Witi Ihimaera - Pounamu Pounamu

I walked down the hallway, past the sitting room to Nani Miro’s bedroom. The room had a strange antiseptic smell. The window was open. Sunlight shone brightly on the big bed in the middle of the room. Underneath the bed was a big chamber pot, yellow with urine.

Nani Miro was lying in bed. Her pillow was flecked with small spots of blood where she had been coughing. She was so old looking. Her eyes were closed, her face was very grey, and her body was so thin, seeming to be all bones. Even when I was a child she must have been old, but I had never realised it. She must be over seventy now. In that big bed, she looked like a tiny wrinkled doll.

Then I noticed the lipstick. Hmmn.

‘You can wake up now, Nani,’ I said sarcastically.

She moaned. A long, hoarse sigh grew on her lips. Her eyelids fluttered, and she looked at me with blank eyes … and then tears began to roll down her cheeks.

She took me by surprise. ‘Don’t cry, kui,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m here.’

But she wouldn’t stop. I sat beside her on the bed and she lifted her hands to me. ‘Haere mai, mokopuna. Haere mai. Mmm. Mmm.’

I bent within her arms and we pressed noses. Then she started to shake with mirth and slapped me hard.

‘Snap!’ she said.

She started to laugh and laugh and I was almost persuaded she was her own self. But I knew she wasn’t. Why do people you love grow old so suddenly?

‘What a haddit mokopuna you are,’ she grumbled, sitting up in the bed. ‘It’s only when I’m just about in my grave that you come to see me.’

‘I couldn’t see you last time I was home,’ I explained. ‘I was too busy.’

‘There’s no such thing as being too busy to see your kuia,’ Nani reproved. ‘Next time, make time. If you don’t I’ll cut you out of my will. I’ll give it all to Willie Jones, what do you think of that?’

‘Go right ahead,’ I answered. ‘Willie will need every cent to pay his fines so he doesn’t go to jail.’

Willie was my cousin. When I was growing up I always thought that I was the only one Nani Miro talked to about getting an education. Ha, it was Willie who told me she talked to everybody, but I was the only one to take her seriously. Nani liked to spread her bets. That way, one of her cards was bound to do the trick.

‘Anyhow,’ I continued, ‘I heard Maka cleaned you out in your last game of poker!’

‘Who told you that?’ Nani scoffed. ‘You know, now that she’s old she’s gone colour blind. Can’t tell a heart from a spade.’

She gave a big, triumphant grin. She was my Nani again. The Nani I knew.

We talked for a long time. She wanted to know how I was getting on at university in Wellington. I told her I was doing really well with my studies, which was a lie, because I was seriously brainless and all the ambitions she held for me were rapidly going down the drain. She asked if I had a girlfriend so I made up more lies about who I was seeing and how pretty she was.

‘You teka,’ she said. ‘Who’d want to have you!’

I brought up the subject of her returning to hospital.

‘Tama’s been talking to you,’ she grumbled. ‘Well, this is why I came home —’

She showed me all her injection needles and pills.

‘I didn’t like all those strange nurses looking at my bum when they gave me those injections. I was so sick, mokopuna, I couldn’t even go to the lav. Better for Tama to give me my injections. Better for me to wet my own bed and not their hospital bed.’

I played the piano for Nani. She loved Me he manu rere so I played it for her and we had a sing-along. Afterwards, she held my hands tightly in hers as if she didn’t want to let me go, and stared deep into my eyes.

‘It’s always the women who look after the land,’ she said, ‘but who will do it after I am gone?’

When I finally left her I told her I would come back in the morning.

But that night the koroua, Nani Tama, rang up. Dad answered the telephone and woke me.

‘Your whaea, Nani Miro, she’s dying.’

We all rushed to Nani Miro’s house. It was already crowded with the other Waituhi families: the Tamateas, Tuparas, Waitaikis, everybody. All of Nani Miro’s mates were crowded close around her bed. Among them was Nani’s rival, Mrs Heta. Nani was lying very still. Then she looked up, saw Mrs Heta and whispered to her:

‘Maka … Maka tiko bum … I want a game of cards.’

A pack of cards was found. Everyone sprang into action. The old ladies sat on the bed, began to gossip and, as usual, puff their clouds of smoke. Nani Tama suggested a game of poker in the living room, so all the men trooped in there to do some serious gambling. Wherever there was a table — in the kitchen, on the verandah, anywhere, games of cards started up. The kids played snap in the other bedrooms and, as the night progressed, so did the games, the laughter, the aroha. The house overflowed with card players, even onto the lawn outside Nani’s window.

Suddenly, there was a commotion from Nani’s bedroom. We all looked to see what was happening. The women had been betting on who would win the best of ten games and Nani and Mrs Heta were neck and neck — and Mrs Heta was squabbling with Nani because it was Nani’s turn to deal.

‘Eee, Miro,’ Mrs Heta said, ‘don’t think that just because you can deal fast I’m not on to your tricks.’

‘Quit moaning and start playing,’ Nani answered. ‘Well?’

‘Dealing all the good cards to yourself,’ Mrs Heta muttered. ‘You cheat, Miro.’ And she made her googly eye reach far over to see Nani’s cards.

‘You think you can see, Maka tiko bum?’ Nani coughed. ‘You think you’re going to win this hand, eh? Well, eat your heart out and take that!’

She slammed down a full house.

The other women goggled at the cards. Mrs Heta looked at her own cards. She did a swift calculation and yelled:

‘Eee! You cheat, Miro! I got two aces in my hand already! Only four in the pack. How come you got three aces in your hand?’

Everybody laughed. Nani and Mrs Heta started squabbling as they always did, pointing at each other and saying:

‘You the cheat, not me!’

And Nani Miro said:

‘I saw you, Maka tiko bum, I saw you sneaking that card from under the blanket.’

She began to laugh. Her eyes streamed with tears.

While she was laughing, she died.

Everybody was silent. Then Mrs Heta took the cards from Nani’s hands and kissed her.

‘You the cheat,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, Miro, you the cheat yourself —’

We buried Nani Miro on the hill with the rest of her family. During her tangi, Mrs Heta played patience with Nani, spreading the cards across the casket.

Later in the year, Mrs Heta, she died too. She was buried right next to Nani so that they could keep on playing cards.

I bet you they’re still squabbling up there.

‘Eee! You cheat, Miro!’

‘You the cheat, Maka tiko bum. You, you the cheat.’

When I was a young boy, I was raised by many grandmothers.

One of them was my beloved Nani, Mini Tupara, who lived at Waituhi, not far from Gisborne. She was my father’s auntie but he called her sister because he had been brought up with her. She lived in what people called ‘The Blue House’ because it was painted that colour; the house is still there, the first house on the lane opposite Takitimu Hall on Lavenham Road.

My father, Tom, was Waituhi born and bred. He was a shearer and scrubcutter and when he and Mum had work, my sister Caroline and I were looked after by various friends and relatives including Nani Mini and her handsome husband George Tupara. It was Nani Mini who sent me off to school at Patutahi and was waiting for me on my return home. When she asked me what I had learnt I recited ‘Jack and Jill’. Her reply was ‘Who are Jack and Jill? What are they doing going up a hill to fetch water, what a stupid place to put a well!’ The next day on my return home, I wasn’t so keen to tell her that what I had learnt that day was a poem about Little Miss Muffet. She asked, ‘What’s a tuffet? What are curds and whey? And why is the little girl so afraid of a spider! She should have picked it up and said kia ora to it.’ Nani Mini taught me to ask questions and to be always aware that I was going out into a world where people put wells on tops of hills and where things would not necessarily make any sense.