True Stars

by Kidman, Fiona

  Rose had put off her promise to visit her niece all day. It was not that she did not want to see Larissa. But she was afraid of what she might find. And of what she and Larissa might have to say to each other. Or worse, simply what they would not say.

  Gary leaned against the door frame of the caravan, his knees drawn up under his chin. He had hardly said a word to her. Suddenly he turned his head in the direction of her car and smiled. His teeth looked yellow when he spoke.

  ‘Pity about the car. Been in an accident?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Tsst. Bit of careless driving, eh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry. Nosy parker, eh? That what you’re thinking?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well what were you thinking?’

  That was when she tossed her head and smiled. ‘What fun it must be to live in a park like this. Friendly.’

  ‘What fun.’ He mimicked her. ‘Want to trade? Want to live here?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’ She raised her eyes and saw Larissa as she walked towards them. She stood very still. Going back, further again, no stopping once you’d begun. She saw Larissa across the edges of her life. She saw her always. She did not tell her children that she saw Larissa, that she was special. They would never have understood why the child occupied her heart. They would have felt themselves betrayed, as if Larissa, their unkempt and wayward cousin, had staked out an area that was specially reserved for them.

  ‘You can keep her,’ Katrina said. Paul had gone and Katrina was alone.

  ‘We’ve got two children already,’ said Rose. Indeed, Richard was newborn. ‘How long do you want us to keep her?’

  ‘For good.’

  ‘Katrina, we’ll help you. You’ll get over this.’

  ‘I am. That’s why I’m giving her to you.’

  ‘What about Paul?’

  ‘He doesn’t want her either.’

  In the gaunt suburb where Rose cared for her, Larissa learned slowly to play like other children. She ate, seemingly all the time, even dirt. Especially dirt. She shitted black earth. She ate with her hands; she grew fat.

  Rose feared that the child was mute, maybe retarded. Sometimes she didn’t seem to recognise her, turned her attention to total strangers in shops and reached out her arms to them. Rose was always tired and Richard kept her awake at night. One day she hit Larissa and shook her until her nose began to bleed. At the sight of the blood she stopped, appalled, and fell to her knees in the garden with the child. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Forgive me Larissa, be all right, please. Give me another chance.’

  Olivia, who was four, stood watching with wide, strained eyes. She walked away from her mother as if she could not bear what she had seen.

  Days, or maybe it was weeks, later, Rose could not remember, for time passed in a blur, the child put her arms up to her and spoke: ‘Mummy.’

  And later, the same day: ‘Kiss. Gizz a kiss.’ After that she had new words every day.

  Katrina came to visit one day, taking time off from her new job in a chemist’s shop. She was pale but she looked all right, just ordinary. She acted as if she was Larissa’s distant aunt, as if she was really one of Rose’s children. Larissa ignored her mother, chanting songs to herself and playing with Richard who had begun to crawl.

  An appointment was made the next day for Rose to see welfare. Kit came with her. He had been trying to get her to see the doctor or anyone who might help, because she was so quiet and thin that he was frightened for her.

  ‘I’m afraid her mother might come and take her away,’ Rose said to the welfare worker.

  ‘She’s not yours to keep,’ the welfare woman said. She was kind, patient, but didn’t appear to understand what Rose was saying. ‘You’re not trying to abduct the child, are you?’

  ‘Abduct? She was given to me.’

  Months passed. One day, Katrina came and took Larissa away. She felt better about having her now, she said, and Paul had said he would see her at the weekends. The minute she picked her up, actually touching her, Larissa turned her back on Rose, ignoring her as totally as if she had never seen her.

  For awhile her children grieved, mystified that their sister had gone, then gradually seemed relieved as their mother had more time for them. Rose picked up again with some of her more interesting friends whom she hadn’t had time for lately, and went to coffee mornings. She got elected to some committees, and started to speak forthrightly on a number of topics.

  Then for a year or so Katrina and Larissa stayed away, although Katrina and Rose phoned each other from time to time. When they began to visit again Larissa had resumed her position as a cousin. She was a helpful quiet child, compliant when she was with Rose, usually guarded, although sometimes when they were alone, like the day at the lake, she seemed very pleased that Rose was there.

  It was when Katrina went away with Wolf, and Larissa came to live with them the second time, that the violence began. ‘You let her take me, if you loved me you would never have given me back to her,’ Larissa screamed once when she and Rose were fighting. The interminable shrieking arguments of early adolescence wore Rose down.

  ‘She was your mother. She is. She had a right.’

  ‘She was a drug addict.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘She’d got sacked from her job for pinching pills.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Bullshit, bullshit, is that all you can say? Who’s la-di-da now? I know. My friend’s father is the chemist that sacked her. Everyone knew. Except you.’

  There was the moment of suddenly knowing it was true, what she’d never thought of. And of Kit nodding when she told him. He’d always known.

  ‘Your mother’s okay now,’ Rose had said, the next time the subject came up.

  ‘Yeah, run away with the big bad Wolf,’ Larissa sneered. ‘I suppose if she turned up tomorrow you’d hand me back again.’

  ‘I expect I would.’

