Huia Short Stories 10

by Tihema Baker

  Mr Gainsford declared school over for the day. Then he came over to me and said I should go with him to his house. I knew that something was really wrong when Mrs Gainsford gave me a pat on the shoulder.

  Mr Gainsford sat me down and in a matter-of-fact voice said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you there’s been an accident. Your mother has been killed.’

  I was shocked. I choked, and gasped for breath, and tears spilled down my face.

  ‘It’s times like these we have to pull ourselves together and be a man,’ Mr Gainsford said.

  When I sobbed, he patted me on the head, and said, ‘Come on, Connor, we have to be brave.’ Mrs Gainsford said, ‘A cup of tea might help,’ and all I wanted to do was to go home to mother. But she was dead.

  I wept myself to sleep that night wearing an old pair of Mr Gainsford’s pyjamas.

  Early in the morning Uncle Matt came to see me. I was still in bed.

  He gathered me in to his arms, and I clung to the smells of the milking shed and disinfectant. He allowed my sobbing to ease before wiping my face with a raggedy cloth, saying, ‘I am very sorry for what has happened.’ He hugged me tightly and mumbled, ‘I really thought that it was all over.’

  Uncle Matt stopped hugging me and grasped my shoulders. ‘Your father was a strong-minded, stubborn man and he would have his way,’ he said, looking into my eyes with great seriousness. ‘Your mother stood by him in everything; it was not her fault.’

  ‘What’s not her fault?’ I asked.

  ‘You were only five years old when I found your father in the river,’ Uncle Matt replied. ‘I thought that it would end there, and did nothing. Your mother carried on and ran the farm as good as any man, and she kept you and raised you right, just like that orchard of hers.’

  Uncle Matt stopped briefly and looked away. ‘Now, she has come back again. It has to stop.’ He gave me another hug, and prepared to leave. I wanted to go with him. He eased me away, and said, ‘I have things to do, but I’ll be back for you, when everything’s arranged.’ He shook his head and left.

  The next day was Saturday, and Uncle Matt came to tell me I must go with him to the marae so that the tapu could be mended.

  We stood alone at the entrance to the marae, just me and Uncle Matt, waiting. A few women dressed in black were sitting alongside the wharenui, talking and laughing, until one of them spotted us. They fell silent.

  Then one of the women started to wail. It was Nanny Toko. Only Uncle Matt’s steady hand on my shoulder stopped me from running away.

  When Nanny Toko calmed down, the speeches began. I understood little, but heard ‘Ngā Manu o te Rangi’ mentioned from time to time. Uncle Matt stood up to reply. I didn’t understand him either, but everyone was silent and listening intently. There was much head nodding, and Nanny Toko started to heave and weep silently.

  Uncle Matt took me to meet the people of the marae. I followed him along the line – Nanny Toko was getting closer and closer. Uncle Matt stood before her. They pressed noses for a long time, before they both turned to look at me. Nanny Toko pulled me to her and said, ‘Anei te pēpi ātaahua. Ka nui te aroha Kāti! Kāti! Kāti!’

  Further along the line, Raima said, ‘Thank you for my nanny.’

  The next morning, I woke up in another strange room, but the smell of disinfectant soon reminded me where I was. I got dressed and headed out to join Uncle Matt at the milking shed. We did what we always did, and when I flushed the surplus milk into the river, and the big eels gathered, Uncle Matt said, ‘Kua tae mai ōku hoa. My friends have arrived.’

  Later, I climbed the hill to my house. It was locked up tight, and the spare key wasn’t under the stone. I had to look into my home through the windows. Mother had gone, and the nectarines were ready. Who would pick Mother’s nectarines? I could not stem the flood of tears and memories that overwhelmed me.

  My mother’s funeral was at the Anglican church in Maidstone where she and I went every Sunday. As we entered, Uncle Matt greeted some people: a man and a woman with a boy my age. They sat behind me, and I heard the man say, ‘Well, there is no denying who his father was; he looks just like him. You know I met him. I came all the way down here to see him.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Uncle Matt said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, basically he kicked me out.’

  ‘Connor could be like that,’ said Uncle Matt.

  ‘I came back again after he died, but she was just as bad. I asked to see the boy, but she refused. At least she kept him and raised him.’

  ‘She was a good mother,’ Uncle Matt said.

  Pall-bearers carried Mother to a hearse, and we followed in a big black car. After her burial, we went back to the church hall for a cup of tea, and afterwards Uncle Matt took me back to his place. We had not been home long when there was a knock at the door. It was the people who had been speaking with Uncle Matt at the funeral. Uncle Matt didn’t seem surprised they’d called by.

