The houses are little flags fluttering past. Some are drab, others gaily painted, a jumbled mass of roofs extending across the plains to the mountains. Now and then is a glimpse of a road streaming with morning traffic, a green field or a clump of trees.
My father, Rongo, was born in Waituhi on tribal land that provided only enough to put houses on. The rest belonged to Pākehā owners, confiscated and balloted to British soldiers who had come from overseas to fight the local rebel tribes of the district, including ours.
Dad belonged to one of three Mahana clans. The first was the whānau devoted to Riripeti, who was a Ringatū priestess well known throughout Māoridom. She led the faithful in our valley. My father belonged to the second, smaller, clan of Teria and Pera. They were ahi kā, meaning they kept the home fires going, and they supported Riripeti. The third was Bulibasha and Ramona’s clan, which provided shearing gangs for Pākehā farmers.
Dad caught the eye of my mother, Huia, at a dance in Gisborne. She was from the Ngāti Porou people of the East Coast but was staying in the city and worked at a canning factory. On weekends, she would go dancing with her friends and was sick of being picked up by young men who were only out for a good time. She had actually looked Dad’s way but, no, she had seen a bad boy who got drunk with his mates on Fridays and probably beat his girlfriends.
However, when Mum looked at Dad a second time, she saw that he had qualities she could work on. At least he didn’t smoke and, if he tried to beat her, he had better watch out, she was no shrinking violet. Then there was the fact that he was obedient to his mother, Teria. Although among Teria’s sons he was down the line in terms of male seniority, she had still raised him like the others: to look after the valley. His particular task was to care for the old people and take meat and vegetables to them if they were hungry or sick. And to show some leadership at meetings when the iwi discussed how to get the land back from the soldiers it had been given to.
Best of all, Rongo Mahana knew how to work.
That was raw material enough.
Mum and Dad married, and he brought his bride back to Waituhi. Not for long, though, just enough time to establish take tipuna, tribal residence through Dad’s whakapapa lineages. Once that was done, they set out to find work.
Within a year I was born and Dad took the afterbirth to Rongopai, one of three marae in the Waituhi Valley, and buried the pito in the earth. It would be the umbilical connecting me forever with the valley.
The pito was another one of those concepts my flatmate Jackson quizzed me about. He was a university student studying anthropology, no wonder he kept asking me questions.
It’s like I have a rubber band inside me, I began, and the pito stretches to wherever I go. Whenever I reach a point where it doesn’t want me to go any further, it snaps me back to the starting point: Hoi! Hoki mai ki te wā kāinga.
Jackson replied in his usual laconic way. More Māori metaphysics eh? Cool.
Our word for it was mātauranga.
I was the first born, and my brother Rāwiri came next. In those days when Māori infant mortality was high he died, coughing for breath, during the winter when he was three. My sister Rīpeka was born a year after him, then came Mere and, soon after, Wiki; Hōne and Mārama weren’t thought of yet.
With a wife and four kids, gone were Dad’s bad boy days.
My father had limited Pākehā education. He hadn’t stayed at school for very long and, instead, was educated in mātauranga Māori by his grandparents. Their knowledge in caring for the land was immense, and they understood its whims with the deep patience of people who had lived all their lives close to the whenua. If the land was wilful and did not grow their crops or if a storm laid the maize low, it did not matter. They would be patient. Sometime, the land would provide again.
My mother, too, hadn’t had much education except through Ringatū teachings; for her that was sufficient. But she often told Rīpeka and me of days when she walked to the Pākehā native school, a long way. Her father had no money to afford such things as we were accustomed to, like shoes and nice clothes. In winter, she and her sisters used to bind their feet up with sacking so that they wouldn’t get cold. She told us how she was so ashamed at school because she looked like a rag doll.
Mum was also, like Dad, brought up by her grandparents, and it was when she was seven that her mother had first gone to bring her home. But her grandfather wouldn’t let her leave because he needed her to milk the cows and do his housework. When Mum grew older, he wouldn’t let her have boyfriends either.
I had plenty who were interested though, she used to tell us.
In the end, she ran away from her grandad and back to the welcoming arms of her mother.
Both Mum and Dad had left school early to work. Dad to go out shearing and scrub-cutting with the Mahana clan. Mum took jobs as a cook and a servant before becoming a factory worker.
Where my parents, as a married couple, had an advantage in actually securing jobs together in the Gisborne district, was that Mum and Dad contracted themselves out as a working partnership. Mum didn’t stay at home having babies and looking after us while Dad took seasonal work somewhere. No, she went with Dad and took us with her. If he was working as a shearer in one of the Mahana shearing gangs, she went along as a fleeco. When the season was over, they took on anything: from Dad as horse-breaker and Mum as kitchen-hand (although she was better at breaking in horses than Dad or any other man was) to being a two-person scrub-cutting team, fencing duo or opossum trappers.
