It wasn’t the first time that Angelo had forced her out of the car, but today was the furthest from home he’d done it. Hina stood on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street in Boerum Hill and watched Angelo’s Chevy Nova retreat into the distance. “America” from West Side Story blared from a nearby window. She breathed in the New York smells of car exhaust and rotting rubbish.
Hina mentally calculated how much money she had in her wallet, deciding whether she could call a cab or catch the L train at the Atlantic Terminal several blocks away.
“Walk it off!” Angelo had spat while shoving her out. “Maybe when you get home you can treat me with more respect.”
“More respect” meant he was angry she had asked again if they’d saved enough money to move into their own place. Hina wanted to get away from her in-laws who blamed her for everything that went wrong for their son. If he couldn’t hold down a job, it was her fault. No baby yet? She must be barren.
In the two years they’d been living with his parents, the scene had played over and over again. Hina, hoping they’d be able to move into an apartment, kept bringing it up with her husband. With each passing month, Angelo, goaded by his parents, dismissed her more quickly, with more disdain, telling her she didn’t know anything. The guilt she used to feel for pushing him to get away from his parents had eroded. As had Hina’s love for him.
This love, at the beginning, had been like tororaro vines heavy with succulent blooms. It had grown up around Hina and Angelo, entwining them, making her think her life was nothing without him. That she needed him so she could breathe. Early on, those vines snaked their way around her. The flowers filled her nose with the cloying scent of hope. Maybe his family would accept her, stop commenting on the texture of her hair or the color of her skin. She felt this living thing, this love they shared, dying like blooms on the vine. Every time he took his parents’ side he made their opinions more important than her.
Hina cared less and less. And she was homesick. So homesick. She dreamt of her family’s whenua overlooking the sea. She would wake up with the taste of creamy kina in her mouth and the smell of morning Milo in her nose. When Hina’s dad had died unexpectedly of a heart attack, Angelo refused to send her home. She told her husband and in-laws that her brothers would postpone the tangi until she got there. Dad wouldn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to all of his children. The money, Angelo kept saying, the money. He was right and Hina hated it. Too much time and money went into getting back home by way of ocean liner. Choking back tears, she had called her oldest brother, telling him she couldn’t be there to farewell their father.
Across the street in front of a closed deli, between cars and buses whizzing by, she saw a young girl wearing a too-large korowai kurī, the kind Hina had only seen in old whānau photos. Long black hair, large dark eyes that reminded her of Nana Mere. The girl in the cloak stared at her and then, looking down, poked an open trash can with a stick. She stabbed it a few times and then looked up at Hina. “Nothing grows here.”
The busy street was noisy. Too loud for Hina to have heard what the girl had said, yet she’d heard those three words as if she was standing next to her. A bus blocked Hina’s view and then the korowai girl was gone. Vanished. As if she’d never been there. Hina thought back to her last overseas call with Mum, Angelo drumming his fingers on the table as they spoke, muttering under his breath about the cost of her calling home again. Hadn’t she just called her mum at Christmas, he complained. Hina tried to keep her voice steady as she talked to her mother, even as she’d felt her chin trembling with homesickness.
“Yes,” she had told Mum, “Angelo says we’ve almost saved enough for our own flat.”
Angelo scowled at the formica under his hands.
Mum was silent for a moment and then cleared her throat. “Do you remember I asked you to get some kūmara? Put a few of them in a dark cupboard for a month. Plant the shoots that grow out of them.”
Hina had meant to do that but her in-laws preferred pasta to potatoes and she wasn’t allowed to shop for the family.
“Do it,” Mum said, “That’s how you’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“We are kūmara people. Plant sweet potatoes. Tell me if they grow and I’ll tell you what that means.”
Was the korowai girl talking about kūmara the way her mum had? Hina had never planted sweet potatoes in the small backyard garden behind her in-laws’ brownstone. At the time, she had dismissed Mum’s instructions as nonsense. The idea had been pushed to the back of her mind until she saw this across-the-street korowai girl and wondered about her mother’s words.
Hina sighed heavily, as if to push her thoughts away with a breath. Walking is how I’ll get home, she decided, a long train ride and more walking. Home was a strange word to her. How could it describe the house she lived in with Angelo and her in-laws? That was not a home. It was a building where she worried about every move she made and where she felt like she was slowly dying inside. Yes, a long walk was just what she needed to clear her head and steel herself for the argument with Angelo when she got home late.
She turned east toward Atlantic Terminal. If she stayed on the left side of the sidewalk, it would be easier to walk past crowds on this summer evening.
Hina used to think that New York was such a big place. Surely some other Māori would be walking about on the streets. Going to and from her clerical job, she looked for someone from home with features like hers. Sometimes she would fix on a face halfway down the street and create a whole backstory for them. A man in a suit with auburn hair and a wide nose. Oh, he is Ngāti Kahungunu because he reminded her of Eru, the boy Hina used to love in Form 4. That woman with the afro and dancer’s body who walked toward her. Was she stuck here in the States because she loved a man and had followed him here like Hina had? Maybe just a tourist staying with relations in Williamsburg? If Hina’s narrative was compelling enough, by the time the stranger was close to her she would call out “E whanaunga, Kia ora!” Or just “Kia ora!” The greeting from home was her code to find others like her in this city full of strangers.
