Hiwa, page 21
But where’s the slick gone? I asked.
Slick shook his head, disappointed. They’ll spend the next few weeks searching for the oil but they’ll never find it – and eventually they’ll forget about it altogether. We all will, and you know why? Because it never existed in the first place.
Slick looked at me.
There never was an oil slick, he said. That’s what’s at the heart of the mandala.
Let me get this straight, Jim said, a tentative awe in his voice. Your advertising campaign was so successful you’ve physically made the oil slick go away? It’s just – gone?
Slick simply grinned. We stood there trying to let the idea sink in. Mary McGowan was leaned against the railing, crying. I went over and gave her a consoling hug but she shook me off. I saw she was crying with joy.
It’s a fucking miracle, someone said.
But it doesn’t make sense, I said.
The others scowled at me.
He’s right, Slick said. We’re way beyond making sense. He looked out towards the radiant dawn. We’ve finally broken through.
These long summer evenings when the mosquitoes whine, and sleep is a brand name I can’t quite recall, I go walking. I unlock the back door and shuffle down to the beach. As I walk I replay that day in my mind. Does it weigh on my conscience? Does it grind me down?
It does. I betrayed him.
While the staffers danced, and a drunken Jim Bacon backflipped awkwardly off the side of the ship, I sat in a toilet cubicle staring at my phone. People needed to know the truth. I called the executive producer of The View, and for more than a few pieces of silver I spilled my guts. Even as I rejoined the party, I knew I’d made a mistake. Jesus would never have been famous if he hadn’t been crucified, and Slick – reclining in a deck chair, watching me with his infuriating smile – well, he knew it. It was the last time I saw him.
The party spread to the wrecked platform of the Deepwater Horizon. A few hours later, when my outraged voice began to blare from TVs around the world, Slick was nowhere to be found. A wildfire of bogus revelations blazed across the mediasphere. The agency was courted and maligned by everyone, from the climate sceptics to the Pope. British American Tobacco offered Mary a fortune to tackle cancer. Confusion was swift and total, and the truth – that thin thread, so easily lost – was but one hair in Slick’s long and tangled beard. The man had disappeared.
Some evenings, if it’s still early, I pass others strolling on the beach. To most I’m just a harmless old eccentric, Gucci slippers in hand. A few recognise me and there’s hatred in their eyes. They think I did more than betray Slick.
Murderer, they hiss.
I shrug, and roll my cuffs, and amble on down the tide line. What really happened is nothing so banal.
Slick was the Messiah.
There. I’ve said it. The millennial doomsayers were right: He was coming. They were just looking in all the wrong places. The Messiah was a Bible-and-internet kid from western Sydney, come again to walk this earth in jeans that were a little too tight. He ushered in a new spiritual age, and then returned to the network, from whence He came.
At the end of the beach, I climb the steps to the headland. I sit and rest my bones, and light a cigarette – a great pleasure, as for some reason or other few of us used to smoke. The view over the Gulf of Mexico is wonderful from here. The ruin of the Deepwater Horizon stands majestic against the fading sky. These days people think it’s a public sculpture, donated by BP. I know better.
I take a drag and sit forward, hands on knees, and stare out at the ocean. I’m very patient. If I stare long enough, and hard enough, like I was looking at a magic-eye picture, something begins to emerge from the chaos of tide and wind. There’s something out there in the water, coating the waves from the horizon to the shore. It absorbs all light, and all life. When I close my eyes, the darkness behind my lids is not so dark as what’s out there. I open them again, and it’s gone.
Tina Makereti
TE ĀTIAWA, NGĀTI TŪWHARETOA, NGĀTI RANGATAHI-MATAKORE
Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore) is author of the novels The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke (2018) and Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings (2014), and the story collection Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa (2010). She also co-edited the Indigenous fiction anthology Black Marks on the White Page (2017) with Witi Ihimaera. In 2016 her story ‘Black Milk’ – written in response to Fiona Pardington’s photograph ‘Uncanny Tui/Kakahu’ (2008) in the A Beautiful Hesitation exhibition – won the Pacific region of the Commonwealth Writers’ Short Story Prize.
