This story was written about three years ago.
Big Piece a Gum
There’s a lot of things in my mind, all higgledy-piggledy like in Mumma’s car all full of our stuff. She’s not here and I’m thinking I don’t need to keep my lips zipped so much.
What I’m thinking about mainly is the Big Piece a Gum.
I think Janie the Pay Rent Lady is saying,
“Has anybody shifted that Kauri gum, you know, it was on the oak shelve thing? Look, it used to be right there and it’s gone.”
And Roimata is turning her big greeny grey eyes up and saying,
“Mum, if you think someone’s taken it, why don’t you ask them? You’ve just put it somewhere again.”
The Piece was on the shelves in the sitting room when we went to live in the big old white house. Janie found the shelves thing in the inorganic rubbish covered in black mould but she cleaned it up and sanded it so you could see the whirly pattern grain. On the top shelf there was a big rock like half a dinosaur egg, if dinosaur eggs were pointy purple glass rock inside, and on the bottom shelf there was a plastic cube with a bit of concrete inside called A Real Piece of the Berlin Wall but on the middle shelf there was the Piece like a great big lump of barley sugar.
On the outside it had got rounded and turned a dull browny colour from being in the sea. Some parts looked like they’d been scribbled on with White Out Fluid. That was wormy things in the sea did that. Janie said,
“It’s thirty five thousand years old this stuff. Kauri gum. I met this guy up the Hokianga who sells it on Trade Me for big bucks. He said you have to know where to dig.”
That sounded like a big old number. I don’t know.
I know about you though, you big piece.
You bled slowly out of the tree. You dried hard. The tree fell and with it you sank under the swamp. Rushing water pushed you down the creek, out to sea. Lightweight, you bobbed in the waves, slowly turning in the current. Fish nibbled you and seaworms squirmed over you. The tide pushed you across the Rangitoto channel and over to North Head with the curving surf.
In clear water, ankle deep, you nudged a column of flesh and, exclaiming, Janie picked you up.
When Mumma took it off the shelf to have a bit of a look, Janie said,
“It really is quite a size, isn’t it? It’s worth a bit but I’d never sell it. Sometimes things just come to you, like they’re meant to be. Karma. That piece of gum, it’s my karma.”
I liked patting that karma gum with two hands arching as far round the curves as I could reach and then lifting it, not heavy and having the same lumpy feel as Myny my Bean Bag Baby. I saw Myny’s shifting drift of beans like a mini sand dune inside when she had a bit of a side split once. Nana fixed that quick with the sewing machine, though.
I haven’t seen Myny in a long while. Nana neither. Outa sight, not outa mind.
I got the pink shawl out of Roimata’s old dolly crib so I could carry that piece around like Myny.
When that piece fell out of the shawl and all the way down to the floor, it smashed into so many beer bottle glass pieces. None bigger than a new potato for Christmas dinner but sharp looking. Not going to cut you if you touched though, like a bloody razor, watch out, you got bare feet lovey like Janie said when the wind knocked over the lilies in the glass vase after Mumma shut the French doors too sudden.
The Saturday after we shifted in, Mumma had a garage sale of all the stuff she’d bought in malls on the plastic. She painted the signs that said Garage Sale and we put them on trees on the street corners and outside the hedge on Roimata’s old picture painting easel that was too low down for her now. Outside the front porch Mumma made a line of the unopened packets of sheets, duvet covers and curtains, $5 each. Some still had their shop price tags , too, $20 or $25 but we stuck ours on top. We put some too small clothes in a basket, $4, and earrings $2 each.
Janie and Roimata put some things out too on the gravel bit under the Almond Tree. There was a box with plates and cups with orangey-brown leaves on and a bicycle man said to me,
“Does your Nana have any more Crown Lynn?”
I had no words to put him straight; she might have grey in her hair but she wouldn’t like the Nana, so I pulled Janie’s sarong to go talk to him and she said,
“What’s up, petal? O.K., I’m coming.”
The sky was blue as blue between the pink flower flakes on the tree when you sat on the steps and looked up. The real fluffy petals looked like the pink woolly skirt on the dolly that Granma had next to the dunny and you pulled up the skirt to find another roll of paper. Ha ha, funny.
In Janie’s house we had the front room that you turned one way into from the front hall and there was pinky purple wallpaper with flowers and three tall windows in a sticky out bit of the room.
Mumma said, “There’s only one damn wall you can put the bed head on in here what with all those cupboards and that bay window,” but I liked that room. Sun coming through the pinky petals and cars going past on the road. Nothing scary in the cupboards.
Enough people came to the Garage Sale so that Mumma’s money belt was jingling full.
In the afternoon, Janie found a big brown and white snail outside when she was trying to clean up the garden.
“Look, at this,” she said to me. “It looks like one of those French snails called es-car-goes.”
I went and looked under the bolting silverbeet leaves and there were lots more so I got three more es-car-goes and put them on the steps.
Janie said,“You’re a clever girl, finding all those. How many, can you count them?”
So I put up three fingers one hand and one finger the other hand where she can see with no glasses or nothing because she puts on these slippy down the nose glasses when she reads the paper.
She laughed more and then she said a gross thing; I think she was having a joke;
“We’ll have them for dinner shall we? You can eat them with garlic and butter.”
So I shook hard, no.
She said,“Okay, we’re not French, are we?”
I’m not French but I might be Australian. I come from there, really.
Later I heard Janie saying to Roimata, “She understands everything; I don’t know how come she doesn’t say anything.”
