62. Morning Star
Roman
My first time on a Maori marae was for my grandfather’s tangi.
I hadn’t thought about going. I hadn’t expected to go. It was Hemi who’d invited me, when he rang to tell me about the old man’s death on that Saturday morning. “I didn’t want it to come from Daniel,” he said. “Better that it’s from your brother.”
That one stopped me. “I appreciate that. But I don’t want to cause drama.”
“No more drama than there would be otherwise. Daniel will be Daniel, and so will Ana. Come anyway. It’ll be three days, as usual. If you can’t come for all of them?—”
“If I come,” I said, “I’ll come for all of them. Respect, eh.”
“It’s what Koro would’ve wanted,” Hemi said. “Good for you, too, to know you’re part of things, even without him. Whanau matters. What he said that last day, through me—he believed that.” He paused. “And so do I.”
“How’re you going?” I asked. “With all this.”
Another pause before he said, “It’s rough. It’ll be a different world without Koro in it. So, bro—come.”
I asked Summer, somewhere in the reaches of the night, to come with me. In the aftermath of lovemaking, it was, because when I’d woken and reached for her, she’d come to me like a butterfly landing on my shoulder. Or a golden bird. Like hope. Kissing me, touching me. Love in her hands and her lips and her body, and when I’d buried myself in her at last, it washed me clean.
Love couldn’t do all this, surely. But it did anyway, and when I said, “The tangi—the funeral—is next weekend. Starts on Friday, and the burial will be at dawn on Sunday. It’s a thing, a Maori tangi. I’ve never been to one, but I know that. It’s—different. Not an hour and some tears,” she answered, “Of course I’ll come.”
“I’ll go up Thursday night,” I said. “You’ll have to take a day off work.”
She said, “Somehow, in New Zealand, I think that’ll be allowed. Anyway, it feels … necessary.” She kissed my shoulder, there in the dark, ran her fingers over my collarbone. “I can’t shake this feeling of … of something momentous.”
I said, “Kua hinga te totara o Te Waonui a Tane.”
“That’s Maori,” she said.
“It is. I know just about that much. It means, ‘A totara has fallen in the forest of Tane.’ A great man. A wise man. A totara isn’t just tall and beautiful and significant. It’s a tree you carve out to make a mighty waka, a canoe. To make the carvings in the wharenui, the meeting house.”
“If you felt that way …” she said, and hesitated.
I tightened my hold on her. “If I felt that way, I should’ve gone back to see him. I should’ve got over myself. He’d have been glad, I think, and I’d have learned something. But I didn’t, and it’s too late. It’s not too late for this, though. Respect should be paid.”
“Is it all right for me to come?” she asked. “As I’m not part of the family?”
“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 of my 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 man should. 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 beginning to 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. To want more. You only went because 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.”
“Roman.” I shook his arms. “I’m not joking. I’m telling you that I love you. That I want to be with you.”
His eyes were always sharp. Now, they were blazing. “What are you saying?”
“That I think I should move in with you,” I said. “I’ll never get anywhere standing on the shore. I need to get into the water. I need to get in over my head. I’m not worried about drowning, because I know you’ll catch me. And I also know that I can learn to swim.”
He was staring at me so intently. When he spoke, though, it wasn’t anything like what I’d imagined. What he said, in fact, was, “No.”
Roman
She looked at me in shock, and the color drained from her face. “N-no?” she asked. “Really? No?”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to shout. I said, “No. Because I want to do it differently.”
“O-OK,” she said. “How?” Still hanging in there.
I pulled the box from my breast pocket, and she stared at it. I said, “I’ve been carrying this with me for two weeks now, trying to think of the right moment. The right way. Trying to find a way to tell you how different this feels. And I know,” I went on as she opened her mouth to speak, “that you’ll say it’s too soon. That you’ve been hurt, and I’ve walked away before.”
“I wouldn’t—” she said, but I put up a hand. “Let me finish. I want you to move in with me, yeh. If we’re engaged. Even if it takes two years for you to get all the way there, I need to know that you know I mean it, and that I’ve shown you I mean it. I need to put a ring on your finger that lets you know that I want forever. I don’t want ‘for now.’ I don’t want ‘while it’s good.’ I want ‘for better or for worse.’ I want ‘for richer or for poorer.’ And most of all, I want ‘till death us do part.’ I want to know that the last thing I’ll see in this life is your face, and the last thing I’ll feel is your hand.”
“Roman,” she said, and, yes, her eyes had filled with tears again. Both of us had cried more in these past days than we had for years, and those tears had done something. Watered our roots, maybe. Opened our hearts, or washed them clean.
I opened the box.
“It’s—” she said.
“A star sapphire,” I said. “Ordered it weeks ago. Odd, eh. But to me—this is you. Your beauty, outside and inside. Your light.” I looked down at the thing. Two and a half carats of deep blue, cut in a simple oval to show the six-pointed star in its center, with an emerald-cut diamond on either side. Beautiful, pure, and rare. Exactly like Summer. “If you let me put this on you,” I said, “I can’t promise I’ll never make you want to take it off. But I can promise that when you feel that way and tell me so, I’ll listen. I’ll listen, and I’ll do better. That’s my promise.”
“I believe that promise,” she said, “because I believe in you. But—Roman. What about the?—”
“The babies,” I said. “Yeh. I want those, too. I want the thing I’ve never had. I have three houses, but I’ve never really had a home.”
“I’m scared.” It was nearly a whisper. “To try again.”
This tenderness. It hurt my heart. “I know you are,” I said. “And I can’t promise that nothing bad will happen. All I can promise is that if it does, I’ll be with you every step of the way. I’ll hold you up when you can’t go on. You have my word.”
“And your word,” Summer said, “is good.” Eyes like stars. Trembling mouth. Summer, wide open.
“Always.” I picked up her hand. The left one. “Can I put it on?”
“Yes.” She laughed, but there were some tears there, too. “Yes. Because I will always love you. I’ll be by your side no matter what. I’ll hold on, and I won’t let go.”
“And your word is good, too,” I said.
“It is,” she said. “And it always will be. All the way to the end.”