Conch - A Short Story

Deep in the lagoon, a haven in Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, the first pair of hands found me. They were long fingered, practiced, and plucked me nimbly from my coral crevice. I rose from deep black to light blue, fresh out of water under a new sky. I was fished up and flushed out. I was polished, prized, catered to and carted around in woven whāriki. For protection. Hands after hands turned me over to you until we sat together under a woven roof. I was much older than you, but just as new in this unfamiliar place. Only days out of the water, both of us knowing only what we had. Like two darling stars ready to move across the sky. Boxes and boxes passed us by, mats, baskets, church hats, packaged away. I was kept in mind and on display, after a journey away. Your mama came home in the rain with coats and long trousers. I was a cream coloured curve placed out of small arm’s reach, on top of the new fireplace. This was the heat we knew now; the life of better, but not the weather.

You were small, your pair of hands grabbing like squat little starfishes. Your mama held you at my level with her strong hands and explained how delicate the both of us were. We were thin bones, smooth from touch and care. You, new as morning, as easily broken. Me, old as dust, this close to settling forever. This was our new home, all of us a long way from where we originated. You slept, fists quiet, in a bassinet safe as an oyster shell. Your kuia touched your gentle black hair and asked, “What is the most important thing in the world?” Your mama smiled at the old idiom, and replied, “He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.” Your kuia curled her wrinkled hands around yours and knew instead, “he tamariki, he tamariki, he tamariki.”

You didn’t take long to grow, shaking unruly seaweed hair and sprouting long frond limbs. Dark eyes, with two tongues like fishes alive in your mouth. You grinned like a clam with your first pair of rugby boots, coming home each time colder and muddier and happier than the last. I would call you together, to see you stand taller and broader with the line of other flower haired girls and bare chested boys. A community of the future. Your kuia called the old songs with a starling’s voice. I watched your practise, fluttering hands echoing the tides that brought us here. All your kikau skirts, in time, swished an ocean chorus of ‘home, home, home.” I sat on the mantle as always, my fixed stare ensuring you kept in step.

When your kuia died the house rang with mourning. You decorated the place with a woven raranga of Aue! Aue! Like a pair of hunched black waves, you and your mama cried a torrent. You cried for your mountain back home to hear it. You held each other as tight as your hands would allow. Over here in New Zealand most people don’t touch the dead anymore, but you brushed her grey hair out like a halo around her quiet face, as gently as you would a baby. Your eyes dried up like old rivers, but your voices wavered still. Birds unsure. Your mother called through me again with shaking hands, emptier and hollower than I had ever sounded before. Your kuia joined me on the mantle, proud and straight backed, a flower ‘ei on her head forever. Aue. We are all thin bones underneath.

Eventually, you were tall and whole, an arm full of books and an arm around your mama. You glittered like the crests of the waves when you went out with your friends, clusters of coral curves laughing like dolphins. You hugged and loved as if you had known one another forever. When you were home from work, your papers stacked up on the dining table, attending you while you studied and studied. This was why we were here. This is a future. Tattoos bloomed across your skin, like a moving tivaevae quilt. A ring of waves on your calf for strength. A tiare flower armband for beauty. A conch on your back, for your home. I watched over your studies with my eye open, as every reason. I am uncle, aunt, mother, father. Your kuia and I were calcified on the mantle, into ornamentation, but not futility. I kept your head to your paper and in turn you would dust the naked pink waterline of my eye.

And then there you were, graduation cap barely fitting over your long curly hair. You practised the speech to your peers for me first, staring ahead with your dark eyes. With a flax work grin, you carried your lagoon blue korowai on shoulders wider than Wellington harbour. When you came home, paper in hand, my white and pink shell was reflected in your pearl teeth and flushed cheek. Your mama held the inside of your elbow like an anchor, clutching her woven church hat to her head, eyes shining up at you as happy moons. She said she cried when they read out your name, because it was her grandmother’s.

You left this house a long time ago now, coming back to her every few Sundays with washing and a smile. You would eat and laugh and sing and talk like you had never left, language like shoals of multicoloured fish swimming through the room. One day you started coming home with a boy. Your mama liked him enough to have the reception at the house, and you danced with your new husband, the gentle crash of waves in a protected cove. Your friends stood in for those who couldn’t cross the ocean, circling your peaceful dance like the reef. One day you started coming home with a boy and a baby. Another starling held gently between your arms. Black hair laying like a mat, so much like you when we were new on the Earth. The first time you brought her over, you and your mama crumpled into a wet hug around her, like two palm trees falling in towards each other for a kiss. Earth shaker, born of a star. Two new unfurling starfish hands reaching up to move the heavens, tangled into your matching curls. On that day, your mama took me down off the shelf, turned me over in her hands, and gave me to you.

Now, I sit in the east-facing window of your house. Your daughter plays in the sunbeams that pour over us like so many waterfalls. She has grown enough to sit, to stand, to sing. To rub the dirt from her knees and her face. Before she was tall enough, you would hold her up to me so we could look right at each other like old friends. Now, she reaches me easily with her sure hands, raises me to her lips to relish the sound, to drink it in like mountain water. Your daughter speaks clearly, with two tongues like fishes. She dances with you under my watchful eye, flowers blooming around your wrists and necks like fringed corals. She dances with the other children, feet stamping and drums pulsing a beat of promise, a beat of “Home. Home. Home.” Her hair shines as black as yours, and she has your kuia’s name.

All I knew once was ocean, sand, darkness, light, wrapped in a cloak the vague colour of a sky indistinguishable. My learning was of coral bastions and avenues of fish, of tide and current seen from below. My learning was not of people, of happening or new. When I was taken out of the ocean, my watery eye was clear enough to see the stars above.

What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people, it is the people, it is the people. It is the children, it is the children, it is the children.

No longer do I guard soft flesh from ocean predators. Rather, I guard powerful voices from buffeting winds, guard soft hands from calloused cold. I guard you, from the distance of the currents.