Half Wild

by Pip Smith

  My horse took a step towards me and nudged the back of my head. It’s time, Tally Ho, it’s time.

  We took the midnight ferry, me and the horse. The ferry was a steam ship, so big all the water in the harbour ran away from it screaming, revealing more water behind it, which also ran away screaming. The ship moved through the water like this for hours until the darkness and the terror had been drained from the sea and it was an exhausted reflection of the pale morning sky. I thought running away would be the brave thing to do, but didn’t realise how frightened brave people must be all the time.

  The other passengers were curled up asleep on the ferry seats in their work clothes, but my heart was going ohmygodohmygodohmygod in my ears so loudly there was no chance of sleep, not for days. The horse and I stood frozen on the deck of the ferry looking out at the beaten up water and let the wind slap us in the faces to remind us how un-asleep we were. The ship was moving me away from a place that didn’t feel right no matter how hard I tried, towards a world that had to feel right, because if it didn’t, what then? The West Coast of the South Island was a place so full of anger at itself it didn’t know what to do other than rip trees out of the ground and pound them into the beaches on the back of big waves, or suddenly decide to make a man rich for no reason other than Why not? I’d find gold there, or I’d get eaten by a cannibal, or I’d climb a mountain, or I’d kill a man defending myself. Nothing else could happen to an angry person like me in an angry place like that. It would hate me and spit me out, or it would love me and spit bits of itself out for me to keep as gifts—there’d be no in between.

  We arrived in the Marlborough Sounds at an hour when no one was awake, not even night animals. The mist over the Sounds was clammy with the breath of dead saints that had escaped from the dank drip drip of mountain caves and the cold wooden floorboards of their convent dormitories to breathe the tides in and let them out again, and mutter curses high up in the canopies of kauri trees. With nothing else to do at that hour, they breathed the ferry towards Picton and, as they did, crawled into the passengers’ ears to explore the rooms and hallways of their souls, because hadn’t they been duped into being on their own for long enough?

  CHILD COACHMAN ACHIEVES RECORD TIME DRIVING FOUR DANGEROUS HORSES DOWN WEST COAST

  Hokitika, West Coast

  At least one hundred thousand deceased saints have sighted a child coachman, around 16 years of age, successfully transport passengers from Picton to Hokitika in less than a week.

  Despite the high speeds achieved by the coach as it traversed some of the most precarious terrain of the South Island, the passengers later proclaimed they had never before experienced such comfort while travelling. The child coachman performed many marvellous feats, at one moment fording a river without first plumbing its depths. The water allegedly covered the backs of the compliant horses and seeped through the floorboards of the coach, however no speed was lost nor doubts raised by the passengers as to their safety.

  The child coachman’s appearance was described as luminous, with delicate features belying his considerable strength and ability. As a token of his appreciation upon arrival at his destination, one Maori halfcaste presented the coachman with the last remaining greenstone talisman from his ancestor’s nowdormant quarry near Kumara.

  Despite the near superhuman time achieved by the child coachman, the saints insist they did not interfere. Once the coachman had arrived at Hokitika at one hour past midnight on the 13th instant, weary and in need of drink, two police officers placed the child coachman under arrest, on a charge of horse theft and vagrancy.

  Afterlife Observer, 14 September 1891

  The first thing I wanted to do when I got back was tell Nonno Buti about my adventure, but instead I had to be the policemen’s hunting trophy for a whole afternoon. It was a wonder they didn’t chop my head off and mount it on a plaque, they were that proud of themselves for having caught me. First they walked me through the Central Wellington Police Station with my hands cuffed behind my back and patted their proud stomachs as if it had been their stomachs that had smelled me out and caught me.

  When the Lady of the House arrived they thought she’d rip me to shreds but instead she pinched me on the cheek and whispered, I like a girl with a bit of pluck. She walked back to where the police officers were still patting their stomachs and said in her loudest acting voice, Now, never steal my horse again, young lady, do you hear?

  Home would be different.

  WHAT TIME DID YOU MAKE? Nonno Buti asked me on the way home from the police station. He was up in the driver’s seat with the reins in one hand, holding something under a hat on his knee with the other.

