Huia Short Stories 10

by Tihema Baker

  That night I think briefly about knocking on the door of my own home before going inside. I’ve never in my life had to knock before, but I have no idea what I am going to find on the other side. I’ve already made up my mind if my mother is drinking tonight, I’ll leave and go and live with Dad for good, but when I finally do open the door, she is standing at the kitchen sink busy slicing onions and carrots.

  ‘Hiya,’ I say, determined to start everything off on a positive note.

  When my mother drinks, her eyes go all bloodshot and she never makes proper eye contact, but tonight the whites of her eyes are clear and she looks straight at me.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask. We kiss, then hug, which is unusual. Mum isn’t a hugging sort of person, but tonight she holds me close, and even though I am wary, I’ve missed my mother and hug her back. I’m not a sulker. Never have been.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I whisper into her hair.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Not drinking.’

  ‘I promised you, and this time I mean it,’ she says. Mum pulls away and carries on slicing at the sink. I put a circle of carrot into my mouth.

  ‘I’m going up to the hospital as soon as I’ve finished here. Do you want to stay for tea?’ Mum says.

  ‘Yep. I can stay the rest of the week if you want. He won’t die will he?’

  ‘No, he’ll be OK. They want me to take his things through, but I have no idea where he keeps his key. I only hope his neighbour knows.’

  Which is so weird. I can’t imagine not knowing where Dad keeps his key.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No. Thanks, anyway. I’ll be fine.’ Why can’t she just accept an offer of help?

  The phone rings, and I hear Mum mention Aunty Ruby’s name. No one has seen Aunty Ruby for years. She lives in Australia, but I still have vague memories of her. A thin, scarecrow-looking woman who chain-smoked and knocked back Bacardi and Coke all day like it was water. There’s something way wrong with my mother’s family. She’s dropped hints at times over the years, but that’s all. One day I’ll find out what the big mystery is.

  ‘Leaving now.’

  ‘Do you want me to make a dessert?’ I ask, tapping at the keys of my laptop. I’m in the middle of private messaging my friends on Facebook. Dad always teases me about my facials when I PM.

  ‘That laptop of yours could be almost human,’ he says, ‘the way you smile and laugh at it.’

  The only way they communicated with friends when he was young was by landline and if they wanted to know anything, they looked it up in encyclopaedias or went to the library. OMG. How did they do it? I couldn’t bear the thought of not having access to the Internet, and I’d die without my cell phone.

  ‘A dessert would be nice. I should be home around seven at the latest.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come?’

  ‘Quite sure. I’ll phone when I know what’s happening, and Anna …’

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘Thanks, and yes, I’d like you to stay.’

  ‘No worries.’

  As soon as Mum closes the door, I text Pearl.

  Wassup?

  U heard bout Celia?

  No?

  In Plymth hospital. Baby due nxt wk. Wana go c her?

  Celia is a friend of ours who had to leave school when she got pregnant.

  Yup I cn drve us thru. Tues OK?

  Kewl C u tomoro?

  C U J

  The following Tuesday I drive a carload of mates through to Plymouth hospital to visit Celia. Celia is only seventeen and almost a mother. OMG. How sad is that? Everyone chats non-stop all the way through about having babies.

  ‘Imagine being stretched open like that. Gross as,’ someone says.

  ‘Enough to put you off ever having sex,’ someone else says.

  ‘It could be kind of cool though to have someone dependent on you,’ Pearl says, ‘Someone to love.’

  ‘Nah. It’d be a pain,’ Abbey says, ‘especially when they wake up in the middle of the night like my little brother does all the time or when he does those baby shits that leak out the sides of his nappies and run down his legs.’

  I’ve arranged to meet Mum in ward three, where my grandfather is a patient, while the others stay on with Celia. I stop at the hospital florist on the way, choose a bunch of bright orange and yellow flowers then catch the lift to the third floor. The receptionist tells me Mr Stevens is in room 321.

