Just Say [Hell] No

by Rosalind James

  She could almost see Marko’s chest expanding with the space. Not an easy land, nothing at all like the lush greens and abundantly providing seas of Northland, but the place he knew best, and the place he fit. The place that had formed the man he was.

  The road dipped, rose, curved, and curved again, and he turned off just before the junction for Tekapo and headed up a road marked with a B&B sign. Driving with one hand on the wheel, as if the car could get there by itself, or he could get them there with his eyes closed.

  A left turn onto a tarsealed road with a sign. Tekapo Farm Stay. Another curve, and the lake appeared beneath them like a sapphire, or maybe more like an opal, a saturated blue almost the color of a robin’s egg. And the contrast of the snow-capped mountains that cradled it, holding it like cupped palms.

  “You need to come back in the spring,” Olivia said from behind them, “when the lupines are in bloom around the lake. On the plus side, we don’t have any visitors right now, so we can focus on you.” Which might be a plus and might not. She could have hidden in a crowd.

  Slowing down, now. Sheds, outbuildings. A dog barking, then another. Two Border Collies, black and white, feathery tails waving, running to meet the car as it came closer to an enormous, rambling, three-story house made of dark wood, its green metal roof settling it into the landscape. A figure appeared on the porch that ran halfway around the house, moving slowly, with the aid of a cane. A long dress, and an apron around her waist. Stooped and thin, tall and gray.

  And dark.

  “My Amona,” Marko said. He pulled the car up, opened his door, and was covering the ground in giant strides, then taking the steps three at a time.

  The sight of him wrapping his arms gently around her hunched-over body, holding her close. The old lady dropping her stick and putting her palms on his face, saying something to him, and his dark head bending to hers as he kissed her cheek. At last, though, he stepped back, steadying her along the way, picked up her cane, and put it in her hand.

  Olivia said, “Well, there you go. Makes me choke up every time. One thing you should know about the Sendoa men, Nyree. They don’t love easily, but they love hard.”

  That evening, Nyree was stretched out on the carpet in the spacious lounge, comfortably furnished with slightly shabby couches and armchairs, and the kinds of mismatched end tables you wished for, so you always had someplace to put your mug. She had her back against one of those couches, this one upholstered in green velvet, with her head against Marko’s knee and Cat in her lap, listening to music. Or more like—feeling music.

  Marko and his father Ander on guitar. His dad had turned out to be, not much to her surprise, a six-foot-four, older, more silent version of his son, the lines in his face reflecting a life spent out of doors, his body lean, hard, and dark as iron, and his fingers even more skilled on those strings than Marko’s. Olivia, her silver hair shining in the lamplight, playing the mandolin, a woodier, brighter sound to it than the guitars. Ella with a tambourine, and Jakinda, to Nyree’s astonishment, on the violin. And Marko’s sister Caro with a flute, its silvery tones darting in and out like a fantail, then soaring above the stringed instruments with piercing beauty. No tunes Nyree recognized, but beautiful anyway. She guessed they were old, and that this family had been playing them forever.

  She let the music slow her heartbeat and seep into her bones, and watched Marko’s Amona, his grandmother, whose actual name was Mary, doing exactly the same thing. Sitting in an armchair set close to the wood stove, her dark face relaxed, her feet in their sturdy shoes and thick stockings not tapping, but looking like they’d used to.

  Earlier today, Marko had taken Nyree for a walk around the lake. An easy track through the bush, the liquid notes of bellbirds reminding her of home, the thin, cold air doing anything but, and Marko content to walk in silence. And then emerging into the open, headed towards a tiny stone church sitting all alone on the shore, surrounded by nothing manmade at all, looking like part of the mountains. Nobody around but a few young people, backpackers most likely, and nobody else at all in the church. The Church of the Good Shepherd.

  They sat in a front pew for a few minutes without speaking, Marko’s fingers threaded through hers, both their hands resting on his hard thigh, and Nyree gazed out the clear window and let the quiet and peace fill her. Clear windows, she guessed, because there could be no stained glass as beautiful as the lake and mountains. Maybe, too, because that was where the builders of this church had felt God most.

