Cowrie

by Cathie Dunsford

  Cathie Dunsford has taught literature at Auckland University, was Fulbright Post-Doctoral Research Scholar at the University of Berkeley from 1984 to 1986 and has directed three New Zealand Writers’ Conferences. In 1992 Cathie Dunsford completed a lecture tour of Europe, England and the USA and International Feminist Book Fairs in Montreal and Amsterdam.

  Her own writing has appeared in publications in the USA, Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand. A bi-lingual collection of her poetry, Survivors: Uberlebende was published by the University of Osnabrück Press, Germany in 1990. She has edited many collections of writing, including the New Women’s Fiction Series. Her latest anthology, Me and Marilyn Monroe, published by Daphne Brasell Associates Press (NZ) challenges the war against women’s bodies through fiction.

  Cathie Dunsford is director of Dunsford and Associates Publishing Consultants—a feminist owned and run company which searches for, assesses, edits and sells feminist texts to the publishing industry. She currently teaches Creative Writing and Publishing at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

  Other Publications by the Author

  POETRY

  Survivors: Uberlebende, Osnabrück University Press, Germany, 1990

  ANTHOLOGIES

  New Women’s Fiction I (ed), New Women’s Press, NZ, 1986

  The Exploding Frangipani (ed, with Susan Hawthorne), New Women’s Press, NZ, 1990

  Subversive Acts (ed), Penguin, NZ, 1991

  Me and Marilyn Monroe (ed), Daphne Brasell Associates, NZ, 1993

  COWRIE

  Cathie Dunsford

  Spinifex Press Pty Ltd

  504 Queensberry Street

  North Melbourne Vic 3051

  Australia

  women@spinifexpress.com.au

  www.spinifexpress.com.au

  First published by Spinifex Press 1994

  Copyright © Cathie Dunsford 1994

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

  Typeset in Sabon by Claire Warren

  Cover design by Liz Nicholson, Design Bite

  Production by Morgan Blackthorne Productions

  Printed in Australia by Australian Print Group

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  CIP

  Dunsford, Cathie, 1953–

  Cowrie.

  ISBN 978-1-74219-043-3 Master e-book ISBN

  ISBN 978-1-74219-409-7 (ePub Format)

  ISBN 1 875559 28 0

  I. Title.

  NZ823.2

  For Audre Lorde, who took the time to work with me on the first draft, Berlin, August 1992, when she was in the final weeks of her battle with cancer. Her last words to me were to extract a promise to finish the novel. Audre named her hei matau “Cowrie” in honour of the text and Gloria Joseph returned the bone carving for me to wear while working on the final draft.

  Mahalo, Audre. I hope you are pleased with the outcome. Thanks for your honesty, insight and love. I miss you.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Mahalo to:

  Herb Kawainui Kane, for his inspiration and permission to use his superb Pele painting for the cover. Martha Beckwith and Katherine Luolama, for adding to my knowledge of Pele and Laukiamanuikahiki. Dr Trina Nahm-Mijo, University of Hawai‘i, Hilo, Fay Hovey— Volcano Arts Centre; Diane Aki; Jessie and Hanoa; Pele Aloha; Karen Anne (Maui); Andrei Codrescu—Hawai‘i, Hawai‘ian Petroglyphs, H.Cox, E.Stasack, Bishop Museum, Hawai‘i. Beryl Fletcher, Susan Sayer, Daphne Brasell, Geoff Walker, Susan Hawthorne, Renate Klein, Michelle Proctor, Keri Hulme and Doreen Dunsford— all of whom contributed comments at draft stages of writing. Special thanks for the support of the Broomsbury Writers, Powhiri Rika-Heke and Dr Sigrid Markmann; Orlanda Frauenverlag, Audre Lorde and Gloria Joseph for their encouragement in Berlin; Spinifex Press, especially Susan Hawthorne, Renate Klein and Michelle Proctor; and Tandem Press—Helen Benton and Bob Ross in Aotearoa.

  Arohanui, Aloha

  —Cath Dunsford, Tawharanui, May, 1994.

