A few weeks after I first spoke to him, Rangi Parata turned up at the front door. ‘Can I watch your television?’ Dad wasn’t due home for two hours.
‘Sure,’ I said, holding the door wide open and standing well back from him. I turned on the TV. There was a soap opera on. ‘Can we watch the rugby?’ said Rangi.
I switched to the other channel. ‘Okay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Ireland isn’t as good as the All Blacks, but –’
‘Ah yeah, I know that. Nobody is.’
At half-time, during the ad break, he asked, ‘Have you got a beer?’
‘We have Fanta. Would you like some?’
‘Your old man doesn’t drink?’
‘No.’
Rangi watched the game and I watched him. ‘Stop looking at me, you freak,’ he said. ‘Are you a queer?’
‘No!’ Dad had explained to me about gays and lesbians and I’d picked up other words for them from books and television. ‘I rarely get to see people my own age.’
‘Yeah? Well, stop it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You got an indoor dunny?’
‘You don’t?’
‘Nah. Just a long drop.’
I had wondered about the shed behind his house. I’d seen him and his aunt carrying pots to and from it. I had thought it was some kind of well.
‘You want to use it?’
‘Yeah, later.’
‘What’s it like in school?’
‘It’s shit. It’s shit if you’re me, anyway. They don’t like my type there.’
I knew he meant mixed race, but I didn’t know what the mix was.
‘Are you half Māori?’
‘Yeah. My dad was the full job.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘No. I think it’s exotic.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Different, but good different, not weird.’
‘Unusual?’
‘Yes.’
‘I like that. Exotic.’ He looked at me and smiled for the first time.
The next time he came over, he brought his homework with him. It was extremely simple. The maths equations were ones I had mastered when I was ten. The reading material was The Hobbit. I had read that when I was seven. I saw corrected homework for the first time, and his teacher’s critical comments written in red biro. Rangi’s handwriting was barely joined up. He asked me to do his homework for him and I was tempted, to win his friendship, but instead I offered to help him. Rangi was going to be leaving school soon to start a building apprenticeship. He needed to pass his School Cert.
We sat at opposite sides of our kitchen table, while I talked him through the English comprehension tests and the maths problems. He was quick to learn.
‘Why couldn’t you learn that in school?’ I asked.
‘Too busy watching my back.’ He explained that there was gang warfare in other parts of Rotorua and that he was trying to stay out of it. Even though he was only half Māori, the white students expected him to be involved and the Māori gang students hated him for staying out of it. He showed me fresh bruises on his arm where he’d been punched. School didn’t seem that appealing any more.
‘I turn up for my classes, talk to nobody and then I leave. I used to hang out at the dairy with this girl I liked’ – the dairy was what they called the corner shop, I’d seen teenagers sitting in there – ‘but her brother found me in school and thumped me.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have a girlfriend or a wife.’
‘No shagging? Ever? That’s sucky, mate.’
‘So, you have no friends either?’
‘I guess not.’
I grinned.
Dad knew nothing of our new friendship. I made sure there was no trace of Rangi’s visits, even flushing the toilet after him every time, since that was something he always forgot. I’d told him that my dad didn’t want him in our house. He was unsurprised, but pleased that I still wanted him to visit.
On Friday 10th December 1982, Rangi got a half-day to mark the end of his schooling. He had a few days’ study leave before his School Cert exams began. Christmas in the sun was still a strange concept to me, but one I liked. Rangi swerved into his driveway and then jumped the fence. He showed me a note from his teacher. ‘Much improved,’ she had written. ‘Rangi has applied himself this year. This boy’s future is bright.’
He whooped and hollered like a cowboy, kicking the dust with his bare feet. Rangi didn’t wear shoes in the summer. From what I saw in town, a lot of kids didn’t. ‘Thanks, mate, look what you did for me! Teacher says I’m going to ace these exams.’
‘You did it, Rangi, you did it.’ And he had.
I had an idea. ‘Let’s go swim in the lake, to celebrate.’
He had an idea too. ‘I’m not much for swimming but I got some beers. Let’s go for a soak.’ He went to grab my shoulder in some gesture of affection, I think, but I pulled back at the last minute. ‘No touching!’
‘Sorry, mate, I forgot.’
The trip to the lake was a mistake. The whole friendship was a mistake, and everything was my fault, but setting off that day, I felt happier than I ever had in my life. I had a genuine friend who was grateful to me for my help. We were going to have fun and act like grown-ups and drink beer. I had turned fifteen some months earlier and I knew that it was illegal to drink alcohol until you were twenty. Dad would have blown his top if he’d known about any of it, but in that moment, I didn’t care.
When we got to the hot pools, we changed into our togs, keeping our backs to each other to reassure ourselves and each other that we weren’t gay, though I couldn’t help but notice Rangi’s physique. He was built like a man. I was thin and scrawny and pale in comparison. He not only had bruises on his arm but lots of small circular scars on his chest. I couldn’t help pointing to them. ‘What happened there?’
‘My mum’s a bitch,’ he said. ‘That’s why I can’t swim. Couldn’t take my top off in school without getting questions asked. Ciggy burns.’
‘She burned you?’
‘Yeah, crazy bitch, when I was a kiddo. I don’t even know where she is now, probably in jail. Don’t tell anyone. I figure I can trust you, Pākehā.’
I think Pākehā meant a white person. I was pleased that he trusted me.
‘Who would I tell? Anyway, she sounds the same as my mother!’ I said, delighted that we had this in common, mad and dangerous mothers.
‘Yeah? I thought you said she was dead?’
I hadn’t thought about her in months. Rangi was my best friend, my only friend. He had told me a secret. I could tell him, couldn’t I?
‘I suppose I wished she was. We had to leave Ireland because she told lies about my dad.’
I told Rangi the whole story as he cracked open two cans. I took a long slurp out of my can, assuming it would taste something like apple juice, but the taste was foul, like I imagined old men’s feet to taste. I spat the liquid out on to the grass.
Rangi laughed at me. ‘Seriously? You never had a beer before?’