Cousins Read online

  NOW A MAJOR FILM, THIS IS THE UNFORGETTABLE STORY OF THREE WOMEN’S INTERSECTING LIVES.

  Makareta is the chosen one, carrying her family’s hopes. Missy is the observer, the one who accepts but has her dreams. Mata is always waiting, for life to happen as it stealthily passes by.

  Moving from the forties to the present, from the country to the protests of the cities, Cousins is the story of these three cousins. Thrown together as children, they have subsequently grown apart, yet they share a connection that can never be broken.

  A stunning novel about tradition and change, about whānau and its struggle to survive, about the place of women in a shifting world.

  Cousins is an engrossing story that runs on in the head long after it has finished.

  — Dominion Sunday Times

  … it is robust and powerful. I simply could not put it down. Lyrical and vibrant, smoothly paced and quietly rhythmic, Grace’s language moves easily from one person to the next, as the stories unfold.

  — Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, NZ Listener

  Patricia Grace writes with an enviable clarity and power.

  — Evening Post

  Contents

  MATA

  MAKARETA

  MISSY

  MAKARETA

  MISSY

  MATA

  Read More

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Follow Penguin Random House

  To the descendants of Te Kakakura and Unaiki Whareangiangi

  MATA

  One

  Walked enough, and didn’t know how she had come to be in the middle of the road. Couldn’t remember leaving the footpaths where she’d walked this afternoon, this morning, earlier, before, when?

  Middle of the road, not moving. One foot not placing itself in front of the other. Hands not paddling — this side, that side — helping her forward. Eyes not looking out but looking down instead, at two feet. At two big-toe toenails cracked, grooved, blacked, crusted and hoofed. Rusty saws. And at the next-toe toenails fluted and humpy, hooked and clawed, scratch-picking at the tarry middle of the road. Middle-toe toenails? Left one gone, right one worn down, nearly gone. It was a grey, sick-skin colour, like part of a nerveless tooth, gaudy like a bruise, like a battering, like a tatter, like a ripped scrap. Next-toe toenails, left and right were underfolded beneath the middle ones, joint bones poking up white, the two bone lumps propping up dirty skin. Then the little-toe toenails had ingrown, biting the toe skin, the toe flesh. There was blood and dirt. One could be the other, dirt or blood. Some of the dirt was tar from middle-of-the-road walking. Didn’t remember leaving the footpaths to walk the middle of the road.

  All day walking the footpaths. At first not on the cracks, but after that, anywhere where her feet placed themselves, one down, one forward, then the down one forward. Hands had paddled her — one hand and then the other — trapping air and thrusting it back. Her handful of air, then not hers, paddling back to wherever it would go.

  Foot dust too. A puff of dust from under one foot shuffling backwards. Hers, not hers. Then from under the other, back and gone. Unowned. Nothing owned nothing owed as she’d made her way, spoken to only by signs which said: Cross, Wait, Switch Go Slow, Keep Clear, King Bun, Red Hot Specials, Neon Tops, Book Exchange, Open, Natural Health, Sticky Filth, Vacancy, Family Planning, Showing Daily 6 and 8 p.m., Travel Rarotonga Hawaii, Apply Within, Way Down Sale, Sorry We Are Closed, Stow It Don’t Throw It, Greenstone, Shark Teeth, To Clear, Caution Fire Engine, Natural Health, Take A Closer Look, Cafe Paradiso, B.Y.O., One Hour Photos, Conjugal Rights, Unauthorised Vehicles will be Towed Away. And breath, hers, not hers. Out of breath.

  Now she stood in the middle of the night, in the middle of the tarry road. No one, only herself. No shoppers now, no workers or kids on skateboards, no joggers, movie-goers or night walkers. The doorways, over-ramps and parks had taken in the pale old men and the dark children who were the street people. No cars, no trucks or vans, no boy on a bike, no girl running — no woman watching, turning her head, staring from the window of a late bus going by.

