Black Marks on the White Page

by Witi Ihimaera

  ‘Mrs Randall takes in lodgers,’ said Eloise. ‘Aroha, take her to Mrs Randall’s, will you? I have this lot to account for. No knowing what might happen if I leave them to their own machinations.’ Eloise was always using words that were too big for the meaning she intended.

  Aroha’s sullenness couldn’t withstand the faint glow that emanated from the Birdwoman. Her hair seemed luminous and so marvellously soft that Aroha wanted to reach out but couldn’t, for who knew what protection a woman such as this carried, seen or unseen? She’d never been so close to anyone quite so meticulous and, frankly, shiny. It was only moments before she found herself telling the stranger all the news of the town, including even her most delicious gossip.

  There was a reason no one had been watching, the Birdwoman learnt, even though there were sentries on every hill. They were too busy watching each other and their firearms, too busy grappling with the ways of war, which, no matter how many times they went through it, could not be made intelligible. She knew they noticed her strangeness but no one had the energy to concern themselves about it.

  Before now, she had only known them as the clumsy ones who took the small and fluttering bodies of her kin for food and feathers, even beaks and talons. And though it had sorrowed her, she knew there was a balance to it. The people called their greetings and gave their thanks, but they hunted. It was an old deal made right at the beginning: her line would be sacrificed to theirs. But the gods gave them two gifts to cope with the hurt — abundance, and a lack of other predators.

  She got used to their ways. She helped. There were people to organise and mouths to feed. She kept her clothed dignity, but didn’t mind rolling up her sleeves. And time passed. And the wars ended, but then even more people were hungry, and she didn’t know if the old ones had been right after all — could she really do anything to help? Her sleeves remained rolled up, and she saw everything that had caused her family to send her to the ground — how they struggled, these landwalkers, her upright naked friends, how they hurt themselves like little children who had not yet learnt how to hold a knife safely or run without tripping.

  SHE HAD BEEN SO busy with the people and their wars that she didn’t notice until it was done. They never took her hunting, they’d seen her disapproval and didn’t want to anger her. But one day they emerged from the forest with empty hands, nothing to offer their children.

  ‘It’s the rats,’ a man said.

  ‘It might be the cats,’ Eloise nodded toward the friendly feral at her feet.

  ‘It’s the white man.’ This was an old koro who was known to shake his stick and rant about the changing world. ‘They take them for their museums. Put them under glass to stare at. I saw it when I went over there as a boy on the ships …’

  ‘Āe, āe, koro,’ the young ones rolled their eyes. They’d heard about the ships, the ships. But that was long ago. Before all the wars. The wars hardened them, and made them so tired.

  ‘They trade in them. Take them by the hundreds.’

  No one wanted to hear this part. No one wanted to believe it. But she heard.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what happened to them now. There’s none left to take. Haven’t seen a huia since I was a boy.’

  Could it be that she had been gone so long? Could it be that she hadn’t noticed the voices of her elders fading? Would she be stuck in this place with these fleshy fools forever? No. They weren’t ready. How could they understand the gifts of her kind when they couldn’t even restrain themselves or others? All that killing.

  So she left, just as swiftly as she had come. She wandered between villages, her anger turned inwards, devoured by her grief. She forgot herself.

  It was a dark place she got into. She no longer held her head high, no longer dreamed of the future. Despair sat on her shoulders where her wings should have been. Darkness consumed her, the quivering lip of a dying abalone, grease in the barrel of a gun. Sometimes she did not see or hear any birds for weeks.

  Then, one day, she saw him, his great figure hunched so that he looked like one of hers, hair on his head shimmering in the way of the tūī. When he moved she thought she heard the whispered scrape of feather against feather. He came slowly, in a considered fashion, was heavy limbed, but when he turned a certain way — it was enough.

  ‘Lady,’ he said, and bowed.

  He was a dark-feathered mountain. He was the shape of her nights. He was ink spilt in a pool of oil, volcanic rock, onyx eyes. The black enveloped them. There had been so many long days, she had seen so many things she didn’t want to see. Lady, he said, and she liked the way the word curved around her and gave her a place to rest.

