What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (3 page)

In the gang he was a ledge for legend, all that time he’d done and being staunch throughout it, not one falter in his (external) demeanour, his swagger, his walking the talk, which was effectively walking the landings, the stairs up and down to his cell, and the exercise yard out there in the days lovely or otherwise, and walking out to freedom, three times it’d been and every time like glory to God stuff, of being so good it felt the sentence’d been worth it jus’ to experience this — this sense of ’ppreciating freedom so much, then hardly out than he was walking back in, driven through the big gate in the prison van the new sentence ringing — no, not
ringing
. Intoning, in whiteman, edjacated Judge’s voice, not satisfied with putting a man away again have ta givim a fucken lecture, too — and walking into reception to the same old screw, Hoppy Hopwood, not a bad old fulla for a screw, that fatface smile of his: If it ain’t our old mate, Mulla. Welcome back, Mulla! Feeling good to be greeted like an old friend, even if it was by a screw, even if it was anutha sentence. For that brief moment a man felt good bein’ back on ole familiar.

Yeah, he remembered everything, so he gave anutha crooked smile, Tania was’er name. Used t’ sleep iner shades. Yeah, Jimmy nodding, so she did. ’Member that time she put herself on the block for all us fullas to fucker, she never took ’em off then neither. Yeah, Mulla remembered that, was Jimmy took his right as prez to be first, yeah he remembered that; and, if truth be known which it would never be or not from his mouth (not ’nless I meet me a nice woman I can talk to) how sad he’d felt for her but not so sad he didn’t get a horn on and take his turn ater when it came. After all.

But he did remember feeling sad for Tania that she’d done this to show her disapproval of Nig Heke (such a fine-looking specimen he was, too. Jus’ like his father, Jake. Jake The Muss, tha’s what they called him. All our bruthas admired him even though we made it out as hatred. The way he fronted the whole lot of us, on his fucken own, in that pub he ruled. Wonder where he is now? Somewhere good, I bet.) That was when Nig didn’t like the bruthas kicking the woman when they went around to the place to repossess the teevee for the Pakeha appliance shop owner in town.

Tania, tha’s it. Tania from Mangakino, I remember now. Mulla wondering what was coming next and why this talk; as well
thinking
Jimmy wouldn’t know something else about Tania, that story she tole him (and only me) of babysitting her kid brothers and sisters and going down to get them fish ’n’ chips and coming back and, well, the house the kids were in, it was (holy shit) fucken burning. Mulla remembered that, he’d take it to his grave withim. A grave coming sooner rather than later now Apeman was
accidentally
put in their midst. (If only I could figure out a way of warning the screws what they’ve done. They won’t be wanting a war. It’s only Apeman, his stupid fucken pride, and Jimmy here, his lying to cover his own cowardice he makes out is pride, that’ll make it war.) But then Mulla got a cunning idea. And so what trickled through with it was a kind of perverse courage. In a moment he was about to turn this on Jimmy Bad Horse.

What’s Tania got to do with Apeman, bro? I’m hanging out for that fucka’s blood. Jus’ gimme the order, boss, and I’m there. Glad inside at Jimmy’s confused frown, at the courage being, apparently, jus’ that.

She goes with Apeman. Tha’s his bitta twat. She changed sides. So? Mulla still couldn’t figure Jimmy’s angle, and anyway he was truly urgent with showing how he was gonna get this action down, he had it all figured out. If it could be called all, a simple screaming as he ran down the stairs brandishing the home-made knife from a stainless-steel fitting from the metal workshop machine room. To let the screws know there was gonna be some bad action and by the time he got down there, three floors, they’d have Apeman outta the way and maybe Mulla’d lose a few weeks remission for threatening behaviour, sumpthin’ like that, but leas’ it
wouldn’t be anutha six years for grievous bodily harm, or his own (not quite worthless) life of unrequited love out there in the free somewhere. So Mulla was chafing at the bit to act his part. Chafing. It solved everything.

So she’s his weakness. Jimmy frowning all ovah, he hadn’t ’spected this. Now listen, Jimmy summoned Mulla closer, about to change the fucken plan on a man which Mulla wasn’t having. (
Uh-uh
. No you don’t, Bad Horse.) Not when he had it all figured out.

So he threw down his mop. I’ll givim weakness. And he walked off for his cell, knowing he was leaving Jimmy staring after him either incredulously or knowingly, or both, but unable to do a fucken thing about it. Not a fucken thing.

