Aue, page 30
Ari steps over Uncle Stu and runs to Aunty Kat.
‘I came to get you, Aunty Kat,’ Ari says and kisses her bloody face.
I drop the gaff.
Ārama
Beth’s aunty from Auckland flew here. And she walked into the quiet special room for waiting quietly at the hospital looking like an angry queen. Like she wanted to yell, ‘Off with their heads.’
She stormed in, heels clicking, black rivers running down her cheeks. She yelled at Tom Aiken. ‘Django? Seriously! Tommy, I told you I could look after her. Could take her. Could help.’
‘Shut up,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t’ve left her with you.’
‘Who then? Her mother?’
‘Running around wild. Hardly been to school? Well done.’
Her voice echoed in the special quiet room for waiting quietly at the hospital. She was clean, apart from make-up running down her doll face, and her hair was perfect and combed and her heels were high, and Tom Aiken had dried blood under his nose, and his eyes were sagging and his clothes were smelly and dirty from camping. He stunk of fire and eel and blood.
She smelled like perfume and washing powder. I didn’t know that for sure because I didn’t want to get too close – but I reckoned that was how she smelled.
‘Django?’ she yelled again and stormed away, thundered through the swing doors, only one allowed to see Beth now. Even Tom Aiken is stuck here in the special waiting place. Clock ticking. Floor shining. Magazines sitting.
‘Why won’t they let us see Beth?’ I asked Tauk, ‘She’s allowed.’
He didn’t reply. I grabbed his arm. ‘Tauk?’
He answered, in a voice that wasn’t his: ‘She’s in trouble.’
‘He hurt her first.’
‘I know.’
‘Real bad.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I am.’
‘I said don’t say that, Ari.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘Me too.’
I looked out the big window. It was getting dark. I tugged Tauk’s shirt again.
‘The eels are gonna eat Lupo.’
‘Let’s go then,’ he said.
Taukiri
Tired. So damn tired. Needed a bed. Wanted an attic. Ari had a room in a house. A house with stains on the floors. And bullet holes in it. He lived there this morning but that felt an eternity ago.
Couldn’t imagine packing up Ari’s room again. Couldn’t imagine abandoning another house. Couldn’t imagine setting all his stuff up somewhere else and pretending it’s the same stuff, so it’s the same life. Couldn’t pretend – like I did last time – that all it took was to put some of his books on a shelf and a cover on a bed and line up the toys and you got yourself a home. Same, same, just a little different.
Leave some of the books in the box, because that’s how it was. Some in, some out. Some words in, some loose. Some love in, some given. Some anger in, some free.
We’d leave it all. We might as well stop pretending having the same stuff means we’re the same people.
Uncle Stu pressed a gun to my little brother’s head, and that made my throat so dry.
Coon emptied his tired pockets into that chocolate box before he shot himself in the head. Then my uncle beat my aunty to a pulp with a gun to her head, and Tom tried to stop him, but he kept saying, ‘Come near us and I’m shooting her, Aiken. Now watch what you’ve made me do.’ And now I was sitting here. And I didn’t know what to make of any of it.
That woman cried, yelled. Looked perfect. Probably wasn’t.
I wished she’d shut up. Just shut her mouth up.
Ari pulled at my shirt and reminded me Beth’s shot-dead dog was still in the river. I’d rather go pull that dog from a hundred hungry eel mouths than sit there and listen to that woman say another word. We all wanted to yell and cry, but her yelling and crying meant we couldn’t. There was no room for more than her in the bright, bright waiting room.
‘Let’s go.’
I walked to Tommy first though. Blood and fish and ash on him. ‘I’ll go get Lupo out,’ I said.
He barely looked up. ‘All right,’ he said.
Ari hugged him.
I took the note from the man who shot himself in the head out of my pocket and handed it to my mother.
I took Ari by his shoulder. ‘Let’s go get you some fresh pants. And Lupo.’
We walked out the door.
