michelle rahurahu
A TOKI TO GRIND
(an excerpt from Poorhara)
Erin loved her Aunty Huia the most out of all the maatua keekee even though she was the harshest on her. After her Ma died, Erin couldn’t be touched without being sent into a raging mania—not even so much as a light shoulder tap. The cousins used to wind her up to get a reaction, and she would play right into their hands. She would fight anyone, big or small. She would run head-first into neighbour kids twice her age, throw useless punches, and take beating after beating. That was until she found weapons. One week she stabbed a cousin in the face with a pencil. The next, she waited on the high fence around the main house to drop a brick on the head of another cousin. And another time, she’d raced to the kitchen in blind anger, looking for a knife, screaming, Say that again, cunt! Say it again! She could only get one stab, one hit, one knock in before she got caught, so she got pretty good at making it count. Then she would be dragged into the back room and made an example of. Erin could take the hidings—in fact, the hidings became a sort of badge that proved she was resilient.
Huia was touched with a similar aura of hostility. She drove many people away. She couldn’t keep a partner, or a friend, for longer than a few months. Erin saw something in her she recognised. She wanted to know her aunty, wanted to think like her: if Huia liked a song, Erin liked that song too; if Huia hated a type of food, so did Erin. Behind the grit, Huia was creative. She painted. She read. She made birdhouses and treehouses. Erin sat like a faithful dog at Huia’s feet. But Huia’s expectations moved constantly and the sting of her disapproval was shattering.
Erin would only see her aunty in the summer, when the sunflowers were growing in steady inches to the sky, and after summer together, they promised to write postcards. Don’t forget to write me more stories, girl, her aunty said, through the open car window, and she followed the car up the street, waving Erin off until they couldn’t see each other anymore.
Huia was an outsider. She had children like the rest of her siblings, had been married, and then out of nowhere, divorced her husband, cut off her long red hair, and lived her life alone, with the exception of her son and Star’s half-brother, Robbie. The news had spread through the family quickly. All in whispers. Except for Aunty Magdalena, apparently, who had cried her eyes out like someone had died, crying out, Why did this happen to my brother? Are you sure? Are you sure? Oh no, no, no. None of the cousins really knew what it meant. Some of them said she was a man now. The way everyone acted made Erin think that Huia had died in some way, or that a piece of her was unretrievable. Erin didn’t know how to deal with that so she didn’t talk to Huia for ages and she stopped sending her postcards with drawings of dragons on them. The cousins started calling Huia Aunty Lez behind her back. Eventually Erin did send a letter with a message along the lines of: I hate you for ruining everything.
– You’re looking well, niece.
– You too. Still wearing your haangii pants, though. Erin had started calling them that because they were the colour of steamed potatoes.
– Haangii pants, Huia said, collecting all the plates from the table. – You don’t know what that means, do you?
– What? Erin replied.
Huia laughed. – Never mind, never mind.
Erin twisted a section of her bangs over her finger nervously. – Aunty, do you know what’s up with the whaanz right now?
Huia continued to wipe surfaces down, her face turned away. Some of the other inhabitants of the hostel were lurking in corners, charging their phones. A large TV was playing a random sports game loudly in the rumpus room, and from time to time they’d hear cheering or booing. Huia threw her cloth in the sink, then filled the jug again. Placed it back on its base. Switched it on to boil. Took out two clean mugs and placed them next to the jug. Then waited for the jug to boil, still turned away from Erin, saying with her body that she would talk in her own time.
Huia had simple pleasures, simple style: rolled up three-quarter haangii pants, a few true steel rings she’d thrifted, a woven bracelet she’d bought from a Trade Aid store. Unlike Aunty Mags who never went anywhere without makeup. Or earrings. And she woke up early every morning to put her hair in old-fashioned curlers. She made Erin wash her hands before every meal, and when she was younger, she’d sit her down to pull a fine-toothed comb through her hair, in a bid to smooth it back, make it presentable. Mags had to work hard to look pretty, and she forced that hardship on others. But Huia’s beauty shone through when she was at ease. Tau and fresh-faced. To Erin, stillness and power smelled like her Aunty’s orchid hand lotion, so whenever she came around she took a 20c coin sized amount and rubbed it into her hands. Then she’d found out hand lotion was just a fancy name for moisturiser, so she started making frequent bathroom trips to hike her legs one by one onto the bathroom sink and lather them in it. She had to take her mana in bulk, whenever she could.
Huia made the cups of Milo and tea; the Milo was for Erin because she refused to drink fancy water.
– What do you want to know? Huia said, coolly.
– Dunno, anything would be good.
– I don’t know much. Things are shifting, changes are being made.
– Shot. Real specific.
– Too waha!
– Is there anything I need to actually be worried about?
– No, bub, nothing for you to worry about at all. Focus on being young.
– I would, except everyone is always pushing me around.
Huia hummed. – Joe’s bothering you?
– Yeah. Wish he would leave me alone. He’s not my dad.
– Hmmm. You heard from your sperm donor?
Erin’s eyes narrowed. – No. Why would I?
Huia threw up her hands. – I don’t know.
– Have you heard from him?
– No bub, I have not heard from him, she chuckled. – You never know these days. Social media and everything. I found my Mormon ex-boyfriend the other day. Still Mormon.
– I never understood the obsession with bio parents anyways—who even cares who you come from? It’s like talking about people that don’t exist.
– Whakapapa exists whether you like it or not.
– Yeah well, whakapapa never did anything for me.
Huia’s lip lifted in a sneer. Erin regretted speaking.
– You know what I said to your ma, before she took her own life? I said, don’t you leave that girl now. She’ll spend her whole life looking for you, she’ll call out your name into the world and always get nothing back.