Then he came out of his cell charging. His scream the main … cacophonous (last year’s crossword — I finished that one) echo in the prison wing. The high ceiling lights glinting off his smuggled precious bit of stainless steel. His facial tattoos jus’ like his Maori warrior ancestors of old, and if he believed enough in the acted scream maybe that, too, from them ole warrior days of fightin’, fightin’, fightin’, the necessary warrior madness. Screaming even louder when the screws looked up at him, hitting the second
landing
, and saw in their eyes the understanding he was coming for Apeman. By the first landing they’d formed a circle around Apeman though Ape was aping out trying to break out to meet this
screaming
challenge. Mulla Rota had to scream louder or he woulda laughed: for the firs’ time in his life something had worked. For the first time he’d done something right. Oh, and even in the midst, the last melodramatic moments of this act, Mulla Rota heard a song distinctive in his mind. Funny thing, it was soft. And by a black (yeah, black. Blackblackblack! Who says we can’t say or even think that word? Whadda stupid fucken rule that is.) The song was by a black singer, not actually black as in darkly brooding, unbearably sad. It jus’ meant something.

T
HE GRASS’D BEEN
cleared away yesterday by her mother when they visited on the sixth anniversary of her death, Beth and what remained of her family; so the nameplate was clear even if the painted indentation of name, date of birth and date of death was almost bled of its white by the sun, the elements that Polly never stopped wondering if her sister could still feel, specially the rain getting in through the lid that must now be, like, rotted in or why that slump in the earth? She always came the following day for a second visit on this yearly remembering; in fact, Polly Heke came several times a year and had done for the last two, from when she herself hit the same age as Grace’d been when she, uh, when she killed herself.

Yesterday, like all of Grace’s anniversary days, they, which was Beth, Abe and Huata, had first stood over Nig’s grave. And if a girl was long used to the fact that two of her siblings of six were
tragically
and long dead, it was Grace she felt for not the older brother she could not remember. That he’d been shot dead in a gang rival fight didn’t help Polly’s memories; she hated the gangs, they looked, acted, and were, disgusting. And those horrible tattoos all over them, on their faces, big kids posing as olden day Maori warriors and thinking everyone was fooled. (Well, I’m not. Gangs suck.)

It seemed strange now that she should be older by two years than her older sister, her only sister (and that hurt the more). She remembered Grace more than anyone — anyone — on this whole funny, sometimes confusing, but sometimes glorious earth, and darkly and blackly sad when she thought of Grace, even though it’d been six years now. She remembered Grace’s protectiveness, even though she hardly had memories at all of who and what Grace protected her and Huata from, which was their father. Fucken Jake. Who she saw from time to time but only by chance and from a distance. A couple of times sitting in a bus. Apparently he’d made all their lives a living hell with his drinking and violence, though Mum said, as if with pride in the bastard, never against them. And she and Abe argued that just being around it was against them, from what they’d learned at school, being told about domestic
violence and effects on children growing up. How Beth could sort of stick up for the man after what he’d put her through, Polly just couldn’t understand. As for what he did to Grace, and that it had been directly responsible for why she took her life — each time she took her thoughts too deep into it she heard in her mind a female cry, a distinct Oh!

Polly Heke only remembered Jake’s voice, his singing voice, which she hated to admit to herself was rather a good one, or so she recalled, even if dimly, and good stick-up-for-the-ex Mum
confirming
he did have a good singing voice and he could dance. (But I still hate him.) And she always would. Specially on Grace’s anniversary days; it built up like nervousness before an exam did Grace’s remembered last day on earth. Nor did Polly buy that talk of her mother’s that the letter Grace left said she
thought
it was Jake who was doing the bad things to her, since it was at night he, Jake The Rapist his own kids called him, did his awful business on his own daughter. He must’ve done it. Why would Grace lie?

She still plucked at the grass around the stone nameplate, as she ran her forefinger over the indented name, starting as she always did from the E and finishing at the G, for that’s what her friend Toot used to call her: G. But he could never come to her grave, nor talk about his friendship with her. When he moved in with the family he used to talk about killing Jake, if he talked at all. But he was over that now and right into his rugby. People were saying he could go far in the game, but you know with their usual, If only, tacked on. If only the boy’d train more. If only he had a more consistent attitude. How would they like it living the life he did, of actually living in a car wreck right outside his parents’ front door! Where would Toot learn discipline from having a life like that? They should leave him alone, or put him in the rep team regardless and then persuade him from there.

