Aue, page 24
But good. It’s her Toko who wields the bar stool and she runs towards her warrior, ready, if she must, to fight at his side.
Then she sees something and it is like she is watching theatre, she runs but she is running like she runs in dreams, sprinting and sprinting but gaining no ground.
Toko brings the wooden bar stool down and into Hash, knocking him from his feet. Tommy swipes at people with his pool cue.
What is harder and meaner than wood?
Metal.
From the jukebox Pat Benatar is singing ‘We Belong’, and behind Toko’s head is an ugly grey thing and the ugly grey thing has a hook on it, and is metal so should be used to pry things, like boots and boxes open, and where has it been all this time? Where was it, not up his sleeve? In a box? No, perhaps behind his back, in the waistband of his dirty jeans. Perhaps there the whole time.
The man with the ginger goatee cracks the hook against the back of Toko’s neck and there’s a crunch. A soft sound like a fistful of bird’s eggs being squeezed.
And he strikes again, as Toko falls back. Strikes again and misses, and he strikes again into the lovely dip where Toko’s nose meets his eyes, where his eyes meet his forehead.
And when Toko thuds to the ground, the hollow sound of his breath busts from him.
And the man aims once more, now for Toko’s teeth.
Jade hurls herself, wings behind her, vicious like a dog.
She pierces the white skin of his arms with her fingers, she kicks him, and she punches him, screams at him and spits in his empty eyes, snatches his long ginger goatee and twists it in her hand, but he sets a single palm on her head and takes a handful of her hair and scalp and he pulls her head down then lifts her up until she’s lost the ground beneath her feet and he flings her to the floor and she sprawls. But quick like a dog, she kicks up and leaps, and Pat Benatar is singing out the last of her ballad. We belong. We belong. We belong.
And down the metal comes, down it comes, freeing the beautiful white teeth from Toko’s open mouth. As Jade leaps forward, pieces of Toko spray out and land heavily on her, burning her skin, and she falls on the floor where Toko lies and takes her husband’s face in her hands and she wishes she didn’t look at his mouth, and now she will spend the rest of her life wishing she didn’t look. She closes her eyes and kisses him better.
Kisses. His cheeks. Kisses. His neck. Kisses places. On his face that. Her lips don’t. Recognise now.
Calls out something, calls out for someone to come and fix what’s fucken happened in this godforsaken place. Love him to life! Love. You cunt of a thing. But she stops that talk. No. No. No. What did Toko say? Love. Love. Yes! There’s no darkness love cannot light! You cunt of a thing. No. No. No. Love. It’s all she wants to do. Love Toko. All she’ll ever want to do. Wraps her arms around his shoulders, tries to lift him. Awake, my Toko! Remember, there’s no darkness love cannot light, and she keeps loving him and will until he stands up, and takes her home, to their boat, to their bed. To their son and the other babies they haven’t even had the fucken chance to make yet.
Had. A. Feeling.
Could. Be. Someone.
Toko’s woman. Mother of Toko’s babies. Be someone.
She looks up. On the street there’s a face staring into the bar through the broken window, glass shattered on the street around her, red silk lifting from her body into the wind.
Kat screams, her hands fly to her mouth.
The jukebox makes a mechanical clunk. And Smokie comes on wanting to know where Alice has gone. He guesses she has her reasons, but he just doesn’t want to know.
Taukiri
The surf had been amazing and being alone with Megan was more amazing. No one would find us here, where we were. She used her credit card, bought me a ferry ticket, and we got my car. The surfboard was nicked and I was sad for that. But we were alone in my car in the place I’d once parked, where I’d once lived. Between the abandoned house and the sea. And we were so safe. No one would find us here.
I was sitting in the driver’s seat and she was in the passenger’s seat, and she wanted us to call the cops.
‘We should. It’s safest. Tell them. Stay with them, then you get on the ferry and you go.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I’m calling, Tauk.’
‘We’re okay here, no one’ll find us,’ I said.
She picked up her phone.
