Black Marks on the White Page Read online

  She would wander like a kite whose string was uncertain and if pulled tight may not hold. She could hide here but still make noise, throw her voice like the ventriloquist cicada. Throwing her voice so no one could tell where she was standing, where she rubbed her legs together from, nor her wings. She felt stupidly free.

  She walked in the wet heat with a singlet on, and an umbrella. She liked the feeling of a moist tongue on her skin, the way lovers feel from sweating after sex. Like that. Rise up, Kawhena, she heard. Sing. The smell was cos of the heat. Cos of rotting cabbage. And people. And smoke. And the clinging tang of alcohol.

  The prostitutes in Itaewon looked like they were straight out of a movie; hanging on the door jambs of their rooms in narrow crooked streets, eyeing each passer-by for the hint of cash and the fuck-eye — music and incense eking out — as if either of those snake charms would entice the lonely. Those things are really for the ashamed and the secretive. The lonely don’t care.

  She took Nick’s hands and led him into the night. Everything comes out at night. Creatures from behind their screens, critters, like the roaches that infested her building, come out to eat, to find a glass of soju, and she had come out with them. Twenty-three years she’d been underground. Longer than most. She came out to be with others, to smell their feral smells, to sweat with them. Everyone lost things here: their wallets, their dignity, their hearts.

  The leaves underneath them were damp and soft beneath her bare knees and then her naked back. As though she was being massaged. As though she was being loved from the ground up. From the earth up. Even on the driest of summer days she could detect the wet beneath her. She could smell moisture. You are the rain, Kawhena, she heard. They said. When a tree shed a leaf she could smell moisture leaving it. The wind and sun taking its life second by second. Sending it back to te pō.

  Her rhythm when on top of him was slow and uncomplicated; maybe it was the heat, or the liquor, or love. It can take a year for a single leaf to pass. We keep vigil for our girl, whisper the whaea. Broken tiny. Pieces, tiny bones. We watch. Shhh. Sometimes when she had sex she felt used up like those leaves. Fallen. Threads of memory where the flesh of the plant had disintegrated and nothing but the whispery skeleton remained. Women are low to the ground, her mother had told her. Hine-ahu-one. They hug it and sniff it, beating their chests and letting their blood run out of them in their monthly grief. Better that than babies, she said. Not better than babies, we say.

  Afterwards, she lay talking with him. They were both passionate about the Treaty. About poverty. About changing the world. When they got back to New Zealand they would make a difference. They would clatter and clamour. They would smack their wings against the branches of trees. Under that foreign liquid sky, everything was possible; a noiseless, colourless space, so massive it felt like anyone could start again.

  THE CHURCH ROSE UP in front of her as if it were a beacon. That Jesus, we say. She loves him. Years of wooden pews and rosary beads flooded her memory. The stained glass windows of her childhood were repeated here, throwing a kaleidoscope of colours and feelings onto the floor. It had been too long since she’d prayed, to anyone. To anything. She dipped her fingers in the font, crossed herself as she’d been taught, and sat down.

  Perhaps if she hadn’t spent the summer singing. Perhaps if she’d kept her legs closed. Impossible, we say. Find your voice. Find your song. He might not have felt trapped. She might not have felt trapped. They didn’t even like each other. There were only odd jobs and no money. She wouldn’t repeat the cycle. She meant what she said in Korea about doing it differently. About change.

  She looked up into the blue eyes of the crucified man on the wall. He looked like Nick. Or Nick looked like him. Dangerous, mutter the koro. Put that dog down. His emaciated body and bleeding hands were supposed to give her comfort. She would sleep here at the foot of this white man for as long as she could. She had no choice.

  OUR GIRL PLANNED A water birth. Make noise, Kawhena, we say. Karakia, e koro. Even at eight days overdue she was still hoping for that. Her waters broke first. It doesn’t always happen that way. The labour was so long she thought we would never come out. After the first twelve hours she was numb with fighting but still we didn’t come. No drugs she had told everyone. No intervention. Listen, we whisper. Hear the koro chant.

