The next morning, when she went to the marae with Kui and Keita, the marquee was already up, the fire was being lit for the hangi stones, the meat was being cut up and vegetables prepared. It had been raining. People kept looking at the sky and not saying anything at all about it.
In the big tent the tables had been put in rows, covered with cloths ready for setting, and some of the women were covering planks with white paper to make another tier. The older girls had lined the tent walls with ferns and were threading flowers into them. Others were tying little flags to the tent poles. Makareta helped them until it was time to go home and get changed.
She had new clothes for the homecoming. Keita had made her a navy skirt and a white blouse and she had new black shoes that her mother had sent. She was going to wear Kui’s tipare, which had been fixed for her to keep her hair from blowing.
When she returned the grandmothers and aunties were all sitting on the verandah in their black clothes, talking and smoking and twisting leaves for their heads. Back by the trees her uncles stood in a circle playing two-up. She watched the circle of heads lift as the pennies sailed upwards, then bow as they dropped. She could hear them laughing and teasing each other.
Wi’s truck pulled in next to the wharenui. It had a canopy over it and under the canopy was Aunty Anihera in an armchair with blankets around her, there to welcome the soldiers. People went to stand by the truck so they could talk to her.
Soon everyone began to gather close to the house. Kui and some of the other old ones put their cloaks on and everyone stood, holding their greenery. It was quiet, there were people at the gateway and rain had begun to fall.
Then the grandmothers began to call the people in, asking them to bring the sons home and calling to the ancestors. The people came, calling back that they were bringing the sons, dead along with the living. They were stepping slowly on the wet ground. With them was a soldier like the ones she’d seen in photographs and newspapers, or in the streets when she was in Wellington. His head and shoulders were bent so that his face couldn’t be seen.
Halfway across the marae the group stopped while the crying and wailing of the grandmothers and aunties became louder and higher and went on and on. The women beat their chests and leaned forward, swaying from side to side, almost falling, and the leaves on their heads and in their hands waved and trembled. It was a long time before Nonny’s family was allowed to take him to the seats under the tarpaulins for the speeches to begin.
When the speeches were over and the people came to hongi with them, Nonny lifted her up. He was smiling. He had red, popping eyes and smelt of rain. The sun had come out and people were steaming.
Later she went with the crowd of people to the urupa for the unveiling. From where she stood she could see the memorial stones for her father and Hori covered with feathered cloaks. The minister was beginning the karakia, and when Nonny took the cloaks away for the inscriptions to be read, the old ones began to mourn again. The wind was whipping at them, tangling the sounds together until all the sounds seemed to be part of itself.
On the way down the hill she could see men behind the tent bending into the steam, and she could smell the hot-earth smell of the hangi being lifted. The tent flaps had been opened and there were people hurrying to and fro.
Twenty-six
Makareta and Mata have met. ‘We returned from James Mahana’s funeral,’ Makareta said in her letter. ‘He’s a returned serviceman, the grandson of Keita’s mother’s brother. Aunty Gloria, Uncle Bobby and the kids were at home waiting for us when we arrived and Mata was there too. I forgot she would be there and went through the kitchen without noticing her. (Everyone else had come out to meet us.) Then I heard Keita come into the kitchen wailing, followed by Kui, and when I looked from the bedroom I saw Mata standing there, frightened-looking. I was surprised when I saw her, Mum, because you didn’t say in your letter that she and I look alike. Perhaps you don’t think so.’
But it was because of Mata’s likeness to Makareta that I found her. When Anihera died not long after the end of the war, I stopped searching for Mata, believing that if she was still in Wellington I would find her one day — as I did, but it was nearly five years later.
So much death. I think I must be lucky to be alive. Men died in a war or as a result of it. Women stayed home and died in TB wards, or were taken from them to die at home.
Cissie left hospital and went to a sanitorium, where she was thought to be improving, but one night she was taken back to hospital with pneumonia. Ben and I had been with her only an hour before she died. I’d had the children for nearly two years by then and since they’d never been allowed to see their mother, they had become used to me. I was happy to have them after Cissie died and pleased that I had a good warm house for them to live in and a yard where they could play. Ben moved into Ministry of Works quarters at the place where he worked just out of the city and came to see the children when he could.
‘Koro Day and Kui Dinah and their families came over to see Mata the day after we arrived home and I could see she was frightened of them too. They were crying over her, asking her one question after another in English. I don’t think that she could understand their way of speaking English — “So you big, hmmm so.” “So you just like you mummy. Got you grandmother name, hmmm.” “Hmmm, that what clothes? So you shy.” But they were talking to each other and to me in Maori at the same time. I don’t think Mata had a chance of knowing what they were talking about. She speaks only English.
‘I couldn’t get used to her being here, standing without moving, looking nowhere and not saying a word — as if she was a new piece of furniture that had been brought in, or a post that had been shifted to a different place. My aunties kept telling me that I should give her some of my clothes and I did, Mum. I’ve found out that she’s got a kind heart.’
