Manawa Toa

by Dunsford, Cathie

  “Would it be all right to reprint some of these letters in the UK press, Cowrie?” asks Sahara. “Of all the letters, it’s the ones from children that really reach people at a heart level.”

  “That’s fine. These letters are for the media and many have asked that we send them out. Greenpeace has hundreds more you could access. Hey, this bumper sticker is an old one from the Cold War: You can’t hug your children with nuclear arms. And we thought we’d seen the end of nuclear testing and the arms race back then! This is so depressing.”

  “C’mon Cowrie. We need stronger fighting spirit than that. Where’s your warrior self? This is gonna be a long battle and we need to keep spirits up. We’ve only just begun.” Kuini puts the kettle on the gas ring, sensing it’s time for a cuppa.

  “Mahalo, Kuini. You’re right. I’ll make us a manuka brew.” Cowrie walks outside the makeshift office and breaks a leafy twig off the nearest manuka, returns and places it in the pot. Sahara joins her at the bench and touches her lightly on the arm to show her support. A lightning charge enters Cowrie’s body, re-energising her in seconds. She turns to Sahara, shocked at the power of her touch. But by now, the Brit has moved to reach for the bickie jar, seemingly unaware of her effect on Cowrie.

  Later that night, after a long walk up the beach, they lie side by side in the dunes looking up at the stars. Sahara knows all the constellations but has not seen the Southern Cross from this aspect before. “Wow! It looks like a kite! There’s the tip, the two wings and the tail with stars floating out like a banner as she flies. Imagine making a kite from the stars with the whole sky as your canvas.” She sweeps her arm through the air. Cowrie sees a brush in her fingertips, dazzling stars coming out from her body and shooting into the stark sky to form the outline of a kite. “This one will have toetoe feathers to brush across the black canvas, and out of the feathers come new stars. See.” Sahara arcs her arm over the sky and punches notches in the night air to indicate the birth of each shape she is creating.

  Cowrie is entranced by her magic. “Ok, Sahara, this one’s for you.” She draws a feather starfish with tentacles flowing out from her body and reaching far into the distant skies.

  Sahara smiles. “It’s a Catherine wheel exploding into the night and sending her silvery shards across the galaxy oceans.”

  Cowrie gulps. This woman’s imagination is wild, exquisite. “Nearly right. Now think of your image under the water, deep in the Antarctic, floating below gigantic icebergs, lighting the dark sea.”

  There is a breathless silence. Then, “She’s a sea anemone, waiting for the perfect wave to burst her flower open to dazzle the seals.”

  “I think the sea anemone is you, sweet Sah. My sky painting is a feather starfish floating in the current, swirling her sensitive tentacles like feathers, picking up messages from all over the planet.”

  “I’d like to be a feather starfish, then. That’s my role down here. To hear the messages and transmit them accurately into the northern galaxy. Do you think my tentacles are sensitive enough?” She flutters her fingers, dancing them into the moist air. A cobalt wave surges up the beach and enters Cowrie’s body, sweet salty water touching every cell, wetting her insides, flowing out her fingertips and toes. She takes a deep breath then holds her fingertips up to the tentacles so that they just touch, softly. She presses, releasing an energy that surges through Sahara. “Wow! If that’s your answer, I like it.” Sahara jumps up and rolls down the dune, turning cartwheels along the beach below, energised by their contact.

  Cowrie is breathless, her hand still suspended in the air. Her eyes follow the young Brit as her athletic body gracefully whirls over the sand. A moment longer and she’d have been tempted to kiss her. Did she know this? Did she break the moment of intimacy to avoid further closeness, or because the energy sparked her into movement? Cowrie rolls over on her belly to watch the action, her own body sensual and flowing. A couple of torea, digging for shellfish, scatter into the sky as a human wheel splashes past them on her flight up the beach. Cowrie laughs at their startled exit. She jumps up, flicks off her lavalava and runs down into the waiting ocean.

