What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

by Alan Duff

  … Came back and it w’z — everything … everything w’z on fire …

  HE DIDN’T THINK they’d’ve screamed, not at first, they’d’ve cried for their big sis, cried their confusion, only when the flames surrounded them like life had their sis, would they have screamed; he’d thought and thought about this; when most of that had died a bit in his head and they were standing their have-to-be distances in the gang bar, and he was knocking back beer cans like liquid dousing his own inner flames and Apeman there beside her cocking his eyebrow at Abe like the gun it was signifying — but even he had to go piss, even Superman’s got to put those can afta cans of beer somewhere; she walked as though past Abe an’ tole him, When you go a huntin’ for Bad Horse, I’m coming. I truly liked your bro, I did. (I unnerstan’, Tarns, it’s your brothers you’re trying to, you know, bring back, too. Plus the li’l sister, poor li’l fuckers — where was the fucken mother she could be gone so long, all fucken weekend, on this earth for herself, the fucken bitch.) He was a good kid, y’ know? (They all are, sis. Or how they start out.) She paused jus’ a second. Unnerstan’? And Abe he nodded, jus’ the once, without once lookin’ ater. Case he, you know.

  SEVENTEEN

  IF BETH LAY awake late thinking of her kids, the tragedies and miracles and more of each (I hope not and hope) to come, she didn’t despair. Not when a mother’d lost her daughter the way she did, though it was that very event she most thought of even after six years.

  That intended visit to see Boogie at the boys’ home; the only way to get the family to him was in that rental car, all that saving she’d done, giving up drinking, watching every cent from the money Jake gave her, which was half of the unemployment benefit paid to a man with wife and six children — and he used to boast openly to his friends how generous he was to her, as if it was his own hard-earned money, as if his taking half of his entitled only one-eighth share was anything but selfishness — and, the first miracle, found she had actually saved her first hundred dollars towards hiring a car to go and see Boogie, real name Mark, in the Riverton Boys’ Home about an hour and a half drive (and my Grace’s life) distant.

  Oh, how it had started off promising to be such a good day. Jake behind the wheel, surprising her that he had a driver’s licence when he’d never owned a car, never even tried, the radio going, Jake as calm, even excited (child-like) as she and children’d ever seenim. A big, hours-prepared picnic feast in the boot of their late model rental, and Jake making the most of it by driving around half of Pine Block, arm out the window, waving to people, winking, laughing, making funny remarks to his family passengers; only sour note was when they spotted Nig (my poor boy Nig, he was my first born and, I have to admit, my favourite. Something about him, the love in the boy) standing outside the Brown Fist headquarters (tall and handsome like his father); Jake hated the Browns (hated half the world and himself most of all). But the moment passed without incident. Then they were out into Two Lakes proper, away from their slums, their line-ups of two-storey, ugly State dwellings, passing houses with neat, garden-scaped lawns, washing cars on driveways, nearly all ofem white but not then seeming to bother Jake, he was too happy just to be driving, being free in quite another way to his pub-going freedom, this was mobile freedom, it was the means to cover a considerable distance, see a wide spectrum of a life they suddenly saw they never knew. And he was with his family.

  Was Grace suggested they go take a look at the posh part of town, Ainsbury Heights, and Jake who got all funny at that, suspicious that Grace should know of it let alone give him the directions. And when he got there? Well, his mood changed. At seeing big houses and driveways with two, three cars parked up them; at not understanding any of it. Not how or why or what the profound process was that excluded him and his lot (as if he cared about us lot); as if he was looking at people from Mars. She remembered that part like yesterday; seeing Jake’s face, his mouth partly open as they sat parked up outside a posh place, shaking his head — the confoundment (Charlie’s word). Like it was his very (precious) manhood suddenly held up to a totally different light and found completely wanting. She’d said, Jake, let’s get out of here. Never wanted to live up here anyrate. But he’d snapped at her. So she, and children back to their tensed state in his presence, had to sit it out till somehow Jake found his way back in his mind, his (broken — it was anyway broken long before that) heart.

