Potiki

by Patricia Grace

  11

  Roimata

  The week we learned of the closing down of Hemi’s job was a time of some anxiety for me, as it was for many people. I wondered what we would do, how we would live. But when I spoke to Hemi he only said, ‘Everything we need is here.’ He then began to retell his story, so that the children came and listened.

  He told again of how it had been once, and I was able to see the land again as it had been, and saw people who were gone by then, stooping into the soil. One of them was my father. There was dark earth which seemed to sit darkly under dark skies. And then as the earth greened, and the green thickened and spread, the skies lightened into broad summers. That was how it seemed in memory.

  Bags of potatoes, kumara and carrots were loaded onto the truck, bags that I had often helped Mary and her mother and other members of the family to stitch with a needle and string. Or there were boxes of tomatoes and cabbages and corn to be shared or taken away for sale. I saw myself with the other children carrying pumpkins, as though each of us had snared a sun in the circle of our arms.

  And Hemi told the new story too, of how it would be again, of how the land could be brought back into full production using new crops that he had already tried out in the house garden and already knew something about. The final payments from the job would help us get started, he said. He wanted to work a horse again but to have a small tractor and truck as well. As he spoke I felt how full of hope and confidence he was.

  It was one day during the spring of the new gardens that Toko came hurrying in to speak to me. We had told and written our stories that morning then gone out to help in the gardens. In the early afternoon my sister-in-law and I had returned to the wharekai to prepare lunch.

  Toko hurried in after us. ‘The stories are changing,’ he said. His eyes were wide and bright and his hair hung damply about his face.

  ‘Don’t hurry so much,’ I said.

  ‘When are they coming?’ he asked.

  ‘Who? When are who coming?’

  ‘All the people. The people that we make the gardens for.’

  ‘The gardens are for us, for our kai … and for the market.’

  ‘And for people.’

  ‘There’ll always be kai … for people … for our visitors.’

  ‘When will they come? Are they coming soon?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I didn’t know what else to say. I only knew that Tokowaru had a special knowing.

  Then he said, ‘Will they stamp their feet and march and run? Will their eyes shine green, yellow and silver? Will they be sore-footed with bands on their heads? What will they hold in their hands?’

  I didn’t know how to answer him.

  ‘And will their hunger and anger be hard?’ he said. ‘What will they do and what will we do? Will we feed them and help them? And will they help us too? Will they do it for me, or you? Will my sister be with them, and my brother? Will our fathers be there, or our children? Will it be us? What will it be? Is it for me?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ I couldn’t say any more than that. I could only hold him close to me, holding him, fearing him, as I had held and feared him on the day that he was born.

  12

  Toko

  There’s a story about Te Ope. Part of the story is old and part of it is new. The old part of the story has been told to us by my second mother Roimata. The new part has been told in the newspapers and on television in words and pictures. But also we have been to Te Ope and we have seen the new story for ourselves, and we have been part of the new story too. My brother James and my sister Tangimoana stay at Te Ope sometimes, and when they come home Manu and I listen excitedly to all the stories they bring.

  The old story is about an area of Te Ope land where the old Te Ope families lived. There were twenty-five houses that people lived in and an empty house that was used as a wharenui. It was not a whare whakairo like the house that we have here, but just an ordinary house where a family had once lived. It had had some walls taken out of it and had been dedicated by the families as a wharenui.

  There was a small orchard behind the houses, and the hills behind the orchard were covered in scrub. The people who lived there were poor and could not develop the land, but they grew their own food and had plenty of firewood for their stoves and fire-places. They were like us now, not having any work, but they were much more poor than we are now and had a very hard life, that’s what Roimata said. And they did not have the sea like we have. But they were not poor in some things, and whatever they had they shared. There was no town there like there is now.

  Then later the war came. This was the long-ago war. Not my grandfather’s war but my great-grandfather’s war where the soldiers waded through mud, and the shells came clouting them, knocking them flat so that they died with mud in their mouths. Their friends who were not dead used the dead bodies for bridges so that they could crawl to somewhere safe, or used them to step on, or just to hold on to. It’s all in the stories. They were red and black days with mud and blood, with shell explosion and rifle fire and dying. The men still alive walked back to life on the backs of the people dead.

  There were no young men at Te Ope because they had all gone to war. But the country wanted more than Te Ope’s young men. They wanted the land for purposes of war, and because their land was in a good place, because there was a good flat area there, it was very suitable. That is what was told to the people of Te Ope at the time, the land was very suitable. But it has been said since that this was an excuse to scatter the people, destroy their homes, and take the land.

  The people quietly packed up and went to the state houses that had been rented to them. They were to return to the land when it was no longer needed for purposes of war. They went quietly because they were poor, that’s what Roimata said.