  Made it in under a week! I said.

  Nonno Buti whistled though his dentures and his leg started jiggling. I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT! he said. HERE, I MADE THIS FOR YOU.

  He took the hat off his knee and revealed a wooden horse with wheels for feet. It was still rough and had not been glazed or sanded. I was sixteen by then, though I didn’t look it; too old for such a toy, but I didn’t say so because I could see he was happy to have made it for me.

  PULL ITS REINS IN, he said.

  I pulled its reins and the wooden horse’s mouth and belly opened. Inside there was something yellow and shiny, like pus-infected organs.

  What is it? I asked him.

  PULL IT OUT, GO ON, he said.

  It was a jockey’s silk racing cap!

  WHAT DO YOU THINK? Nonno Buti said. His eyes were all questions and exclamation marks, but my stomach dropped. My West Coast assignment had been a test. He wanted me to race for him. He wanted me to make him money.

  But I’m a girl, Nonno, I said.

  WE COULD BE RICH! he shouted down Adelaide Road, but the way he said rich was the way a child wearing a tea towel as a turban says rich. He was too excited. I didn’t believe him.

  No, Nonno. They won’t let me race, I’m a girl. They have doctors to check.

  BALLE! he said. I didn’t know what he thought was balle—the fact that I couldn’t race or the fact that I was a girl. WE’LL SHOW THEM! he said.

  I was starting to wonder about Nonno Buti. Maybe all his belief in my ability to make it to the West Coast had been the deluded ravings of an old man. But then I had made it there, so maybe all brave things need a delusion to get started.

  I put the silk racing cap on as we pulled up outside my front gate.

  Mamma and Papà and I stood at three points of a triangle in the kitchen, with my brother and sisters standing at the points of a bigger more complicated shape around us. Their arms were by their sides and their mouths were open, ready to catch drops of spraying blood. They were at a bear fight and I was the bear, but nothing happened for a long time. When no one could handle the suspense much longer Mamma said very softly, Dove cazzo sei stata?

  Mr Innocente entered the room, and took Mamma’s elbow with a sympathetic look on his face. He had a great catalogue of looks for his face and knew which one would work on which person at any given moment. He knew you had to give people what they needed to help them love you—and right now what Mamma needed was a kiss on each cheek and to be told she was right to feel sorrow, so he rubbed her back and said, Non ti preoccupare, I enjoy a challenge.

  Good, she is too much for me, Mamma said, and started to sob. Even from the other side of the room I could see that her cheeks were dry. She was beating Mr Innocente at his own game and he didn’t even know she was playing.

  Papà walked slowly towards me and gripped me by the top of the arm.

  Nina, he said, running away will not help. If you do not marry him, we’ll send you to the girls’ home. You cannot keep living here, you will give your mother a brain fever, and Mamma looked at me and winced to show how horrible that would be.

  The girls’ home was hidden behind a medieval fortress on Cuba Street. No one knew what happened behind its high walls, but wild girls went in and came out dead-eyed, singing hymns about shepherds. It was the most terrifying place a
girl could go, but I couldn’t marry Mr Innocente, and I told Papà so.

  Papà’s grip tightened and my right side lifted off the floor. He was all muscle and gristle; I didn’t know he was that strong. He shook me then. I could feel my brain rattle in my skull, his nails pierce my skin, but the shaking I could take. It was the look he gave me that I couldn’t bear.

  In that one look I saw how he hated all the different parts of me, especially the parts I couldn’t help being. What he hated most in me was the stubbornness he hated in himself, and I couldn’t help that, I couldn’t change that even if I tried.

  He shook me for a long while. Some of the older children were crying and saying, No, Papà! but Mamma ushered them down the hall to their bedroom.

  When Papà let me go the tips of his fingers were white like the fingertips of a frog. He must have noticed this too because he looked at his hands and said, I am an animal.

  I thought, No, Papà, you’re not as good as that.