  ‘The caravan looks nice,’ said Rose.

  ‘Want it?’ said Larissa, stopping in front of her. She tapped a cigarette out of its pack.

  ‘I’ve already offered it to her,’ Gary said. ‘The lady’s choosy about her accomodation.’

  ‘Fits. What the fuck do you want?’

  ‘I brought you some tomato preserve. I thought it might come in useful.’

  ‘Christ, what do you think this is? The church fair?’

  ‘You used to like it.’ Rose held out ajar in each hand.

  Larissa stood, not moving to take it, blowing smoke towards Rose. Gary leaned forward and plucked ajar out of Rose’s hand.

  ‘Lady Bountiful, eh?’ He contemplated the jar, smiled, turned it over, rocking the contents under the lid.

  Feeling foolish now, she wanted to retrieve it or apologise.

  ‘Pretty weird stuff,’ Gary said, rotating the bottle. ‘Pretty weird fucking juice.’

  Rose stepped forward, holding out her hand. She couldn’t take her eyes off the jar.

  With a quick stabbing movement he smashed it against the metal frame of the caravan door. Glass flew through the air. The red tomato preserve bled down the wall, carrying more glass with it.

  ‘Here.’ He shoved the jagged dripping edge towards her and bared his teeth.

  Stepping backwards, she put up her hands as if to ward him off.

  ‘You’ll have to clean that up,’ he said to Larissa, tossing the jar on the ground.

  ‘Yeah.’ Larissa contemplated the mess, looked sideways at Rose. ‘Tell that bloody whoring mother of mine to keep her dogs off me.’

  Clumsily Rose turned to open the car door.

  ‘If the cap fits wear it,’ Larissa said, softly, but not so much that Rose would miss it above the noise of the motor.

  Back at home Roach had had his throat cut. His body was laid neatly across the driveway in front of the garage door. It was natural to think of someone like Gary. Only Roach’s body was still very warm, as if he had died only minutes befo
re.

  Wiki Muru, whom Rose Kendall had once thought of as her friend when they sat demonstrating on the road leading into Weyville, had become disenchanted with her alliance with the liberal Pakehas in the town. It was a gradual process at first, but then it accelerated faster than anyone, herself included, could have seen.

  After the tour she had started supervising one of the work schemes that the Labour Department ran. She got several gang members who had been unemployed for a long time into work, and a lot of young people who had gone away to the cities started coming home because they’d heard there might be temporary work there which was better than none. You couldn’t say things were great, because Muldoon had left such a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and the town, like most of the country, and especially the smaller towns and cities where people most liked rugby, was still split in two over what had happened about the tour. There were those who said the protesters were shit-stirrers and communists who had tried to interfere with people’s freedom and that Maoris should be kept in reserves like the blacks in Africa; and those who had been on the tour and wanted to change things. The people who wanted Maoris put in reserves, and said as much, claimed that do-gooders like Wiki were turning Weyville into one of the reserves, which was not exactly what they had in mind; they meant reserves away from them. Maybe in the cities, where the wanky liberals were anyway.

  But the work schemes kept the lid on things. Wiki slaved her butt off night and day. She lost weight, stopped smoking, and wore her bone carving with new pride.

  After the Government changed, just the way they had all hoped, the work schemes got closed down and the kids were still in the town and had nothing to do. Neither she nor the elders could stop the gangs starting up trouble again. Two of her sons, including Henare, had moved into the Mob. Henare had recently imported a pit bull terrier illegally through the wharves at Napier and he never took his black sunglasses off day or, as far as anyone could tell, night. The Muru boys’ chapter was importing junked down Japanese cars that were so short on parts you could class them as disposables. Street fighting broke out most nights round pub closing time and there had been seven rapes in the town in four months. People began staying inside after dark. Wiki went to see Kit Kendall twice to find out if there was any way the gangs could get back into work; he said he was sorry, but in a free market economy work schemes were just not on. He’d told her that the youth of this country, Maoris included, had never had a greater incentive to get off their backsides and do something for themselves.

  ‘Do you mean that?’ Wiki had asked him.

  The story went that Kit Kendall had simply stared into middle distance, though he had not discussed the matter with Rose.

  It was some time since Wiki had spoken to the Kendalls, Toni Warner, the Ryans, the Deckers, the Appleblooms or anyone else who had been on the tour marches, but when she heard about the unemployment march she had got a group together and they’d all gone along. In justifying it to the kaumatua she said they had to do something; maybe something good would come out of it and she was still ready for a fight, she’d just been waiting for one to come along. You couldn’t give up hope.

  When the march was over and the television cameras stopped rolling, everyone was flushed with triumph. Wiki’s group were part of the crowd, shouting and cheering, and jeering as well, every time the Government was mentioned. They would march all the way to Wellington, they said.

  Then Larry Verschoelt got up and said that was all very well, but what sort of work did these people want? There wasn’t enough work for white people these days, and he didn’t see why niggers should be doing white men’s jobs. When Matt went over and tried to explain to Wiki about Larry, she said they’d all decided to march, but if any of the local branch members came along she wouldn’t guarantee their safety because some of her people were talking about killing a few whites and she might just help them do it. Matt and Harry and Toni had a meeting and drafted a statement saying that they thought it would be culturally insensitive of them to join the march, and how really pleasing it was that Wiki’s group had taken this initiative. So far they hadn’t issued the statement.

