And I would have let go. Because babies and little kids know; they know that life is unfair and that they’re just tiny, tiny – insignificant. Then adults teach them that they’re special, that they’re the centre of the world, that it’s enough that they’re just here participating. And then ten years later you wake up and you know that they’re lies; you are not, you are not, you are not … enough.
So in my head that little me screams, not just for then; for now, forever. And it is true and honest and real. Mum just stands there and looks at me, except now her face looks as it does now. She leans over me, not down to pick me up, to soothe me with It’s all right, you’re OK because she doesn’t really know if I will be. She leans over and turns on the stereo and then walks to the table, pulls out a chair and sits down. She stares at the wall, not at me. She just sits there and lets my cries and the music eddy around her – she is a rock, unmoved.
She is in shorts and a singlet.
Her work shirt stripped off and on the floor.
Her hair long and in a high pony.
The hair at her neck curls with sweat.
She is young, so young, but tired.
This song is for her.
Staring at the wall, unmoved. I cry for her and she does too.
But memory is a tricky thing. Sometimes I think it’s more about what’s happening now rather than what happened then. I can’t be remembering it right, because Nikki cannot be defeated by anyone, let alone a baby. My mum is stronger than that.
‘Are you crying, Bugs?’ Stone Cold sounds like she’s going to crack up.
‘No.’ I wipe my face with my sleeve. ‘It’s just hay fever. Silver birch trees.’
‘Yeah,’ Jez says. ‘Bugs always gets snotty, eh? Sniffing, sniffing. That’s how you got your nickname, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hang on. What’s that got to do with bugs? Like Bugs as in bugs, bugs right?’
‘Nah,’ Jez says. ‘As in Bunny.’
‘Oh,’ she says, as if everything about me suddenly makes sense. ‘I thought it was Bugs, like a bug, y’know, an insect?’
Bitch did not just call me an insect.
‘Y’know, because you’re so short.’
‘Can you turn this up?’ I say to Jez. ‘I love this song.’ I have no idea what it is, but anything is better than talking to her. The dark closes in on us, narrowing our world to just the road picked out by our headlights.
‘Take a left up here.’ Jez suits being a navigator. ‘Up this driveway.’
The security light announces our arrival as we crunch, crunch across the gravel up to the house. We’re barely on the verandah when the door opens and Nan is standing there, fuming about something.
‘Your mother is worried sick.’
Shit.
‘Come in, come in.’ Nan stands aside so we can file into the hall. ‘No point you getting cold. Go through to the lounge while I ring your mother.’
I lead Jez and Stone Cold to the lounge. We are blasted with heat as I open the door, but strangely it is not comforting like it usually is. Pop is asleep in his chair with Blue at his feet and Uncle is watching TV.
Uncle looks up at us and says, ‘You guys are so busted.’
I sit on the floor next to Blue and gently pull his ears through my hands. ‘We didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘Didn’t you? Good luck trying to convince your mum.’
Jez walks over to Uncle, leaving Stone Cold standing at the door. Uncle makes room for him on the couch and they do one of those complicated handshake things that guys think are cool.
‘The Outlaw, eh? Jezzy James.’ Uncle drawls it like a cowboy, milking it for any comedy he can. ‘With a chick on each arm.’
Pop throws the remote at Uncle, hitting him on the arm. ‘Your niece is not a “chick”, Boy.’ Yeah ‘Boy’, I’m not a ‘chick’. That’s what you’ve got to look out for with Pop. He looks all still and whatever on the outside, but he’s just listening and waiting.
‘What are you doing just standing there, girl?’ Nan is prodding Stone Cold into the lounge like a reluctant milk-drunk calf. ‘Sit down so we can close the door. Don’t want to lose all that nice warm air, eh?’
Stone Cold looks around the room like Goldilocks trying to decide which chair to destroy. In the end she plonks herself next to me and pats Blue on his arthritic hip. Blue curls around and gruffs at her to keep her hands to herself, and for once she takes the hint, and starts picking her shoes.
Nan sits down in her La-Z-Boy – her and Pop have matching ones that ‘fell off the back of a truck’. But they don’t have a scratch on them, eh? Nan doesn’t put her footrest up; she just sits there and rocks and rocks.
