The Bone People (63 page)

And while the doctor blinks over that, Piri writes swiftly,

JOE'S FINE. HE'S IN JAIL. I DON'T KNOW WHERE KEREWIN IS. YOU BEEN IN HOSPITAL FOR

TEN WEEKS, HIMI, AND YOU HAVE TO STAY IN A WHILE YET.

The boy reads it, and reads it, and reads it again, as though the words don't make sense, while Piri begs him

in his heart not to ask any more questions.

These bastards haven't told him anything, and no way am I going to be the one who breaks his heart. How

can I say he hasn't got a home any more? That Kerewin's knocked down her Tower and apparently gone for

good? Or that my triple-dyed shit of a cousin isn't his father any more?"

He avoids Simon's eyes then, too. He writes, GET BETTER QUICK. I WILL COME BACK NEXT WEEK,

ignores the fact that the child is obviously loaded with more questions and imploring him with his eyes to

stay, and gives him a fast final hug.

It can be Lynn's turn next time, thinks Piri, this is killing me,

patching the doctor handle Simon, reluctant and upset, back into bed.

He doesn't wave back when Piri waves him goodbye.

He keeps the tobacco packet for days.

He takes it a question and answer at a time, working them out in his mind. Joe okay?

Yeah, writes Piri, Joe's fine.

That's good. I didn't hurt him then. He's fine.

That's not why he can't come.

Where's Joe?

In jail, Piri's reply... but why's Joe in jail? Was it the windows? Did he get the blame because I was in here? I

hope not, he'll be wilder than hell. But why else?

That is why he can't come though.... Jail, he means jail, ah yes, penitentiary. Aside from the penitential part,

says Kerewin, floating out the door and going down the Tower stairs... where would she be but at the tower?

Piri knows, he's been there.

But where's Kerewin?

I don't know where Kerewin is, writes Piri. Which means she must have gone away.

Why has she gone away? Because Joe's in jail, and I'm here?

And I've been in here how long?

Ten weeks. Ten weeks! That's a hell of a long time.

And I can't come home because Joe's in jail, and Kerewin's gone away because he's in jail and I'm here.

It starts to tie itself in knots, the question and answer way. But the crux of it is,

You'll have to stay here a while yet, Himi.

How long's a while yet?

For days he asks it, writing on the pad they gave him (it isn't paper, but a square of plastic with a transparent

sheet on top. You can write on it with your nail if there's nothing else, and when you lift the transparency, the

words vanish.)

WHEN AM I GOING HOME? SP to all and sundry.

"You're writing very well today, Simon," and the male nurse hurries away.

WHEN DO I GO HOME? SP

"When you're better, dear, I expect." The wardsmaid smiles, and goes out, shutting the door on him.

WHEN DO I GO HOME? SP

"As soon as you're walking properly, we'll be thinking about that... excuse me, Nurse Campbell, would we

have..." the pediatrician called Fayden lowers his voice and he can't hear any more.

WHEN DO I GO HOME? SP

"I don't know, Himi, only the doctors can say that," Lynn shakes her head and smiles and cries at the same time. "Your hair's growing nice... you like those grapes eh?"

Chatter chatter chatter and say nothing. It's her third visit, and her last one, because they're taking Marama

home this weekend.

("Don't tell him we won't be seeing him again . . . Jesus!" he says explosively, "I'd rather see him with Joe again than stuck in a home. He'll rot there."

"I still don't see why they won't let us have him -- " "Because we haven't got much money and we're Maori and we're not really relations and we got four kids already and another one on the way . . . ahh Lynnie, don't

cry, I didn't mean it like that," Piri trying his consoling best.)

WHEN DO I GO HOME? SP

"Come off it, young man. This is getting past a joke."

Ploy number two: if they won't answer you, don't answer them properly until they do.

So, seven times the audiologist has asked, "Do you hear that?" and each time he has handed back the pad

with the same question on it, a bland expression on his face.

The man is red in the face, and saying things under his breath.