  Nick-kurī stood guard like a sentry, his eye immediately drawn to anything that looked medical. It was something for him to do instead of watch our mother cry and call out. Where are her women, the whaea growl. The koro are making drums. Bring forth your tāne, Hine-te-iwaiwa. When he came to her she was at a backpackers. Some church set her up. Gave her a food parcel and put her in a box. She rung him and he came.

  Kawhena needs to have a caesarean, the doctors said, crowding and measuring and timing. Our kurī father questioned and grilled them. That baby is struggling to come out, they shouted at him. There will be consequences. Come, tāne, come, the koro are loud now. He asked what that meant and would the baby die and what about Kawhena. Haere mai, child. Into the light. He made the decision to not have the caesar and to just continue. They threatened him then. Told him that they would do the operation if the baby was not born in the next hour. They said that the baby was in distress. We are in distress. The doctor looked angry. His beard wobbled even when he wasn’t speaking because he was grinding his jaw. They looked similar in that respect — our matua and the doctor — the latter an older whiter version of our father’s anger, the both of them warring while our Kawhena moaned and sweated.

  Kurī-Nick decided; the hospital and all the doctors were not for us. Sing koro. A breath, e tāne. It was discrimination. He told mum and the midwife they were leaving and even when the midwife protested and told him to calm down he yelled that she could fuck off back to her institution too. Manawa mai, take heart, one breath. Anxious koro. Loud koro. Make noise, Kawhena, say the kuia. He grabbed mum’s suitcase and walked her out with her arm over his shoulder, rescuing her. Big man, shout the whaea.

  They made it down the long corridor, wide enough for all the other patients to stop and watch the spectacle — momentarily relieved from their own concerns — as our loyal kurī urged our mother on. We can do this by ourselves, he half yelled, half cried, almost carrying Kawhena by now. He was sweating as if he were the one having labour pains and then, on the lino before the door, our girl fell to her knees and called out for the midwife who had been trailing along behind talking to the muscled back of Nick. She too was crying and afraid.

  Nick-kurī father bared his teeth. Cornered hound. Lost dog. His face contorted and he urged our mother again to get up. I’m sorry, he kept saying, let’s go back. We can go back, babe. You can make it. But we were somewhere else by then. And Kawhena refused to move. Access your life, e tama. Break forth. The koro turn. Change, the koro chant.

  Change, we scream to Kawhena. Now we come. Kawhena hears. Kawhena will have her voice. Several of the doctors including the angry bearded man come to tell the midwife that she needs to move my mother out of the hall and our mother stands up. Back, she roars at them. I don’t need any of you. Back. And there on the blue lino, white knuckles holding the perfectly placed handrail, the koro making the blood thrum in her ears, through excruciating push by push, this woman, this whānau, is born.

  WE WERE DELIVERED INTO our girl’s arms and onto her belly and at her breast. We opened our eyes to the horrible brightness, to tears from Kurī-Nick, and to Kawhena’s glazed smile. In the hall they brought blankets and warmed us and gave us a few minutes. Then they brought a wheelchair and wheeled us back into the birthing room before the placenta had even been delivered. And it wasn’t until after the placenta came that they looked and found a girl.

  Our father spoke like a different man, a whimper voice we had never heard. Hello, my little one, he said. When the iho stopped pulsing he cut it. Now this child is born, say the koro. Now the voice is found, say the kuia. Our mother laughed and Nick-kurī smiled back not minding because all that a
nger of before had passed.

  When the midwife checked us over she didn’t find anything wrong, we were already suckling like we’d been doing it forever. Everyone in that room was glowing and exhausted. We felt that. It had nothing to do with our death. If they could’ve, they would have sensed our smile too.

  The midwife could never have known that there was something wrong with our lungs, and then our heart. In the moment before it stopped our girl had handed us over to Nick-kurī and he was nuzzling us and calling us his little one. He was the most gentle man he had ever been in those minutes as he lifted us up and put our cheek to his chest. The koro began again. The winds of change. So that the sound of our kurī’s heartbeat could carry us back into the dark.