  Finally, Marko said, “My granddad used to bring Amona here like this. A few months before he died, we took a wee walk and ended up here, same as today, and he told me about it. It was their church, he said, because it belongs to this place. He knew it was hard for her to feel like anyplace was home. And when he brought her here from Australia, the parish priest at the Catholic church was a bigoted old fella. I don’t know what he said, but my granddad left the church and didn’t go back. My mum and dad did, eventually, when the priest changed, and Jakinda as well. But my granddad wasn’t a forgiving sort of fella. He’d had too much to forgive, maybe.”

  “She’s Aborigine,” Nyree said.

  “Noongar. Western Australia. Well, half. White dad, I guess. She doesn’t know much about her parents, or about any of the rest of her family, either. Taken from her mum when she was little.”

  “One of the Stolen Generations,” Nyree said, with a contraction of her heart that was nearly painful. The generations of Aborigine children, especially the half-white ones, who’d been stolen from their mothers and placed in orphanages and missions. They’d been sent away again after that, once they’d reached their early teenage years. The girls to work as domestic servants, the boys as stockmen and laborers. Earning not much but room and board, but then, they’d already lost everything anyway. Lost their language, their people, their place, all the things that mattered most. And, for the mums especially, knowing that their own children could be taken in the same way. Especially if their fathers were white.

  Despair.

  Marko said, “She remembers when they took her away. Riding in the back of the truck with the rest of them, and with the mums running along behind, calling out, crying, their arms stretched out for their kids. She watched her mum running until the dust swallowed her up. She was four. Five. Somewhere in there. Afterwards, they told them their mums didn’t want them. But she remembered her mum running.”

  Nyree had a fist pressed to her heart. “How did your granddad meet her?”

  “He was working as a shearer at a sheep station, earning some money in Aussie, saving to buy his own land. Older brothers getting the farm, eh. She was working there. Maybe fifteen, maybe a year older. Or younger. She isn’t sure.”

  He didn’t say anything else, but after a moment, she asked, “How much did you have to fight, growing up?”

  He looked at her, and she smiled a little painfully, because the memories were painful, and said, “Marko. I was Maori in Dunedin, in a Pakeha family, and without my whanau. I’d never felt different before. And I know you’d have fought when the other boys said things about her.”

  “Not as much as my dad had to. Which wasn’t as much as his dad did.”

  “Protective. All of you.”

  “Probably. Change can come too slow, especially here.”

  Tonight, in the light of the lamps and the warmth of the big room with its comfortable, shabby couches, the curtains drawn against the cold night, she wondered why Marko hadn’t told her before. She might not have brown skin, but surely he knew she was brown enough inside.

  Habit, maybe. Or a test.

  The song ended, and Marko’s dad Ander said, “Time for bed, Mum?”

  “Maybe so,” Mary said.

  Marko stood up, set his guitar on the couch, and said, “I’ll do it, Dad. Don’t get enough chance, do I.” He picked his grandmother gently up out of the chair, lifted her in his arms, and said, “I reckon Nyree will bring up your cane and your tea.”

  “O
f course,” Nyree said. She set Cat on the couch, causing her to utter a vocal protest at the cruel loss of a warm lap, and went to gather Mary’s things.

  Up the creaking wooden stairs, covered with a faded maroon carpet that looked fifty years old, to the second floor. Down the hall all the way to the end, Marko making carrying his grandmother look no more difficult than carrying a rugby ball.

  It was a spare room, nearly Spartan in its lack of furnishings, Nyree saw as she set the tea on the bedside table and handed Mary her cane. The most striking feature was a dot painting above the bed. Nothing but those white dots, a few curving lines, and different shades of blue, but a clear representation of a lake, the land around it, and the islands in it, like an aerial photo. All sinuous curves and serenity, but there was power there, too. She said, “That’s a beautiful painting. Striking. Stunning.”

  “Marko brought it back from Perth a couple years ago,” his grandmother said. “Says it’s meant to be the Wagyl, the water snake. Noongar have Water Snake Dreaming.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Nyree said again. “Strong.”

