by Alan Duff
She and Charlie had re-enacted the possibilities of what might have happened in Grace’s (and the other kids’) bedroom. The way the bottom bunk would have been in darkness, even with the door briefly open, as poor Grace’s rapist came in. Beth had played the horror part of her daughter — to the hilt — so she’d not only know if Jake had done it but how her poor child must have felt. It was almost as bad as burying her all over again. That it should not prove the case against Jake came as a kind of relief. Suspended judgement, the words Charlie in his profession’s way used. Suspended, it would seem, forever. And anyway, even if Jake was innocent, she and Charlie were both agreed, now see how he felt being an innocent suffering unjustly. Though in her heart of hearts, Beth couldn’t quite justify that kind of injustice against a man she had once loved, who had fathered her children even if mostly only biologically. Not that bad an injustice.
A few more wines on board, and they were on the floor dancing. Along with quite a few other couples. And everyone smiling at each other as they swept past in good old-fashioned waltz to the band assisted by modern gadgetry so they moved to a host of sounded instruments. The occasional figure passing by outside, vehicle headlights, none of it mattered, here life was: candlelight spears, the soft head fuzz of wine, food outta this world, conversation (oh, I hope he doesn’t find me too uninteresting; I only got mostly sad and bad things to talk about), the music, the fact that all her first-time fears were unfounded. And love.
SHE CAUCHT IT JUST as they turned to sit down (from dancing? In a place like that?) not knowing her eyes had narrowed, slowing immediately her anyway slow waddling walk. Well I’ll be. If it ain’t … She didn’t form the name in her mind, it was so familiar, so much used to be a part of her daily existence it — she, Beth — didn’t have a name, she was a concept. Of a friend. A close, close friend. She thought it again: Well I’ll be. If it ain’t her. With him. Mister Welfare, who used to come round our area to round up our troublesome kids. Not that she had any herself, did Mavis. (Too fat. No man wanted to have sex with me. And even when I got me a desperate, he was always drunk with not much juice down there, or none at all.) And not that Mavis’d wanted to have a child; li’l thing squawking inner ear with its constant demands. No more the good times, not even the man who fathered it likely to be part of the deal in which case, in her more honest moments with herself, which were less and less these days and she knew that, she might’ve copped for it, being a mother, a de facto wife, a more meaningful citizen of this small city world or jus’ Pine Block woulda done — just.
But life hadn’t even given her a just. When it’d offered so much when poor Beth’s world’d spun into tragedy of losing first Grace, then Nig in that gun battle on this very street at this very end, the lake end, of town, between those stupid Brown Fists and the jus’ as stupid Black Hawks. How she and Beth’d been so inspired by the words of that Maori chief, Te Tupaea, telling everyone off at those Sat’day morning gatherings he used to have out on Beth’s (the State’s) front lawn, for their drinking, for not making something of their lives, for their children’s sake he thundered at ’em like the pack of children they were; and how rapidly they’d built the hall, and the things this inherited title chief’d taught them, it’d seemed like he had brung ’em hope when otherwise there was none. It’d seemed that he, chief Te Tupaea, came along at the right time, when Beth’s poor Gracie was dead, raped by her own father why she killed herself, and even Beth’s famous fight-back ability was never more in need, and Mavis herself with a life purpose outside of boozing and playing cards and pleasuring the flesh teaching others how to sing, and as if she’d been born to teach (I remember how gooood I felt about myself) — all to end up like everything does in Pine Block, nothing. It jus’ faded out. Their past’d claimed them. Their way of sordid, unthinking existence’d summoned ’em, damn near every bitch an’ bastard, back. But not that bitch inside (astonishingly) that restaurant, oh no. Look where she was. When I, her best mate, poured so much of myself into helping pull her up from her tragedies and from that damn Jake fucken Heke. And she thought of that Shirley Bassey song, I (Who Have Nothing), did Mavis Tatana in her self-pity, and the line came with Shirley’s and her own mighty-powered voice, as if Shirley was there or Mavis was herself singing it in the street, must watch you, go dancing by, which got her emotions roiling up for the line, with my nose pressed up against the window pane! — I — And there she stopped. Though not with nose against the window pane. And in her heart she’d sung the word with twinned meaning of pane and pain (oh, you can’t know how much pain, Bethy-girl).
