Huia Short Stories 10

by Tihema Baker

  Whata decided he could risk another peek out, just to see where they were. The view had changed from dirty, crowded city to rolling country. They must be going south. There were green paddocks that looked like they were made of waves of earth, halted in their progression towards the sea and frozen forever. They were criss-crossed with fences and peppered with sheep. Whata looked at the hills and thought the sheep looked like sesame seeds. He smiled at the idea of sesame sheep. His dad used to get them two-dollar hamburgers from the takeaway shop sometimes, and the buns always had sesame seeds on them. Whata would pick them off the top and pop them between his teeth, imagining them exploding like mini grenades in his mouth. He wondered whether his dad had used many grenades this week. There were heaps of bad guys in wars, and surely grenades were the best way to kill them off.

  Whata couldn’t remember when he had last seen his dad. He could remember what they had done together, but not exactly when it was. It felt like ages ago. But maybe it hadn’t really been that long. He missed his dad, but he knew he’d be back again soon. Mum hadn’t been talking about him much lately, so maybe she was planning a surprise welcome home party. Maybe that’s why her and Hemi were always busy thinking about other stuff. Stuff other than Whata. That must be it, he thought. And that’s why they were always spending so much time with the rest of Mum’s family. Whata had thought it was because everyone had missed them so much, because they had lived so far away for so long. Or maybe he just needed to pay closer attention to things, Whata thought to himself. Whata was always getting in trouble for being a daydreamer.

  ‘Always in your own world, you are, boy,’ his mum would say to him in her exasperated voice. Her what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you? voice. ‘Away with the fairies,’ she’d sigh, shaking her head.

  Whata didn’t think that it was a bad thing at all, though. In fact, he thought it was a cool thing. Isn’t that what they’re always telling you at school? Dream big and you can be whatever you like? And Whata knew exactly what he wanted to be. A hero, like his dad. A war hero who travels to faraway lands where they discover delicious biscuits.

  Whata dozed a little. They’d been driving for so long he felt like it was too late to thump on the window and let Uncle know he was back here. Might as well hold out until the end, ’cause it probably couldn’t get much worse. He would be in deep, deep trouble by now.

  Finally, Whata heard the rushing indicator again. He saw the orange flash of its lights. He felt the ute begin to slow down and then turn. He looked out and saw the mountain, seasoned with the tiny standing stones. Whata recognised the burial ground immediately. He wondered why Uncle had come here.

  The ute’s motor was cut as abruptly as it had started, and Whata’s ears rang in the sudden near silence. He hadn’t realised how loud the engine’s roaring had been until it was gone. Amid the buzzing in his ears he heard his Uncle pull the key out of the ignition and open the door. Crunch, crunch came his uncle’s boot steps on the gravel shoulder. He slammed the door behind himself, and Whata slouched down as low as he could, tensing in suspense, dreading his impending discovery.

  But his uncle moved around the front of the vehicle and opened the other door, which groaned in protest. Whata let out an almost groan too – not quite of relief, but one that meant he was grateful for the extra time. He realised he hadn’t come up with any excuses for being back here.

  He heard Uncle begin to walk away, the sound of his feet tapering as he got further from the ute. He sat up to spy on him. He was carrying something in his hands. Whata couldn’t quite tell what it was in the dim light. It might have been a spade. He tilted his head to the side, wondering what Uncle would need a spade here for. There weren’t any gardens to be dug up. Only big, flat stones with writing on them.

  Behind him, another car rolled up. Two. Three. More of his uncles were arriving, and they too were carrying things. That’s weird, thought Whata, as they followed Uncle Dave onto the mountain. The last one turned and spotted Whata crouched in the grubby tray of the ute. His eyes betrayed his surprise, and then showed another emotion that Whata couldn’t quite pick. Whata bent lower, shyly meeting his eyes, waiting for his punishment to come. But it didn’t. Instead, his uncle smiled at him sadly – how could a smile look so sad? Whata wondered absentmindedly – and began to walk to the ute. Once he reached it, Whata moved away from the edge, still waiting for a grilling, but his uncle held out his hand.

  ‘Come on, little big man,’ he said softly. That was Dad’s nickname for him.