  A settlement rises out of the lava rocks and around the lagoon. Voices and wind rustle through the coconut trees. She is floating on the waves, far out at sea. There is a distant rumbling. Water whips up around her, lashing her body. A strong current drags her out, sends her skimming back at rocket speed, seaweed smashing into her face, her shell. She is reeling on the wind, over the sea, high above the land. The ocean is on her tail, flying with her through the air. She exalts in its freedom, flings her small fins outward and screams.

  “There, there, Cowrie. Auatu. Mere is here. The wave won’t drown you. Besides, there are no coconut trees in Aotearoa. It’s in your imagination. You are a strong swimmer. You can enter back into the wave. It does not have to eat you up.”

  A dash of sand hits Cowrie’s face as children run by and she sits up, wondering why her recurring childhood nightmare has followed her to the shores of Punalu‘u, Hawai‘i.

  Cowrie touches the coconut etching twinned to the bone hei matau Mere gave her before leaving home. She remembers fingering its soft edges as a child and dreaming of a woman who could live in the sea protected by her dark brown shell, a woman who would skim the waves to shore and dive back through them to the waiting ocean. But sometimes the dreams would turn to nightmares. Mere would always be there to comfort her.

  She digs her toes into the hot, black sand of Punalu‘u Beach beside an oval lagoon fringed by coconut trees and a thatched hut housing local artifacts. Cowrie has not been inside yet. At the far end of the beach, the remains of a stone heiau or temple which she’d explored earlier. Ahead, the glistening calm ocean. In the distance, a line of people streaming in from a tourist bus to the thatched hut behind the lagoon. She places her towel and water bottle in her pack and begins walking up towards the village at Pahala.

  Crowds file into the small museum to see the mural painted by Herb Kawainui Kane. It features Punalu‘u as it might have been two centuries earlier when the beach housed a village of thatched huts. Women prepare food under the shade of the trees while men work on the canoes. At the far end of the beach a heiau, Kane‘ele’ele, rises up out of the sea-spray like a vision. The mural is painted on a magnificent curved wall, as long as an ancient canoe, as high as a coconut tree, and reinforced against earthquakes.

  The guide explains that the painting depicts Punalu‘u Beach village and heiau which was destroyed by a tsunami in 1868. Later, a twenty-foot wave rose up over the beach crashing down upon the museum they stand in now, destroying everything and pushing mud knee high up the wall. But the mural, which extends to floor level, was completely untouched. A tourist asks how this can be so. The guide shakes his head and says, “It is protected.” He does not tell how his grandmother had seen a giant sea turtle with the head of a woman at the peak of the wave as it surged upwards. How the turtle had dived back into the wave and remained, far out at sea, looking over the beach protectively until the storm was over.

  Keo and Paneke live in one of the old sugar cane houses on a plantation high above Pahala. The journey up through the macadamia plantation is hazardous. Large rocks from the plantation trucks stud the road and driving is slow. Cowrie’s old truck weaves drunkenly around the mounds and rattles with each change of direction. Macadamia groves turn into waving stalks of sugar cane and soon the truck is dwarfed by the massive plants.

  She swerves to avoid a mound in the road ahead. A huge, beautifully sculpted rock, glistening in the sun, appears to move slightly to the left. Cowrie t
akes off her sunglasses for a better look. She drives to the right of the mound and it moves again. She hauls on the brakes and jumps out. The mound is a large land turtle. Its head disappears inside its shell as soon as she approaches.

  What a beauty, she thinks, and places her hand on its warm back. The turtle remains stone still, but her hand is jolted off its back. It is as if an electric charge has entered her. She falls against the side of the truck, gasping, then stares at the turtle, dazed. This is not the protective creature who swims through her dreams. Her wet hand on the hot shell has acted as a shock conductor. Despite her prodding, the turtle remains inside its shell. It has no intention of moving. Cowrie climbs back into the cab and veers around the obstacle.

  The road narrows at the top of the sugar cane plantation and turns left into a dirt track. Husky brown fern trunks spring from the roadside and their lush green and silver leaves fan out in a canopy above her. Suddenly, the heavens open. The leaves shiver and flicker with the weight of the water flowing down their spines. Below, ginger flowers gorge on the falling water, turning it to sweet scented honey as it runs down the shimmering leaves and trickles on to the black earth.

