by Alan Duff
Grace touching her less-than-a-year-older brother reassuringly on the arm. Only sometimes, Boog. Forcing a smile his way because she was lying. Sensitive kid that he was, a girl felt older not younger. And him being a boy. And the son of Jake Heke. Still, that didn’t stop a sister loving him, maybe she loved him more for being a sort of freak, a standout from the rest of the Pine Block roughies, let alone a son of Jake. Boys: they make such a big deal of being tough. It’s the most important thing in the world to em. Specially Maoris. Not that the Pakeha boys at school are that much better. They’re all stupid. Even that cop standing over there with his sleeves rolled up, arms folded, face set in concrete trying to act tough. It’s males. Grace was sure of it.
Boogie asking the cop — for about the third time — when his turn was gonna be on the list, the cop telling Boog to wait his patience, boy. Something in the tone of boy that wasn’t right. Like hatred was lurking just beneath his uniformed surface. Hatred of people like Boog, and her by sisterly association, Grace.
Maybe a hate for Maoris, hard to know. Though God knows there were plenty at school didn’t like Maoris. Not that a girl blamed em half the time; they’re a rough tough mean lot, those (us) Maoris. Even the kids. Learn young.
But it hurt knowing a segment of your school peers didn’t like you on account of your race. What about the good ones like me? Not saying I’m an angel, but I ain’t bad. I ain’t. Then Boogie muttering in her ear, Givim patience if the old man was here. He’d fuckin waste the white cunt. Hissing the word out. Grace telling him don’t talk like that or I’m off. And thinking that their father’d do no such thing, not whacking someone on Boog’s behalf. He didn’t like Boog. Hated him in fact.
Grace could hear father’s voice echoing in her mind: Ain’t no kid of mine they can’t look after emselves. His own kid. And being disowned because he couldn’t fight. What about Boogie’s other qualities? Always near the top of the class, very kind, and very sensitive to the kids that everyone else forgets about, or scorns. Nope, you got to be able to fight first. And even then you weren’t exactly guaranteed Jake Heke’s love. Jake the Muss, that’s what his mates — his crawwwwling mates call him. Muss for muscles. They love him for it. Never mind that last night — or it was early this morning — he beat up my mother. That doesn’t bother them, he’s still their hero.
People starting to arrive: making their appearance head first as the rest of them followed up the wide stone steps. High heels clicking, shoes scuffing, heavy leather work-boots clumping, near every one ofem with a Maori inside. Grace recognising so many of the faces as Pine Blockers; the kids and some of the mothers come withem. Only one father so far. Hardly surprising.
The odd one saying hello to Grace, no one acknowledging poor Boogie. Making Grace feel more protective toward him, yet a part of her mind confused at feeling an opposite hatred, a contempt for his physically inadequate condition. And wasn’t as if he didn’t have the physique: he was tall, like his father (we all are) and muscles were developing, she’d seen him in the bath, running around the place. Yet he hated fighting. Violence. Anything to do with it — for himself. Oh but he didn’t mind telling kids his old man was who he was, and he was always boasting about his big brother Nig gonna waste the whole flippin world once he got into the Brown Fists. Yet say boo to him and he’d freak out.
A big man appearing in a suit. Bennett. Mr Bennett, the child welfare officer. Grace knew him, he’d been around regarding Boogie, his behaviour at school and outside of it, his stealing from shops and being caught, playing truant. And now here, an appearance at the Children’s Court in front of a magistrate.
Morning, everyone! the big welfare officer greeting all and sundry, anyone’d think this was a Sunday picnic. But Boogie and Grace both giving him shy smiles of greeting, instincting what they did of his likely good fatherliness, the qualities he seemed to give off. Then he disappeared into the courtroom, Grace presumed, behind those big wooden double doors.
Others in suits or nice dresses, court officials no doubt, hurrying by and disappearing the same way. Most ofem Pakeha, white. Funny that, how one side of the double doors are one race, and the other this race: Maori. Made Grace want to crawl into a hole with shame. Or had her wanting to disassociate herself from them, jump up and explain she was only here to give her brother moral support because she knew her parents wouldn’t be here to do same, and she’d even got permission from the headmaster at school to be here, just as long as she didn’t take the whole day off should her presence be no longer required, as the head put it. She was a good girl. Maybe a little different from many or most of her peers, and certainly different from her Pine Block peers, but she was a good girl. I mean I have good thoughts. So she supposed that made her good.
