Witi Ihimaera - Bulibasha

The scene was straight out of the Spencer Tracy movie, Bad Day at Black Rock . Apirana Ngata took a large stick and scored a line parallel with the red bridge. The stick grated harshly, the groove like a wound, the stick a knife opening up the earth.

‘All the shearing sheds to the south of the line,’ Ngata said to Rupeni, ‘are yours.’ He threw the stick down in a temper. ‘And all the sheds to the north,’ he said to Tamihana, ‘are yours.’

Both Rupeni and Tamihana bristled. They were not used to taking orders from anybody, including Apirana Ngata.

‘Kua pai?’ Apirana Ngata asked.

Neither man wavered.

‘Kua pai !’ Apirana Ngata shouted. He jumped up and down in anger and threw his hat on the ground.

Then, ‘Kua pae,’ they said.

‘This was how the agreement was made,’ said Uncle Hone, ‘about which sheds belong to the Mahanas and which to the Poatas. Although Apirana Ngata is dead, we have continued to honour the agreement.’

The fire crackled. The embers glowed. The tilly lamp gave out its slow, steady hiss. Nightflying insects made tiny taps at the window, as if trying to get in.

The afternoon before Christmas Eve, Uncle Hone lifted his sweat-soaked face and shouted, ‘Kua mutu.’

We gave an almighty cheer. At last we could get on the road back home and into our glad-rags to go shopping and celebrating in Gisborne. Even the shearing season has to defer to the birth anniversary of the Christ child.

Mr Williamson had arranged for an advance payout. I flushed with pride at the sight of my pay envelope. Nothing, however, prepared me for Glory’s face, so assured and nonchalant.

‘Why be so excited? This has been earned .’

Even so, I felt that Glory had better look to her mettle. Peewee and Mackie were gun workers and could take her dag box from under her if she didn’t watch out.

‘We’ll be back the day after Christmas dinner,’ Uncle Hone told Mr Williamson. ‘We should cut out the shed before New Year.’

‘There’ll be a bonus if you do,’ Mr Williamson replied.

He shook hands formally with Uncle Hone and Aunt Sephora and inclined his head to us all. Geordie was with him and gave me a grin.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, my son Geordie and I wish you the best of the festive season,’ Mr Williamson said.

We didn’t bother to wash or pack up. Everybody wanted to exit running. We piled into the cars as we were, smelling of dags and sweat and decorated with little curls of stray wool. The men drove like maniacs, tearing around the corners, over the culverts, through the cattle stops and around the bends, down to Tolaga Bay, the first sign of civilisation.

Tolaga was booming with locals. We stopped for food — pies with peas and spud on top, or fish and chips — and to fuel up the cars. Uncle Albie, David and Benjamin snuck off somewhere. Watching them go, Aunt Ruth muttered, ‘Well, as long as their tanks aren’t so full that Grandfather Tamihana smells the fumes.’

We hit the road again, alternating between dust and tar seal until Gisborne. Sometimes we hit forty miles an hour top speed, golly Moses.

Haromi was in the car with us. Batting her eyes furiously, she pleaded with Dad, ‘Please, Uncle Josh, puh-leez, I’ll do anything if you’ll just stop in Gisborne for five minutes. Only five minutes, oh please.’

‘No,’ Aunt Ruth said. ‘Bulibasha will be waiting at Waituhi and if we don’t get there the same time as everybody else we’ll be for the high jump.’

‘Oh, puh-leez!’ Haromi moaned, as if her entire life depended on it. ‘I haven’t got anything to wear for Christmas Eve!’

‘No dice,’ Aunt Ruth said.

However, something Haromi said made Glory frown. She jabbed me, Do something.

‘We should have a vote,’ I said.

Before Aunt Ruth could open her mouth to protest, everyone including Mum and Dad and Aunts Sephora and Esther had agreed with Haromi.

‘Aye!’

We didn’t have any good clothes either.

The change in Haromi was instant. Her eyelashes stopped batting — she had what she wanted and a girl should save her eyelashes for the real thing. Now she began to bewail the fact that she smelled of the shed and was still in her shed clothes. There were five of us in the back seat, but she squashed us to one side as she pulled a comb from her pants and began to backcomb her hair higher and higher into a beehive. She took out eyeliner and lipstick and leaned out the back window to look at herself in the rear driving mirror. As a final touch, she undid the top two buttons of her blouse.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ Aunt Ruth said.

A tussle ensued as Aunt Ruth tried to button Haromi’s blouse back up. With a sigh, and without Aunt Ruth seeing, Haromi flicked the buttons clean off.

‘Oh Auntie,’ Haromi said, her eyes wide with innocence and surprise, ‘look what you did !’ She was a tricky one, was Haromi.

When the car stopped in Gisborne, Dad yelled, ‘Only five minutes!’

Haromi was already out the door.

There was an art to doing five hours of shopping in five minutes. Haromi was the expert. Watching her was like looking at a movie going at double speed. The trick was knowing what you wanted. The other was to be pushy, a trait Haromi shared with her mother, Aunt Sarah. When either was in a hurry there were no ‘Excuse mes.’ There was no time for ‘Sorrys’ either.

Into Woolworths Haromi went, and out she came with cosmetics, new bra and panties. No time to shoplift; just throw the money on the counter as you leave. Next stop was McGruer’s, and out Haromi came with an H-line skirt and a voluminous petticoat to puff it up. Third was Adams shoe store, and out she came with a pair of slingbacks. Then into Melbourne Cash for some red stockings and –

There, in the window, was an imitation leopardskin bolero jacket. Beside it was a photo of New teen star Sandra Dee who appears with Lana Turner in ‘Imitation of Life’, Universal International’s new hit movie. Sandra Dee was wearing exactly the same bolero.

Haromi came to an absolute standstill and lost thirty seconds. I could see she was fantasising about being Sandra Dee except, of course, doing a much better job of it. She swayed, dazed, and then looked at me.

‘I must have it,’ she whispered between clenched teeth.

In we marched. The poor saleswoman was on the point of selling the bolero to a girl who would have fitted it perfectly, but Haromi yelled, ‘You can’t sell my bolero!’ The saleswoman rocked back, surprised. ‘I rang just half an hour ago,’ Haromi said, ‘to tell your floor manager I was on my way to get it. Didn’t you get the message?’

‘Well no, miss,’ the saleswoman began.

Haromi chattered away gaily, peeled the money out of her paypacket — and mine — and placed it on the counter. The trick was to keep on the attack and retreat quickly before the enemy knew they’d been had.

‘Don’t bother to wrap it,’ she said, ‘I’ll take it as it is.’

Out the door we went, past the saleswoman, the girl who had been on the point of buying the bolero and the other customers. Just like that, leaving them like stunned mullet. And what the heck if the bolero was three sizes too small. What were scissors for?

We all managed to get back to the car within, well, six minutes at the most. I saw Nani Mini Tupara and she gave me ten shillings and told me to spend it on something that wasn’t religious. Dad had bought a new shirt, Mum and my aunts had summer frocks, my sisters had comics and lollies, and Glory had bought a water pistol. The last person to arrive was the one who hadn’t wanted us to stop — Aunt Ruth, wobbling along in very unsuitable high heels and burdened down with boxes.