  They had many children.

  She had no time to remember herself then.

  ‘Mother,’ the children would call, ‘we’re hungry. Mother, we’re cold. Help us.’ Their mouths open with constant needs and demands. She was kept busy from the start of the day to the end.

  They worked hard together to grow the children. It was easier for her to forget the guilt-ache and shame of where she had come from, how she had let it get so bad, how she didn’t help her people. Better to let her children grow up in her husband’s world, without the burden of her knowledge. She settled on this as the right path, though her husband would sometimes look sidelong at her, as if considering some puzzle he couldn’t figure.

  ‘Wife, sometimes you seem very far away,’ he said one day.

  ‘I am here, husband, look at me. I am always here.’ But he was not convinced.

  ‘Yes, your body is here, but I see when you leave. It is like you are up there somewhere.’

  Even in a marriage, there is only so much you can hide. Or share.

  ‘You can tell me about it, if you wish,’ he said.

  ‘Sometimes I miss my family, but then I think of the children.’ That had been her answer. Focus on the children.

  It was difficult, then, when one by one the children began to lose their way.

  She watched them leave, sooner than she wished, on their own journeys of peril. But when her youngest son showed signs of following the same path, she took him aside.

  ‘There’s something I should have told you kids long ago.’ Her son stooped so that she could whisper in his ear. She told him where she had come from, about her own kind, how there were so few left. Their gifts. The covenant they had had with his father’s people. She told him how she had been sent a long time ago, and the telling was like an unravelling of all the things she had seen: the wars and despair, the museums and grief, the long, dark nights and the joy of making children.

  ‘You were hope made real,’ she told him. And she hoped it wasn’t too late, hoped that the knowing would help him, hoped that the story would make him stronger than he knew how to be.

  Her boy saw a world that was not what he thought it was. He saw many things that he hadn’t known possible before. He only had one question.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell everyone?’

  She thought how she should have opened her mouth when she kept it closed. How silence doesn’t help anything. But would they have heard her? Maybe she didn’t give them the chance.

  ‘Perhaps I should have spoken sooner. Perhaps not. It is time when it is time,’ she said, and placed her hand on her son’s shoulder.

  The unravelling of her story was an ending. The darkness came flooding back in. This time it wasn’t bleak or hurtful, it was a flash of curved beak in velvet dark. Black milk. The depths of Te-Kore-the-place-before-night. More inviting, more liquid than you ever expected black to be. Darkness that holds all of light in it. Home, she thought, and she heard the movement of feathers through air.

  THE STONE

  MICHAEL PULELOA

  1992

  It’s a big stone.

  Five feet tall.

  Cone-shaped. Upright.

  It’s smooth like skin.

  The father says, It’s time: The stone is ready. And they know it’ll take all six of them to move it.


  They’ve spent years and years and years with the stone. They’ve fed it and bathed it and watched it grow. Yes, the stone grows!

  THE MULTI-PLATINUM, GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING rock musician sitting in front of Francis Palikiko doesn’t look like he has money. He’s unshaven, in a tattered T-shirt and torn, faded jeans.

  The children, who had once been playing in the yard around the men, are now whispering to each other and when Francis hears one of them say the thin musician is kāpulu, he calls for Lei and asks his wife to take the children into the house. He knows, it’s time. He can’t stop the stone in his front yard anymore. He doesn’t want to.

  The only evidence of financial wealth — the only reason Francis is sitting with the rockstar right now — is the $60 million Gulfstream parked in front of the control tower and the open-field dirt parking lot at the Ho‘olehua Airport. He’s never seen anything like the jet, and he joked with the rockstar the first time they shook hands that the rockstar must really be a god. (If there’s one other reason Francis is still sitting right now, it’s the rockstar’s companion, Love. He hasn’t made up his mind about her, either.)

  They’re sitting at a picnic table under a 20' x 20' E-Z Up in Francis’s yard, less than two miles away from the airport. In a small yard in front of a small wooden house. There’s a little garage with an old rusty car on blocks. Mango trees. An old forklift. An old mini-dozer. And the rest of it is overgrown bush and koa haole.

