, which now dropped its white flowers in the water about me. In its branches a pipiwharauroa chick screeched for food while its small foster-parent hurried back and forth to provide. The grass was long and green there still, in spite of the dryness of the summer.

  But I knew those days were over for Rere and me. There was a war and Rere was going away. At times it seemed that he’d gone already, because now when he came home on leave he was different in his manner — quiet, as though waiting — as though to speak or to laugh would reveal the excitement he felt inside him. It was as though the Rere I knew had already left us.

  I dressed and went to where the others were, stooping to spread a towel on the ground in the shade. It was as I straightened that I felt my breath scoop and fill me, then release itself, groaning, from somewhere deep inside. I went down spreading my knees apart and my baby slid from between them on a surge of water, as though she had come to me, swimming, from somewhere upstream. I put my hands beneath her, turning her. Her eyelids moved, her mouth opened, she sneezed, and as I lifted her, she arched, like a swimmer, her little arms stroking. That’s how our Makareta was born to me and to her family, without pain, in wartime.

  Kui Hinemate came towards me, calling to Gloria to bring towels and asking Keita to cut flax for the muka ties. I lay back against a tree while she attended to me, thinking of Rere, praying that he would be home to see his daughter before the battalion left for overseas. ‘An aunty, just like that,’ I heard Gloria saying. ‘An aunty to a girl baby with a woman face, a kuia face.’ I could tell she was excited and tried to lift myself from the sorrow that I had suddenly felt. ‘Did it hurt, Polly?’

  ‘I felt nothing,’ I said, then started to cry.

  ‘Too quick,’ Kui Hinemate said. ‘And no pain, that’s why you’re crying now … And there’s a war.’ She wrapped our baby in a pillowslip and bound me with towels. ‘Lie down and sleep before we take you home,’ she said. ‘Sleep your sad heart away.’

  I did sleep, my baby beside me, and when I woke Gloria had made tea for me. The washing had been bundled, the water tins were full and Keita was scooping the placenta into a basket she had made. Pipiwharauroa squealed on and on in the manuka.

  Kui took our baby and the basket and went ahead of me on the track up through the scrub, talking, talking. ‘Maybe you’ll be my last one, maybe not,’ I heard her say. ‘But I’m glad of you. I don’t get wood or carry water any more, don’t milk a cow or get kai from the creek. The garden is only small now because the men have gone. There’s work on the land, but I’m told that
’s for younger ones to do. But now there’s a baby to look after, a baby and a mother. I’m glad of it.

  ‘A long time ago your grandmother was given to me when her own mother died because I had a new baby of my own and milk enough for two. She was a round-faced baby like you, and I had the job of my young life. It was like twins for me, Anaru and Keita, a sister and a brother for each other. One grew into a little black, talking girl, the other into a long-legged, quiet boy, tall and white like me. He went to war and didn’t come back.

  ‘But the war let us have Wi back and I was here to be the mother while Wi and Keita worked the land. Now I have you. I’m glad to have my work back again.’

  We made our way through the stalky grass, and at the top of the rise took the track that led down into the bush where, in and out amongst the ponga, the karaka, the nikau and the manuka, the fantails jibbed, angling their fans, snapping their quick beaks, turning and tailing.

  We rested there a while, sheltered from the afternoon sun, and Kui adjusted baby’s wrapping so that sun would not touch the new skin. ‘Are you better Polly?’ Gloria asked, putting her arm round me.

  ‘There’s a war,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want Rere to go but he’s going. We don’t know if there’ll be a final leave or if we’ll be allowed to know when they sail. I just want him to see our baby before he goes.’

  ‘They’ll come. They’ll come on last leave, so we’ve heard, so we believe,’ Keita said. ‘And when it’s time for them to go? Well, the horses are in the home paddock ready to take us to the train.’

  ‘Wellington,’ Gloria said. ‘We’ll see the soldiers go and we’ll see Anihera.’