  The moon reflects dazzling particles, like luminous starfish floating on the surface. The waves are large and inviting. She dives through the first one, surfs over the next and strokes out into the dark water. Once beyond the breakers, she glances back to shore to see if Sahara is ok. Now upright, she waves back. Cowrie beckons her into the water. Sahara edges close to the sea, but does not enter. Cowrie flips over onto her back, floats, looking up to the stars. Maybe she has a lover back home. Strange that she’s never said. We connect so well, but maybe she just wants to be friends. That’s cool. But the energy beween us is so electric. Perhaps I’ll just have to be courageous and ask her. After stargazing a while longer, she’s drifted further out to sea. She turns onto her belly and fins her way back to shore, coasting on the waves.

  Sahara approaches the water, noting how like a sea creature her new friend is. She can’t quite place which one, perhaps a seal surfing the waves? She’s always been afraid of large waves, but didn’t want to tell Cowrie this. She’d love to throw off her shorts and be able to enter the ocean like that, surf the waves as if she belonged in them. But she had been raised inland and not seen the ocean until her late teens. Once a child nearly drowned in a pool and it had taken all her courage to dive in and rescue her. But she was shaken afterwards. And the pool, thankfully, did not have waves. Yet a part of her longed to dive into the belly of a sea curve, swim into the core of danger, feel its embrace and stroke out beyond. The next wave carries the strange sea creature right up to Sahara’s feet in the shallows. Looking down upon her rounded body with fins outstretched, it dawns on her. “Turtle! You look like a turtle from here,” she giggles. Cowrie noses her feet, nibbling her toes. She screams like a child in delight. Each time she moves, the turtle nudges her ankles, tempting her into the water. They end up splashing each other until they are both thoroughly wet.

  “Let’s walk back to the hut and light a fire to warm ourselves. We can boil up some ginger tea.” Cowrie is beginning to shiver in the night air after her time in the water. Sahara agrees and they make their way back over the dunes.

  Sipping tea beside the fire, sharing stories of their youth, Cowrie raises the courage to ask Sahara why she ran off to do cartwheels at such an intimate moment of sharing, why she did not come swimming. Sahara takes a deep breath. “It’s true, Cowrie. I’ve been avoiding this moment. I like you very much. I enjoy our closeness. But from the very beginning I sensed you were attracted to me and I’ve had to hold myself away because I’m not gay.”

  Cowrie sighs. Not again. First Koana, now Sahara. How could she be so naive? Sahara continues. “By that, I don’t mean I’m only heterosexual. I don’t believe in such strict gender lines. One day I’d like to be with a woman. I just know I am not ready for that yet. It’s not a personal rejection. Just where I’m at currently.”

  “How come you didn’t let on earlier? I’m so embarrassed I made such an assumption.”

  “That’s ok. I wanted to tell you earlier but felt too shy.”

  “So how come your email address is Sappho at Island? I mean, that’s a surefire hint.”

  “Oh, that’s the local café. They have e-mail, faxes and access to the internet—so we all use it for our overseas messages. It is run by lesbians, true!”

  Cowrie blushes, then laughs. “If you could’ve seen the way Iri and Kuini teased me about you wanting to come over and find a South Pacific lover, you’d’ve died! I hope this isn’t going to get in the way of our work together.”

  “No! Nor our ability to have fun! I really love your energy, Cowrie, and I want us to be friends.”

  “So—do you have a boyfriend back home?”

  “No—the last one was a cattle rancher in the Australian outback when I was covering the drought, and you definitely don’t want to know that story.”

  “Was he that awful?”

  “One
day I’ll tell you, but not now.” A tear emerges in the corner of her eye and rolls over her cheek, dropping onto the soft earth. Cowrie is moved, wonders what pain lies beneath this tale, longs to hug her friend in comfort, but does not want her closeness to be misinterpreted.

  “Another cuppa, Sah?”

  “Ta.” She reaches her arm over the fire for Cowrie to top up her cup, stumbles then screams in pain. The fire has seared her skin. Her cup crashes onto the burning manuka. The nearest cold water is at Mere’s cottage, too far to help. Cowrie dashes into her hut and grabs the piece of kauri gum that acts as a paperweight. She takes out her fish knife, scrapes off some gum, mixes it with the manuka oil next to her bed, then applies the mixture directly onto Sahara’s arm. She winces as the mixture touches her singed skin. But soon the ancient Maori herbal remedy starts soothing the pain. “Thanks, Cowrie. I shouldn’t have been so careless.”

