Cousins

by Patricia Grace

  In the mornings he’d be up early no matter how late he’d come in. She’d hear him moving about in their room putting his clothes on and would pretend she was still asleep because she didn’t know what to say to him. Someone of her own but she didn’t know how to own him, often glad when he didn’t come because she didn’t like to do what men and women do.

  By the time they were all up he would have breakfast cooking and Aunty would start telling him off. He’d listen for a while then he’d sometimes say, ‘She’s not moaning about it. I can’t hear her moaning about it.’

  ‘Don’t mean she like it,’ his aunty would reply.

  She felt she should say something too but didn’t know what. After that breakfast would go on in silence, and when it was time for Sonny to go he’d walk out as though he’d forgotten them all, whistling down the path to the tramstop.

  ‘Only good thing I can say about him,’ Aunty would say when he’d gone, ‘he goes to work every day. But what’s the use if he don’t bring home money, just drinks it, buys silly things, bets on the horses, gives it away. You want to give him a good telling off.’

  But she didn’t know how to tell him off. As well as that, she quite liked it when she heard him say, ‘She doesn’t moan about it, can’t hear her moaning about it.’ They had their names down for a state house and once they were on their own Sonny would be different, she thought. He’d change his ways because there would be just the two of them. When they had their own place she’d know what to say, they’d know how to talk to each other and she’d try her best to like what men and women do. They’d have children and be a family all belonging to one another.

  They’d been married a year before they were allotted a house. It was painted turquoise and had a roof of brick tiles. It had hard brown lawn front and back and a thin hedge. There was a low wall at the front with a letterbox by a wooden gate. Even though she hadn’t heard from Jean for a long time, she decided she would write and describe the house to her. There would be an answer this time, perhaps, which the postman would put into the letterbox so that it would be there waiting for her when she arrived home from work.

  Inside the house there was a floor of varnished wood and she was going to save up for linoleum and a bisonia square. Sonny’s aunty and uncle had given them all the furniture they needed for the time being, bedding and towels as well. Ada had given them some green curtains and a table.

  On most nights Sonny would be home late and she’d wake to hear him stumbling about in the kitchen. Sometimes she’d go out and heat food for him, help him into bed.

  Now and again he would come home early from work and then she’d be glad to have someone to eat with, someone to talk to even though it was hard to know what to say. He’d sit and eat, staring in front of him and she’d sit opposite him wondering if he had forgotten she was there.

  And on the nights when he wasn’t home she’d sit and look at wallpaper, at windows and old curtains, at nailholes and cracks in the floorboards, insect holes, door handles, watermarks on ceilings, trying to find something to hold as her secret, something to be her own. Once in a while she’d write to Jean, but mostly she sat thinking of work the next day when there would be the noise of people shouting above machines, the crush and hurry when the whistle went, the smoke-and-pie smell of the canteen, the gossip, the swearing, Jerry having them all on. She’d think of what she was going to tell Ada.

  Then one day Ada sat down on a box by the folding machine and when the lunch whistle went she stood up and went home. That night she died.

  When Ada didn’t arrive at work the next morning she had to work the folder on her own, putting the books through then going round the back to stack. It was nearly knock-off time when they heard that Ada had died.

  She didn’t feel anything inside when she heard, not sorrow, not anger, not anything. Some of the women cried but there was nothing inside her that could make her cry. She sat on Ada’s box by the machine and there was nothing in her legs and arms to make them move. ‘Come on, lovey,’ Jerry said. ‘Time to go home. Go home and have a good cry. It’s a good way for our mate to go you know. No suffering.’

  When she arrived home she took the photo of her mother off the wall, sat on the edge of the bed and held it against her. There was nothing inside her that could make her cry but she thought about the time she’d gone running along the track shouting for Aunty Gloria, nearly crying, and the day after that when they’d sat on the hill where her mother was buried, pulling out weeds and putting flowers in a jar.

