Aue, page 16
Toko shovelled mouthfuls of baked fish into his mouth and washed it back with beer. He ate a corn fritter covered in creamed spinach.
‘Fit for a king,’ he said.
Jade took one of the corn fritters that had fallen on the floor.
She cut a small piece off and put it in her mouth. It was a little undercooked in the middle but she chewed it and didn’t say anything. Then she felt something pierce her.
‘Ouch,’ she said, tasting blood.
She pulled a tiny shard of broken plate from her mouth.
Toko leaned and looked inside, ‘Just a scratch,’ he said and kissed her. He took a piece of fried blood sausage and held it up. ‘Open up,’ he said and fed it to her.
After dinner Toko took their plates to the bench. Jade stood and hit her head on the shelf behind her. She brought plates of leftover food to the bench, but stood there with nowhere to put them down and Toko was in her way.
He turned to her and saw her standing there, a plate in each hand, nowhere to put them, her stance wide, riding the sea.
‘We’ll find a better system, baby,’ he said.
Taukiri
The moonlight through the attic window was keeping me awake. And awake I kept thinking and thinking, and wanting not to. Because Ari was waiting. As long as he waited, I wouldn’t be free. That was fair though. Why should I move on, when I left him with promises I didn’t want to keep?
I went outside and smoked a roach I found in Elliot’s ashtray. Sipped on a beer. And thought on the promises I’d made. I went back to the kitchen and sat beside the phone. For a while I just looked at it. Then I dialled the number of the farmhouse, sort of hoping he wouldn’t answer but knowing this was as brave as I’d get.
Just before I hung up I heard his voice: ‘Tauk?’ He answered the phone in the middle of the night with my name. I hated myself.
‘Bud,’ I said.
‘Tauk! I prayed you’d call, you know, just like we did for that bird who flew away. And you did.’
‘I did.’
‘When’re you coming back? Soon?’
‘Ari.’
‘Soon?’
‘There’s something I called for.’
‘Yes. And I wanted you to call! To tell you I start school again tomorrow.’
My eyes stung. Water crept into my body. A murky, seaweedy tide.
‘You do? That’s great. You’re happy – right, Ari? It’s good there, isn’t it?
‘I miss you.’
‘You’re happy.’
‘I suppose. But,’ then he whispered, ‘Uncle Stu.’
‘Ari.’
I heard him start to cry. I heard him hear the words I couldn’t say.
‘Are you coming back?
‘No, Ari,’ I whispered, ‘Not yet.’
‘Why?’ he asked, sobbing now.
I couldn’t answer, because I didn’t know.
‘I’ll call, okay.’
He didn’t say anything. Just sucked back his breath and sniffed.
I waited. He waited.
‘You’ll miss me one day,’ he said, then hung up.
I looked out of the window at the moon, and the night, sky now emptied of stars, and imagined Ari in his pyjamas crying, walking back to bed.
Climbed the stairs to the attic. Sitting on my bed I took out my chocolate box. Took off my bone carving. Took off my bone carving for the first time since Koro gave them to us. For the first time since we called ourselves the bone-carving warriors. Put the bone carving inside the chocolate box and shut the lid.
I shook some of Aunty Kat’s pills into my hand and swallowed them in one dry mouthful. Then I put the box back under the bed and ignored the naked feeling.
The lightness of my neck.
It felt good. It felt like I’d finally coughed up every last bit of ghost sand. And I could get on with my life.
In the morning I drove to the city, and went to the Wellington district court. I parked close and stayed in my car.
May was the person I wanted to see, but not the first person I saw. I didn’t know why I wanted to see her in person, see her out in the world – that woman in Megan’s photo, her split lip. I needed to see that she was a real person and not just a picture or a story.
I’d tried to tell myself it was because I had too much time on my hands, but I knew it was more than that.