What bothered Polly, too, was how could she be older than someone who was born before her? In her mind Grace was always older. She wasn’t the — the thing down there, height of Polly herself since she was tall like her father, beneath the weight of earth, the girl aged thirteen when she put herself to sleep, she was growing into a beautiful woman as her kid sister Polly hoped she in turn would grow into. Though in her heart of hearts, she knew she
was now older than the suspended forever-in-time sister; Grace was thirteen. She’d stopped existing at that age. But then she hadn’t: she existed in Polly’s mind, dwelled in her (virgin) womb, floated in the liquid (tears) of her (loving, sisterly) existence. She was a girl who’d put a rope around her (gracefully long and slender) neck, tied to a branch on a tree at the Trambert property (why the Trambert place?) and jumped. That’s what she was. Polly Heke, your big sister is a was.

No! You’re
not
a was.

She was not a photograph that looked natural because no one in the Heke house at that time had a camera and the ones Mum had had done were from the class photograph when Grace was in form 3, which the photographer separated out from the classmates (as if Grace was born to be alone even when she’d been in a group
photograph
). She’d put aside her own suffering for as long as she could to give her younger siblings comfort, till that — Polly every time had to wipe at her eyes to stop the crying, six years this’d been burning and tearing at her, the more as she got older and began to contemplate the enormity of it — till that visit to Boogie in the rental car which she did remember, the car she did, the smell of newness and the luxury of the back seating, the visit that never happened. Poor Boogie waiting in a boys’ home, poor Mum’d saved and saved to hire the rental car, slaved to make a big feast of a picnic to eat with Boogie at his court-imposed Riverton residence, and they never got there. (We never got there.) Which she couldn’t remember. Only the terrible fuss next day of Grace being identified down at the hospital morgue. It was that night.

So she wiped at her eyes, she was sick of crying, it didn’t change a thing, and she walked past the line of pine trees, avoiding Nig’s grave (one is more than enough, sorry, Nig) and got a recall that that day had been quite cool, though this day was warm, and there was wonderful mass singing. But she dismissed that, too, as
meaningless
after the event, blaming most people in her mind for allowing a girl’s life, her potential, to be self-extinguished like that. And she sat in the bus shelter and got thought of her father, a man in his forties without a car, and how life had not only left him behind but he
probably
also missed his share of buses, too, from being hungover. The black bastard. Dirty, raping, incestuous, drunken black bastard.

T
HIS IS WHERE
she would have walked — or run. Polly Heke very much hoped her sister had run (swiftly) to her self-taken death. Though now it was three more streets wide with new urban development where in Grace’s day it had been a paddock. Their State house had backed onto it, Polly remembered that place more than anything, the two-storey grimness of it, the neighbour through the wall next door, the streets she couldn’t now imagine she had been born and raised in, not now they were in Charlie Bennett’s house (wonder when she’s gonna marry him?); it was scary coming back here like this, and confusing to start with because the new suburb stretched out hundreds of little boxes from their old place. Not that she was now living in ritzville, it was just a couple of steps up from this.

The looks she got; though there was one girl who in the middle of about to say something nasty had suddenly recognised her (I recognised you, too, Lena) so put a hand to her mouth, mumbled Polly’s name and pulled her two girlfriends away. Polly thought she heard Lena say, leave her. She’s cool. But not cool enough for Lena to linger and talk, say an old friend’s name.

The strip of paddock she found was about half a width of a football field. Back on the rise of her old street she was able to see over the high brick wall (I don’t remember it being that high) the Trambert house already with lights on when dusk was still coming down. And she could see the tree, a huge one it was, a towering spread losing to autumn coming on. Found her heart hammering. And her thoughts running parallel with the gathering dark. (Or my sister.) Trying to imagine what Grace must have been thinking. And why the Trambert place? Why there?

Sheep grazed in the paddock, taking no notice of her
presence
, though she knew there’d be plenty of eyes out those little box windows wondering at her. Stuff them. Let ’em wonder. (Why the Tramberts?) Her mother said the man himself had come to the funeral, a fine-looking man she said and with great dignity. He’d come to the house, too, just to pay his respects and ask if there was anything he could do. She said he’d got awkward all of a sudden and then she realised it was because he wanted to give her money. (But she didn’t take it. Good for you, Mum!) Not that this Trambert man had meant anything except kindness. Though the
neighbourhood
was talking when Grace was hardly in her grave that there
must’ve been something going on between them. Polly could hear the voices now — when she was too young to hear them at the time — So why’d he offer the mother money if he wasn’t, you know? And why’d she pick his tree to do it off, there’s plenty trees closer than his place. But the letter from Grace ended that: it was Jake, her own father. Grace’d given the letter to Toot and Toot gave it to Beth and that was it for Mister Jake The Rapist Muss. Oh, how she hated the man. Hated him.

