Black Marks on the White Page

by Witi Ihimaera

  ‘Facts of life,’ he said, when he could get a word in.

  ‘What’s that?’ they wanted to know.

  ‘Girls growing up, what you have to know.’

  ‘Sex education,’ they said. ‘Dad, we have all that at school.’

  And his daughters came out with all this vocabulary that was difficult for him to listen to, goofing about in the kitchen — pubic hair, body changes, sexuality, sexual orientation, condoms, safe sex, relationships. And — what were the schools thinking? — erections, wet dreams. He felt like going down and having a go at them at that school. These were only little girls.

  ‘Imagine Aunty.’ Well, no, he couldn’t, another bad idea.

  ‘Like, she’d probably make us go out and watch the horses.’

  ‘Doing it.’

  ‘Go tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Farmers, or wherever. Get what you need. Something for the little ones too.’

  ‘Doing what?’ asked Poppy, coming in from the bathroom with Maddie.

  ‘Get your socks on,’ said Lainey. ‘Did you let the water out? Did you wipe round the bath?’

  ‘What horses? Doing what?’

  ‘We’re getting you and Maddie some cool-as slippers tomorrow, from Farmers. Did you hang up your towels?’

  ‘Dixie dropped mine in the bath. Rosie and Dixie wouldn’t get out the bathroom. Like, we called out. Why didn’t you come and get Rosie and Dixie out the bathroom?’

  ‘Go and turn TV on. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s on soon.’

  ‘Slippers?’

  Watson went into the bathroom to run water for Rosie and Dixie and left them playing in the water while he put a load of washing into the machine. Returning to the bathroom, he soaped the two little girls and swished them up and down the length of the bath, in turn, a head resting on the palm of his hand. They kept him at it until the water had cooled right down.

  If only they could remain this age.

  He lifted the girls out, wrapped them in towels and sent them ahead of him into the sitting room where the heater was on. He helped them into their pyjamas, put jerseys and socks on them and sat them together in one of the big chairs.

  Out in the kitchen Lainey and Pattie were making chocolate crackles. Next thing it would be boyfriends. Nah. No, no. Get that thought right out of the way.

  He picked up a big painted star that Rosie had made at school. She’d given it to him and wished him Happy Matariki, which he found amusing. Dixie had brought home a Matariki calendar — June to May, or he should say Pipiri to Haratua, with information about Māori New Year. Fallow ground, earth’s preparation for new growth, the appearance in the sky of the cluster of stars known as the Matariki, which all signified a time of change. New beginnings.

  He should ring Zee.

  ZELDA WOULDN’T LET HIM leave school until he had something to go to, something with a future. Told him he couldn’t stay working in the fish shop all his life. She had decided on a trade apprenticeship for him and had gone about town in her lunchtimes making enquiries of builders, mechanics and plumbers. There were no positions available anywhere so she rang their father.

  ‘Nothing here,’ he said, but gave her the name of a friend, Mack, who was a painter and paperhanger.

  ‘Givus a look at him,’ Mack said.

  Watson left school but kept in contact with Annie and Tai, attended their rugby and netball games. Sometimes, if he was working nearby, they’d visit him, watch what he was doing, chat for a while and make arrangements to meet. He liked having a job. It was good having mates. Had a thing for Annie — her dark, round eyes, teeth like a fall of rocks filling her mouth and pushing the bottom of her face out, bushy ponytail, the best legs — shortish, big muscles, skinny ankles, like the old coke bottles upside down. Better than bottles, flicking and flying about the netball courts.

  Something else he enjoyed was going to Tai’s place and spending whole Sundays with Tai and his father fixing cars or motor mowers brought there by their neighbours and relatives.

  HE STOOD FOR A moment at the lounge doorway. The paper cases from the chocolate crackles were on a plate on the floor, the two little ones were asleep and the others had their eyes fixed on chocolate rivers.

  ‘You girls make me happy,’ he gasped into the room. ‘I’m going out to look at the stars.’

  WATSON CAME HOME ONE day and told Zelda that he wanted to bring Annie home, to live. He was nineteen, had completed his hours as an apprentice and Mack had kept him on as an employee.