  Whata looked up at the big, lonely hill behind his uncle. All of a sudden, he wanted to be back on the road. Lying back on the dusty metal of the ute, watching the sky whizz above him. He wanted to be worrying about getting in trouble and how hard the smack on his bum was gonna be. But now he had to get out of the ute, and there was something not right about that. Something not normal and not good. Whata whimpered.

  ‘It’s OK, little big man,’ his uncle said to him. Reaching out with his arms now. His wide open arms and his sad smile.

  Whata let his uncle’s big arms help him down and held on tight to his hand as they walked together, away from the ute and towards the dark rows of stones.

  The Dance

  Frazer Rangihuna

  ‘Happy eightieth Tabby,’ I huff into my crochet, waiting for this birthday party I never wanted. They’d believe me if I said I was poorly, at my age, but I’ve left it too late. I told my daughter Hokimate I didn’t need anyone to remind me how close I am to either Te Rerenga Wairua or Gehenna.

  She’d just said, ‘You’re only as old as the man you feel, Māmā!’ Well, the last man I felt was her dead father, so she’ll have to forgive me for not breaking into waiata over it. I can just imagine what the guests will say, too. ‘Oh Tabby, you never seem to age – what’s your secret?’ I could share the beauty tip my grandmother had given me – to wash your face in upward strokes – but what they’re really asking an old person for is wit or wisdom. And with the speed of my reply, they could be fooled into believing it comes naturally to me. But it hasn’t, and it doesn’t. It’s only because I’ve had more time to pore over everything, and I’m at peace with most things – even passing over.

  Maybe Hokimate, on the other hand, is wishing me a slow death? I often ask her, ‘Where will you be in twenty years, darling?’, so she’ll think where I’ll be, but she never bites. Apparently, we’ll move back to the old homestead in Rua. My bedroom will open out on to a stream, where she’ll catch me fresh eel for breakfast every day. And for all its fickleness as a plan, it’s good to know what happiness would be for her. So I’m not dying any faster at least, wondering.

  I look up from my lap, then my fingers move to the beauty spot above my lips. I’m taken back to the past. Those days when my beauty agreed with everyone. How I loved to watch Uncle Tutu smile at his past – when he took my hand and said, ‘You remind me of your Aunty Tai when she was young, sweetheart. Will you allow an old fool a dance sometime?’

  He had been rattled – told us prisoner-of-war stories of urine that turned into ice before it eddied around the bottom of a metal bucket, and grizzly German shepherds prowling barbed-wire fences. One time, when river stones were being tipped out of a trailer for a hāngi, he tackled the first person he saw, then wriggled on top of him, screaming ‘Stay down! They’ll see you! Stay down!’ He was never fully with us, poor Tutu. Always humming ‘Māori Battalion march to victory’ cheerily in his throat, which I believed was a tribute to his fallen brothers, now sleeping under soft duvets of ryegrass. The last time I saw him alive was at a formal held at our marae that everyone who was anyone attended.

  Under the party lights, I had watched girls being approached by boys from every angle like silvereyes on a tree fuchsia.

  Someone touched my shoulder. It was Uncle Tutu and a gangly boy with boyfriend potential, scratching himself in a wool suit. He was very handsome, with his hair slicked cleanly away from the part, a Māori nose and ochre eyes.

  ‘I’m still
waiting for that dance, Tabitha’, said Uncle Tutu. ‘But this boy asked if he could go first.’

  ‘Uncle – I didn’t,’ the boy started, then stopped at an elbow in the ribs.

  He offered me his hand. ‘Kia ora – I’m Tui. May I, Tabitha?’

  I took his clammy hand, felt the fine hairs on my forearms excite as he led me to the dance floor in a stream of minted hair oil and musk. As he pinched the chiffon at my waist, we began to dance.

  ‘Sorry about this, Tabitha – Uncle Tutu’s always trying to play Cupid. Says he’s seen corpses trying harder to look alive than me.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s fine, Tui, I love to dance. Just don’t step on my toes, because I’m not dressed for a jive.’

  He winked. ‘It’s a deal.’

