Black Marks on the White Page

by Witi Ihimaera

  ‘Change your bum and we go moe,’ he said to Rosie. ‘Go ninighs.’ He changed her nappy and prepared her morning bottle, lay her down on the big bed and crashed out beside her. Dead sleep. Best sleep. The only sleep.

  If Rosie woke before he did, she would jump on him, sit on his face — which was just as well because he didn’t know what she might get up to if he slept on. Climb? Fall? Squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube, take off along the street never to be seen again? Rosie gone. That is, if he forgot to lock the doors. Maddie not collected from kōhanga. That is, if he forgot to set his phone alarm as back-up.

  Getting off the bed he’d go to the bathroom, cup his hands under the cold tap, give his face and hair a soaking, glimpse the wreck of himself in the mirror. All this splashing and gasping amused Rosie. Her mother’s round eyes. When he was done she would grab hold of his leg and he’d walk with her clinging.

  ‘Thank God for you, Rosie,’ he’d say as he opened the fridge.

  SOMETIMES WHEN WATSON AND ZELDA were kids their mother would wake in time to see them off to school. She would make a cup of tea and ask, but not in a really interested way, if they had everything and if they’d done their homework. Her hair would be poking out in all directions. Watson would answer ‘Yes’ to both questions, but Zelda would either not reply or, before walking out the door, say something smart like, ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Zee,’ their mother would call, and she’d turn to him and say, ‘Givus a hug, Wattie,’ so he would do that before going out to catch up with Zelda, wishing he was sick so he could stay home with his mother until she went to her job at the hospital later in the morning.

  After school he and Zelda would look on the windowsill to see if their mother had left them any money. If she had, they’d go and buy a bumper burger, which they would share, sometimes a can of coke. On other nights they’d have bread and Marmite, saving the rest of the loaf for the next day. Or they’d eat it all.

  Zelda would go through his bag, slap his reading book and his maths homework on the table and see if he had any school notices. He’d read his book to her, she’d do his maths homework for him if he couldn’t do it or if he was too slow, then take out her own books.

  Their mother would return, sometimes with milk and saveloys, at around seven o’clock.

  By eight o’clock she’d be showered and ready to go out again, all done up, telling them not to stay up late.

  ‘You have to sign our homework notebooks,’ Zelda would say. Sometimes there was money needed — two dollars for a puppet show, or twenty dollars for a school trip. Permission slips had to be signed. Their mother would sign the notebooks and the permissions. She’d leave two dollars, or even five, but if more was needed there’d be a row.

  ‘Where’m I supposed to get twenty bucks from?’

  ‘You work, don’t you?’ was Zelda’s reply. ‘You get paid. You get paid money.’

  ‘There’s rent you know. You want us to get kicked out? There’s petrol. There’s the electricity.’

  ‘There’s the pokies.’

  ‘Don’t get smart, Zelda. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Stay home then, if it’s nothing.’

  Their mother would walk out, calling back, ‘Go and ask your father.’

  They had once gone, after school, to the garage where he worked. Walking along the motorway, because it was quicker, they hoped they wouldn’t get picked up by the cops. Their father wasn’t happy to see them or to hear why they had come.

  ‘I’m already paying through my back teeth for you lot,’ he said. ‘What does she expect? I got a wife and kids you know. Now I’m supposed to subsidise her habits? No way.’ He gave them two dollars each and told them to catch a bus home. It was getting dark. They didn’t go there again.

  But there were times, sometimes months on end, when their mother would stay home at night. She’d shop and cook. They’d stay up late watching television together. After a while it would start all over again. The rows would make him feel like running away.

  He did run away once but Zelda found him at the mall sitting with his bag, swinging his legs. She came up behind him, grabbed a fistful of his shirt and shoved him along in front of her, bad-mouthing.

  Stopped when she realised people were staring.