  AT THE GATE, THE eyes of the tekoteko bore down from atop wide arms. The rain came, slashing and ripping the world apart. Here Kawhena would bury the tiny box. Here she would bury everything. She stood in borrowed blacks with Nick at her side. They would carry this child home. This was his tūrangawaewae. Would her dead gather behind her, cluster around, watchful and slightly dangerous, taiaha raised, warriors with one foot cocked back, ready? We are here, we say. Would thick-bodied women blockade the path with song that becomes karanga and tears at you, as if the dead they are calling on exist within you and the whaea are pulling them out tendon by tendon? We will, we say. Would her dead walk towards her with heavy ankles, as though shackles dragged behind them, as though they were the slow prisoners of an army, forced forward to take up their own front line, chins high. We do, we are, we have.

  THE MAIHI WELCOME HER. Into the bones we go. Into the womb of Papatūānuku where we do what Māui was unable to. We become immortal. We are not crushed between frightened thighs.

  She is not crushed. The rain softens the ground for all the noisy creatures to emerge.

  KAWHENA IS ANGRY SO that the muscles in her stomach tense into strands of ropey distress. Her rage has thew but she stands with her dead on the verandah, maihi holding the house up above her. She has changed since Korea. She has changed since every single thing that went before this moment. She does not invite you in. She does not welcome your dead to come and mingle with hers. She is no longer the friendly native.

  OUR GIRL LINES UP, we line up, the women and her, along the porch with linked arms. We line up with them, her, our dead. Those who died in birth. Those who died defending us in the world. We stand shoulder to shoulder, adorned in kahu-kurī. Where once the tekoteko kept all at bay, demanded they wait at the gate, commanded respect, now it is just us; the women whose children have died, the men whose children have died, caught with their foot perpetually raised behind. This is the front line. You may no longer come in.

  You, our girl wails, you must listen. Hear the roar of the cicada, we say. Sing girl, sing. Her toes are dug into the flesh of Papatūānuku. You, rise up, she calls. Make noise. Get off your knees and make noise.

  MATARIKI ALL-STARS

  PATRICIA GRACE

  WATSON HAD SEVEN DAUGHTERS who were all stars. ‘There they are,’ he told Annie one night when he was sitting on a box by the clothesline, looking out into the northeastern skies. ‘Our awesome daughters, all on stage.’

  The actual daughters, inside watching television, ranged in age from three to thirteen. The eldest was Lainey. The twins, Pattie and Trinny, were eleven months younger than their older sister, and at next birthday, for a month, all three would be thirteen. Of the remaining stars, Poppy was nine, Maddie seven, Rosie five and Dixie three.

  In regard to his teen and soon-to-be teen daughters, Watson had been stressing out about ‘women’s stuff’ and ‘facts of life’ — how to divulge, transmit, what to say to his girls, what to do. ‘Women’s stuff’ had already begun, had taken him by surprise three months back.

  ‘I have to do better, Annie.’

  When Lainey told him about the blood, had shown it to him on the bed sheet, he’d felt sick and rushed her to the doctor. The doctor patted his arm and sent them in to see the nurse. However, he didn’t go in to the nurse’s room with Lainey because the other daughters were waiting in the van for him. He went out and used his phone to let the teachers know the girls were going to be late for school.

  More to come.

  More than just monthlies, and for the first time in three years Watson thought of contacting his sister. Going through his mind were words she’d yelled at him the morning he’d gone and taken Dixie from her.

  ‘What do you know about girls?’

  Sister Zelda had come and helped him when this youngest girl was born and Annie was dying. His sister thought they were irresponsible having all these kids, all these girls, and didn’t mind who was witness to her saying so. ‘Idiotic if you ask me.’ Watson hadn’t asked her to come, knowing what she was like, but it was true he needed her at the time, couldn’t have managed without.

  Irresponsible?

  He would’ve stopped at five kids, even four, but Annie kept telling him he needed a son, which wasn’t true. ‘Girls make me happy,’ he told her.

  ‘One more try,’ she said three times.

  The last pregnancy and her illness were both discovered at the same time. Because of the pregnancy she refused treatment for the illness.

  ‘Don’t worry, Wattie,’ she said, ‘I’ll stick around. Can’t get rid of me that easy.’

  It wasn’t what the doctors were saying.

  Watson wanted her to have the chemotherapy even though it meant the baby wouldn’t survive. Annie couldn’t do it, and after she realised all hope of her own survival was gone, told him she had no regrets.

  ‘You’ll manage, Wattie,’ she said.

