Page 138 of Catch a Kiwi
“There’ll be heaps of people there,” I said. “Not just whanau. Friends. Community members. You thought the birthday was heaps of people? This will be more.”
For all my talk,I hadn’t known anything at all. I hadn’t known I’d be sitting quietly with the rest of the whanau for days on end, wearing a wreath of kawakawa leaves on my head and not feeling stupid about it, as one person after the next stood up and spoke. As they talked to the old man like he was here with us still, because Maori believe the spirit hangs around for a bit after death, here to listen to what you say, to hear you express your love. After that, he’d really be gone.
Today, the last day, I was watching Hemi, in a black suit like the rest of us, standing up and walking to the front of the wharenui, beneath the carved rafters, the woven flax panels that lined the walls, their intricate design reminding me of what Matiu had said. That each of us was a thread in the weaving, or a strand of flax. That individually, we might be simple and we might seem insignificant, but together, we made a pattern. Maybe even something beautiful.
Hemi said, the words rolling from his mouth, rich and sonorous, “He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.”His voice broke on the final word, and he visibly steadied himself before he continued. “‘What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people. It is the people. It is the people.’ I was a stubborn kid. Raging against the world, eh. Sure I had the right to more, and wanting to go out and take it. Too much anger in my heart. Too much ambition in my chest. That was what I was for the first fifteen years ofmy life—a bird in a cage, wanting to fly. I came to live with Koro, then. He taught me how to live as tangata whenua, a person of the land. How to fish. How to listen to the stories. How to sing.” Another pause, and I could see the tears rolling down his cheeks when he went on. “How to care for something and someone beyond myself. At least, he thought he’d taught me. Turned out, maybe not so much.”
This was the last thing I’d expected. To see Hemi Te Mana, with all his dark power, laying himself bare. I watched and I listened, and so did everybody else in the carved house. “I was a stubborn boy still,” Hemi said, “and then a stubborn man. Never learning well enough. Making mistake after mistake, even as I started getting all those things I’d wanted. Even as I got the woman I wanted. I got her, and then I lost her, because I hadn’t learned my lessons well enough. Koro knew, though. When she ran, she ran to him, and he took her in. He told me, that night, ‘If you can believe I’ve learned anything in all these years, that I’m not just hanging about here because I’m too stubborn to die, then believe this. Let her go. That’s the only way you’re going to keep her. Give her the chance to think it through, and yourself the chance to understand what she’s trying so hard to tell you. Give her her freedom, same as she’s giving you. Such a thing as holding too tight, my son. Such a thing as squeezing a woman too hard.’ I thought,How could he not take my side?Even as I was so glad that she’d gone to him, that she’d be safe. Koro sheltered her, and he sheltered Karen, too, as if they were his own mokopuna. He was the safe harbor for us all, letting us find our way back to each other. Koro gave me everything. Gave me back my life, when I was that teenager. Gave me back my future, set me on the road to success. And gave me my wife, and the wisdom to keep her. There’s nothing I could ever say or do that would be enough thanks for all of that. But Koro would tell me to pay him back by living the way a manshould. To raise my own mokopuna, someday, to know all that they need to. He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. It is the people. It is the people. It is the people.”
By the time he sat down, I was more than choked up myself. More speeches, more singing, more tears, and Hemi was saying to me, “If you want to say something, bro, this is the time.” Tomorrow, at dawn, would be the final farewell.
I didn’t know whether I could do it. Stand up in front of all these people, so few of whom I knew, and open my heart like that? Open a vein?
You are stronger than you know, my son.I stood up, walked to the front of the space in my stocking feet, and addressed the people.
“Hemi is my brother,” I said, “a brother I didn’t know. When I found out—I wanted nothing to do with him. With any of you. I’d never had a whanau like that. I thought I didn’t need one, or maybe I thought that needing one would make me weak, and the one thing I knew in my life was that I couldn’t be weak. I could only wall myself off. I was a fortified city. And then I found out that I had a whanau after all. That I had a father, and a grandfather. That I had a sister and a brother, aunts and uncles and cousins. And still—I didn’t want it. Until I came here and met all of you. Until I met Koro. And he told me—” I had to pause. “That I might not know my maunga and my awa, but my maunga and my awa knew me. That I might not know my marae, but my marae knew me. That I was good enough?—”
I had to break off, now, because the truly terrifying thing was happening. I was crying. Out in the open, in front of everyone. I wanted to stop, to turn away. Instead, I wiped my tears, took a breath, and finished. “That I was good enough,” I said, “because our tipuna made it so.”
A murmur from around me, and I said, “If I’m beginningto be a whole person now, a person who can care enough, who can give enough—that was partly because of Koro. I still don’t know my maunga and my awa,” I went on with a smile, and got a ripple of laughter. “But I believe that our tipuna made it so. That, I believe.”
