Dogside Story

by Patricia Grace

  What they remembered was that if you came down to bone there was always the matter of survival, which had all been done before—of oceans, of war, of illness, of theft and starvation. Compared to all that this was nothing, only a bit of yack yack that had been stopping them from seeing. After all they were not court, they were bone, and they’d allowed themselves to be bullied.

  There had to be a hui.

  Pop Henry was in his armchair by the door where he slept through the meeting, waking every so often to mumble into the spaces about him before dropping off to sleep again.

  Arch who had the floor was pulling old stuff down, telling about the death of Rua’s mother, his father’s remarriage and how he and his sister Wai had undertaken to look after him. He told what happened between Rua and his sister Ani Wainoa, of the night when Kiri was brought home, leading up to recently when Rua had decided to acknowledge his daughter and take charge of her.

  All of this was already known to those present, but perhaps it was known in a fragmented way. Arch wanted to make sure they got it right, but also Arch was wanting to settle people. They were here to bear witness. He kept his eyes going round the circle, watched as people relaxed, watched Amiria and Babs.

  The Two were there under sufferance, sitting side by side, straight-backed, flicking their eyes about from time to time sizing up the height and weight of what they were facing. Rua was there, home for the first time since he’d left with Maina.

  Arch moved on to speak about the matter of custody that Amiria and Babs had taken to court and the background to that. A point that he kept returning to was that he didn’t understand why his nieces, Amiria and Babs, were so determined to take the matter to court and why they would want to take family business there, why they would want to insinuate abuse when they had no reason for believing it had ever taken place. ‘We got to find that out,’ Arch said.

  From there he came to the main point that he wanted to make, explaining to Amiria and Babs and everyone, that court or no court he, Wai, Tini, Atawhai and others he’d spoken to were supporting Rua. They wanted Kiri to be with him since he was her father, and they knew Kiri preferred to be with him. But aside from those reasons they all knew if they didn’t support Rua now they were allowing him to be taken away, and allowing all the young ones to take themselves away too. ‘All gone, house empty,’ was how he put it.

  What Maina had done when she came to collect Rua was nothing new. It was all part of custom to remove a loved one from a situation where it was considered they were not being well treated. Tini could remember when her brother Henry had worked for Maori Affairs that her aunts and uncles had gone there to inform them that they were removing their nephew because of insult by the Department to Henry and his people. On another, more recent occasion, they’d all gone as a group to collect a niece who was being ill-treated by her husband’s family.

  What Maina did was only unusual in that it was not family removing a family member from a situation, but rather someone coming from outside the family to take someone away from it.

  Tini, Arch, Wai knew they had no room for objection. The whole incident had shamed them.

  ‘We don’t want this thing going to court,’ Arch said. ‘But what we come here to say this morning is … if it go to court let it, because it’s on’y court. If our nieces win in court, they win, but on’y court. If they want to say all round the shops what they been saying, then they say it, on’y yack yack. Want to send it all across the river, then they send it, on’y yack yack. But in that case … in that case …maybe they want to follow their tongues.’

  This last statement caused a stir in the house, a wiggle in among the heke and tahuhu, caused a shift of eyes to see how The Sisters were taking it. It had been years since a dog-poisoning forebear had been told his actions were more suitable to life across the water and had been told to go and live on the other side. He had moved away for a time, though not to Godside, and had returned some years later by which time talk of what he’d done had mostly been confined to rafters.

  But it was not so long ago that people had known without being told that they needed to leave for other places. There was Ani Wainoa for example, though she would have gone sooner or later anyway. Very recently it had been Brad and Horomona who’d received the message.

  For The Sisters to be told they should go and live on the other side was hard stuff, especially coming from Arch. It drove their chins up, narrowed their eyes.