Last night there’d been a big fight. They’d wrecked the place, or what there was to wreck of it, which wasn’t much. More broken glass and spilled beer and plenty of blood. First it was Jake roaring his head off at some man — it must’ve been a man because Dad was calling him cunt — that he was a tougharse and the cunt was a wimp and why didn’t they prove it (prove it?! Prove what? Grace awake upstairs in her bed’d wondered), and the other fulla yelling that Jake didn’t fuckin worry him, rep or no rep, telling Dad he wasn’t backing down to no man, Jake the Muss Heke be damned. So Dad hitim. It must’ve been Dad because he was the one yelling immediately after the familiar, yet still sickening, sound of fist crunching into flesh and bone, Stand up!
Then a woman started on Dad, accusing him of being the biggest arsehole cunt under the sun and why didn’t he pick on someone his own size and Jake’s voice just hearable as telling the woman, Aw, shut ya mouth, woman. As if she hardly existed. But the woman building to a screaming pitch and being joined by others — Grace figuring that it must be a kind of madness comes over em when they’re boozed up; and maybe it’s also fear, so they yell and scream, just like kids do when they’ve been unexpectedly frightened. They yell. Close their eyes and yell like hell. And it was Jake they were afraid of. Dad. My father. The man who did that to my mother and created me. Oh God, I hope it’s not inheritable. Whatever it is that Dad’s suffering from.
Then men’s voices joined the din and soon there was thumping and bumping and crashing going, and glass smashing and wood, beer crates, splintering; women yelling, some ofem bawling, and there was even one laughing. Grace heard her — in snatches — this woman her mocking laughter at the mayhem happening around her, sort of like a TV documentary describing a scene, the sequence of mad events taking place before and around her: Yah! and now Moose is sticking his big nose in! Go to it, Moosie! Hahaha — And then she’d be cut off, then come clear again: G’won, Mary, cry ya little eyes out, as if that’s gonna make these bastards and bitches stop. G’won, Mary, weep! Hahaha! Yer mad! The fuckin lot of yas, yer ma — Cut off again.
The struggle, this humungous struggle resuming dominance over a girl’s ears and no doubt those of her other five siblings. What must they be thinking? Specially the younger ones.
Calling to Polly, You wanna hop in with me, Poll? But Poll saying no, she was alright. Her and Sweetie, her doll, they were looking after each other. So Grace calling to Huata the same invitation and getting sobbing in reply. God, she’d heard it so many times before, and she knew it went on all over this place, the kids, always the kids, suffering most. Poor Huata.
She got up and climbed in beside her seven-year-old brother, cuddling up to him, feeling the damp of his tears on his pyjama top, the wet and then familiar stench of his piss. Oo, it’s alright, Hu. It’s alright. And Hu heaving with sobbing. And the fight still going on down below. And snatches of commentary from the laughing woman. And such a nice starlit night outside too.
Sorry, darling. Yeah, me too, dear. And I’m sorry for hitting you. No, no, I’m sorry for hitting you. Here, comein givus a kiss. A hug. A handshake. Yet another handshake. Put it here, brother. Take my hat off to you, man, you pack a punch. You too, bro. Here, put it here, man. I fuckin love ya. You’re
my cuzin, you know that, eh? You and I are related. Here, put it here, brother. On my mother’s side, eh, that’s the connection. And here we are fighting each other. Here, shake, cuzin. And don’t let us — blood-related — be fighting each other again. Sorry, sorry, sorry, here shake, put it here, gimme a hug, a kiss (a fuck), we won’t do this again we were juss drunk, eh, cuzin? Have I shaken your hand? Here, put it here, cuz, just in case. My fault — No, my fault. No, it was my fault, I shouldn’t said what I did — Man, it wasn’t what you said got me wild it was …
On and on and on into this lovely night, this lovely night and lovely children corrupted, ruined, raped, and all you can say is shake? Put it here, brother? And next week, next month, next year, for all the years of your terrible existence you lot’ll be doing the same, Grace in her brother’s bed thinking, as his small body seized every regular so often with a sob ascending from his troubled sleep.
