Aue, page 4
Aunty Kat pulled out her shopping list. I saw my writing ‘plasters lots’.
‘Now you can cross it off.’ I smiled at her.
The dairy lady put the plasters in a bag. ‘They’re on me. Buy me a beer one day, Kat.’
We ate our dollar mixtures on the drive home. The dairy lady’s kids were probably allowed dollar mixtures whenever they liked, Beth said. I said probably not but they would have got them more often than we did, and I bet they never had to eat a teaspoon of Pam’s sugar when they had a craving for a lolly.
We got home and I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to see if I had a mark on my face where Beth had punched me. It felt quite sore when I touched it, but I couldn’t see anything. I put a plaster on it, though, to be on the safe side. I put two of the boxes in the bathroom cabinet and took one and slipped it under my mattress for emergencies.
Beth was tired and grumpy at class the next day. Aunty Kat smelled of cow dung again and had no pretty stuff on her eyes. She got peed off because Beth had forgotten almost everything we had learned last week. I was peed off because Beth wasn’t making any jokes, and learning was more fun when she was being funny. She didn’t even get snotty with Aunty Kat. And I really loved it when Beth was being smart to her, though I didn’t show it because I didn’t want my ears clipped.
Aunty Kat noticed Beth’s bad mood too because she gave a big huff and started going through the sounds letters make together. Beth perked up.
‘S and L make the ssslll sound. S and H make the ssshhh sound,’ she said. ‘Sllloppy shhhit. Like what landed on Dad’s head this morning.’
Aunty Kat growled at her for swearing, then she laughed too.
At bedtime, I couldn’t get to sleep after Aunty Kat left my bedroom. Tauk had set everything up here just like they were before but it looked different. Even the things looked like different things.
Then we are at the dairy in town and my mum is selling us the dollar mixtures instead of the lady. I am so happy to see her. But Beth and I still have to leave with Aunty Kat. I can’t understand why. I tell everyone I want to stay and live at the dairy with my mum, but even she just smiles at me.
‘I want to stay here with you, Mum,’ I say.
She hands me a packet of plasters and a Chupa Chup.
‘Use these. Goodbye,’ she says.
And then I’m in my new bedroom and it’s made of whale ribs that let the night in. And when I try to sleep, I look up through the ribs at the moon and I can’t.
I woke up but scrunched my eyes tight, so tight my head hurt. I tried to shut out the white moonlight coming in the window. And as I lay there wide awake with my eyes scrunched shut, it seemed like even Beth, on the next farm, might not be real at all. Even though I knew I could watch the lights of her house from my window.
When I opened my eyes again I saw my old room around me, and I had to blink and blink to find a tear in the wallpaper and the shape of the light shade that made this room different to my old room.
I got out of bed and my feet on the carpet made me get a yucky, walking-in-the-swamp feeling in my legs, and I thought something might snatch me at my ankles and pull me under the bed, so I ran quickly to the window, and only when I saw the shadow of the bush outside and the moonlight instead of the streetlights and the sound of birds that liked night-time I knew I was not in my old room, and I knew I had woken from a bad dream but not from the one I wanted to wake from because there was still no Mum and Dad, no other bed to crawl into. There was no Taukiri.
Across the paddocks and past the trees, a light was shining at Beth’s house. I went back to bed, taking two steps and then leaping like Sonny Bill Williams so that whatever was under my bed couldn’t get me. I pulled the blankets up over my head and stayed awake all night long.
On Christmas Eve, Tom Aiken and Beth picked up me and Aunty Kat to go and cut our Christmas tree. They already had theirs.
‘Why’d you take so long to get one?’ Tom Aiken said.
‘Just busy,’ Aunty Kat said, ‘and to be quite honest, we’re not feeling very Christmassy.’
‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘Know the perfect place to get one. An old mate won’t mind.’
Even though he said ‘old mate’, Tom Aiken still put us on lookout. He told us to stand out by the gravel road and yell if we saw a red truck coming.
Beth asked, ‘Are we stealing? Because if we are Santa might see and then we won’t get any pressies.’