  Marko said, “Nyree’s an artist, Amona. She sees people in color. Did you ever hear of that?”

  His grandmother peered at Nyree more closely. “You do, eh. No, I never heard of that thing. What color is my Marko?”

  “Red,” Nyree said. “Strong. Passionate. Physical.”

  Mary nodded slowly and said, “That’s all right, then.”

  Marko said, “What color is Amona, Nyree? I’ve wanted to know.”

  Nyree said, “It’s not a… real thing. Not an official thing. It’s only how I see it.”

  “It’s always only how you see it,” the old lady said. “And what’s ‘official’? Whitefella’s idea. Tell me.” She smiled, and her solemn face lit up. “Nothing you can say now that hurts. All the things have already been said.”

  “You’re purple, then, to me,” Nyree said. “Deep.”

  “Ah,” Mary said. “Got some sadness to me, have I? Is that what you didn’t want to say?”

  “Maybe. I just know what I see, and maybe some… feelings about that. I’ve got a bit better at knowing what the color means, over time.” She didn’t mention Marko’s grandfather. She’d remembered that Aborigines didn’t speak of people who were dead. But his grandmother had told Marko the story about her mum running behind the truck, and surely her mum was gone. Although how would she know?

  Nyree tried to imagine losing all trace of your family and tribe. Your whanau and your iwi. Your whakapapa—your genealogy—traced back over hundreds of years. The place you’d come from, the beach on which your ancestors’ waka had landed after that first long-ago voyage from Hawaiiki, the homeland. Your mountain and your river. She tried to imagine all that, and couldn’t. It was part of her, like it was part of every Maori, the connection to your place and your people. Losing it would feel like some vital organ being ripped from your body.

  Like deep purple. For vision, seeing beyond what your eyes could take in, and for sadness. And for the strength to bear it.

  “Ah, well,” Mary said. “Life is sad, eh. But good, too.” She put a hand on Marko’s cheek again. “Go show your girl the stars. Doesn’t matter whether you can see them up there or not, they’re still the same stars. Better to see them, though. It’s good that she sees the colors. She knows her Dreaming, I think.”

  Marko kissed her cheek and said, “I’m out with the sheep with Dad early tomorrow. Sleep well. It’s good to be home.”

  No place more different than Northland than this, he’d thought before they’d come. Nyree hadn’t been the only one who’d been nervous. Now, though, lying on the hillside above the house, a thick blanket under them and a sleeping bag over them, looking up at that other world, thousands of tiny lights forming patterns and splashes across the black background, with the shining pathway that was the Milky Way, the blurry white of the magellanic clouds, and the silent presence of the mountains, threat and livelihood both, surrounding them—he realized he’d been exactly wrong.

  “Different” was the city. “Different” was Auckland and Dunedin, buildings and light and people that crowded out the stars. The mountains, and the sea? Two parts of the same thing. The living world.

  Nyree sighed beside him and said, “Beautiful. Like a dot painting itself. This is a special place.”

  “Mm.” He had his arm around her, and her head was on his chest, the two of them an island of warmth in the cold night. And when they were too cold even under their sleeping bag, he took her back into the house, all the way to the little room in the attic, with the sloping ceilings he’d banged his head on so many times growing up, and made love to her.

  Slow and sweet and tender, the opposite of the wild night before. Too many feelings bouncing around inside him, and only one way he knew of to let those feelings out.

  Nyree’s face in the starlight. Nyree leaning down for a kiss, her hands in his hair, stroking over his shoulders like she couldn’t get enough of him. Nyree rocking her slow way to fulfillment with his hands and mouth helping her along, touching everything he could reach, trying to let her know how glad he was that she’d come with him, and how warm it had felt tonight to have her leaning against his knee while the music and his family and her presence filled the empty spaces inside him. He didn’t know how to say it, so he told her with his body instead, knowing it was better than any halting words he could have come up with.

  He let her wrap him up, too, in her hair, her kiss, her own stroking hands, her soft skin, and, always, her changeling’s eyes that looked all the way inside to the color of him. He knew she saw him, and he didn’t mind, because he also knew that the man he was worked for her.

