It’s very difficult to keep looking in his eyes because I have been throwing stones at cars. I have been trying to hit windscreens. “Why would you be involved in that sort of nonsense?”
Mr Atkinson asks.
“I d-d-don’t know,” I answer though I know very well why. I can picture it clearly, throwing the stones, aiming at the sun-smeary windscreens. The bull’s-eye. Me running for the cover of the for-climbing-up tree where Tamoa is already hiding barricaded behind the roots that arch out of the ground like rock. When the cars pull over, Minis, Zephyrs, Bedford vans, the driver performs a cursing jig, fists clenched in rage, swearing helpless, defeated by me a child—Tamoa and I mimic the driver to each other.
“You were involved, weren’t you?” says Mr Atkinson.
No, I say, looking straight into his eyes. I can’t do any more than look him straight in the eye. But I can’t keep the straight looking up. I will have to say Yes. “Yes, b-b-but …” What am I to say next? I don’t know what I’m going to say.
There’s no need to speak. Mr Atkinson leans back in his chair, lights his pipe and does the speaking for me. “I think I know what has happened here,” he nods. “Were you roped into this by Tamoa?”
Tamoa. All I have to do is answer Yes and naturally my word will be believed over Tamoa’s. “Yes,” I answer, looking Mr Atkinson in the eye. Tamoa threw the stones, I lie.
“Why would Tamoa throw stones?” Mr Atkinson asks. I shrug, sullen, silent. Mr Atkinson says he has a theory about why. Tamoa throws stones because he has a chip on his shoulder: he hates pakehas and since they own most of the cars in Heritage he’s at war with them. But you are a pakeha, are you not?, he says. And yet you two have formed a friendship it would seem. There’s the weakness in the theory. “You must be an exception to the normal pakeha,” Mr Atkinson says with a chuckle of smoke.
I like the idea of being an exception, someone not lumped in with the others. “Y-y-yes, Sir,” I say, smiling.
But Mr Atkinson wonders, “Why?” Why would Tamoa want to be friends with me, a pakeha? “Has he ever asked you to take alcohol from your father’s hotel?”
“No” (the truth).
“Money from the till?”
“No” (the truth).
“Cigarettes?”
“No” (the truth).
Mr Atkinson frowns, puzzled by my answers. “Well, don’t be surprised if he does,” he says, sharply. In the meantime he’ll have to put us two being pals down to opposites attracting. Neither of us makes friends easily. But I mustn’t let a desire for friends lead me to make poor choices in life. There’s nothing wrong with being curious about those who are different from you, and there are some fine Maoris about, but beware of the wrong sort.
His gentle, lowered voice soothes me. His sweet, leaf-smoke smell soothes me. He stands up from his chair and walks over to place his hand on my shoulder, breathing a pipe cloud onto my head, the embodiment for me now of kindness, wisdom, authority, mercy. I am in awe of him. I love him. I’m ashamed he had to explain my errors to me. I should have realised them myself. I should never have made those errors in the first place. Does he think less of me? What can I do to make him stop thinking less of me? “Tamoa m-m-made me th-h-throw the st-t-ones,” I lie and stare up into Mr Atkinson’s face desperate for a sign of redemption.
His hairy brown eyes slope down and pucker. “He did?”
“He said he’d b-b-beat me up if I d-d-didn’t d-d-do it.”
Mr Atkinson lets out a long, smoky sigh. He pats my shoulder, nods and smiles, satisfied.
I hurry through his waiting room back to class, passing Tamoa. I keep my head bowed, avoiding Tamoa’s face. I could turn around and admit my lie. Turn around now! I can bear the strap, the shame. No, I can’t. I don’t want to bear them. Besides, it’s too late. Mr Atkinson will have taken the strap from its special drawer. There! I can hear it snap once, twice, another time, another. Tamoa will wear the red welts like a badge of honour. Surely he will. Forget Tamoa, he’s not a fine Maori.
But I can’t forget Tamoa. Heels would forget him, Winks would too. “Don’t waste your time worrying about the likes of him,” they’d say. I’m their son. I should think as they think. Be as they would be. I should have faith in their ways. Now there is a double betrayal, of Tamoa and of Heels and Winks.
The Tamoa betrayal is the one that needs my immediate attention because he’s waiting for me when school finishes.