  The people of Te Ope did not expect to go past their land one day and see that their houses had gone. But when they went to find out about their houses they were told that the land could not be used as a landing field if it had houses on it. The houses were derelict anyway, they were told, and not fit to be lived in. They had been given better houses, they were told.

  The people agreed that they had been given better houses, except that the houses had not really been given. These houses did not belong to them but to the government and they paid rent to live in them. To pay rent was difficult for most because there was still no work for them. There was no land for gardens and no wood for their fires. These houses were scattered everywhere so that the family was separated, and also they didn’t have their meeting-house any more.

  But that wasn’t a proper meeting-house, they were told. No carvings, no nothing, and it was falling down anyway. They couldn’t possibly call that a meeting-house, they needn’t try and put that one across. And what did they mean their family was separated? Each family had been given a house, a bigger and better house than the one they had come from, they should be grateful, and right in the city too. If you really wanted a job you could find one. If you really wanted a garden what’s to stop you? That’s what they were told.

  The Te Ope people talked until there was no more use in talking and then they went back to their scattered city houses that did not belong to them. They did not have anything that belonged to them any more except that they had each other, scattered as they were, and they had their stories.

  Also they had an old man called Rupena who wrote letters. He wasn’t greatly old then, not greatly old like our old mother Tamihana, but was a man whose family had grown up, and whose sons were away at war. He wrote letters setting out all that had been promised and all that had been done, and what the people wanted. No one knew about the letters except for a few members of the family and those who had received them. The letters were a part of the old story.

  They later became a part of the new story, but the old man was dead by then, though not long dead. My father Hemi remembers him and my mother Roimata too. He was helped down from the bus and across the sacred ground when our
mother Roimata returned here. That was when our own kuia died, mother of our father, but it was before we were born. There were white seagulls flying, and white waves. The old man’s hair was white against the dark clothes that people wore, and when he stood to speak he said that our grandmother, lying in her coffin in the glinting house, was a singing bird and a soul of joy. That’s what Roimata has told us.

  The new story began at about the time when our mother was a girl and when our father left school to work the gardens, which was more than thirty years after the beginning of the old story. Reuben of Te Ope, grandson of Rupena, was sixteen then. One day he went home from school and said to his parents, ‘I’m not going there any more.’ His mother and father were angry and told him not to talk that way. They told him he was to go back to school and that was that, no arguing. ‘But what for? What for?’ he kept asking.

  ‘You must have a good job,’ they said. ‘You must have a decent life. For your future,’ they said.

  ‘I can get a job,’ he said. ‘And I do have a decent life.’ But they wouldn’t listen to him. ‘You’ll be out on the streets, like your brother, jobless and pohara, not bothering to come home, feeling ashamed. You’ll be like some of your cousins, drunk and useless. You’ll end up in jail.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean that. Leaving school doesn’t mean that.’

  ‘That’s what it means. We’ve seen it. You can’t leave.’

  ‘Well what about both of you? Yous didn’t stay at school. Hardly went to school …’

  ‘It was different … We had to and … couldn’t afford, but you …’

  ‘You’re making me eat shit sending me back there.’

  ‘Now look, you don’t need to … you’re going back. Because we know … and the old man and them, they know too. They know about no work, and their homes falling down about them, about people helpless …’

  ‘If their houses fell down there was still the land,’ Reuben said.

  ‘We’re not talking about the houses on the land that were pulled down, we’re talking about the houses after that. Fell down. And anyway that was then, that’s not now.’

  ‘But why isn’t it? Why not now?’

  ‘Well that’s an old story, you know as well as we do.’

  ‘I do. I know the story and I know the place. You, both of yous, and him, the old man, you took me there to run in the finals. And he told me. “This is your land,” he said. “This is the place,” and he told me all the things he’d told before, but he pointed here and he pointed there. “We tried, you know,” he said to me. “Me and my sisters and some of our cousins,” and he said some of their names. He told me who. “We went back and back,” he told me. “We wrote,” that’s what he told me. I listened to him …’

  ‘Well listen to him now. Get on over to Aunty’s and talk to him. He’s the one. He’ll talk sense into you. Tell you to stick at school, make something of yourself.’

  ‘Aren’t I something already? Aren’t I? That’s all I learn at school – that I’m not somebody, that my ancestors were rubbish and so I’m rubbish too. That’s all I learn from the newspapers, that I’m nobody, or I’m bad and I belong in jail. You’re telling me that now too.’

  ‘It’s not that, Son. It’s not what we mean. You’ve got the brains. You should use them.’

  ‘I am. That’s what I’m doing right now, using my brains. I’ve thought about it, I tell you. I’ve already thought. And what I know is I’m not learning one thing, not one thing, that’s anything to do with me, or us. And some of the stuff, well, it’s against me and against us. It makes us dumb, it puts us wrong.’

  ‘But it gets you somewhere.’

  ‘Where somewhere?’

  ‘Somewhere. It gets a future for you.’