  Maybe he wanted to say it after all, though, especially when she’d reached that first gasping orgasm, her head thrown back and his hands covering her full breasts. Looking like the best thing he had, and feeling like it, too. And after that, when he’d moved over her, had his fingers laced through hers and her arms stretched over her head, when her mouth was open and her eyes were closed, and everything she felt was there for him to see…

  Marko’s a ‘Show, don’t tell’ type of fella.

  Probably true.

  Nyree woke early the next morning, but only because Marko had woken earlier, before the sun had risen. She dressed in the postdawn chill, then headed downstairs in search of tea and warmth.

  She found both in the kitchen. Nothing here of the high-end, bare-surface flash of Marko’s. White cabinets, some with glass fronts showing off colorful mismatched plates and bowls. Burnished bronze door pulls, ancient dark-wood flooring, and a few wooden stools set at a center island. Over the sink, a vase under the big window held dried flowers that she’d bet had come from the garden, and in the corner, beside a huge round oak table and chairs, a wood stove sent out warmth.

  And the stooped figure of Mary frying bacon on the stove set into that island, whisking eggs in a bowl and adding milk. She looked up when Nyree came in, her face seaming with her smile.

  “What can I do to help?” Nyree asked.

  “Get yourself a cup of tea,” Mary said. “You can do the flowers, maybe.” She nodded to a basket of dried lavender and roses on the table, their stems tied together, and a collection of larger and smaller bags beside them, already filled with the fragrant mixture. “Put the old stuff in the bin, and do the new ones. Lavender in the little ones, and both in the big bags. Livvie does that for the guests. The little ones in the drawers, the big one in the closet. Makes it smell nice, eh. Nicer than sheep.”

  Nyree said, “Surely you’d rather do that and let me cook.”

  “No,” Mary said. “Cooking’s what I do. It’s good to have something to do. Good to move, too. I’m not going to get any straighter by sitting down.”

  Nyree got her tea, but moved basket and bags to the counter to work. “Marko has this,” she said, “this kind of counter. Only whiter. I don’t like them normally, don’t want to look at the cupboards while I e
at, but I just realized they’re nice for visiting while you cook.”

  Mary nodded, but didn’t answer. The silence stretched out, but was comfortable all the same, and Nyree busied herself with the sachets and let herself relax. After a few minutes, when Mary was slicing bread, the old lady said, “Different for you here, I think. The mountains.”

  “Yes,” Nyree said. “But you were right about the stars, that they’re the same wherever you are. I’ve missed the stars in Northland. I didn’t know there was a place where you could see them this much better.”

  “Same as me,” Mary said. “When I came here. The stars were the only thing that was the same.”

  “Where were you,” Nyree asked cautiously, “in Australia?”

  Mary’s lips didn’t tighten, but she may have gone a shade more still. “Madura Plains, that was the station. Edge of the Nullarbor, that was. The desert. Oh, it was brown, brown, brown. Dead. A bad place, that Nullarbor.”

  Nyree nearly shivered. Her worst nightmare, living her life without color. “It isn’t green here, either, though.”

  “Green—you don’t need green,” Mary said. “Only life.”

  That was when Ella wandered in. Wearing PJ pants that she’d tied below her round belly, and a top that she’d left unbuttoned from the waist down, so a strip of skin showed. Need to find some new ones, Nyree thought. The girl climbed onto the stool beside Nyree, picked up a bag, started stripping lavender, and said, “Caro’s still asleep, but I couldn’t.”

  Her grandmother looked up and focused her gaze on Ella’s face. Nyree got up, turned the jug on, and got down the herbal tea and a mug as Mary said, “Something bothering you, eh.”

  “I started thinking about the family,” Ella said. “How it’s not so awesome, down the hill with Mum, but it is here. And I wondered…” She looked down at the bag she was filling, the hair falling into her face, hiding it. “If it’s… all right. Giving the babies away, I mean. If I’m thinking of myself too much, and not about them. You did it, Amona, and you were younger than me. Auntie Livvie told me you were sixteen when you had Uncle Ander. Or younger, even.”