8 – The Visit

Short Info:  Beth has saved enough money through not drinking to hire a car and to go and visit Boogie.  Whole family is happy and excited, even Jake.  Things turn sour when Jake stops at the pub and the parents both get drunk.  The visit to Boogie never happens.

Themes:  Parenting / Alcohol / Pride / Maori Culture

The chapter opens with Beth feeling proud of herself for not drinking and for saving money to see Boogie.  Duff builds a mood of happiness, emphasising both Jake and Beth’s pride in their rented car. The children in the back having fun too, except for Grace.  Beth wondering briefly what was wrong with Grace, “Kid’d been even quieter than normal lately. Beth couldn’t figure it out, other than putting it down to teenage stuff.” (P94).

Comments made about how life ‘opens up’ when you don’t spend all the money on booze and gambling.  The family have a ‘flash’ car, food in the boot, jovial atmosphere.  Husband and wife are joking to each other, for once, it doesn’t upset Jake’s pride.  The family cruise around the streets together, enjoying the looks they get, Jake calm for once.

They stop at a lake, Jake and Abe joke around, play fighting each other.  Beth wonders if he’s started smoking ‘dope’ because he is so happy.  Abe wonders if their ancestors used to row their waka on the lake and if they’d fought there, “Sure they did.  Your ancestors, boy, they were fighters,”

Jake turns sour as they drive through the white neighbourhood (Ainsbury Heights) and snaps at Beth. “So Beth not willing to push it, afraid she’d bring it right out his old hatred, resentment of anything that had white skin, had a job, owned a house, had a car.”(P98).  P99 – Beth thinks about how Maori are no good with money.

They drive past the exit to Beth’s old village and she thinks on her mother and father, how they never showed love either, ‘her father never showed his love to Mum because he was of that school of being gruff, tough, manly – MANLY – and happier when he was around his mates, drinking with them …” (P101)

Pages 102 and 103 consider the Maori slave past – in particular, Jake’s family – and maybe cause of Jake’s temper and quick pride.  “We weren’t allowed to play with many other families in our pa.  No way, not the Heke’s, man.  Don’t play with them, you’ll get the slave disease.” (P102).

Jake sees some mates and ends up going in to the pub for a drink.  Beth and the children are left waiting in the car.  Beth goes in to try and coax him out and ends up staying also, despite hating seeing the abandoned children running around in the car park.  They get drunk together and miss Boogie’s visit.

Beth gives the children money for food and a bus ride home.  Meantime, Jake and the fullas go out to the car where they promptly eat the feast prepared for the visit.  “She looked around her . . . at them, the feeding animals gorging on what felt like her very own body, such a violation did it feel.” (P111).

Chapter ends with Mark Heke (Boogie) “The housemaster on the evening shift coming up to him: Mark Heke, it appears your visitors are not coming.  And the kid saying, Yes they are. Yes they are. How kids get when they won’t face the truth.” (P113)

5 – Tennessee Waltz (Beth’s POV)

Themes: Parenting / Alcohol / Music / Hopelessness / Maori Lifestyle / Womanhood / Dreams

Short Info:  Beth waking up broken and beaten and wanting to drink, reflections on her children, dreams

Beth wakes up the same morning of the court appearance, feeling her bruises and the swelling on her face.  ‘ooo, that bastard.  One day I’ll kill you.  It hurt all over.’ (p38). Beth realises that she has slept until late in the afternoon and that she has missed Boogie’s court appearance.  Wrestling with her guilt she makes herself feel better by justifying it with her physical appearance, couldn’t go there like that.  Beth moves around her kid’s bedrooms, thinking about them, feeling guilty.

She sees Polly’s doll, thinking it looked like a corpse.  She sees the boxer posters in Nig’s room and compares them to Jake ‘But still looking at the Negro boxer and comparing to her husband, the build, the meanness of face, the eyes . . . the eyes, searching for something she could see but not put her finger on; as if the fighter’s eyes were giving away something of the exact same look in her husband’s eyes, almost a hurt.  Yes, a wounded hurt.  As if he’s saying, I’m gonna punish you, not because I’m bad but because you hurt me.’ (p40)

Beth’s reverie is interrupted with thoughts of the Tramberts all the time.

Beth changes, using clothes she has secreted about the house and proceeds to sit down and drink a beer.  She thinks back to girlhood, when she’d been ‘spunky’.  Drinking more and more beer ‘Have another glass.  Mmm-uh.  Thank you.  Downing it greedily, like medicine. Or love.  Or maybe they’re both.’ (p42)

Beth wanting to listen to music, saying that the Maori are a musical race.  Thoughts turning to how Europeans are like strangers – might as well be from another country for all the contact the two races have.  ‘Oh, but I can’t blame em half the time when you see all the crime, or too damn much of it, is committed by us.’ (p43) Beth goes on to say that Maori’s are basically a good people, they look out for each other, give each other the shirt of their backs, etc. Beth says Maori’s have passion and humour “but we ain’t got material things.”  The Maori have their love of food, they are a laid back race, “cept when we’re drunk”.   ‘Half our trouble: beer and fists and having passion.  They don’t mix.’ (p43) Goes on to say Maori are musical, good dancers, natural born entertainers, but shy.

Kids come home and comment on her face.  She is half-drunk by this point and goes back to sense of hopelessness.  Grace comes home, crying.  Grace and Beth hug each other but it feels strange.  They may as well be strangers.  Beth makes false promises to go and see Boogie in the home.  Grace implores her mother ‘why can’t we leave here?’ Again, Beth gives her false promises that they will one day.

‘A smoke.  Coldish beer.  And music.  Wanting no more, for the moment, than that.’ (p46).

Beth continues to get drunk alone and shouts at the ceiling ‘We used to be a race of warriors, O audience out there.  You know that?  And our men used to have full tattoos all over their ferocious faces, and it was chiselled in and they were not to utter a sound.  Not one sound. The women, too, they had tats on their chins and lips were black with tattooing . . . I spose they thought us women are weak anyway, though we aren’t.’ (P47)

‘And we used to war all the time, us Maoris.  Against each other.  Ture.  It’s true, honest to God, audience.  Hated each other.  Tribe against Tribe.  Savages.  We were savages.  But warriors, eh.  It’s very important to remember that.  Warriors.  Because, you see, it was what we lost when you, the white audience out there, defeated us.  Conquered us.  Took our land, our mana, left us with nothing.  But the warriors thing got handed down, see.  Well, sort of handed down; in a mixed-up sense it did.  It was more toughness that got handed down from generation to generation.  Toughness, eh. . . .But we – or our men, anyway – are clinging on to this toughness thing, like its all we got, while the rest of the world is leaving us behind.’ (p48)

During her half-drunk ranting she sees the lights go on at the Trambert’s place again.  Imagining what they’d be doing at this time of night.  Sporadically she sends the kids next door to buy beers.  Beth dances to the Tennessee Waltz by herself.   Grace watches from the outside ‘This grotesque face with its wounds fresh and swollen sliding – sliiiding – across a girl’s vision like out of a dream sequence on that backdrop of yellow/white squares illumiating a woman, a mother, a beaten wife, a member of a troubled race, her condition for this side of the world to see.’ (p49)