7 – The Night’s Last Act (Grace’s POV)

Short Info:  Grace watches the Tramberts as their daughter plays the piano and sees their ‘wonderful’ life.  She sees the horrific comparison between their life and her own and hates it. Foreshadowing of the event that will change her life in discussion of the stars, death, coffins, her changing body.

Themes:  Womanhood / Rape / Pakeha/Maori Cultures / Alcohol / Music

In the previous chapters, we have seen Grace run away from her mother dancing alone in the house.  She runs and runs – Duff trying to emphasise her youth here in order to make the upcoming act against her even more disgraceful.  In this chapter we learn that she dislikes her changing body and the act of sex, “Ee, yuk. I don’t ever want one a them inside me.” (P84).

Grace hears piano music, wonders at the stars, describes being ‘black’, how she hates it. “… I’m black, even for a Maori.  Hate it too. I hate it.” (p85).

Grace describes what it is like to live in Pine Block, describing the deaths that occur from violence and carelessness.  She  ruminates on her ancestry and the fact that Pine Block has no connections with their culture.  Talks about death again, more foreshadowing.

She watches the Pakeha family and compares them to her own. The house, the lawn, the mother are all well-groomed.  Grace realises that the mother is about the same age as Beth but she doesn’t look it, because she doesn’t look like she’s ever had a fist in her face.  The young girl playing the piano is Grace’s age.  “Grace astonished. Crushed. At the girl her ability. But mostly her confidence.” (p86). Grace watches as the mother and father hug the girl, seeing something that she will never have. “A girl felt more than crushed, she wanted to die.” (p87)

Grace is heard crying and the family call out ‘Who’s there?’. Grace runs away, back to her own family and we see the juxtaposition clearly between her life and the life of the Pakeha family.  The music is different in her house – it is loud, the house is full of people, aggressive noise.  Page 88 describes Grace’s awareness at the difference and the relationship between her father and herself.  She almost wants to tell him that she is bleeding because somebody hit her and longs to know whether Jake would defend her.  “(I just want to know I’m loved.)” (p88). We meet Uncle Bully here also – complimenting Grace.

She escapes from her father and his mates and goes to check on the younger children.  She undresses for bed, making sure to close the curtains (foreshadowing) and again wonders at the changing state of her body.  “A woman, eh? Won’t be long and I’ll be a woman.  Feeling scared at that thought: a sense of loss. And yes, sorrow. (I don’t wanna change. I don’t wanna grow old.) ”  (P89).

Grace is assaulted in the next part of the chapter.  Once it is over, she runs out in to the night again, the men of the party talking about her as she walks past them.  Grace goes to visit Toot, wanting to try the glue to block out the memory of what has happened to her.  It is sad that she searches for comfort from this boy who is in desperate need of his own comfort.

Duff tries to emphasise how futile this life is, how endless and repetitive the cycle of abuse is. “Same place, same time, next week.” (p92).

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)

3 – They Who Have History (Grace’s POV)

Themes: Pakeha / Maori History : Opposite Worlds of Maori and Pakeha

Short Info:  Descriptions of the courtroom, Grace’s description of white people, Boogie being taken away

Grace and Boogie still inside the courtroom, looking at all the ‘fancy’ pictures etc, on the walls.  Grace imagining that the Trambert’s house would look similar – reverential. Grace and Boogie ashamed that their parent’s aren’t there.  Grace looking at the white people, with their nice clothes and judgements and thinking that they’d never had to live through their mother being beaten for not cooking eggs, etc.  ‘oh, it’s not fair.  Boogie plays the wag from school because half the time he’s scared of being picked on, or he’s being led by other kids and he’s scared to say no.  He doesn’t go to school because he can’t see what good school is going to do him anyway.  Lots of us don’t.’ (p34)

Most of the chapter concentrates on Grace’s impressions of the white people and how Boogie doesn’t seem to fit in to the world of white or Maori.  Boogie (Mark) is declared a ward of the state, under the control of welfare officers, to live in a Boys Home.