‘Please don’t, not yet.’
‘When?’
Then I kissed her, kissed her hard, so hard, so deep. Tasted her. And she kissed me back. Had my hands in her hair, then up her shirt, then held her chin. Everywhere, wanted to be everywhere. I took the hem of her T-shirt in my hand, said: ‘Taking this off,’ and she bit my lip until I did.
Unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them off and kicked away my shoes and my worry and all logic. Just wanted to feel her, because she was a sea, a rising swelling ocean. I kissed her freckle and she moaned. Just could’ve died like that, with that sound. Just could’ve died then when she moaned because it struck me as the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. Could’ve died because, well, fuck. What I saw was the skin I hadn’t seen, and oh my god was she beautiful. Was she what.
The water under the full moon is black.
Wind scatters everything. Everything, and everyone, and without hands, it is all so very hard to regather. Without a voice to call them home, herd them, warn them, tell them where they will be safe. The good seeds are scattered amongst the bad now, and only with the first unfolding of their leaves can anyone see their worth. Or worthlessness.
It is painful to only see through these watery sea-eyes of mine and hear what the wind – what I pull towards myself – will bring. The songs, the tiring words, which have begun to escape me. The jewels, the truest treasures: the lyrics, the poems, the ballads. The stories. They are the reddest, bluest, greenest jewels.
The real treasure at the bottom of the sea.
Not my bones, but what I did, and the aftermath of that, and how it will go, on and on and on.
Give me my mouth, give me my fingers and hands, so I might make something right.
I took him. I whipped him away, like the wind I am now, and told her I would take care.
She couldn’t, people said. I should.
And I did. I watched her go, and I was glad, to see her back turned, her head down. I was glad to take him, and let her walk away with a child in her belly.
Taukiri’s first day at school is the week the children are making Mother’s Day cards. He comes home and puts his bag on the floor, and looks up at me and says: ‘Hi, Mum.’
And I say ‘Hi, son.’
And that is that. What’s done is done.
Give me my mouth, give me my fingers. Let me fix this.
I am tired of toothing at the grey grit. At ghost sand. Biting and biting, saying nothing. Let me have one last, useless word.
Jade
They are alone on the boat.
She rewinds the song and plays it again.
They’re crazy to have left her alone with him, she shouldn’t be allowed near anyone, not ever, because they’ll die. And for much longer than a mere moment she wonders if she should jump overboard with him. Drag him under and drown Toko’s two fatherless babies at once.
The knife on the counter is the first thing that has smiled at her since Toko’s teeth were smacked from his head. Her son is asleep on the little bed in the little cabin.
She takes the knife. The knife she gutted a fish with.
She lifts her shirt, and sits down on the floor. She aches.
Maybe we’ll make five baby birds.
And she cuts into the highest bird in flight, deep in and under it, to the bone of her rib. This, at least, can go. This, at least needs to not be on her body anymore. She slices under and cries at the white-hot pain, as she frees the inked bird from her body, in a small babble of blood. And the pain feels good, like crying at a funeral, so she cuts the next, slicing it away like black pāua meat. She moves to the next one, taking a weak stab at it, but only making a pissy bleed before she passes out from the pain. Not the pain of the bleeding birds, but the many other terrible things. Does she slice at something else before she closes her eyes? She hopes so. She hopes she did a good job. She hopes she won’t wake. She waits for Toko to find her. ‘Toko, I’m here. I’m just here. Auē.’
Instead of Toko, she wakes to screaming, and she is tired of it. There is so much screaming, so much noise. So many words, everyday: ‘How do you feel? What can we do?’
You can fuck off, she thinks. All of you.
Taukiri is crying beside her, his fingers on his mother’s ribcage. He touches the open wounds and bleeding birds. He says, ‘Mumma! Mumma!’
Aroha screams and swings Taukiri up. His hands are so bloody. Aroha whips him away like the wind.