Jade
The piece of paper had my address on one side, written in child-like handwriting. I unfolded it, and on the other side I read three scribbled words. Just three words.
Please forgive me.
I don’t care who it is from, it could be from Coon or Hash. Any one of those dogs.
It is dark. There is just moonlight.
The boys are walking up the river.
Taukiri tells Ari to stay, to sit in the grass.
‘Stay, you shouldn’t see it,’ he says, as tears fall down his face.
But Ari follows his brother.
‘I can help,’ Ari says.
Taukiri goes into the river, and disturbs an eel. It moves away in a fluid motion.
He pulls the dog’s body up onto the bank.
They dig a hole and bury what’s left of Lupo.
I feel the smallest piece – a mere speck of me – find shore.
There is Ari walking out of the whare mate. In the sunlight he blinks, and he blinks and he closes his eyes, holds his face to the sun. Then he runs chasing his second and third and fourth cousins into the trees behind the marae, laughing then, laughing so loud, laughter enough it could almost make a dead heart beat again.
Soaring then. I soar on the wind of his voice. His laughter.
And a small bone alights upon the beach.
Then, Jade reads a note: Please forgive me. And to her, it doesn’t matter who it is from. It’s from anyone and everyone. It’s from them and him and me and her.
‘I forgive you.’
And the light opens, swallows me.
Swallows me whole.
Taukiri
Time to teach Ari how to play the guitar I bought him for Christmas. We had time. I wasn’t going anywhere. I called Megan the other day, and apparently Coon left a note for his boys. Told them he was a narc, and that he’d had an epiphany. He could save the world from that single load, so that was what he did. Megan had seen the note. Photographed it and would show me one day. Maybe.
Called da po-po, Coon wrote.
Savin’ da world from you cunts.
Sorry not sorry.
Peace out.
She had heard talk though. That the gun wasn’t with him.
The gun that was with the police. My koro’s gun.
Bet you never touched anything he has.
I had touched things he had. I knew that now.
Books.
‘Your koro taught me to read this,’ Mum said, running her hand over the mermaid’s green hair.
Didn’t need to touch his gun.
I didn’t tell Megan that I knew it wasn’t with him, decided not to put her in that position. I was afraid of what she’d think of me, that she wouldn’t know what to say.
She’d been to see her friend, the one from the picture. ‘You know. May. I picked her up and took her for a drive. We drove and drove, Tauk … Just drove. We talked about going backpacking together. Europe maybe.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Cool.’
I haven’t called her since. She hasn’t called me either.
Me and Ari were sitting on the bed that we shared in my mother’s house at Rakiura. He brought it to me still wrapped. Just a little rip in the Christmas paper.
Clanking in the kitchen. Nanny setting the table. Koro had gone fishing. Aunty Kat was probably sleeping. My mum would be walking around the house, making sure, just making sure. That Nanny was sorting food and Aunty Kat was breathing and Koro had left a bookmark in his book, and I’d washed my face and made my bed and brushed my teeth.
All those things meant we were still here, that we were not going anywhere.
He dropped the guitar to the bed with a clunk. ‘I can open it now,’ he said.
‘Go on then.’
He tore into it. ‘I knew it, I knew it. A guitar. I thought, maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was a trick, but wow. A real guitar.’
‘It’s not new.’
‘Good. Like yours?’
‘Yeah.’
Beth stepped into the doorway. She was here from Auckland while her aunty got some things sorted. She wasn’t with Tom Aiken anymore because he was an unfit father, as defined by three easy questions from one or two important people wearing bad shirts and decent shoes from the Ministry for Children or something. Django Unchained ? Really? And hardly been to school? Seriously? And knows how to keep house? Honestly?
It might not be permanent.
Sad she was without him. Like a small pebble now, the smallest bone. White and soft and soundless. Like something you could put in your pocket.
Ari was struggling with new Beth, though sometimes he seemed to enjoy being the talker. Being the brave one.
Until night came.
He was still a sook at night. It was lucky we were sharing a room for now.