  I sat on the kitchen table staring at the window. It reflected me back as a crinkly creature, the kind that lives in a rock pool and I thought, That’s where I should be, at the bottom of the sea.

  The hours began to drag and melt. I had no idea what time it was when footsteps padded down the hallway. I turned to look and there was Ida, standing in the doorway in a nightie that was once mine. It was so small it only came to her knees and the buttons down the front strained against their holes. I turned back to face the window because I didn’t want her to see the tear stains on my cheeks, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her to go.

  She sat on the table next to me, put her arms around me and squeezed. She had her head resting right where Papà had gripped my arm but I didn’t tell her to move because it’s a wonderful feeling, having someone squeeze all the hateful bits out of you until all that’s left is good.

  The rain finally broke in relief and Ida squeezed until the rain stopped, and the whirr of tiny frogs offered their voices up in the absence of rain.

  Where did you go when you ran away? Ida asked.

  The West Coast, I said, and I’ve got this to show for it.

  I reached into my pocket to pull out a greenstone a Maori had given me, but it wasn’t there.

  Ida pulled my hair out from under my silk racing cap, and combed out the knots with her fingers. It was a strange feeling, letting her be tender like this, because usually she was one of Mamma’s spies, recording everything I said to use against me later.

  She did my hair up the way she’d seen ladies have it done in the salons along Lambton Quay and walked me over to the kitchen window. There, looking back at me, was not a sea creature but a young woman I didn’t recognise.

  See, Nina? You are beautiful. You’re more beautiful than any of us.

  The thought made my stomach turn, but it was late, and in the morning it would seem like we hadn’t been tender with each other at all.

  Mr Innocente came to my pumpkin patch in the night, took off my nightgown and my bloomers then ran his hands over my skin, saying, Don’t pretend you don’t want this. Don’t pretend you’re not dreaming about this right now.

  I tried to squirm away but I was half asleep and too slow. He pulled me back and thrust himself into me and grunted each time he thrust. It hurt like hell but it hurt less if I lay still and dumb, as if my body was an alien thing something strange was happening to a long, long way away.

  When your body is broken into, your spirit lifts up out of scar tissue like mist, evacuates all cricks and aches, and condenses in a distant room until whatever pain your body feels has passed.

  There’s a mirror in this room. You’re reflected—you appear smaller there—manageable, understandable. You can be shaped and adjusted, set back on course. You can come to terms with yourself here and, when you do, the room’s no longer needed, the walls crumble and your spirit rushes back into your body where it lives pressed up against the outside world, with a clumsy animal grace.

  Innocente shuddered and rolled off, and I pulled my knees up to my chest to try to cover up the hollow sick feeling he’d left between the bones of my pelvis.

  I was stinging down there and I knew that my vagina was a black hole. There were sparks coming out of it, like the ocean when it’s disturbed at night.

  There were two sparks coming from the house, too. They were Papà’s eyes, watching.

  I dreamed that I had a penis—I could feel it, all the nerve endings and everything, and Innocente had nothing but a hole, a black hole.

  All that week, voices were heard through walls. Papà in a rage at Mr Innocente, saying, She is no good to us, she is ruined, you have to take her now!

  We were married at a registry. Mamma gave Mr Innocente a case of last year’s passata as a dowry. Or a bribe. Or a curse.

  And on the train to Auckland, words streamed out of Mr Innocente’s mouth and the carriage filled with coal soot.

  I dreamed and when I woke, it was to the sound of a woman calling out from the other side of a door. Apri la porta, Brasseli, so che ci sei dentro!

  Who’s that? I said.

  Mr Innocente froze in the sheets.

  Who is that? I said again.

  This is what I was explaining to you on the train, he said.

  The woman screamed, APRI LA PORTA, STRONZO BIGAMO!

  When I opened the door a woman I recognised, with black hair turning grey in places, slapped me across the face so hard I dropped the sheet I was holding around my naked body. She saw everything: my breasts, the gap between my legs. The stickiness on my thighs.

  When I came to, the woman was rubbing a tincture under my nose. I tried to sit up and move away, but she held me back down.

  Shhh, she said. I don’t blame you.