  Drops pour on to her left arm and shoulder, tickling her breasts and shoulder blades through the lavalava and she enjoys their sensual flow. In the rain, she can just make out a building ahead to the right. It looks too large for the cottage. Closer up, she sees it is some kind of temple, painted red and yellow, with a red, yellow, green and white flag hoisted up a pole at the entrance way.

  She continues until the track veers left down towards an old wooden barn decorated with washboards, rusty farm implements and a magnificent stark white goat’s head. A fresh frangipani lei hangs from the horns in welcome. Cousin Keo said to watch out for the barn with the goat’s head at the entrance. Beyond it is a charmingly dilapidated old, green cottage with wooden shutters. The truck swings in between the cottage and the barn, coming to a halt in front of a lush patch of taro. She decides to leave her kete of kalo and she’d bought to go with the meal, inside the truck. They have plenty here. But she grabs the feijoa wine and jumps down on to the rocky path.

  A round-bellied Hawai’ian man emerges from the back of the cottage. Cowrie is amazed to see the likeness to her grandfather’s picture in the old Kodak box. Only here, a much softer version. Keo takes down the lei from the goat’s horns and places it around her neck.

  “Aloha, hoahanau.” He touches her nose with his. She returns the greeting.

  “Haele mai, meet Paneke.” Keo leads Cowrie to the back of the cottage and she drops off her jandals in the row of shoes outside the door.

  Paneke greets them. “Aloha, Cowrie. Please come inside.” She wraps a huge, brown arm around Cowrie’s waist and draws her into the kitchen.

  It reminds her of farm kitchens in Tai Tokerau. She feels right at home. Scrubbed wooden walls and tools hanging off nails. At the end, a large, wooden table with benches either side. In the middle of the table, a vase of fresh ginger which engulfs the room with its sweet, sickly fragrance.

  After drinks of fresh pineapple and coconut over ice, and many laughs and inquisitive searchings of each other’s cultures, Keo lifts kai from the umu and they sit down to the meal. “Fresh ‘ahi caught this morning and baked in banana leaves,” explains Keo, unfolding the leaves.

  Cowrie stiffens in shock. She knows that locals used to eat turtles, but dolphins?

  Paneke notices her shock. “You don’t like fish?” she asks.

  Cowrie takes a deep breath. “I love it. But ‘ahi, dolphin?”

  Paneke and Keo burst into laughter. “Dolphin is mahimahi, not ‘ahi,” Paneke explains.

  Beside the ‘ahi are kalo and uala, wrapped in kalo leaves.

  “That flavours the vegetable and helps the sap to stay in,” explains Paneke.

  Between each dish is a bowl of poi. It is purple with a texture like yoghurt. The flavour is delicate. She asks how it is made.

  “It’s kalo beaten to a pulp,” explains Paneke.

  The poi is delicious, but it is the ‘ahi soaked in banana leaves that most appeals to her. The smell is smoky and sweet. The moisture of the fresh fish is retained and the banana leaf adds a subtle taste.

  Paneke asks how Cowrie found them.

  Cowrie explains that when Mere adopted her from the Rawene Orphanage, all she had with her was an old Kodak box containing a cowrie shell, a turtle etched on a piece of coconut and a yellowed newspaper article recounting a tsunami in 1868. Once Cowrie had completed her studies, Mere urged her to write to the address scrawled across the back of the cutting: Kini Aloha, c/- Na‘alehu Post Office, Hawai‘i and she’d received a reply from Kini’s grand-daughter, Koana, inviting her to come and stay and explaining that one of Cowrie’s relatives, Keo, still worked on the sugar cane plantation at Pahala.

  Keo wants to know what it was like growing up in Aotearoa without true knowledge of her origin.

  Cowrie explains it wasn’t so bad after Mere took her from the orphanage. But she still felt like an outsider. She was lighter-skinned than Mere’s other children but darker than the Pakeha school kids. She was neither Maori nor Pakeha—an alien—and compensated for this by trying to fit in all the time. She worked twice as hard for half as much. Being called a “fat Polynesian” at school didn’t help. Even her name, after the cowrie shell in Apelahama’s box, marked her as different. Mere said she’d grow to be strong like Tane Mahuta, God of the kauri forest.