  In the high early morning sun, Rose worked steadily. She cleared dead broom and gorse away from a corner of the garden. Rotted leaves had formed a rich dark layer across the earth where camellias and a holly bush fought for survival. She tied the holly bush back, being careful not to scratch her hands and bare arms. A hydrangea stood revealed for the first time and the two flowerheads that had struggled towards the light were such deep purplish-blue that she paused to consider them with regret. She could imagine cultivating colour like that.

  A kingfisher flashed across the expanse of sky between the overgrown ngaios rearing above the spot where she was digging, and away down the bank. The ngaios’ leaves undulated like the green Indian Ocean in which she had once paddled; the boughs were sharks among the waves. Tucked behind the trees stood a small glasshouse with several broken panes, indiscernible from the house.

  On the rainbow in the white face of her watch she noted that it was 10.15. She made the decision there and then to leave Weyville.

  She went inside and got bread and laid it on the ground. Starlings and some sparrows congregated, scuffing the long grasses with their feet and beaks. She watched them squabble and squawk, and smiled. She could have put nesting boxes in the trees.

  Somebody else would have to do it now.

  She took her spade and turned the soil where she had cleared a space. It was a new spade, purchased the day before. The blade sliced cleanly through the damp earth, disturbing slaters. When she had been working for five minutes or so, she stood back and surveyed the hole she had dug, glanced at the cardboard carton in which she had brought home her last lot of groceries. It would almost fit.

  ‘Can I help?’

  Toni’s voice startled her so much she almost put the spade through her shoe.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Passing by.’

  ‘Come to gloat?’

  Toni looked at her, as if she was strange, she thought. Toni had no right to look at her like that.

  ‘I hear your march gets underway again today. Why aren’t you on it?’

  ‘It leaves at midday. It’s not my march.’

  ‘But you’ll be going?.’

  ‘I’m not marching to Wellington.’

  ‘Who is? Or is that top secret?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not many.’ Her face reddened.

  ‘You had a great time yesterday, I thought you’d all have gone.’

  Toni couldn’t help exulting. ‘There were two thousand.’

  ‘You got on telly. Congratulations.’

  ‘Oh Rose.’

  ‘Oh Rose, what? I could have been there too?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She hesitated. ‘Wiki’s leading the Wellington march.’

  ‘Brilliant. It should be a good show. Just what you all need. Maori land march all over again.’

  ‘It’s a march of the unemployed.’

  ‘C’mon Toni, where’s your spirit? You should be getting your tent together. Your billy. New pair of Reeboks.’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘Isn’t it? What’s it like Toni, tell me.’

  ‘I didn’t come round to talk about that.’

  ‘But I’m asking you.’

  ‘Wiki just wants a small group from Weyville, a really representative group of the unemployed … she says we got things started but now it’s over to them. She’s probably right, if all the middle-class hangers-on want to get on the bandwagon it’ll look like something else.’ She blushed.

  ‘Wiki’s not talking to Pakehas any more? Even Martin Luther King used to ask the whites along.’

  ‘Some of the union people are going.’

  ‘So what happens, does she hold interviews along the way? What about all the rural poor you were spouting about the other night? I mean, hell, you want a big march don’t you?’

  ‘You soun
d as if you want it to happen.’

  ‘I just want to know what went on between your moments of high drama in the main street of Weyville and this morning’s attack of the bleeding hearts.’

  Only of course Rose did know, because Harry the wet had already told Kit.

  ‘Rose, you don’t know what’s going on around you.’ Toni squatted on the ground beside her friend.

  ‘No? You mean people don’t tell me things to my face any more?’

  ‘You’re not engaged with reality.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very profound and meaningful, Toni.’

  ‘People like you.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ve noticed.’ Rose turned another lump of earth, uncovering beer bottles and a rusted can. She picked up the can and studied it. ‘I’m worried about chlorofluorocarbons,’ she said. ‘And the hole in the ozone layer. And slam dancing. And mercury levels in the sea. And the greenhouse effect. I’m scared especially shitless about the greenhouse effect, it’s just as well I don’t live by the sea. And about glue sniffing, though not by the people who sniff, though I wish I knew how to get them to stop. And about my kids dying in some random and senseless way and, almost worse, about them wanting and planning to die. And designer drugs, and the moral majority, and buildings falling down when I’m inside them.’

  ‘And the state of race relations in this country and the closure of the post offices, and why they’re cutting back on the DPB?’

  ‘I love Kit.’

  ‘Oh sure. That’s a good idea. Love Kit and don’t worry about any single goddamn thing that you can actually do something about. That all makes sense, everything you’ve said.’

  ‘What d’you want me to say? That I don’t support Kit? Anyway, I can do something about the things that worry me. I don’t buy things in spray cans any more.’ She dropkicked the rusty can, lifting it skywards, caught it in her hand.

  ‘The rest of us don’t need to love Kit. It’s got to be too much of a hassle.’