A former Curator Māori at Museums Wellington, Makereti holds both an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and now convenes one of its postgraduate workshops. In 2022 she was awarded the Ursula Bethell Writers’ Residency in Ōtautahi (Christchurch), where she worked on a fourth book.
In her 2017 University of Auckland Public Lecture at the Auckland Writers’ Festival, Makereti noted that when she was growing up, she knew nothing of her whakapapa: ‘I knew nothing of half my family. Nothing at all. And though I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I felt haunted by that loss. I was as awkward and lost and damaged as a person can be in that situation. But I could write, even though I soon forgot it for a while, and I did write, and creativity kept me alive.’ She did not, she said, ‘come from privilege, even of the cultural kind. I come from not knowing, and that is how I know how important this kaupapa [of writing and studying Māori literature] is. Stories can save your life.’
The story published here, ‘Gravity’, explores a related kind of anxiety: a young mother alone, with little whānau support, struggles to build a secure life for herself and her child. Makereti wrote the story over a decade ago, when she was the single parent of young children. While she was staying with an aunt in Devonport, she found herself stranded after the last ferry back from central Auckland. Her ‘feeling of complete vulnerability’ informed the story’s central incident. The experience, Makereti says, reminded her ‘of how for many, many years, the only thing that stood between my children and danger was me, and how it was unnatural that a young woman should be responsible for so much by herself.’
Makereti wrote ‘Gravity’ considering ‘all the other young women who were still in similar situations, many of them in much worse situations, and about “welfare” policies that forced those young women to work in low-paid jobs that aren’t conducive to the wellbeing of their children.’ In this story, she says, ‘I wanted to give the reader that visceral feeling of precarity.’
Gravity
He slept in a curved bundle: chin jutting out, head back, back arched, legs tucked up. There wasn’t much time to watch him like this: once he was up he wouldn’t stop moving until after lunch when he would drop, bottle in mouth and blanket by cheek, and sleep unmoving for a solid hour. People said Lani was lucky in this – he slept and woke in hard rhythm, ignorant of the kinds of sleep problems toddlers were supposed to have. In sleep he was a changed creature. It was as if he became the person he would one day be, or perhaps she could see the remnants of some prior life. On waking, he would stomp about the flat, or roll and wriggle on the floor, and she would see his father, or her father, or her sister, or cousin Melissa march across his features. No matter how much she watched, she couldn’t figure the puzzle of him out.
Jimmy’s hands began to clench and unclench, then reach up to rub his nose, the whole of his face scrunched up, a sure sign that it would soon open in wakefulness. Lani felt a bittersweet tug, knowing the sleeping Jimmy would soon be replaced by rocket-boy Jimmy-James. Then his eyes opened, suddenly, and stared unblinking into her own. ‘Car-car?’ he said, loud, clear, without hesitation, ‘Car-car an’ chiooo chi-ooo.’ ‘Yes, car-car and choo-choo in the living room,’ she told him, and watched his rumpled, eager face as he scrambled off the bed and disappeared through the bedroom doorway. So many treasures to be found in a Sunday.
In the afternoon, as always, unwelcome thoughts of the next day began to surface in Lani’s mind. Walking Jimmy to the park, letting him splash in the puddles from the morning’s rain, she felt it on the edge of things, the shortness of time before the next day, and work, and rushing, and another leaving. Each work day was a little rip in the fabric that held them together, but she made herself cheerful for her boy. After all, she was good at this, putting on the act of cheerfulness. She did it every day for the customers, so why not for her son? And she would console herself with the few hours they had left: dinner, stories, playing on the floor, bath time – after which he always came to her, wet and warm, to be cuddled in a towel and rocked back and forth while he dried.
Jimmy’s father had been a mistake. They only went out a few times before she realised his need for a toke far outweighed his need for her, or any woman. Perhaps he would grow out of it one day. She had walked away light-hearted. Then she discovered she was pregnant. Neither of them had even thought of that, at nineteen, a baby! ‘Are you going to keep it?’ he had asked. She had replied that yes, she would. ‘Well. Let me know what I can do. But I haven’t got much, you know. Do you want me to be there?’