  WHEN WATSON ARRIVED AT kōhanga wheeling Rosie, Maddie was sitting on the grass with her bag beside her, looking out through the enclosure, as though she’d been waiting there all day. She leapt up at him and he carried her against his shoulder for a while, pushing the stroller with his other hand. He was working out how he was going to manage all of this once Dixie came home. He could withdraw Maddie from preschool, but he didn’t want to do that. Could get a double stroller, or a car. Well, couldn’t afford a car at the moment but he could clear his gear out of the van, remove the shelving and get another seat put in. He decided to go and talk to Tai. They could work on it over the Easter break.

  THE MONTH WAS UP and he hadn’t heard from his sister. That night he rang Zelda and asked her when she was bringing Dixie home.

  ‘Never mind about Dixie,’ she said. ‘You’ve got enough on your plate and Dixie’s all right here, better off.’

  ‘Not without her sisters. You said …’

  ‘I changed my mind.’

  ‘Look here, Zee …’

  ‘When she’s older, going to school. You get back to work. Get babysitters, daycare and after-school programmes.’

  Watson put the phone down with a soft hand, planning how he was going to go and get Dixie. You can do it, Wattie. The girls had their eyes on him, knew what was going on.

  ‘Aunty Zelda’s a pig,’ Lainey said, tears springing out of her face.

  ‘Don’t talk like that about your aunty,’ he said.

  ‘But, like, she is. She is,’ Pattie said. ‘Like …’

  ‘We’re going to get Dixie, going to get little sister.’

  WHEN ZELDA WAS FOURTEEN and he was ten, his sister found part-time work in the takeaway part of a fish restaurant — Friday nights and all day Sunday. He’d go there and hang out in the street or help where he could — wiping down, sweeping, putting out rubbish.

  ‘Don’t talk about me to anyone,’ Zelda said, ‘I’m sixteen, don’t forget. Don’t tell them nothing.’ He saw a different side to his sister as she took orders and money, gave change, salted and wrapped the hot bundles and handed them over. Have a great weekend, a great rest of the day, a good evening. A different face. Big eyes, smiles and makeup.

  Though he didn’t get paid for his help, there was always a meal for him at the end of the day. Zelda gave him two dollars every week to put in his pocket and bought butter and luncheon to go on their bread. She said she would save and he could go to school camp with his friends the following year, but he didn’t want to go to school camp, didn’t have special friends.

  ‘Well, it’s all stupid anyway,’ she said. ‘Who wants to sleep in a tent?’

  WHEN THE GIRLS WERE in bed Watson went out to the garage and began removing shelves from his van. He’d already taken the paint gear out, knowing he had to give up on the notion that he would get back to his paint business. He’d been in business on his own for three years after working under a boss for ten. He and Tai had modified the van, he’d bought his gear and built up custom, and Annie kept the books. He and Annie, their own business. Even Zelda had been impressed. Three years out on his own when Annie died. Didn’t finish the last job, couldn’t remember much about it. The only use he had for the van now was when he and Rosie went to the supermarket.

  The next morning, he strapped Rosie into her car seat and went to see Tai at the wrecker’s yard. He told Tai of his predicament and said he needed to make the van into an eight-seater so he and the girls could go and get Dixie.

  ‘All do-able,’ Tai said. ‘We look around for seats. We work on it, but … takes too long. Look at you, stressed to the max. You got to go and get Dixie now or y’not going to stop crying. Tomorrow. Saturday. Take L
ainey. Me and the missus’ll have the girls. Up there in the morning, back in the afternoon. All good. We do the van later, not a problem.’

  After he left Tai he went into town and bought a baby seat for the van, bottles, milk formula and a pack of nappies.

  Early next morning, Tai and his wife came in two cars to get the girls, and Watson, with Lainey beside him, started up the van.

  ‘Hit the road,’ Tai said, ‘and don’t take “no” for an answer.’ Tai knew Zelda. ‘Pick up Bubba and go.’ Which was what Watson intended doing — leaving everything and taking off, no clothes, no bags, no nothing. There was a drawer full of baby stuff at home anyway.

  When they arrived at the farmhouse he saw his sister out in the yard pegging little garments on the clothesline. It made him swallow. He told Lainey to wait in the van, and on his way into the house called out to Zelda that he had come for Dixie. He went through to the bedroom and took the sleeping baby from her cot.