  Uncle Matt invited the man and woman, and boy about my age, in to the front parlour. His ancestors lined the walls: stern-faced people, some with tattoos. We all sat down, and Uncle Matt said, ‘Connor, this is your Uncle Koro and your Aunty Waiti, and this is their son Tāmati, your cousin. You will be going to live with them.’

  As we drive home after Connor’s funeral, I say to Dad, ‘I read his diary again, but I still don’t understand what really happened.’

  Dad’s eyes are looking far away. ‘Remember the old tohunga we met when we went to pick Connor up?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, I do. Uncle Matt.’

  ‘Well, he’s the one who made peace with your aunty.’

  ‘Aunty Ngā Manu o te Rangi?’

  ‘Āe, my sister,’ says Dad softly. ‘Her baby was stolen by that old kuia, Nanny Toko, and given to the father. She tried to get Connor back, and so did I, but …’

  ‘So she haunted them?’

  ‘That’s right. My sister died a bitter, vengeful woman, and wouldn’t let it go, even after death.’

  Then, with a great sigh, my dad looks sadly into space and says, ‘E Ngā Manu o te Rangi, tōku tuahine, kei a koe tō pēpi ātaahua ināianei, kua tae te wā mō te whakatā.’

  Harlow and Father Brian

  Jacquie McRae

  It took thirty minutes to retrieve Harlow’s body from the attic in St Francis Church. Other than the fireman and the policeman, Father Brian was the only one to witness it.

  Warren ambled out to his police car and telephoned the station.

  ‘Hey Maggie, it’s Warren. Send an ambulance over to the church on Fenby Street – and tell them we don’t need the sirens.’ He hung up and leaned back in his car, lighting a cigarette. He dragged on the smoke before flicking through the messages on his phone.

  Father Brian slumped on a bench seat as if all the air had been sucked out of him. He rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his face. He hadn’t cried since he was a boy, but as grey clouds gathered overhead, tears leaked through the gaps in his fingers.

  His thoughts took him back to the day he had met Harlow, thirteen years earlier. He’d literally bumped into him outside the butcher’s shop in town, when the boy was five. Before he’d had a chance to apologise, Owen Baker, a member of his congregation, came up behind the child.

  ‘Hi, Father, this is Harlow,’ he said, shoving the boy forward. ‘We only got him today. I keep saying “No more foster kids” to Gretchen, but … you know women. Argh, maybe you don’t, but trust me, Father, they just do what they want.’

  The child stared blankly up at Owen as he spoke. Father Brian bent down to say ‘Hi,’ but the boy backed away and clutched something behind his back. As Owen and Harlow wandered off down the street, Father Brian saw that it was some sort of rag that the boy held.

  The Bakers dragged their foster kids to Sunday school and church every week. After his service, Father Brian made a point of mingling with his parishioners on the lawn at the front of the church. He tried to get Harlow to talk to him, but the boy wou
ld only stare at his feet or look away. Father Brian made sure he talked to him each week regardless.

  Things started to go missing from Sunday school at the same time Harlow started. At first it was the red crayons, then someone’s shoe, and then a jacket. When Ms Mavis, the Sunday school teacher, started complaining to Father Brian about the missing items, he managed to convince her that they were the type of things that got misplaced easily.

  No one needed convincing of anything when Tony Grin lost his Pokémon card and it was found in Harlow’s back pocket.

  ‘He hasn’t had a mum or dad, to teach him right from wrong,’ Father Brian told Ms Mavis.

  ‘Well, neither did you, and you didn’t take to stealing.’

  Ms Mavis liked to dish out punishments like she was God’s right-hand woman. She pried Harlow’s fingers open and snatched the rag that he always carried. He never cried or said a word.

  A siren and ambulance lights flashing brought Father Brian back from his thoughts. He watched as Warren stubbed a cigarette out on the pavement and marched towards the ambulance. A pimply boy of about twenty stuck his head out of the ambulance window and yelled out to Warren. They got into a loud discussion about the siren. When they stopped arguing, they lifted the stretcher out and wheeled it up the cobblestone path and into the foyer of the church.

  ‘Be gentle with him,’ Father Brian said as they picked up Harlow’s body and took it away for an autopsy.

  He forced himself to climb the ladder into the attic.

  The smell of death still hung in the air. A small mound of clothes was bunched up on the floor. Father Brian squeezed his eyes shut to block out the image of Harlow curled up here in a foetal position, but the vision was etched in his mind.