  Back there somewhere she had left the bad-luck cracks under the shop verandahs where she’d stepped past windows of shoes, skirts, dresses, nighties, lingerie, pantyhose and scarves. Past sweatsuits on racks, T-shirts on carousels, jackets and jeans, singlets and underpants, socks, pyjamas and ties. Silk flowers, gauze butterflies, masks and mirrors, Mickey and Donald, good-luck crockery, brass plates, water sets, fruit imitations, crystal balls and bowls and plastic chandeliers. Past hairdressers, photographers, jewellers, preachers, singers, sniffers and paper sellers. Hot bread, Chicken Spot, fruit and vegetables, fish and chips, buns, cakes, bread, pasties and pies, fish steaks, paua fritters, fillets of fish, crayfish, octopus, mussels in brine.

  All day. But now in the middle of the tarry road she sat, pitchy-footed, feet and ankles specked with spotchy tar, breathing in and out, huffs and whiffs of breath going to wherever they would go. Sitting. Middle of the tarry road. Middle of the undark night, which was orange coloured, lit by the orange street lights and the spiky stars.

  Down, tar. Up, stars. Tar stars. Stars, stares. After everyone had gone there’d been one bus, one late bus. Running girl gone, boy on a bike gone. The lost kids and lost old men had stepped into doorways, alleys, schoolyards, parks, and gone. There was just herself on the street side, walking, and from the passing bus a woman had looked out, staring in surprise from the bus’s window. And now, once more, there was just herself, sitting, tar-gazing — her own black self, one dress and one saggy coat with big pockets, one shoe in each pocket, heels on the shoes worn down and two round holes in two soles. In one of the pockets there was a photograph in a frame. Somewhere back there, after the push and hustle, the fast cars and the buses rushing, she had bent, taken off one shoe and then the other and pocketed them.

  When?

  After that she’d walked again, and her feet, not her shoes, had flat-stepped over the already-gone footsteps of the people gone — over today’s and yesterday’s footprints of people striding, dawdling, staggering, dodging, zigging and zagging. Many footprints of many people. Her own wide feet had walked over them, foot over foot.

  Then at the edge of the footpath she’d waited, back there in the undark dark, waited with a shoe in each pocket while the late-night bus bussed through over the recently tarred road, through the middle of the night-time.

  The face she’d seen was a face like her own, wide and dark, with a thick frame of hair turning white, and there’d been surprise in the eyes that met hers. The bus beat its way onward and their eyes had held until the bus became a shape, a dimmer and dimmer light on the long road.

  She’d stepped off the footpath then, out from under the shop verandahs with her pocketed shoes, to walk the middle of the road, still churning words through her mind, words to do with shops and goods, signs and messages — from hairdressers and supermarkets, laundrettes, fishmongers, butchers, coffee shops, florists, dentists, photographers, jewellers and pharmacists. To do with home-goers, park and doorway sleepers, light and stars, dark and walking, a woman turning, feet and faces, steps and stepping. She had crisscrossed her mind with words that were not thoughts, words that would not become thinking. Then she’d stopped.

  Where? Didn’t want to ask where or why, or to have thoughts that lead to thinking. Only wanted hands in shoes in pockets and just herself, her own ugly self, with her own big feet and big hands, her own wide face, her own bad hair, which was turning white, springing out round her big head. One coat, one dress. Shoes on their last legs or last feet or in their last pockets, a photo in a frame, and her name.

  She wanted what up to now she’d tried not to have — just herself, which was what she’d always had. Just herself and her nam
e, Mata Pairama.

  Mata Pairama sitting on the road, breathing in and out, having thoughts but not thinking. Having thoughts that sometimes coiled, hunched against themselves waiting for a forgetful moment when they would become the thinking, become the questioning — the where, the why, the what — become once again the beginning of the answer search, the beginning once again of waiting.

  But there would be no more waiting, no more seeking answers to questions thready already from fingering, because she knew now that there were no answers, unless the answers were ‘Nowhere’ ‘No reason’ ‘Nothing’ ‘No one’.

  Nothing and no one, only herself and her name, a dress, a coat, hands in shoes in pockets. Mata Pairama. There was a photo in a frame and two feet to walk her. She was her own self, ugly.

  Two

  ‘Uglee. Uglee.’

  The kids sang it through the spaces in the boards, softly enough so that she could pretend not to hear. An eye moved behind a knot hole and she turned her head so as not to see it, turned on the stool, turned her back.