  The rockstar has seen the stone, and though it’s not as grand in appearance as he’d hoped, if it’s what Francis Palikiko says it is, he’s still very much interested in purchasing it. It’s a beauty, the stone, and nothing like the ones he already owns, but there’s no doubt it’ll sit nicely with the renovations currently underway outside his Los Angeles home.

  The rockstar has brought an archeaologist with him. He introduces her as Love, and she doesn’t offer another name when she shakes Mr Palikiko’s hand. She’s here to substantiate the historical value of the stone and verify its authenticity. She’s brought copies of sketched images taken by early European explorers and once stored in the archives of the British Museum. And now, under the tent, after she takes another sip from a bottle of water, she shows the photocopied sketches to the men. She points out how the details in the image correspond to details on the stone in the yard. ‘It’s a definite match,’ Love says. ‘This is the one.’

  The rockstar slides the drawings of the stone toward him and lifts one of the copies to get a closer look. ‘It appears that way,’ he says. ‘I’m almost afraid to ask what it’s worth.’

  Francis lets out a laugh. He knows the couple hasn’t flown all this way to worry about cost. ‘It’s priceless,’ he says. ‘But you can make us one offer.’

  The rockstar, of course, is happy. He’s supposed to be in Italy right now, but the promise of obtaining one of the most storied stones in all of Hawai‘i’s history is too appealing to pass up. This moment makes Italy a stroll on the Venice Beach Boardwalk.

  The rockstar looks over at Love.

  Francis has seen it coming. He motions for the rockstar to take the photo over to the stone. He says, ‘Go. Take one closer look. Think about it.’

  The rockstar gets up and leaves the table. He heads for the stone. When he’s there, he lifts the paper in his hand next to the stone so he has both the photocopied sketch and the stone in his view. Before long, the rockstar says, ‘Any way we can get the original of this sketch from the museum, Love?’

  He decides the whole thing is destiny. Not for the family, but for the stone. They’re vessels, he thinks. It’s the stone that’s special. It’s been confirmed. And his family agrees.

  The stone heals them when they’re sick:

  Common colds, flus, fevers, pneumonia — no problem.

  Headaches, backpain, depression — no problem.

  Anxiety, hyperactivity, drug abuse — no problem.

  LOVE TELLS FRANCIS SHE has a PhD in archeology but Francis has never heard of the school. She’s been on assignment in Hawai‘i before, to the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, she tells him, but her last real fieldwork was in Egypt, at El Hibeh. She’s never been to Moloka‘i but she says the view from the jet and the short ride from the airport have already piqued her interest in the island. ‘Mr Palikiko,’ she whispers. ‘I’m hoping, really hoping, you’re not going to sell it.’

  Francis reaches for the remaining photocopies on the table. He’s a little stunned. He’s made up his mind, but he wants to hear what she has to say. ‘You came Moloka‘i to tell me no sell? Strange.’

  Love smiles. ‘This was a last-minute change of plans, Mr Palikiko. We’re supposed to be in Italy. We were going to look at art.’

  ‘That’s it, ah?’ asks Francis. He keeps his eyes on the sketches. ‘Real art.’

  ‘It’s quite a find. I’ll give you that. But sell it? That doesn’t seem like something a man like you …’

  Francis looks at her. ‘Huh, Ms Love? A man like me?’ He keeps his eyes fixed on her. He puts the papers back down on the table. He continues his stare.

  Love says, ‘You’ve got something truly remarkable. I don’t have to tell you that, but I will. You don’t want something like this sitting outside a mansion somewhere in LA, do you? There are probably museums …’

  ‘His yard, my yard. What’s da difference? Look around. At least it’ll have a nice view. Probably a pool.’

  Love smiles again. She likes him. ‘I can just tell him it isn’t the stone, Mr Palikiko. Think about it,’ she says. ‘If you really want to sell it, at least consult with a few museums.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Francis. It’s a question he’s not really expecting her to answer. ‘Because dey care? I tell you, if your boyfriend pay da price, he’ll care.’ He looks over at the rockstar, who is now leaning over with his face inches from the stone. ‘Eh, rockstar,’ he says. ‘You be one stone star, too!’ And he puts out another big laugh.