Playing now, strumming now. He was a natural. I could hear that, though no one else might.
Beth leaned to listen. Then she moved, one step, stop, one step, stop. She sat on the edge of the bed, tucked her hands under her tiny thighs.
‘Look what I can do, Beth.’
He strummed.
He plucked but didn’t make a song. He was just learning and didn’t know a chord. But he strummed like he did know. He slapped the shiny rosewood and nodded his head and tapped his foot like he did. He heard something no one else could, the song before it was a song. Ari felt the guitar play itself.
We stopped. My brother grinned at Beth, a grin that said, You hear that?
‘Uh huh,’ she said.
Beth fished in her pocket. Slow, like she was now. Probably not from the head knock, but the trauma of the bad things that happened the day she shot a man.
Beth pulled out a shell. Then a coin. A stone. Half a wishbone. A might-be-pearl.
Beth tossed all the things from her pocket in front of Ari and clapped for him.
And when Ari saw the might-be-pearl he gasped, grabbed it, lifted it, turned it in his hand, held it up to the light.
Then looked at me, already knowing. I shook my head. ‘It’s gone, Ari.’
He won’t ever stop looking. He and Nanny go to the beach sometimes and he drives her wild with his looking. Pointing. Lifting. Checking.
For a moment all was quiet, so quiet, just the guitar humming still under our breathing.
She said it again, though, out of nowhere. Just said it. Like it was a little animal that needed out, a little animal that got trapped inside her, so she freed it, but another one grew in its place, so she let that out too and round and round it went.
Some in, some loose.
Sometimes she said it over and over like there was a swarm, sometimes she said it just once. Three words. Slow, singing. Ragged. Broken. She could say them sad or angry, even happy: ‘Shot him dead.’
Sing it high, sing it low. Let them know.
‘Shot him dead.’
Then Ari would run off to get his box of plasters. ‘Where’s it hurt now, Doc?’
Beth touched a place on her that didn’t look hurt. Looked fine. Not a scratch, not a bruise, not a blister.
And Ari tore open the plaster, and unstuck it, and covered where she was sore.
There was the smell of herbs and of fish being crisped, hiss and bubble from the kitchen.
‘Haere mai ki te kai,’ Nanny called.
At the round table: Koro beside Nanny and Aunty Kat beside Koro, Mum beside Aunty Kat, me beside Mum, Ari beside me, Beth beside Ari and Nanny beside her, and Nanny said the karakia mō te kai, and she said, ‘Āmene,’ and we opened our eyes and I looked at her and saw it then, shining.
I just looked and looked at it, and I looked at Ari, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell him, I wanted him to see it first, for himself. But he was into his kai now, hard out, not taking a breath, gobbling down the fried potatoes and crispy blue cod.
‘Homai te pata,’ Nanny said.
Aunty Kat took the butter and passed it, and then I saw her see it too, and she looked at Ari, then me.
Ari was wolfing down his kai.
‘He inu māu, Ari?’ I said.
We’d had a family meeting, and Nanny had asked us all, ‘How are we going to do this? How do we survive now?’ And Ari had put up his hand and said: ‘We will need a secret language, Nanny.’ And she’d laughed and said, ‘Āe, Ārama, let’s start with our reo. We’ve lost enough.’
He didn’t stop eating when I asked him the question. ‘Nope.’
‘You need one though. Nanny, pass him the L&P.’
Ari looked up. ‘There’s L&P?’
‘I can’t see any,’ said Nanny. And as she turned, looking for it, confused, turning this way and that, Ari saw it too.
‘Nanny!’
‘What, my moko?’
Ari pointed. To her heart. To the shiny thing on a silver chain.
‘You made a necklace with the pearl, Nanny. With your earring.’
She touched it, and smiled. ‘I did, Ārama. So you can stop looking for its other now.’
Ari set down his knife and fork. ‘It’s not garbage?’
‘Ehara, ehara,’ she touched it then. ‘Does this look like garbage?’
