Potiki

by Patricia Grace

  One day when we were out in the gardens there came noise from far back in the hills. It was the road machines, making a way for development to begin, and it was the sound of dynamite blasting the hills away. But these roads were not the roads that the money men had wanted to make. The roads they wanted were roads in front of our houses, and through our wharenui and urupa. The roads had been shown to us on maps by the money men again and again, who had kept saying that our house could be shifted without cost to us. But when asked where it could be shifted to, they said that perhaps it could be shifted nearer to town, to a more central place.

  Everybody had laughed then, because the man had not understood that the house was central already and could not be more central. The man had a surprised look when the people laughed and looked down at his clothing as though he could suddenly be dressed strangely. It was then that we all realised that the man had not, had never, understood anything we had ever said, and never would.

  My uncle tried to explain it all again. I think he felt sorry for the man. My sister Tangimoana was not sorry for the man at all. She called him a stupid bastard.

  Now there was a very strange thing. I was sitting up close by my Granny Tamihana. We had the mattresses down so that we could be comfortably seated, and our rugs were spread on the mattresses. We did not get in under our rugs because the weather was warm.

  Earlier when preparing the house for the meeting some had thought that we should bring in a table for the man’s plans and papers, and a chair for the man to sit on, but my mother Roimata disagreed.

  She said to let the man be like everyone else because that would be good psychology.

  ‘You mean let him sit on the floor in his suit and his sock feet so he’ll feel a fool, him not being used to our ways?’ Tangimoana said.

  ‘Tangi I didn’t mean that, not exactly. I meant let the boot be on the other foot for a change. Let him feel what we sometimes feel … in different situations.’

  ‘It’s exactly what you meant no matter how nice you put it,’ said Tangimoana. And all the women laughed while they unrolled the whariki and the boys put the mattresses down on them.

  When my cousins Paul and Stanny came with a table and a chair for the man the aunties sent them away again saying the table and chair were not needed.

  And when Tangi called out ‘stupid bastard’ to the man, my father Hemi and my Uncle Stan, who were seated by where the man was standing talking to us, frowned and were angry with her but they didn’t look up. The man kept talking and his face was red and furious.

  It was so strange. My father and uncle were frowning and upset, and the money man was angry and red, and then my old Granny began to shake. I was close by her. I turned my head to look at her. Her forehead was resting on her skinny hand, which was like a chook hand, or really a foot of a chook, and she was laughing and laughing.

  At first I didn’t understand, with all the angriness of the man and the annoyed manner of the other older people, why my Granny was shaking like an earthquake and hiding her face with her hand. Then my mother Roimata on the other side of Granny put her head down too, and her shoulders were lumping up and down. Mary, who was sitting on the other side of me reached over and began to tickle my chin. She had forgotten all about the man standing there, red in his sock feet. Her remembering is not good in some things. I began to laugh too.

  There was beginning to be noise and a murmur in the house, the way there often is when you have finished with something and had enough.

  It was enough right then. The man began to collect his papers together. My father thanked him and then we stood to sing the hymn which would conclude our meeting. But I did not stand because my family did not wish it. It was not easy for me to stand. My Granny remained seated with me and so did my first mother, Mary.

  As the hymn ended everyone moved out of the house, the children to play with their ball out on the marae, and the adults towards the wharekai.

  The man was standing with my father. Hemi, I knew, would be asking the man to stay and have lunch with all of us in the wharekai, but the man was shaking his head.

  There we were with everyone else gone. My father and the man were going towards the door. My mother Mary was standing on her mattress singing to the house, to the shadowy, quick-eyed figures, rocking her body from side to side and beginning to sing louder and louder. My Granny stood and reached my sticks to me. She waited for me, bent and old, wiping her laughing tears.

  I pulled myself up on my sticks. At the same time I looked up, and my eyes met the man’s eyes as he looked back. Eyes angry, but as well as anger there was something else coming into his eyes that came from the anger, but anger was only part of it.

  Right then I saw what the man saw as he turned and looked at the three of us and as my eyes met his eyes. I saw what he saw. What he saw was brokenness, a broken race. He saw in my Granny, my Mary and me, a whole people, decrepit, deranged, deformed. That was what I knew. That was when I understood, not only the thoughts of the man, but also I understood the years of hurt, sorrow and enslavement that fisted within my Granny Tamihana’s heart. I understood, all at once, all the pain that she held inside her small and gentle self.

  And the pain belonged to all of us, I understood that too. I understood that my sister’s angry words shouted in the house of wood, the house of stories, the house of tipuna – shouted into the domain of Rongo which is the domain of peace – were a relief and a release for my Granny, causing her to shake and laugh herself to tears.

  I was the only one who saw the carved hate and anger on the face of the man as he stepped into the afternoon, out into the shouting of kids scrambling after their ball on the marae.

