As he turned down the no-exit street he’d seen her waiting out by the gate for him, seen her cigarette glowing in the dark.
‘I rang hospital. Dad’s asleep,’ she’d said, going ahead of him to open the door as he carried Kid through to a bedroom. ‘So, won’t go back up tonight unless they ring me.’
‘It’s what to tell her, what to do,’ he’d said as they unpacked the car. ‘All this … just putting her in the middle of shit.’
‘Eating stones, you,’ she’d said. ‘I’m throwing a couple of tonics into you,’ and he’d laughed, felt himself relax.
‘A couple of rock crackers you reckon?’
‘You, me both.’
‘Time to party you say?’
‘A bit of crying, laughing, dancing, something like that. Think about the rest tomorrow.’
The next day he’d gone round to Harry’s place for the trailer and to tell their uncle that Jase wanted to come back and stay, then he’d spent the afternoon helping to move Bones, Remelda and Eva’s things to the cottage behind Remelda’s Aunt’s place.
He and Kid had spent the rest of the week looking after the house, doing shopping and cooking while Maina went to work and to the hospital. On some afternoons they’d gone into town to see Heke Norman and the following week he had enrolled Kid at the local school and begun looking for work.
He still hadn’t spoken to Kid about why they’d moved and she hadn’t asked. He’d been thinking more and more that he would have to allow Kid to be tested by a psychologist and examined by a doctor—not even by Atawhai—who now said it would be better done by one of his colleagues as being someone outside the family.
‘Wait right ’til the last, is all I can think of,’ Maina had said. ‘Or get the psych report and put off the examination to the last minute. Something might happen.’
What did happen was that once he decided to talk to Kid it all became easy. ‘People say I stole you,’ he’d said. ‘They say I don’t treat you good.’
‘Policeman coming?’
‘No. People—Aunty Wai, your Aunties, know where we are, but …’
‘Sick of all them.’
‘Your Aunties … they going to court to try and get you back.’
‘Who cares?’
‘Well it means … See …’
‘Who cares, Rua?’
‘Judge might say, might say, give you back.’
‘Don’t make a difference.’
‘And then the policeman … ’
‘But I won’t.’
‘Policeman …’
‘Won’t go, Dummy.’
‘Take you back to them.’
‘No way. Can’t you listen? Get out the window, hide in the trees, hide in Aunty Wai’s place, hide in Uncle Arch’s, Pop Henry’s, Georgie’s house … Or, if we live here with Maina and Pop Silver, I run away to here …’
‘Might come for me …’
‘Not you, Dummy, running away. Not you stealing me … ’
And she was right. She’d brought it all down to nothing. The Two could win in court, but what could court do? Nothing to him, nothing to her. So easy it made him laugh.
Now here was Arch telling it, giving it heaps, saying the same thing—it’s on’y court, on’y yack yack, we been done over before, on’y court.
After Arch, Wai dished it out too, supporting him, making it clear, driving the nails home. The girl stays with her father, knock down every door, girl stops with him. Across from him The Two sat like rocks. They’d break, he thought, or go.
Break? OK.
Go? Good riddance.
‘You forget how close I know you,’ Tini was saying to The Two. ‘I know what I saw when I was a girl.’ Tini was reaching back, a long way back and he didn’t know why. To him it was all done. Kid had done it, Arch and Wai had done it, said it all and it didn’t matter any more. After the court hearing, no matter what happened now, he was coming home with his daughter and was just awaiting an opportunity to stand and say it.
He’d found three days’ work doing shelves for a downtown café and another five making frames for a vineyard, but hadn’t liked going to work because it meant Kid having to wait at a neighbour’s place after school until he returned, and though she’d waited patiently enough he’d seen she wasn’t happy. Also he could tell she wasn’t happy at the school he’d enrolled her in.
But without work he’d felt cornered, useless, as though all he was doing was waiting for night and for Maina to come home, which wasn’t how he wanted things to be.
Two days after the court hearing, Maina would be gone for six weeks to Taiwan. After that there’d be other groups that she would be asked to manage, though it hadn’t been an easy decision for her to stay with her new job—a job that would frequently take her away from home—knowing Hani Silver could check out any time. But her father had made her hold on to the work, threatening to put himself into care if she didn’t stay with it. ‘If you don’t stick with it, Daughter,’ he’d said, ‘I’ll know you’re waiting for me to die so you can get on with your life.’
At first she’d been wild with him for saying that, then she’d laughed. ‘It’s true,’ she’d admitted. ‘True, I actually thought of it. Thought, give it up for now, there’ll be time for me later.’
‘Ha, snapped,’ Hani had said. ‘Snapped. But think of me alive another twenty years and don’t worry. Don’t put yourself on hold, otherwise I take myself off to one of those places. Anyway, I want my granddaughter and baby to come and live with me. They need a house, ne?’
After the dining room was up he was going to build a house, a good home for his daughter and himself, and big enough for her cousins to come and stay. He’d get the electricity on, widen the track and make it suitable for bikes.
Tini was telling sad stories, everywhere quiet. Ngarua looked out from one wrecked eye, a wink, a blink, but what did she know?
