The Last Time We Spoke (16 page)

Benjamin, I feel a blooming in my breast. You responded to
te reo Māori
– your people’s language – even though you did not understand the very words you heard. This is good. So good. The words, they belong to you. Their pull is deeper than any conscious thought or tutored knowledge. Your response springs from a deeper place, a place with origins in the beginning of time.

Time
…
I must move on with my story.

So determined was the white man to assimilate all Māori that he worked hard to dismantle our tribes and our whole Māori way of life. Even our precious language was discarded. Our children were now taught in English,
te reo
actively discouraged.

And we bought into this ideal. The English dream. The clothes, discipline, the sports and high teas. Many of our people melted under the heat of city lights into this whiteness, their Māoritanga soon just a puddle from the past. A new life beckoned, offering work, excitement and the English way. Ah, the English way. Rugby, tennis and big brass bands. Pikelets, scones and wedges of bright-orange cheese.

How hard we strove to be citizens of this ‘superior’ world. We even went to war alongside our pale-faced compatriots to make real our intent, to fight for their Crown. Yet despite our bravery and the honours steeped upon us, we remained brown. Too brown.

Carla covered her head with a pillow. She couldn’t say why she set an alarm, but she always did. It wasn’t so much having to be somewhere – she rarely had to be anywhere – it was more about lending shape to the day. It also gave the weekend a point of difference; she never set an alarm on the weekend.

After a five-minute
snooze
respite, the beeping began again. She sat up and dropped her legs over the side of the bed, letting her toes brush the carpet. The coarse fibres prickled her soles. Slowly she stood up. It was important not to rush; the day had to be carefully filled.

After putting on her new slippers from the Two Dollar Shop – the old possum-fur ones had finally disintegrated – she reached for her dressing gown. As she tied a perfect bow in the mirror, she was mindful to keep her eyes on the task at hand and not allow them to explore the rest of her reflection.

In the kitchen, water spluttered out of the tap into an empty kettle, the pipes, like the day, still stiff and awkward. She placed an already used tea bag into her mug – her cue to now attend to the drapes and blinds. If timed correctly, the kettle would start to whistle just as she was opening the last blind.

She lifted the steaming jug and poured. The crumpled brown
tea bag floated to the surface, releasing stingy ribbons of colour. Carla added a thimbleful of long-life milk, a spoonful of sugar, and stirred. Three rotations.

Mug in hand, she sank down into the chair at the window and watched Oteha Valley Road wake, cars gliding out from nowhere like disturbed woodlice.

At nine o’clock she stood up, prepared and ate a buttered slice of raisin toast, then placed two frozen sausages on the bench to defrost, before going to get dressed. Lunch, a ham sandwich, was at twelve. A midday nap would follow, then a trip into Browns Bay to visit Kevin. By five-thirty she’d be home again, seated in front of the television, with a glass of cheap sherry in hand. Sausages and mash were at six, and after that, the day could be allowed to seep into the long night. This order and routine was everything. It harnessed the flux.

She was having her afternoon nap when the telephone rang. Her mouth clunked shut, arresting her sleepy drool.

She reached for the receiver. ‘Hello.’

‘Mrs Reid?’ A strong Australian accent.

‘Speaking.’

‘Bryce Deacon, Auckland Prison.’

Still drugged with sleep, Carla sat up.

‘This is a courtesy call, really. Just to notify you that Ben Toroa’s first parole hearing is coming up at the end of the month. You are invited to attend if you wish. You may, however, simply prefer to write a letter in opposition to, or support of, the prisoner’s release. Should you elect not to attend in person, we will notify you of the outcome in writing.’

‘Oh.’ Carla’s mind sluggishly made the relevant connections. Even the name Toroa was momentarily foreign. It had been over four years.

‘I’ll … Um … I’ll have to think about it. I mean, I’m not sure whether I—’

‘I understand. If you do decide to participate, you are entitled
to bring a support person to accompany you into the hearing. We’ve posted you a letter and booklet outlining the process, but I’ll give you a number to call in case you have any other queries.’