  ‘We been done over before,’ Arch said. ‘And somehow we get through. But, our kids leave and they don’t come back, well, we don’t get through at all. Kids go, that’s it. Had it. Finish. Who to clean the cobwebs down? Who to paint the pou? Who to get the house ready for the dead? Who to call the dead home and who to bury the dead? Who to light the fire, keep the fire burning? Who to cook the kai and put the hangi down? Right now, who to build the wharekai? Who to get the fish? Who to see the mokopuna eat their fish?’

  When Arch finished Wai stood to push the message home that the girl would stay with her father, no matter what. ‘If Rua wins in court, and we give every bit of support to see that he does, then OK, the girl stops with him. If he don’t win, same thing, the girl stops with him. We see to it, court or no court, no difference. You want her,’ she said to The Sisters, ‘you have to knock down every door to get her. Behind every door you find me, triple bypass and all. You knock me down, you find someone else. I tell you, if anyone has to leave here it won’t be the young ones.’

  Again Sisters getting the squeeze, the message that if they didn’t like what they were being told they could go, but by now their chins were almost pointing ceilingward. They sat like concrete, eyes wide and unmoving.

  ‘You forget how close I know you,’ said Tini, standing as Wai sat down. ‘You forget it was me who was a mother to you, whenever I could. And … I know what I saw when I was a girl.’ There was a shift from those listening, who didn’t know where Tini had decided to take them, or why.

  ‘What I saw was your mother, who was my same-age cousin, with ribbons in her hair, dresses with long sleeves so that the sun would not touch her arms, white socks to her knees so the sun wouldn’t touch her legs, pretty hats to keep the sun from her face. The only child with shoes.

  ‘What I saw was a pretty girl with pretty white skin who had black sisters to do her washing, who fetched things for her, cooked for her. Black sisters who got a hiding from their father if ever Little Lady cried. I saw brothers who carried her on their backs to school, saw them coming out of the trees with her, carrying her so that no speck of dust would get on her shoes or her clothes. They were brothers who would get a hiding if she complained, and who carried her on their backs everywhere until she was ten years old. After that they led her on her own horse that no one else was allowed to ride. They fed the horse, watered it, groomed it, took it to the school paddock for her.

  ‘We her cousins, didn’t think it strange.

  ‘She was a round girl with a round face, round body, round arms and legs that were like cream, like butter. For lunch at school we had a piece of eel, a piece of crayfish or a piece of bread wrapped in newspaper. She had condensed milk sandwiches, fried bread with golden syrup, cake with plum jam, carried by her sisters in a billy with a lid.’

  Tini spoke into a mainly still house, but maybe there was a shift made by The Sisters, a slight lowering of chins, a wariness entering the unshifting eyes.

  ‘In winter she had warm scarves, tunics, wool coats and socks, but I think the very coldest days would be the only times we wished to be her. At thirteen she was kept at home, fed on pigeon and fish, cakes and cream. She had her hair brushed for her, chairs taken outside for her so she could sit under a shady tree.

  ‘Later her brothers escaped to the war. Two of them never came home. Her sisters escaped to nowhere. All The Lady did was grow from a little soft girl to a soft big girl who sat and watched her sisters rub and scrub, and who she began to blame for all that was unhappy about her life.’


  And now there was definitely a shift, a turning of two heads. ‘Shut up you,’ Babs shouted, ‘about our mother.’

  ‘But what was her life? Nothing was her life.’

  ‘Shut up you, about our mother.’

  But this was not going to be tolerated. People were beginning to object, and Atawhai and Cass moved to sit one each side of The Sisters to see if they could bring about some control.

  ‘We her cousins, got married. Some of us moved away. Her sisters married too but still they looked after her, cooked for her, sewed her clothes, took her with them to card games and socials. At thirty years of age she surprised them all by getting married. Her marriage lasted for three years and after that she returned to the family home with you, her two daughters.

  ‘Her sisters gave the house to her, built homes of their own from tin and boards. I was the one who helped her with you, her children. My own kids were grown by then. I bathed you, fed you, carried you home with me when your mother took to her bed complaining.’

  Cass on one side and Atawhai on the other were talking The Sisters down, telling them to wait, wait, their turn would come. Even though they blocked their ears it didn’t prevent them hearing what Tini was saying.