First, I saw a woman with short bright red hair. She was leaning on a brick wall talking to the second person I saw: a skinny man, his hair cut in a mullet. The red head was bouncing around him. She smoked, offered it to him. He shook his head and she hiffed it on the ground, walked back and forward. Talking, looking left and right. Leaning back on the wall, crossing her arms, hands in her pockets, hands out, lighting another smoke.
Then I saw May. The girl from the photograph.
She was sitting on a concrete wall near a glass door. Very still. Like a pile of damp sheets.
Her lip was stitched. She was wearing a white T-shirt with a print of a large scallop. I recognised it from working at the shelling factory. It was what the café staff wore. She was holding her left thumb tightly with her right hand. She started tapping her heel against the ground.
A young man came out of the court, and she jerked herself up, thumb still in hand. He walked right by her, and she followed him. He was wearing a grey shirt and black jeans and white high-top sneakers. His hair was slick with gel. She was talking to him, a pleading look on her face, but he didn’t look back. They reached a beat-up blue Mitsi. He opened the driver’s door, got in and started the car. She got in the passenger’s seat, and put her face in her hands. He reversed out of the parking space quickly, his lips pouting, eyes steady and they drove off.
Ārama
After dinner I got ready for bed. It was still early, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway, but I decided I would rather go to bed than sit around with Uncle Stu and Aunty Kat. My mouth kept almost opening to say something like: ‘I wonder what my teacher will look like?’ or ‘I wonder if the playground has a fort?’ or ‘I hope the kids like me.’ But then I just closed my mouth and kept the words inside because it was better than saying them and no one hearing me.
Uncle Stu wouldn’t hear because he never heard me, and neither would Aunty Kat, because she couldn’t hear me when he was around, because even when he wasn’t talking, he was loud.
I tried calling Nanny again, to tell her. But she still didn’t answer. Ever. And by now her answer service must be packed full of messages from me.
‘Hi, Nanny. How are you? Do you feel better yet? I still feel sad too. Maybe we can cheer each other up.’
‘Hi, Nan … Where are you? I miss you. Call me.’
‘Nanny. Do you know where Tauk is? I think you need to tell him to come back.’
‘Nanny, can you call me?’
‘Nanny, I know someone who will really cheer you up. My friend Beth. Can you call me so I can come over with Beth sometime?’
‘Nanny, did I leave an old rugby ball at your house? Lupo put a hole in my new one.’
‘Nanny. I forgot to tell you. Lupo is Beth’s dog. You will like him. Can I bring him over?’
‘Hi, Nanny, called to tell you Lupo ate another bee. You would laugh at his fat muzzle.’
‘Nanny. Where are you?’
‘Are you so sad, Nanny?’
‘I love you, Nanny.’
‘I watched Django, Nanny.’
‘Uncle Stu said C.U.N.T.’
‘I found your earring, Nanny.’
I thought those last three messages would get her here. Especially the lie, which I felt really so bad about – but it was for the best. I knew that adults lied for the best. So I could too. But she didn’t call me back. Not once. And Aunty Kat said she didn’t know when we could go and visit again.
Aunty Kat came up to read me a goodnight story. She picked up my big book of myths and legends.
‘Would you like Māui tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which one?’
‘How he found his mother.’
I went to the box in my wardrobe and held up both copies of the same story. One was in Māori, the other in Pākehā.
Dad had bought the Pākehā version. To help us learn it. It hadn’t helped. We just read that one instead.
‘Which one?’
‘Ha. English,’ she said.
I liked the story, either way.
When Māui was born his mother thought he was dead and she cut off her hair and wrapped him in it and tossed him into the sea. The wave children of Tangaroa, the god of the sea, carried him on their backs. Tāwhiri, the god wind cooled him under the sun. When he found shore the seabirds wanted to eat him. Also the flies and even jellyfish. But his uncle came and his uncle didn’t know he was his uncle, but he took him anyway. And he taught him things. Māui could turn into birds. Māui was sad that other children had mums, so he searched for his and he found her.
‘Again,’ I said.
