Miata

A Beginning

Evan Everett had begun his mission determined and strong, but now at the gate he faltered. He could not go further. He turned away. Indecisive. But fate took a hand. The door opened. He had been seen.

Hello, he called, I came about your daughter. He approached the open door. She remained there. A barricade. He would not be invited in.

I came about the baby. He got no help so he ploughed on. I can help with her care.

She eyed him steadily without speaking. Provoking him. Damn the woman. She had no right to judge. The power to hurt nearly overcame him, but then he saw her eyes shining in the late afternoon sun. She was holding back tears. Defending a damaged family.

She had already decided on her own truth. Let her keep it. What did her opinion matter to him now?

He remained silent until she found the silence too much to bear. You took my husband. You’ll not have my daughter as well, she said.

It was not meant to be, he said, but I can help with the child. Your daughter should not have to suffer for our mistakes.

The woman had hoped for something, anything to help her understand and ease the pain, but he was not going to give it to her. She began to turn away. I have my own people to help. I have my whanau. You would not understand. Go. The girl will grow up strong, not knowing what happened here. Don’t think of us again.

There is money for her. You will be trustee, he said.

What do I want with your money and trustees? You know money. Do you know love? she jeered. Shame money, to replace the life of my daughter’s father?

Trust money for an education for his daughter, out of respect for him.

Blood money, she said.

A gift for the child out of respect for her father,.

She shut the door.

And so two different worlds parted. He had money to salve a conscience and meet a future need. She had family to nurture life. But each knew the other’s world well enough. She would get the money and use it. And he would respect a community that absorbed needy people.

Childhood

My upbringing was casual. I roamed the Hokianga. I embraced it and it embraced me. I had a parent, a grandmother, a stable home, clothes and food, but no boundaries. That I survived my childhood is a puzzle. I learned to sail by getting into boats. I learned to ride by getting on horses. I learned poetry from an old man who sat by the sea reciting. I learned sex from a variety of males eager to instruct me. I learned domesticity from my mother for whom an orderly clean house was everything, and I learned to live from my Gran for whom only life and nature mattered. My grandmother was undefinable, with no peer, no equal and no category.

I learned from a school teacher, but not at school. Often I’d follow her home. Now I understand the dedication of a teacher who spent all day in front of a class of kids, and walked home with the stray.

What did you teach the big kids today, Miss Wilson?

We did geography, from this book. Can you find Iran and Iraq and their biggest cities, and tell me who lives there? And thus the precocious brat did her homework from a class three years ahead.

Early memories mingle with stories told. Perhaps it never happened. I believe I remember pulling out four cabbages because they were in the row with the carrots. Then I used my little pink spade to help Grandma put them in the cabbage row. My Gran may have been surprised that a three-year-old could count to four and identify cabbages, but she took everything in her stride. She did not show anything except love and patience.

I learned genealogy from the old men who quoted whakapapa whenever they could. I could trace my iwi back to Kupe, whose rock stood at the head of the Hokianga. But I did not learn my own origins. One day we had talked about adoption at school. Most kids at some point question their parents.

"Mum, are you really my mum? It was a question almost frivolous. Almost facetious. I was losing interest in the answer as I asked it, but there was a jolt – a frozen moment – a second before she regained control. She turned to me, almost angry.

I keep house for you, I feed you, I clothe you, and you ask if I’m your mother?

And she ruffled my hair and laughed and went back to her scrubbing and cooking. And I had my answer which was no answer.

Miata, can you come home with me today? This was a little different. I followed Miss Wilson when I chose and usually too often.

Why? The petulant eleven-year-old who did as she pleased.

There is a maths-teacher from college coming. You like maths, don’t you?

Sometimes. I would not give up my independent afternoon too easily.

I wish I could tell you Miss Wilson’s name and not keep calling her that. But she left for Australia about the time I went to college and I lost touch. I owe her a lot for that day.

With a show of reluctance but a thrill of excitement I met the maths-teacher.

Miata, if I have twice as many bananas as I have apples and I have 12 pieces of fruit. How many bananas have I?

Disappointment. Just another person wanting to hear party tricks from the bright maths-girl.

Eight of course.

Miss Wilson and her friend exchanged glances. My ego swelled a bit.

How about a hundred pieces of fruit?

A trick question, but I knew the answer. sixty-six and two thirds.