Simon watches the muttering with interest. As well as getting to hear quite a lot with the help of the

amplifiers he wears, he's got fairly good at lipreading.

"You're well on the way to becoming a first class bloody nuisance," says the head nurse of the children's

ward the next day.

He's been showing an interested group of ambulant children how far you can piss if you really set your mind

to it i.e. right down the stairwell. He doesn't look apologetic.

He writes, WHEN DO I GO HOME? SP (Plot three: be a nark.)

"As soon as I can arrange it if you keep on behaving like this!" she snaps, and is instantly aware that that was the wrong thing to say. There is a demoniac glint in the crooked green eyes.

Now there's nothing else for it, she thinks, or God knows what he'll be up to next.

"I think you'd better come into my office a minute, Simon. I have something very important to tell you." She holds out her hand.

He ignores it, but follows her, heart beating hard.

It had dawned on him days ago that They didn't have any intention of sending him home. And the suspicion

has been steadily growing ever since Piri and Lynn stopped coming, that They don't want him to have

anything more to do with the people he knows. Both things would have broken him before, but today's child

is way harder than the gullible soft-hearted Clare of four months back, he thinks.

They stare at one another.

The woman:

It should be Fayden doing this, he can handle you . . . why do I always feel uneasy? Your appearance? Thin

so your bones show,

eyes vividly alive now despite the bruised-looking sockets, hair regrown to a spiky aureole concealing all the

damage except for that crooked face... you don't look child-like, more a shrunken bitter adult... or is it the

way you move, that lurch, a drunken sort of scuttle when you want to get out of our way? Or the way you

refuse to accept us? You're a cool arrogant bandit of a child; you don't owe us obedience and you show it

hourly, by the minute if you can... and Fayden jokes about it, eggs you on... can't he see you need a good

stable place to grow up in, a place of kind authority, a normal background at last? Can't he understand as we

do, that "home" means, "When am I better?" -- not really going back to that, that ghoul--

Simon keeps his mind blank. He just stares at her.

She takes a deep breath.

I know we're right, and Fayden's wrong.

She checks that the door is shut, and switches on the Don't Disturb sign. She pitches her voice more loudly

than normal.

She explains, using simple terms, why Joe was sent to jail, what custody is, why he has been removed from

Joe's custody.

"He was never really your father, you know, it was never properly finished, you see?"

She explains what a handicap is, what multi-handicapped means, what normal means.

"So you'll need very special care and teaching so you can, when you're grown up, fit in with all the other

people. You see that, don't you?"

No response.

He stands unmoving, one hand steadying himself against the wall. His face is absolutely still.

She explains why, in short, they'll be sending him away soon to a very nice home and school where there will

be kind and] understanding people who will love him for himself, take good care of him, and teach him all,

"Simon, you can hear me?"

His eyes are fixed on her face.

He hasn't shown any reaction whatsoever. Except, queerly, his eyes have become darker.

Pupil enlargement of course... but where's the green gone to?

"Simon?" standing up, "Simon? Are you all right? Simon?" Her voice is coming from the far dark distance, and sounds like a cry for help.

They can't do this to me. And he knew they could.

He had endured it all. Whatever they did to him, and however long it was going to take, he could endure it.

Provided, at the end, he went home.

And home is Joe, Joe of the hard hands but sweet love. Joe who can comfort, Joe who takes care. The strong

man, the man who cries with him. And home has become Kerewin, Kerewin the distant who is so close. The

woman who is wise, who doesn't tell him lies. The strong woman, the woman of the sea and the fire.

And if he can't go home, he might as well not be. They might as well not be, because they only make sense

together. He knew that in the beginning with an elation beyond anything he had ever felt. He has worked at

keeping them together whatever the cost. He doesn't know the words for what they are. Not family, not

whanau... maybe there aren't words for us yet? (E nga iwi o nga iwi, whispers Joe; o my serendipitous elf,

serendipitous self, whispers Kerewin, we are the waves of future chance) he shakes the voices out of his

head. But we have to be together. If we are not, we are nothing. We are broken. We are nothing.