  People went away, or they died.

  She sat there for many hours hoping that Sonny would come so that there would be someone to tell, someone to talk to. He rarely came, but occasionally called to bring her something. Nothing to make her move, and eventually she lay down on the bed and went to sleep.

  The next day she woke late, feeling swollen, as though something angry had found its way into her. She stayed in bed all morning then got up, dressed and sat at the kitchen table and waited. She didn’t really know what she was waiting for — unless it was her children. Where were her children? There was nothing inside her that would make her move.

  That night Sonny came with a leg of mutton wrapped in sticky brown paper. ‘Thought you wasn’t here,’ he said. ‘Why you sitting in the dark?’ He put the meat on the table in front of her. ‘I come to drop this off … Why you sitting in the dark?’

  ‘Ada,’ she said. It was not knowing what to say next that almost brought tears to her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘She died.’

  She heard him groan as he sat down beside her and then he banged a fist against his chest and cried. Not like the women at work dabbing at their wet eyes, not like herself a moment before with two sudden tears popping into her eyes but not running. But crying with noise and wetting tears. He reached out for her and she held him until his crying stopped. For a moment it was as though he belonged to her.

  ‘When?’ he asked.

  ‘The night before last.’

  Then he looked at her in a puzzled way and started to ask some questions that she didn’t understand.

  ‘Where is she then? You been over?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where they got her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ada?’

  She didn’t know what he was asking her so she told him about Ada feeling sick at work and going home when the lunch whistle went. The next day at work Ada hadn’t turned up and in the afternoon they’d found out she died.

  ‘So you been over?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Ada’s.’

  ‘I’ve been home here.’

  ‘Have they gone?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ada and them.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I dunno. Back. Where Ada comes from.’ But she didn’t know how to answer, didn’t know what he was asking her.

  He put his hand in his pocket and took out a pound note and some change. ‘We’ll get a taxi,’ he said.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Over Ada’s, and see …’ There were things that she didn’t know that everyone else knew. She put her coat on and followed him. He had the parcel of meat and was rattling change in his hand.

  Sonny directed the driver to his aunty and uncle’s place and asked him to flag another car. When they arrived he went inside, and it seemed a long time later that he came out with Aunty and Uncle and the rest of the family.

  A woman answered the door and when she saw them all standing on the path she began to cry out. She called them to come in, embracing them one by one. They went into Ada’s sitting room and sat down and the woman went into another room where they could hear her waking others. Then she returned and sat with her head bowed, holding her hanky to her eyes. Sonny’s uncle stood up and began speaking in the language she didn’t know. As he spoke the woman nodded, smiled down at her hands, folding and turning the handkerchief.

  When he finished speaking
there was a long silence, then the woman said, ‘I’m happy to see all of you, thank you for coming, you’re all welcome. I’m the sister-in-law of Ada’s sister’s husband. They left here yesterday early but someone had to stay back and keep the house warm. Just me and my two kids stayed back. You’re all welcome here.’ They could hear the two kids out in the kitchen preparing food and after a while they came in. ‘Here’s Jacky and Ann,’ the woman said. They’ve made a cup of tea for us.’

  In the kitchen the table had been set up with bowls of meat and vegetables and plates of bread as though they had all been expected. The old ones started joking and laughing as though they hadn’t just now been crying, going on as though Ada had played a trick on them all and as though they were all about to play a better one on her.

  ‘Mum and me’s going back home in a couple of months,’ Uncle said.

  ‘Mm, cheaper to go on two legs than let them take you in a box,’ Aunty said.

  ‘She thinks I won’t pay for her to go back, that’s why she wants to go now.’

  ‘Where will you be? Under by then, huh.’

  ‘She thinks I’ll bury her where she drops.’

  ‘The way you cough you could drop tomorrow … And now, dear,’ Aunty said to the woman, ‘you come from the same place Ada come from?’

  ‘Further north, right at the top. I been here twenty years now and been back only twice.’