A day later, or an hour, maybe just a minute, Aroha comes to the white room. The room where Jade has slept, drugged and bandaged up, for what seems to have been an eternity. The room doesn’t rock. It doesn’t glow gold. The motionlessness is harsh. Like being born into stark room from a warm blinking womb.
The door opens often, letting in more blinding light and blurry white-clothed silhouettes.
‘Fuck off,’ she says loudly – words from a past life – but they don’t. They buzz around her like she has become their tagged property – an experiment in how much pain a person can take. The people seem busy making graphs about her like she is a statistical miracle.
‘She’s still alive,’ they seem to say to each other. She wonders if they think she shouldn’t wake.
Aroha comes to help her dress in black. ‘E kare, it is the last day of the tangi,’ she says. ‘We need you there.’
She thinks of the apple crumble that might be there. And vomits.
Aroha cleans her up, and undresses her like she’s a doll. Or like she is to be buried soon.
Aroha strips an old cloak of nettles, fused to Jade’s skin now, from her. Dresses Jade, raw and wounded, in a fresh cloak of nettles.
But she won’t be in the kitchen this time, to prepare the kai.
Her grief, oozing from her, could well poison the apple crumble.
When the dressing in black is done to Aroha’s satisfaction, she walks Jade to the car, parked close. Special circumstances close. They walk to the car waiting in an ambulance zone, their arms linked like they are the sisters Jade thought they were. Toko made their sisterhood true. Linked them. Now he is dead. Aroha should have left her for dead.
‘You need to be there. It will be harder for you, later, if you’re not. You need the tangi and the tangi needs you.’
Jade almost trusts Aroha more than she trusts herself, because she seems to be in motion as the world around her is. She is like the sun rising as it always has. Some in, some out. Circular. Jade is tired of everything – the weather, the trees, her own beating heart saying to her, ‘This has always been coming, pretty woman. Thought yours was a fairy tale? Good things are not to come. Get off the peace train, fool. The tracks ahead have been plucked away from the curving mountain like they are guitar strings.’
Even Aroha’s composure says these things.
Aroha takes the gas canister out of the boot and sits back in the driver’s seat. Both of them wearing black dresses. Sun shining in, hurting Jade’s eyes, ‘Why is the sun shining?’ Jade asks. The light dizzies her.
Taukiri in the backseat. Hair combed.
Important? No.
‘Mummy, where’s Daddy?’
Foolish boy.
Aroha presses the mouthpiece against Jade’s lips.
‘Deep breath.’
Jade’s head lightens. She could almost laugh.
But she asks, ‘Is it okay? I mean for the baby.’
And Aroha gives her the sorriest look she’s given her since she found her with the tattooed birds cut from her ribs and Taukiri’s tiny hands, running across the open wounds, leaving lines like red finger-paint.
‘Does that really matter?’ Aroha asks, before pressing the mouthpiece against Jade’s lips again.
Now, as Jade stands beside Taukiri in his pushchair, she cannot work out what those words meant.
Toko will be buried today. She cut the tattooed birds away from her ribs, and Aroha will take Taukiri for a while, just so she can rest, and she could almost laugh.
Under her black dress her knife wound is bandaged, and under the bandage she feels nothing, no throbbing, none at all. Her legs feel weak. Her heart seems to hardly beat. The soles of her feet are numb. She feels like she is floating.
Colleen’s sparse tears don’t bother her as much as Hēnare and his eyes. To look at them would require more medication, to look at them and wonder if they might have been Toko’s one day would require more than gas.
The shiny black coffin her husband lies in looks small beside the large mound of earth. A man with dark glasses and a leather jacket comes to stand beside her, and says, ‘Your kid?’ and she looks down at Taukiri’s sweet, sleeping face, turned against the side of the pushchair. Jade looks at him, his black eyes, as he says again, ‘Yours? Going to be hard for him,’ and he leans to whisper into her ear, ‘now his arrogant father is dead.’
And she spins to face him and holds his sunglass-covered eyes with hers. Holds them long. Holds them for ransom. Holds them like she could have them if she wanted. Could rip them from their sockets. People claim her, she thinks. Why can’t I take? She holds those sunglass-covered eyes the strongest she has held anything in days. She sees him try to breathe, but he can’t.