It is almost worse than the night.

Because now he can see nothing ahead, nothing at all.

He stopped communicating.

The pad would gather dust if it wasn't a hospital.

The male nurse said,

"He does exactly what you tell him to do as though he hadn't heard you, unless you tell him to answer. Then

he doesn't hear you."

It was a wall he had built in one night, with consummate care, and there was only one entry point.

They didn't know it.

They tried cajolery. He could come and go as he pleased. He stayed in the single room he'd been put back

into, stayed rocking on the bed.

They gave him something that'd been kept aside for months, Kerewin's parcel of the things he'd looted. They

watched when they Save it, hoping for a chink to show in the wall.

' He sorted through the stuff mechanically, not hesitating over any of it.

. Moneycowries in his pocket, paperclips on the table. The gadget in "is pocket, the cigars on the table. The

agate and the scented ?» in his pocket, the felt-tips on the table. The chess-set jammed in his pocket, the ink-

block on the table. The visiting cards slipped in beside, except for one, on the table.

He strung the turquoise ring on the small medallion's chain and it round his neck.

"Hey, do you like jewellery? (Remember his earring?) I know, we'll get your earring, okay? (Get his

earring.)"

He looks at his hands. He doesn't watch people's faces anymore. He knows what his eyes can give away.

"Hold on a minute... there we are? My, you look grand! We'll get a mirror and then you can see how good it

looks, eh?"

He avoids looking in the mirror. His earring could be a thousand miles away, instead of in the lobe of his ear

again. So could everyone round him.

("Well, we tried," said the head nurse. "What next?")

They tried a form of simply bullying -- anything to crack the facade. Like the physiotherapist saying, "Walk.

Stop. Walk. Stop," about twenty times in a row. The child obeyed like a zombie soldier, and the only result

was his footwork deteriorated to lurching.

The wall is seemingly a complete barrier. The male nurse was reduced, one afternoon, to shaking the wooden

child. He stopped himself hurriedly.

There was nothing in Simon's downcast eyes, not even fear.

But there is a way in, and Fayden found it.

He's the pediatrician, recently graduated, an ebullient young foreigner not especially liked by the rest of the

staff. He's inclined to wear peacock shirts under his uniform whites, and he whistles and sings and talks too

much to the patients. For all his inexperience, he's apt to disagree with his colleagues in all departments over

the way they handle the people they serve. "Man, they're peeople," he drawls, a dozen times a day, and

"Peeeple Fayden' he's become.

At the last staff meeting on Simon, he says.

"Man, he loves that Gillayley, it's obvious what we do."

"Aw... come on. He's been scared into pathetic submission by him and --"

"Not from what I've heard. Those Tainui people said --"

"They're biased. Haven't you read the welfare reports? And our social worker's comments? We've agreed as a

group that placement in a Hohepa home will provide the most advantageous start for --"

"I dissent."

"Your opinion is noted."

Nothing else for it now, he thinks. The afternoon before the boy leaves, he moves in.

"Hullo, you."

The room is too quiet. The child hasn't seen him. He's doing what he mainly does these days: legs drawn up

and crossed at the ankles,

arms wrapped round his knees, chin sunk on them, he rocks back and forth. His eyes are closed.

"Stop it eh, Simon."

The rocking into oblivion goes on.

He looks at the bedside table, and yeah, the kid's taken out his aids again. The ultimate go away. Each time

before, they've waited until he puts them back, taking it as an encouraging sign he wants the world to include

him sometimes.

But this time we gonna intrude. It's worth a try, man.

He sneaks over and lays a hand on the unsuspecting child's shoulders.

The boy jerks once, then holds himself rigidly still.

Fayden sits down on the chair, and holds out the three things he has in his hand.

The aids and Kerewin's card.

For a minute, nothing happens.

Then, slowly, the child takes the aids, and adjusts them in his ears.

He thinks I'm gonna bite him? Cautious and shaky and slower than a crippled snail--