  He thought his sister would blow her top, slam him with twenty reasons why he wasn’t ready for responsibilities, most of them to do with money, his immaturity and his ignorance. Instead, she was silent for longer than he’d ever known her to be, pacing up and down the lounge rattling car keys.

  ‘Is she pregnant?’ she asked after a long while.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he said.

  ‘Get married,’ she said. ‘Don’t have kids. Or not ’til you’re thirty.’

  Zelda did more pacing. ‘You can live here,’ she said, ‘pay the rent. I’m going off to marry a farmer,’ and walked out the door as though to an immediate wedding.

  Later, when he asked her about the farmer, she said she hadn’t met him yet but she’d done the research. According to Zelda there were plenty of farmers with lots of money needing wives and business partners.

  Zelda found her farmer. Watson didn’t ask where or how. Cattle farmer, Grant, was ten years older than she was, had a ten-year-old son who lived with him and an eight-year-old daughter who lived elsewhere. Zelda never had children of her own. Watson didn’t know whether this was by choice or not.

  THE LANDLORD WAS IMPRESSED with the paint job and said he’d give Watson work on his other rentals if he wanted it. Cash jobs — fences, decks, exteriors, bathrooms, kitchens all needing a lick. And he would pass Watson’s name on, give him a thumbs-up to others needing work done.

  He decided he’d put the extra money into a holiday account. They’d take a trip down south, look up relatives, and he’d show the girls where their grandmother was buried. Zelda had kept in touch with some of the cousins, who had visited her at the farm. One of them lived on family property where there were campsites and camping gear available for rellies wanting to stay. After Christmas? Or perhaps the following year. He and Annie had never had a holiday.

  He went to the bedroom for his jacket and jandals and out into a night already frosting over. The sharp air blew his mind, expanded him. He sat on a box by the clothesline looking up into the pitching sky, the prickling stars, and out towards the horizon where he found the constellation of seven, newly risen. The eyes of the ariki, plucked and flung there in a fit of rage. Or seven sisters, or a flock of doves.

  ‘They can be whatever to whoever,’ he said to Annie, ‘but to you and me they are our wonderful daughters.’ Untouchable, unreachable, he wanted to add, but couldn’t.

  Watson thought of going inside and bringing the girls out to look at themselves, but then decided he’d keep the moment to himself and Annie. There’d be other nights, or early mornings — the best times for audiences — before the performers took their bows and danced off stage for another year.

  ‘All our brilliant and beautiful daughters,’ he said. ‘All dancing. All stars.’

  He watched until theme music, coming from inside, told him the movie had come to an end.

  He went in, carried Rosie and Dixie to their beds and decided he’d ring Zelda, just to say hello.

  RUSH

  NIC LOW

  THERE ARE FIVE OF them crammed into a white council ute, speeding through the waking city. Jackhammers and shovels rattle in the tray. The young guys in the back are knee to knee in work pants and steel-capped boots. One of them slugs at a Farmers Union iced coffee. It’s a Monday morning in Melbourne and just past dawn. The sun ripples bronze across the highrises, licks out from laneways like a golden tongue.

  Big Toff’s driving. He’s a reassuring bulk up there in the front, not even fort
y but big and dark and weathered. His massive shoulders protrude from either side of his seat. Next to him, Archie looks tiny. The old man’s barely five foot and all sinew, wired tight like an old-time bantamweight boxer. He riffles the paperwork with tattooed hands, one last time. His scowl is cast-iron with concentration.

  Relax, Uncle, Toff says. He speaks with the sharp, tumbling cadences of the Western Desert. You can’t beat ’em?

  Archie looks up and cracks a grin, and puts the papers back in the glovebox.

  Past the CBD, Toff swings the ute off St Kilda Road into the cool green of Kings Domain. They crawl along the triumphal avenue with hazard lights winking, and on up to the Shrine of Remembrance. The blunt stone monument squats above the city like a misplaced Greek temple.

  Toff parks on the forecourt next to three other council utes. One’s got a small excavator on the back. The shrine’s grey stone is a bright confusion of workers in high-vis vests. They’re setting up a safety perimeter. A hard-case woman in mirror shades hammers a white planning sign into the lawn.

  Archie climbs down from the cab and jams a foreman’s hard hat over his wiry grey hair. He looks out across the glass spires of the city skyline, as if appraising their value. Then he looks up at the shrine.