  We waltzed nervously through ‘My Funny Valentine’ and ‘Lili Marlene’. By the time ‘Blue Smoke’ began to play, Tui had stopped counting steps, and I could feel his natural rhythm. Every now and then our eyes would meet before his gaze fell off the side of my face, but I wasn’t fussed.

  ‘This song makes me feel like I’m on a beach in Hawaii – when I’m not listening to the words, anyway,’ he said, as we moved together in a gentle waewae takahia.

  ‘Yes – I don’t even want to think how painful it must have been to farewell your loved ones, knowing you might never be back.’

  He gripped my hand a bit tighter. ‘It’d be horrible. But it’s telling us something.’

  An answer hummed in my throat.

  ‘Relax, Tabitha. I mean all of us.’ He gave me a weak smile, then gazed over to Uncle Tutu in a khaki suit and wearing his war medals. He looked comfortable among swirls of smoke and flashing lights.

  Then Tui stood still, and I felt dizzy. The people around us blurred into colours. ‘Tabitha – can I …’

  ‘Can you what, Tui?’

  WhiIe I waited for his answer, I felt an unfriendly poke at my collarbone. Queenie Mōrehu stood there, big-boned, big-breasted, under a millefeuille of opal. My first cousin, whose mother married a man from up north, bringing flat noses and big lips into our bloodline.

  ‘Can I cut in?’ she asked – no, demanded.

  Tui itched in his suit again. I heard a long ‘um’ behind his lips. ‘Uh, Queenie, I’m dancing with Tabitha; we’re not finished yet.’

  She cracked a knuckle. ‘Well, you owe me, Tui-tuia. I waited for you all day on Saturday!’

  ‘No, you said you’d be waiting for me. I told you I had a rugby game. Not my fault you’ve got no ears.’

  ‘Well, you can make up for it now, Tui-tuia’, she said, then gave me a shoo-fly look. ‘He’s mine now, Tabby. Go and dance with one of those boys drooling over you.’

  It was all true, too. He was hers a month later, but I hadn’t started to hate her, yet. No, it was still a test of tolerance between us – like pretending you didn’t mean for an unwanted visitor to catch you gazing at your watch. Besides, I was trying to figure out what these strange feelings were.

  Of course Queenie made sure I didn’t feature in the wedding.

  I remember Nanny Maude, Hokimate’s namesake, patting a chair next to her, waiting for me to sit down. She groaned disapproval under her breath, to a domino run of eye-rolling down the pew. ‘Good grief, bub, tie a rope around that one and we can all go for a blimp ride!’

  She watched my jaw drop.

  ‘Auf, as if you weren’t thinking the same’.

  Tui didn’t look happy. He just stared into hundreds of thought bubbles in the baptismal font next to him. His eyes stayed dull when Queenie walked towards him, shinier than her taffeta gown.

  ‘That would be a love-me-not,’ said Nanny as she pulled a petal off her corsage. ‘Poor man; I suppose Tutu’s death made him panic – he thought he’d die alone.’ She pushed a handkerchief to her mouth. ‘Did you know anything about the rumour going around, bub?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, apparently, Tui told your Nanny Mihinui that he has deep feelings for you. Hell, but no one would dare to get close enough to ask her if it was true.’

  I said nothing. Just turned the shock away with my face.

  Deep feelings? Then why didn’t he tell me?

  Queenie’s back left me a poor view, but I could see Tui’s face hover over her shoulder, and our eyes locked.

  ‘For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,’ he said.

  Now, I’m squashing this crochet of flowers in my fist, thinking hindsight is a fine thing, isn’t it? The afternoon sun has hit the back of the curtains, turning me into Albert’s blushing bride. He could never win – being Pākehā and a Christian. But he withstood everything they threw at him. Nannies tiptoed on the steps of the paepae to make sure they were always above him, and men held their breath during the hongi. My Nanny Mihinui had even woven me a harakeke chastity belt for a wedding gift. But obviously I never used it. If I did, then maybe I’d be able to hide under my blankets all day. Until it was all over.

  Suddenly the door flings open with the smell of chocolate and burning wax. In marches my grandson, singing, ‘Why was she born so beau-ti-ful?’

  ‘Why was she born at – Happy birthday, Māmā!’ shouts Hokimate.

