Black Marks on the White Page

by Witi Ihimaera

  A pre-recorded clip of an RSL consultation meeting booms across the Domain. Over the insane chirping of pokies comes a scrum of angry voices, the thump and squeal of feedback as someone tries to grab the mic. There is shouting, and the terrible splintering sound of dentures crushed underfoot.

  I deeply respect old soldiers, Archie continues. There is no ripping-off here. The more time I spend with them, the more I consider myself their true friend. We recognise they have a long history and a rich culture.

  The police line tightens as the crowd surges forward in anger. The superintendent watches the mob’s every move, his radio at the ready. Archie pushes on. He’s enjoying himself now.

  We recognise veterans have a long history, but the sad reality is that this memorial was built to commemorate soldiers who are all dead. None of them actually use the shrine. It is a dying culture, and this mine will help to preserve it. Once we have dynamited the structure, we will donate fragments of rock to the museum. We will plant two large shrubs to commemorate the diggers’ sacrifice, all at our own expense. Most important of all, we will offer work in the mine to any able-bodied veteran. As we have learned, it is better to work for, rather than against, the mining industry.

  The crowd roars its disapproval over the grunt and wheeze of the excavator. Archie’s crew works on in the background. From time to time one of them rises from the fast-expanding mineshaft, nervously scans the crowd, then bobs back out of sight.

  Archie’s nasal voice booms out over the PA. We also offer compensation to veterans. We offer point-zero-six per cent of turnover, shared among all veterans who can prove an unbroken link to this hillock since seventeen eighty-eight. This will be about six dollars each, and will rise even further once gold is found. We hope this generous offer will be looked upon with gratitude.

  This time the bellow of anger from the crowd is a physical force. The police have drawn their batons and fixed their visors. The light is fading, and shadows pool in the shaft where the workers tunnel beneath the shrine. Up the front a TV technician switches on a bank of halogens. Archie’s tense form is a sudden island of light among the seething mass of protesters. He begins to wind up his speech.

  We look forward to working with the old soldiers of Victoria, contributing to the wealth of the nation, and making a meaningful living for ourselves, like you’ve always wanted. Thanks and if you don’t mind me saying, go fuck yourselves.

  The crowd erupts. The noise is catastrophic. The police line stumbles back under the onslaught. Two dozen police horses thunder into action, charging the crowd from either side. There are screams as pensioners go down beneath the hoofs.

  Toff moves to Archie’s side and it is just the two of them standing in the light, the focus of the crowd’s rage.

  Shit, Toff says. We have to call this off. Look.

  To their right a mass of burly men with crewcuts shoulder-charge the police line. They look like off-duty soldiers. Old-timers beat the police back with their crutches and walking frames. A catheter bag slices the air above Toff’s head.

  Toff looks back, afraid for the work gang’s safety. They have emerged from the mouth of the diggings in a tight high-vis huddle and are shouting to him. He can’t hear them over the noise. They move slowly towards Toff and Archie and the brilliant halogen lights.

  From the opposite direction the soldiers lead the charge, bellowing and pushing at the cops. Somewhere in the back a furious martial drumming starts up. The police line disintegrates. The crowd is upon them.

  They all reach the spotlight at the same instant. As the work gang enters the light, the halogens’ fierce rays catch their vests as if reflecting off a huge mirror-ball, and the enraged crowd rears back.

  Toff realises the workers are moving in a phalanx because they are carrying something enormous. They lower it carefully to the ground at Archie’s feet, then peel away. There is a hot, sharp intake of breath: first from the old man, then the cops, soldiers and pensioners, and those watching live on TV across the country.

  It is a gleaming slab of crystalline white quartz, prised from the earth beneath the shrine. And running through it, like a bolt of lightning frozen into the rock, is a seam of gold, as thick as Toff’s enormous thigh. Half a million bucks’ worth, at least.

  For one brief moment the crowd stands in silent awe, and in that glittering pause, a microsecond before the Melbourne Rush begins, each of them feels the ripe slink of blood in their veins, and something else too, something huge and fierce, welling up inside.

  I DREAM OF MIKE TYSON

  From an untitled novel

  TUSIATA AVIA

  EVERYBODY HATES FALE — they don’t say it out loud like that, but they hate her.

  ‘Oh, Fale,’ they say, ‘she’s a hard woman.’ They laugh like they’re glad it isn’t them that has to live with her. Even the men are afraid of her.