Tom Aiken told her to relax. He was only worried that maybe the old mate might have forgotten that he didn’t mind us taking a tree. Beth looked at him like she didn’t believe a word he said. I pretty much trusted Beth’s face and anything she had to say more than anyone else.
Aunty Kat went and helped Tom Aiken, while me and Beth watched out for the mate who might have forgotten that he didn’t mind us cutting down one of his trees. The sun was burning down on us and I was feeling so tired from the brightness. Beth looked up at the sky, and said: ‘You know what, Santa, I’m just doing as I’m told, and that’s good.’ She punched my arm. ‘That’s good, right?’
I liked being able to help Beth feel better, because even though she didn’t realise it, she made me feel better all the time.
I folded my arms and looked down the road and said, ‘If I still had a dad who told me what to do, I’d do what I was told and I wouldn’t care what Santa thought.’
Beth slapped my back. ‘Yeah,’ she said.
We looked out for the red truck. Then Tom Aiken yelled, ‘Come on, guys. Let’s go, let’s go!’
We ran up to Tom’s truck and jumped in, and we sped off with a brown-green tree bouncing along in the trailer.
‘Dad,’ Beth said, ‘it looks dead.’
Tom Aiken laughed, ‘What did you expect? I wasn’t going to steal one of his good ones.’ And Aunty Kat said not to worry, because she had some white paint at home.
‘Yes,’ Beth yelled, and started singing, that she wanted a white Christmas, that she dreamed of a lovely white Christmas.
‘Why don’t you get one off your own farm, Tom?’ Aunty Kat asked.
‘Where’s the fun in that? I mean, who is going to remember that story. We’re making memories.’
And we all sang at the top of our lungs while Lupo went mental.
Christmas morning was S.H.I.T.
I woke up and the house was quiet, because Aunty Kat had gone to help Uncle Stu do the milking. I decided to pretend it wasn’t Christmas at all.
You wait for Christmas, you count sleeps for Christmas. And I hadn’t.
I got up and went to the bathroom and found things to plaster. I put my hand over my chest to find my heartbeat, then put about six plasters over the loudness.
Taukiri
I woke because it was hot in the car. Yesterday, I’d stopped at a supermarket and bought a loaf of bread, some marge and a jar of Marmite. I added a dozen beers to my trolley. And I needed a new toothbrush.
I went to the toothbrush aisle. First, I picked up a green one, but that was the colour of the one that always showed up in our bathroom for Ari. Just showed up. One blue, one green. Just showed up.
Some things I should have told Aunty Kat: Ari has a green toothbrush and a new one should just appear when he needs it. He likes brown sugar on his Weet-Bix. He has nightmares and he will need another bed to crawl into when he does.
I bought a yellow toothbrush. And a box of beer. I shouldn’t have bought the beer because I had hardly any money left. I was down to coins and not many were gold.
Christmas lunch was Marmite sandwiches and beer on the beach.
One year Ari got a box of chocolates, and when the box was empty, he cut out photos of me and him, pictures of waves and surfboards and a guitar and glued them to the box to give to me for my birthday. That empty chocolate box was the best present I’d ever been given. Well, best homemade one. Mum gave me Dad’s old guitar for Christmas last year. I had all that with me now. The guitar. The chocolate box. My beers.
I walked down to the beach. Got the closest I had been to the sea since Bones Bay.
Tom Aiken said I should have waited till after Christmas. ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Spend Christmas, then go.’
I sat on the beach and strummed the guitar.
After a song or two I stopped playing and took my shoes off. The beer made me brave. I put my feet into the sand, and let it squeeze up between my toes.
I walked towards the sea and stopped where it could have touched me. I sculled my beer and threw the empty bottle into the tide and yelled. ‘You’re not fooling me. I hate you.’
I put my sneakers back on, and walked up to my car. With my back to the water, after throwing my bottle and yelling at it, I felt like the sea might follow me and eat me up in one huge foamy mouthful. But when I looked back, it was pulling away in a sad grey murmur.