At first he’s silent, sulky, eyes puffy from what can only be an afternoon’s crying. As I attempt to cut across the lawn away from him he follows. When I go the other way through the front gate he follows. Across the traffic lights and over the rail-line he follows. I notice he limps slightly and tugs at his shorts as if to relieve a discomfort. Suddenly he begins a haka, screaming out hori words I don’t understand from deep in himself so that his voice rasps. He rushes up to me to unleash the chant, the slapping of his chest, shivering hands and tongue poking in-out-in-out, directly in my face. His eye corners and nose glisten with tears and snot. I flinch expecting him to throw me to the ground and hit me. If he does I’m going to let him do it and not resist or fight back. I’m terri-fied of being hurt but Tamoa seems to have a right to hurt me in this case and I’ll have to take my punishment. His revenge will make me clean again.
No, I will fight. I brace myself ready to punch and scratch and bite with everything I’m worth. Yet all he does is rant his haka and let me walk by without laying a finger on me. It’s not until I’m well up the street that he speaks English. “When I’m Prime Minister I’ll cut your fucking throat e hoa,” he calls out. I walk on. He calls louder. “I asked what onions are e hoa. When a whole lot of horis stick their cockos in a girl. My cousin says they piss on them too and pour petrol on them if they don’t like them and flick matches, e hoa. I’m getting my cousin to do that to your mother. The Mongrel Mob are coming to onion your mother.”
Tamoa isn’t at school the next day or the next day. I want to plead with him, give him cigarettes and a bottle of beer I’ve stolen from the Private Bar and stashed in the for-climbing-up tree. I want to be friends again and have him promise the Mongrel Mob will never onion Heels. But Mrs Quigley says, “I’m afraid he’s been wagging. Don’t you bother your head about that sorry case.”
I must warn Heels. The Mongrel Mob’s coming to onion her. But that would mean revealing why they’re coming, that I was the real stone-thrower. I must protect her. But I can’t protect her all day, when I’m at school. Some job I did protecting the stairs from one denim hori, let alone a whole gang.
Now is my chance to speak up. Heels and Winks are standing at the foot of my bed. It’s one of my growth-spurt days, almost noon. I lie beneath the blankets, sweaty, an ache in my head, ears crackling when I swallow. They want to have a word. It can’t be about the phone box—I’ve learned my lesson and always return my tray of dregs to the Private Bar sink however woozy I might be. It must be the cigarettes and bottle of beer I stole for Tamoa. There is an especially severe clench to Winks’ face. His dark, deep-set eyes have narrowed to slits. Heels’ jaw is jutting, she’s building up to her sucking and scratching stage. It’s not a good time to speak up, I sense. I sit hugging the blankets over my knees.
“You never told us you fell off your bike,” says Winks. I’m relieved. Yes, I did fall off my bike on the way to elocution at Mrs Daley’s. My cardboard case that carries my recital poems toppled from its perch between the handlebars and somehow lodged in the front wheel spokes. This jammed the bike and flipped me through the air onto the road. No harm done. The spokes were a bit bent but I straightened them.
“We understand you were very upset,” Winks continues. Yes, I suppose I was upset. I got a shock, I tell him. Just a shock that’s all.
“That’s all, he says,” snarls Heels.
“I’ll handle this,” snaps Winks, cutting her off. He glares at me. “Upset enough that when a perfectly decent woman, a Mrs …”
“Pritchard,” pr
ompts Heels.
“Pritchard offers to help you to your feet and dust you off, you …” His temper is blazing in his face. “You shout at her to f …”
Heels holds up her hand to prevent him uttering the word. Winks’ cheeks swell with holding his breath until he can think of an alternative word.
“To … to … intercourse off.”
It’s true. Sprawled on the road in front of a few old ladies, embarrassed, I said it. I think about calling the old woman a liar. If this Mrs Pritchard was a hori I might get away with it, but Heels and Winks wouldn’t be so angry in the first place if she was hori. Instead I sputter that it was a spur-of-the-moment mistake and I’ll never do it again. Heels sucks and scratches that I most certainly won’t do it again. For half an hour she’s been on the phone to Mrs Pritchard apologising for my disgusting behaviour, behaviour that I never learned from her, a lack of manners, a foul mouth and lack of common courtesy. When she thinks of the sacrifices she and Winks have made for me, slaving their guts out in a hotel with hori animals just to give me a future, only to be rewarded like this, to be let down and disappointed like this.