  ‘As soon as you could walk you fetched and carried for her. As soon as you were old enough you cooked and cleaned for her. You were good girls, pretty girls, slave girls, clever girls that hardly went to school. One of you stayed home with her every day.

  ‘You were ragged girls who wore what was left of my children’s clothes, who carried bags of shopping home from the time you were seven, shopping which you paid for with money from all the shares in land that your grandfather had left to your mother. She lived on the very best of land that was left only to her, with its beautiful freshwater springs, its wood pigeons, its tui and korimako, its ti-kouka, its nikau and ponga—in a house cleaned and shined for her by two daughters she didn’t at all love, who she sent away into the bush when visitors of importance came by.

  ‘She treated you all the time unkindly. Like dogs, except that dogs are better treated. You ate leftovers, slept on broken beds. You were beaten. And all you wanted was for her to love you. I understood that because of the look of hope you always had, the quick way you moved in your wish to please her, your half smiles, your half afraid movements, the way you tiptoed.’

  ‘Aii aii …’

  ‘Aii, aii … Stop her. Make her stop.’

  ‘Our mother … ’

  ‘Aii, aii, aii, our mother gave us everything.’

  ‘Your mother hurt you, ordered you, beat you, slaved you. You went here and there doing everything for her, feeding her, feeding her, until her precious skin began to split and her teeth rotted away and the only time she moved from her chair was when there was a meeting to do with land.’

  ‘Thief. He’s a thief. He wants to take everything.’

  ‘And when she held her bandaged arms out that evening in the house we watched, not believing what was happening. There was our grandson, wet and shaking. There was this new baby wrapped in a rag. There were the terrible arms reaching out … ’

  ‘Land-grabber.’

  It was a shocking word which caused a long silence. It was a word the rafters hadn’t heard since government acts had placed land belonging to everyone into the hands of a few, causing great disruption and loss. Just what it was that Those Two were nutting off about, was what everyone was trying to fathom.

  ‘But we could let it happen because of these two girls,’ Tini said, ‘who were women now of course, women in their thirties with no lives of their own, who waited hand and foot on their mother who had no love for them.

  ‘They looked after this mother of no love, and now they cared for a baby as well. But now. But now, here was The Lady’s child to love, the child she chose to love, just as her father had chosen to love her. But was it love? Or was it another way of showing her unlove of her lovable daughters. I tell you I was the one who was your mother then. Was it just another way of punishing daughters for their father who had turned her out? Little Kiri had the best of everything for the first two years of her life while my cousin was alive. She saw in this baby what her father had seen in her.

  ‘But the night that she took the baby home was her last night out of the house, out of her chair. There was poison growing from the inside of her, breaking through bathed and shaded skin. Her daughters fed her, fed her, changed her weeping bandages. The poison grew. It came breaking out of her. It touched others … ’

  ‘He’s a thief, a snatcher.’

  ‘Land-grabber, thief.’

  ‘He takes her from us, he takes everything.’

  ‘Wants everything.’

  ‘Our mother … ’

  ‘Our mother gave us everything.’

  And surely Tini was going too far, stirring the pot when it didn’t need stirring. People watched as Babs reached into a bag, took out an envelope and flung pages into the middle of the room. ‘Look there, and tell us he’s not a thief.’ Dion collected up the pages, put them in order and handed them to Atawhai who began to read through.

  ‘Somewhere, wrong has to stop,’ Tini said. ‘To make it stop we got to know what it is. It’s why I had to tell it all, so poison don’t go on infecting. But who? Who can stop it?’

  ‘Look there,’ Babs called. ‘Look there and you’ll know all about Rua, just waiting, just waiting, his own house falling down. It’s only now he decides he’s her father.’

  What’s all this? No one knows. It’s awful.

  ‘She told him,’ Amiria shouted. ‘That kid did it. We know, we know she told him. We know she snooped through our drawers, read our papers when we weren’t home. She’s in it too, with him.’