  Zelda came screeching, ‘What’s got in to you? Leave her alone, she’s sleeping. You think you can manage on your own?’ He brushed past her.

  ‘Kids crying every day,’ he said.

  She followed as he hurried out to the driveway. ‘Because they miss their mother, you fool …’

  He opened the van door and strapped Dixie into her cocoon on the middle seat, words slicing from behind.

  ‘… who shouldn’t have smoked in the first place. Her choice not to have chemo.’

  ‘Shut your ugly mouth,’ Lainey shouted from the window.

  ‘Don’t talk like that to your aunty,’ he said as he got in, turned the key and wound up Lainey’s window.

  ‘She’s a cow.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that …’

  ‘There’s better cows than her running round the paddock.’

  As Watson turned and started down the drive his sister banged on the window shouting, ‘Okay, okay, wait. I’ll get her things,’ and went toward the house.

  So, he stopped. ‘And anyway, look,’ he said to Lainey. ‘Little sister. Little fatty, eh?’

  Lainey sniffed onto her sleeve, dried her face and peered at her sister. ‘Our room, Dad. Her cot. Me, Trinny, Rosie, Dixie.’

  ‘When she’s older,’ he said. ‘Keep her by me ’til she’s older.’

  He thought he should go and help Zee, but he’d had enough of her hammering on. When he saw her coming he got out, opened the boot door and took the bags from her without speaking.

  ‘What do you know about girls?’ she shouted as he drove off. He glimpsed her in the rear-vision mirror, standing in the driveway, stiff as a ladder, watching them go.

  WATSON HAD KEPT OUT of Zelda’s way since then, hadn’t contacted her for over three years, though she had texted him a few times asking him to come and visit during school holidays. He’d replied that he was working and left it at that. But now, what to do? Lainey needed a bra. Couldn’t go to the doctor for that.

  And different clothes. Stuff. He’d dropped Lainey, Pattie and Trinny off to the end-of-term disco and noticed other girls of their age all dressed up in outfits and costumes, glow and glitter, coloured shoes, earrings, hair decorations and makeup.

  Phones. What did he know?

  Facts of life. How could he?

  Anyway, it was time he visited. Couldn’t stay away from Zelda forever, though there was little time for visiting now that he was working again. The landlord had come to see him about painting the house. ‘She can do with a lick of paint,’ he’d said. ‘Hourly rate, in lieu of rent. Take as long as you like.’

  ‘No worries,’ Watson said.

  Maddie was at school now, Dixie off to kōhanga, which gave him four or five hours a day on the job. If he had to take time off for school things, doctor visits, or if kids were home sick, he could.

  ‘Outside first,’ the landlord said, ‘then we might think about the inside. Inside could do with a lick.’ Watson wondered if the landlord was doing the place up for sale. ‘Take your time. She won’t run away. And not selling her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just looking after my investment. You and the girls got a roof over your heads as long as you want.’

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘At least until I kark, and not planning on doing that any time soon.’

  Watson enjoyed the work, making something old and shabby new again, and for the first time he had savings. When he and Annie first started out they’d had debts to pay off for the van and gear. They’d only just cleared those when he’d had to pack it all in.

  ZELDA LEFT SCHOOL WHEN she was fifteen, to work full time in the fish restaurant. A year later he began his secondary schooling in a uniform sourced by Zelda from Savermart, which was where she outfitted herself too, in excellent style. She bought him new shoes and school books. During that year their mother died.

  She came out from the bathroom one morning and asked Zelda for money again.

  ‘No way, José,’ Zelda said.

  ‘A loan, Zee. ’Til tomorrow — pay you back tomorrow.’

  ‘The tomorrow that never comes, you mean?’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Zee.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Until tomorrow, otherwise …’

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘A bit behind, that’s all. Repayments. It has to be today …’

  ‘Drop dead,’ Zelda said, and walked out.

  That night there was a phone call to say that their mother had collapsed at the casino and been taken to hospital by ambulance. They found out later that she had died on the way there.

