His waistcoat had the cut of another man. It did not sit upon him with ease and grace. Instead it forced its way around the sides-not meeting in the middle but leaving gaps that showed his own greedy sized shirt underneath. His fingers stroked the fabric of the couch he sat upon without my invitation, like the cheek of his first born son.

“Tis very unfortunate, your circumstances ma’am.”
His Irish accent which I had once found musical now only served to confuse the words in my head. He waved the paper in front of me again-as if that would make a difference.

“Your husband was an honourable man, a good man tis true.”
His ruddy cheeks were round and hard, I had to fight the urge to thrust a rosy apple handpicked from my garden earlier that morning between his lips.
“He is with the good Lord now. God rest his soul.”

I said nothing. All words had fled. I nodded my head. What was he doing here? Could he not see I was in grief? That my heart had been torn out? I wanted to cut off my hair with a sharp rock and wail until my lungs burst, to let the pain fly free from my body. My mother in law would call that inappropriate behaviour. So I sat there with my hands folded on my lap, like I had seen the English widows do. It did not make me feel better at all.

“Now, as I said before, yer affairs are in a bit of a pickle. A few unpaid debts there ye see mam. However, I can sort it all out fer ya. Just sign this paper here and I will take care of it. Take this house of yer hands. Then all will be square see. I can sort out the affairs of your late husband’s estate just like that.”

His eyes lingered upon the paintings on the wall coveting them as his own. I sat like I had seen English widows doing, without moving. Mr Doherty eased his body off my couch, his hand lingering upon the fine weave of the fabric, reluctant to leave its comfort. He slid the paper across the table. I wanted to scream “Get off my land you snivelling pig before I slit your throat and throw you to the dogs for dinner.” Instead I rose and walked to the door.

“Thank you, you are so kind.” I said without any hint of sarcasm.
He left with the other mans waistcoat embroidered across my mind.
I held the sheet of lines in my hand.5th of something 1880? The date I presume. Though I knew numbers, I had never learnt the letters. I spent all morning looking at it. Trying to see how my life had ended up on this piece of paper. I held it to my heart but only felt the same rustling that I had at the banker’s office. There did not seem to be any substance behind it. I stood from the small wooden writing desk, closing the lid hoping to trap the paper within it, binding its message forever. The windows were crosses of white, like the ones they put on the graves. Beyond I could see the sea. The tide had gone out, farther than the fine white sand exposing the mud that lived beneath. I went outside then, walking back and forth my long skirts rustling around my boots.

Something inextricable had happened. The House still stood where it always had .It had not moved an inch. But something within it had. I stood back from the street as if I could see it with the naked eye. Naive I know, it would not be so easily revealed. Do you no longer want me to care for you? Was it something I did or didn’t do? I called to my home. I felt something stir then.

If my husband was here and knew what I was doing he would laugh at me. My neighbours? Their lips would curl with derision. Yet I knew the house was created with materials made from the earth just as the small whare my mother had been born in. It was alive I knew that. It was they who were fools not I. It was their skins that had grown too thick to feel not mine. I had rubbed my children’s skin every morning with my soft hands coated with oils from berries, as my mother had done with me- to make sure the same thing did not happen to them.

I circled around the property. Every now and then I bent to pick one of the delicate English flowers that struggled to grow in the garden and would have died except for the stubborn persistence of my husband and his family. It was proper to inspect the garden. It was not proper to be looking for ‘signs’.

I hoisted my skirt as I came around the corner, the feel of the fresh air against my bare legs made me long to rip them off. To free them from their confines. The house next door stood silent. I pulled my feet from the boots and felt the earth upon my feet. The little bumps and lumps of the earth, so subtle, unseen from above, yet beneath my feet were the caresses of the hands of my mother. I thrilled at the sensation as I walked, connected to her. I picked up the boots that had held me prisoner, careful to leave no signs of my impropriety.

“Bad luck or good luck? Perhaps we make our own luck?” Something my father would have said if had ever spoken to me. I pushed his blood within me to the side that drank cups of tea, sniffed English flowers and hid from the rays of the sun. Why did this land no longer want me here?

I stood at the far end of our garden looking for the ‘signs’. I stilled my breath and stood silent, connecting through the earth like the tree that shared my space. Allowing the sky to pass over and around and through me. Still. Silent. Being. Still and cold as a rock. I saw the ripples in the garden then; the browned leaves; a branch broken; a bald dark spot upon the grass; a place where all had died around it. Discord where there should be harmony. I moved closer.