And Roimata said, “She can talk if she wants to. She just doesn’t want to, that’s all.”
“Well I’m no child sikey-whatsit but something’s not right.”
That was different from what the brown lady with the greenstone necklace said, after. I heard her call me an “elective mute”. If that means like those green TV turtles that boys like, I don’t know. She may be making a big mistake there.
Back in Australia we were in the car for a long time and it was hot and sweaty. There were days and nights and it got colder at night because it rained a lot some nights. But it’s mostly hot in Australia. The car inside roof was white plastic with thousands and thousands of little black and blue dots on it, really tiny little dots like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of little fly footprints; little flies had put ink on their feet and walked carefully, around and up and down. The car engine was loud, droning on and on phutta, phutta, phutta.
We left the fly footprints car in the Long Term at the airport. Mumma threw away the car park ticket in Janie’s kitchen bin when we shifted in, I saw her. She should have put it in the box for Paper Recycling.
That night before, in Australia, I was in bed but I woke up when Mumma was putting me in the car seat very fast, all in a big hurry , and she was saying ,
” Be quiet, be quiet, sshh.”
All sorts of things we had were pushed in all higgledy; she was dropping things and where was Myny? Myny was in the dolly baby bed back in the house there too with her tufty dirty yellow hair and blue dress that was too big because it was my real baby dress. She’s still there now, I think.
When I woke up again the light was bright yellow and there was lots of brown ground and blue sky, no houses or people. Mumma woke up too and gave me some water and some raisins and said,
“We’ll get a wash at a gas station, shall we? And some brekkie at a caff.”
The gas man said,
“Going on holiday? That’s a real vintage one, that Vee Dub. She’s a cutie, eh, your wee girl.”
Mumma got away from there fast, she said,
“It’s none of his beeswax where I’m going. It’ll be on the radio or on the TV next thing.”
She talked a lot like that, keeping on going down the long ribbon road. She said,
“Don’t tell anybody our business, all right, lovey?”
Then it was night time and raining, streaming wet on the windows and a very bad time. A big bang and jerking and my leg hurt, everything thrown about even more of a shambles and Mumma very loud. Bright flashing lights and they took us to a hospital kind of place. They did an X-ray on my leg and said it was bruising nothing broken and they stuck white zip ups on Mumma’s cut head. I saw them do that because she wouldn’t let them take me away. I heard her say,
“No, there isn’t anybody you can contact,” and,
“We have to get to the airport,” and,
“Where is my car?”
And this was the time when she got up from the trolley and came over to me and said,
” I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and then she bent down and whispered,
“Just zip your lips, honeybee. Don’t say a word, okey doke?”
And I just nodded my head very hard and my leg hurt and I was tired, really tired.
Later she was back when the shift was changing, she said, and she carried me even though I was a big girl for little Mumma and we got right out of there, just like that.
Then I could walk with my sore knee not hurting too much and we went along a road in grey light until we came to where there was a taxi and Mumma made the driver take us around until she found our car. It was a bit banged up but the taxi driver man knew a garage guy and he hit the front with a hammer and fixed everything but the window. We put a plastic rubbish bag there instead and it made a ripping noise when we drove along but it didn’t rip.
In the city Mumma went into offices to buy tickets for the plane. I sat on the plastic chairs and my leg hurt and under my legs stuck to the plastic and hurt again when I pulled my legs off. Then we were going really fast to the airport and parking the car, getting a wriggle on.
On the plane the lady with lots of makeup said to help me, sweetheart. I held out the lolly bowl for everybody but I did like Mumma said, kept my lip buttoned.
At Auckland Airport, a man in a grey shirt said,
”Welcome home,” and quickly looked away from Mumma’s purple eyebrow.
We had some days where we went to the mall after breakfast and Mumma said,
“Put it on the plastic,” and laughed tinkly high.
When we went to see Janie the Pay Rent Lady , Mumma talked a lot very fast and Janie said,
“Really ,I just wanted one person,”
but I sat close to Roimata and she read me a book Angelina the Ballet Mouse that was pretty and pink. I watched Roi’s shiny pink mouth saying the story words and then she put lip gloss on me too.
Then we were living in that high white house with the gum and all.
Janie’s car crunched away on the stones and Roimata had put on her blue big school uniform and gone on the bus that went past outside the hedge.
I took the Big Piece dressed up to show Mumma but she was busy, busy with the white paper. She had made flour and water scrapbook paste and she was sticking white paper strips over the window glass and around the door.
I was hungry for my breakfast so I got a tall stool and I climbed up and onto the bench to get the Rice Bubbles out of the high cupboard. That’s when the Big Piece fell out of the shawl. I ate some Rice Bubbles sitting on the floor. Then I picked up all the bright beer bottle pieces of the Big Piece. I put them back in the pink baby shawl. I took them outside and got the trowel and made a hole near where the es-car-goes lived. It took a while and it was getting hot now and those cicadas were loud as loud.
Then a man came round the corner of the house and said,
“Where’s your mummy?”
Well, I kept the lips zipped but they found Mumma anyway and there was more noise and tinkly high laughing and the shouting and crying too.
“Just sit down and we’ll talk about it,” from the man. “Now, now, Mrs Pember, let’s be sensible.”
His grey car had writing on it and then a police car came too. And that brown lady in a T-shirt, who made a mistake about the turtles, she came for me.
I fetched up here at Auntie Sue’s farm. I like the animals and the ducks. I wouldn’t mind going back, though, and having a look to see if any of those bits a gum were big enough to put on Trade Me. It was a big old piece a gum, that piece.