  Despite his own sadness, what Watson remembered of the days that followed was Zelda’s constant tears. Zelda’s sorrow. He had thought she’d be glad.

  Three people, their mother’s sister, a cousin and an uncle, who they had never met before, came from the South Island to get her. All three looked like their mother. They were kind, like her, and when everything was over wanted him and Zelda to stay, come and live close by. There was family property, they said, where perhaps they would like to build a house one day.

  Zelda wouldn’t agree to it. She had recovered from tears and said she had to get back to work, and that he, Wattie, had to get back to school, his mates, his rugby. She made things up. He didn’t have mates, didn’t play rugby. There were their mother’s clothes and things to deal with, she said, which was true. There were debts to pay, she could’ve added.

  Zelda left the fish restaurant for better-paid work at an appliance store where she could get discounts on electrical goods and technology, and where she was soon winning prizes for salesperson of the week — a hairdrier, a telephone, a television set. She saved for a computer, went on a course, read the manual and became a skilled operator. She bought him screen games and a Nintendo, told him he wasn’t to hang out at the video parlours or he’d get picked up, and that he should bring his mates home after school instead. He didn’t want to go to the arcade and kept telling her he didn’t have mates — which was true during those junior years — but she didn’t seem to believe him.

  It wasn’t as though he was friendless. Kids in his class liked him all right, thought he was a crack-up the things he came out with sometimes, but he didn’t hang out with them. He went to school. He came home, did enough homework to keep him out of trouble then watched television or played the games.

  Once a week he waited around town for Zelda to finish work and they did their grocery shopping, or he’d go into the store and check out the latest technology, check out this other Zelda — smart, sharp and trusted, cheerful and heading for management positions.

  During his last two years at school there was a group of four, including Tai and Annie, who attached him to themselves. They dragged him off to their sports on Saturdays, where he wore the scarves and found that he enjoyed himself, especially enjoyed the netball — all those legs.

  ‘Bring them home,’ Zelda urged him. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the house, nothing to be ashamed of. There’s food in the fridge. What’s up with you?’r />
  But he couldn’t get used to the idea.

  ‘You think I’m going to jump on their necks or something?’

  He wondered about Zelda’s own friends, or if she had any. He’d only heard her complaining about some of the idiots at work.

  ‘THERE’S MONEY,’ HE TOLD Lainey, Pattie and Trinny, ‘from the painting job, so you can have new clothes.’ He was wiping down the table and stove, and the girls were at the sink doing dishes. They switched to face him and began jumping about and clapping like Americans on sitcoms, so excited that he felt sorry for them.

  ‘From the shop?’

  ‘Awesome, Dad.’

  ‘Aunty Zelda will help you,’ he said.

  That stopped them.

  ‘Nah. Nah, Dad.’

  ‘Not Aunty Zelda.’

  ‘We can, like, buy our own clothes.’

  ‘It’s not just the clothes,’ he said. ‘Other things. Things for you to know. Grown-up things. What do I know about girls?’

  ‘I already told them, like, about their periods,’ Lainey said.

  ‘Yes, she did. Gross. And bras,’ said Pattie.

  ‘Yeah, gross. I don’t want, like, periods and boobs,’ said Trinny.

  ‘I don’t too,’ said Pattie.

  ‘Der. Like you got a choice,’ said Lainey. ‘Anyway, I done the research. Farmers. You go to Farmers. The bra specialist lady, like, measures you, finds the right size and gets you to try them on.’

  ‘You went there? Farmers?’

  ‘Julie told me.’

  ‘You should’ve said. Why …?’

  ‘Cost heaps. Rip-off.’

  ‘But you … and I just thought …’

  ‘God no, not Aunty. Old school.’

  They turned back to the bench, listing the things they imagined themselves wearing if they went shopping with Zelda — skirts down to their ankles, tops with frills, button-up cardies, men’s pants, policeman’s shoes, flares. They were laughing, clowning, funny, pretty, like their mother. He moved the chairs to sweep under the table. So, shopping with his sister wasn’t a good idea. But.