  15

  Roimata

  Everything we need is here, Hemi said. It’s true, and he’s always known it. What Toko said was also true – the stories had changed.

  Once we went back to the land there were not enough hours in the day for what needed to be done, and every day our work continued until after dark. With the help of a horse, and later a small tractor and truck, the land was broken in. Seaweed and other manures were spread in the winter months and turned under. Trenches were made for compost. A good market was found for potatoes and pumpkins for the first year’s harvest, and each year after that the gardens were added to, new crops were tried, and the market slowly widened. But before the market we had ourselves to provide for. Our homes were full as more of the whanau returned because of jobs becoming more and more scarce, and as accommodation became more difficult to find and to afford.

  There was work for everyone here, even though it was not the paid work that most had been accustomed to. Some were pleased and relieved to be back. Others were here more reluctantly, and did not stay long. Ours was a chosen poverty, though ‘poverty’ was not a good word for it.

  The stories were of existence, of survival, of being up before light, breakfasting on reheated vegetables, bread and tea. Then by first light, those who worked in the gardens would be out stooping into the soil.

  Our two youngest ones were not little children any more. They did not need me so much for their schooling because they had discovered how to learn for themselves. They themselves knew what it was they wanted to learn, and why. They knew how to go about getting the knowledge that they wanted. But Manu and Toko and I kept a corner of the wharekai free, where the little children of the whanau came to talk and sing and read and write each morning. We had time enough for that. We could not afford books so we made our own. In this way we were able to find ourselves in books. It is rare for us to find ourselves in books, but in our own books we were able to find and define our lives.

  But our main book was the wharenui which is itself a story, a history, a gallery, a study, a design structure and a taonga. And we are part of that book along with family past and family yet to come.

  The land and the sea and the shores are a book too, and we found ourselves there. They were our science and our sustenance. And they are our own universe about w
hich there are stories of great deeds and relationships and magic and imaginings, love and terror, heroes, heroines, villains and fools. Enough for a lifetime of telling. We found our own universe to be as large and as extensive as any other universe that there is.

  For our stories there were not enough hours in each day, but we spent a part of each morning with the little ones of the whanau while their parents worked. Toko, who had had by then to slow his movements down, spent more and more time with the children, and with those who worked in the kitchen. His brother was always nearby to walk with him or to bring him to the gardens when he wanted to come.

  It was easy enough to laugh at the state of our clothing. Some of the skirts and jeans had been mended so many times that they were almost made up of patches. The socks and jerseys had been darned so many times that we could call them new again. Many went barefoot for most of the year to save their shoes for the cold months.

  Our homes needed painting but there was no money for paint. Some of the fences needed nailing but there was no time for it until winter came. Our cars had been sold because there was no money for repairs, and no money for petrol. But we had the truck and tractor, there was money enough for that.

  Some of us still had television, but once a set broke down there was no money to fix it. And there was no time any more for watching television, and not much liking for it because it did not define us. There was little indication through television that we existed at all in our own land. There was little on television that we could take to our hearts.

  There was money enough to pay for electricity, rates and petrol for the machines. There was enough for tea, flour, soap and cigarettes, but little more than that. Hemi’s brother Stan sometimes said, ‘The gardens are great, the people are pohara,’ but it was only said so that we could laugh at ourselves. We were not pohara. Our family had known greater hardship than this in the past, and had known greater poverty. Some had survived, become whole again, others had never mended.

  We were not pohara. Our chosen hardship was something that was good and uplifting to all of us, a biting on the pebble that keeps an edge on the teeth. But we did not know how events were to turn and all but destroy the spirit that gave life and energy and strength to all of us.

  We were not pohara. We were whole and life was good. The gardens would soon be in full production and perhaps then we would have warm shoes, perhaps then we would have meat on our plates. If we could not it did not matter.

  We would not have wished that the old lady in her ninety-third year would be in the wharekai daily, sitting by the fireplace preparing vegetables, but it was what she chose to do. ‘I’ll help my Mary,’ she said. ‘You leave us two here and not to worry. Otherwise I rattle in my own kitchen good for nothing. Go to your other work.’

  We would not have wanted to take Mary away from the work she loved, and we did not. Mary would spend the mornings in the wharekai with Granny Tamihana preparing food, washing tea-towels and tablecloths, mopping floors and washing down table-tops. In the afternoons, Mary would as usual go on her own to the wharenui to dust and polish, to converse with the tipuna, and to sing in the house of the people.

  James was not with us all the time. He was with the koroua who taught him to carve, regaining a skill for the whanau. They were sometimes at Te Ope and sometimes elsewhere, depending on where they were needed. But James returned to us and to the gardens in the busy seasons, even though we had told him it was not necessary for him to do so.