  Nestled among the clothes, he saw a handkerchief that had been embroidered with poppies, a pile of red crayons and a small rag. He picked it up and inhaled deeply.

  He thought of that Sunday thirteen years earlier, when Harlow’s only possession had been stripped from him. Harlow never arrived the following Sunday.

  Father Brian hunted Owen down as soon as the service was over.

  ‘Hi, Owen. Where’s Harlow?’

  ‘We sent him back. The kid was too wonky for us.’ Owen rounded his kids into the waiting minivan. He climbed into the passenger seat and wound down the window.

  ‘We think we’ll get a girl next time,’ he yelled as the van pulled away.

  The years passed by, but Father Brian still searched for Harlow’s face among the crowds. He spent hours ringing all sorts of welfare agencies enquiring after the boy, but the conversations always ended the same.

  ‘I’m sorry, but if you’re not family or a carer, we can’t give you any information.’

  After a while he stopped ringing, but he included the boy in his prayers.

  Just last night he’d prayed that Harlow be kept safe and held between loving arms, and this morning he’d found him.

  Father Brian spent most of the day on the phone tracking down the Bakers. He wasn’t the only person to have lost contact with them when they moved. He didn’t expect them to care about this, but wanted them to know.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ Gretchen said when he finally got hold of her. ‘I did ask about him one time, but it seems other families found him hard work as well, and he bounced around a bit … He would have aged out by now.’

  ‘What do you mean, aged out?’

  ‘Well, once a kid turns seventeen, the government no longer pays for someone to look after them.’

  ‘At seventeen, they’re on their own?’

  ‘Yep. All of them. Ours all had to leave, and I’m sure they’re doing fine.’

  Father Brian clenched his teeth. He said he had to go, but after hanging up the phone he sat in the same spot for the next hour. His Bible lay on the coffee table nearby, but he could only stare at it. Every Sunday he preached words of love and kindness, but he wondered what use these messages were.

  The phone rang beside him, and he reluctantly picked it up.

  ‘Hi, it’s Warren. Just keeping you in the loop about that foster boy. Looks like he died from a combo of pleurisy and not eating.’

  ‘Has anyone come to claim him?’

  ‘No, but don’t worry. If no one does, I’ll get the welfare services to deal with it.’

  Father Brian bristled at the word ‘it,’ and for the second time that day, he felt like smashing something.

  ‘His name’s Harlow. And I’ll take care of his arrangements if no one comes to get him.’

  He sat through a church meeting that night, but everything he heard seemed to come from a distant place, and he couldn’t make much sense from it. The others in the room talked about sending a card to Derek who was recovering from a hip operation, and discussed the possibility of flowers for Eileen as a thank you for organising the gala. They told him that the money for his new kitchen was still waiting to be used, and he managed a nod of his head.

  On Sunday, his congregation gathered for their service. He read mainly from the book of Matthew: a selection that spoke of heavenly priorities. He warned about doing charitable deeds only to be seen by others to be doing them, and then read from Leviticus about atonement.

  His parishioners had come to expect to be uplifted on church days, and many left that day wondering if Father Brian was perhaps losing it.

  That night he couldn’t sleep for the fourth night in a row, so got up and typed ‘Aging out’ into his computer. There were a couple of links to old articles, and a YouTube clip he could watch, but he was searching for a place that Harlow might have gone to find shelter. A home where all the kids like Harlow ended up.

  It didn’t exist.

  He turned off the computer and stared at the blank screen. Father Brian knew that Harlow, who’d been almost invisible at age five, had simply dropped out of the system and completed his vanishing act.

  By the morning, for the first time since he’d discovered Harlow’s body, he knew what he had to do. He took out the writing pad with his name embossed at the top and drafted a letter to the church board.

  He recommended that the board review their plans for his kitchen: it was perfect as it was. He asked instead that they consider using that money to set up a fund to help children transition from welfare care into society. His long-term dream was a house for that purpose, but this would do for the moment.

  A year later, when it was time to place a headstone on Harlow’s grave, Father Brian knew exactly what he wanted carved on it.

  Harlow

  1995–2013

  A life that made a difference.

  Hei te Tau Tītoki!

  Zeb Tamihana Nicklin

  Ina whānau mai ia ki te whai ao ki te ao marama he mea pīrere noa ia e tana kōkā, ka waiho atu ai ki runga ake i tētahi kaupeka o te rākau tītoki. He mōhio tonu nō te kōkā nei ka nānā Te Hakuturi a Tāne i tana pēpē. Ka pau tētahi wā kāre anō te pēpē kia tangi noa, kāre anō hoki kia moe kia kai rānei. Maringanui ana ko te wāhanga o te raumati kei riro i a Takurua te pēpē nei hai kai.