He thought of the cove on a day with cloud covering it, backing up for a storm, water packing down grey and weed shadowy in it. Up on the bank the two of them had cleaned fish, scales flying, birds waiting to snatch up guts and hearts and bleeding pieces—birds dangling there, dropping and snatching. They’d bucketed water into the tub of cleaned fish and gone out into the water to wash themselves.
Hard, salted hair, black weed floating.
Making his way towards shallow water at the base of the ledge, he’d cupped his hands over one, then the next of the round stones lodged there, pulling himself along and she’d followed, out from him in the deeper water, pushing a log in front of her, resting on it every now and again. Gradually the stones with their spongy growths had given away to the sharp dark rocks that in several places leaned out into the water.
There he’d divided the heavy weed that trailed in the slow movement of the water and which covered the dark openings between the rocks. He’d dived under, gone in feeling blindly for kina, touching up and down the ridges of rock until his fingers found them, easing the shellfish away from where they clung, then coming up to breathe, to lift the kina onto dry rock before he parted the weed again, thrusting in and reaching.
She’d taken her shirt off, collected the shellfish into it, lifted the shirt-bag onto the log to push through water, and they’d taken the long, long way to bring them to shore. They’d cracked through the red centres and the flattening spines. The red juices and brown seed had spilled as they loosened the wide orange tongues in the cups of shell.
What did Ngarua know?
Maybe she knew where Tini was going with her talk, and why. There was movement from The Two and their barracuda mouths were opening, telling Tini to shut up, shut up about their mother. Cass and Atawhai had gone to sit with them, talk them down while Tini kept on, rubbing it in, rubbing it in about their mother, he didn’t know why. Because not even he, who now didn’t care much for the feelings of Amiria and Babs, wanted old stuff thrown up. What use was that?
‘Aii. Aii. Make her stop.’
Tini was telling about him wet,
out of the sea, an undrowned baby with anemone eyes, arms and legs like bones of birds, hands like shells that opened out as fingers. He’d never been scared before. Reaching out were the awful arms and he had put his child there.
‘Land grabber.’
It was a bad word but he didn’t care. Tini was making everything worse, so much so that people were now objecting to it. They were beginning to comment, and Jase was whacking down on guitar strings to cause an interruption.
Enough, enough, enough.
But Tini, on her feet, wouldn’t sit, kept it up while The Two nutted off completely about something Kid was supposed to have done, something he and Kid were supposed to have cooked up between them.
Take it, take it, take everything.
Porangi as. Biffing papers. But even so Tini hadn’t given up calling out Lady Sadie. Noise all around. Everyone fed up. He felt like walking out, taking Kid, going.
But then he began to see it all come round.
Trees fall, the mud banks up behind, and there you are guts up in mud pulling away rubbish and silt, until first there’s a trickle, then a flow. You’ve done as much as you can do but it’s a day or two before water runs clear.
Maybe not in the trees. Maybe not right for a girl living in trees. It would be better to build his house out on the front part of the land closer to cousins, closer to mothers and fathers. Yes, and leave the old place to its strange memories.
There was silence now, while they all waited, waited, waited, for a right time.
Watching The Two.
Waiting.
Watching them drying their red eyes, blowing their red noses, dabbing, dabbing with all their tissues, blowing and dabbing, sniffing, fingering back their hair.
And maybe one day they’d go off and see the world too, he and his daughter. Yes. Grandfather, aunty and uncle in Oz. A mother who wanted to be an aunt on the other side of the world.
Waiting.
People spoke to each other in whispers while Jase plunked a little, and they all waited.
Waited.
Amiria stood, holding a hand out for the papers, taking them from Atawhai, crossing the room and handing them to Jackson. ‘Burn them,’ she said.
Thirty-nine
It’s time for the song.
But who will begin it? What will it be?
Jase with the guitar is gearing up, picking at strings, bouncing a few chords. His sickness is taking his eyesight away but he doesn’t need good sight for that. He waits for a note and a beat.
Jackson has taken the papers outside, flicked his cigarette lighter under them, put a hand behind the flame letting it grow, then putting the burning papers into the empty two-kg-sliced-peaches tin that smokers use for an ashtray. He holds the tin up by his face for a moment, lighting his cigarette as the flames rise.
Other smokers come out to join him and when they’ve all finished Jackson returns to the doorway, rattling the tin to show those inside it has been done, there’s been a burning. Good job too, or words similar to that, is what people call out to him.
He leaves the tin and its butts and ash out on the veranda and goes back in.
It’s time for the song. Which song and who will begin it?
It won’t be Arch or Wai or Tini to begin. They’re still recovering from their deliveries, from the hard words said, from the revelations made. They’re relieved it’s done and are free now to remember their deaths. They need time.
It’s not up to Amiria and Babs who are still in their tissues, needing days, weeks, months, and help, to lift themselves. The Two could not do it.
It won’t be Te Rua who also needs recovery time, which will be time in water. He’s waiting, and while he waits he thinks of the house he’ll build on the front of the land and of the journeys he and his daughter could take one day.