  I ask for a vase, and the receptionist disappears and comes back with something that looks suspiciously like a coffee jar. I walk down the ward corridor, amazed at how close I am to sick people wandering round in their pyjamas. I could have been walking through their private bedrooms. Some of the patients are asleep on their beds, others sit in chairs looking as though the world has come to an end. There’s no privacy at all, and I try not to stare, but I can’t help myself. It doesn’t matter though because no one seems to care what I do. Not once does anyone stop to ask me who I am. I could be anybody nosing through the ward, a weirdo pervert or a stalker. When I arrive at room 321 my grandfather is asleep and my mother is standing at the end of his bed. I kiss her on the cheek.

  ‘Have to pick the girls up in an hour. They’re visiting Celia. They said it was a false labour, whatever that is. She’s going home tomorrow to wait for the real one.’

  Mum looks as though she doesn’t even want to be there. I start arranging the flowers in a jar and try to start a conversation.

  ‘The receptionist called this a vase,’ I laugh. ‘Puhleez. It’s a coffee jar.’ Mum doesn’t speak, just stands like a statue at the end of the bed.

  My grandfather stirs then, and he looks up at me. He tries to talk, but all that comes out of his mouth are weird sounds, a couple of words that sound like ‘beedle’ and ‘fricken’ and then he starts to cry, his crinkled old eyes filling with tears. One of his hands is all curled up on top of the blankets, and his mouth is crooked, his left cheek puffed out as though it is full of cotton wool. He pulls his good hand from underneath the blankets, holds it out above the bed as though he wants to touch me. I take a step back, scared for a moment. Mum goes all weird when that happens as though she’s going to lean over and pull me away, out of his reach, but in the end, she doesn’t. She stays where she is at the foot of the bed. Sometimes I just don’t get my mother. She acts so totally crazy at times.

  Afterwards I drive the girls back to Waitapu. They talk about Celia all the way back, her ginormous stomach and boobs, her stretch marks and Matt, her drop dead boyfriend, but I can’t stop thinking about my mother, the way she was in that room with her own father. He was like a stranger to her. I can’t imagine ever being like that with my father. Why was she like that? Why does she seem to hate him so much? In some ways I feel sorry for my grandfather, but I hardly know him. In fact I hardly know any of my mother’s family. My grandmother died when I was very young, but my mother says I have her dark eyes and her singing voice. I know my grandmother was Māori and that she came from somewhere up north but that’s all I know.

  There are times when I want so much to be part of a big family with cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents who love you. Like Pearl’s family. I envy the way she belongs. My grandfather’s family is from England. We’ve never met any of them, and my father’s parents are both dead. They died when I was a baby. If Aunty Ruby lived closer maybe I could talk to her about everything that’s going on. I’m sure family would understand things better than anyone else. Even though I’ve got friends, there are times when I feel completely alone.

  Mum isn’t home when I arrive back in Waitapu, and I sit for a while on the couch, channel surfing. I watch a reality programme for a while. OMG. How can anything be ‘reality’ when everyone knows they are being filmed? I flick to a music then a doco channel, but I can’t concentrate. What I’d seen at the hospital keeps playing through my mind. My mother standing at the end of the bed, stiff and serious and my grandfather lying in that bed, so alone.
I pick at a bowl of stale chips, check my Facebook page but in the end decide to go to bed.

  I am still awake when Mum comes in, I hear kitchen noises, a tap running, cupboards opening and closing and then the sickening clink of a wine bottle against glass. No way! I pull the covers off my bed, storm down the hall in my flimsy nightie.

  ‘You promised! You promised me!’

  ‘Just one, Anna, I’m only having one.’

  ‘But it’s never just one! Never!’ I grab the bottle of wine and pour it down the sink.

  ‘Anna! What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘God, what is it with you? Why all the mystery at the hospital today? What was that all about? You need to tell me. I need to know. I have a right to know!’

  My mother says nothing, just stands there looking as if she is going to cry, and it’s only then I notice her dirt-streaked shoes, her hair covered in dust, smears of dirt on her face. She looks as though she’s been in a fight.

  ‘What the hell’s happened to you?’ I ask.