  One month after Dixie’s birth, she died.

  Sister Zelda stayed on, ruling their lives, demanding that they all stop crying because what good would that do? They were worse than the baby. It was true Baby never cried. Passed from hand to hand, fed, changed and talked to, Dixie was a reprieve, a little blink during the dark days.

  ‘I gotta get back to the farm,’ Zelda said when Dixie was twelve weeks old. ‘I’ll take Maddie, Rosie and Dixie with me. You get yourself back to work. Get after-school care for the older ones. Get someone in to do a bit of housework.’

  ‘I’m not going back to work,’ Watson said. ‘The kids need me.’

  ‘You can’t manage on your own,’ she said.

  ‘I can manage. I will. The babies aren’t going anywhere.’

  It was the only time in his life he’d ever stood up to Zelda. His daughters supported him by screaming.

  ‘All right. All right. Shut up. You girls are as silly as your father. Shut up or you’ll have CYFs knocking on your door thinking someone’s being murdered.’

  ZELDA WAS FOUR YEARS older than Watson, and she’d looked after him when he was a kid, scratched for food, washed their clothes, stood over him while he scrubbed himself — all so that the Social Welfare wouldn’t get them. Only a kid herself, he realised now, she’d get in to their mother’s handbag or go through her pockets for money and, if she found any, run off to the shops for bread or milk. Stole. Jar of Marmite in her pocket. They’d have Marmite on toast for breakfast and Marmite sandwiches to take to school for lunch. If you didn’t take lunch to school, the Welfare got you, according to Zelda.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL NEXT morning, when Watson returned from walking Maddie to kōhanga, that he realised his sister hadn’t completely abandoned her plan to relieve him of at least the youngest child. He had Rosie in her stroller and was turning onto his front path when Zelda came backing down the drive in her car with Dixie behind her, strapped into her baby seat. He left Rosie and ran across, calling, ‘Whatcha doing?’

  She stopped and opened the window. ‘Don’t panic. Only for a month ’til you find your feet. Look at you. Total disaster. Bring her back in a month.’

  He ran after her as she continued backing out, but she zipped around at the bottom of the drive and shot away. He wheeled Rosie to the back of the house and sat on the step, head between his knees,
eyes leaking.

  ‘I’ll get her back,’ he promised Annie. Thin figure of his wife in the white bed, teeth and eyes breaking out of her face. Dozing, waking. Little Dixie tucked in beside her sleeping and snuffling.

  ‘You’ll manage, Wattie.’ A whisper.

  ‘No worries, my love.’ A promise.

  He’d brought mother and baby home from hospital and Zelda had arrived. Girls on the sofa having turns holding Dixie, a distraction from DHB coming and going with their drips and jabs.

  Rosie was calling him. ‘We got to get her back, Rosie,’ he said, unstrapping his daughter from the buggy.

  THE OLDER GIRLS HIT the roof when they came home, but he had calmed down by then and decided to wait out the month. There wasn’t much else he could do without a proper vehicle. He had a work van, which his mate, Tai, had helped him fit out with shelving and security bracing to take his paint and plaster gear and his ladder. Only enough seats for three in front.

  Each morning he dragged himself, sleepless, out of the pit, dizzy, fat-eyed. Kids crying. Had turns, or did it all together. Who could blame them? He made breakfast and school lunches while Lainey dressed Rosie, washed her face and hands and helped her with her Weet-Bix. She’d decided this was her role now. After breakfast Lainey followed her sisters off to brush their teeth while Watson began washing dishes.

  He saw Lainey, Pattie, Trinny and Poppy away to school and set out in the opposite direction, with Rosie in her stroller, to walk Maddie to kōhanga reo.

  At home again he finished tidying the kitchen with Rosie playing on the floor around him, ignoring toys, getting into the pot cupboard, or climbing. Climbing was what she most wanted to do, but she liked the fridge photos too, which he had put down low for her to see.

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes.’ He wondered how much Rosie remembered. By that time of day his insides were collapsing — inside his face, inside his head, inside his stomach. Legs going bandy. Arms, heavy as tyres hanging out the washing, carrying Rosie, bringing the wash basket. Flashbacks. Eyes dripping. Had to get his head down.