Erin felt as though the air had been slapped out of her. – Ma is different.
– Isn’t that funny. Huia laughed, but the creases around her eyes were absent. – You can give children life and then they sneeze in your face. Mauri ora.
Erin stared at the table.
– I suppose at some point you were going to start believing you invented the world, Huia went on. – At some point, all the oldies become irrelevant. What’s that thing? OK Boomer?
Erin built a fence with her fingers over her eyes. – Oh my god.
– Ah see? We’re not cool enough to use your language even.
– You are cool. I’m just saying my biological dad is a deadbeat, right?
– What about your aunties, your uncles? Your kaumaatua, aye?
– I wasn’t talking about them, Erin said through her hands.
– Couldn’t imagine my boys talking about me the way you just talked about a whole branch of your whakapapa. Whatever—they don’t exist—never did anything for me. Ploody hell.
Erin moaned. – That’s not what I’m saying.
– Tried to get Whetuu interested in the whakapapa, he was always a bright boy. Quick.
Huia leapt to her feet and took the mug to the sink to dump the remaining tea, then stood at the bench for a moment.
– Has Whetuu been to yours whenua? she said suddenly.
– You mean the dirt pile?
Their whenua was a fabricated memory to her. All she had was an old photograph of herself as a kid, crouched in front of a wharenui that had collapsed on itself.
– Mmm hmm.
– Nuh. I haven’t either.
– Well, no wonder you talk like that. You don’t even know who you are.
– I know who I am.
– I know who I am, Huia repeated cruelly.
– Well have you been?
– The last time I was there with your uncle they had a Paakehaa expert come in and talk about Rarahe.
– Oh yeah?
– He came in, all swagger, with his thumbs tucked into his big belt and a huge hei tiki swinging around his neck, talking i te reo Paakehaa on the makeshift pae about how he had an honorary iwi affiliation, went on and on about how he had walked the limits of our land, the traditional way, that he had an intimate relationship with it, gesturing here and there, all proud. Guess he thought he was talking to whaanau, but who talks down their nose to whaanau? And the look on your uncle’s face. It was like he’d swallowed a stone.
– What did he do about it?
Huia moved back to the table, settling back into her stories, and into her chair. – Oh nothing, nothing. Didn’t want to be inhospitable to a quote unquote expert who knew far more about their tuupuna than any of the siblings did. All that whakapapa had been lost. They were desperate to know. And the kaumaatua had brought him in, were real chummy with him.
Huia smiled. – But you know what, in the thick of all this man’s flailing about and posturing, your whanaunga Debs—have you met her? never mind—she started laughing. Howling. Screeching. And then the whole back row of waahine was laughing too, some trying to hide it, you know, snickering, but some of them were having a big haati laugh. And you know me, I laughed too. It got so loud that we couldn’t hear the old bugger.
– Lol. Did the guy stop?
– He kept going. Either didn’t hear or care. A kaumatua gave us the eye, and I think talked to Debs, chided her, whatever—like she would care. It was done. They had their last laugh, hey?
– I wish I was there.
Huia hummed in agreement. – You would’ve fit right in, girl. Or ruffled a few feathers. The rangatahi don’t get the oldies, and the oldies don’t get the rangatahi. Your maamaa was an old soul. She held a lot of the power, lifted everyone up by their necks, and then when she died, well.
Huia paused a moment, wringing her hands.
– Your maamaa held the whaanau together. Even when I didn’t understand, she knew what to do. She was strong and took on everyone’s burdens and their secrets.
– Secrets?
Huia fell into another silence. For the first time, she looked old to Erin. It was as if her eyes had sunk into her skin and buried themselves in her skull.
Huia’s wet eyes scanned back and forth at a spot in the distance like she was reading something there. – Tanea held youse up with the reo and the ways of old. It’s a damn shame we didn’t hold onto any of it. Everyone is all, Who cares, I know it all. As much as we have a laugh at the Paakehaa in the room, well—the fact is he knows more than you do. Shame.
Erin sat up in her seat, then slouched again.
– The waahine should have picked it up, youse should have taken up the responsibility when she died instead of everything dying with her. You’re stuck in this poverty mindset, a victim mindset, we prove the Paakehaas right by being as lazy as they think we are.
– I don’t believe that.
Huia exhaled slowly and looked down into her empty mug, still in her hand. – Look at you. Still young enough to hope and wonder. I hoped and wished you would rise like her, be a rangatira like your maamaa. I told her not to leave us.
Huia looked up into Erin’s eyes.
– My maamaa is in the ground, Erin said, fighting the urge to scream.
Huia smiled. – Mmm. Like a seed. Can plant a seed. She pressed a finger on Erin’s forehead. – But you can’t force it to grow. You’re just as useless as I am.
Tears fell down Erin’s face, her lips pursed closed.
Huia chuckled. – Womp womp.
He uri ahau noo iwi Arihi, Ngaati Tahu-Ngaati Whaoa, Ngaati Rahurahu noo Ngaati Kahungunu hoki. Ko ahau te mokopuna a Hemi Rahurahu raaua ko Merehira Karaitiana. Kei Te Whanganui a Tara e noho ana. E mihi ana ki nga tohu o nehe, o Te Aatiawa me Taranaki Whaanui ki te Upoko o te Ika a Maui e noho nei au. Ko Michelle Rahurahu tooku ingoa.
Michelle Rahurahu is a writer whose first novel, Poorhara, will be published in October 2024. She is the co-editor, alongside essa may ranapiri, of Kupu Toi Takataapui, a journal for takataapui Maaori writers. She is a proud CODA (child of Deaf Adult), fluent in NZSL.