Carla scrambled for a pen and scribbled down the number on the back of a birthday card from Geoffrey and Mildred – a sunglasses-wearing baboon blowing out candles in the configuration of the number fifty.

‘Between you and me, Mrs Reid, I don’t expect parole to be granted, so probably no concerns there. Just a formality, really.’

‘Yes … uh, right. Thank you.’

Then a click and the line went dead.

Carla chewed off a piece of nail and worked it between her teeth. Parole. Already? He’d barely served one-third of his sentence.

Everyone had said time would be a great healer, and in some respects they had been right. The passage of years had dulled her grief and faded the intensity of her pain. Yet now, like some cruel joke, she found herself back at the beginning, the anguish as acute as ever.

She fiddled with her wristwatch, flicking the clasp open and shut. Just before two. With her siesta interrupted, the day was in disarray. What would she do with the extra time? Kevin would still be asleep at the centre, and they wouldn’t allow her to disturb him until three at the earliest.

The room for the parole hearing was bare – the walls, the whiteboard, even the waste-paper basket empty of any clues. The space reminded Carla of her old school science laboratory with its lifeless smell, rows of yellowed benches, and lone desk up front.

She made her way to the back of the room and sat down on a chair in the corner. She put her handbag at her feet and crossed her legs. Then she uncrossed them and picked up her bag. She rummaged through it for a mint. She shifted two seats along. Then one along from that.

A man in prison green put his head around the door. ‘
Kia ora,’
he said with a friendly grin. ‘Won’t be long now.’

She nodded.

No sooner had he left than the door swung open and four men in dark suits and a woman in a cherry-red two-piece filed in with all the gravity and solemnity of a funeral processional. They took up their seats at the front table and one of the men poured each of them a glass of water. A policewoman talking on her mobile wandered in and sat down in the front row, followed by a large, wheezing woman, who subsided into the chair right in front of Carla, obscuring her view completely. The woman’s dandruff-sprinkled blouse ballooned in and out with each whistling breath.

Just like in a movie theatre, thought Carla irritably, people clumping together in tight pockets when there is an entire room of seats available. She stood up and moved back to her original corner.

Ten minutes elapsed. The members of the parole board shuffled documents and conferred in hushed tones. More people arrived. The noise level in the small room rose. Talking. Coughing. Sneezing. Chairs scraping.

After fidgeting and worrying at a scab on the back of her hand, it started to bleed. Carla dabbed at the raw skin with a tissue until the tiny spring of red dried up. When she looked up her throat constricted around a painful gulp of air.
He
was there. In the room. A dark, brooding shape. His back to her.

He was taller than she recalled, his black hair longer and wilder, and streaked with grease that glistened under the lights. His tracksuit bottoms hung low over his hollowed-out bottom and his shoulders curled away from her.

The man in green uniform stood up to open the session. Carla tried hard to concentrate on his words, but her eyes kept wandering to Jack’s killer.

‘And he has been involved in a number of violent outbursts,’ the officer said in a plank-flat voice. He looked down at the notes on his clipboard. ‘It is noted that the prisoner’s behaviour has in fact deteriorated over the past two years of incarceration. He has shown little motivation to change, not signing up for any of the recommended rehabilitation classes. He has also been found with contraband on his person on several occasions and …’

A psychologist – the wheezy woman – was next. Her tight bra corrugated her outline.

‘I would have grave concerns about the release of prisoner Toroa into the community at this time. As you have heard, his behaviour has often been aggressive and hostile towards staff, and his tendency to violence appears to have become more pronounced in the past eighteen months – an observation already outlined by my colleague. The prisoner is manipulative to his own ends, and it is my opinion that …’

Everyone was facing the front, their backs turned on Carla. They should have been addressing her, not five random people up front! Had the woman in red ever felt Toroa’s hand over her mouth? The man with a silver tiepin, had he smelt Toroa’s fermented breath on his face? And the guy with a chisel-thin nose and absent chin, had he ever heard Toroa’s soulless voice raging around him? The degrees that no doubt hung on their walls would attest to their qualifications and wisdom. But what of real life? She could tell them. She had the most important qualification of all.