  On Fale’s wall there is a big picture; it is a picture of Jesus. Someone has cut a great big hole in Jesus’s chest and his heart is sticking out. His heart is just sitting there, like a hunk of red meat. Whoever cut that hole in Jesus’s chest has also tied a piece of barbed wire around his red, meaty heart.

  It’s not fair, but Jesus just looks at you like he’s saying: ‘Look what they did.’ He looks so beautiful, with his yellow hair like a girl and his sad blue eyes. His fingers point at his heart, like he’s a taupou, a virgin-princess with beautiful dance-hands. Sometimes when I’m by myself, I just go and look at the picture and I feel so sorry for him. I wonder why his father hasn’t gone to look for the person that did all that stuff to him. I wish I could take that barbed wire off. It makes me feel sore.

  ‘E, ki‘o, you shit, you not go anywhere after da school.’ Fale’s voice comes out of the quiet. ‘Just school and home and do da weeding, uai loa, OK?’

  Sometimes I can sneak out the front door without her seeing me. Not today though.

  ‘Ia, you know your name, a? Ki‘o. Ki‘o-kae-shit.’ And she laughs, ‘I fink dat’s be your new name now, OK? Ea, ea? I can’t hear you. What’s your name?’

  ‘Ki‘o, shit.’ I say to the floor.

  ‘No, dat’s not right. I said, Ki‘o-kae-shit. Das your really true name, suga, that’s what your name it’s mean. Ia, what’s your name?’

  ‘Ki‘o-kae-shit,’ I say to the floor. ‘Ia, good.’ She nods. ‘Ki‘o-kae-shit, you better come back after da school and don’t hanging around with those bloody fa‘afafine, uai loa, OK?’

  ‘Yes, Aunty.’

  When I first got here I tried to figure out how to make her happy, tried to figure out how to not make her angry. But now I think there is no way of making her happy — it pisses her off if you try to make her happy. I peel taro.

  ‘E, pa‘umuku, slut, what you fink you doing? Who told you to do da taro, a? Kaukalaikiki kele oe, you are da very cheeky one. An now you waste those bloody taro. You fink someone pay me to feed your big bloody mouth?’

  I’m supposed to get the food ready when I get home from school, she never tells me what she wants, I should’ve peeled the yam, but probably the same thing would happen if I peeled bananas or made rice. I think she likes being pissed off. These days I just try and keep my head down.

  I WAS CRAZY, I can see that now, I was really crazy.

  I wait till she falls asleep, after hours and hours of massaging her big, ugly legs, and then I creep outside and turn on the shower and after a few minutes I run down the road and swap my lavalava for my ‘out’ clothes hidden under a bush. I meet my friends Whitney and Tina under the pulu tree. Those aren’t their real names, but that’s what we named ourselves — Whitney, for Whitney Houston and Tina, for Tina Turner. I am Madonna.

  Whitney had done it, she’d been doing it since she was about twelve, she’d done it with just about everyone. She was proud of herself too and would always have a new story about some guy that she’d done it with — the head boy or the caretaker at school or the minister’s son, or the minister — but she always had her eyes open for a Palag
i, a white man. A real Palagi, that’s what she wanted.

  Tina did it too, but she probably talked about it more than she actually did it.

  They were both pretty. Whitney’s skin was kind of light, kind of half-caste colour, kind of orangey and she had blonde hair — well, actually, it looked more like orange than blonde from the dye. It kind of matched her face. Tina was dark, so we called her Nelson Mandela and meauli black all the time and she would get angry and call us dogshit and pig’s balls and stuff like that. I reckon she was actually prettier than Whitney but you didn’t notice it, because Whitney was so loud and so funny and such a big flirt that everyone always noticed her.

  Both of them were skinny and their feet were massive. Theirs were even bigger than mine but they just kept squeezing their great big fa‘afafine banana-boat feet into my shoes and stretching them out all over the place.

  ‘E, pa‘u, slut!’ Whitney screeches at me as soon as I come into sight. ‘We been waiting all night for you, bloody aikae, shit-eater! Se, hurry up, someone gonna take my man before we even get there!’

  ‘Don’t worry, suga, your man’s probly got no polos, anyway!’ Tina laughs back.

  Whitney pusi-eyes me, ‘E, I like your top, ka‘i e sexy, lemme try.’