Aunty Kat read it again, and I think her voice went quieter, almost embarrassed when she read about Māui’s uncle teaching him things. Even though he didn’t know he was his uncle.
‘That’s enough,’ Aunty Kat closed the book. ‘Are you scared for tomorrow?’
‘A bit.’
‘Me too,’ she said. She stared out my window for a while. ‘I miss teaching you and Beth. You know when I started it was holiday time anyway. No other kids were learning. I just wanted, I just thought …’
She stood up, tucked my blankets in and kissed me on the forehead. It felt very nice. Like I might get to fall off to sleep good tonight, because of those things. The story. Tucked in. Kissed. She must have forgotten I was too big for all that.
‘Night, Ari. I love you.’
‘Night, Aunty Kat.’
Aunty Kat had never said I love you to me before. I didn’t say it back, it felt like I would be lying. I’d lied before, but it didn’t feel good and that bad feeling would take away the good feeling, the feeling that would help me sleep tonight. The kiss on my forehead and the blankets tucked snugly around me, a story in my head. Even if it was a bit sad. It was still a story, a story someone had read to me.
‘You’re nice sometimes, Aunty Kat.’ It was the best I could do, and at first I was okay with it.
Aunty Kat gave me a small smile as she turned out the light and closed my door.
I felt a bit bad afterwards that I hadn’t said, ‘I love you back,’ to Aunty Kat. I didn’t think she got those words said to her. And I probably did, I probably did love her.
The harder I thought about it, the more I felt it.
I loved her before I even moved here because she was my aunty. Sometimes I compared her to Mum, and then she was just like the sugar I ate spoonful after spoonful of when I really wanted a lolly. But sugar was still nice, on Weet-Bix or in lemonade.
It was funny I didn’t say I love you to Aunty Kat because I thought it might be a lie and I wouldn’t be able to sleep. And then I couldn’t sleep anyway, because I should’ve said I love you. I decided I would go downstairs and tell her.
I got out of bed, and walked to the door. When I opened it I heard things. The sounds made my heart go frog in mashed spud.
There was a smash, and I heard Aunty Kat cry out.
‘So you spent it, you stupid bitch.’
‘I needed them.’
‘Books?’
‘For our nephew.’
I closed the door.
I wanted to jump out my bedroom window. But I couldn’t.
I was scared to go running out in the world when no one might notice because they were too busy keeping themselves from being sucked down the plughole with the bathwater and they might even wonder if I’d even been there at all, because maybe I was just a ghost and why should they go wasting their precious time looking for a ghost.
‘Dear God,’ I said out loud, ‘Tauk needs to call me. And you need to make sure it happens. You owe me it.’
I sat with my bone carving pressed between my hands, breathing slow. ‘Āmene,’ I said.
I climbed into bed and closed my eyes.
When I woke again it was late in the night, so late, morning would be coming, and I heard a sniffling somewhere in the house. It sounded like Aunty Kat. I thought about how sad Uncle Stu must have made her. I got out of bed and walked out of my room, towards Uncle Stu and Aunty Kat’s room. I peeked in through the crack in the door. Uncle Stu was asleep on the bed, not under the covers, jeans on, shirt off, white belly hanging loose, snoring loudly. Aunty Kat was kneeling on the floor with her back to me, hunched over my schoolbag, a pile of my new books in front of her. On top of the books were the photos I kept tucked in one of the pockets of my bag.
She was holding one in her hand. One of her with my mum and Uncle Toko and Tom Aiken. They were all standing on a beach, a big fire behind them. I knew that picture. I’ve stared and stared at it. Aunty Kat was smiling in it like I had never seen her smile. Big and wide and toothy.
I knew. That had been her real life, not this one, not this one we were both in now. Living like ghosts.
I tiptoed downstairs and to the kitchen for a drink of water. There was a mess, a broken plate, some leftover dinner over the floor. My All Blacks lunchbox, too, broken in pieces.
It seemed like one of Uncle Stu’s favourite things to do was to hiff food around. Like a kid. Worse than a kid.