He’d like to be gone from there, like to be in water over at the cove where today there’s light from a struggling sun; where there are crosswinds brushing cold water up into small jagged waves; where the blowhole is emptying, uncovering the nubbled boulders as the heavy weed shifts in the remaining water. Wherever he is there’ll be a pattern in his mind of stones in shallow waters, an image of the places where the sand shifts, of rocks and dark spaces, of sliding and shunting weed, and of channels where the fish will swarm away from him as he swims to deeper and deeper places. Wherever he goes there’ll be a voice in his heart.
He’d like to be gone but the time hasn’t arrived yet when he can get up and leave, go and find his daughter. He has to see it through to a first song, then to a coming down through more talk, more songs, until it’s time.
So who will begin this particular ending?
It won’t be any of the younger ones because they know they haven’t lived long enough to take such responsibility. They can only wait.
It won’t be Cass, or any other newcomer because they know it’s family business. This must take its own time in its own place.
It’ll have to be Atawhai, who is old enough to understand the extent of bruising, experienced enough to read the faces and know the right moment and the right song.
What will it be?
The first could be a love song to warm the spirit, followed by songs that will rouse it. After a time it won’t matter who begins the songs as one picks up from the one before. The singing is likely to continue until the tide has turned and high water rises full above the sharp rocks, dark spaces, shifting weed, and spills out through the opening.
It will continue until there has been enough time, and when that time has come, people will leave at intervals and in twos and threes so that exit is not too sudden, so that the house is not left too suddenly alone.
The patterns on the heke-of-many-colours, of which visitors from Northside have whispered that they thought they’d come to Disneyland, swirl and spin.
The carved figures of the tahuhu with head-this-side, head-that-side, as bold or as shy as the moon, chuckle and dance and flash their eyes, while the leatherclad Ngarua on the far end wall dips her paddle, sings final words, watching from a ruined eye as she is made whole once again by the closing of a door.
Chapter Thirty-nine
It’s time for the song.
But who will begin it? What will it be?
Jase with the guitar is gearing up, picking at strings, bouncing a few chords. His sickness is taking his eyesight away but he doesn’t need good sight for that. He waits for a note and a beat.
Jackson has taken the papers outside, flicked his cigarette lighter under them, put a hand behind the flame letting it grow, then putting the burning papers into the empty two-kg-sliced-peaches tin that smokers use for an ashtray. He holds the tin up by his face for a moment, lighting his cigarette as the flames rise.
Other smokers come out to join him and when they’ve all finished Jackson returns to the doorway, rattling the tin to show those inside it has been done, there’s been a burning. Good job too, or words similar to that, is what people call out to him.
He leaves the tin and its butts and ash out on the veranda and goes back in.
It’s time for the song. Which song and who will begin it?
It won’t be Arch or Wai or Tini to begin. They’re still recovering from their deliveries, from the hard words said, from the revelations made. They’re relieved it’s done and are free now to remember their deaths. They need time.
It’s not up to Amiria and Babs who are still in their tissues, needing days, weeks, months, and help, to lift themselves. The Two could not do it.
It won’t be Te Rua who also needs recovery time, which will be time in water. He’s waiting, and while he waits he thinks of the house he’ll build on the front of the land and of the journeys he and his daughter could take one day.
He’d like to be gone from there, like to be in water over at the cove where today there’s light from a struggling sun; where there are crosswinds brushing cold water up into small jagged waves; where the blowhole is emptying, uncovering the nubbled boulders as
the heavy weed shifts in the remaining water. Wherever he is there’ll be a pattern in his mind of stones in shallow waters, an image of the places where the sand shifts, of rocks and dark spaces, of sliding and shunting weed, and of channels where the fish will swarm away from him as he swims to deeper and deeper places. Wherever he goes there’ll be a voice in his heart.
He’d like to be gone but the time hasn’t arrived yet when he can get up and leave, go and find his daughter. He has to see it through to a first song, then to a coming down through more talk, more songs, until it’s time.
So who will begin this particular ending?
It won’t be any of the younger ones because they know they haven’t lived long enough to take such responsibility. They can only wait.
It won’t be Cass, or any other newcomer because they know it’s family business. This must take its own time in its own place.
It’ll have to be Atawhai, who is old enough to understand the extent of bruising, experienced enough to read the faces and know the right moment and the right song.
What will it be?
The first could be a love song to warm the spirit, followed by songs that will rouse it. After a time it won’t matter who begins the songs as one picks up from the one before. The singing is likely to continue until the tide has turned and high water rises full above the sharp rocks, dark spaces, shifting weed, and spills out through the opening.
It will continue until there has been enough time, and when that time has come, people will leave at intervals and in twos and threes so that exit is not too sudden, so that the house is not left too suddenly alone.
The patterns on the heke-of-many-colours, of which visitors from Northside have whispered that they thought they’d come to Disneyland, swirl and spin.
The carved figures of the tahuhu with head-this-side, head-that-side, as bold or as shy as the moon, chuckle and dance and flash their eyes, while the leatherclad Ngarua on the far end wall dips her paddle, sings final words, watching from a ruined eye as she is made whole once again by the closing of a door.
Dogside Story Page 25