by Albert Wendt
A long, slender-fingered hand with a silver ring on the middle finger eased into her view, fingers closing round her pen, which it withdrew. In quick circular movements, the hand scrawled beneath Laura’s note: ‘Hi, Laura, my ingoa is Mere, and I don’t want to know anyone on this course, except you because you’re not scared of me’. Laura’s masochistic dread drained away rapidly, to be replaced by upsurging, healing relief, and she wanted to know Mere; know her as a friend without boundaries, hesitations and conditions.
‘You going to pay for the coffee?’ Mere said, voice tingling with mischief, as they hurried out of the theatre before the other students got up.
‘Suppose I should since I introduced my pale self to you first,’ Laura replied. They laughed, on and off, as they headed for the café in the Student Union building. Finding their progress blocked momentarily by a surge of students rushing towards them, Laura took another risk. ‘Mere, when you first demanded the seat next to me, I thought you’d come straight out of Europe’s dream of the Noble Savage.’
‘No, not savage – savageress!’ They laughed some more. ‘And I’m not going to miss a session with our handsome Ngāti Whātua doctor of the suntanned body – and heart.’
‘Me neither!’
There were not many customers in the café yet, and it was overly warm, so they took off their coats and draped them over the backs of their seats before going to the counter. Laura sensed acutely that Mere, who wasn’t aware of it, wore an almost visible aura of what her mother had called magical and dangerous emanations, which immediately attracted the inquisitive attention of most people in her presence, and sometimes caused envy, wariness and suspicion. For instance, at the counter, the bony young waitress, who had spiked black Mohawk hair, automatically ignored Laura and, beaming as if she was fortunate to be in Mere’s presence, asked Mere politely what she wanted to order. ‘White coffee and a tomato and ham toasted sandwich, please,’ Mere replied.
‘Black coffee and a blueberry muffin,’ Laura added. ‘And I’m paying.’
‘Yeah, my Pākehā mate is paying,’ Mere said, and the young waitress thanked her, and, without looking at Laura, accepted the money from her.
Walking back to their table, Laura confirmed to herself that whatever it was had little to do with Mere’s commanding height and physical beauty and haughty manner. She just had it and wasn’t aware of it – and that added to her mystique.
She’d anticipated – and was anxious – that Mere would not be accessible but, as soon as they were seated, Mere, with elbows on the table and long woven hands bridged under her chin, gazed directly at her and admitted, ‘I was annoyed by your intrusive move because I don’t normally mix with – with other students.’
‘You mean, Pākehā, eh?’ Laura interrupted her, but she continued.
‘… but you were so open …’
‘You mean, rude and foolish?’
‘… I had to reply,’ Mere ended. ‘And you’re now paying for being so open.’
While waiting for their order, they talked lightheartedly about their Māori lecturer and course.
The Mohawked waitress smiled at Mere again and ignored Laura altogether, when she brought their order.
‘I like you because you’re different,’ Mere said to Laura.
‘In what way different?’ Laura immediately asked.
‘Are you always that direct?’ Mere asked. Surprised, puzzled, by Mere’s question, Laura struggled to accept Mere’s description of her. ‘You don’t even know you’re direct?’
‘I suppose you’re right. I’ve always thought of myself as being timidly diplomatic and guarded, afraid of people.’
‘You’re like my mother. She has no sense of diplomacy or guile, and sees into people. Scary sometimes what she comes out with.’ She paused, and then informed Laura that she was Mere Handsend, and she lived with her mother and brother and sister in Freemans Bay, labelled a slum by the media. But where did they expect poor people to live – in Remuera? They laughed about that.
Laura then informed her – and she’d realise later that it was the first time she’d ever told anyone about her childhood – she was from New Plymouth, where she’d been raised by her grandmother and mother, who had eventually committed suicide in an asylum. Her grandmother had died two years later from lung cancer – she smoked forty a day – and Laura had found herself a ward of the state, an orphan; and so began her battle to survive many foster families.
‘See what I mean, Laura? I’m a stranger and you’ve just told me the secrets of your childhood.’