Hearing the sounds of their shift from the sitting room to the kitchen. And someone starting up the guitar, telling everyone, Be happy now. Like that song: Don’t worry. Be happy. As if it is all so easy. As if the events just passed have not taken place. As if it hasn’t tramped across another lot of kids’ minds, crunched underfoot more of whatever it is that, left untouched, has a kid growing up normal, kind of pure.
Then voices in song, harmonised song, floated up to the bedroom. So you would not believe — you would not —that from the same source had sprung, just minutes before, such chaos, such encrazed chaos.
And maybe an hour later, a girl didn’t know, drifting as she was in and out of dreams and waking dreamscape, the two jumbled, mixing in, she hearing the same voices just shot. Gone. Just bursts of notes lasting a line, a verse, a word.
Someone telling the guitarist, Hey! Hurry up and tune that fuckin thing. I wanna sing a song for you fullas. Someone telling that person, it was a woman, to shud her fuggin mouth, she couldn’t sing to save her black self, that she’d heard a fuggin cat screechin better’n her, and telling the guitarist, Tell her to go fug herself, Sonny. Bitch can’t sing to save her black self. And the insulted woman replying, The hell you think you are talking about me like that? I c’n sing better’n you. Oh yeah? Yeah. Oh yeah? Yeah. Shit, woman, may’s well bring the fuggin cat in here than listen to you singing. So juss fug up. You fuck up. Don’t play her song, Sonny. Play Strangers in the Night, Sonny. Play My Cat Sings in the Alley, Sonny. Come on, Sonny, let me show this bitch. Ah, go catch some mouses, woman. Catch you in a fuckin minute. Come on then. And the men whooping, Yeow! Go to it, ladies!
So the ladies going to it, you could hear their struggle, and it wasn’t hard for an experienced girl to picture em hanging onto each other’s hair, clawing at each other, taking big raking gouges out of one another’s facial skin, spit flying, froth bubbling out of frantic mouths, eyes bulged blood red with the effort, the booze, and that certain madness that afflicts a girl her own race and only them, she knows it — oh but does she know it. And the men yelling and laughing, and saying, Whooaa at probably the combatants falling over them, pushing em away, laughing, Go fight over there, spill your blood on Bully’s shirt, I had my share. Laughing.
It’s a joke. It must be a joke. A lifetime joke, the same one said over and over, like their aftermath handshakes, on and on and fuckin on.
No wonder a girl felt she was going half mad, or didn’t want to live no more, not here, in this house, in this street.
And eventually the women’s fight over and their tears shed and sorries gushed, and the guitarist going danta-danka-dunka-dinka-dang-ding down his strings, a chord, a tuning chord, forever tuning when he’s not playing or drinking. Then Dad. Tennessee Waltz, Beth. Do Tennessee Waltz. Grace waking both ears to that. And Huata fast asleep and gone of his seizures, but wet as anything. A girl could hardly bear to move her leg lest she register it too fully, her brother’s piss against her form. Thinking, Go on, Mum. Sing. She sings so beautifully. And her mother saying, You sing it with me, Jake. And Dad saying, I might. I might. Then someone, one of those stupid women, sticking her nose in: I’ll sing it with you, Beth. I’ll harmonise you, eh? And her original antagonist telling her, Beth don’t want a fuggin cat miaowing along with her song. So fug up, woman. Ah, fuck the singing, one of the men drawling, what’s to eat? And, funny thing, at the same time the smell of cooking reaching Grace’s nostrils: now, Thursday, so it’ll be pork bones and watercress with spuds and doughboys. Soon as they’ve fed they’ll be falling asleep where they are. Grace falling away back into dreams.
She thought it was a dream: someone asking for eggs. Then someone, her mother, saying, What, eggs with a boiled feed? You must be joking, mista. Grace fearing for the mother in her dream till she realised it wasn’t a dream.
Awake, listening. Too damn quiet down there. Just mumblings. Huata soaked to the skin beside her. Her own pyjamas wet from contact with him. Creeping out of his bed, stripping her soiled nightclothes, getting into bed naked, ahhh, the nice feel of sheets against her skin. Now what’s happening? as arguing started up.