Chapter concludes with looking up at all the pictures of the grey-haired, white men in robes thinking about how they had a fair chance, fancy schooling, money ‘History.  (He’s got history, Grace and Boogie Heke, and you ain’t.)’ (p35)

2 – Two Kids on a Bench (Grace’s POV)

Chapter Two – Two Kids on a Bench

Themes: Youth mirroring Parents : Hopelessness : Music : Alcohol : Violence : Manhood

Short Info:  Introduction to Grace and Boogie (Jake and Beth’s children), Family life,

Grace and Boogie are together in the courthouse, waiting to hear the sentence for Boogie’s misbehaviour.  We learn about Boogie’s personality here – he’s a ‘sook’, a ‘wus’ – the opposite of his manly father.  He is picked on because of this, and so tries to commit crimes, etc. to live up to the Muss name.

‘Oh Bog, you’re such a sook at times.  You really are.  No wonder the old man picks on you.’ – Grace to Boogie (p22)

Grace ponders Maoriness and boys, and reflects on her relationship with Boogie – ‘…maybe she loved him more for being sort of a freak, a standout from the rest of the Pine Block roughies, let alone a son of Jake Heke.  Boys: they make such a big deal out of being tough.  It’s the most important thing in the world to em.  Specially Maori’s.’ (p22)

We discover that Boogie is ‘hated’ by his father ‘Ain’t no kid of mine they can’t look after emselves.  His own kid. And being disowned because he couldn’t fight.  What about Boogie’s other qualities? Always near the top of the class, very kind and very sensitive to the kids that everyone else forgets about, or scorns.’ (p23)

Discover that Boogie hates violence but goes around telling all the other kids that his dad is Jake The Muss, tough guy, etc and boasting about older brother Nig.

Scenery descriptions of the court officials, mostly Pakeha, dressed nicely ‘Funny that, how one side of the double doors are one race, and the other this race: Maori.’ (p24)

Grace recounts the fight at their house the night before and Jake the Muss yelling and cursing.  ‘Aw, shut ya mouth, woman’ (to a bystander in the fight) As if she hardly existed.’ (p25).

‘Grace figuring that it must be a kind of madness comes over em when they’re boozed up; and maybe its also fear, so they yell and scream, just like kids do when they’ve been unexpectedly frightened’ (p25)

Grace sees her father’s violence as a disease / illness ‘Oh God, I hope it’s not inheritable.  Whatever it is that Dad’s suffering from.’ (p25)

Grace comforts the smaller kids whilst the fight goes on ‘On and on and on into this lovely night, this lovely night and lovely children corrupted, ruined, raped, and all you can say is shake? Put it here, brother?  And next week, next month, next year, for all the years of your terrible existence, you lot’ll be doing the same’ (p26)

Music playing after the fight – seeming to sort everything out.  Women fighting  ‘… it wasn’t hard for experienced girl to picture em hanging onto each other’s hair, clawing at each other, taking big raking gouges out of one another’s facial skin, spit flying, froth bubbling out of frantic mouths, eyes bulged blood red with the effort, the booze, and that certain madness that afflicts a girl her own race and only them . . .’ (p27)

First foreshadowing of Grace’s suicide ‘No wonder a girl felt she was going half-mad, or didn’t want to live no more, not here, in this house, in this street.’ (p27)

Woman’s role to cook.  Beth refusing, Jake hitting her because of it.  Grace waking in the morning to broken beer bottles, overturned crates etc.  the kids cleaning it all up ‘And Huata was too young yet to know Boog’d failed the test of pending manhood, but he’d learn.  He’d be one of the judges one day against one of his own peers.  All boys are judges against their own.’ (p29)

Back to the present, courthouse, Grace’s shame that their parents aren’t there, the welfare officer patronising them with the ‘Maori’s and their late nights’ comment. ‘The mothers with fags in their mouths, in hands that had a tattoo, an arm with one, two of them that Grace could see.  Most ofem – there’d be eight or nine mums – fat things.  And most wild-looking.  The Lost Tribe . . .’ (p30). Mother hitting a small child across the face in front  of the welfare officer and he being powerless to do anything but admonish the woman.