‘Yes, I wanted to; I meant to,’ Laura said. ‘But you’re the first person I’ve told.’
‘Thank you, Laura,’ Mere said softly. For a quiet, contented while they drank and ate.
The café filled quickly; a male student came over and asked Mere for the two empty seats at their table. Mere glanced at Laura and said to the student, ‘Ask my friend here; the seats are for her dragon demons.’ The puzzled, annoyed student turned to Laura.
‘Yes, and they’re invisible, and will be ferocious if you try to remove them from their thrones,’ Laura said, seriously, meaning it. The student straightened up, his large frame looming threateningly over Laura. ‘If ya don’t believe me, try and take the chairs, mate,’ Laura continued. ‘Just try; they’ll bite ya valuables off!’ For a burning instant, he stared down at Mere, who returned his violent gaze, then he wavered, his eyes sliding away in defeat, and lumbered off.
Then Laura held the backs of the two chairs and dragged them through the crowd over to the defeated student’s table. She bowed to him and his friends, and said, ‘My dragons don’t need them any more.’
‘Thanks,’ the student said.
‘You’re a tough orphan,’ Mere whispered, when she returned, and they chortled, but tried to hide it.
‘Yeah, tougher than Oliver Twist!’ Laura said.
When they left the café, they agreed to meet at their next lecture and sit together, and then have coffee afterwards again.
Laura had not had a sister, so she couldn’t say if her feelings for Mere were like those between loving sisters; she’d not had similar relations with other women before Mere, so she didn’t know what that was like. She’d had crushes on two boys at primary school and then, at high school, on her handsome maths teacher, but this was nothing like that. Beginning in high school, she’d had very sexual relationships with many men and a few women, but she’d been celibate for the last year. There was none of that here, though she found Mere to be physically the most beautiful human being she’d ever known. In the language of her mother, this wasn’t a ‘spell’ Mere or some trickster shaman had cast over her. This was new, exhilaratingly new, and she trusted it and would let herself go with it to wherever it led her.
Three weeks later, after their late Thursday afternoon lecture, when Laura was suffering a slight cold and cough, Mere invited her to have ‘a whiskey or two to cure her cold’ with some of her friends at Shadows, the bar on the top floor of the Student Union Building, and she agreed readily. She’d been to Shadows a few times before with John, a member of her previous year’s history class, who was obviously vying for more than a drink with her. At first she’d been interested, but she had, with definitive finality, ended it when he’d emailed her and, with pornographic aggression, detailed his dimensions, and how he could therefore give her the greatest multiple orgasms she’d ever had.
A torrent of cigarette smoke and the ripe-acidy smell of beer and alcohol rushed against them as soon as they entered the dimly lit bar. Laura’s eyes adjusted quickly as she followed Mere across the room, weaving their way through tables noisy with groups of students. Mere ignored all the suggestive greetings and obvious lascivious examination of her body. They dared not touch her, Laura noted.
There were four of them: one giant Pākehā man and three Polynesians, at the corner of the room around a rais
ed table. One of them, who wore the face of a young Al Pacino and a stained green corduroy shirt and worn jeans, jumped to his feet, and bowing, greeted Mere, ‘Hail, Mary, mother of Māui!’ Mere reached to hongi him.
‘Yeah, Mary, mother of Māui, mighty is thy beauty!’ the other three chorused.
‘Fuck you, guys. For that blasphemy, you’re buying Laura and me some whiskey to cure our colds,’ Mere greeted them.
‘You got a swish-looking friend there,’ the giant Pākehā said, reaching over and shaking Laura’s hand, gently. ‘Keith’s ma name.’
‘And her name’s Laura,’ Mere said. ‘And Laura, this silly guy is Aaron’. Laura reached forward and shook hands with the Al Pacino double. ‘Watch him all the time, Laura; he thinks he’s irresistible to women.’
‘Not irresistible, sis, just a harmless bachelor who wants to hold a caring wahine’s hand!’ In one quick illuminating instant, Laura glimpsed Aaron’s scary depths of intelligence and cunning and ability to read people and situations in all their complexities and frailty – and that he was expert at disguising that. She decided she had to be wary of him – but there was no fear.