In my car, I took off my shoes and rubbed every grain of sand out from between my toes. I put on clean socks and cracked another beer.
Ari would have opened his present by now, I thought. And even though I hardly gave a shit, I hoped he liked it. I hoped he’d find someone to teach him to play.
Ārama
The lounge smelled like paint, not like Christmas – which was good. Aunty Kat had covered the tree with white paint, the whole thing. To be honest, she’d looked a bit nuts painting and painting every inch of it when only parts of it were brown. When it was dry, Aunty Kat and I’d hung fairy lights and tinsel on the branches.
The house was so quiet it couldn’t be Christmas.
I waited for Aunty Kat to come back from milking, and we opened the presents while Uncle Stu was showering. One present said: Dear Ari, Love Aunty Kat and Uncle Stu and inside was a remote control helicopter. I was used to hugging whoever I got a pressie from, so I was glad Uncle Stu wasn’t there.
My pillowcase had chocolates, socks with fire trucks on them, felt-tip pens, a colouring book and a rugby ball. Santa still found me, which almost made it feel like Christmas, but I didn’t let that feeling get too far in. Uncle Stu decided he would go to some hunting buddy’s house for Christmas. That was good. He put a crate of beer in the back of his truck and left. Aunty Kat phoned Tom Aiken and asked if him and Beth would like to come for a barbecue.
‘We have lamb and sausages, and I made potato salad,’ she said. ‘No, I haven’t made a pav.’
An hour later they arrived. Beth brought the doll she got from Santa.
‘I don’t think Santa knows me that well, bringing me a dumb doll,’ she said, holding it in both arms, close under her chin.
Tom Aiken had a big pavlova covered with whipped cream and fresh blackberries.
‘Wow,’ Aunty Kat said.
‘It’s a supermarket job. Beth decorated it.’
‘It looks lovely.’
‘I’ve got something else,’ he said. ‘I’ll just go to the truck.’
I could see what it was even though it was wrapped up in paper with snowflakes on it.
‘It’s from Taukiri,’ Tom Aiken said, ‘He asked me to give it to you.’
I snatched the present and bolted upstairs. As I ran I heard Tom Aiken laugh and say: ‘Thought he’d be excited about that one.’
It was big and I tripped on the stairs and fell. When I fell the present made a hollow sound like it had something to say, something deep like fee, fi, fo fum. Then it sighed.
I dragged it up the rest of the stairs and set the pressie down to open my bedroom door. I hauled it into my room. I didn’t look at it and I tried not to listen, shoved the present from Taukiri under the bed.
Then I went to the bathroom, took off my socks and wrapped plasters around my two small toes because I’d hurt them running up the stairs.
Tom Aiken cooked the sausages and lamb chops on the barbecue. We ate lunch and it was delicious, so delicious it almost felt like Christmas, with the creamy potato salad and salty pink slices of lamb with crispy fat on the outside.
I thought of how often Uncle Stu sat down for dinner and was disappointed with it, and how it seemed dumb of him to go when he knew he would have nothing to complain about this time. Or maybe he would? It was better without him, which again felt like a Christmas miracle, but I decided to pretend there was no such thing as a Christmas miracle. And it was good he didn’t get to enjoy the lunch. Which was probably a bad thought to have but I didn’t care.
Aunty Kat brought out Tom Aiken and Beth’s pavlova. Me and Beth stuffed ourselves with it. It was soft and crispy and creamy, and though the berries made me suck my tongue, it really was the best thing I’d eaten ever. After lunch Tom Aiken and Aunty Kat went and pulled a black plastic sheet from the tin shed by the house and put the hose on it for me and Beth to slide down.
Tom Aiken decided we needed the best slope, so we all hiked up to the slopiest paddock. Aunty Kat and Tom Aiken sat at the top with a chilly bin of beer between them, watching me and Beth run barefoot up the hill and slide full pelt down the black plastic. We had the big hose Tom Aiken used to clean the cowshed spraying full bore on it, and Beth poured out a huge bottle of Budget dishwashing liquid over it and the black sheet foamed up. We slid down over and over again, and laughter buzzed in my bones and tummy like bees.
