by Kate Lattey
I did my best to keep my head down and keep going. I took Taniwha back to Pony Club, but they told me I had to pay subs to be allowed to join in, and there was no way we could afford it. Money was running out quickly, and the more dispirited Dad got about not finding work, the more he took to drowning his sorrows at the local pub. That didn’t help our finances any, but when Mum tried to confront him about it, they got into a shouting match that all the neighbours could hear. To get away from them, I took my sisters down to Murray’s to spend the afternoon riding Taniwha.
I watched from the sidelines as Morgan led my long-suffering pony around the paddock while Bella and Phoebe rode him, my youngest sister sitting behind the saddle with her arms around Bella’s waist, grinning from ear to ear.
“Wasn’t too long ago he’d have bucked them into next week,” Murray said gruffly as he leaned on the gate and watched them.
“Yeah, I know. He’s a good pony.” I lay my arms across the top of the metal gate and rested my chin on them. “Dad wants to sell him.”
“He what?”
I shrugged, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice. “He hasn’t said anything to me about it yet, but I heard him telling Mum. She said soon we’ll have no money left for food, and he said if we get really stuck he’ll just sell the pony.”
Murray said nothing for a moment, then sighed. “That bad, is it?”
I shrugged again, not trusting myself to speak. Murray put a large hand on my shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze, then walked slowly towards the house. I watched Tani swish his tail against the flies and give me a long-suffering look, but I stayed where I was. Morgan stroked his face, and Phoebe lay back with her head resting on his rump and gazed up at the clouds, which were darkening overhead.
Bella noticed that too, and shot me a worried look. “It’s going to rain, Jonty.”
“Oh well.”
“I don’t want to ride in the rain.” She scrambled down, swinging her leg clear over Phoebe and landing on her feet in the grass. “Can we go home now?”
“Okay. Take his saddle and bridle off.”
I watched as they fumbled around, then went into the paddock to help them. I gave Taniwha a scratch behind his ears and a bit of dry bread out of my pocket, then the four of us carried Taniwha’s tack back to the garden shed and put it away. We were heading down the driveway when Murray called me from the house.
“Come here a minute, would you?”
Leaving my sisters, I jogged back over to him. Raindrops were already starting to spatter the ground, and I knew we’d get drenched before we made it back home.
“Yeah?”
Murray didn’t say anything, just reached out and took hold of my wrist, then pressed something into my hand. I looked down at the thick wad of money with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“What’s that for?”
“For your pony. I’m buying off you.”
“What?” I looked at him in total confusion and said the first thing that came into my head. “But you don’t even like him!”
Murray gave me an exasperated look. “If your father sells him, who am I going to get to do my garden, eh?” he demanded. “It’s an investment to make sure you stick around and keep this place in decent shape. Now that’s five hundred dollars in your hand. He’s not worth any more than that, so don’t ask.”
I nodded, speechless, then flung my arms around Murray’s chest and hugged him tight.
“Thank you,” I told him sincerely, and he patted my back.
“Yeah all right, steady on. I’ve got brittle bones, you know.”
I grinned as I let go of him, holding the folded money tightly in my hand. “Sorry.”
“And don’t lose that on the way home. I’m not giving you any more.”
“I won’t lose it.” I shoved the money deep into the pocket of my jeans, still hardly able to believe that it has happened. “And you can ride Taniwha any time you want.”
Murray croaked out a laugh as the rain got heavier on the porch roof. “Go on, get out of here. Take those sisters of yours home before they get soaked.”
“Too late,” I said as the rain lashed off the concrete, making Phoebe squeal. “Don’t worry, we don’t melt. Thanks Murray!”
Mum was cooking dinner when we got home, all four of us soaked to the bone. I’d had to carry Phoebe on my back most of the way, and she was shivering by the time I set her down in our living room, dripping on the threadbare carpet. Mum ushered the three of them into the bathroom and ran a hot bath, telling me to keep an eye on the sausages while she sorted them out. I was turning the snags over in the pan when she came back into the room.
“You’re doing a good job there, son.”
“Thanks.” I put the tongs down on the bench as she drained the boiled potatoes into the sink. “Mum, I’ve got something for you.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
She had her back to me as she added some margarine to the potato pot and stirred it in, letting it melt around the spuds. I dug the money out of my pocket and held it out towards her, my heart pounding excitedly. Mum turned back around and looked at me, then at my hand.
“Jonty!” She didn’t look happy, like I’d expected her to. Instead she looked upset, and scared. “Where did you get that?”
“I sold my pony.”
Mum swayed slightly, and reached out to grab the bench with one hand to steady herself.
“You did what?”
“I sold Taniwha,” I said clearly, because she didn’t seem to be getting it. “Murray bought him.”
“Murray?”
I frowned. “Yeah, you know. The old man that owns the paddock where Taniwha…”
“I know who he is. Why did he want to buy your pony?”
“So Dad wouldn’t sell him.” Mum closed her eyes as I kept talking. “I heard Dad say that he was going to sell Tani if we ran out of money for food, and I happened to mention it to Murray, and he just offered me the money. It’s five hundred bucks,” I said, holding it closer to her, wanting her to take it.