Mere then introduced Paul and Daniel, who shook her hand politely and then fenced her out at the edge of their circle and talked to Mere. She was pleased to realize she wasn’t suffering any feelings of rejection; in fact, as they joked and laughed and drank after they had bought her a whiskey, she preferred to stay at the edge, observing their circle, with Mere at the centre. Every time Mere pulled her into the circle she stayed until they forgot her – that didn’t take long – and then she moved to the edge again. She valued the position, having adjusted her whole self to it in order to survive her foster families and institutions. Not seen, not felt, not heard: forgotten; you were out of reach of people’s abusive attention there, safe at the edge. Because she didn’t yet know Mere’s four male friends well, it was best to be at the edge, Laura thought. She knew Mere would bring her more and more into their circle when she knew it was safe, welcoming.
As they talked and drank and then, surreptitiously, lit and passed round a joint, one of Laura’s favourite ‘relaxations’, she gathered they were all finishing bachelors degrees in various fields: Aaron in chemistry, Keith in education, Paul in history and Daniel in English. They also lived near one another in Freemans Bay, and their families had known one another since the five of them had met on their first day at primary school. Terrific achievement. She sighed, sucking the joint – how many people can maintain that length of friendship and loyalty? She recognised this group as a family although she had no idea what large families were like. Not a biological one; no, this was a combination of Māori, Niuean, Samoan and Pākehā, and that was also new to her.
‘Hey, Laura, you having a good time curing your cold?’ Aaron broke into her thoughts.
She nodded and couldn’t stop grinning, which made them laugh.
Mere offered her another joint. She shook her head furiously, but Mere said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty more where that came from.’
‘Yeah, mate, Aaron’s the King of Dope in this bar.’ Daniel, for the first time, spoke to her.
‘And I’ll take ya home if ya get too fucked up,’ Mere whispered.
Laura’s eyes clicked open and her panicking consciousness was again snared in the black featureless darkness of her childhood. Automatically she gulped back the scream surging up from her gullet, and clenched her eyes shut, again. Don’t panic; breathe slowly, in, out, in, out … All of her started feeling safe. Now, open your eyes again. The darkness, the feel and look and smell of it, was definitely not her bedroom, not her flat. The sheet and soft blanket were not hers. She’d not been here before. She was wearing a t-shirt much too big for her and one of those floral things PIs wore round their waists. Quietly she searched and found the bedside lamp and switched it on.
The light rolled like a wave across the room and brought into view the bed opposite, and a sleeping face jutting above the blankets and contoured by long black hair. Mere. Laura realised she’d drunk and smoked too much; recalled her eyelids feeling heavier and heavier, her speech slurring against her wishes, her body disobeying her instructions, Mere catching and holding her up, then – was it? – Daniel holding her other arm. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ she kept saying as they carried her.
Laura switched off the bedside lamp, and snuggled deeper into the bedding. Facing Mere across the room, she let the darkness draw her into its healing, welcoming embrace. Thank you, Mere, thank you.
When she woke again, she sensed it was mid-morning, and Mere wasn’t there – her bed had been remade neatly. She’d left Laura a towel and flannel, and a clean black sweatshirt and sports trousers. Laura put them on. She had to roll up the sleeves and trouser legs, but she felt at home in them, in Mere’s clothes; their shape and odour and friendship.
It was cold and damp in the mildewed corridor as she hurried to the bathroom. She switched on the cold shower, shoved her head under the hard punishing water and held it there until the fuzziness was shocked out of her head. She wrapped the towel round her wet hair and, with toothpaste and cold water, loudly gargled the stench out of her mouth, promising herself she’d never again consume so much whiskey and dope.
She opened the kitchen door, shyly, and was immediately swamped by the smell of fried bacon and eggs, toast and coffee. ‘Kia ora,’ the woman at the stove, with her back to her, greeted her.
‘Good morning,’ she replied.
