The Last Time We Spoke (19 page)

Carla agonised for days over how to teach Toroa to read. She knew that so much rested on the first lesson. She would have just one hour to gain his trust, engage and relate to him on a level he understood. Trust. Relate. Engage. Words that were world’s apart from how she felt towards him. That he had robbed her of everything she valued had to be set aside. Her focus was to teach him to read. Her motivation for doing this was still not entirely clear to herself. Perhaps it sprang from a desire to convert something so evil into a more positive energy and thereby give a measure of purpose to her existence. It probably also arose from a more basic desire to reclaim control and not allow Toroa to ‘win’. Words were her fists. And Kevin had sanctioned the initiative. Given his blessing. That was all the directive she needed.

The challenge became everything, consuming her every moment and importing depth into her one-dimensional days. Like an old cushion filled with new innards, so Carla’s life took on a more robust shape. She borrowed books from the library on innovative ways to teach adults to read, spoke with Haslop about Toroa’s family history, and trawled through newspaper archives for stories of disaffected youths. She read Alan Duff’s
Once Were
Warriors,
5
learning something of the horror of domestic violence in an urban Māori family, and
Life Is So Good
6
by Afro-American George Dawson, the grandson of slaves who’d learnt to read at the age of ninety-eight. Carla bought coloured paper to make flashcards, bars of chocolate for rewards, and a lever arch file, which she labelled TOROA. She fell asleep with books in her lap and dreamt about alphabet zoos, giant Milky Bars, and pages without print. She trialled teaching techniques on Mingyu, her willing and ever-patient guinea pig, and she read poems to the bathroom mirror, until it was all fogged up and her bath cold.

Finally, the first lesson was upon her.

He was seated opposite the Reid woman in a small meeting room adjacent to the prison chapel. The authorities had put an oil heater in the room, which was a plus. At least it promised an hour of warmth, if nothing else. In prison, the cold lived permanently in your bones.

The Reid woman had surprised him by asking the screws to remove his handcuffs. They’d had to get the okay from above, but eventually his hands had been freed. Now she was pulling things out of a large basket. He eyed it suspiciously.

‘Did you get the meal I dropped in last month?’ she asked, pulling out a chipped blue bowl and a spoon, and placing it on the table in front of him.

What was she up to?

‘You did or didn’t get it?’ She was persistent; he’d give her that.

Yes, he had received the tub of cold little balls, but he hadn’t touched them. They’d smelt good, but he wasn’t about to get poisoned or anything. He nodded.

‘You know I got a speeding ticket bringing that here.’

Ben raised an eyebrow.

‘An eighty-dollar fine.’

Was she blaming him?

She smiled. The wire coiled around his insides gave a little.

‘I still can’t believe it. I nearly lost my licence,’ she said, continuing to unpack the wicker basket. ‘Forty kilometres over the limit. Forty-five, actually. It’s no fun seeing those red and blue lights flashing in your rear-view mirror, I can tell you.’

Ben’s lips twitched, holding onto a grin that wanted to break free.

‘Anyway, I hope it was worth it. It used to be …’ She swallowed. ‘It used to be my son’s favourite dish.’

Ben looked away. There was no easy place to leave his eyes in this small room.

The woman lifted four ice cream tubs out of her basket. He was seriously confused. Some literacy class!

She arranged them in a row in front of him. Vanilla. Vanilla. Vanilla. Vanilla. He could tell by the picture on the lid, the same on each, a scoop of the creamy white stuff. He hadn’t had ice cream in the longest time. He missed it. Not so much the sweetness, as the texture and temperature on your tongue. All the food in prison had the same feel. Lukewarm and slop-soft.

‘Mr Haslop tells me you’ve been given a job in kitchens.’

Jeez, was the woman stalking him?

‘We’ve been impressed with your progress recently,’ Haslop had said to him. ‘That left hook of yours at last behaving itself, Ben. In fact, I note you’ve not been involved in any disruptive behaviour for some months now.’ Ben had yawned. ‘So we’ve decided to trial you in the kitchens.’

Working in the kitchens came with serious perks. Kitchen workers had their own gym. There was no lockdown in the daytime.
You got first choice of
kai.
And perhaps the greatest benefit was that it quickened the slow creep of time.

‘As you know, this comes with privileges and responsibilities,’ Haslop had continued. ‘What we’re saying to you, Ben, is that we are placing our trust in you. I hope you’ll not disappoint us. This could be the next step to getting out of here, the next step towards reclaiming your life.’

Ben looked at the Reid woman now sitting in front of him. The light was coming from behind her. She was wearing a baby-blue jumper with fine hairs of wool that stood out in a soft, fuzzy aura. Bizarrely, something about it reminded him of the big mustard-coloured sweater his mum used to wear on cold, rainy days. As a kid, he’d loved snuggling up to her, the soft sweater enveloping him in big folds of woolly skin. He shifted in his chair.

‘I hear kitchen work is one of the most sought-after jobs.’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said in a really loud voice, trying to scare her off. Her face stayed the same – calm. He looked around for a clock. He wanted the hour over and done with.