  All right, you mob, Archie calls. Let’s get to work!

  BY THE TIME THE police arrive the paved forecourt and wide granite steps are a mess of smashed rock. The excavator has piled the debris to one side, where a team of workers sift the dirt with wire-mesh pans. A small crowd of onlookers has gathered at the safety perimeter.

  A police cruiser pulls in beside the utes. Archie’s shoulders hunch tight. Toff drops his sledgehammer and walks quickly over.

  Let me, he says.

  A sergeant and a constable step from the car. They look like they’re at the tail end of a long night shift, their faces creased and tired.

  You with the council? the sergeant shouts. The percussion of jackhammers is relentless.

  Yeah, Toff yells.

  You the boss?

  I’m the spokesman.

  The policeman cups a hand to his ear. What?

  I’m the spokesman!

  Huh?

  You got a nice tan! Hang on. Toff signals the others to stop work, and soon a dusty silence falls over the Domain. What’s the problem?

  We had reports of someone vandalising the shrine. But you’re council, right?

  Right, Toff says.

  What’re you doing? Maintenance?

  Not quite. Here. Toff points to the planning sign, then folds his thick arms across his chest. He waits with a half smile.

  The sergeant leans down and reads. His weary, businesslike expression ruptures with surprise. He looks at Toff. You serious?

  Serious.

  Mineral Exploration Licence?

  You got it. G-two-eighty. Eight weeks, eighty metres down, mining lease if we hit pay dirt.

  Pay dirt? You mean you’re digging for—

  Gold, Toff says.

  THE SERGEANT RUNS A hand along his stubbled jaw. Right, he says. Gold. This is kind of unusual. You got any paperwork?

  Sure, Toff says. I got a twenty-seven-F, all the back checks, an ECB and two double-oh fours. You want them all?

  The sergeant shrugs. Toff ducks his bulk under the safety tape and retrieves the papers from the ute. The sergeant reads in silence.

  Hang on a minute, he says. Land Council? You’re from the Aboriginal Land Council? He looks sharply at Toff and the work gang at his back. Is this some kind of stunt?

  A small, mostly elderly crowd has drifted closer to listen. An unusually tall old man in a blue blazer, a red poppy pinned to his lapel, hovers behind the sergeant. He radiates distress like an old-fashioned bar heater. Activists, the man moans. They’re activists.

  Toff’s black eyes are trenched deep in his fleshy face, but they’re shining. He’s been waiting for this. He laughs. Were activists, he says. Now we’re the Aboriginal Land Council — of Minerals.

  The sergeant shakes his head. What’s your point? he says. What are your demands?

  No demands, Toff says. This isn’t a protest action. You know what they say — if you can’t beat ’em? He smiles and shrugs. Now we’re a real-deal mining company.

  The sergeant stares at him and, for the first time in his life, Toff feels the sweet righteousness of bureaucracy rising up in him. This is totally legit, he says. Call the Department of Crown Lands. The number’s on the forms.

  The sergeant looks sceptical, but he pulls out his phone and dials the number anyway. He is put on hold. After a long wait, a bored operator comes on the line. The sergeant paces while he talks, one hand shading his eyes from the glare.

  Who the hell signed off on — okay. Sorry. Sure, the paperwork. Twenty-seven-F? Yep. Two double-oh fours? Two of them, got it. Yes. What? How much to look it up? Jesus! And where’d they get that kind of money? No, it’s not a set of GPS coordinates, it’s the Shrine of bloody Remembrance. No, that is not fascinating. It’s — what? A typo? It’s a fucking typo? The what? Online complaint form? Wait—

  The sergeant glares at his phone in frustration.

  See, Archie calls, a challenge in his voice. The old man approaches, the high-vis vest around his shoulders like a modern possum-skin cloak. All paid up, he says. We’ve got a permit to do this. Your laws, mate, so you’re with us on this one.

  Permits can be revoked, the sergeant says. Who are you?

  Archie Ryan. I’m the CEO.

  Wait a minute, the sergeant says. I know you. You’re a serial protester. You’re at everything. Any cause that’ll have you.