  ‘There’s an old lady, Paritainoema …’

  ‘A half-sister to my great-grandfather. Same fathers but she’s from the second family.’

  ‘Yes, well it’s that first family. One of the daughters was brought down and married to an uncle on our mother’s side.’

  ‘I heard about it, and there’s some of that family down here too. It’s …’

  She listened to the talk that became more and more difficult to follow, sprawling everwhere, sentences begun by one person being finished by another. It seemed that they all knew people, the same people, even people who had died a long time ago, seemed they’d all known each other for a long time and in another life, even though they had only just met. The woman was called Johnny but her real name was something else. Other people knew things that she didn’t, there was a secret to it. The talk went on until daylight.

  ‘We go home for our things, girl,’ the old man said to Johnny as they stood to leave. ‘Tonight we come back and stop here with you.’

  ‘Ae, we stop here until the family come back. No good just you and your two kids,’ Aunty said.

  ‘Thank you, Mother and Father. My kids and me’ll get your beds ready for you.’

  They went out onto the footpath into the half-light of early morning, into the pallor of street lights as the first tram went by with its trolley clacking, bearing on the front of it its name, its number and its three blue lights. It traipsed fully lit, pulling its clangour along the grey dawn street.

  Ada was gone. Dead, and gone … back, she didn’t know where. Everybody knew each other, knew how to finish each other’s sentences, knew what to do and say, belonged to each other. There was a secret to it that she knew nothing of.

  Seventeen

  Where were her children? For years she had waited for her children. Long after Sonny had stopped coming home she’d waited for the children who would belong to her and to whom she would forever belong.

  She was often asked at work about her family, about her children. One by one young women left work to have babies. Often they’d bring their new, dressed-up babies for everyone to see and the women would all gather round talking, smiling and clicking their tongues. Sometimes they’d give her the babies to hold and they’d say things to her that made her sorrowful.

  Once, a long time ago, Jean had come, stepping out of a taxi with two grown girls and a little boy. At first she hadn’t recognised the woman getting out of the taxi, but the two girls, who looked to be about seventeen and eighteen, were so much like the Jean that she hadn’t seen for nearly twenty years that she knew the woman must be Jean with her daughters Kirsty and Jennifer. Jean was carrying the little boy up the path while the two girls waited by the taxi.

  ‘Jean,’ she’d called from the window. ‘It’s the right place. Send the taxi away.’ She’d gone out and helped them in with two big bags.

  ‘I thought you mightn’t be here any more. I never got round to answering your letters,’ Jean said.

  ‘Never mind …’

  ‘I kept the address but then I wasn’t sure … I thought I might stay a while, if there’s room.’

  ‘There’s plenty of room, you can stay as long as you like,’ she’d said, taking the bags and putting them into one of the bedrooms. ‘There’s only me here.’

  ‘What about your husband? Kids?’

  ‘No kids. And Sonny’s not here any more.’

  ‘Like Rick. Rick buzzed off years ago,’Jean said. ‘Good riddance too. I’ve been married again since then. Lasted two years. It was me that buzzed off that time, and since then I’ve been round having a good time …’

  ‘There are two spare rooms and I’ve got beds and blankets here that Sonny’s aunty and uncle left when they went away.’

  ‘Did he go with them? Sonny?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Got another woman?’

  ‘One and then another.’

  ‘He must be a bit of all right, is he? Is he a bit of all right?’

  She didn’t know how to answer Jean. Sometimes she forgot what Sonny looked like. He had a wide body, she remembered, and his head sat between his shoulders as though he had no neck. His face was oval-shaped and his eyes were small and dark brown. His legs were short and he swayed from side to side as he walked.

  ‘He’s ugly.’ She didn’t know why she said it but it was true. He was ugly enough to like or love her, to be someone of her own, but there were secrets to it that were difficult to know.