‘Am I in trouble?’ I say it to Blue, not wanting to look at Nan.
‘Yes.’ Nan’s just straight-up. Uncle is kind of haw-hawing, so Nan shoots a look at him and he shuts his mouth, but every now and then a laugh escapes from between his teeth, phhht, like he’s leaking air.
‘Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re staying here the night.’ Nan points at Stone Cold. ‘This one is not supposed to be driving at night, let alone with these two.’
‘How did Mum find out?’
Nan looks at me like she’s weighing up whether I can be trusted with the information. ‘She finished work early so she could bring home ice cream for you.’ Nan hits all the guilt buttons. Sometimes I forget that she’s a mother too and knows what to push. ‘Because the two of you were supposed to be sleeping around.’
Uncle can’t stop the laughter this time, and he takes Jez down with him. I have to bite my lip to stop smiling, which I know would just piss off Nan.
‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’
But he can’t stop laughing. Sometimes if you just bottle something up for too long it just fizzes out of control, like Mentos in Diet Coke.
‘Sleep over, Nan,’ I say to her. ‘We were meant to be having a sleepover.’
‘That’s what I said. So your mother brought you home ice cream for your sleepover, and you weren’t home. So she thought maybe you were at this one’s place.’ She points at Stone Cold again. It’s funny how she doesn’t use her name – and then I remember I haven’t introduced her, which will be another demerit point in Nan’s book. ‘So she called her mother.’ Fuck. Mum sure likes spreading the drama. I reach over and give Stone Cold’s hand a little I’m sorry squeeze, but she shakes off my touch.
‘So this one’s mother says, “Oh, Char drove around to your place ages ago,” to my Nikki.’ So Nan does know Stone Cold’s name, but she’s still not using it. ‘And then she said, “Maybe they walked into town.” And Nikki said to her “Why would they walk if they could drive?”’ Nan leans in a little bit towards me and Stone Cold. ‘And do you know what your mother said?’ Stone Cold shakes her head, No.
‘She said, “Oh no, Char wouldn’t do that; she’s only on her restricted; she can’t take passengers.” Which was a funny thing for Nikki to hear, Bugs, since she was only staring at her own car in the driveway.’ Nan looks at Stone Cold again. ‘Can you guess what else your mother said?’
‘That my car would be taken away if I drove other people on my restricted.’
She should have said she couldn’t remember, or just shrugged or something, but no, Stone Cold just goes and confesses.
‘That’s right. Funny how you can remember that now and not then, eh?’ Nan looks back at me – I reckon she’s really getting into this story. Rock, rock, rocking away in front of the fireplace, spinning a yarn, a fairy tale. Except there’ll be no happily ever after once she’s done with us.
‘Then Nikki rings Jez’s mum.’ I look at Jez; he just shrugs. But I’m getting pissed off. Yeah, I can understand me being in trouble, but why did Mum have to dump everyone in it?
‘Why didn’t she call me?’
Nan looks annoyed that I’m interrupting the plot. ‘She did, but you didn’t pick up. Don’t you roll your eyes at me; she was worried about you. We all were.’
Until we rocked up here. Not a whole lot of concern since we drove up.
Uncle has his hands out like a viewfinder, framing my head between the square of his fingers and thumbs.
‘What are you doing?’ I want to add dick but Nan would probably clip me around the ears.
‘I’m just trying to memorise what you look like before Nikki beats your ass.’ Uncle tries to yuck, yuck it up with Jez, but he’s gone all tense, his hands wadding into fists.
Nan looks at Jez. Nah, she sees Jez. She rocks one more time in her chair to give herself a little momentum to stand. ‘You kids must be hungry. Look at this one, skinny thing.’ Stone Cold smiles at Nan like it is a compliment – not in this house, chick. Nan holds her hand out. ‘C’mon Jez, you can help me.’
Jez stands up and takes her hand. Nan holds his hand tight and pats him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll make something good for you to eat; you need feeding up, boy.’
I kind of relax into Blue, thinking I’m off the hook, but she nudges me with her foot as she walks past. ‘Bugs, you and that one go make up the spare room.’