She nods to Winks and he removes his belt, drawing it from his trouser hoops like a bendy sword the way he’s done in the past. But this time there’s none of his theatrical tap-tapping of the belt on his open hand as a warning. He mutters, “Jesus bloody Christ, I’ll teach you a thing or two.” His face quakes with temper like I’ve only seen it do when he and Charlie Carmichael clip the winter coats from his horses and they won’t stand still in their stall so he flogs them with the clipper cord till they snort and pant in terri-fied submission.
He claws up a fistful of blankets and flings them from me. He orders me to “roll over, roll over” and when I won’t do as he says he hooks his fingers in my pyjama-pant elastics and lifts and spins me onto my stomach, pulls the elastic down at the same time to expose my buttocks. The elastic breaks. My pyjama pants rip like paper.
I flick myself off the bed and shimmy under it for protection. The springs sag and squeak from Winks diving across to try and tackle me. Now he’s on his knees groping for a hold of me in the dusty narrowness. I shuffle away from his grasp into the open field of the room where Heels sucks and scratches for me to be still and take the medicine that’s coming to me. She snatches at my arms but I wriggle free, crying, crying how sorry I am and I’ll never swear again. Sorry’s not going to help me now, Heels juts, bear-hugging me onto the bed. I butt her breasts with the back of my head, kick backwards into her shins. I sink my teeth into her forearm. She squeals, releases her grip and bursts into tears, disowning and cursing me for fighting back. “He’s bitten me. Your son has bitten me,” she shows Winks. This sends him into a frenzy with the belt. He whips my arse and legs. He forces my face into the sheets to stop me reaching around and catching the belt mid-air. I almost jerk it away from him but all this does is work the buckle loose from inside his hand. When he starts whipping again it’s the buckle that makes contact with a rhythmic slap-clink. A sting-burn-numbness ricochets into the bottom of my spine and down to my big toes. I slide my head sideways. My eye meets Winks’ eye. His arm freezes like a man about to throw a ball. He’s heaving to catch his breath. Sweat-drops hang from his nose and top lip. His eyes water suddenly and his chin twitches. He bares his teeth and brings his arm down once, twice, three, four, five times, not hitting me, but letting off blows into the mattress beside me.
He stands with his legs wide apart, heaving and threading his belt into place. He doesn’t look at me. He inspects Heels’ bite-wound, wets it with spit-kisses.
“To think I nearly died having him,” sobs Heels. She means the operation she had to have me born properly.
I wish she had died. What a terrible thing to think. I think it again and then say it in my mind to know if I mean it. Yes I do mean it. I enjoy thinking it. There’s no shock or guilt in thinking it and meaning it. If anything there’s excitement. I mumble it into the sheets. “I wish you had died.” I repeat it to the sheets and say, “The Mongrel Mob are coming and I don’t care.”
Heels and Winks stare at me, probably thinking I’m apologising.
Something freeing is happening. Here I lie, no tears, no pain. Where’s pain? Where’s fear? I’ve passed through these into a state of sleepy peace. The sting-burn-numb sensation has contracted to the base of my spine. It has now become a pleasant tickle deep inside me, an itchy pins and needles at the tips of my fingers. I don’t move a muscle, I can’t move a muscle. My legs won’t shift. Only my mind works, I conjure a force field around me, one able to push Heels from me, a weightless push and drift of her away from my skin, my heart, my being. What about Winks? Is he going to be pushed away too? Not yet. Not quite. I’m still pushing Heels away. But his turn is coming. It’s close.
She’s gone. Now it’s Winks’ turn. I push. He’s up there tightening his belt around his waist. He’s touching Heels’ sore arm, leading her out of the room. The door’s closing. There they go. They’re gone.
A glass of milk and two shortbreads, my favourite. She sets them down on the bedside table. She calls me darling. She wants to make up, to get back into each other’s good books as she would say. She expects it to happen just like that. She probably thinks it has already happened by some natural process. Her arm sports a brown strip of plaster. I’ve been alone in my room for an hour on my bed. Is that meant to be my strip of plaster? “Sit up and have your shortbreads,” she urges.