  What’s happened? I asked her, lying in her arms. I was comfortable there. What’s happened? I asked again, closing my eyes.

  I am his wife. I’m your husband’s wife, she said. I opened my eyes with a start. Of course, that’s where I’d seen her before. She was a vision I’d had of myself, married and worn out with nothing in my head but everything I had lost.

  My feet carried me over hills and through the back streets of towns. They pulled my legs through a pair of trousers I found somewhere, I don’t know where. They walked for years, until my hair grew so long it fell out, and a new crop of hair grew back, short as a boy’s. They carried me to a house that looked like mine with a shrine to boats out the back rising up from a ground covered in broad leaves and heavy, swollen balls. You’d think it was a garden growing the heads of demented babies if you didn’t know better, I thought, as I fell down amongst them.

  The night sky was a mess of twinkles, there were too many, I didn’t know how the sailors saw any sense in them. I tried though. I took a deep breath and held my fingers up to make a window. I squinted my eyes and moved the window around until the stars clicked into place and there she was: St Eugenia herself in a pair of trousers, looking right at me.

  Are you going to give me some advice? I asked.

  What can I say? she said. You’re a disgrace to our name.

  What? I said. But you’re in trousers too!

  And look where it got me. Dead.

  I rolled away from her, towards the pumpkin at my side. St Eugenia faded into the morning light, thank God, but Mamma was there instead, standing in a nightshirt with two new babies on her hips and her hair falling over their faces. There was too much hair and too much Mamma, she was everywhere I wasn’t and surveying the garden as if I wasn’t there. She walked back into the kitchen and shouted, Ida, there’s a good-sized pumpkin out here, bring the knife.

  She didn’t know me anymore. She didn’t know the difference between her own daughter and a squash.

  Why had I come back to this place? Perhaps I’d been hoping to see Ida again, perhaps I’d thought she might pull me close to her, and we’d sit together as friends, not as sisters, but looking at her standing at the back door with a knife in her hand and her eyes redder than a crow’s, I t
hought, It’s time to leave now, Tally Ho, at least until they’ve calmed down.

  With nowhere else to go I went to the brickworks, only it wasn’t a brickworks anymore, but a manufactory that made drains. I wondered if I was at the right place, but the same men were there, crawling around as if looking for their lost eyes.

  There was a man standing with his hands on his hips, ciggie in mouth, smoke pouring out of his nose as if the insides of his head were on fire and he was standing patiently, letting them burn. He stared into the clay pit, stared at his watch, stared up at the sun as it adventured up into the sky and then turned to stare at me. He smiled in a way that said, You again, and I smiled in a way that said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please give me a job.

  We worked hard and it felt good, putting our bodies to use like that. Some of the men took off their shirts and the sun turned their backs as brown as the clay, but I left mine on even when it was soaked through with sweat.

  I could’ve made pipes forever. It was a simple process and everyone knew their role and how to play it. The rest of the world was a dark, unfathomable place in which people put on brave faces and pretended to know how to get by.

  When the sun started the slow fall out of the sky the other men worked faster, hoping to draw home time closer. I worked more slowly, hoping to push it away, but the slower I worked the faster the end of the day arrived. It didn’t make sense. As the other men streamed out the manufactory gates, the man with the opera eyes passed me a towel and bucket of soapy water to wash myself down.

  You alright? he asked.

  Yes, I’m fine, I lied. I didn’t know where I’d sleep, but was trying hard not to let the worry show.

  You coming with us to the pub or what? he asked, and it was a question I’d never forget. You coming with us to the pub or what? as if there was no doubt in his head as to whether I was a girl or a boy or a fish or a turnip. I was a man, and I was invited to the pub, where men went.

  At the pub the drainpipe men taught me everything they knew. All their jokes, and what to say when, and whose chair to kick out from under who. To Darkie we said, If you go outside at night don’t close your eyes or we’ll lose you! and to the chows that stumbled in from Haining Street we pulled back the skin next to our eyes and said, Ching chong Chinaman! which wasn’t as good but we laughed as if it was.