I went to the phone and dialled Nanny’s number.
‘Nanny. I’m really scared.’
I hung up, then sat cross-legged in front of the phone and stared at it. Taukiri would call me, I thought.
I lay down beside the phone. I’d wait. I’d close my eyes for a minute, and wait there.
Jade and Toko
It was true, Jade realised quickly, her ferry trips were nothing like being at sea with Toko, sailing from Rakiura, up the coast and back to Kaikōura.
The last evening at sea, Toko filleted a blue cod for dinner. He slid the small knife slowly through the belly of the fish, up behind its gills and along the spiny back in one fluid movement, removing a translucent pink fillet.
Finished, he drove his knife into the cutting board, then thumped his chest, ‘I am man. I hunt. You,’ his smile was wicked, his white teeth shone and his dark skin glistened, ‘you, woman. You cook this. You cook for me this. And then you do for me everything else I want.’ And he grabbed her and pulled her to his overalls, and she could smell the fish guts and blood on them, and could feel the dampness – the sweat from his day’s hard work – through her T-shirt. He smelled so earthy, so dirty, so masculine and good.
Jade saw there was another cod, set aside.
She pulled away from Toko and took up his knife. She snatched the fish up by its tail, and she pierced its belly and slid the knife along, splitting it, so its guts spilled onto the board.
She went to plunge her hand inside, but Toko touched her wrist. ‘Hey there, little lady. You trying to put me out of work.’
His voice was light, playful, but Jade thought she heard a ragged edge in it.
She set the knife down, ‘Ha. Yeah right. That’s me. No way could I fillet it.’
‘Do you want me to teach you?’ he said.
‘No, no. I’ll leave that to you.’ Then she added, for emphasis: ‘Yuck.’
A wave hit the boat, and some of the loose warm guts slid from the bench and onto the deck.
‘I’ll clean that up,’ Toko said.
‘Thank you, baby.’ She put her arms around his neck and looked up at his face, the sea and sky behind him creating a dipping and rising horizon, from two unblending blues. ‘Everything you want,’ she said. Then she took the fillets and ran off, ran along, skipped away with them to cook up for dinner.
Later, when she was resting in the cabin, she heard the door open. There he was. His face browner than it had been that morning. He smelled soapy. She leapt from the bed and a jolt shook up from her feet and into her spine when she landed but she didn’t wince. She was upon him and she took down his jeans and took him in her mouth and she didn’t stop until he came, just as the ship cleared a wave and she wondered if both their stomachs might be in their chests.
His because it felt so good, to feel so good, to be so lucky and loved. Hers because it felt so wrong to feel so good, to be so lucky and so loved.
They found a system. Jade cooked and she put the food on the plates, and she wouldn’t make feasts at sea. She made simpler meals. Just fish or chicken nuggets with one serving of vegetables. No other plates in the centre of the table with other choices. Eat before you lose it. Take your plate up as soon as you finished, scrape it in that bucket. I’m washing and get the hell out of my galley or I’ll tan your behind.
‘I’ll tan yours,’ Toko would say, scraping his plate. Then, ‘Good woman,’ as he left her galley.
When they docked in Kaikōura four days after they’d set sail it felt like they’d been at sea for months. Jade took to the dock like a newborn calf. Her feet struck solid ground and she no longer needed to dance to get from A to B. But instantly she wanted to be back where the floor anticipated her next step and rode up to catch it, throwing and catching her, as if from a billowed sheet. The world didn’t care where she placed her feet and didn’t care how. The sea did, the sea demanded her attention.
Even driving seemed harsh now. The sound of gravel crunching under the tyres, the dust turned up. The speed the car could go at.
They pulled up at the house at the foot of the mountain, and Colleen was waiting in a white wicker chair on the front porch. A man was sitting in another white wicker chair opposite her. His scarred face, his hands, those hands in his lap, his leather waistcoat. Sitting close to Toko’s mother he looked much uglier than Jade remembered him.
