Helena Leon Mayer
Dear Karaka
An abundance of Karaka trees once grew along your banks. Now, they hold only groves of privet, making my nose run all summer long.
Do you remember the time I ran up to the lower pool at night, alone, having snuck out of my window with something knotted in my chest?
One day I realised that you are probably brown and turbid more often than you are calm. I had thought that you must always be best for me to float in. How predictable to think that your state would be centred around my swims.
Still, thank you for taking this skin, this hair, these feet, these eyes, this breath, these lungs, and turning them into something that I can live in.
Sometimes I wonder if my veins are filled with your waters, but maybe that’s my instinct to claim another’s as my own.
I miss you.
Dear Karaka,
Do you remember the extensive cultivations? Do you remember the pā?
Do you remember the gardens that, in 1853, grew so abundantly that the excess of 3,573 kits of potatoes, 860 kits of onions, 2,654 kits of maize, 1,516 kits of peaches, 429 bushels of wheat, 132 kits of grapes, 194 kits of kūmara and 26 kits of watermelon were traded in Tāmaki Makaurau?
Did you know of the gold in your midst? Did you hide it? Did you feel, already from the first nugget, that your banks would burn and bruise? Did you weep?
How did it feel when they re-routed you, to build the hospital? What do you do to keep your surface smooth against the concrete? Where will you overflow when you get mad, now? Can your ghost still dream through the parking lot where you once ran?
Do you remember the time I clambered in you, crying before the storm, scooping small pellets of polystyrene?
Whose banks are yours to hold?
How can I make it up to you?
Gathering
After ‘Ka mua, ka muri’ by Kiri Piahana-Wong
My mother. She is asking which colours go together better, she is in the garden proving she can mow the lawn, she is telling me to let her know when I get home
My grandmother, Omamia. Her last day at school, leaving to care for a dying mother and three alcoholic men. She is fourteen
My other grandmother, Omama. She pulling at her curls and arguing with her adult children about getting a new fridge. This argument has been going as long as I can remember, and the food still moulds on the top shelf
My great-grandmother, Luise. The family history reads: ‘The farm was hit by 2 bombs, which were supposed to hit the tracks of the train station. Luckily Luise was in the garden and at the chicken coops.’ It is March 13, 1945
Her husband, Franz. Face down on the road next to a motorbike with one shoe off. He has ten children, but eight of them do not know about the other two
Omamia again. Here, she is insisting the refugees and the immigrants are taking up too much space, she is saying ‘they can’t come here and expect to have everything’
Her husband, Dieter. As a child, him and his nephews are too poor to swim in the pools so they crawl under the fence and are caught. The lifeguards let them swim in exchange for cleaning up at the end of the day
A different great-grandfather, Wilhelm. He is the leader of the Nazi Party chapter in Reidöshingen. Decades later, my mother is surprised when in high school, she is one of a few that admits to having a grandfather who was a Nazi
My great-grandmother, Frida. In my mother’s recollection, she voted for the Nazi Party because Wilhelm told her too. In my grandmother’s recollection, women weren’t allowed to vote
My parents. They buy a house with their inheritance money. The house is on land stolen for mining, on the banks of a stream that used to be full of Karaka trees. I learn to swim in these waters
My great-great-great-great-[redacted], who is unknown, but almost certainly a witch
My great-grandfather, I’m not sure which one. I glue a photo of him to a poster about the WWII in year 9. I caption it Herr Schmetterling, which means Mr. Butterfly, because I have forgotten his name
My father. Here, he is a teenager in the competitive swim squad. They fill a swimming cap with so much water it is several metres wide
And then me. Like a noun without a capital, in my othertongue
I gather you behind me, gather you to say that this line ends with me
Helena Leon Mayer (German, Pākehā) lives in a very old yellow house in Ōtepoti. They are a bit too excited about worms, witches and pickled radishes, and they help make stuff at @crochet_for_palestine.