She placed an oblong piece of card down on the table. ‘Know what this is?’

Ben knew. He couldn’t read the writing, but recognised it immediately. It got pinned up in the kitchen at the start of each week. The prison menu planner.

‘Can you read any of it?’

Suddenly he was back in Mr Roberts’s class and everyone was laughing at him.

‘Ben?’

He hardened his jaw and his eyes.

‘It can’t be a good feeling,’ she said, ‘not being able to read. Being reliant on others to interpret the world for you.’

‘I don’t need no one to interpret my world,’ he said with a sneer.

She pulled out a yellow book with the face of an old guy on the cover. ‘See this man?’ She held out the book.

He jerked backwards. She was invading his space.

She kept her arm outstretched. Her fingers were long, just like his mum’s.

‘This man learnt to read at the age of ninety-eight.’ she said. ‘Ninety-eight! Can you believe that?’

Ben took the book just to get her off his back. It felt weird. The weight of it. He thought it would’ve been lighter. The cover was smooth.

Strangely, holding it made him feel important, like he was one of those legals dressed in a suit, who always smelt super clean. He’d never held a book before, not a real book. Sure, he’d had A4 exercise books at school, but not one with lots of pages filled with perfectly square black writing.

He brought it in closer. The old guy on the cover’s eyes momentarily trapped him – straight-looking, bright eyes.

‘You can learn too, Ben. You’re smart enough, that’s for sure.’

He dug his feet into the ground to stop himself from being sucked into this woman’s world. Words like ‘smart’ and ‘I know how hard’ were drawing him in.

‘So today I thought we’d begin with fruit salad.’

Far out! Never mind fruit salad, this woman was a fucking fruit cake.

‘A recipe for fruit salad. One you can use in the kitchens.’ She started to open the ice cream tubs.

Ben peered inside. No ice cream.

‘Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me bring in a knife,’ she said with a tilt of her head. ‘So I had to cut up all the fruit beforehand.’

He snorted. Just the thought of this woman bringing a knife into prison. He made his face serious again.

She passed him the spoon. ‘Now tip the apples into the big bowl.’

He leant forward and found the tub of cubed apples. They were browning at the edges. In they went. Then the woman was holding up a piece of card.

‘Apple. See how it’s spelt:
A-P-P-L-E.
Follow my finger as I say it.’

Did she think he was five years old or something?

He made a cursory show of looking at the card.

‘Next, bananas.’

It seemed like forever since he had eaten a solid, sweet banana. There was no banana in any fruit salad he’d eaten inside. Once a month, at breakfast, they might get a cup of ‘fruit salad’, but it was just cubes of tinned peaches with a few pieces of floury apple floating on top.

‘
B-A-N-A-N-A.
’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Fruit salad,’ he hissed between pursed lips.

‘Good. Now for the peaches and pears.’

Peaches and pears. He was getting hungry. He’d not tasted a fresh pear, or a peach for that matter, before.

He nonchalantly tipped out the contents of the last two tubs. They smelt like some other life, of green grass, blue sky and sunshine.

‘See how both these words begin with the same three letters?’ she said. ‘We say them a bit differently, though. We say …’ She twisted her mouth up as she repeated them. ‘I know it’s confusing, but that’s English for you. Always playing tricks on us.’

Us. Ben’s body prickled.

The woman unrolled a big piece of paper. As she smoothed it out, he saw that there were hundreds of crazy cartoons jumbled all over it, the page packed with pictures. Some of the drawings were so minute he could barely make them out. He couldn’t take in the whole picture at once it was so busy.

‘Use this magnifying glass,’ she said, handing him a thick circle of glass stuck to the end of a stick.

Ben sighed and grabbed it. It would have some uses inside. He’d try and snaffle it when she wasn’t looking.

‘Hold it over the poster.’

He made an exaggerated show of doing this. The pictures behind the glass grew bigger. There was a dog sitting inside an orange kennel. A pink house in the clouds. Loads of
korus.
A rugby ball. Some square black words.

‘Now see if you can find the fruit salad words.’

He knew there was a catch. The stupid woman was just trying to humiliate him. He dropped the magnifying glass.

‘Hidden somewhere on this page are those four fruit words,’ she said, seemingly oblivious to his protest.

Ben’s heart knocked against his ribs. So she wanted to show him up, well he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

Then he saw it, tucked up under SpongeBob Square Pants. ‘
PEACH
!’ he cried, jumping up.

She laughed.

She looked different. She had the whitest teeth he’d ever seen, packed in two tidy rows like notes on a piano keyboard.

He sat down and made his face serious again.

‘How about you find “banana”,’ she said, her smile dying too. ‘Then we can eat some fruit salad to finish off. You’ll be eating your words,’ she said with a smile.

Stand tall, I shout! This is an important moment, Benjamin Toroa. You cannot yet hear me, so why do I raise my voice? Even when I find you unguarded in your sleep, your dreams still thwart me. Though I suppose one cannot dream about things of which one is ignorant. You do not yet know what great people you are descended from. Do not realise that their blood runs through your veins, and their aspirations lie buried within you – seeds that can be cultivated.