So I push myself up to my feet and help Stone Cold up on her spindly legs. Pop, who’s just been lying there the whole time not saying anything, beckons me with a couple of fingers, and I’m shit scared, because if Pop has something to say it must be serious. He pulls me in closer and kisses me on the cheek.
‘I’m glad you’re safe. Don’t ever do that to me again.’
I nod and he lets me go.
Me and Stone Cold are sharing the bed in the spare room. Funny; until tonight I had always thought that this was my room. Well, Mum’s and my room. But I guess it’s just spare, just waiting for anyone to fill it. Not special, not owned, not mine. The bed is old and a bit lumpy. If you don’t sleep on the edge you roll into the dip in the middle. Stone Cold has rolled into the dip, so I’m teetering on the edge. She keeps putting her huge feet on mine. They’re cold, and I keep shifting away but she keeps putting them on me, leeching my heat.
‘I don’t think your Nan likes me.’ She says it like it should be news to me. ‘She kept calling me “that one” or “this one”; it’s weird.’
She’s a good judge of character. ‘She’s just shy.’
‘Shy? She isn’t shy.’ Even though it’s dark, I know she’s rolling her eyes. ‘Shy. Whatever.’
‘You have to earn her trust, then.’
‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna happen.’ Stone Cold rolls onto her stomach, making the whole bed buck underneath me. The springs groan and I feel embarrassed in case someone hears it and thinks we’re … ‘What do you think she said to Jez?’
‘I don’t know.’ I really don’t and it’s killing me. Nan and Jez were in the kitchen for ages making mince on toast, and I know that Nan would have made that mince in the afternoon, so how long does it take to toast some bread and butter it? And at the table Jez didn’t say anything, just chewed on his toast and stared at his hands, opening and closing his fingers slowly like unfurling leaves. I want to ask him, but Jez is on the floor in Uncle’s room so Uncle can ‘stop any funny business going on’. They picked the right man for the job – Uncle can kill anything funny, that’s for sure.
‘I reckon she told him off.’ Stone Cold shuffles her feet onto mine again, and I can’t shuffle away any more because I’ll fall out of the bed. ‘He was so quiet.’
‘He’s always quiet.’
‘You know what I mean. That’s so unfair; it wasn’t his fault.’ Making it clear whose fault she thinks it is. Does she really want to play this game? I didn’t want to drive out here. She’s been shitty at me since she called her mum after dinner. I don’t want to deal with her attitude anymore, so I want to just get it out in the open.
‘What did Shelley say?’
Stone Cold sighs. ‘Nothing much. Said she didn’t want to air our dirty laundry in public.’
‘But you were on the phone.’
‘I know right? I think she just wants to give me the Shelley Fox command performance tomorrow morning.’ She rolls on her side towards me. ‘Did you ring Nikki?’
‘Nah. She’d yell at me on the phone and then yell at me again in the morning. May as well let her just go mental tomorrow, eh?’
‘You know people on death row get to choose their last meals.’
‘Yeah.’ My feet are cold; she’s drained away all my heat.
‘I wouldn’t choose mince on toast.’
‘Neither.’ I try to think what I’d choose if this was my last day. None of this. I wouldn’t be in this bed with Stone Cold. I wouldn’t have picked Jez up. I wouldn’t have taken my mum’s tape. But that’s easy to think now that it’s done. Because from here I can see how all the little choices added up to this. At the time they were just random pieces of lego – I didn’t know that they’d click together to make a cell.
Stone Cold is already asleep, her snoring made louder by her humungous mouth. But I can’t sleep. My mind is busy trying to remake my choices, brick by brick.
Early morning, and the world is still wet with dew. Me and Jez are leaning against Uncle’s four-wheel drive. It’s a tank of a thing, but unlike Stone Cold’s parents’ one this one is actually used off road – for spotlighting deer, or up on the coast to set up the kontiki on the beach for snapper. Uncle is checking Stone Cold’s car, making sure she has oil and what not, even though we’ve told him she just got it. Stone Cold is going to drive ahead, with us and Uncle following behind in case she gets in trouble. Well, in any more trouble.
