I mourned for my bastard of a cousin. After he died I could never look in the mirror in the bathroom without expecting him to come up behind me and shove me to one side –
‘Get out of the way, Useless.’
I hadn’t expected him to die, ever. Mohi had existed outside the rules because that was where Grandfather had placed him. He walked higher than the rest of us and was not subject to the same laws of gravity that made us walk the earth. There he floated in supreme confidence that, whatever happened, Grandfather would always support him. I think of him, drowning in the canal, his eyes wide with surprise, the air bubbling from his lips –
‘But this cannot be. This cannot be. I am the grandson of Bulibasha —’
Chapter 54
In 1959, still determined to prove Grandfather wrong about my abilities, I sat School Certificate for the second time. At seventeen I was two years older than most of the students sitting the examination, and Miss Dalrymple had hinted that perhaps I should give up any pretensions to te rori Pakeha.
The day the results came in the post, Andrew telephoned early to say that he had just received his and that he had failed. I thought, ‘Boy, if he’s failed I’m a goner too.’ By the time Mum handed me my letter, I was convinced of it. I opened the envelope. I thought I saw a blur of Fs for Fail.
Since her brush with Miss Zelda at the general store Mum had started to learn the alphabet. She took the letter from me and, in her halting hesitant way, began to read out the results.
‘P, Biology. Pass ne? Ka pai, kotahi P.’
She held both my fists up in the air and made me put one finger up from the right fist. She read the next line.
‘P, English. Pass ne ra? Kapai, e rua P.’
Another finger up, right fist. Next line.
‘F, Geography. Aue, he raruraru! E rua P, kotahi F.’
One finger up, but left fist. Next line.
‘P, History. Kia ora. Pass ano! E toru P, kotahi F.’
Three fingers up, right fist; one finger up, left fist. Final line.
‘P, Mathematics. E wha P, kotahi —’
Mum’s face quivered as she realised I had passed. She held the results in front of her. ‘I think I’ll get a frame for this,’ she said, ‘just to prove I’m not so dumb a mother after all.’
Naturally Grandfather was told and, while I foolishly expected a compliment, a crumb from his table, I was not crushed when it didn’t fall into my eager hands. Grandfather still mourned Mohi who, by virtue of dying young, had become a kind of saint — the person whom no other heirs could hope to emulate. More to the point, Grandfather had always valued things he could see — strength, a well-formed physique, fortitude. Grandfather could see those, could see sweat, or a hillside after all the gorse had been slashed, or a fence where there had not been one, or the shorn sheep after a contract had been completed. But School Certificate results? Marks on paper? Those remained unseen to Grandfather, like chicken scratchings in the dust, and therefore without worth.
Grandfather’s failure to acknowledge my success at the next family meeting was, I assumed, simply a sign that our relationship was taking its normal course. Whatever my achievements, I was still third child of his seventh son. Little did I know that Grandfather was preoccupied with his health. At sixty-seven he was faced with intimations of his mortality.
Grandmother Ramona suspected something was wrong with Grandfather when she saw him cleaning the toilet bowl after having flushed it two times.
‘I can do that,’ Grandmother said.
‘Hei aha,’ Grandfather answered. He motioned her away but she stepped past him. It was strange to see him on his knees doing woman’s work.
‘Didn’t you hear me, woman? Hei aha.’
Grandmother backed away. But she had seen the blood rushing down the bowl with the water.
A week later Grandfather started to have stomach cramps, and although he never complained Grandmother Ramona knew he was in pain. Then Grandfather began to do his own washing — woman’s work again — washing and rinsing his long underwear. She caught him at it and saw there was blood in the front and in the seat of his longjohns.
‘How long has this been going on?’ Grandmother asked.
‘I feel like a woman,’ Grandfather growled. ‘It is only women who pass blood.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘but that is natural for us and only happens every month. It is not natural for the man to pass blood and so often.’
‘You look after your business,’ Grandfather said, ‘and I’ll look after mine.’ Then, ‘I am passing blood from my bum also, kui.’
‘Kaati,’ she answered. ‘It’s time to see the doctor.’
Even in 1959, when they should have known better, Maori used to say, ‘The only time you see the doctor is when you want to be born and when you are about to die.’ Accidental injury was permissible as long as the damage was visible — a fractured limb, a gunshot or knife wound. But something internal — like what had happened to Lloyd or what was now happening to Grandfather — was unseemly and to be feared. The invisible malady was a punishment, retribution for some evil committed when you were younger. So if you were ill from an internal disorder you pretended it wasn’t there and willed it to go away. If it persisted you hid the illness from your close family. If you felt faint you rushed to the bedroom and lay down so nobody would know. If you wanted to vomit you excused yourself and tried to get to the toilet before you spilled your guts. You bore your symptoms with strength and fortitude, in spite of the pain. Much later in life my father Joshua showed exactly the same stupidity when his waterworks stopped and he couldn’t urinate. He remained stoic until finally pain drove him to the doctor. He was lucky to be fixed — unlike Uncle Ihaka who died at forty-nine when the swollen appendix he had been hiding burst and killed him.
My dear cousin Haromi — she was another one. The only recourse for breast cancer in those days was to have a radical mastectomy and even then, according to fatalistic folklore, you ended up dying. When I visited my wonderful cousin in her last week she said to me, ‘At least I will die a complete woman.’ The removal of any part of oneself was a heresy.
Is it any wonder that, in the event of autopsy, the return of a Maori body unblemished by the coroner’s knife and with all body parts in their place, is of such concern to Maori? I can still remember the outrage and agony which attended the tangi of my nephew Aaron, Haromi’s second son, who died of an unknown malady at the age of three. The release of his body was delayed by the coroner. When Aunt Sarah went to bathe her grandson and prepare him for burial she found two neat incisions — one at the base of his neck where his scalp had been lifted, and another across his chest where his heart had been examined.
The body is tapu.
This attitude was the rule with Maori people. Was there any reason to expect that Grandfather would be an exception? No matter Grandmother Ramona’s stern admonitions, he refused to visit the doctor.
When Grandfather’s body began to rot inside, he clamped back the pain. Eating became a nightmare and he turned to the pure Waipaoa water, to kanga pirau, fermented corn, and puha mashed with kumara. When he felt an attack coming on he hissed and clenched his lips. Eyes bulging, he punched out blindly as if trying to render visible the attacker within.