Aha! I saw it move. Hunched over in the corner doubled up with bitterness. It’s limbs were swollen and bulbous- each joint filled with water. I do not know how I had not noticed him before. I moved closer the words my mother taught me flowing from my lips. They flew forth from my mouth and wrapped themselves around him, he was startled then. He was not as quick as they usually are. Grown complacent from his surroundings, he was trapped. The Tipua – nature spirit, turned to growl at me. I worked my toes into the ground standing tall and strong. I would not run from a ‘spirit of nature’. From the Maori God Tu the warrior, I had inherited the right to stand fast.

I bent down and inspected the Tipua carefully. The rock upon which he sat was not grey like the rocks from the seashore that scattered the cliffs below the house down to the shore. This rock was of a different kind.
“You cannot see me. The people here have no eyes or ears. Their feet no longer walk upon the earth

.” He said.
I said nothing moving to the left and to the right, observing.
“I have watched you often. In the sun with your hats and your umbrellas. Even you prefer to walk in its light rather than cower under a bush where it is dark and damp and sooo wet.”

He shivered. The rocks surface was porous and filled with many holes. This rock was from the earth-deep within and used to warmth.

I hoisted my skirts and squatted on the ground, making the signs of harmony in the dirt, tracing them with my fingers. Each line had strength and meaning. A continuous flow of patterns and shapes melted into the earth, the chant spinning forth from my lips. I felt my mother’s moko upon my chin as I watched. She always drew close at such times unlocking the wisdom from those that came before.

The Tipua’s eyes grew wide, expanding from their grey slanted shape into small boulders round and true; big as eggs. I shuffled to the left and traced my fingers again in the dirt- continuous harmonious lines and patterns. I sat back and waited. The Tipua’s grey arms unwound themselves from their bitter folds, his fingers uncurled. He reached out and stroked the rock upon which he sat like he was handling the wings of a butterfly. Slow, softly, cautiously not wanting it to disappear. I nodded my head in approval.

The rocks holes and pits were all filled with wet damp sludge. Once green leaves disintegrating into blackness. I picked up a dried curled leaf and dug at them, cleaning out each hole. Green moss had grown along its side, small insidious curls creeping up. I picked up a broken twig and scraped it off showing the colour of the rich brown soil it had been growing over.

“I can see that you have been put somewhere that you do not belong.” I said. I used my fingers then. Clawing away the dark wet blackness that was covering the rock.
“I know what it is like.” I whispered surprised by the tears that leaked out my eyes. I bent down and tugged at the rock, it moved a little. I rocked it back and forth, gently easing it out of its hole in the ground. I tilted it a little and water trickled from every crevice down the rocks face and was absorbed into the earth.

“Aaaaah”

the tipua sighed. His swollen joints reduced revealing slim firm arms. I felt the burden ease a little.I tugged at the rock some more. Then seesawed it across the ground. It moved a few inches and landed on the edge of my skirt. I pulled it out quick as a blink, only to hear the fabric rip beneath it. I looked over the white picket fence. The house next door was still silent. I undid my skirts and stepped out of them. I bent down and clasped the rock in my arms dragging it forward a little. It was too heavy. My husband would have moved it easily. I looked about, desperate to help the Tipua. On the ground not far away, the sun was warming the earth. Determined now I grasped the rock and with a burst of strength dragged it until it rested in the warmth of the sun.

“You must stay here for now. You will be warm and safe. I will get you back to where you belong, soon.” I knew now what I must do.
I collected some dried twigs and piled them as I remembered my mother doing- next to the rock. I fetched some dried leaves and used the tinder I kept inside my discarded boot to start the fire. As I squatted down in front of its flames I thought about how much I loved my son. I called to him then telling him that I may not be here for much longer. The wind played with my hair, the earth massaged my feet and the fire burned away the cold that had chilled my very soul. I don’t know how long I sat there. An eternity passed.

“Are you alright?” Her prim and proper voice jarred through the air landing in the middle of my eternity.

I saw myself then- skirt lying discarded on the earth. My undergarments marked with black wet sludge; my boots tossed upon the grass and my hair flowing free having wriggled out of the clips that had held it into submission. I threw back my head and laughed. Laughed so hard that I rolled upon the ground from the sheer force of it. So hard that the pain inside my chest burst open and poured out through my eyes making a strange howling sound through my lips as it made its way to the world in which I was living. I was not dead it seems. She ran back into her house and closed the door. A bolt slid across it from the inside. Did she feel my pain at that moment? Or was she just worried she might feel it too if she stayed?