  ‘Go on. He can’t be that bad,’ Jean said, ‘otherwise why would he have all the women after him?’

  The little boy Terry had gone to sleep on his mother’s lap. He had a round, moon face and white curls, and it seemed as though his head was too big for the rest of him. It lolled on a wisp of a neck and his skinny arms and legs dangled like pink ribbons.

  Three weeks later when she arrived home from work, Jean’s bags were packed. Mata was sorry to see the bags by the door and to realise that Jean was leaving, because she looked forward to coming home after work knowing there would be someone there.

  Terry was asleep in the bedroom and the girls had gone. ‘I’ve sent them to their father,’ Jean said. ‘He’s going to get them jobs. Besides, he’s got his own house and he can afford to have them.’ And then she’d said, ‘I’ve decided to go back to Terry’s father and I was hoping you might have Terry for a little while. Doug’s not very good to Terry because he reckons he’s not his … What do you think, May?’

  ‘I’d like to have him,’ she’d said.

  ‘Just for a while until I can talk Doug round. He’s got this nice place with everything in it, every gadget you can think of, really modern, but it’s no place for kids. Terry wouldn’t like it there. I rang Doug this morning and I can tell he wants me back, so I told him I might have someone to look after Terry for a while.’

  ‘I’ll have him.’

  ‘Until I work things out. I know Terry likes you.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll have him.’

  ‘And I’ll ring you. I’ll ring in a week or two and let you know how it’s going … I thought I’d go now while he’s asleep. He won’t mind, he’s used to being looked after by other people.’

  After Jean had gone, Mata looked at the clothing that had been left for Terry and realised there wasn’t much. She didn’t mind because she liked the idea of going out and buying what was needed. She’d get clothes, some nice shoes and some little gumboots so they could go out walking when the footpaths were wet. He had a few nappies and she’d get a few more, not too many because Terry could ask to go to the lav now and only ne
eded nappies when he went to bed. He could say several words. He called Jean Mumum, and sometimes he called her Mumum as well. If he wanted to call her Mumum she’d let him. As well as the clothes she’d get a pushchair, a cot and a highchair. She could get them from the second-hand shop and paint them up. The idea filled her with pleasure.

  Then she wondered how she was going to afford all the things for Terry if she wasn’t able to go to work. In her excitement she had forgotten about work. But she had some savings so she’d use them. By that time Jean could be back and she’d return to her job again.

  She’d had Terry for six months before her savings ran out, then she wrote to Jean and told her she needed money. Jean replied saying that she’d send money every fortnight. It was a relief because she’d thought Jean might come and take Terry away.

  Terry was six years old before his mother came for him. Jean had left Doug and met someone else, a man who wanted a family.

  ‘I’m not sprouting any more kids at my age,’ Jean said. ‘And anyway, if I did have another baby who’s to know this one won’t turn round and say the kid’s not his too?’

  She’d said that they were lucky there was Terry, and anyway it was a nuisance sending the money every fortnight. She’d promised to let Terry come back for a holiday every now and again if they didn’t go to Australia to live.

  Terry turned and waved to her as he got into the taxi ahead of his mother and she never saw him again. It was as though he had died.

  She thought of him every day and whenever she went out she’d look for him. When she saw children playing, or walking to or from school, she’d look for the one that was most like Terry, or the one that would be nearest to his age. At first she’d sent cards and presents on his birthday to the address Jean had given her, but these were always returned to her with ‘Address Unknown’ stamped on them.

  She returned to work and when she was asked about her family she’d sometimes say, ‘I did have a little boy once, but he died.’ It seemed the right thing to say.

  After that she waited, but it was difficult to know who or what she waited for. Once again she was looking at wallpaper, at windows, cracks in walls, watermarks on ceilings, cracks in floor-boards, nailholes, insect holes, handles of doors, trying to find something in a room or a house to hold to herself, something to be her own. But always, in the end there was only herself. All the other things that she had never had, had gone.