They barely knew each other. She found that she did not, in fact, want him to be there. Jimmy’s father was still a mistake. Better to go it alone, she thought, better not to rely on the unreliable. But lately Jimmy’s father had surprised her. He had begun turning up regularly on Saturday afternoons, keen to take his son for little outings. Lani wavered between being pleased and worried about this.
Monday morning dawned as it always did – she was up before light, organising Jimmy’s food for the day, dressing, getting him dressed and bundled to face the cold. They were out the door by seven-thirty a.m., Jimmy’s eyes wide and tired. ‘Where bus?’ he asked while they waited at the stop, but for the most part he sat still in his pushchair, pulling apart the dandelions Lani found for him on the side of the road. The bus was ten minutes late. When it finally arrived the bus driver descended the steps to help Lani lift Jimmy in, and she was grateful and embarrassed all at the same time.
They got off twenty minutes later at Monrad Street, where Happy Days Childcare Centre was just opening. Jimmy was ready to run by this time, and so he did while Lani stowed his gear in his cubby and put his lunch on the tray. There were only two other lunches there at this time of the morning, and two other children playing with enough toys for forty. Despite this, Jimmy headed straight for a little boy with a beautiful Buddha face, yelled ‘Pow! Pow!’ and knocked over his tower of wooden blocks. The boy looked up, surprise then disbelief then anger causing his mouth to open and close like a fish. He began a tirade of words Lani couldn’t understand, but the intent of his pointing finger and stamping feet was clear. ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ Lani said as she began to move towards the boys. A crisply dressed caregiver reached them first, herded them up with efficient clipped tones and redirected them to other games.
Lani was already getting late. ‘Bye-bye, Jimmy-James,’ she said, crossing the floor to give her son a squeeze. He beamed at the ball he was chasing, held up one hand in a casual wave, said ‘bye-bye.’ He didn’t look up. There was some relief in this, except as Lani left she had the nagging feeling she’d forgotten something. There was no time to think about it as she ran for her train. Five minutes. She’d done it before. It was all in the mind. Push past the lung pain and leg pain. Ignore the underclothes heat and sweat against the cold lash of morning air. Don’t think don’t think don’t think of the boy, of days at home, of blocks and books and trains and parks. It was like pushing against gravity.
Workdays passed like this: a constant parade of faces, pleasantries, items scanned. People grumpy, slow, in a hurry, desperate for conversation. Cheerful greetings repeated until it felt like every word was her skin rubbed against concrete. There was safety in this. Sometimes she liked to imagine she was a shop mannequin who could only speak work-related phrases. Somehow that made it easier. Breaks in the smoko room were scorned because they gave her time to think.
Monday to Wednesday, Lani worked eight-thirty to four. Thursday and Friday she worked late shift, two to ten p.m. She’d taken these hours so that she could spend most of the day with Jimmy, but it also meant she couldn’t get subsidised childcare for him. There were no childcare centres that opened after six-thirty. She couldn’t afford a babysitter to come to the flat. So, when she was on late shift, Lani took Jimmy to stay with her cousin Melissa. Melissa had a two-year-old of her own, so she was home anyway. When she could, Lani bought her a six-pack or a bottle of wine.
On Thursday morning Lani woke lazily, letting Jimmy wander into the living room a while before she got up. She could hear him building up his blocks and tumbling them, pow, pow, from where she lay. She didn’t leave him for long, of course. She couldn’t.
After breakfast Lani took Jimmy to the Warehouse, where he could play with the toys in the aisles. The staff seemed not to notice that this was their express purpose for visiting. Then they came home and ate lunch and Jimmy napped while Lani washed up and got ready for work. Afterwards they walked to Melissa’s, Jimmy in his pushchair stacked with everything he needed. It was a routine sort of day.
When Lani knocked on the door, a man she had not seen before opened it. He was tall and lanky, with adolescent spots on his chin, and eyes that seemed much older than the rest of him. He looked straight at her and she felt as if she was an unwelcome stranger at his door. For a moment she wondered if she was at the wrong house, but when she looked in through the doorway she found herself facing her cousin’s hall.