It’s Winks’ turn. He sits on the bed and tousles my hair. I flinch and shrink from the sudden lift of his hand, its warm weight, though I feel myself returning his smiling—I can’t help doing it. He says it gave him no pleasure taking the belt to my hide but bad habits have to be knocked out of us. He even winks and says he’s impressed by the way I fought back. I’m growing up, showing some gumption. Goodness gracious how strong I’m getting. I return his smile again, and Heels’ smile as well, proud of the compliments.
I crave the milk and shortbreads but won’t allow myself to touch them, won’t allow those two hovering over me to have the pleasure of my pleasure in eating and drinking. Winks places his hand gently on my rump. I sniff sharply from the pain. “Sore?” he asks, smiling and nodding so that I understand that he knows what it’s like to be sore.
“No,” I lie, enjoying contradicting him.
“Not sore?” He’s doubting me.
“N-n-no.” How dare he doubt me.
He pats my bum, testing me. I disguise the blood-throb of pain with a cough. “Whatever you say,” he grins.
I want to dig my fingernails into his arms and tear away skin for his grinning. “I can’t f-f-feel anything f-f-from here (meaning my hips) d-d-down to th-th-there (meaning my toes).” How shall I keep up this lie? I have to imitate what it was like straight after the belting, that feeling of no feeling, dead legs. Winks and his sudden grinless look, serious, concerned, are worth the risk.
“Nothing at all? No feeling?” he asks. Heels is concerned now. The brown pencil-lines she wears for eyebrows fidget as she blinks. Winks eases the blankets from my naked body. I play paralysed as he pokes and prods at my skinny legs and feet, my ribby stomach, trying for a response. “No feeling?”
I shake my head. No feeling. He and Heels take careful hold of my hips and turn me onto my side. This will be the hard part. They’re going to start fingering those welts, the ones that look like I’ve been sitting in a cane chair. I’m going to have to withstand the hurting. I’ll recite my times tables to keep a blank face, think of all the best exotic, adventure-sounding names of racehorses I’ve seen in the newspaper, and shuffle the words into poems the way I like doing. “Dashing Star, Ragtag Kingdom, Desert Honour, Tang, Storm Mouth,” equals:
The desert honours the ragtag kingdom
With a dashing star and the storm mouth’s tang
Their fingers feel between the marks on my thighs, arse-cheeks, back. They’re being so careful with their touch they almost tickle. I’m enjoying this te
nderness. Their fingertips stroke and soothe me. I must harden myself against their affection, against them. Look at their faces, they work so hard to maintain beautiful faces—Winks with his razor and Old Spice aftershave; Heels with her bottles and tubs of scent, lipstick, powder and Ponds. They have lines in their faces deep as the lines in the hand’s palm, saggy, blotchy skin. Heels often admires my skin, “so smooth and without a single solitary blemish. You’re so lucky,” she says. “What a lucky boy to have such lovely skin and have been born in Sydney. You have landed on your feet.”
These ways, skin and Sydney, are not the only ways I’ve become aware of being superior to her, to them both. Heels’ is a butcher’s daughter. I am once removed from a butcher as a relation, from those blood-greasy hands they have, a finger missing, an apron wiped with gore. Heels watches television and doesn’t ever read. For me it’s the other way round—no TV but books, books, books. She says she doesn’t need to improve herself, she’s improved enough, but I noticed that Jane Austen’s Persuasion recently appeared beside her bed. I teased her about it but she set me straight. She said, “It’s really just there for show, for when people are coming through to value the place for buying.”
Heels is good at maths and counts coins from her desk two at a time as if dusting fast. I’m hopeless at maths. That, as far as I can tell, is her only victory over me. Winks reads books, thrillers and Westerns, and watches TV but he can’t draw like I can. He can’t spell a word like philosophical. He’s the son of a barber. I’m glad Winks’ life stands between mine and a man who would have been covered in other people’s hair.
They don’t know it but I’ve found them out. Horis are no more likely to be drunks than pakehas. What about Charlie Carmichael who drinks till he dribbles and slurs when he talks? Even if horis were, who is it that’s giving them the liquor in the first place? These two right here standing over me. When the phone rings after nine at night—“Horis again, Dad?”—it’s not always horis. What about when the card schools start fighting over cheating? They roll up their sleeves and mark out a boxing ring with chairs but the blood spilled is blood nonetheless no matter how they pretend to fight like proper gentlemen.
Hoi Polloi Page 4