They would also do anything extra the boss or Mrs Boss asked them to do. And if the boss needed some other odd jobs done, my sisters and I took those on.
You want your paths swept or outhouse cleaned, Boss?
We were never too proud.
My first memories as a child are blurred with a succession of shearing whare during the season when we travelled around like gypsies. Or else, during the off-season, of shepherds’ quarters and draughty single-room scrub-cutters’ shacks. Of sugarbag doors and windows, straw mattresses, dirt floors, outside lean-to corrugated-iron kitchens and, somewhere in a paddock, a wash house and long-drop toilet. Of hazy glimpses of Mum lifting cooking pots onto hooks over open fires. Or Dad checking his saddle by the light of a solitary candle. Or my sisters and I patching holes in the walls to keep the wind and rain out.
Mum always tried to make each whare beautiful. After she and Dad had finished a contract job at one farm, we would pack our belongings and move to the next job. We were always arriving at a new place at night, and every whare was dirty and smelly with the walls smeared with black smoke, the table and cupboards still strewn with days-old food left by the previous hands, and the floor littered with chipped crockery or broken chairs. Sometimes a window would be swinging on one hinge or a door just propped up in the frame. We would stand in the doorway, surveying each whare until the light cast by Dad’s match burnt out.
Our mother had seen many of her extended family die of flu, TB, meningitis or respiratory infections from unhealthy living conditions. It was only to be expected, therefore, that the first thing she ever wanted to do was to clean our new shack from top to bottom. There were so many desolate beginnings, and whenever we finished at one place and were on our way to another, I would close my eyes and cross my fingers and pray: For Mum’s sake, let the next whare be a nice place, please let it be clean.
But it never was.
Even now, sitting in this train travelling to Wellington, I look down and see my fingers crossed in that same childish way. Yet I am twenty years old; no longer a child.
My impulse is caused for another reason. Now that Dad is dead, what will come after?
Mum would already be starting the fire to boil water. Was she going to let her kids take one more step into this hovel, let alone sleep in it? No fear.
You kids, go and help your Dad bring our things from the truck.
By ‘You kids’ she meant me and Rīpeka, as Mere and Wiki were just babies. My two younger sisters stayed with Mum while Rīpeka and I ran back to the truck with our father. Most times that meant going for miles by torchlight because the places we worked at were not exactly first pick. No driving up to the front door. There were times when Dad had to leave the truck on the other side of a river, for instance, or a gully. We’d have to wade through the water or climb stony tracks to get to our new home.
As for pitch-black country nights, Rīpeka and I were already accustomed to those. We had often been left alone when Mum and Dad were working late. When Mum sent us back to the whare to get the fire started for dinner while they finished the scrub-cutting for the day. Or when, to finish the contract quicker, they wanted to keep shearing until last light.
So, no matter how dark it was or how far we had to go to reach the truck, Rīpeka and I were never afraid. All we had to do was keep our eyes fixed on the headlights shining far away. Anyway, Dad was with us and would fight off any lurking taniwha. And if a kēhua snuck up to scare us, emboldened, we would have said boo back.
What shall me and Rīpeka carry, Dad?
He’d be standing in the light of the truck. Your mother’s cleaning supplies first I think, he would say. The stuff she’ll want to slosh all over the floors and walls to get rid of the fleas and germs, I’ll take that. You kids feeling strong?
We’re very strong, Dad.
Okay! Then you, Tama, can you manage the mops, brooms and towels?
My muscles are as big as Tama’s, Rīpeka would say.
Then you take that box that Mum can put the two babies in while we work.
And Dad always had to tell Rīpeka she was as strong as I was, even if she wasn’t.
We’d return to Mum together, pushing through the scrub to the whare. After we’d dropped off the load, we’d go back to the truck to get the next lot of our belongings. The bedding, kitchenware, our big suitcase of clothes, lots of nappies, our food supplies and Mum’s special book. It was a thick medical tome that could tell her if we had a fever and why, or what to do if we broke an arm.
Sometimes Rīpeka and I would have to go back to the truck ourselves while Dad helped Mum with the hard jobs: shifting the furniture around or finding fresh hay for the mattresses or chopping wood for tomorrow or washing down the outhouse. We had two dogs, Kurī and Tim, that could protect us but, although Rīpeka would insist she wasn’t frightened, she’d take a pot with us and bang it with a stick.
Without Dad around, those ghosts might gang up on us.