Mavis smiled bitterly. Not bothered if Beth happened to look out and see her — ’n fact I’ve a good mind to march in an’ ask her who she thinks she is. And is she above all us now. Mavis felt like slapping Beth’s face. But, lucky for everyone, Mavis got one of her less frequent moments of self-honesty, and knew the fault was (well, not all) she’d returned to the old way of life; only started off as one li’l drink, catch up with the people she’d known all them years of, let’s face it, being one of the stars in McClutchy’s, no bitch sang better’n her, big Mavis the Davis (from Sammy Davis) Tatana, so she was only catching up. ’Cept it ended up like Jake Heke and choiceless family’s visit to Boogie waiting in the Riverton Boys’ Home — it didn’t. And nor did her resolve to have only one drink and go as every Thursday scheduled to the community hall where a bunch of kids were waiting for a singing lesson, raw though the lessons were (I knew that), it was that she was there, bringing — or trying to — out the confidence in them, seein’ as their useless fucken parents weren’t. She stayed on that night and ended up at a party. Then someone at the party said, Hey, there’s a fortieth at my cousin’s in Tokoroa, whyn’t we put in for a keg and go over? With that beaming look, child-like and eagerly kinda innocent that it was, as if the welcome they’d get would be second to none (specially with the keg) Eh? Eh? Whyn’t we go over in Tama’s van? So they did. And stayed not jus’ for the three days the party las’ed, but the lifetime it claimed back in doing so.
So Mavis took one last look at Beth in there sat down across from her Mister Welfare bigtime manager man, and she took her large (and gettin’ larger) frame across the street, full of beer from the new pub she’d become a regular of jus’ up the street, tonight bein’ a Saturday having started, what, ’bout lunchtime, so she was pissed and hadn’t any real idea of where she was walking to, ’cept somewhere in the direction of home, but now regretting it her decision to sneak off from everyone, not that they noticed in their oblivious state, singing that Bassey number aloud to herself now, but not loud-ly, I. I who have nothing. (Nothing, girl.) I. I who have no one. (No one. Not for myself.) Must wa-atch you — Voice coming out in more a simper. And someone watching her would’ve seen a picture of seventeen stone fallen womanhood moving slowly down the main street of Two Lakes, another Saturday night, like lumbering truck tail-lights disappearing into another somewhere.
SIX
THERE WERE WHITE ones, red, cream, black, and that was jus’ the or’in’ry phones. And they were all different shapes, one even looked like a old-fashioned phone, on a cradle, ’cept it had shiny brass bits here and there, and a modern dialling face. (So where’s the fucken cellies?) He looked around, trying to cover his burning self-consciousness, that funny buzzing feeling in his head a man always got when he first came outta jail, it took ’bout a week to go away, how he was dressed, what he stood for now, in the stark of Real People’s territory, the opposite of what this place was these inhabitants these free to go every evening at five-thirty voluntary work prisoners, in this shop all lit up like the punishment cell in the block, where they never turned the lights off let alone down, day an’ night, it reached right into your brain and picked out the part that said sleep, held it focused in its spotlight glare so the sleep signal couldn’t escape to the rest of the body with its daily dose trickle of instruction, give respite to (any) body in its rightful entitlement to rest. A prisoner on punishment didn’t have
no entitlements, ’cept to breathe. Even having a shit when a man felt like one wasn’t an entitlement, not ’nless he wanted to stink his (only) home out by having it in the pot, sitting in that corner like his only piece of furniture in the world, as each morning a man had to hand over his blankets, his foam rubber mattress (all sperm stained and with other man-stains) and empty out his pot. Then that was it, the day ahead like a desert.
He was glad he wore his shades. Real glad. Glad he had brown — very brown — skin, so they wouldn’t notice the burning. This fulla coming up. A tie. White shirt (so you’re fucken clean, mister. So?) His chest came up with his head posture — Yeah? He’d beat the cunt to it, ’fore he aksed a man in that tone they do: Can I help you? Which is exactly what the man aksed. Can I help you?
Mulla went, How mucha cellphone? Said it in one push of sullen air. Well, that depends, Mister Shirt-an’-tie came on the attitude on the spot. On what? Mulla shuffled his feet, feeling that embarrassment turning to its familiar anger, what all the boys did when they was embarrassed, confused, thought they’d been made fools of: they got wild. On how much you want to spend. (Wha’?) At first Mulla Rota confused; what’d this cunt mean, what the fuck was this, how much he wanted to spend? — but then he got it: fulla was just finding out which phones to show a man, what price range. But no way, he thought again, he wasn’t being out-slyed by no straight white wanka. ’Pends on what I like. (Take that.)