  ‘What am I gonna wear?’ I don’t really want to hand over my halter neck.

  ‘You wear my ofu.’

  ‘I can’t fit that!’

  ‘Sista, you can, look it sooooo stretchy.’ Whitney pulls her top out from her like bubble gum. I look like a sausage in that top, a big pink sausage, squeezing all over, that’s going to pop out of its skin. I can smell her on me — man-sweat, mildew, Impulse — I’m a big stinky sausage.

  Whitney puts on my top like a mini-dress and she looks great. We practically run all the way to Seabreeze, where I buy a lei from one of the kids outside the club, I hope the frangipani will hide my Whitney smell.

  ‘Sailors!’ Whitney gets a crazed look in her eyes. ‘You gonna rock my boat tonight!’ she yells into the crowd.

  We clear a space in the middle of the dance floor and Whitney is pole dancing, disco dancing, lap dancing, Samoan dancing, dirty dancing, she is doing every kind of dance in the world. She is dancing on the stage, with the band, she is looking at the bar, but the barman crosses his arms and shakes his head at her. She licks her lips at him and laughs and then she is in the arms of one sailor and then in the arms of another.

  ‘Come and lick my pipi, Palagi sea-man!’

  We dance and dance. Kool and the Gang, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson. Whitney is bumping and humping and singing my ears out, ‘Fuck my boat, don’t fuck my boat baby, fuck my boat, don’t tip my boat over …’ and laughing her head off. We are looking at the sailors, we are brushing up against them, we are shaking our bodies. I don’t care about my sausage body anymore, I am twirling and twirling on the dance floor, I am shining and shining, I am smiling and laughing and the sailors are smiling and laughing to me.

  A slow dance comes on and a Samoan man, kind of old like my dad, wearing an ie lavalava and jandals, comes and bows to me. I shake my head, but he keeps bowing and smiling and bowing and smiling. I’m really shame, but I get up and dance with him. He is a really good dancer, he swirls me round and round the floor, my skirt swirls round and round my legs, I shut my eyes and everything swirls round and round with me in the middle.

  All three of us girls, with three sailors and a crate, go to Mulinu‘u in a taxi. We always go there after the clubs, everyone does, piled into cars and pick-ups with bottles of Vailima beer. We drive up and down Mulinu‘u until Whitney says, ‘It’s bloody too crowded here, we go to Taumeasina — come on, polos!’ She laughs at the sailors like it’s the funniest thing in the world. We know they will pay for the taxi.

  Taumeasina is like you think Paradise is going to be, a tiny little island in the middle of the sea and when the tide is out you can walk up to your knees out there. It’s blue sea, white sand, coconut trees, and someone has even made a seat underneath the trees for bad girls like us and their sponsors. The six of us drink our bottles of Vailima and laugh at Whitney’s rude jokes. She sits in her sailor’s lap and jiggles up and down, ‘Come on horsey, come on!’ She opens her mouth and I think she is going to swallow the whole bottle this time. Tina opens her mouth like a bird swallowing a big, big fish. Then all the sailors try to do better. I laugh — they will never beat Whitney and Tina, never!

  Whitney and Tina disappear with their boys, and here I am with mine. His name is Jarrod — I think of Carrot. I can hear the guy with Whitney moaning like he’s got a bad stomach ache. Carrot is wriggling and drinking and looking at me.

  I laugh and yell out to Whitney, ‘Suga, tell your boyfriend to go and have a ki‘o in the bush, he must have a sore magava!’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asks Carrot.

  ‘Just checking the time.’ Carrot must be dumb, cos he just nods his head and keeps drinking. I’m not like Whitney and Tina — I don’t like to make the first move, just in case he doesn’t really like me, just in case he pushes me away. They never do, but I’m still like that.

  Carrot’s hands are in my hair, pulling out the pins. ‘Wow, it’s right down to your bum!’ He is stroking me like you stroke a dog.

  I close my eyes. It’s nice.

  ‘You’re pretty, you know, for a big girl. You should leave your hair down.’ He pulls a squashed frangipani from my lei and tucks it behind my ear. ‘See, you look just like a hula-girl now.’ He tries to pull my top over my head; I have to help him cos it’s so bloody tight.

