Page 82 of Just Say (Hell) No
“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.”
“Not by myself, I didn’t,” her grandmother said.
“All right,” Ella said. “But Mum did it by herself, or almost.”
“She’s your model, then,” Mary said.
Nyree brought the tea over and said, “I’ll go up and…” She tried to think of what. “Get ready,” she added lamely.
“Nah,” Ella said. “Don’t go. I need to ask you. Don’t Maori have something like this? Like… you don’t give your kids away, not to strangers.”
“No,” Nyree said, sitting down again. “Or yes. You mean whangai, when somebody else in the whanau takes the baby, so he can stay in his place, with his people. Because to Maori, the whanau is big, not just your mum and dad, and your… place matters, and you need to know your iwi. But you’re not Maori, and there’s nobody to take them, not that I know.” She thought a little more, then added, “Also—whydoessomebody take them, in a Maori whanau? Because the mum’s too young, or for some other reason. Maybe because she needs to finish school and then go to University, because she’s good at maths. And because it’s better for the boys to have more family around. Two parents, or a grandmother, grandfather, aunties and uncles and cousins, there to help. Butparents.That’s the most important. People who want that baby. Or those babies.”
“But I do have some of that,” Ella said. “Here, I mean. I thought this would be easier. An easier choice. I thought it was right, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s selfish after all.”
“No,” Mary said. “Not selfish. Just because they have to leave you—that doesn’t mean they don’t know where they come from, where their birthplace is. It doesn’t mean they don’t know their Dreaming.”
“I don’t think I have a Dreaming,” Ella said sadly. “All I have is being confused.”
“Their Dreaming is the place,” Mary said, cutting the bread into chunks and putting it in a glass dish. “And the people. Your past, and your people’s past. What Nyree says. But you can tell them. They don’t have to have their past wiped out. Not gone like it was nothing.”
“Open adoption, you mean,” Ella said. “I thought it was better for it not to be that way. That they could start over with their new family, and I could start over, too.”
“Not better,” Mary said. “You can’t wipe out the past. You can try to forget your babies in your mind, but your body won’t forget. It will never forget.”
“Oh,” Ella said, and her chin wobbled. “So… it’s better if I keep them?”
“No,” Mary said. “It’s better if they know where they came from. And it’s better for you to feel sad. It doesn’t kill you, sadness. It won’t be the only sadness. Just the first one.”
Marko washed up in the toilet built into one corner of the mudroom, then pulled off his gumboots, hung up his jacket, and headed into the kitchen with his dad.
“I smell bacon,” he said, stooping to give Amona a kiss. “Nyree doesn’t cook for me, can you believe it?”
“She’s busy, maybe,” Amona said, and Marko had to laugh.
“Yeh,” he said. “She is. Three jobs, now I think of it. At the restaurant, and painting, and helping Ella. And she told me cooking wasn’t part of the deal.” He sighed. “Waiting for Nyree to crack… that can feel like a long wait.”
He shot Nyree a look, but of course she wasn’t blushing. She was laying the table, and all she said was, “True. But then, you’re a man who loves a challenge.”
“I do.” He went over and gave her her own kiss. He felt good. The cold air, the mountains, the sheep. Whistling to the dogs and watching them do their job, nipping at the animals’ heels, herding a mob of four hundred as smoothly as if you already had them in the chute. And working alongside his dad. A different kind of team, but a good one.
Breakfast was quiet, as usual, focused on the business of eating. They were just finishing up when the doorbell rang. Loudly.
His mother set down her napkin and stood up. “That’ll be for the B&B. The cards said ‘Surprises’ today, after all. I got breakfast first, though.”
When she came back in, though, it wasn’t B&B guests at all. At least it didn’t look like it to Marko, not from his mum’s body language. A tall, handsome, brown-skinned man, a brunette woman, and a boy of sixteen or seventeen, nearly as tall as his father.
“Sorry to interrupt your meal,” the man said. “But we just heard what happened, and that Ella’s home again. Julian here has something he needs to say.”
They moved to the lounge. All of them. And if Marko had gone still, his dad had gone more so. Everyone took a seat, but at a nod from his own grim-faced father, Julian stood with his hands clasped in front of him, swallowed hard enough that you could see his Adam’s apple bobbing, and said, “Ella’s baby. I’m the, uh… dad, I guess. So I came to ask what I should do.”
Ella said, her voice nearly steady, “Nothing, that’s what. I’m taking care of it. Caro didn’t need to tell you I was coming.” She shot a look at her cousin. “And it’s notababy anyway. It’s two babies. Twins.”