Mum opened her eyes. “You never went and told Murray that we had no money for food.”
“So what if I did? It’s true, isn’t it? And look.” She still wouldn’t take the money, so I did what Murray had done to me and grabbed her wrist, then pushed the notes into her hand.
“Son, that’s your pony. You love that pony.”
“It’s okay Mum, honest,” I said. “I can still keep him at Murray’s. He said it was an investment to make sure I keep doing his garden.”
I grinned, thinking she’d get the joke, but she just looked down at the money in her hand and said nothing.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked, unable to bear the silence. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“Oh Jonty.” Mum reached out and grabbed my shoulder, pulling me in for a hug. “You didn’t have to do that. I hate that you thought you had to do that. I’m not spending any of this unless we absolutely need it, okay? I’ll put it somewhere safe. Your father might get a job soon, and then you can use it to buy Taniwha back,” she promised. “How does that sound?”
I wrapped my arms around her waist as a car pulled into our driveway, and the engine switched off. Dad was home.
“I think you should spend the money,” I told her honestly. “If you hide it, then Dad might find it, and he wouldn’t spend it on food for all of us.”
One of the sausages made a loud snapping noise in the pan, and Mum jumped, then stroked my hair.
“I’ll put it in a safe place,” she said shakily as we heard Dad’s footsteps on the front porch.
“Buy Phoebe a raincoat,” I told her. “Get Morgan some new shoes, and buy Bella a schoolbag that stays zipped up.”
“What about you?” Mum asked as she shoved the money deep into her own pocket. “What do you want?”
I grinned at her. “Don’t worry about me,” I told her as the front door swung open to admit my father. “I’ve still got a pony.”
Dad did find o
ut eventually, of course. He started talking seriously about selling Taniwha, so I was forced to tell him the truth before he went round to Murray’s and tried to take Taniwha away. He was furious, especially since most of the money had been spent by then, and he hadn’t seen any of it. His revenge was to sell my saddle, after I brought it home one day for Phoebe to put on the back of the couch so she could pretend to ride. With her vivid imagination, it kept her entertained for hours, and I could see the rapture on her face as she pretended to be galloping and jumping. But we came home from school one day to find that it was gone, and I never saw it again.
Time passed slowly, with Dad becoming more and more dependent on alcohol. I hated it, watching him drink away the money that should’ve paid our rent. Mum was trying to get work wherever she could, picking up night shifts as a cleaner, but there was only so much money she could earn before the unemployment benefit that the Government was giving us would be diminished, and the hours she was getting weren’t enough to tide us over. She worked off the books, getting paid cash in hand, but it still wasn’t enough.
I kept my paper run, and I gave all the money I earned to Mum. It wasn’t much, but I wanted to do something to help. I could see her getting more and more stressed out by the day, and when the doctor’s office informed her that the subsidy for my meds had run out, I assured her that I no longer needed to take them. I hated them anyway, but I wasn’t prepared for the effect that going off the drugs cold turkey would have on me, and it sent me into a black hole of self-inflicted trouble.
I’d expected to feel better without the medication, more like my usual self, but instead I felt as though I was losing my mind. I was ten times more unsettled than I had been before, and I couldn’t sit still or focus on anything. I drove my family insane, constantly moving around, grinding my teeth and biting my nails and talking non-stop, because the only way I could get anything in my head to slow down for long enough to process it was to say it out loud. My constant chattering bewildered my parents and irritated my sisters, but there was nothing I could do to make myself stop.
I kept waiting for it to get better, but it only got worse, and I was utterly beside myself one evening, sitting on the floor in our cold living room with my back to the wall, rocking my head back and forth until it hit the wall behind me with a thunk. It didn’t even hurt, so I did it again, and again. Mum told me to stop, but I couldn’t, or wouldn’t – I couldn’t even tell which. Then Dad walked up to me, crouched down in front of me and looked me in the eyes.
“Have a sip of this.”
He handed me a bottle of bourbon, and I remember looking at my mother and seeing the horror and desperation in her eyes. But she didn’t tell me not to, so I took a sip. Dad patted me on the head and said to keep sipping until I calmed down, then stop.
It worked, and for the first time in weeks, I felt as though I could breathe again. The edges of the world softened and my mind seemed to relax back into its accustomed fog. But it didn’t last, and the next day I was sitting in the classroom with the same jittery sensation I’d had the night before, with only one way I could think of to make it stop. All I could think about was getting home and having another sip of bourbon so that I could get that calm feeling back again.
Eventually Dad cottoned onto what was happening, and gave me a hiding that left me with a backside so bruised I couldn’t ride Taniwha for days. He wasn’t mad that I was drinking, but because I was stealing his booze, and he told me in no uncertain terms to go and get my own liquor if I wanted to keep the demons at bay.