‘Tell us, tell Beth, the story.’ He elbowed Beth. ‘You gonna love this. It’s just your thing.’
She kept chewing but looked straight at Nanny.
Aunty Kat put down her knife and fork. ‘Tell us, Mum.’
Nanny sipped some water, cleared her throat. ‘Āe, āe. Whakarongo mai, whānau.’
Koro, grinning wide, touched Nanny’s cheek. Her chin quivered.
My mum winked at my aunty Kat, who tilted her head.
Ari grabbed my hand, then Beth’s.
Acknowledgements
Mum, you bought me typewriters, pens and books, and made me believe that the ghost stories and fairy tales and sad poems I wrote as a kid were the very best in the world – that I was a writer. Thank you for being the most supportive and kind māmā there ever was.
Maddox and Siena Manawatu, my beautiful children, you have inspired me to write using as much magic as I could muster. You didn’t (seem to) mind that I was not always managing what other mums might have been managing, and you stepped up and helped pāpā keep our whare running.
To my sisters, Tami and Nicole, you made sure I always remembered that my blonde hair and blue eyes didn’t mean I wasn’t ‘Māori enough’. I miss you.
To my dad, thank you for all your quiet support and generosity, for keeping the home fires burning and catching and cooking kaimoana. For our trip to Rakiura. For adventures collecting pāua, mussels, hauling up the odd octopus.
To my little brother Kodie, thanks for being the guy we all look up to and for being one of my best friends.
Tina Makereti, thank you for your thoughtful assessment and the tautoko you gave me as part of the 2016 New Zealand Society of Author’s manuscript assessment programme. I’ll always treasure that first hard copy that arrived back to me in the post, your sound advice scribbled in its margins.
Headland literary journal and The Maisonette Trust, thank you for the grant which funded the trip for me to spend the day with editor and publisher Mary McCallum at Mākaro Press.
Penny Howard, the images on the cover could not be more ātaahua, nor more perfect.
My tutor Cliff Fell and fellow students at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, that class was choice, inspiring, challenging, and where I scratched out some of Auē ’s best bones.
Lee Scanlon and Teresa Wyndham-Smith, I’m very privileged to work alongside two amazing journalists, who have much knowledge and such a wide-ranging vocabulary, as well as the ability to see and the desire to find stories. This book would not be what it is if I hadn’t learned from the pair of you before the edits. I’m grateful for your support and patience over the past two years.
Te Miroa Maxwell and Emma Walker, thank you for letting me be a cheeky little wahine during our weekly te reo class, asking sneaky questions to make Auē better. You helped me ensure my limitations weren’t my characters’ limitations. Any mistakes that remain are my own.
Tokohau and Desiree Samuels, thanks for being all pai. (To the whole whānau, you’re all pai too.) Ngatai whānau, thank you for letting me use the bach at Mōkihinui to work. The Frankfurt Writers Group – thank you for the inspiring meetings at Club Voltaire, and for encouraging me to let Auē have a ghost.
Paul Stewart for the wonderful typesetting and the tough job of proofreading, and to Carrie Wainwright for kindly checking the reo. Both Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa’s tikanga course resources were fantastic. Osho’s book Intuition – knowing beyond logic: insights for a new way of living inspired the text of the book Beth and Ari read together in the tent.
I also want to acknowledge Emira Maewa Kaihau (Ngāpuhi, 1879–1941), who composed ‘Akoako o te Rangi’, the song Toko plays and tells Jade, wrongly, that it’s written by a Pākehā. More on this talented wahine at www.folksong.org.nz.
Louise Leung Wai, you drove me across Wellington hungover (little Amelie and Ruby not so keen in the back) so I could hand my manuscript to Mākaro Press in person. I needed to do that.
Renée, thank you for seeing the potential of Auē and for championing it, rough as it was in those early stages. Thank you too for opening up the dialogue between Mary and me on the title, which opened up so much more, and for replying to my worried emails with kindness.