  They use a twenty pound ‘ō‘ō and brand new shovels and dollies. They have machinery, heavy equipment, but they use their hands. It takes a full day.

  They sweat.

  They bleed.

  They pray.

  They cry.

  And the stone cries, too. It sounds like singing birds, they say.

  THE ROCKSTAR IS BACK at the park-bench table. He places the photocopy of the stone onto a small pile of the others. He looks at Francis. ‘Don’t know these things like Love,’ he says. He points to the stone. ‘Good shape. How is that?’

  ‘It’s a stone,’ Francis says, and they both laugh.

  ‘I mean, what’ve you done? To keep it so beautiful?’

  ‘We’ll write things down,’ Francis says.

  Love looks over at the men and then reaches over for the photos on the table. She collects the photos of the stone, puts them into some kind of sequential order, and then places them neatly in a stack in front of her. ‘It’ll be quite a chore having to move it,’ she says.

  Francis keeps his attention on the rockstar. ‘We get ’im on your plane,’ he says. ‘A‘ole pilikia. No problem.’

  When Love smiles, Francis knows she’s just doing it to keep things civil, and as far as he’s concerned, it’s more than enough for him. She stands up with the stack of papers and says, ‘I’m going for another look. I’ll be there if you need me, boys.’ And she makes sure the men watch her as she walks away.

  The rockstar keeps his eyes on her until she’s sitting on the lawn, right next to the stone. ‘She’s beautiful,’ says the rockstar. ‘Smart, too.’ Then he continues, ‘I know what she told you when I was over there. I understand. I’ll take care of it, Mr Palikiko, the stone. You haven’t changed your mind?’

  Francis knows the stone. He believes the rockstar even though he also knows the rockstar himself doesn’t completely believe his own words. ‘Depends,’ says Francis.

  ‘I haven’t toured in a while, Mr Palikiko. Not recording this year, too.’

  ‘Then you’re in the righ
t place,’ says Francis. He points toward the stone. ‘There’s your inspiration.’

  The rockstar looks back at Love and the stone. He looks at them for about ten seconds. ‘Five hundred?’ he asks.

  Francis smiles. He keeps looking at the rockstar.

  ‘One?’

  ‘Higher.’

  ‘One-point-five?’

  ‘Higher.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Close.’

  The father doesn’t care about what they’ve done. And he doesn’t have to explain why they’ve done it, either. As far as he’s concerned, he’s listening to the stone.

  They’ve lived years and years and years with it.

  They’ve fed it and watched it grow.

  The stone called to him in the first place. So why should he explain himself? No, he won’t.

  No. He’s the one who heard it.

  THEY ARE SITTING AT the table under the shade of the E-Z Up. The rockstar and Love are on one side, Francis and his eldest son on the other. In the middle of the table there’s a large wooden bowl with a creamy, grey liquid that Francis tells them is ‘awa.

  ‘I know rockstars like their medicine,’ he says. And then he smiles. ‘No worry. Just try.’ His son stirs the ‘awa with a polished coconut shell, and Francis points, “Apu.’

  The boy pours ‘awa until the ‘apu is brimming, and the three of them watch as he carefully stands up and steps away from the table. They turn to watch the boy when he walks toward the stone and kneels at its side. He holds the ‘apu just above his head and then pours the ‘awa at the base of the stone. Francis says, ‘Ancestors first.’ Then he smiles at the rockstar and says, ‘Write that down.’

  The four of them sit at the table, the boy serving them one at a time in the same way he served the stone. The rockstar and Love ask questions, first about the stone, and then about life in general. Francis answers until he feels they’ve heard enough. Every now and then, the boy offers another round, and they drink.

  There’s dirt all over their bodies and cramps in their arms, but they don’t quit. They can’t. In order to move the stone, they tear up the lawn. They uproot trees. The stone wants to move and they’re doing it. Just them. A family. For the stone. For the family.