The fulla looks at him, so Mulla knows he’s one up. Felt like tellin’ the fulla he’d come in here a different man ever since he called it right with Apeman — (blank) — that day. Only costim six months los’ remission for threatening behaviour and illegal possession of a weapon, which meant he was here right now, out one day before his prez, Jimmy Bad Horse Shirkey. Why a man was here, to get Bad what he’d aksed for, a cellie. And he didn’t mean a cell, neither! (Hahahaha!) Neither man needed one of those for a li’l while, Mulla in his heart of near-breaking (again) hearts, never. (I can’t take anutha sentence. Next time I’ll top myself.)
They went over to anutha section of the shop. Mulla the worst and most differently dressed here. Jeans, denim gang jacket laundered and held in plastic sealed bag storage, same brown shirt that smelled of mothballs they used to keep the moths outta the prisoners’ civilian clothing, and his head-kicking steel-capper boots which at least were the same unpolished, scuffed dirty as the day they walked him in from the prison van. And this was the clean version, of fresh outta jail, he hadn’t even got drunk yet, firs’ things firs’: the prez of Two Lakes Brown Fists chapter wanted to come home tomorrow to a cellphone. (To do The Family’s drug deals. Yeah, drive around in his mean machine waitin’ forim at the Quarters, selling a kaygee atta time, none a that foil bullet shit, not for the Browns.) Mulla even whispered it in his head so guarded was he on the matter of drugs and one, but usually more, of their number always getting busted. If Jimmy’d aksed a man to come in to this shop in a week’s time, after he’d been a week outiv it, then they woulda looked atim like he was from outta space (hahaha) an’ not like one a them nice planets, neither! (hahahaha! Ooo, you’re funny sometimes, Mulla Rota who c’n still motor.) He knew even this clean version of him was so different to every person in this too-well-lit shop it was a wonder they were servin’ a man, a wonder they hadn’t called the cops, a wonder the girls here don’t scream. But that was alright, who the fuck cared? (Well I do.) I don’t. Here you are, sir. At that, Mulla leaned back, in total disbelief: no one’d ever called him sir before, let alone someone who a man’d admit (if none of the bros were listening) was his superior, like socially, like class-wise. (But not your fucken white colour, honky.) And his colour, if truth be known.
(Sir?) Hard to hide the smile. He felt good then. Real good. He flicked a woollen glove cut off at the fingers at the dude, how ’bout that one? No reason for selecting it, jus’ a place to start the, uh, proceedings. On account of Jimmy arranging for Mulla to be picked up at the Intercity bus-stop by one of the boys who was waitin’ outside in one of the gang’s rumble machines, fucken 8 big ones unner the bonnet, Jimmy’s instruction to aks for a discount seein’ he was payin’ cash, and if he got more’n eight percent Mulla could have the rest outta the three hundred. Not that he knew what that calculated to, typical Jimmy coming up with a figure like that when even Mulla could work out ten percent by just taking a nought off, and five percent by dividing that figure by two (long’s it’s not in odd numbas! hahaha) but he’d settle on some figure. Or look over the fulla’s shoulder while he was working it out himself on his machine.
There were hundreds — no, not hundreds, but scores of cellphones to pick from. This’s ninety-nine ninety-five, on special, the fulla toldim. You wha’? That pricked a man’s ears up. Shit, he could give Jimmy a hundred change and look good and keep the utha hundred for himself. But he decided it wouldn’t be a good move, not with Jimmy coming out tomorrow and expecting his instruction to be carried out and wanting a receipt. Nah, he shook his wraparound shaded head. Wanna good one.
