Testing? Aunt Sephora wasn’t kidding. I was supposed to be a good samaritan, too.
‘Simeon,’ Grandfather said, ‘I want you to take some meat and maize over to Maggie’s place. After that call at Pera’s. The old fella phoned me. He needs help.’
To get through this one, I’d asked Andrew to help me.
Maggie’s old shack was on the other side of the maize fields.
‘This is my lucky day,’ she slobbered. ‘Two young boys, and juicy too.’
‘Cut it out, Auntie,’ I said. She roared with laughter, showing her black teeth. She was eighty if she was a day.
‘Huh? I must be losing my reputation!’ She looked at the meat and maize and sniffed approvingly. Then, ‘You got to hand it to Bulibasha,’ she said. ‘He looks after his women.’
This was Andrew’s chance. ‘You mean women really went for him?’
‘Did they what?’ Maggie answered. ‘My boy, when the word spread about the size of it —’ She made a guess with her hands, shook her head, expanded the gap between her hands, and shrugged. ‘Oh how can I possibly be expected to remember.’ She yawned. ‘I’ve had so many.’
Andrew broke up laughing. The last thing I wanted to hear, however, was yet another exaggerated claim about Grandfather.
‘I’ll leave you two sweethearts,’ I said.
The company wasn’t any better at eighty-three-year-old Uncle Pera’s.
‘Thank you, boy,’ he said when I went into his bedroom. His chamberpot was full to the brim. I had just enough time to take it to the outhouse, pour it down the stinking hole and take it back to him. As soon as I returned he was wanting to slide off the bed and on to the pot. His old body burst into a series of farts, hiccups and splashes of piss and shit into the bowl.
That’s right, Granduncle, go ahead and make my day.
‘Sorry, mokopuna,’ he said.
‘That’s all right, koro,’ I answered.
‘My daughter, she usually come to fix me up but, hullo, her car lie down and die today.’
‘No problem, Uncle Pera,’ I mumbled. I wished he wouldn’t talk to me. I was trying hard to hold my breath. My words came out more like NopoblemuncaPera.
Afterwards, eyes and nose averted, I wiped his bum and got him to lie down while I washed him all over with a sponge. I’d done this with him before so knew where he hurt and where he didn’t. What always surprised me was that his skin was so smooth and dark, polished by age and the sun to a shining ebony. It was a privilege, really, to touch him, and know he was my kin, my own flesh and blood.
I changed Uncle Pera’s sheets, put him into a new nightgown and back into bed. In the lean-to kitchen I found some Maori bread and boiled up some broth of watercress and kumara. Uncle Pera didn’t know where his false teeth were so I had to break his bread for him, soak it in the broth and feed him that way.
‘That grandfather of yours —’
Slurp.
‘He’s a great man.’
Not again.
‘I remember when we all go down the river to be baptise. All us peoples —’
Munch.
‘Down the river. Singing our heads off. Long time ago. All dress in white like the peoples of Israel. We were so happy. The elders all there. We wade right in up to here —’
Spill, slurp, munch.
‘They raise their hands and ask us, “You want to receive the Holy Ghost?” I nod and down I go. All the way under.’
He started to cry. He pushed his plate away and clutched me. His body rattled like a hollow gourd.
‘If it wasn’t for your grandfather, boy, I wouldn’t get close to the gates of Heaven. You thank him for me, boy. I be Heavenbound soon and he the one saved my soul.’
By the time I got back to the homestead, the family were already sitting down to dinner — Grandfather, Grandmother Ramona, Aunts Sephora, Miriam and Esther, Mum and my three sisters. I washed quickly but as I came into the dining room Aunt Sephora shot me a warning glance. She got up to get my plate from the kitchen.
‘He can get it,’ Grandfather said.
Aunt Sephora sat down again.
I’d had enough. It was Aunt Sephora’s job, not mine, to get me my plate. But he was saying now it was my job. As if the kitchen was my place, too. As if I was a woman. As if I was useless.
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said. I stalked out and slammed the door.
All of a sudden there was an eruption behind me and women’s screams. The back door flew open. I knew the fucker was running behind me, hip hop hip hop, and I hoped he would trip on his bad leg. My heart was pounding, but I kept on walking steadily onward. Fuck him, fuck him.
Then he was on me. He lifted me up by the scruff of the neck. He pulled me back, half strangled, into the kitchen.
‘The food that is put on this table was given to us by the grace of God —’ his voice hissed out. ‘Your father, uncles and aunts are all out there shearing so that this food can be put into your belly —’ The pots were steaming on the stove. ‘I will not have anybody in this house refuse food that good hands have prepared —’
He opened one of the pots. He pushed my face into it.
When my head came up it was covered in puha and mashed potatoes. I was too stunned to care about what came next. It was the humiliation more than anything else. The humiliation of being too weak and too young to fight back. The humiliation of having my mother, sisters, grandmother and aunts as witness. I know it was idiotic but I looked at Aunt Sephora and said, ‘Mmn, nice.’
Grandfather threw me against the wall. ‘You’re getting too big for your boots, Himiona.’
Grandmother Ramona tried to reach Grandfather, to stop him. ‘Hoihoi,’ she reproved him, ‘he tangata porangi ke.’
She was too late. He raised a hand to hit me.
I saw Glory and semaphored to her. Play dead, Glory, quick!
She screamed and crumpled to the floor.
I wrenched away from Grandfather and ran out into the darkness.
Above the moon and stars. Below the earth.
Glory found me in the cowbail, crying my eyes out. She cradled me. ‘There, there, Simeon.’
We went back down the hill towards the quarters. My mother Huria was waiting for me. When she tried to hug me I pushed her away.
‘Kua mutu,’ she said, ‘Kua mutu. Stop this, Himiona. I won’t have this anger between us.’ Her eyes were haunted. ‘I know how you’re feeling,’ she said. ‘I feel that way sometimes about your grandfather. But he is Bulibasha.’
Faith and Hope joined us. My mother grabbed us all in a fierce embrace.
‘We have to remain a family,’ she continued, piercing me with her eyes. ‘You, your sisters, your father and me. Perhaps one day. Perhaps —’
Chapter 14
It was all a zigzag of lightning in a summer sky. The next day there was no mention of the incident. Grandfather got on with his life and his job; we got on with ours. I guess Grandfather could have piled more work on to me, but he didn’t. Nor did he go out of his way to avoid me, as I did him. Life went back to normal, whatever that was. However, Grandfather did think that Glory should see a doctor about her fainting spells.
At the end of the third week the Mahana shearing gangs returned to the homestead. It was the beginning of a new month and another family meeting, the opportunity for a huge feast. My mother was overjoyed to see my father Joshua. She didn’t tell him what had happened between me and Grandfather.
‘You’ve done well, son,’ Dad said. ‘I’m proud of you. Your grandmother has told me how good a job you did.’