I was eleven years old, with no way to buy alcohol and no money to spend on it even if I could’ve. I snuck sips from Dad’s stash when he wasn’t looking, but it was a risky endeavour and I didn’t like doing it. Then one afternoon I went into Murray’s house to use his toilet, and on my way through the living room I noticed a well-stocked liquor cabinet in the corner. I knew the old man was out in the garage, and couldn’t see me, so I snuck across the room, crouched down in front of the cabinet and tugged the glass doors open. It was unlocked, and I reached in towards the back, looking for a bottle that he wouldn’t notice was missing. My fingers found a small bottle of whisky that I could easily hide in my jacket, and I slipped it in there with a deep feeling of guilt, but with an equally strong belief that I had no choice. I was desperate. There were only a few days of school left before the holidays started, and then I’d quit, I decided. I wouldn’t need it anymore when I didn’t have to sit still all day, and I’d make myself stop after that.
It was only for the last few days of school.
It was only this once.
As it turned out, Murray’s liquor was substantially stronger than the stuff my father could afford, and a couple of big gulps before school the next day sat me right on my arse. Even the teacher couldn’t ignore the fact that I was obviously plastered, and she drove me home at lunchtime and told me to stay there until I sobered up. I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when she found out why I’d been sent home. She was furious, smacking me soundly on the backside and telling me off for being so goddamn stupid, before sitting down on the couch and bursting into tears. Little Phoebe climbed up into her lap and tried to comfort her while I stood there awkwardly, at a total loss for what to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said eventually, my words slurring slightly as I spoke. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Mum looked at me, her arms wrapped around my little sister. “I might have married a drunk,” she told me through her tears. “But I’m sure as hell not going to raise one.”
I nodded, and started crying myself, and then to my immense relief, she opened her arms to me. I crawled in next to her on the couch, and she held me close, and I vowed then and there to never, ever do anything to upset her again. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
Slowly, painfully, the effects of the drugs wore off, and I recovered my sense of self. School went back, and although I still found it difficult to focus, I forced myself to cope. My teacher increased her efforts to help me, pushing me to join in with extracurricular activities like rugby and kapa haka, which did their part to keep me out of trouble, but I still never felt like I could relax.
Winter finally passed, and spring arrived. Little lambs appeared in farm paddocks, and Taniwha shed out his thick winter coat and gorged himself on spring grass. The rugby season finished, so I took up soccer instead. Spring turned into summer, and the school year finally came to a close.
It should have been exciting, but by then our weeks of rent arrears had finally caught up with us, and we were served with an eviction notice, effective immediately. With my mum and sisters in floods of tears, we packed our belongings onto an old trailer that Dad had borrowed from a friend and left the house we’d grown up in. We were homeless, with nothing left except for what we could carry.
It was two weeks before Christmas, and we had nowhere to go.
PART III
-
RESTLESS
The restlessness and the longing,
like the longing that is in the whistle of a faraway train.
Except that the longing isn’t really in the whistle -
it is in you.
- Meindert DeJong
THE COTTAGE
I woke early on our first morning in the cottage, and for a moment I lay there, staring at the crooked floorboards as sleep slowly deserted me. Sunlight filtered through dirty windows at the front of the cottage, and dust motes floated through the still air. I blinked, then sat up, remembering where we were. The past few days had been a blur of new rooms, different faces and unfamiliar places every time I woke up, feeling like a constant burden. Six people weren’t easy to give shelter to, especially when one of them was barely five years old and kept crying because she was so hungry. People were sympathetic, but there was also a sense that we’d made our beds and now we had to lie in them. I’d overheard my mother telling one of her friends that her parents in the Far North would take us, if we could get
there, but that they still wouldn’t have anything to do with Dad. Her friend urged her to leave him behind, for the sake of her children, but she wouldn’t. The idea of it panicked me – I had no way to get Taniwha to Northland, and moving that far away would mean leaving him behind for good. I couldn’t do that. Taniwha was my best friend. I’d been forced to tell Murray about our situation, and he’d offered to let me move into his spare bedroom – but only me. I’d refused, unwilling to leave my family. All we had was each other, and I knew that Mum would never forgive me if I left. She relied on me too much, and I’d sworn never to let her down.
Morgan barely stirred as I got up off the mattress we’d been sharing on the floor, and walked across the room, my bare feet scuffing up dust on the creaking wooden boards. I reached the front door and slowly pulled it open, holding my breath in silent anticipation of what I was about to see.
Behind me, the house was quiet, my whole family sleeping peacefully at last. But outside, the world was wide awake. Green paddocks stretched out towards the distant hills, and the sun was peeking over the top of them to say good morning. I stood on the front step, curling my bare toes over the edge, and stared out at this wonderful new world.
“Merry Christmas,” I whispered to myself, still struggling to believe that I was really awake, that this wasn’t still part of the dream I’d had for so long.
It had only been a few hours since I’d been sitting in the back seat of our car with Phoebe on my lap, listening to light rain pattering on the roof and trying to get her to stop crying. My parents had been arguing over top of Phoebe’s wails, with Mum sounding on the verge of tears herself.
“It’s Christmas Eve, Nate, and we don’t have anywhere to go!”