‘Not mine. Not his.’ And she points to Aroha. Aroha’s head bowed, an arm around Colleen, ‘Hers.’
Jade steps away from the pushchair Taukiri is sleeping in, and away from the man. A last look, and Aroha is standing just a bit too far away from the fatherless little boy.
For one moment – with Jade a step or two away, and poised to flee, and Aroha, with her back turned, a step or two away, not poised to flee – neither of them were close enough. He was alone and yet to be claimed.
Jade walks away. Aroha would take him, that much she counted on. Aroha would not let her nephew down. She would not let her brother down.
Smart-Jade walks away and hopes they bury Fool-Jade with her foolish dead husband.
She wonders how long Taukiri is orphaned. Only seconds, which will never collect enough of themselves to make a minute.
But what’s time?
He’s been abandoned for an eternity.
A man with a bulldog tattoo on his neck has entered the bar, looking for a young man who owes him something.
I bang again at the windows and rattle the door. I find my way in through the cracks. Sun is outside. She doesn’t even try to join me. It is too dark here, they hold her out, the walls and roof, and windows painted black. She could burn it all, but she leaves everything as it is. As it always has been.
A bearded man, tattooed down his arms, takes a bottle from the mirrored shelf behind him, pours himself a drink, takes a sip. I blow in his ear. It takes everything I have, everything I have, and I see in his eyes he hears the words I blow, the words of a song about a fast car he wished to never hear again. I see in his eyes, he knows something else is there. Me. He feels me. He doesn’t blink. He turns to the man who stands at the leaner now.
‘Looking for a kid. Kid named Taukiri Te Au.’
And the man behind the bar freezes up, tenses. We all see it – the man who’s come with questions sees it too. ‘Never heard of him,’ he says.
‘Don’t lie now.’
‘Haven’t.’
‘But I know you have,’ he says. ‘I know it.’ And he leaves.
The light, the light that loses patience with me and my trying, splits everything open again, but doesn’t swallow. Just splits or pierces or cuts. Again and again.
Taukiri
There’s a thump on the window, almost splitting it in two, and Megan shrieks because she sees a man peer through the glass, then suddenly he is on the passenger’s side and she goes to hit the lock but too late. He swings the door open wide. I leap from the car, pulling up my jeans and running, running around the car to get him, to stop him, and he is pulling her from the car and I lunge at him.
But smack. Crack. Then black.
Dream of her now. All of her, so beautiful. But the black. Just black. Sinking into the Kaikōura Canyon, muscle loosening from bone, hot blood running down my throat.
Kat has her secrets too.
The day after Māmā loses her earring, Kat drives to Gore Bay and finds me, Jack, Ārama, Tauk, Māmā and Pāpā walking the road, looking for something. She’s driving Tommy’s car. She pulls up, pulls over, gets out. She has been crying but has reapplied her mascara. Pinched her cheeks.
‘Hi, Aunty Kat,’ Ari says.
‘Hi,’ Tauk says, sullen, whakamā.
‘Tēnā koe, Kat,’ Māmā says, not looking up.
‘Hey, sweetheart,’ Pāpā says. ‘Great to see you.’
I ask, ‘Why have you got Tommy’s car?’
‘Borrowed it. So I could come and see Mum and Dad.’
Mum doesn’t look up. ‘We’re having a really bad day here, Kat.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve lost one of my pearls.’ She looks at her daughter. ‘You know, my lovely ones. From your nanny.’ She goes back to searching.
‘Oh, is that all?’
Mum snaps her head up, ‘It’s irreplaceable, Kataraina.’
‘Yeah, I know, it’s just,’ a bubble of strange laughter comes from Kat, ‘we’ve survived a lot worse, haven’t we? At least some of us have.’
Mum doesn’t laugh. ‘You can’t take anything seriously, can you? Don’t care about anyone but yourself.’