  He made a joke about not wanting to live up in Ainsbury because of big lawns to mow. They drove out of the area. On their way to Riverton, or so they all thought including, to be fair, him. Beth couldn’t remember who suggested they drive around the lake, it might’ve been Grace, it might’ve been Jake, it might have been her, it could have been Polly, but not Abe as he never said much unless it was about his idol, his big brother Nig. And Huata was too young. They stopped off at lakeside, the lake a calm mirror reflecting what lakes do of their surrounds and the unspoken knowing that they’d never even been down to the lake (nor done much else in even a small city world) but of Jake, too, his calmness. Then it was Riverton. No it wasn’t, first they’d go right round the lake. Long’s we get there by lunchtime, eh dear? Jake with his rare, best charming smile and since they were all enjoying ’emselves, why not?

  She remembered seeing the pub sign and Jake licking his lips, her fear and knowing that he’d stop. Except he didn’t. Drove straight past. So it was definitely going to turn out the day it promised (oh, Jakey!) She was so happy for all of them. Even if Grace was a little quiet in the back. They sang songs together, started by — could they believe? — him. Jake The Muss. The man whose own children always paused, just for a fraction, before they called him dad. The car a happy family chorus, even Grace’s distinctly toned voice joining in, eventually she did. (And I remember the goosebumps, when he reached a hand for mine and squeezed it with the love he first used to give me — till the bastard discovered he got more out of hitting me. And still got the love afterward.) She remembered that gesture.

  He wanted to show off the rental car to his mates. No, he wasn’t going in, just parking outside McClutchy’s pub, toot the horn at the boys, his mates, as they walked in for their all-afternoon Saturday drinking and betting on the horses. Beth’d done her share of Saturdays — and other days — drinking too. One drink, tha’s all I ask, dear. That was all he asked. How could she refuse a man who’d behaved in such exemplary fashion — another word learning from Charlie Bennett. In retrospect. On that day. That memory.

  Waiting and waiting. Hold on a minute, kids, I’ll go get your father. The shock of seeing what she, when she was drinking before she gave it up especially for this trip, this visit to go and see Boogie (since I couldn’t be at court when he got sent away, not with my face beaten up from Jake’s fists the night before because I refused to cook his pal fried eggs with boiled food, in one of my moods of had enough of this fucken life) of what she must look like parked up in a bar at noon with a whole (sweet I thought) drinking day ahead to look forward to.

  Many hours later, herself starting with just one drink, the picnic on their bar table being gobbled up by the company she’d joined with (my kids still waiting out in the car. Oh, I’ve got my share in the guilt, too). The lame, beery breathed excuses each time she went out to reassure them that dad (and now me) wouldn’t be long. Finally, Grace walking off home in a fury that the visit wasn’t going to take place (I remember seeing her, even in my drunken stupor, walking off across the pub carpark.) Waking up — being shaken awake by Jake — next day at the cops at the door. Going into town, the morgue … to identify her. Grace — (Ohhhh!) Ohh, it hurt every — every — time. There was no hurt worse. Not even when the next child was Nig, shot dead in the gang fight.

  Grace had left this world with some of her mother with her. She hadn’t figured, not for the life of her, why she’d done it on the Trambert property, and she’d got the courage up several months later to look him up in the phonebook, ring the man ask him had he known Grace. No, he’d not set eyes on her in his l
ife nor had any clue as to why she ended her life, on our property, as he put it. Which for some reason struck home with Beth as meaning she didn’t have a property, as if the divide was quite clear and required no further explanation. She still didn’t have her own property, though Charlie insisted half his material ownership was hers, that’s how good a man he was. Though she said wait and see if they ever got around to marrying, since she had filed divorce proceedings against Jake the day after Grace’s letter and he did not contest the application, in fact they couldn’t locate him to serve the papers on him so it was declared decree nisi. Why Grace chose the Trambert place was now in the grave with her as would the reason if Toot hadn’t broken their agreement not to show the last letter she left.