It didn’t take any figuring to know Trambert’s missing land was money in the bank. Money. It was one thing Polly Heke
couldn’t
get her mind around; she got emotional, she got angry, she got resentful and envious (when I’m not an envious person normally, not even at Kylie Leech getting a modelling contract up in Auckland). For it seemed to her that somehow white people — come to think of it, Asians, too, and probably even more so — had ensnared money with rules and mysteries only they knew so brown people, Maoris and Pacific Islanders, couldn’t get their hands on it. And where she was right now, moving across a shortened stretch of land (I’m trespassing, hahaha!) behind her housing brownskins, it was like a one-way bulldozer carving out little pockets of area for a moneyless brown family to live in, whilst shunting the pay dirt over to the Tramberts. The fucken Tramberts, though she tried not to swear. Especially that Charlie had near fully converted his adopted Heke children to his way of thinking, which was about dignity and — shit, she used to think it was — stuff like that. Swearing, specially for a female, was on his hit list. (Well, I’m swearing now, Charlie Mr Welfare Officer middle-class Maori. Polly Heke’s saying that Mr fucken Trambert gets to have all the money so fuck him.) Though she did put a somewhat guilty hand to her mouth at those thoughts, or those forbidden words, that is.

Grace’d never said anything about the Tramberts. Though she might’ve and Polly didn’t remember; it was a long time ago. Now she was standing in the part shadow of the very tree Grace took her life on. Or from, as the Pine Block people put it. Part shadow because as she got closer the shadow came from the old brick wall and less the tree, which she thought must be oak for no other reason than oak would be these people. (These lucky white bastard people.) Why the Tramberts?

When she looked up at the wall several centimetres taller than her for the second time, she could see a clear line of it having been added to, though it was the same style brick. That got to her; it meant Grace must have been able to see into the house. She might have crouched right here at this spot and peered in. What would she have seen? Polly followed the wall, heedless of being seen, not as if anyone would think she was a burglar, she giggled at the thought and at her boldness.

She ran a hand lightly along the brick as she walked in its constructed shadow. Then it was sun rays at their last low angle as she came around the corner; and all was beautiful reds and pinks of backlit and underlighted cloud formation, and she had to shield her eyes until adjustment came. Sandpaper to the running fingers’ touch she put end to that before her fingers bled. The wall stretched out for some considerable distance so it was some house in there. Or grounds at least. She moved out from the wall until she could see the roof of the house, grey it was, they looked like stone rectangles. Turning, she could see the tree, less what the wall cut off, and she tried to pick what branch it might have been, not the picture itself, of (my) her sis Grace hanging; that had been
imagined
and come forth in dreams, vomited out of her guts, her heart, a hundred times over. It remained a vivid, stark picture, but one with less meaning than what had brought it about. In her more sensible sixteenth year, Polly Heke thought of the death as the final miserable moments lasting however briefly long they did. But the life before it, leading up to it, as a never-ending — not nightmare, it was worse than that — as an endless lying out in this paddock, middle of bitterly cold, raining winter night with not even stars for comfort. That’s what Grace Heke must have felt life was like. (And you —
youuu
—) Polly suddenly trembling in her anger (you didn’t even think about what she was going through) as she thought of her father, all six foot three inches of him, of old measurement since he was from that era, of raping fatherhood.

At the next corner there was a long driveway, which took some working out and only from the line of trees and deduction and the break in the wall — when she got the courage to step out to get view of it — and open iron gates. Now she definitely was a trespasser, as well feeling suddenly like the girl Charlie Bennett’s
influence and her mother’s good sense and love for the man had made her: sort of, well, a better class without being fancy-dancy about it, but not like what was behind that brick wall living in the grey-slated, white house she could see a slice of through the wrought-iron gate. Charlie Bennett’s class was lower than that and Polly Heke was glad it was. (Happy as I am.) But I’m no Pine Block girl out here in a lost state, a wretched state, about to end her life for reasons unknown on the property of someone she neither knew nor was remotely like, no. I’m not here to commit suicide, I just want to understand, to put my mind at rest; and if they come out and ask me what I’m doing, I won’t be no Pine Block bitch with attitude and thieving intentions casing the place, tell them I was just looking, that’s all. Or just passing, even if on their land.