  The woman in the thready dress, swinging the knob on the chimney, was her aunty. She had a pretty face, smiling with gappy teeth, smooth as though she could be young, younger than her dress.

  Frown.

  ‘Get in here, you kids, and stop getting smart. Bring wood, Chumchum. Missy, bring that baby and get the washing, get her a jersey too.’ Aunty moved a pot over to the side of the range and shifted a tin across.

  The boy came in, put wood on the hearth and stood brushing himself, swivelling his eyes and turning his mouth down at her. ‘Stop that,’ his mother said, clipping the side of his head with her hand.

  ‘Only me been looking after Bubba,’ the girl behind him said, ‘Bubba done mimi, Bubba done tutae,’ and Aunty stamped her foot, sending the girl out to the clothesline.

  ‘Give Bubba to Mata,’ she said.

  The baby stank, and her name wasn’t Mata. Why did her aunty keep calling her Mata, which didn’t sound like a name at all — sounded like a noise instead, or butter. She didn’t like people making up names who had cheeky brats for children and a stinken baby, but she was too shy to say anything about her name.

  Now Aunty was smiling again, ‘There, Bubba, your cousin Mata, see.’

  ‘It’s May.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘My name. Like on my bag,’ she said, showing the label, ‘May Parker.’

  ‘I saw, but I thought … So that’s your name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My sister called you Mata.’

  Stinken was a bad word and if kids were heard saying it at the Home matron would put soap in their mouths, or they’d have to bend over with their bottoms bare and get whacked with the cane. At meal-time they’d have to read the Bible while the others had tea. While she was on holiday she wasn’t to forget to read the Lord’s word, to pray night and morning and to do the Lord’s will always. She had new sandals, and a brown and white gingham dress that Mrs Parkinson had made, for her holiday. She’d darned her socks and fixed the cuffs of her cardigan and had two hankies with her name on them. It was all because she had grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins who had sent for her. Jean had been jealous about the grandparents and the sandals.

  She mightn’t see Jean again, mightn’t ever go back to the Home because her grandparents would want her and keep her. Then she’d have dresses and shoes like the School kids who came out of their own doors of their own houses every day, who walked along their own paths and out of their own gates every morning on their way to school. Their own curtains at their own windows would shift and the mothers’ hands would wave. Sometimes a mother would pop a head out of the window and call, ‘Don’t forget to come straight home after school.’ The girls had skipping ropes and pencil cases, the boys had threepences and marbles.

  The girl, Missy, came in with the washing and took it through to the other room. The boy was behind her with water in a basin that had a little piece of yellow soap in it. ‘Get this nappy, Miss, take it to the lav,’ her aunty called, and Missy went running, running, somewhere.

  Where? Because she wanted to go to the lav, hadn’t been since she left the Home, not even in the train.

  ‘Stay in your seat,’ Mrs Parkinson had said, ‘Don’t talk to anyone and don’t get off at all until you get to your station. Also don’t forget that I have charge of you, May. I am the one allowing you to have this holiday and I expect you to be well behaved and obedient. Home children are brought up to love and fear the Lord. You must guard against sin while you are away and beware of bad companions. And beware of the devil, who will whisper evil into your ears and lead you into temptation so that the gates of hell will be open unto you.’

  As the train moved off she’d looked out of the window at the shunting engines, the railway buildings, the factories and sheds and the crisscrossing railway lines. Smoke and soot had streamed back from the engine as the train picked up speed. Telephone poles and sooty houses had flicked by. Pole, house house, pole, house house, faster and faster.

  After that there were large paddocks where sheep grazed, or smaller ones where cows were feeding amongst tufts of weed, banks of cutty grass, rushes, and old, leaning trees. But she’d watched out for houses because that was what she liked best, liked thinking about houses.

  Inside houses were mothers, fathers and children, tables and chairs, cups and dishes in cupboards, curtains with flowers on them, floral wallpaper, patterned mats on floors, beds with shiny bedspreads, drawers and wardrobes full of clothes. There were toys and dolls. The dolls had dresses and pants and there were tins of beads that you could make bangles and necklaces with, threading the beads on cotton — green white red, green white red, all red, all green, any way you liked. When it was long enough you tied it round the doll’s wrist or neck.