My daughter comes to stay with me during the term holidays and I like to show her the city, wanting her to see what other children do, and to go to the places that city children like to go to — a circus, the Winter Show, the pictures, the zoo, the song and dance competitions, or to ride the dodgem cars. She likes to go to the pictures and seems to enjoy the other things we do, but I don’t think she ever sees herself as a child who might take part in the way that a child does. She is more like another mother, taking Heni, Benny and Bonnie for holiday outings, enjoying the children’s enjoyment and ending up with sore feet at the end of the day.
I think she prefers to stay at home and do some of the things she doesn’t ordinarily do. At her home she is never allowed to do dishes, sweep floors or make anyone’s bed apart from her own. She doesn’t lay the fire, bring in kindling, help with the washing or carry water from the creek. Children are never left for her to look after, even though she has a way with children.
Outside the house by the chimney, there’s an old kotukutuku bush that the Cat Lady planted. The small, pink bells are sparse among the foliage and the branches have been made brittle by insects that have eaten away the inside wood, leaving mainly the outer skin, the holey bark. At a touch it crumbles. I imagine the tree has a cat smell. Apart from the tree, the yard is only a lumpy piece of lawn, a brick path, a clothesline and a weed-filled dent where the air-raid shelter used to be. Makareta sits under the little tree sometimes with her back against the trunk, and I know she is missing Kui Hinemate and the old ones, although she never says.
‘There was trouble at the funeral. Uncle Jimmy’s wife’s family wanted him buried up their end of the urupa, by Aunty Tui, but his brothers and sisters wanted him down in their part. Early on Sunday morning the cooks, who had got up early to get breakfast, woke us all up and said that two lots of diggers had gone up to the urupa — Jimmy’s brothers and uncles on his side, and his wife’s family as well. Grandfather Wi and some of the other men went chasing up the hill after them and barred them all from the cemetery. The last thing they wanted was two holes — inviting another death they said. And they made them all come back down to the whare
nui, telling them that if they were going to argue they could do it in front of Jimmy before they put the lid on him.
‘So they argued back and forth for half the morning, until Keita stood up and gave them all a good telling-off. She told them they’d all had their chance to find out from Jimmy what he wanted while he was alive. She told Jimmy off too. “You took long enough to die,” she said to him in his coffin. “And could’ve spoken up and saved all this trouble.” Then she told them they had to ask Jimmy’s children what they wanted, and that whatever the kids said, that’s what they would do. It took them a while to agree to do that, but in the end they did. I suppose everyone knew what the kids would say. Junior stood up and told us they wanted their father next to their mother, and that was it, that’s where they put him. We had an interesting time there.’
Even though Alma is our good friend, Makareta has never become used to the parrots, and I notice that whenever we go to visit, Alma always has the birds away in their cages. ‘Birds in houses,’ Makareta says to me. ‘Speaking people’s language.’ Then she’ll say, ‘Kui is the one who knows the birds’ language.’ And I picture her and the old lady walking along the creek tracks with the piwaiwaka turntailing about them as they go, all of them talking together.
There are pictures in my mind too, of Kui and Makareta at night with the lamp, Hinemate telling about all the things she has to tell, and of Makareta reading her school books to her or perhaps reading the letters that I have sent or the ones she is writing to me. Or I think of them unwrapping the parcels I send and making figures with the string, the old hands and the young hands dipping and diving like the fantails, making diamonds and double diamonds, woman that becomes man, kite, cup and saucer, butterfly, four brothers, Venus, thief, place of spirits, house of ghosts.
At other times I know she will be at different gatherings, whether it is for a death, a land discussion or a court hearing to do with land — there with the old people, sitting as still as it is possible to sit, watching and listening. I used to be concerned about the amount of school she missed because of the travelling she does with the old ones, who will not go anywhere without her, but I know now that in her schooling she is well ahead of her years. I worried once that her English would not be good because of being brought up in a house where English is not spoken, but she speaks English as well as the teachers that she learns from. There’s no need for me to worry about her, except that old people die. I am not sure that my Makareta is prepared for that.
‘That afternoon I went out to get Mata because the aunties wanted her to come and say goodbye. My other cousins were having turns riding downhill on a drum, and Mata had spent most of the morning watching them. As I went towards her I saw her rub something in the grass then hold it up to the light. I wondered what it was, and I also wondered which of us would speak first. Up to then we hadn’t spoken to each other at all. “I found this marble,” she said holding out her hand as I came near, “just there by the path.” It was the first time I’d heard her say anything.
‘It was where the old house used to be, the house that I’ve heard about but never seen, that Kui’s brother made out of manuka and rushes. I’ve been told it had a dirt floor that they swept with a manuka broom, and that it was warm and comfortable. Keita was born there and it was there that the great granny died and Kui became Keita’s mother. Things come up out of the ground there — green or blue glass, medicine bottles, bits of crockery, broken combs. Sometimes I find marbles there too — mainly bottlies or teapots, which I give to my cousins. But I have never found a marble like the one Mata held out to show me. None of us have. None of us have ever seen a marble like that, with drifts of smoke and ribbons and rainbows in it that trick your eyes, seeming to move. When my cousins saw it they stopped asking me to go and get bread for them and just stared. They didn’t say anything about the marble, just stared and stared.