I want to give you a really big puzzle, so I’m going to write it down, and we can work it through together. Shit. How to escape? The other kids would be walking home. I wish I’d gone too and left Mr Maths Teacher to play games by himself.

The bananas and apples and now plums as well were written down as b’s and a’s and p’s in a series of lines.

I laughed. Too hard sir, we can’t hold all that fruit in our heads. It was the right thing to say. Mr Teacher –- I have no idea who he was –- knew how to involve kids. It was a new world, and I was ready to emigrate to it. A world of letters, not numbers. On paper not in my head, where solving one bit gave a key to the next bit. I saw algebra, at work, and I was transfixed. I begged for more.

Perhaps we better stop now so your mother won’t worry. I ignored him.

Off home now so Mum knows you’re safe.

Mum, doesn’t care what time I get home.

A silent glance and nod above my head. Okay, a few more. When at last they could stand me no longer I took the pages and ran to Grandma’s house. Only Grandma would understand the wonders I had seen. I threw the papers down in front of her and babbled apples, plums and pears at her. I wrote the lines and I solved them.

For the first time she let me down badly. Looking at the rows of letters and numbers that filled a page in both childish nonsense and mathematical obscurity she said, Auē, girl, you are going to have to learn to write smaller than that if you write so many lines.

She gave the only advice she could give as she gazed on hieroglyphics. But from an eleven-year-old she got no mercy. I scrawled the next line at twice the size and stormed from the house.

I went to a boarding school in Auckland. There was a scholarship and some other money but no one told me whence it came. I didn’t really care. My mother who lived in a world of gentle decay, home-grown food and reused items bought me the fancy uniform and paid for five years at college and transport. I asked, but she didn’t answer. I ran away several times. I didn’t think of it as that. When I couldn’t stand it any more I went home. I wandered the Hokianga again and renewed my affair with nature and my other life and then I went back to Auckland. I was the weird Māori kid from the Hokianga but I won a lot of their sports competitions and I topped most of their academic classes. The fancy white kids learned to keep their contempt to themselves and the teachers learned to hide the silliest of their rules and restrictions.

The biology teacher and the maths-teacher loved me and I loved them. I read their textbooks in the first few months and asked what the year thirteen kids were reading. There was gentle laughter and discouragement but I found out and read their textbooks too. I felt that I’d done most of what I wanted to do and I relaxed and spent my time helping other kids to understand. That’s how I fell in love. Not properly in love. It was just platonic ego massaging but it was important to a lonely thirteen-year-old.

You are so good at explaining this stuff, Julie said. I shrugged. How come the teachers can’t tell it the way you do?

They’re busy and have to explain it to lots of kids at once in many different ways. It’s not easy.

Julie looked at me shyly. We’re going out in the boat on Saturday, would you like to come to my place this weekend and come with us?

That was strange to me. Boats were something you got into and went about the harbour, probably caught fish, worked in or played in. You didn’t invite friends for a weekend of it. But Julie was nice enough and was offering me friendship and a weekend away from college.

The school caretaker drove us to Julie’s house. Her family was not a family to ignore when they needed a favour.

Their house was three stories and wide.

Wow, how many in your family? I asked.

Julie smiled and was proud. Just, Harry, Claire, me and Mum and Dad. But, Harry’s gone to university. I wondered how four or even five people filled the house. And even why they would want to. It was nice though. A good view over the inlet. There was a boat there somewhere.

Sister Claire came shyly to meet me. She was an enigma. Pretty, messy and occasionally loquacious, she could change in a moment to silent and morose. Obviously intelligent, she was nonetheless willing to defer to every contrary idea or statement. At first I found her interesting and fun, but she could be an irritation as well. I dared not question anything she said lest she sink into her deferential shell.

Julie’s father baulked when he saw me but recovered well. So you’re the girl who helps Julie with her homework? We do appreciate that don’t we Julie?

We all agreed that we did and Julie and I escaped to Julie’s bedroom. It had pink walls and five teddy bears. It looked like a three-year-old’s room but was too neat to be ten years old. I laughed out loud. You have pink walls and teddies. This is so cute.

Julie didn’t take offence. It was how parents like hers show their love. They decorate rooms. I adapted to pink bedrooms and teddy bears quite well, and then we went boating.

We packed clothes and food. At first I didn’t know why, but I learned that there was no boat down in the bay below the house. What there was, was something