‘Come in and take a seat,’ the woman said, and turned, smiling. ‘Mere’s at her waitressing job; been gone for a couple of hours. I’m her mum.’ She was about fifty. Her hair was streaked with grey, and there were deep wrinkles round her sad, inquisitive eyes, which were hard to hide from. She had a solid body that anchored her firmly to the earth.
Laura slipped into the nearest seat. ‘I’m Laura,’ she said hesitantly.
Mere’s mother came over and, tonging strips of bacon onto her plate, said, ‘You two were really plastered when you came home last night. Dan had to help both of you into the house.’ There was nothing judgmental in her remarks. She scooped two fried eggs onto Laura’s plate, then some fried tomatoes. ‘It’s good Mere doesn’t get hangovers.Do you?’
‘Sometimes,’ Laura replied. ‘Not this morning though.’
‘Lucky, eh?’ Mere’s mother said. ‘I’ve given up the booze because my poor head can’t take any more of the hangovers. I get awful migraines too.’ She put some food onto her plate and sat down opposite Laura. ‘By the way, my name’s Mahina – but all Mere’s friends call me Hina or Auntie. You choose which one. Okay?’ Laura nodded eagerly. ‘I don’t believe in the Christian bullshit, but, in my whānau, we still say karakia.’ She stopped and looked quizzically, amused, at Laura.
‘Yes, I’m an athiest,’ Laura admitted for the first time to anyone.
Mahina closed her eyes and, in a measured, mellifluous and dramatic way, said a karakia in Māori, then opened her eyes and invited Laura to eat. ‘Mere didn’t know where you live so she – or should I say, Dan – brought you (and her) here.’
‘Mere and I met only a few weeks ago; we take anthropology together.’
‘I thought so,’ Mahina said. ‘I know all her other friends.’ She paused. ‘My choosy daughter doesn’t have many friends.’
‘Last night I met Keith and Daniel and …’ She couldn’t remember the others.
‘… Paul and Aaron,’ Mahina filled in. ‘Yes, they’re joined by the hip, all of them. And through them we, their lucky parents, are joined hip to hip.’
So began an utterly open exchange of information about their lives, and when they finished eating, Laura washed the dishes and Mahina dried them, while they continued the exchange. Then Laura put on the huge laundry, following Mahina’s instructions about the quirks and idiosyncracies of the ancient washing machine, and helped her host clean the kitchen, the bedroom
s and the bathroom.
They were cleaning the sitting room when Mere returned with their lunch of restaurant food. As if Laura had always been a member of their whānau, they lunched and continued the captivating, thrilling exchange of information, and Laura listened in on the latest gossip about the neighbourhood, which Mahina referred to affectionately as their ‘tūrangawaewae’. It was late afternoon when Mere reminded her mother of the time.
‘Gotta go to work,’ Mahina sighed. She hugged Laura and said, ‘You come any time. No good living on your own, Laura.’ She left for her cleaning job.
‘Thanks for the clothes,’ Laura said to Mere.
‘That’s okay; sorry I didn’t have anything better and they’re not your size.’
‘And thank you for getting us here safely last night.’
‘Thank Dan. I thought I was fine until we got into the bloody cold of the car park, and then I collapsed. You were too bloody high to tell us your address.’ She laughed and then added, ‘Daniel is always there when you need him.’ Eyes twinkling, she said, ‘You’d like him; he’s your type.’
‘And what type is that?’ she asked.
‘Frighteningly intelligent, shy, reserved, and a fucking good poet and writer.’
‘I’m not like that,’ Laura interrupted. ‘I can’t write for nuts and I’m as dumb as nails …’
‘Pull me other leg, girl! Anyway, you’re articulate enough to ring and thank him, and maybe teach him not to be so withdrawn.’
Later, as Mere drove Laura to her flat in Mount Eden, Laura said to her, ‘Your mother’s the greatest, Mere. She wants me to call her Hina or Auntie. I’ll call her Auntie. I’ve never had an aunt.’
‘She’d like that, and she is the greatest. It takes great character to overcome the shit she’s been through. Or you can say, her battle through the shit has turned her into a mighty mum.’ She stopped, and Laura sensed Mere didn’t want to continue in that direction.