  “Strong enough for my treat?” asks Keo, opening up the huge, ancient fridge that rumbles away contentedly in the corner. He takes out a large, oval watermelon which has been sliced in half. Inside is a mountain of fresh fruit: pineapple, watermelon, mango…Cowrie feels the juices rising in her.

  “Hala-kahiki, ipu, manako…come, eat,” says Keo, holding out a bowl made from a coconut shell.

  Cowrie takes the coconut half from his hand and is about to ladle fresh fruit into its shell when she notices a carving on the inside. A turtle with a woman on its back, coasting over the waves. She is startled. It is the turtle-woman she has been dreaming about. She holds the carved bowl out to Keo, pointing to its interior.

  “Who is this, Keo?”

  Keo smiles. “Ah, that is Laukiamanuikahiki. She was brought up on Kauai without knowledge of her origin. She rides a turtle.”

  “She rides a turtle. That means she’s still swimming in the ocean around us?”

  “Could be,” says Keo, winking at Paneke. “You seen her, Cowrie?”

  Cowrie smiles. “What if I have, Keo?”

  Keo grunts. “You keep away from her, girl. She burnt down her brother’s house. She has strong powers.” For a moment he looks serious, then he breaks into a highpitched contralto laugh. “Just watch you don’t eat her,” he adds, screaming with laughter.

  Cowrie enjoys the thought, but not as Keo means it.

  Kia ora Mere,

  I’ve met cousin Keo! He lives with a gorgeously huge, round-bellied wahine, Paneke, high up above the sugar cane plantation at Pahala. Paneke reminds me of you. Felt home sick. They told me Apelahama was a brilliant musician and had a special friendship with Koana’s grandmother. Wonder if It was more than that? Keo didn’t say. This island is laced with myth—just like home. Keep wanting to cry at the familiarity of it all. Did you get my p.c. from Ka Lae? That’s where the first Maori canoes left for Aotearoa. This one shows the black lava sand of Punalu‘u Beach, beneath Pahala. Paneke says giant sea turtles surf into the beach at night. You can write to me c/- Koana at Na‘alehu P.O. Think of you often. Hope the kahawai are still biting and falling for that bone and paua trace I made you. Think of me eating raw ‘ahi drenched in limes—yum!

  Arohanui—Cowrie.

  Cowrie lies on her back in the still water. Above her, the giant mamaku stretch out over the bay. She feels a ripple as something swims under her. A sweet smell fills her nostrils. She is woken by giggles and laughter. Koana’s daughter, Nele, is holding a freshly peeled segment of mango ov
er her face, willing her to wake up and play. Her brother, Peni, laughs gleefully as she bites into the mango and pretends to take Nele’s finger also. Nele screams with delight and Koana appears at the door to see what all the fuss is about.

  “It’s ok, Koana. Time I got up anyway.”

  Koana shoos the kids away and sits down on the old cane chair beside the hammock, strung between the back porch uprights, where Cowrie sleeps.

  “What did Keo tell you about your grandfather, Cowrie?”

  “Not too much. He was a bit of an old devil, evidently. But sounds like he got on pretty well with your grandmother, Ko!”

  “Yeah, but I think they were just close friends.”

  “Often the best relationships, eh? Well, it seems that Apelahama worked for a US outfit, stringing ‘ukulele. When the firm opened up a music shop in New Zealand, they asked Apelahama if he’d go. It was just after his home had been destroyed by the lava-flow, so he thought, why not, and went. All he had with him was an old Kodak box and the clothes he stood up in. When in New Zealand, he met and married a kiwi woman, Leonie, and they had my birth mum, Laura.”

  “But I thought your mum was Mere?”

  “Well, she is, to me. Laura gave me up when her boyfriend left her. She couldn’t manage alone. Mere adopted me from the orphanage at Rawene.”

  “So what does Keo think about having a kiwi cousin?”

  “I reckon he’s quite pleased, actually. I really like him and Paneke, and they’ve invited me back any time. They wanted me to stay with them, but I think I should find my own place to live.”

  “The hammock getting a bit much, eh?” Koana laughs.