Jez is quiet. I probably shouldn’t push it with him, since I got him in this mess, but I really want to know. So I say as casually as possible, ‘What did Nan say to you last night?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Whatever; like my nan wouldn’t have something to say.’
Jez kicks at the gravel, making the stones skip one another like leap frog. ‘She wanted to tell me what my name meant.’
‘What, Jeremy?’
‘Nah, Muka.’
It’s silent again apart from the kick, kick of his feet. ‘Well? What does it mean?’
‘It’s what it is.’
‘Eh?’
‘It’s the stuff in flax. If you peel away the outside, it’s what’s inside. They use it for weaving because it’s strong. It binds things together. It’s what Māui’s ropes were made of when he fished up the North Island and when he tamed the sun.’
‘She told you stories?’
‘Yeah, but it wasn’t just stories; it made me feel … she said I carry it in here.’ He touches his heart. ‘The muka, eh?’ I just look at him, and he gets all flustered. ‘I’m telling it wrong. I don’t know, eh?’ He opens the back door of Uncle’s car and hops in.
I just stand where I am, staring at Uncle and Stone Cold. She’s inside now and turning the engine over. Uncle bangs the roof of the car like they do in stock cars because she’s good to go. She puts her headlights on and just sits there as Uncle walks towards me.
‘Ready to face the music, kid?’
Oh yeah, the music. I wonder if Stone Cold got Uncle to fix her tape deck? Probably not. She seems kind of frightened of him, even though she’s taller. When he was talking to Stone Cold she seemed to hunch down and not really look at him. Mind you, that could be because he’s butt ugly.
‘This is gonna be a fun journey, eh?’ Uncle is the only one talking. ‘Are you two thinking long and hard about what you’ve done?’
I give Uncle the finger, and he just laughs.
It’s a long ride home, made longer by the silence between me and Jez and Uncle’s lame jokes. But I wish it was twice as long; I wish it would take all day. Usually I’d feel happy as we drive up the hill from Wairākei – I love seeing the mountains suddenly pop into view. Stone Cold keeps driving into town as we turn off to drop off Jez. And then suddenly I’m alone in the car with Uncle on the way home.
‘You’ll be all right, Bugs. She’s probably calmed down now.’
‘Mum?’<
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‘Yeah, you’re right. Had a whole night to stew. Sis knows how to nurture a grudge, eh?’
He pulls into the driveway. It is a beautiful spring day; the sky is blue and the daffodils Mum planted in pots are cheerfully yellow. If this was a movie, this would be a happy homecoming, because anger and arguments only ever happen in a storm; not on calm, clear days like this. Mum slides open the ranch slider and stands there with her arms folded, and this isn’t a movie.
Uncle winds down his window. ‘Sis, I have something that belongs to you.’
‘You want a cup of tea?’
‘Nah, I’ve got to get back to the farm.’ Uncle is pushing me out of his car, throwing me to the lions. ‘Busy time of year.’
‘Bugs has never had great timing.’
I wave to Uncle as he pulls away. It’s the first time I’ve wanted him to stay; wanted to hear his lame jokes.
I gather my self-righteousness into a shield and walk straight past Mum towards my room, because really, what did I do wrong? It was Stone Cold who broke the law. I was just there.
She slides the ranch slider shut – so the neighbours can’t hear, although our walls are so thin they probably still will. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To my room.’
‘We have to talk about this.’
‘Like you’re gonna “talk”, Mum.’
‘Do you know how worried I was? Coming home and finding you gone? And then I find out Charmaine has a car and you guys are driving around …’
‘Yeah, thanks for dropping everyone in it. You didn’t have to go around ringing everybody in town …’
‘I was trying to find you.’
‘I was fine.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘I’ve been fine every other night, every other day. What makes yesterday so different?’
‘I came home and you weren’t here.’
‘Yeah, well now you know what it feels like.’
Mum is crying. I can’t believe she’s so easily defeated. Not by me, not by her baby. I thought my mum was stronger than that. Her tears are embarrassing, and I feel disgusted looking at her. She says, ‘You’re grounded.’
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