  “S’ok, Sah. You gotta take risks sometime.” Cowrie smiles.

  Sahara, sensing her meaning, replies “Yes. But I’m not ready to right now. I have some healing to do.”

  “You sure do, Sah. That’ll take about a week to heal. Here, let me bandage it.” Cowrie cuts two large leaves from the banana palm nearby and tears them into strips. She winds the fronds around her friend’s arm gently, making sure she does not disturb the healing potion. Giant tears well behind Sahara’s eyes, then pour out over her cheeks. She tries to wipe them away with her banana leaf arm, but realises it will hurt too much. She raises her other hand. Cowrie takes it in her own. “Just cry, Sah. Let it all out. It’s good for you.”

  Sahara’s voice is stilted as she gasps for breath between her words. “It’s more than you realise. The flame is symbolic. Remembering him brought it all back. That poor charred creature. I’ll never forget. It stays in my mind like a nightmare.”

  “Maybe talking about it will help?” offers Cowrie.

  Sahara hesitates a moment then speaks slowly. At first she had fun with the cattle rancher. But one night he got his Aboriginal servants to pack them a meal and ride out at dusk to the edge of the last remaining bush on the farm. He ordered them to light fires around the perimeter and grabbed Sahara, ripping off her clothes, saying how sexy it was to make love beside an inferno. She tried to resist. He raped her in front of them all while the bush blazed—then ordered one of his “natives” to take her back to the house. He didn’t seem interested in her after his conquest. She stayed awake all night, shivering in the heat. The next morning, he was gone. But one of the boys brought back the furless body of a charred shivering koala who had been trapped in the flames. She felt as if she were inside the animal’s pain and wept as she touched its raw charcoal paws.

  “Ever since, I wondered how many other animals and birds got burned that night. It has put me off sex for a long time.”

  Tears have now wet Sahara’s shirt. Cowrie wraps a warm blanket around her friend and holds her close, crooning waiata softly in her ear to ward off the nightmares. After a while, she is breathing deeply, far away in sleep. Cowrie searches her face, so dreamingly gentle, so soft. Her long lashes and full lips, her beautiful, perfect ears. She wouldn’t be surprised to see wings sprout from her shoulders.

  Mau ano te tinana, maku te ata o te tapara kau atu e.

  For you the reality, for me only the shadow of desire.

  Every day Cowrie dresses the burn on Sahara’s arm, alternating between the kauri gum concoction and fresh manuka resin from the trees outside their hut. It is healing well. Lucky she can continue her work on her battery-driven laptop. Sahara walks to the marae media centre daily and checks out the latest developments, then writes up her stories, consulting with Kuini and Cowrie over certain details to make sure the cultural context is accurate.

  Only one more week until the first Peace Flotilla boats leave. Tension is high and the elders are still debating whether women should be allowed to paddle the ancestral waka around the test zone. It flies in the face of tradition. Kuini reckons it’s more heterosexual conditioning. After all, the waka and its paddler are supposed to represent the act of sexual union between man and woman. The symbolism goes back to ancient waiata. So, she reasons, what would it mean if a woman was stroking the waters? Sexual union from woman to woman? But no—we can’t possibly admit that—even though some of the women singers of those waiata sleep together. Heated discussion ensues which is never resolved.

  Cowrie is in charge of stocking the pantry and cooking on board the trawler. They’ve agreed to let Sahara travel with them as far as Tahiti—but whether she stays on board or covers the action from shore is yet to be decided. Today, they are all pitching in to give the boat her final coat of paint for the new journey. Finally the Manawa Toa is ready for action. By now, Sahara’s burn has faded and she can use her arm. She keeps the banana leaf bandage on to protect it from dirt and being infected and asks Cowrie to make sure she packs some manuka resin and kauri gum for the trip—just in case.