  ‘I had some thinking to do. I drove up to the lookout to get my head sorted,’ she says, ‘I got a bit carried away. They want me to look after him when he’s discharged. God. If it wasn’t so serious it’d be funny.’

  ‘But it’s only natural, isn’t it? To look after your father? I’d do the same if it were Dad.’

  ‘Yes I know you would, but what if he’d treated you badly? He hasn’t of course, but what if? What then?’ She looks as though she is going to cry again. ‘It’s all too hard, way too hard.’

  ‘What has he done that’s so bad? Why can’t you tell me?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. She tips the wine from her glass down the sink. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why can’t you trust me to understand?’

  ‘Because you might not like what you hear.’

  ‘In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not a little kid anymore.’

  ‘I know. I know you’re not.’

  The following week at college I’m walking from biology to English with a group of friends when my mother texts me.

  Ok to phone?

  Yup

  I slow down, letting the others go on ahead, and wait for my mother’s call.

  ‘Hiya, Mum.’

  ‘Just to let you know, I’ve made a decision. Your grandfather’s going to Eventide, the rest home, for the time being. It’s all arranged. Can we meet later for coffee?’

  ‘Sweet as. You OK?

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  ‘Where to for coffee?’

  ‘Starbucks, OK? We need to talk.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Everything. There are things you need to know. Like you said, you have a right to know.’

  It has been raining on and off all morning. We’ve had to run between classes, covering our heads with books and backpacks, but now the sun shines down, hot, on the wet footpath in front of me. Steam rises from the concrete.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘After school. Three thirty OK?’

  ‘All good.’

  ‘Love you.’

  ‘Love you, too.’

  The air is thick and muggy now, almost tropical. My phone vibrates again as soon as I hang up.

  OMG Gess wot! Celia hd a boy! He’s beautiful.

  The photo Pearl texts of the baby is seriously cute. His face is all squashed and wrinkled, and he looks a bit like a little old man, but his eyes are wide open, dark and shiny.

  I’m looking forward to coffee with Mum. Whatever she has to say might answer some of the questions I have, help explain things. I’m a little scared, but for some reason nothing seems as bad as it did a few days ago. Instead there’s a kind of buzz in the air, the same sort of nervous feeling I get before singing solo in the choir in front of the whole school. Maybe I could even tell Mum about my own weird feelings, the feelings that have been freaking me out so much.

  The sun is bright now, everything glistening after the rain. When I catch up to my friends, the scared feeling is almost gone. Instead I feel as though something good is about to happen, something new and exciting. I’m not sure what yet. All I know is, on this day, at this moment, it feels seriously good to be alive.

  Tank

  Tangai Waranga

  The fastest way to get to school was through the grass alleyway, still wet with night dew. It flowed out onto the school sports field, a wide green harbour, larger than any open space the young girl had ever seen. The grass clipped neatly from this alleyway over to the next, by the quiet creek, 500 paces south. To the west of the field boomed the motorway, with cars screaming past the tall fitzing pylons. The girl feared those mast towers, believing they scorched the hair and skin of anyone who dared to get too close.

  Tamāhine’s grandfather had recently passed away, and it had been decided that she should leave her mother, father, sister and brothers to live with her grandmother. She wasn’t sure why she had been picked.

  Living at her grandparents’ state house already were her two cousins, the son of the mātāmua and the son of her uncle, her grandparents’ whāngai.

  Her grandfather had been a hard man, but Tamāhine had never known that side of him. To her he was Papa, the kindly grandfather who teased her. To his youngest whāngai son he was a harsh disciplinarian. Tamāhine had seen Papa beat Tini when he’d been mischief; had heard her cousin pleading with him to stop, but she’d never seen him lay a hand on the mātāmua’s son.

  No one had asked her if she wanted to stay with her nan; it just happened. She wasn’t even sure if she’d been enrolled at school – she just turned up at class. She knew most of the kids from her class. Some were from her grandparents’ street or from around the corner. Here at this school Tamāhine realised that not all brown people were Māori: she had classmates from Rarotonga, Samoa, Tonga and Niue. Those islands sounded mysterious, exotic and always hot. She had no idea where they were. The majority of the school were Polynesian and the rest were Pākehā. It didn’t seem like such a big deal in those days.