I walked to the casket, touched the old man’s sleeve, remembered that last hongi with him. Surrounded by his acceptance. “Nga mihi i to tautoko i a au,” I told him, pronouncing the words carefully, knowing that my accent was all wrong and not caring. “Thank you for your support of me. Thank you for your strength. Thank you for your wisdom, and your kindness. Thank you from—” More tears, now. “From this least of your mokopuna. Thank you.”
Summer
I’d cried, when I’d been able to understand the words and even when I haven’t, throughout those days. I’d cried at the sadness of it, and at the happiness, too. At the love surrounding me. At the aroha that filled this building, celebrating a life so well lived. Koro’s house had been tiny, but his heart had been huge, and his heart had been the part that mattered.
And when his casket was lowered into the ground, when hundreds of black-clad mourners raised their voices in song once more, lifted their hands, fluttering like birds … I saw it, that thing Matiu had told us about. Koro’s spirit, his wairua, taking Te Aro Wairua, the path of the spirits, northward. I visualized it as a drop in a silver stream, carried along its way. Peaceful, now, because it was going home. Because Koro was going to his beloved wife, and to his own ancestors, too. All the way up to Te Rerenga Wairua, at Cape Reinga, the rocky bluffs at the northernmost point of these islands. The leaping-off place of the spirits. I saw the silver essence of the old man going over the edge, down the ancient, gnarled trunk of the pohutukawa that clung so improbably, so tenaciously to the cliff, and sliding down its roots into the sea, north to Hawaiiki, the homeland. I looked up into the dawn sky and saw the bright star that must be Venus. The morning star, rising with the new moon in the springtime of the world. The star shone, and I cried.
I cried for the loss of Koro, and I cried for Roman’s pain, and the pain of all those around me. I cried for my baby who’d never been, and, finally, I cried for my mother. For a woman who’d never had anything but love to give, but had given that with her whole heart. I cried for the mistakes I’d made, and for the grace I’d been given. And when the feast was over and the mourners departed, exhausted, I told Roman, “Let’s walk on the beach. I’m lightheaded with … with emotion, and fatigue, and all of this, but I don’t want to go inside yet. It’s not raining. Let’s walk.”
“I could use a walk myself,” Roman said. “Let’s do it.”
It was early still, a windy, cold Sunday morning in early spring, and almost nobody was out and about on the endless, wide expanse of the Mount Maunganui beach. I held Roman’s hand, and we walked into the wind. It took my hair and blew it around wildly, and I didn’t care. After a minute, I began to run, and Roman ran with me. Shoeless, light as air, blowing away with the wind. We ran until I was gasping, until we were laughing, until I had to stop, hang onto Roman, and get my breath back.
One minute, I was looking up into his face, laughing. The next, he was kissing me like I was everything he needed. Like he wanted to drown in me. And I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back the same way. His mouth on mine, then on my neck, and I was gasping for a different reason.
I don’t know how long we stood like that, wrapped around each other, with the wind blowing the waves into whitecaps, blowing sand into Roman’s black suit and my black dress. My heart had been so heavy at times, these past days, but now, it was so light, it wanted to blow away.
Now,my mind was telling me.Say it now.The thing that had come to me along with the vision of Koro rising to the stars in a blaze of silver light. I told Roman, “Koro told me something, too, that last day. I didn’t know what he meant, but I looked it up. It’s a Maori thing. A Maori saying. I’ll probably butcher it, but it’s this. E tata mate, e roa taihoa.”
“I don’t know what it means,” Roman said.
“Death comes closer,” I said, “but by and by never comes at all. You can put off the important things, thinking you have time. Thinking that you’ll wait until you’re better. Until you’re perfect. But life doesn’t work that way. I’ve been so afraid of risking again that I’ve closed myself off to everything. To you most of all, and to love. But by and by never comes at all. If I want it, if I need it, I need to jump in. I need to go for it.”
Roman had gone completely still. “What, exactly,” he asked slowly, “do you need to go for?”
“For you,” I said. “I need to go for you. I need to tell you that I believe in you. I believe in your heart. I believe in your mind. I believe in your down-deep goodness. I believe in that all the way to my soul.”
“I’m not really …” He was having some trouble with his words. “As good as all that.”
“It’s because you don’t think so,” I said, “that you are.” I had both hands on his forearms now, the urgency building in me. “You’ll never stop pushing yourself to be better, because that’s the man you are. You weren’t sure about meeting your whanau, not because you didn’t care about them, but because you did. You weren’t sure you were good enough, and you were scared to feel more. Towantmore. You only wentbecause Matiu told you that the old man needed you there. That he needed to know he’d done right by you, that he’d welcomed you. That you had a place with him, and with all of them. That was why you went. For him. And that’s why you came this weekend, too. Not just for what you could get. For what you could give.”
“I think you rate me too highly,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I don’t. Every time I’ve been with you, ever since the first day, you’ve had a choice. You could help me, or you could walk away. You could say I wasn’t your problem, that Delilah wasn’t your problem, but you didn’t. You helped every time.”
“Well,” he said, “to be fair, there was the way you look.”