  ‘It’s a legal document,’ Atawhai said. ‘Signed and witnessed. It’s Lady’s will. The papers show that our aunt … has left land, house, shares, in fact everything to her whangai daughter Kiri. Her first daughters, I’ll say her true daughters, have been given guardian status. That is, they have been allowed custody of house, land, shares, everything, only for as long as they have Kiri in their care.’

  ‘Aii, aii, she gave us everything, gave us everything.’

  ‘Now you turn us out.’

  ‘Take our land our home … ’ They were on their feet shouting and no one could really blame them.

  ‘He knew, he knows, that Te Rua … ’ Amiria wailed.

  Atawhai sat down and Tini rose to her feet again. ‘He knew, he knows nothing,’ Tini said. ‘Just like the rest of us. He’s not the thief. It’s your mother who is the thief. She stole from you. She stole your young lives, she hurt you, slaved you, blamed you, and after she died, we now see she stole from you again.’ Here Tini had to wait while Atawhai tried to calm the sisters down. ‘But we won’t let her steal from you any longer. I tell you take your papers, burn them. It’s rubbish. All it is is legal, that’s all. Nothing. Before all the new laws were made land was for everyone and people decided where they would build their houses. Think of that. We here today know where your land is, where your house is. You don’t need a piece of paper to show us.’

  Tini looked round for agreement for what she was saying, knew she was getting it. ‘Now your mother’s unlove has been written but you can’t have, we won’t let you have, a piece of paper that steals from you and which is only something a law has made, which has only the eyes of two witnesses to say it’s true. We are your witnesses, and we know your land, your land with not one broken tree. Free yourselves from her. She wasn’t your mother. We were your mothers. We were the ones who loved you, and we are the ones now.

  ‘Ngarua and Maraenohonoho held jealousy in their hearts and in some ways the quarrel between them has never ended. In another way it has become unimportant because one night Ngarua took matters into her hands. After that it became a rivalry cloaked in story, part of who we all are because Ngarua freed us.

  ‘Free yourselves. Don’t carry the bruises, or pass on bruises. Your mother’s poison has to stop ri
ght now. Free yourselves. Begin with a burning.’

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  He felt sorry for Arch who’d been father and grandfather to him for a long time now, so close to him he hadn’t noticed him get old. Old on his feet, telling it, telling it in the house, making a way home for Kid and him—cutting away crap, cutting it away to get to what was important. Wanted to get up and tell them all it didn’t matter anymore.

  ‘I think I got to bring my dog,’ he’d said to Maina once they’d packed the car and bundled Kid into the back seat with covers and pillows.

  ‘Policeman coming?’ Kid had asked as she stirred and woke.

  ‘No. Tell you tomorrow,’ he’d said, at the same time wondering what had made her ask the question, what had been said to her that was worrying her in sleep.

  ‘Yes, bring him.’ Maina had put her arms round him briefly. ‘See you at home,’ and she’d driven off.

  After watching her go he’d stood with Eva, Jase, Bones and Remelda for a while, arranging to help them shift the next day. ‘But you don’t have to,’ he’d said.

  ‘Not stopping. No way.’

  ‘Nah, going,’ Bones had said. ‘Bring us a trailer from Uncle Harry’s.’

  As he drove away he’d been thinking about what he would say to Kid the next day, wondering how she would feel about being taken away from her home, her family, her school, and beginning to think he should’ve put more thought to what he was doing. Could this shifting about be used against him in court? Also he didn’t really think the fact that he was going to live with Maina would make any difference to accusations Babs and Amiria were making against him, or was she his minder now?

  And no difference to the question of whether he allowed Kid to be examined or not, whether he should call Atawhai or not. That was the thing, the rock in his stomach.

  But he’d wanted to leave with Maina, had to. Apart from wanting to be with her he’d felt stuck, not knowing what to do and knowing nothing was changing. For something different to happen you had to do something different—had to try to alter the tide, or struggle against it until it turned so you could see what was there once it went out again.