  Toff puts a restraining hand on Archie’s shoulder, and when the old man speaks his voice is weary and tight.

  We’re done with protesting, he says. No one gives a shit about land rights in this country anymore. This is a commercial mining operation. You need an injunction to stop it. C-two-forty, federal, with underwritten DCBs. Takes weeks to get and easy as piss to overturn. While you’re waiting you could keep that mob under control. They’ve been threatening my crew.

  Damn right we have, the tall old man says. He steps forward and grips the thin safety cordon. His anger seems equal to that of Archie. Why do you have to dig here? he says. Men fought and died for this country. Why the bloody hell would you mine this?

  Mate, Archie says with a sour grin, we’re hardly going to fuck with our own land.

  THE CITY EXPLODES. News crews and photographers and lawyers scramble. The airwaves burn with confused outrage. Conservative blogs are spotted plagiarising Wilderness Society press releases, and vice-versa. Rio Tinto and Fortescue come out in support of the dig, and the internet is soon awash with rumours of a joint venture to open-cut mine the MCG. Only Tony Abbott distinguishes himself, giving an apparently incoherent yet tactically brilliant speech wherein he coins the slogan ‘Support all the Diggers, all the time, whatever they’re digging.’

  At Kings Domain the crowd swells throughout the afternoon. The workers douse the Sacred Flame with a Kmart fire extinguisher. From behind the police line Toff and Archie watch gleaming charter buses disgorge a flow of pensioners, ferried in from suburban RSL clubs. The protesters carry hand-scrawled placards, bags of knitting and Gladwrapped sandwiches. They surge up the hill in a blue-rinsed wave.

  Mixed with the elderly crowd is a steady stream of sympathetic locals, students and activists. Away to the east, the youth wing of Socialist Alliance is digging a solidarity hole in the lawn.

  A nuggety man with tattooed arms pushes to the front of the crowd. He’s wearing a sticker-covered hard hat and carries an enormous red flag. Orrite, lads, he calls in a broad Scottish accent. We come to show solidarity. This is a bloody good action.

  Piss off, mate, Archie says. This isn’t an action.

  Ha, the man says. Tha’s a good line. That’ll confuse the hell out the bosses.

  I’m serious, you little cunt, Archie says. This is a commercial mining operation. You can’t coopt this. Piss off.r />
  The man’s face darkens. We took a vote, he says. The rank and file unanimously voted t’ support your action. Why’d you turn that down?

  Sorry, mate, Toff says. Us bosses got a press conference to do.

  The news crews have been allowed inside the cordon. A big PA has been set up so the crowd can hear. Toff gives Archie the thumbs up.

  Go for it, Uncle, he says. Stick to the script, don’t lose your cool, eh?

  Archie nods. All right, you bastards, he mutters. Let’s do this.

  After years of speaking to polite but indifferent crowds at other people’s rallies, the old man’s restless, wary features take on a cast of authority. He seats himself before the bank of cameras. He takes out his notes and pulls the microphone close. Over the gunfire rattle of jackhammers, his amplified voice echoes across the Domain.

  Afternoon. I’m Archie Ryan. I’m a Wurundjeri man, and CEO of the Aboriginal Land Council — of Minerals. Today is the first day of work at the Kings Domain mine. We have every confidence this mine will yield significant quantities of gold.

  There are cries of Shame! Signs reading HANDS OFF HALLOWED GROUND bob above the crowd. The tall elderly veteran has made it past the police line, claiming he is feeling faint. He sits against Toff’s ute as if resting, then reaches a bony arm under the chassis and handcuffs himself to the vehicle. There are angry shouts and he is swarmed by police.

  It is clear, Archie continues, that local people will support this mine, because it brings jobs and money to the local economy. Stand back a minute, would you.

  The work crew has chipped out the base of the cenotaph with a jackhammer, as if notching a tree for felling. There is a cry of Timberrr! and the twelve-metre-high stone spear tips slowly forward, then thunders to the ground. The now-huge crowd shrinks back in fright. You’re dead! You’re fucking dead, screams a voice from in the crush.

  Now, Archie says, we understand that there are concerns from old soldiers. We have consulted and listened to their concerns. Watching TV and visiting RSLs has taught me the fundamental value of respect for veterans. Listen.