  And then my back is in the sand, Carrot has stopped talking and is breathing so hard like his face is going to burst. I look at his arms, I put my face against them, they smell hot. I run my fingers over his tattoos: things from the sea, hooks, a beautiful woman joined to a fish. I think of Tila, just for a second I have that drowning feeling, but then it goes away. I look up at the stars and listen to Carrot’s slowing breathing, feel his arms around me and pretend that it will be like this forever.

  Whitney and Tina don’t know I am waiting for one of these polos to love me. Every weekend I look as happy as they do, but they don’t know that I am waiting. Maybe the sailors don’t go for me because I’m fat. Maybe it’s because I’m a real girl. Maybe it’s because I don’t do all those sex things Whitney and Tina keep talking about. I don’t want to put a guy’s thing in my mouth. Whitney and Tina go on and on like it’s the greatest thing in the world, like they really, really love it. Makes me feel like pua‘i-ing, vomiting. But, if one of those polos would stay, just one of them, I would probably do it. Even though I hate it, I would probably do it.

  Afterwards I wash in the sea, say bye to Carrot and run home before daylight to start the saka before Aunty wakes. I have been getting away with this for ages.

  BUT THIS TIME WHEN I come in through the window, Fale is waiting.

  ‘Sau i.’ Her voice comes out of the dark and I nearly jump out of my body. ‘Come here.’

  I look around the room but I still can’t see her.

  ‘Sau i.’ Her voice is friendly.

  Cold, cold water runs down inside my backbone and underneath my scalp.

  I see a black shape low to the floor. Fale is lying on a mat underneath the window. I don’t even move. I am right in front of her, it’s amazing I didn’t step on her. Slowly, I crouch down in front of her.

  She doesn’t say anything for ages, she acts like she’s gone back to sleep, but I know she hasn’t, my whole body has rushed into my head. ‘You had a good time?’

  I say nothing.

  ‘You had a good time, suga?’

  There are rocks in my throat, I am trying to swallow them.

  ‘You do somefing nice tonight, a, suga? Ia, I’m hope you do somefing very, very nice tonight. I’m hope you have da very good time tonight. Poor fing, must be so tired.’

  She doesn’t say anything again for ages, all I can hear is my head thumping.

  ‘You just like da so special g
irl, you go out to da kalapu, club, and drink da beer an make da fuck with maybe da twenty mens and maybe da dog too, a? Ia, very good. Ua lelei. You better go to bed now.’

  I look at her.

  ‘Hurry up, you go to bed, you must be so tired.’

  I get up very, very slowly, waiting for her foot or her elbow or her fist. I walk to the bedroom and stand just inside the door, I put my hand up to the doorframe and steady myself.

  Her voice floats out of the dark. ‘Suga, aumai le ipu vai, bring a glass of water.’

  I walk to the kitchen and fill her a glass of water.

  Her voice comes again. ‘And bring da scissor.’

  I walk back to her in the dark with the water and the scissors.

  Fale is sitting up now, cross-legged. I hand her the water, she drinks it. ‘You know what we do to da pa‘umuku, slut, in da fa‘asamoa, suga?’ Her voice is steady. ‘We make da sign so all da peoples know dat dis girl is da pa‘umuku girl. Dese day, even da afa kasi, half-caste girl dey come from New Zealan and dey fink dey better than anybody else, dey fink dey can do anyfing dey want. Dey fink dey can act like da dog or da pig and no body gonna stop dem. You know what we do to the pa‘umuku girl? A, suga?’

  I nod.

  ‘Come on, special girl, tell me.’

  I hear my voice say, ‘Cut off their ears.’

  THAT NIGHT I DREAM. Mike Tyson and David Tua and The Rock all at Mulinu‘u beach dancing. I am dancing too, with my hair flowing down my back, flowers in my hair. I am doing a slow hula and they are dancing round me, clapping their hands and slapping their chests and banging the floor. I dance faster, shaking my hips to the beat of their hands and their chests and the floor. I am shaking till I am a blur. They pick me up like a taupou-princess, they hold me above their heads, I sit on their hands, a throne made of my own glossy brown hair.

  And then they are throwing me down, down, down to the ground. I fall on the ground and they body-slam me, WHAM, first David Tua, BAM, then Mike Tyson, SLAM, then The Rock. The Rock picks me up by the hair and Mike Tyson goes LEFT RIGHT LEFT, David Tua goes JAB JAB UPPERCUT. Mike grabs me by the face and bites me, he is biting and biting and the floor is covered in hair and bits of ear.