  It named her father — no it didn’t: it said she thought her abuser was her father. But it seemed clear enough even if Beth had never seen any sign of that sort of secret desire in Jake. And a wife of sixteen years should know shouldn’t she? Maybe she didn’t. (Yet still I don’t accept it, or part of me doesn’t.)

  So Beth was beyond the grasp of despair. But not thought. The second tragedy was Nig. The second miracle — the first being the discovery that even a denied, poor woman can save (I’ll never forget that) — was Boogie, when he turned up with the man Beth now had sleeping beside her, Charlie Bennett, then a child welfare officer, now the general manager of the Two Lakes’ division, and had sung that ancient Maori lament with Charlie alongside him directly to Grace in her open state coffin. Now, the next miracle — Charlie hurumphed that it wasn’t a miracle it was as it should be — of Boogie in his second year at university, studying of all things, law. When that is what he’d fallen foul of in his troubled younger years.

  Charlie was strong on his Maori culture and had converted Boogie to learning its ancient chants, the different (ferocious) haka from the days when the Maori was at war with himself, tribe against tribe (gang against gang?) and the legends, the lores, the whole deep process which Beth could see was the base of her de facto’s existence. She herself took to learning more about her culture but now she was less interested and refused Charlie’s one weak characteristic of insisting it would be good for her. She told him she’d decide what was good for her, that she had tried, rather enjoyed, but now no longer felt it was for her. She teased him about being like a door-knocking Christian trying to convert her to his beliefs, just to keep him in his place on that one area of somewhat blindness on his part.

  It was Abe who now kept her awake with worry. No, it didn’t consume her, after Grace nothing could be so bad but nothing. And Abe was a young man with his own mind even if a lot of it had been shaped by those earlier years of Jake. And, just like Jake, with headstrong — no, hellbent — notion in his head of getting revenge for Nigs death (as stubborn and set of mind as his father). She’d run into him in the main street, on her way as it happens to have a café lunch with Charlie, quite a regular thing for them to do and she comfortable with it now, driving down from the hospital where she worked in the laundry (alright, so you’re no miracle of occupation, girl, but hey, am I complaining?) She knew he’d not like the approach, even from her his mother. So she just asked, Why? hardly pausing as she walked past him. Nig, he answered, without a blink of his shaded eyes his oh-so-cool posture in the company of his Hawk mates. It wasn’t till she got down the street a way that she realised Abe had joined the gang whose jailed-for-life member had shot Nig dead (on this very street, my son’s blood ran).

  But it was all too much for her, trying to figure out the mysteries of gang rivalry and why each did what to the other and what made brothers join opposite gangs and fight each other. And she knew Abe was too much his fighting father’s son to be able to persuade away from this course his life was on. It was giving without hesitating (not even a li’l smile for me, the rat) Nig’s name that had her wondering, or realising, that Abe had truly loved his oldest brother. Though joining the other side was a mystery. At the funeral Abe held back his grief. In the months, which became the years, afterward, he was grieving. And, with it, developing that deep down sullen brooding that no one does better — worse, rather — than a Maori. Ask any Maori is what she said to Charlie who tried to give her his theories that all races are the same. (Though he was one, if a very different one.) On certain things Beth — still a Heke and don’t ask me why — begged to differ.

  Another time she was driving down town when she spotted a familiar face even though it wore sunglasses, them wraparound things the gangies wear as if the rest of us don’t know what a cop-out cover-up they are (poor frightened li’l and large things) which nagged and nagged at her until she got it. Good grief. It was that gang girl. And she was in the arch rival Hawk colours same as Abe!