  All week, when she visits the media office, Kuini teases her about her concern for Sahara and the growing closeness she sees emerging between them. Finally Cowrie silences her taunts by telling her Sahara is heterosexual, though Kuini refuses to believe it. When she sees Cowrie isn’t joking, she commiserates: “Some of my best friends are het, Cowrie. And anyway, since when did you let that stop you? Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “Don’t tease me, Kuini. I’ve really fallen for this special woman. There’s something soulful in our connection that goes beyond all boundaries and I want to explore it. Please don’t hassle us. Let her find her own identity in her own time. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out how on earth I missed all the signals.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t very clear with them?”

  “Maybe. But she apologised for taking her time telling me. She didn’t mean to lead me on. It’s just that sensuality flows so easily from her. It’s her vibrant life connection. She isn’t even fully aware of it herself yet. I find her approach to life fascinating and refreshing. We’ve shared many stories of our childhood and there’s so much connection, even though we come from utterly opposing traditions. That’s a part of what makes it so interesting. We’re all about to share a powerful experience sailing up to the test zone—and it’s vital we work together as a team. I don’t want divisions emerging that will tear us apart. The work we’re setting out to do is far too important.”

  “I agree with you on that, Cowrie. Enough said. I just feel so sad. You are an unusual but stunning team. It’s surprised me too. I was suspicious of her motives at first, simply because of her background, but I like her now. I just wish you’d finally meet your match.”

  “Maybe I have. But she’s just come in a form that was totally unexpected.”

  “Perhaps. But tread carefully, Cowrie. I don’t want to see you as hurt as you were over Peta. How is she by the way? It’s ages since I’ve asked after your US friends.”

  Cowrie smiles. Her former lover is now partners with an old college mate, Nanduye, and they work for land rights on the Kahnawake reservation in Canada. The break-up had been painful. But they’d mended the rift, healed well through the journey. “She’s great, actually. I do miss her. She and Nan are currently touring reservations throughout the US and Canada, preparing a book on land rights.”

  “What about that crazy queer Benny and the crew at Grove Street?”

  “Benny is filming ‘earth power energy sites’, travelling the States on her BMW with a Lady Di lookalike in leather. The Grove Street Gang have a new flatmate downstairs in my old apartment—from Aussie. Turns out she’s a pretty hard case and keeping up the pressure from the south on my behalf. Squish suspects she’s an ex-lover of Benny. Her name’s Lizard. And Siliyik, the performance group, are doing gigs down the West Coast. I get regular postcards from Uretsete and DK updating me on events. They usually give two entirely different stories, but between them, I get the general idea. DK is given to hyperbole from time to time.”

  “Not unlike someo
ne else I know, eh? No wonder you two get on so famously.”

  “Hey Cowrie,” yells Iri from the far desk. “An email from Koana. Says she’ll see you in Tahiti. The Kanaka Maoli movement are sending a support team to help organise land-based marches in Fa’a’a and Pape’ete. Mauva sends her love also and wants to know the date of your arrival.”

  “Email her the latest details. Thanks Iri. I’m going back to the hut to see how Sah is.”

  After she leaves, Kuini walks to the desk. “I’m worried about Cowrie. If she falls in love with this het— she’s in for a deeply painful time.”

  “You can’t stop her, Kuini. Anyway, I’d say it’s too late. They fire each other’s imaginations. They’ll find a way to express this. Loving does not always have to be split down strict gender lines. After all, I came out with a married Rarotongan church woman, remember? Who’d’ve imagined that?”

  Kuini laughs. “True! I don’t understand you youngies. It was much clearer in the good old days of lesbian feminism, before queer culture even had a name.”

  “Yeah—but dykes have always been around. They may not have had a name for Sappho but they knew about her loving, enough to want to destroy her poetry. Besides, who knows with Sahara? She’s not afraid to hang out with dykes, clearly. Or to cross over cultural boundaries. She’s quite a risk-taker. Imagine leaving England for Te Kotuku Marae!”

  “She probably didn’t know what the hell she was coming to.”

  “Yeah—but she’s coped pretty well. And we did give her a helluva hard time for the first few weeks, eh? I reckon we should just leave them to it.”

  “Reckon you’re right. I just can’t keep my sticky beak out, eh?”

  “Cause you love Cowrie so much, Kuini. I know that. Sometimes wonder why you two never got it together. I used to think you would.”

  “Get away! We’re too bloody similar.”