So he settled on a cellie’t cost two-eighty so at leas’ he had a starting twenty for himself since he was goin’ out to get drunk soon’s this deal was over, soon’s it was gone down — he liked the terminology, he even knew the word, terminology, liked that, too. He’d cashed up his social welfare cheque, two weeks of unemployment benefit at $147.50 per week, divided by going on six years made his life worth not even a buck a week, some earning life, man (some earning life); and then he aksed, How much the discount, man? Fucken near called ’im sir back. Oh, there isn’t any, not on this phone, sir, it’s on special. (No you don’t.) Then I don’t want it. Sir, I’d love to give you our normal discount of — he hesitated just a moment too long there so Mulla thought he had the fulla, though clearly not on this deal — five percent. Mulla dared to lift up his shades, prob’ly from being called sir twice. I was afta ten. Percent. His own hesitation for a different (diffident) reason, of nerve suddenly got to him without the hide-behind of shades. So back they went to get a phone that wasn’t on special, even though the fulla tried the bullshit that the ones on special actually had twenty percent marked down on their recommended retail; seemed to Mulla Rota this fulla thought he was jus’ anutha gang member there for the taking. And he left that shop with forty in his pocket for this arvo of pissing up so he wouldn’t have to cut into his own money (man, I wan’it to las’ at leas’ a cupla days) plus the phone, plus the fulla calling him sir in parting. And he liked that.
Got into the waiting car with the pros who wasn’t a brutha, not a proper one till he’d proved himself, feeling good, too, that the pros looked up to him, gave a man respect he deserved, man had he earned it, tole the fulla, honky fulla in the phone shop called me sir. Laughing. And the pros laughed, too, and aksed, Whatchu callim back — cunt? Yeah, I did, Mulla lied. Di’n’t know why, lies fell out of a man like dropped lollies stolen in a lolly shop; lucky this young dumbarse wouldn’t know.
THE CEREMONY WAS as solemn as it was deadly serious, of the welcome home for the prez himself, and the legend (he wasn’t really a ledge, they only went along with it; the thought of Mulla bein’ a legend was what they got off on, all those years inside and few of them in the gang itself on the outside. All those years of staying staunch to his Family, not the man himself. Weren’t Mulla — the wankah — himself they were welcoming) Mulla Rota jus’ part of that welcome home for the prez.
Fifty cut-off gloves of brown wool or brown leather (never that utha colour, ebony) and yet the shades each ’n’ every lowlife unloved bastard and their handful of patched bitches were as black as the night would be tanight when their partying, amply assisted by the voluminous quantity of dope they’d smoke, would be at its maddest, happiest peak. The shades were, well, ebony, and so were some of the teeth rotting in the open roaring mouths to Jimmy Bad Horse near to, well, black, as he was aksing — aksing ’em! — WHO’S FIRS’? WHO’S FIRRZ! when he really meant what’s first. And they were ROARING back: BROWN FIS’ FIRRZ!
BROWN FIS’S FIRST! that last quite distinctly properly said, by all of them. Like they all for that one-word moment, or the one just before it, understood that sumpthin’, sumpthin’ had to be done to a greater height so to do due and proper homage to their beloved leader — oh, and Mulla, too, seein’s he was here, walking behind the prez witha glow on he thought was The Family roaring for him as well. He, Mulla, didn’t unnerstan’ that it is the man who manipulates, is cruel and loving and using of the members’ emotions who gets to have his praises his qualities of (much flawed) human existence sung. There were dudes who’d had their fucken heads kicked in, their lights punched out, their li’l hearts broken but mended by the same man, Jimmy Bad Horse muthafucka Shirkey There were bitches he’d fucked, raped, sodomised, slapped around, beaten up, humiliated, at the same time he’d picked ’em up, lifted their broken li’l bodies and hearts unto his and him, the body bursting in its gang regalia with not so much muscle as fat over muscle enough to fool people who didn’t look too closely. Tha’s what leadership was about: sticking it to people, specially your own. Long’s you picked ’em up after and said there there, Jimmy’s here, Jimmy had to do this to you, unnerstan’? Course they understood. And even when they didn’t they sort of accepted that the fault was theirs. Same as they accepted their flaws as kinda and mos’ly their own fault, why they behaved like they did. Which is where Nig Heke’d goddit wrong but made amends (oh how he did that: jus’, you know, with his life), whose handsome photographic portrait on the wall, by the gang insignia cut out of polystyrene and painted the necessary colours, had been somehow snapped by one a the members some time before he was killed, this is where Nig Heke had made himself immortal, cos he’d accepted he’d done wrong. He’d gone and done the RIGHT thing and shot that fucken Hawk dead — dead — ’fore they blasted back and got Nig and Fattyboy whose ugly faced photo was also on the wall alongside Nig’s for these (broken-hearted) people’s belief in those two boys’ immortality. Sumpthin’ like that. Eh bro? Sumpthin’ like that is how we see those two, uh, late bruthas.