The memories eddy softly like a warm wind. I look out the carriage window and see Gisborne gradually receding. The houses stand isolated now, not grouped together. The countryside is opening up. On one side of the train is the sea. On the other are the hills that enclose Poverty Bay. Ahead rise the Wharerātā Ranges. The main highway out of Gisborne winds its way upward across them.
When I was a boy, I used to marvel that our truck could make that climb. The road wasn’t sealed then, and our truck was pakaru. It would groan and shudder so much we’d often have to get out and push.
Wherever we went, we took our household with us. Mum and Dad sat in the front of the truck with the babies sleeping between them. Rīpeka and I sat on the tray in the back with a canvas tarpaulin that Dad had made to fit over a wooden frame. Inside the makeshift tent looked like a kennel or a chicken coop, and why not?! After all, Kurī and Tim sat there with us and so did Roos and his hens. We also had a pet pig, but he came later.
Back and forth we’d go from the truck to the whare, then back to the truck again. Every time we got to the quarters, Mum would have cleaned it up a little more. Wipe, wipe, wipe. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Clean, clean, clean. No time to sit down, she would say to us. When we’ve finished, then we can rest.
Back and forth, hoki whakamuri. We left the hens and rooster until last. Dad would put Roos under one arm and one of the Mrs Roos under the other. I would take two of the other hens, and Rīpeka would carry the pullet. Our hens were very tame, like our pig, unless they were clucky. Then they were just like Mum when she was hapū, and pecked at us all the time. If there were any chickens, we’d carry them in our jerseys and pockets.
Rīpeka hated Roos because he used to chase her around the paddocks, and sometimes Mum would find her crying in the small fenced coop with the rest of the fowls because Roos thought she was one of his girls. Every time Christmas came around, Rīpeka always asked Mum if we’d have Roos for dinner. But when Dad finally tucked Roos under his arm, kissed his head and twisted it until he was dead, Rīpeka burst into tears. And when he was put on the table, she wouldn’t eat him. Hei aha? Dad asked her. I thought you didn’t like Roos.
He was a good Roos! she cried. And you killed him, Daddy!
Clean enough, Mum would say.
We would finally be able to have dinner on our clean plates on the spotless table, and the babies would be able to crawl around on the immaculate floor. The mattresses would be full of fresh hay and there would be new sugarbag curtains across the windows to stop the flying insects from coming in. Until we built an outside coop for the five fowls, Roos and the baby chickens slept inside in a makeshift cage Dad made for them. Kurī and Tim would sleep outside with our pig in their new fenced enclosure. Rīpeka, Mere and Wiki slept with Mum and Dad. I always had my own bed. And Dad would have fixed the door so that it could shut. Even in the middle of nowhere, we had to keep ourselves safe.
And we, too, after our baths, would be spotless.
With the door secured nice and tight, Dad would say: I’m not too sure how I feel about the sleeping arrangements. Sometimes I feel like Joseph going to bed in a stable. The only thing missing is the donkey.
And then his voice would get husky and low.
But thank you, Wife, for the safety your mātauranga provides us with.
And then would come the next day when we would dress as if going to town. Dad would put on his jacket and hat and Mum her best going-to-town suit and gloves.
Off we would go to the Big House, carrying the two babies. To thank the boss for the shit job he had given us on land our ancestors had once owned. All of it. As far as the eye could see.
Dad would take off his hat and introduce himself with a dignity twice as gentlemanly as the gentleman of the house. And this is my wife, Huia, Dad would say.
Mum would shake hands with the boss and the boss’s wife, if she was there. She would keep her gloves on. Pleased to meet you, she would say.
These are my children, Dad would continue, introducing us. Then it was our turn to shake hands.
Sometimes we’d be asked in for a cup of tea.
No, thank you. We knew our place.
Perhaps another time.
However, there was always small talk to be endured.
Until, Ka haere mātou, Mum would say when she thought we’d stayed long enough.
We’d shake hands again and walk back to the whare. When we thought we were far enough away, Rīpeka and I sometimes whispered to each other about what we’d seen of the Big House. The glimpses past the boss and Mrs Boss or through the closed windows: What a neat house. Did you see the big clock in the hallway, tick tock? And what about the carpet on the floor. And the paintings on the walls and the vase with flowers in it. On and on, gabble gobble gabble gobble, until Mum would stop us with a defiant laugh.
You want all those things, my children? Then you shall have them one day, eh Dad?
She’d start picking wildflowers to put in a broken jar on our kitchen table.
We won’t always be working for other people. We won’t always be pōhara. You wait and see, Tama. You just watch, Rīpeka. One day.
I look back now and I know exactly who we were. I also know exactly who they were.
But we were not going to be who we were forever.