‘I’ll be back in a coupla hours,’ the man yelled over his shoulder, and stepped out, still not offering anything but a hard stare at Lani. He brushed past them, took the steps two at a time, keys jangling on a chain that looped over his pocket.
‘Who was that?’ Lani called as she brought Jimmy into the hall and let him out of the pushchair. Melissa came into the hall, flushed, beaming. ‘My new boyfriend,’ she giggled, ‘Mike.’ She looked pleased with herself.
‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend?’
‘I didn’t, until this week! Met him out clubbing with Daniella on the weekend. He kept texting after, so, you know … ’ Melissa looked expectant, as if Lani should be offering congratulations. Lani didn’t know where to look.
‘But, how much do you know about him?’ she asked.
Melissa’s face changed.
‘Nice one, Lani. How much did you know about Jimmy’s father before you guys hooked up?’
‘Well … yeah. I mean, he didn’t even say hello.’
‘Who didn’t?’
‘Your boyfriend, Mike. He kind of just snobbed us.’
‘He was busy, Lani. Anyway, you can meet him later, when you come back.’
Jimmy had found his cousin Sara, and was holding her hand while he stomped around the house singing a very loud but incomprehensible nursery rhyme. She was six months older than him, though smaller. She blinked her wide eyes and let him pull her from room to room.
‘They’re so good together,’ Melissa said.
‘Yes.’ What could go wrong? Melissa had her own child. She was a good mum. Even if she was a bit dazed by this new guy. Jimmy would be okay.
She left, accompanied by her mantra: It’d be okay. It would be okay. Everything Would Be Okay.
After work, Lani was relieved to catch the ten-fifteen p.m. train. There wouldn’t be another for an hour. When she reached the stop nearest her neighbourhood and disembarked, the usual bus was not waiting there. She assumed it would come soon, so she waited. The other five people who left the train at the same time as her got picked up or walked to their own cars with keys rattling in their hands. She waited. It wasn’t unusual for the bus to be late. She thought about what she would do when she got to Melissa’s. Jimmy would be asleep, but she usually bundled him up and took him home anyway – he’d sleep through the whole deal. She’d tried to sleep at Melissa’s a few times, but her couch was uneven, so that when Lani finally fell sleep, she would dream of steep mountain ledges and ships tumbling in choppy seas. Besides, waking up at home was so much better.
At ten forty-five, when Lani had been waiting ten minutes, she decided to call the bus company. A sleepy operator informed her that the bus had met the train as usual and had nearly completed its run.
‘No. It wasn’t there,’ Lani said.
‘The information I have is that the bus left the train station at the appropriate time.’
‘Yes, but I just got off the train and the bus wasn’t there!’
‘That is not the information I have.’
‘Is there another bus coming?’
‘Services for the night are complete.’
‘But there is another train coming, isn’t there another bus?’
‘We do not meet the last train.’
‘Okay.’ Lani’s first impulse was to be polite, her second to vent her frustration. Neither option would be much use in getting her home.
She hung up and rang a taxi.
‘We’ll get someone to you as soon as we can, love.’
‘How long will that be?’
‘Uh, ten minutes at least. Could be up to thirty – I’ve got to find a driver for you.’ The train station was deserted. There was nothing to do but wait. Walking could take forty-five minutes or more, and the taxi might arrive in ten. Lani texted her cousin: missd bus. Taxi cming soon. Melissa didn’t text back. A car drove past, and then another. Lani backed away from the road, feeling like a target. How dumb was it to stand around a deserted train station in the middle of the night? What could she do if one of those cars stopped? She stepped back again so that she was consumed by shadows, and leant against a wall.
Then she stepped forward. Better to be out in the open perhaps? It was colder in the open. She stamped her feet. Her hand was in her pocket, and her phone was in her hand. Ten slow minutes passed. The taxi operator didn’t call. She checked her phone. No messages. Five more minutes and she’d call the taxi people again. Another car passed. It turned, and passed again. It stopped. Lani lifted her phone out of her pocket and punched in the emergency number: 1-1-1. If she was worried, she decided, she would hit the green call button. She lifted her head to feel the air – surely if she was in trouble, she would experience the crackle of fear that told her to act? A car door opened and a large woman emerged. There were two other people in the car, at least one was a man.