‘Mata has a kind heart. I went to get bread, left them all there eating it and was just about to go inside again when Missy called me. She was dancing on the fence wires. “She give it to Manny,” she called. “She give Manny the marble.” ’
I went to Alma’s one morning and the birds were screeching and flapping in their cages. Alma was on the floor in the hallway, and at first I thought she was dead. I got her to hospital as quickly as I could, and on the way there in the ambulance she said, ‘My sister had a stroke,’ but her voice was faint and her speech indistinct. ‘I looked after her. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone.’
But Alma isn’t a burden to me. She’s my very dear friend, a lovely grandmother to Ben’s children, helping me to care for them, knitting coats, jerseys and socks for them in Fair Isle or bright stripes, or making what she calls little odds-and-ends dolls and toys with her clever fingers. Before her illness we visited each other every day, and we had special dinners together on Sundays when Ben came.
Now in the mornings, after the children have gone to school, I go and help Alma to wash and dress and we have breakfast together. Then I tidy up for her and feed the parrots. There are only four now — Poppy, Winston, Tattersalls and Halfmoon. Halfmoon is the one that knows me. She’s a small, green bird with a grey head, a bright pink band round her neck and bright pink eye circles. She has white, semicircular patches each side of her beak that can be seen in the dark. With her head on one side and her beak partly open she looks as if she could be smiling. I find myself wondering if we might be sisters, Polly being a parrot’s name. In the afternoons I take Alma’s washing home to do along with my own things, and in the evenings Heni takes her a meal. I’ve had telephones put into both our houses so that she can ring me if she needs me, but she seldom rings. ‘Half of me is all right,’ she says, ‘I can make do with the good half, so don’t you worry.’
It was when I was going to visit Alma at the hospital one day that I saw Mata from the window of a tram, sitting in a school playground. It could have been Makareta that I was seeing. It was Makareta’s large frame and dark, plump face. The stillness was Makareta’s as the girl sat, watching other children play, but Makareta does not have awkwardness and is not bereft. She has a river of hair that falls, touching the backs of her knees. Every strand of it has been touched and cared for.
The school was the same one that Keita visited when she’d gone looking for Mata when Anihera was first taken home. And I knew that the orphanage nearby, which Keita had also visited, would be the place where Mata was living.
I went to the school the next day but was told that I wasn’t to come on school premises inquiring about children. On my way out, a girl of about Makareta’s and Mata’s age came into the playground. I stopped her and asked about Mata, but she hadn’t heard of anyone by that name. It was then that I realised that Mata would have been given a different name. I decided not to do anything further myself. Instead I wrote to Keita.
Keita received a reply to the first letter she sent to the matron of the orphanage saying that there was a girl fitting the description in her letter, daughter of the man whose name she’d given, but that the father was now living in England and had arranged a legal guardian for the girl. The legal guardian, as was her right, the letter said, asked that no further correspondence be sent and no further contact with the girl be attempted. Keita kept writing but didn’t receive replies to further letters until she wrote mentioning Mata’s land. Then she received a letter from the guardian saying that Mata would be allowed to go there for a short holiday.
I went to visit the guardian, Mrs Parkinson, soon after receiving the address in a letter from Gloria. I thought I might be able to visit Mata sometimes, take her out or bring her home with me for weekends. But I was told not to interfere and not to come there again. Mrs Parkinson was an especially pinched woman who looked as if she’d been out on a stalk all summer, rattling, with no watering.
‘Keita gave Mata a photograph of Aunty Anihera, the one of when Aunty was a bridesmaid at your wedding. It was difficult to tell whether Mata was pleased or not, because her face i
s always so still, so expressionless. But I think she must have been pleased, because she kept going and getting it out of her bag and looking at it.
‘I think you might be right, Mum, about wanting me to go to boarding school where I would be living with people of my own age for a few years. I might learn something — because I found it very difficult to talk to someone like Mata even though I know my English is good. I just wasn’t used to someone like her. I know Keita wants me to go away to school (her old school). To her, schooling is very important (and to me too, Mum). Keita doesn’t think very much of our high school. I wouldn’t mind going away if it wasn’t for Kui, whom I don’t like to be separated from even for a day.
‘I’ve been teaching Kui to read and she’s getting very good at it. She likes any books — storybooks, arithmetic books, school journals, newspapers. I read them all to her, translating as I go. She especially likes stories about different people of the world and about the constellations. She knows about the constellations from her old knowledge. I think it would be cruel to leave her now that she is so old, but I think Keita is determined. I think Kui might die without me.
‘I said something to Mata about our urupa and Aunty Anihera’s burial place. I could see that what I said gave her a shock and I felt sorry I’d said anything. She ran across the paddock calling to Aunty Gloria.’
Twenty-seven
It was a hot night and Makareta was uncomfortable in her serge gym, long-sleeved blouse, blazer, tie, heavy black stockings and lace-up shoes. The new panama felt tight round her head and the elastic under her chin made her itchy.
Cousins Page 13