  ‘But that’s eating shit.’

  ‘Work’s not eating shit …’

  ‘Sometimes …’

  ‘It’s keeping your neck out of the water, you know, not … drowning. But it can be more. For you. You can do anything. You know … anything you want, can’t you see?’

  ‘You’ll make me go there and eat shit.’

  ‘You don’t go back and it’s like you’re throwing shit in our faces.’

  ‘You’ve been shoved into it anyway, you don’t even know …’

  ‘Don’t get smart and don’t argue. You finish the year off then see …’

  ‘See?’

  ‘Just to the end of the year, Son. You’ve done good so far and you might as well.’

  So Reuben returned to school because he couldn’t get his parents to understand. It was his Mum and Dad who told all this to Roimata, but that was later.

  Reuben did go to see his grandfather Rupena, and asked what he should do. The old man didn’t answer Reuben’s questions about school, but he said, ‘Don’t go out on the streets, go on the land. Our land, yours. Belongs to all of us, all of yous.’ Then he said, ‘Get the letters, in the wardrobe. Only copies. Copied the ones I sent. Read them and then you’ll know. Show your cousins and then all of yous will know us old ones tried, we had a go. You show them we really tried and they won’t blame. And if yous can do something … well good on yous.’

  It was when he got the letters that Reuben began to learn the things that he wanted to learn. Before that no one had known, or hadn’t remembered about the copies of the letters that the old man had kept, along with the few replies that he had received.

  The first letter had been written after the pulling down of the houses.

  ‘… we the people of Te Ope ask you if it was a right thing to take down these houses belonging to us. We think it would be right to talk of these matters first so that we can give our explanations to you and you can give your explanations to us. We write to say why have you done this? We have come to see you but you have only told us it is necessary and quickly gone away leaving us to look at each other. What manner is that? It is too late now, you have taken our houses down. You have taken the timber away. For what reason? You say that these are not good houses. You say that we live in better houses now. That is the truth. But these houses belong to the government and not to the people of Te Ope.

  ‘I will tell you that the meeting-house was blessed in a Christian manner in the name of God who is above all men. But now it is taken down. Why have the blessed timbers been burnt?

  ‘When will this war be ended so that our friends will return to us? But there will be no houses for them, and no gardens to feed them. There will be no house of mourning where we can gather when they bring home the shadows of the dead. Our land will come back to us and then we must build our houses again, but our money is going away to pay our rent.

  ‘These are our thoughts and what do you reply to all of us …’

  ‘As has been already explained the houses of which you speak were demolished because the land is required for a landing field. Since the houses of which you write were substandard I am sure you will agree that there has been no great loss to you. You must appreciate that the homes that have been allotted to you and the other families have been given at a very low rental.

  ‘I note that in your letter you have mentioned a meeting-house. There was no building on the land that could in any way fit such a description. I suggest that you keep strictly to facts if in future you feel you need to make further representations to this office …’

  When Reuben finished school he began to study law, but in the evenings and at weekends he would talk about the land and the letters, to his parents and his brother. He would visit the homes of his relatives, or go looking for his cousins in the different parts of town, or in other parts of the country. He showed the letters to all of them so that they were able to discuss them.

  After the first letter there was a space of over a year to the second.

  ‘… we see that you do not use the land. Why have we, the Maori people of Te Ope, given up our land and our houses when you do not use the land for purposes of war or for any purpose? When will the air base be built because the land is clear
now? All of the houses have gone, the trees have been chopped. If you think that the land is not right after all, then we, the people of Te Ope will want to go back there and make our gardens again. We will build up our houses. We will wait there for our sons when this trouble is finished …’

  There were other letters like this one belonging to these early years, but there were no replies.

  It was before the second war, my grandfather’s war, that the land had been made into a playing-field by men on relief work. There was only one letter from that time, telling of how the promise had been broken.

  ‘… the land has not been used as an air base or for any purpose of war. We have come there to you but you only look into your books. You say that you will speak to this one and that one. We go away, we come back, but still there is no reply to us.

  ‘Now you send men to make a park there while we of Te Ope only watch and do nothing because we do not have houses there any more. When will this stop? The park must stop. Return the Te Ope people to their land.’

  There was a short reply to this letter saying that the office would look into the matter, but that was all.

  The people later gave copies of the letters to us so that we would all know their stories, but that was before I was born. Later Roimata and Manu and I made little books with them, and read them and told them over and over.

  And we made a big book from the newspaper cuttings that our Aunty had saved too. They were from the time when Reuben went to live on the land. They were pictures and stories of the young Reuben and the people who supported him, and pictures and stories of the park and playing-field and the clubrooms. There were stories and pictures of arrests and people going to court, and stories of family picnics that Reuben had organised for the people, and pictures of the tents and gardens. Roimata wrote the dates on the pages of our book for us so we would know.