  Tangimoana was at university because the whanau had asked her to go there and study law. There was enough money for that. She returned in the holidays and divided her time between sleeping, and working in the wharekai or gardens. But also she had study and assignments to do.

  The man did not come back again after the last time when he left in anger. No one came and we heard no more for over a year. We were busy with our work and had almost put the development proposals out of mind when a letter arrived. The company was to go ahead with its plans but would have to go ahead without the use of the land on which our urupa and wharenui stood, unless at that late stage we would reconsider. Also they asked for permission for the construction company to use our private access while development took place.

  We did not reconsider, and did not give permission for the use of our road. In this we were supported by other people who, over the years, had become friends. They were fishermen and family people who had always used our road and the beach in a family way. They were people who did not want to see development in the area, and did not want the destruction of trees and the flattening of hills, and did not want to have the road used by big trucks and land-working machines.

  After the letter we heard nothing more for some weeks. No one came. Then one day when we were out in the gardens detonations sounded as from far away, and later that day the sound of road machines was carried to us by the northerly. It was the construction company building access through the back way. We turned back to the gardens because there was nothing else we could do.

  Every day the sounds came closer until one day we could see the yellow cuttings that the yellow machines had made, and the yellow clothes and the yellow hard hats that the men wore who worked the yellow machines. There was nothing we could do, or that’s what we thought, because that part of the land had gone from us long before.

  There were others who did not think as we did, that nothing could be done. Their letters, objections and actions were widely reported and discussed, but we turned away. We were busy with our gardens and our nets, and busy learning all that could be learned about the land and the sea. We were busy telling and retelling the stories and histories of a people and a place, and learning or relearning a language which was our own, so that we could truly call it our own again. We worked for our own survival and we tried not to look towards the hills, tried not to hear the sounds that came from there.

  Then one morning a small group of people came by our place and said that they were going up to sit on the new road, and that they were not going to allow the road construction to go any further. They were going to sit in front of the bulldozers they said, and they asked us to join them. We looked up and saw that others were already there, waiting on the road. We did not join them. It did not seem right to us, to sit on land that no longer belonged to us.

  The roadmen laughed when they arrived at work and found the group of people with their placards and signs. They did not start up their machines but went away and boiled the billies and played cards until the bosses came. That’s what the people told us later.

  The bosses shouted and raved and so did the people, but the people did not move until the police came. Some of them went home when the police came, but some were arrested and taken away in vans. We could hear them shouting about the road and the destruction of the land. It was afternoon before work on the road began again.

  The next morning some of the young ones from here went to join the group that had reformed up on the road, though not everyone in the whanau approved of them doing this. They hurried home when the police came, being careful to avoid arrest.

  ‘Some of them are our own relations,’ James said. ‘Driving the big machines.’ He said two names. ‘They said they didn’t want to give up their jobs because their jobs would only be given to others and the road will be made anyway.’

  ‘Of course they shouldn’t give up their jobs,’ said Hemi. ‘All this is no fault of theirs, nothing to do with them. A man and his family have to eat.’

  ‘They spoke to us,’ James said. ‘Asked us if we lived here, and said who they were, they’re Rihanas.’

  Hemi and I both knew who they were.

  ‘There was trouble,’ Hemi said.

  ‘Been inside, both of them,’ said James. ‘And not easy for them to get work.’

  ‘Go up there tomorrow and bring them home,’ Hemi said. ‘Their grandfather was from here and their parents brought them here when they were children. After that they went to Aussie to live. Go up there tomorr
ow and bring them home.’

  That was when we met, or met again, Matiu and Timoti.

  The barricades and protests lasted just a week. There was nothing anyone could do.

  But it was soon after that that letters began to arrive again. We were offered more and more money for the land on which our wharenui and our urupa stood, land which would give good access to the developed sites, and allow greater development. We were promised too that our own roadway which gave access to our homes, and which we had built and which we maintained ourselves, would be upgraded. The developers would widen and seal the road as well as kerb, channel and light it – if they could also use it. But we did not wish to help them in the things they wanted to do so we did not give permission for our road to be used, even though the road, as it was, was expensive and difficult for us to maintain. It was rutted and pot-holed, and flooded sometimes in winter.

  The developers were angry at our constant refusals but that was because they did not understand that our choice was between poverty and self-destruction. Yet poverty is not a good word. Poverty is destructive too. We did not have real poverty. We had homes and enough good food, or nearly always enough. We had people and land and a good spirit, and work that was important to us all.

  One evening after karakia Stan read to us the most recent letter telling the sum the developers were offering for the land. We were shocked by the figure read out to us. The amount of money offered told us that the developers were desperate for our piece of land, and this desperation was frightening to us. It caused us to wonder what could happen, what they would do, once they had accepted that we could not be bought. We wondered if their power and money could be used in a different way. It was worrying to realise the desperation that was behind the offer of such a large sum.