  Ko ngā ropi o te pēpē e titiro mātai atu ana ki te āhua o te rākau tītoki kua huri hai whare mōna. Ka pau tētahi wā anō ka rere mai ai he uha huia he hūhū mātotoru kei ana ngutu tōhihi. Me te mea nei he punua huia te pēpē nei e whanga mai ana ki tana kōkā ka ngāwari noa ai te whāngai atu a te huia ki te pēpē, ā, kua nanea. I te ngarohanga o Huia ki te rapu kai anō mā te pēpē kātahi tonu ka rongo Te Wao Tapu nui a Tāne whānui tonu i te tangi a te pēpē, ka mutu, ka kakama te rere atu a Tūī, a Kōkakō, a Tīeke, a Kererū, mā raro mai a Kiwi, a Takahē a wai atu anō, a wai atu anō o te kāhui manu ki te oriori i te pēpē nei, otirā ka kaha ake anō ai te tangi mai. Nā wai rā, ka hoki mai anō a Huia he hūhū anō ōna hai kai mā te pēpē, kātahi ka tau tōna mauri ka kai ai, me te aha, kua mākona anō. Ina warea ana te pēpē e te moe ka whakakotahi ai ngā manu ki te whakatau me aha kē rātau me te pēpē nei. Ka tūī korokoro ake a Tūī ki a Huia ka rōreka, ‘E tipu hae
re ana te pēpē nei ekene ia kua rahi kē atu kia mau ki te kaupeka nei, ka whati ai.’

  Ka ‘hū’ te whakahoki a Huia ka tangi, ‘Ehara, ehara! Me tahuri tātau ki te hanga whare e haumaru ai ia.’

  Ka ‘kū’ ake a Kererū ka ‘āe’ mai. Ka ‘kō kō’ te tangi mai a Kōkakō ka tīwaha, ‘Me tono atu koe Kiwi ki ngā uri o te papa, mā rātau te papa o te whare e whakarite.’

  Ka ‘hui e’ a Tīeke, ka ‘tāiki e’ te katoa, ka ‘hī!’

  Ao ake he rā, ka tahuri a Ngāi Pēpeke ki te whakariterite i te tūāpapa o te whare, ko tā te kāhui rere rangi rātau ko Kiwi mā he kohikohi i tēnā i tēna kia pai te tū o te whare me te tuanui e haumaru ai tō rātau taina hou.

  Ao te pō, pō te ao ka raupā haere ngā ngutu o te kāhui manu me ngā waewae parahutihuti o ngāngara mā i te whakatangetange riaka ki te whakatū i te whare hou mō te pēpē. Tōna taro kau iho nei, ka tū mai he whare ka waiho atu ai e te kāhui manu nei te pēpē kia warea anō ia e te moe ki roto i tōna whare hou. Ka riro mā Katipō hai kaitiaki i te kūaha.

  Nō te pēpē e moe ana ka whakakotahi anō te kāhui manu nei, ka whakatau mā wai e toro atu ai ki te manukura nui ki a Moa ki te tono ki a ia māna hai kaikawe i te pēpē hai ngā rā ka pakeke ake ai ia, ā, māna anō te kāhui nei hai rangatira. Ka puta te tīwē whakatarapī a Kererū ka kū mai, ‘Inā te tawhiti o tō tātau manukura e noho ana, e ao kē ana kia riro māku hai kawe atu tō tātau tono ki a ia ina rā aku parirau parahutihuti.’

  Ka noho te kāhui nei ka whakaaro iho, kātahi ka puta ake te komekome i ngā ngutu pūoioi pewa nei o Kea me ana kupu whakahē, ‘E hoa, i tō kaha kai miro kua mōmona kē atu, e kore rawa koe e whiti noa i te moana o Raukawa kua tē kē te koitō.’ Ka ‘tāiki e’ te āe mai o ngā manu katoa!

  Kātahi tonu ka whakatopa iho mai ko Toroa i te raki ka tau ai ki te papa e huihui ana ngā manu. Ko tā Toroa, ‘Mō taku tōmuri, otirā inā te whānui o ōku parirau, kotahi rā noa kua tae atu ahau ki a Moa.’ Ka noho anō te kāhui manu ka whakaaro. Ko Takahē anake ka whakahē mai i tā Toroa kī, ka takahi-e ai tōna waewae ki te whenua. ‘Tēnā kua tau,’ tā Huia.