Witi Ihimaera - Bulibasha

‘Put your eyes here,’ Geordie said. ‘Now, click.’

The frames sprang to life. In each frame was depicted one of the Wonders of the World. The pyramids of Gaza. The Grand Canyon. The Leaning Tower of Pisa. I could not help thinking that this was what Pakeha life was like — 3-D pictures, larger than life, bursting out of the frames in full brilliant colour.

Then Geordie asked, casually, ‘Would you like to come into Gisborne to see Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea ?’

‘No,’ I answered. ‘We’re shearing and I’m the sheepo.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Father will talk to Hone —’ He pronounced Uncle’s name Hone-ay. ‘I’m sure Hone will be able to organise someone to work for you. It will only be for the afternoon. I know you want to see the film.’

I must admit that I was keen to see the movie. Even so, when I saw Mr Williamson speaking to Uncle Hone and Dad I felt like somebody had just stepped over my grave.

Geordie and I caught the bus into town for the two o’clock matinee. I couldn’t help the growing sense of unease, a feeling that I had done something to disturb the nature of things. I tried to pretend, for Geordie’s sake, that I was having a great time. Geordie didn’t seem to mind.

Summer lightning.

I was not surprised, therefore, to find that Grandfather Tamihana had just happened to choose that day to come up to Williamson station. There was something fatalistic about his visit, something Greek in the irrevocability of destiny. Zeus had been told of the misdemeanour and had come himself to render punishment. When Geordie and I returned from the film, Grandfather was talking with Mr and Mrs Williamson up at Amberleigh.

‘You’ve got a bright lad here,’ Mr Williamson said as I walked into the sitting room.

Geordie must have known how I was feeling. He tried to make it better. He put an arm over my shoulder. ‘It was a superb film, Father,’ he said.

Grandfather stiffened. I’m not too sure if he was more angry because I was there among Pakeha or because I was being made a fool of by Geordie who, in his eyes, was taking liberties.

‘Well, Simeon, time to go down to the others, ne?’

The shearing was finished for the day. The afternoon was silent as Grandfather and I walked down the hill. When he got to the whare, he simply said, ‘I’m going to talk to your father.’ To Dad. Not me. This was Dad’s fault.

I could see Aunt Molly, Aunt Sephora and my father; the others were still swimming at the river. I prayed they would stay down there. Grandfather’s voice raised itself in the whare. It was level, controlled and definite. I never once heard my father respond.

My father came out. Grandfather was beside him, leaning in the doorway, watching. Dad walked across the sunlight, cutting a dark shadow across the light.

‘I’m going to give you a haircut, son,’ he said. He was finding it hard to swallow. ‘Your grandfather says your hair is too long.’ He wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘Go and ask Auntie Molly for a chair.’

‘Please, Dad —’

‘Don’t make this any harder, Simeon,’ he continued. ‘Just go and get a chair .’

I was sitting in the chair, a towel around my neck. My father Joshua had the scissors in his hands. He was trembling. All of a sudden there was laughter. Mum and the others arrived back from the river.

‘What’s going on?’ Mum asked gaily.

‘Simeon’s having his hair cut,’ Dad answered.

‘About time,’ she laughed. ‘We’re always on him to —’ She saw Grandfather Tamihana.

Then she knew. They all knew. They stood by — Mum, my aunts and cousins and sisters, all mute witnesses. Glory wanted to come to me, but Mum held her close to her.

‘Please, Dad, don’t do this,’ I whispered.

‘Son, you know you shouldn’t have gone with Geordie to the movies.’ He made the first snip.

‘Why didn’t you stop me, Dad?’ Another snip.

‘How could we say “No” to the boss, Simeon? When Mr Williamson came down here and asked your uncle and me, of course we had to say “Yes.” ’

‘I wasn’t away long, Dad. Peewee and Mackie said they’d be able to carry on.’

‘It wasn’t their job, son. It was yours.’

‘You’re just parroting what he said to you,’ I answered, gesturing at Grandfather.

‘The family always comes first, son. You put Geordie before the family.’

My hair was coming off lock by lock. Then Dad took up some hand shears and began to shear close to the sides of my head. I looked down into my shadow. I was sitting on a chair, at Grandfather’s instructions, in the hot sunlight. I heard Glory trying to attract my attention. I knew she wanted to play dead for me but, It won’t work this time, Glory.

‘Not like this, Dad,’ I pleaded. ‘Please. Not in front of everybody.’

‘It won’t take long, son. I don’t want to do this to you, but you have to be punished.’

‘For making friends with Geordie?’

‘You should have said “No” to him from the beginning. It’s because of you that we’re behind in the shearing.’

My head whirled. ‘You can’t blame me for that, Dad. I am not to blame for the rain. For us being behind. You can’t believe that.’

‘I’m not blaming you. I’m just telling you how it looks to your grandfather. He was really angry to see you up there at the Big House. That’s not your place, Simeon. And that boy’s arm around your shoulder? That’s not right, either.’

The scissors went snip again.

It was the shame more than anything else. All I had done was allow a Pakeha to befriend me. In so doing I had transgressed some implacable law of Grandfather’s. I was being punished.

Then Dad finished. My mother started to sob. I knew I must look really bad. All the hair was shorn from the sides, leaving a tuft on the top.

‘I’m sorry, son. It will grow.’

‘ He still has too much hair !’

Grandfather came hip- hopping across the galaxies, out of a black hole in the universe, storming from Olympus. He wrested the shears from my father.

Glory shouted, ‘No!’

Before I knew it, Grandfather had chopped off the top, too. The shears drew blood.

‘Whakahihi, Simeon. Whakahihi . You’re getting too big for your boots. Maybe this will teach you where your place is.’ He started walking away.

‘Tar,’ I whispered.

He stopped. Looked back.

‘ Tar !’ I yelled at him. The blood was trickling down my face.

‘Porangi,’ he said.

My eyes were stinging with tears. I was trembling with rage. ‘ Tar! Tar! Tar! Tar !’

Each shout echoed like a rifle volley through the hills.

Shortly after that, Mahana Four left Williamson station. We went straight to the Wi Pere estate and, from there, to Tara. By the end of the summer my hair had grown back and the scar of that day was forgotten by everybody except me. Even today, when I least expect it, I feel the tingling jab of the shears where Grandfather Tamihana cut my scalp.

In February my sisters and I prepared to leave Mahana Four and return to school. At the family meeting that month, the Mahana shearing gangs received disturbing news.

‘The Poatas have broken the agreement,’ Uncle Matiu said. ‘They have crossed over the line drawn by Apirana Ngata. They have been signed up by the Mathewsons on our side of the river.’

There was a long and anxious debate. The earlier sighting of the Poata gang by Mahana Two clicked in our memories, and everything fell into place. Uncle Maaka made some remark which I did not understand about our inadvertently doing the same thing to the Poatas the year before. The conversation rushed over him like a river. In the end –