I ain’t cookin fried eggs with no boiled feed. Damned if I am. What I serve up is what you get. You’re not satisfied then take a walk, Jim. This ain’t a fuckin restaurant and I ain’t no one’s slave. Not even his. Grace presuming her mother’d be pointing at her father. And Grace fearing for her. Her mother’s physical wellbeing, and wondering why does she bring it on herself half the time? She knows what he’s like. Someone saying something, Grace couldn’t quite make out, but her mother clear enough: The hell you mean, Maori way? You call yourselves Maoris? Then Jake telling her to shuddup, woman. And she telling him to go to hell. She’s got her opinions and she’s got a right to say em. Back she went: Maoris, eh? Can any of us in this room speak the language? No reply. What do we know of our culture? Her voice emotional, the way it gets when she’d had too much to drink, or is like anyway when she gets a bee in her bonnet. Men’s voices, a chorus ofem, telling her to shuddup and siddown and that she had a damn cheek talking to them like that. But Beth went right on at them. She told them the Maori of old had a culture, and he had pride, and he had warriorhood, not this bullying, man-hitting-woman shet, you call that manhood? It’s not manhood, and it sure as hell ain’t Maori warriorhood. So ask yourselves what you are.
But the men weren’t listening: Grace heard a voice go, That’s it. I ain’t sitting here while no woman talks like that to men. The sound of chairs scraping then Jake: Say sorry, Beth. Silence. The hell I will! What’ve I got to be sorry for? Tell HIM to say sorry!
Next instant the noise ofem all leaving. The door finally slamming. Silence again. Grace squeezing shut her eyes, pulling the blanket over her head waiting for the inevitable to follow. And it did.
And Grace laying there, moving her jaw rapidly but regularly from side to side and making a low ahhhhhh under the blankets as she did. It blocked the sound out completely. Didn’t even allow thoughts of it to enter her head. They didn’t come till later.
Up in the morning, dizzy with lack of sleep. A note on the kitchen table addressed to Nig to get the kids to clean up and don’t wake me, love from Mum.
A pool of her blood on the floor at the table where she must’ve sat after he’d finished with her. Poor poor Mum.
Nig not up so Grace sending Huata to wake him, Grace starting on the sitting room, Polly following faithfully after her lugging that doll of hers, a thing with blonde shiny hair she thought of it as her baby/sister/other mother all in one.
Sitting room a mess. Broken glass, smashed beer bottles, wood splinters of beer crates, the overpowering stench of beer. And fags. Settee tipped over on its back, the armchair one more fight older with more blood splatters, beer stains; a circle of beer crates on their ends where they must’ve sat around in a circle continued drinking or saying their sorries and thrusting put-it-here hands at each other. The whole scene bathed in sunlight pouring in through the black cloth blinds on permanent B for broken, in different stages of up or down, overlooking the back lawn, wh
ich hadn’t been mowed in ages, with bits of junk sticking up out of the high grass, a beer crate, a cardboard carton, a big tyre; and beyond, out there in the vast green expanse, but you wouldn’t believe two such different worlds could be so close, Trambert’s sheep grazing on his acreage, and the stand of pines you could see from Grace’s window (and used to be filled by a frightened girl’s imagination with witches and terrifying creatures of her haunted mind, but she was tougher now, so they were just the pines the area was apparently named after) and aptly ugly macrocarpa.
The floorboards sticky with partly dried beer, and cigarette butts everywhere. Abe walking in, heading straight for the overturned settee and plunging his arm at the seat junction, no good morning, kiss my arse, nothing, just wanting to be the one to find any coins even a note or two that’d slipped down there.
Nope, nothing. Fuckem. On to the cigarette packets, rushing about like a flipping vacuum-cleaner whipping up the packets flicking the lids, saying nope, nope, nope till he let out a whoop that he’d struck gold. Choice! Three, man! Stuffing them into his school shirt pocket. Grace going, Abe! But Abe not even glancing at her. Then Nig — shadow of his father — standing at the door. And Abe stiffening, touching his breast pocket. Gimme, gimme, Abe, Nig chuckling but menacing.
Not that he was a bully. Not to Grace he wasn’t. He loved her and she him. But Boogie, poor Boogie out there in the toilet having to clean the worst part, the spew, the runny shit spots up around the toilet bowl rim; and no one liked Boog except the girls. And Huata was too young yet to know Boog’d failed the test of pending manhood, but he’d learn. He’d be one of the judges one day against one of his own peers. All boys are judges against their own. And now, waiting for a real judge to pass judgment on poor Boogie, given that name out of contempt because he was scared of the Boogie Ghost as a kid, more scared than normal, terrified in fact. The rot’d set in early.