Witi Ihimaera: Sky Dancer

“You’re supposed to pinch yourself, Mum, not me! Do you want a cup of coffee? I have to warn you it comes out of a can.”

“Don’t we have coffee beans? Or a grinder? You mean its instant?” Cora shuddered at the word. “This is even worse than I expected. God, pass me a cigarette and the cellphone. I’ll get Zac.”

“Zac won’t know what to do.”

“I know you don’t like him but I’m going to tell him to get us out of here and back to civilisation. Now, why aren’t I getting through?” Cora was having a panic attack. “Why isn’t it working?”

Skylark sighed with relief. “I know you love your cellphone and can’t live without it. And I know it’s a really important fashion accessory for you, and a status symbol. But you know, life can sometimes be so unfair.”

Cora stared at Skylark and then at the phone. Her pupils dilated and she clutched the cellphone like a drowning woman a straw. “My pretty purple cellphone doesn’t work out here?”

“The telephones here are the kind that hang on walls, Mum, and they’re connected to poles.”

“No call waiting? No speed dialling? No screening of calls so that you can decide on whether to pick up? So we’re well and truly stranded?”

Mum had never been the sharpest tool in the shed.

“It’s a bummer,” Skylark said.

The good thing was that Zac could not telephone them either.

Not only were they stranded, Skylark realised, but without their Jeep they had no wheels — and no luggage. Nor did they have food supplies to supplement the kitchen’s minimal sugar, coffee, tea and milk. When Arnie arrived, they would just have to go back down the mountain with him to do a big shop at the local supermarket. Cora brightened at the prospect — shopping: coffee beans, a newspaper maybe — and hastened to the bathroom to make herself up for the trip.

Skylark, meantime, couldn’t help thinking about Hoki’s story. Was that why there were so many birds — landbirds, she was relieved to see — inhabiting Manu Valley? They were everywhere, circling in the sky or walking over the land. The bittern calling ‘ Ka Ka !’ controlled the marshland. The hawk squealing ‘ Kee Kee !’ was monitor of the upper Heavens. The wild duck honking ‘ Koekoe! Koekoe !’ ranged the skies from north to west.

What did Hoki call them? Manu whenua. Yes, that was it. Manu whenua.

If Manu Valley was like this, the Great Forest of Tane must have been awesome: a great confederation of bird tribes, interconnected groups of iwi, just like Maori had today, stretching kilometre upon kilometre from east to west, north to south. Within the tribes had been whanau groups of different birds occupying various levels of the forest strata.

No longer; only small parts of the Great Forest remained. Manu Valley was one of them. Bella and Hoki had kept it for the landbirds. They had created a sanctuary.

In an unsafe world, here birds of the land could find safety and protection.

“Just like Mum and me,” Skylark said to herself.

Around midday, Arnie arrived — not on the Jeep but in a station-wagon. He stopped outside Skylark and Cora’s bach, and Hoki came down the steps of the homestead to greet him.

“Kia ora, Nephew,” Hoki said.

“Hello Auntie,” Arnie answered. He saw Skylark glaring at him. “Before you start, don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger. There was something wrong with the petrol pump —”

“I told you so.”

“And the carburettor and the pistons, and the engine was leaking oil. But do you want to know what was really serious? Your brakes were just about gone. If you and your mother had been on the road a minute longer, you could have been killed.”

Skylark shivered at the news.

“Anyhow,” Arnie continued, “Lucas wants me to take you back to Tuapa so you can discuss what you want to do.”

“Like what ,” Skylark said crossly.

“We can repair it so you can get back north, but we’ll have to send for parts, so you won’t be moving from Tuapa for the whole time you’re here.”

“Oh no,” Cora said. “What else can we do?”

“Well,” Arnie answered, “if your Jeep was a horse I’d put it out of its misery and shoot it. But it’s not, so there’s another option. Lucas has offered you his station-wagon.”

“But we can’t do that,” Cora said.

“Course we can, Mum,” Skylark answered. If Lucas wanted to woo Mum with a car rather than roses, fine.

“In that case,” Arnie said, “let’s get back to Tuapa where you can talk to him. Then the station-wagon’s all yours.”

“We could do our shopping,” Cora suggested, as if the thought had just popped into her mind. She turned to Bella and Hoki. “Would you like to come with us?”

Bella pondered this a moment. She nodded and then, for some reason Skylark couldn’t fathom, said to her, “As long as you don’t drive.”

Arnie drove. Cora was squeezed between him and Skylark, looking as if somebody had sat on a tube of toothpaste. Bella and Hoki were in the back. “What did Bella mean about me not driving?” Skylark asked Cora.

“When we arrived last night,” Cora said, biting her lip, “I was so embarrassed about running her and Hoki down. Anyhow, honey, you’ve always been better at taking the blame —”

“About what!”

“I told her you were driving.”

Of course Tuapa hadn’t changed, hadn’t magically transformed into a great big city. No matter how hard Cora closed her eyes, crossed her fingers and hoped, when she opened them, she’d be in some MTV music video setting, it remained Tuapa. That made Skylark so glad. Serve Mum right for putting the blame on her.

However, news soon spread that Cora Edwards was back in town, and at their first stop — Flora Cornish’s Tuapa Diner — the clientele increased quickly from five to ten and included the proprietor of the massage parlour, who was considering making Cora a job offer. Nobody seemed to remember Skylark’s encounter with the skuas and nobody asked her how she was.

When Lucas arrived, it was clear to everybody that he had gelled his hair and substituted armpit au naturel with Old Spice. “I’m really sorry about your Jeep,” he said. “I’ve tried my best to fix it —”

An offended splutter came from Arnie. Meanwhile Cora, utilising a little trick she had learnt from the Hollywood School of Bad Acting, bit her bottom lip so that small tears could appear at the corners of her eyes. “You’re all so kind to me and my daughter,” she said. “I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart.” Just to prove she meant it, Cora placed both hands on it. Everybody went “Aaah” but Skylark furrowed her brow. After all these years of trying to teach her mother, Cora still couldn’t remember that her heart was on the left.

“I need a drink,” Bella said. She wasn’t fooled one bit. Off she stalked to the pub on the other side of the street for her usual shot of vodka.

“Looks like you and I are the only ones left,” Hoki said to Skylark. “Shall we go to the supermarket, dear?”

“Don’t forget,” Cora whispered, “coffee beans, a carton of cigarettes, I’m out of make-up remover, ear plugs for those awful birds in the morning, a night mask to keep out the sun in the mornings and, oh, do try and get some lovely smellies for my bath.”

Although Skylark wanted to make amends with Hoki, she wasn’t at all thrilled at the prospect of company. Hoki would take hours to negotiate the aisles on her walking sticks. That plus Mum’s little wee lie gave extra meaning to one of Skylark’s favourite badges pinned to her jacket: I Do Not Want To Have A Nice Day.