  I know why I was born so beautiful – it’s a curse of half-caste children. I’ve met many expectant mothers who’ve rubbed their crystal ball bellies, hoping to see olive skin and a father’s green eyes. If I had been born one or the other, living in two worlds at the same time wouldn’t have been so difficult. ‘Haumi e, hui e’ one minute, ‘hallowed be thy name’ the next. I was mana whenua any day of the week, except for Sundays – when we were all wretched sinners.

  ‘What’s it like being eighty, Nan?’

  I point at Jesus hammered to the wall. ‘He saved the whole world by the time he was in his thirties, and all I’ve done is outlive him. No great feat, when a twenty-year-old bitch is 140 in human years.’

  Hokimate’s sigh moves the candle flames. ‘Auf, that’s pōrangi talk, Māmā. You’ve plenty to be proud of. Now make a wish and blow out these candles, please. My chest is sweating bullets from the heat!’

  Just who am I bowing my head to when I’m making a wish? I wonder. If it’s to show subservience to anyone, I want no part of it. Been there, worn the head covering.

  So I tell her eyes, ‘The only thing I wish is for my daughter to find a nice man, who shares an ancestor and blesses me with another grandchild – please.’

  ‘Auf Māmā, you weren’t spose’ to say it out loud!’

  ‘Then how were you supposed to know what I wished for? What an old woman wishes for.’

  ‘OK then, so how much longer do I have to wait for Kelvin Davis to come knocking down my door?’

  ‘Well, I know this lovely couple in Waipuk. Hikurangi maunga, of course. They have a handsome boy, about your age. I could give them a call?’

  Hoki frowns. ‘Hika, so he’s fifty and still living with his parents?’

  ‘He has his own en suite.’

  She pulls a face, as if she’s about to sneeze. ‘And if he’s so handsome, why isn’t he married yet?’

  ‘He’s slightly … oh, what’s the politically correct word?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Retarded.’

  I hear the splat of an open hand to her chest. ‘That’ll be the bloody day, Māmā! Anyway, the guests have arrived. Come on, girl.’

  Out on the driveway, I have to shield my eyes to see through heatwaves snaking off the asphalt. There’s Queenie, in her polka-dot muumuu, and mothers bringing their children to heel by their shirt tails. A car slows down to a crawl, with a load of faces like pot stickers thrown at the windows. It’s all very strange. No one is moving forward, all still waewae tapu. This is hardly a marae, but I’m getting the same feeling – that silence means someone should be doing something.

  But I know it’s all supposed to begin with the cries of two women.

  ‘Hika, are these ones waiting for your ninetieth, Māmā? Surely they don’t want
to be welcomed on?’

  ‘I’d say they do, Hoki.’

  ‘Auf, blimmin’ hōhā! Hika, and I thought Pākehā were the worst for dial-a-pōwhiri!’ she scoffs, and kicks off her heels. Mouth open, she tries to bring up a wail. I push a finger against her lips.

  ‘Hoki, I’ve got this,’ I say, thinking she has nothing to cry about.

  Across the way, it seems that Queenie has finally reached kāea status. Not to the centre right of me any more, as she was accustomed to being in our kapa haka years. I’ve barely opened my mouth when Queenie chants over me, so loudly a neighbour’s peeved face appears in the window, then slams it shut. So much for waiting her turn – but that’s never stopped her before. She was the first to menstruate, to have children. So how should I – how should anyone reply to someone shouting like this?

  Queenie is approaching too boldly; not with the measured steps of manuhiri. She’s pushed her way in front of Tui. Showing no respect for him trying to protect her as a bearer of a womb. No, it’s all exposed and ugly.

  I look at her, and I still don’t know why Tui wasn’t enough for her. Why did she choose my priest? My husband?

  That’s why I hate tui (the bird, that is). They remind me of what I had married. With his fancy black suit and white collar. Everyone stopped in their tracks to be taken in by his beautiful song, and who knows how many sticky flowers he had plunged his beak into? Is it only me who noticed his bullying tactics, or how chaotic he looked in full flight?

  ‘I’m glowing you say? It’s the radiance of Christ.’

  ‘Oh, that black hair? I was consoling a crying child.’

  ‘I must work the works of Him who sends me while it’s day – but I’ll be home late.’