So much has changed for our people. Sometimes even I feel the walls of my story bow under the pressure of all that has changed. Our people have been corralled so far down this new road that at my lowest I wonder if we can ever go back. If you look over your shoulder, Benjamin, it is now hard to see what was left behind.

You inhabit a world where too many children die. And not just from the pox. Too many women cower in corners and accept. There are those who drink till they cannot remember, the fuzz and fury of alcohol changing who they are. And those who smoke the small glass pipe, corroding their conscience
…
It was not always like this. Violence finds an easy home living with the poor, the dislocated, the isolated. And like yeast left unattended, swells and grows, spilling into and onto everything.

But give up? Never! What mother gives up on her child? And you are my child. Our child. All of Māoridom’s child.

We cannot only watch over the good. I persist with you, Benjamin, for every day brings a new sunrise, just as every winter is surely followed by a spring, and just as today this
Pākehā
woman chose to look forward. I will never give up, because I have spied something that sparkles like gold dust within you, and it waits to be found
…
by you.

Gravy trickled down Ben’s chin. He speared another chunk of beef. Music pounded. It was Sunday. He was hanging with Owen and Marvelle in Marvelle’s crib, the three enjoying a communal feed and sharing what their respective visitors had brought them. Marvelle’s tongue searched for a greasy noodle stuck to his cheek, then he crammed another forkful of chop suey into his mouth, before passing Owen the plastic container.

Marvelle’s lag was eight years. Ben didn’t know for what – Marvelle never said – but he liked hanging with the guy. He was a choice card player and had a wicked sense of humour. He also had a great voice and could do an awesome impersonation of Vanilla Ice. It helped that Marvelle was built like a powerhouse. Since Ben had been invited into Marvelle’s inner circle, no one bothered picking a fight with him any more.

‘What you got there, bro?’ Marvelle asked, pointing to Ben’s tub.

‘Osso bucco,’ Ben said, his tongue wrapping itself carefully around the words.

‘Ozo fucking what?’

‘Ossss-o buuu-co, dumbo,’ Ben repeated. ‘It’s bray … uh … braised veal. Osso means “bone” in Italian and
buco means “hole”. “Hole-in-the-bone”, ’cos the best bit’s the marrow, man.’ And with a loud slurp, he sucked up the pocket of jelly hiding in the centre of the bone. ‘Want some?’ He held out his tub.

‘You’ve lost the plot, cuz,’ Marvelle said, pulling a face. ‘Gone soft in the head ever since that woman came calling. She’s sucked out your bloody marrow, that’s what.’ He tapped his skull.

Owen, who’d been lying on the bunk, burst out laughing, his saliva spraying across the room. ‘Next thing, you’ll be asking the screws for conjugal favours with the ho,’ he said, chortling. ‘Mr and Mrs Ozo Buko.’

Ben lunged across the room and grabbed Owen by the throat. ‘Shut the fuck up.’

Owen’s face darkened.

‘Get off him!’ Marvelle shouted. ‘You’re strangling him.’ He grabbed a handful of Ben’s track top. Ben looked down at Owen’s dusky face. Marvelle brought his elbow up around Ben’s neck and pulled, and they both fell backwards onto the floor.

Owen stood up, coughing and gasping for breath. He stumbled, steadied himself, then staggered out of the cell.

Marvelle pointed to the door. ‘Get out!’ he said to Ben. ‘Get the fuck out of my crib. You’ve changed, man. Gone fuckin’ weird, you have.’

Back in his own cell, Ben cursed, his fists clenched and his eyes screwed up. What was happening to him? It was like some spirit had set up shop in his brain. Who was he? He didn’t know any more. Why had he got so upset with them for dissing the stupid Reid woman?

It had started out as a ploy, part of a greater plan to get out of prison. He’d forced himself not to be rude to her, pushing out
politeness and acting like he was concerned. Then she’d begun arriving with food. At first, he reckoned she was trying to poison him, but after testing it on some of the newbies, he’d been won over. Free
kai
was free
kai
, and you could never get enough inside. Plus, it was food like he’d not tasted before. Seriously good food.

The sham had become easier over time, and occasionally he’d had to remind himself it was all bogus. Like an actor had started living his role and couldn’t confidently pin down who Ben Toroa was any more.

But it was when he started learning to read, that weird things really began to happen. His anger sort of burnt down like a candle, till there was only a short wick drowned in a pool of melted resentment. Rumbles didn’t interest him much any more, while learning a new word gave him the same high a left hook used to do.

‘Stupid bitch!’ He punched the wall, his fingers crunching against the concrete. He grimaced, but it wasn’t pain he felt, just fury. All to do with that ho. She’d enticed him into her web and wrapped him up in her sticky string, and he’d been blind to it. Now he’d pissed off his two best mates. That was it! He’d tell her next week. No more visits.