We played until it was late, because different birds started to make different sounds, and different shadows fell on the ground. And our fingers were like soggy walnuts.
It was not Christmas. It was just a hot summer day having fun with Beth. We got some pressies and had a yummy lunch. And I’d got the best thing ever: a promise from Taukiri that he was coming back. He’d never want anyone else to teach me to play the present stuffed under the bed. That meant he had to be coming back sometime soon. When that happened I’d pull the present out and we’d open it together.
Unless it was a trick.
Unless Taukiri found a box shaped like a guitar but inside the box was something different. No, Tauk wasn’t that mean. And the present made noises.
It wasn’t Christmas. It couldn’t have been. Nanny never called.
I was the mail collector. Mostly I collected boring letters with typed-up names and see-through windows for Kataraina Te Au or Stuart Johnson. I liked having a job, but most things I brought Aunty Kat made her frown and sigh.
One afternoon I opened the mailbox, and there were the same boring ones, three of them. Telecom, Kaikōura District Council, Farmlands. But there was another one that had handwriting on it.
I ran up the driveway, waving it in the air.
Running into the house, I banged into Uncle Stu.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘There any mail?’
‘Yes, look,’ I said. ‘For me. From Tauk.’
He snatched the other envelopes from under my arm and opened one.
Felt him expand, his teeth pressing together. Felt the air turn to tiny splinters that get into your fingers and toes and have to be poked out with sewing needles.
‘Why you need a letter?’ he said.
He slapped a sheet of paper against my chest. It was covered in numbers.
‘You don’t need no letter.’
He ripped Tauk’s letter out of my hand and walked outside with it. I followed, but I couldn’t shout give it back, because I hadn’t been able to breathe in the air that he’d made sharp with all his splinters.
He took a box of matches out of his pocket, took a match out and struck it against the box, then set the envelope on fire.
‘No, no, no,’ I said. ‘No.’
‘All the phone calls you made.’
When it was mostly burned he tossed my letter and its scaly black ash on the ground.
He walked away, got on his four-wheeler and tore off. I looked at what was left of the letter and saw two legs disappearing into ash. Nothing else. Had Taukiri drawn me a picture? Had he written anything? When was he coming back?
I closed my mouth and held back words that stung my gums and tongue, the back of my throat. I chewed them like they were a mouthful of tiny splinters and tried to swallow them.
I went to the bathroom, took two plasters out of the box in the cabinet and went to my bedroom. I lay down on my bed. I put four over my mouth, and then I closed my eyes and put the plasters over them too. Held the tears right in.
When I heard the four-wheeler arrive back home, and the door slam, I just lay straight and still. And when I heard what he started to do to Aunty Kat in their bedroom I used the rest of the box of plasters on my ears. But I still needed a pillow, and even when I had the pillow over my head I could hear his yelling. Thumping. Aunty Kat crying.
In the morning Aunty Kat wasn’t in the kitchen. There was a note on the table that said she had to help Uncle Stu all day and I should eat breakfast and then go and play with Beth.
Beth was busy hanging laundry on a clothes horse. She was home alone too.
‘No class today,’ I said.
‘Fine by me. I got better things to do,’ she said, and carried on hanging up laundry.
After that we went to the bush to build a hut with some ponga fern. We built it like a teepee and tied it at the top with rope. Inside the hut was damp and our bums got wet from sitting on the ground. Beth found some logs to use as seats and a wooden beer crate from the house to use as a table. She also went and got an old glass milk bottle. She filled it with weeds and put it on our table. It was nice. I told her we should pretend we were Eskimos and this was the house that we’d made ourselves from the ribs of a washed-up whale. That was a game me and Taukiri had played at Bones Bay sometimes.
When we got hungry Beth said we could go make some lunch.
Her house was nice. She had empty beer bottles and jam jars everywhere filled with flowers and weeds. The house didn’t smell as much like cow dung and hay as Aunty Kat’s and Uncle Stu’s. It smelled lemony, like a mum lived in it. Which was strange because one didn’t.