  Then the mother came and chased you out because you weren’t allowed. Betty wasn’t allowed to bring dirty, black children into the house to make bangles and necklaces for dolls. Or Home kids. Betty was a naughty, naughty girl.

  Jumping up. Beads spilling, dropping on the flowery mat, sprinkling over the patterned lino. Running out nearly peeing, squeezing her legs together. ‘Who told you you could come here … Off … And don’t you ever let me catch you in here again.’

  Out of the gate, down the street, nearly wetting herself.

  She’d been late home and had been sent into the bathroom to bare her bottom for the cane. After the caning she’d peed, so the stick had come hitting down again For, Being, A, Dirty, Girl, Now, Clean, Up, This, Mess.

  ‘Piss pants, piss pants,’ the kids had said as she went for the mop and bucket, whispering so they wouldn’t have their teeth prised open and their mouths washed out, ‘Piss pants, piss pants,’ hissing.

  She’d stayed in her seat on the train even though she’d wanted to go to the lavatory. Now she wanted to go urgently and didn’t know whether she should ask her aunty’s permission or just stand up and look for Missy, who had run somewhere to the lav.

  At school, stretching an arm high for the teacher to see, you had to say, ‘Please may I leave the room?’ Sometimes, one at a time, you were allowed to go, but sometimes you weren’t.

  ‘Did you go at lunchtime?’ Miss Bower had asked.

  ‘Yes, Miss Bower.’

  ‘Well then, you can wait until after school, can’t you?’ Eyes. Eyes on her. Eyes on her Home dress, her Home haircut, her black face. Homey, Homey. Blackie, Blackie. ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Bower.’

  ‘Sit down then.’ She’d sat, pressing her legs together, squeezing the bones at the sides of her knees and the fat parts at the tops of her legs, unable to write or read or listen.

  There was a boy standing in the doorway with a snake and she was going to pee. ‘Good boy, Manny,’ her aunty said.

  ‘I find hees hole. I pull him out by the bank go down.’

  ‘Out on the block outside and I bring a knife.’

  She could see that her aunty was plea
sed as she took a knife from a hook by the stove. Aunty Who? If she knew her aunty’s name she could say please, Aunty Betty, or Jean, or Mary, may I leave the room?

  She’d stepped off the train with her bag and looked for someone who might be her grandmother or grandfather, but had seen only the woman, or girl, in a big coat and girl’s shoes. ‘I’m your aunty,’ the woman had said as though she was shy, but hadn’t said a name, ‘Give your bag.’

  They’d walked together along a white road, not speaking, until her aunty had stopped and said, ‘We get through here,’ and had held the fence wires apart for her, ‘That little house, it’s where we going.’ The new sandals were covered in white dust and had begun to hurt.

  Once through the fence they’d headed down a slope, stepped across a small stream then taken a track through rushes and trees. ‘Your grandmother and grandfather come back the day after tomorrow,’ her aunty had said as they came out into a little yard. The boy and girl were there with the baby. They’d looked about the same ages as the cry-baby Home kids that she and Jean had to look after, dress, help, pull and chase to school, get the blame for. The two kids had gone behind the house pulling the dirty baby. But it wasn’t a real house.

  ‘Silly,’ her aunty had called to them. Then she’d said, ‘Come inside, Mata. Sit and rest, Mata dear.’ But her name wasn’t Mata.

  There’d been room for her to sit between the table and the wall and there was a little window high above her head. It was like being in the fort that the School boys had made once, out of boxes and boards. There was a stove with a pot and a kerosene tin on it, a basin and a row of tins on a bench and boxes nailed to the walls like cupboards without doors. In the boxes were tin plates and mugs, bowls and billies and knives. The walls were papered with old Free Lance and Auckland Weekly pages and there was a lamp hanging from the ceiling on a piece of S-shaped wire.

  The School boys’ fort had had little doorways and passages that you crawled along to get to a small room where you could sit with your knees pulled up hard, but it was bad. Kids had taken their pants off in there, then someone had told and they’d all been caned. After that, boxes had been forbidden and the bank had been made out of bounds.