I lay there all night looking at the stars as they passed their way around me. The night cloaking me in blackness. Is Te Kore- the void blacker than this? A heavy sadness came from the deepness of the night overtaking me. My tears flowed unstopped alone without eyes to see them.Tears for my lost husband. Tears for a life that now made no sense. Tears until the earth was satisfied. I looked for the Tipua. At first I did not recognise him. He was no longer bulbous and grey, now he was tall thin, black and filled with a terrible rage.

“Why?” I asked.
I felt his anger inside me. Losing his home, separated from everything he knew, put in a corner. Alone, dark, cold, wet, abandoned. The anger boiled up inside of me. My home, my house, my land, everything I held dear was to be taken from me. The anger was big and dark and strong. I saw it, I recognised, I felt it, I acknowledged it, but I could not keep it. I knew it would destroy both of us if I did.

I sang a Maori waiata to the Tipua. A simple hymn, Christian and Maori combined. I made my way through the darkness to the water pump. I filled the small cup next to it with a little water and broke a leaf from the fern next to it. Dipping it in the water I returned to the Tipua calling for my Tupuna- my Ancestors and the gods to bless him, I splashed the water over the rock. Then placing the leaf upon the rock I asked for his blessing. His anger slowly fell away replaced by a quietness. Exhausted by the events of the past day I made my way back to the house and into my bed.

The next morning I dressed in my plainest dress with a small bag of cooking utensils bound in a small cloth. Mr Doherty would surely not begrudge me these few things? I was unsure how I would carry the rock. The pounding on the door started while I was eating my breakfast. I did not rush but savoured each mouthful taking in the beauty of my surroundings. The photos of my children, my husband, the items we had chosen together at different times of our lives together. The door was strong it would not give easily. When I was ready I opened the door.
“Mr Doherty, good morning.”
He eyed the way my hair was loose and flowing about my shoulders. He saw that my feet were bare.
“Did ye not hear me knocking woman?”
My eyes flared and he saw then the fires that I had lit. He faltered.
“Oh, I, ah... was just worried the creditors would be here already. Sign the paper with your mark and we can be done.”
“Where is it?”
He pulled another from inside the other mans waistcoat. I walked to the window to look at the place where my children had played, where my husband and I had sat one last time. Is this goodbye? I asked the land.

I heard Mr Doherty lay the paper upon the small writing desk behind me, it rustled like thieves running through the dead leaves of a forest. Then I saw them. I ran past him out the door and literally flew down to the garden. Across the smooth lawn on the other side was a raised garden bed. Set about within were rocks of a similar size and hue, basking in the sun. All the plants were luscious and green around them. I went to my rock. The Tipua was sitting quietly.
“Would you like me to move you over to the other rocks? Are those your family?”
“Ai.”

He said
I bent and dragged the rock across the lawn. My hands smarted and burned as his rough edges cut into my softened skin. This pain was nothing. I reached the raised bed and tried to lift the rock but it was too heavy. I leaned it against the ledge and rocked it until it fell into the garden bed. I pushed it over the English flowers until it was in the circle with the others.

“Thank you.”

The Tipua said.
I made my way back to the house. I knew then that I could no longer pretend. I am who I am.
I held my head high and walked inside.
To my delight there was my eldest son Robert sitting on our couch. Mr Doherty however did not seem so delighted.
“So... um... I... thought you could not be contacted?” Doherty was saying.
“By you perhaps.” Robert replied. He stood then and taking Mr Doherty by the hand he led him to the door.
“The creditors will...
“Any outstanding debt has already been paid. Good day.” Robert closed the door.
“I‘m sorry I was not here sooner. I saw you in my dreams and came as fast as I could.”
“You are here now.” I said and I grabbed his hands and stroked his soft skin. It hadn’t grown too thick. We sat on our couch.
“It is time I told you about my family,” I said “introduced you to your Tupuna.”
I felt my Mothers moko upon my chin as she came closer. I always did at moments of great wisdom. Out the window I saw the tide had come back in.

Impressum

Texte: Adrienne Giacon
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 02.11.2012

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Widmung:
This is dedicated to my Ancestress Mary Ann Benson/ Sampson/Wynyard. She was half Maori and married New Zealands Governor General Colonel Wynyards Son in the 1800s.