She’d not been able to stay away from the hearing. She wanted something from the process. Perhaps the knowledge that Toroa was suffering. The security of seeing him shackled? A sign of repentance, maybe. An apology. At least an acknowledgement – if not from him, then from the others – of her grief, of the sense of hollowness inside that never abated. The law had forgotten about her and her family. To have simply written a letter would have been too academic, too
abstract. She had come as Jack and Kevin’s representative. She was there to remind the board that it was dealing with people, not a series of events and blood-soaked evidence already bleached by time.

The busyness of the small room suddenly overwhelmed her. The voices were too loud, the place too hot. She felt herself disengage; she’d become a master at it. Had she taken the chops out of the freezer in her hurry to catch the bus? She should stop on the way home to buy grapes for Kevin at the fruiterer – the black seedless ones he loved. She had to remember to also stop at the post office to pay her electricity bill. It was overdue. They would cut her off.

Toroa’s voice was slow, slovenly – one word running into the next – and evil deep. He slouched there before the table of five, speaking indistinctly, sloppily. Carla shook with anger. His posture smacked of disinterest and irreverence. His demeanour was blatantly scuttling the civility such a proceeding demanded. She couldn’t even see his face – his untidy mane concealing his profile from her. She had the right to see his face.

Bile shot into her mouth. He was asking to be released.

Hearing that word suddenly crystallised for Carla what the day was about. She had not allowed herself to even entertain the idea he might be freed. It was unthinkable. The man who’d telephoned had said the hearing was a mere formality. Yet the people on the panel seemed to be listening to him. Considering. Weighing up the possibility.

She swayed in her chair.

Then, it was over. Abruptly.

A brief explanation. No slow build to a climax. The parole board had announced its decision. Toroa had failed in his bid.

Carla was the first to leave, but as she hurried from the room, she in no way felt the victor.

‘Fuck ’em all!’

‘Chill, Bennie boy. There’s always next year.’

‘Piss off, Randy! Anyway, you in this shithole for longer than me. Your mitt’ll have fallen off by then from all the jacking off you do.’

‘I thought you weren’t in any hurry to get out of the boob, brotha? Wasn’t that what you said last night? “Not like something special waiting for me out there.” Your words, bro, not mine.’

‘I know what I said. And I meant it. I won’t give those pencil necks the satisfaction of thinking I’m desperate or nothin’. They just want the power to play with my fate. Well I’m gonna have the wood over them.’

‘Sometimes your logic’s all twisted, man. Anyway, we’re tight.’

Ben ignored the mixed compliment. He was still reeling from the belated realisation that what he’d just missed out on was the one thing he actually wanted the most. He hadn’t made any effort to present well, hadn’t bothered to enrol in any courses in the lead-up to the hearing. He hadn’t even brushed his hair for it. Thought he didn’t care. But standing there in front of those suits had vacuumed up all the interference in his life and clarified his thoughts. His freedom could have been just a signature away. Now he couldn’t let
go of the notion. In his mind he was already released and cruising the hood.

‘I’d give anything for a proper piss-up, bro. A shit ton of DB draught, a tub of chicken wings from the Chinks. Smokes too. And bitches. As many as I can handle.’

They were standing in the corner of the yard, not easily visible to the bridge. Randy glanced over his shoulder, then put out a hand, his fist clenched tight. ‘My shout.’

‘Fuck me! Is this what I think it is?’ Ben said, grabbing the small parcel. ‘Where’d you get it?’

His friend tapped the side of his nose. ‘Special delivery.’

‘Jesus, you’re the man,’ Ben crooned, a proper smile spreading over his face.

‘Stick with me, bro,’ Randy grinned, slapping him on the back. Then he stepped behind the wall to shoot up.

‘Hey,’ Ben called after him.

‘What?’

‘I’m getting out of this hellhole next hearing.’

‘Whatever you say, brother.’

‘I got me a plan.’

Randy looked up, his eyes already glassy.

‘I’m gonna meet with that Reid woman. I’m gonna r-e-f-o-r-m. Tell her I’m real sorry for what I did. Them parole dudes gonna be so impressed, it won’t be long before Ben Toroa parties when he wants to party, and not just when his homie gets his paws on some!’