  She turned to skip to the east, a hundred steps to the warmed black asphalt playground with the gold painted netball court lines, competing crossways with white tennis court stripes. Entering the gate, she sailed past the fence and bounced up the six-foot slope to where the squat rectangular prefabricated classrooms were anchored.

  Four grey prefabs huddled around an internal courtyard of criss-crossed paths next to patches of stunted grass with drinking fountains, benches and rubbish bins. The lengthwise side of the prefabs had big windows that faced the courtyard, while the opposite wall had much smaller windows higher up.

  Tamāhine, ten years old, dark haired, olive skinned, barefoot and stocky, trotted through the porch into the classroom foyer. She hung her bag on the hook and pulled out her exercise books, all the while singing along to the pop tune pouring out of the classroom. ‘Mexico, Mexico, Mexico. Mexi – co-oh-oooo …’

  The bell rang, so she hurried in. Her teacher was already turning off the record player. He glanced at her. ‘You’re late, Tank; the bell’s already rung. No playing the record player for you.’

  Tamāhine was crushed. ‘Sorry, Mr Elare.’

  Her teacher was of average height; a white man with glasses, thinning hair, a moustache and hairy arms, fingers and legs. His smell to her was what the old people called haunga Pākehā – a different smell from that of Māori and Polynesians, very strong and almost unpleasant.

  She scurried to sit at her table as he called the class roll. She would have liked to play the record player and choose a song. Kirsty, who lived on her street, caught her eye and pulled a face. Kirsty always got to school early, and Mr Elare always called her by her real name.

  Mr Elare never allowed her to play the record player. He seemed to think she was too clumsy and would break it. She didn’t mind when the others, even the biggest boys, played ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ or ‘That’ll Be the Day’, because everyone got to listen after all.

  Tamāhine a
nd some of the other girls had been given nicknames by their teacher. Rangi was Lady, Sally was Queenie, Masina was Princess and Salote was Duchess. Salote hated the name Duchess, because she was named for her grandmother.

  Mr Elare called Tamāhine Tank, because of her size. Tamāhine really thought that her brown self was of a standard line. She didn’t mind the name too much – it made her sound tough when they played bull-rush at lunch and playtime – but it wasn’t her choice.

  Tamāhine loved playing patter tennis, netball, squares and elastics with the other girls. She also enjoyed bull-rush, rugby and races with the boys. Her friends called her Tama or Tomboy.

  She’d even gone to the home of one of the Pākehā boys in her class to play battleships after school. Her friend had taken her inside his house and introduced her to his beautiful young mother. She seemed very nice, and pleased to meet her son’s friends. Sometime during the afternoon, Mr Elare was there, talking to her. Tamāhine was surprised. It was the first time she had ever seen a teacher outside school, and it made her shy. She went home.

  On this day after school, Mr Elare told Tamāhine, Rangi, Sally, Masina and Salote that he had a special task for them to help him with. He took them into Room 4, across the courtyard. They walked through the empty classroom to the office at the back, and on a long bench across a wall were ten stacks of blue carbon pages. Mr Elare told them to start from this end, gather one page from each stack, staple them neatly and pile them up tidily at the other end.

  Every one of the girls was pleased, and promptly starting bustling around importantly, happy to show Teacher how helpful they could be. They worked away, stacking and stapling as fast as they could, and turned it into a race. They had fun.

  Tamāhine didn’t realise the other girls had left until Mr Elare said, ‘Come stand over here, Tank. I want to talk to you.’ He sat down in a chair and motioned her over. He was dressed as always in dress shorts – that day they were blue – a short-sleeved shirt, long socks and lace-up shoes. He leaned back in the chair, crossed his arms over his head and looked across at her.

  ‘Well, Tank, I’ve been waiting to talk to you for a long time about your scowling and surliness. Other teachers have commented about you playing rough games with the boys. It’s not a good situation.’