  At Nig’s funeral the girl had come up and hugged Beth. She figured the girl was trying to say she was closer than just a gang member friend of her son’s. But she didn’t say and nor did Beth ask. She had a mind for making Nig’s last farewell with all the dignity she could muster, and much supported by damn near half the Pine Block community come out to share her and family’s grief. Mavis (oh, May. You had so much, girl) had led the singing, and it and the massed neighbourhood voices answered back, it did take much of a mother’s grieving load, it did. Mavis did. Best voice in Two Lakes was — is — Mavis. ’Cept not much point if you’re a drunk. Not much point in your flower blossoming in seedy bars, girl.

  Jake wasn’t at his son’s funeral, just as he wasn’t at Grace’s. Now, with years and a good man’s guidance and much talk, she realised Jake’s problem was to do with his self-esteem. Remembering on that same ill-fated failed visit to see Boogie his revealing how he’d been raised on tales of his family being direct descendants of slaves, in the old days when Maoris practised slavery, and she’d found out since that to be a slave was the ultimate in shame since it was usually a captured warrior who preferred dishonourable life to honourable death. Growing up, Jake and his siblings had been mercilessly teased for their status. What else could he have grown up into? (Not that I forgive him. Not for that, even if I’ve always had my doubts, even after a thousand times and more of reading that letter Grace gave to Toot. Nor can I forgive myself, I ended up with Jake in the bar, too. It was my idea to take the picnic lunch meant for my family into that bar, those animals who just consumed it on the spot. Beth, you’re guilty, too.)

  She saw him now and again. Usually sitting at a bus-stop and, over the years, different ones which she figured out must mean his job had him on the move. Then she saw him working on a road gang (with his shirt off, what else, on a not very hot day) surprised at the involuntary thrill at sight of his powerfully muscular body (after all these years, and what those same muscles have done to me?) Yes. After all these years, six now, still had animal appeal despite the violence. Even Charlie, anti-violence Charlie, said that Jake didn’t really know any better, not with growing up with violence as his only behavioural role model, as Charlie in his welfare officer way put it. Though where did that leave the victim? was her reply. Which Charlie had no real answer to except to agree that the buck has to stop somewhere. Funny, seeing a big, formerly fiercely proud man like Jake standing at a bus-stop had him looking less a loser than when he was the Jake The Muss of old. Sure, it didn’t exactly become him, his physical stature, that covering-up head lifted in exaggeration, or otherwise his eyes were down like a child’s, of can’t see you, you can’t see me. She even thought of pulling over in her car and asking if he wanted a lift. But he’d take it the wrong way, sure to. Or he’d think she wanted him back when she didn’t. (I don’t. I don’t.)

  So Jake was working for a roading contractor, which explained the different bus-stops she spotted him at in the evenings after work. Wondered if he had another woman; he didn’t have that look that he did. Did he visit the kids’ graves? Probably not. Did he think about what he’d done? A thousand questions she could have asked him but what was the point? It was past now. And no, she wasn’t pining for him. Happy who she was with, even if he was
no lover boy par excellence. No complaint about the foreplay, it was the act itself (comes too quick) leaves a woman hanging. Charlie rather formal, almost prudish, about sex. Whereas she (well, I — I was born with a, uh, shall we say healthy — hehehe — appetite. Why Jake and I lasted so long together. We were good together, at that we were.) Oh, and they danced as well as sang together well, too. But as for talk, forget it.

  Charlie was intelligent, made a woman realise she wasn’t so thick herself — why, he’d even changed the way she spoke, she could hear the changes herself — he was considerate, he loved her children as though his own and they, the three remaining, loved him. (He gave me life like I had only that once got a glimpse at when we drove around town and up to Ainsbury Heights. Not that we’re Ainsburians, but we ain’t Pine Blockers either, not now by a long shot.) And if she could perform one big miracle with her troubled Maori people then opening up their eyes to life’s possibilities, its challenges, goals, pleasures, even variety of recreation, that is what (and all) she would give.