No one understood her words. Some would swear or tell her to move or just walk around her without a word. After the first year living in New York, she’d stopped looking for faces like her own. The painful nostalgia of home was better kept in a tiny box in her heart, only to be opened in the quiet of night when no one could see the tears on her pillow.
Tonight felt different. Angelo had abandoned her far from home. She had seen the korowai girl and thought of her mum. This was nowhere near her usual route to and from work. Longing for home surged within her. Hina clutched her elbows protectively and watched people walking in the opposite direction. No one noticed her. She was a kēhua. Unseen.
After a few minutes of feeling invisible, Hina found the nearest pizzeria counter. She bought a cheese slice and stood, watching people as they passed by. Toasted cheese and garlic crust had her feeling better, had her shaking off the dread of going home. Folding the paper plate and using the napkin to clean her hands and her mouth, she stood on tiptoe to see over the heads of people passing by. Hina looked up and down the street, trying to catch faces before they passed her. How else could she see a face like hers and maybe smile her greeting, “Kia Ora!”
She watched a tall man with black hair tucked under a wool cap. He had warm brown eyes, wide cheekbones and a prominent nose. His skin was the color of aged tōtara wood. His lips puckered and Hina thought she could hear him whistling even as he was still far away. “This guy,” she thought. “Talk to this guy.”
Shame, sharp and queasy, arose within her. Who was she to be talking to strangers in a city that even after all this time was still unfamiliar? Was her homesickness so heavy that she’d talk to just anyone? This wasn’t back home where everyone she’d greet would be a neighbor or a cousin. She quickly reasoned with herself. She would never see this man again or any of these people around her at this moment. It was a public street. No one could hurt her here, she thought bitterly, only the people she lived with did that.
Hina saw a lull in the crowd just before the tall tōtara man passed and shot out in front of him. He stopped short, nearly touching her sleeveless arms. His eyes softened as he looked at her but his face was a question mark. Did he see in her what she saw in him? Tightly gripping her handbag, steadying her voice, she asked her unspoken question framed as a greeting: “Uh… uh, Kia Ora?”
The question mark on his face shifted to recognition. His eyes touched her hair, roamed over her face. Then Hina watched as his face split into a joyful smile. She took a few steps back, surprised and unsure of what would come next. No stranger in this city had acknowledged her beyond a grunt or some rude words. With the pronunciation of every vowel and the American hard “r”, he took her right hand in his two roughened ones. “E hoa, kia ora!”
Hina was confused. Who was this Māori-looking man with a flat American accent? With her hand still in his, he bent to put his face in hers. “Kwehkwe. That is my greeting in Kanienʼkehá꞉ka or Mohawk. My name is Frankie.”
A language she did not know. A name. Extracting her hand from his, all she could say was “Oh…”
Hina was confused despite hope fizzing in her chest.
“You’re from New Zealand, yes? I was in the Marines.” He saluted her. “Lance Corporal Arquette, miss! I served with the Kayforce fellas in Busan during the Korean War.”
He relaxed and spoke as if talking to himself. “Been back 10 years already. Can’t believe it.”
The man pulled her along, down Atlantic Avenue, turning down Nevins Street. “Come with me. I knew some amazing soldiers over there. Those of us who were Native tried to stick together. We needed to.”
She stepped away from him. “Hold on. Where are you taking me?”
Frankie gestured down Nevins. “E hoa, just down the street is the Wigwam Bar. You’re in our neighborhood. Boreum Hill. A lot of us Mohawk live here. We build skyscrapers in Manhattan.”
“A bar?” Her chest still fizzed and Hina felt more alive than she had been in a while. As if she’d been sleepwalking through her life in this place.
“It’s where we all hang out after work. We miss home. The Wigwam is the closest thing to it.”
Hina relaxed, letting Frankie take the lead as they walked down Nevis. Going to a bar where she would see other brown faces sounded promising. She tried not to smile.
Frankie kept talking as if they’d always been friends. “Those Māori fellas were the best! They taught me to play rugby. We taught them how we fish.”
Hina nodded, trying to keep up with his long steps.
“You ever heard of the Mohawk men who build skyscrapers? My father did it before me and my grandfather before him. They didn’t live here in the city, though. Well, during the week they did and then they went back home every weekend.” He leaned towards Hina conspiratorially, whispering, “They call us skywalkers as if we’re magic or something.”
Half a block down Nevis, Frankie stopped and turned to face her. He held out both of his hands as if to contain the neighborhood, a mix of older commercial buildings and brownstones. “E hoa, welcome to Little Caughnawaga!”
He waved to a nondescript building in front of them. “And this is the Wigwam Bar, our home away from home.”
A bell sounded as Hina stepped through the door after Frankie, who greeted several people by name. Tin beer signs and union stickers decorated the wood-paneled walls. An ornate headdress hung over the bar. “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash played on the jukebox and two men hovered over the machine, singing along. At the far endstood a pool table. Next to it, one man held a billiards cue in one hand and a cigarette in another. An older, balding man with a red kerchief around his neck was making drinks behind the bar while a pretty woman swung a curtain of long black hair back and forth as she waited tables. The air smelled of stale cigarettes and the yeasted sweetness of beer. Hina could feel her body relax, her fight or flight response disengage. This. This was a good place.
Frankie sat them down at the bar. “Moe,” he called to the bartender, “get over here!”
The bartender polished a glass with a hand towel as he came over, his eyebrows raised. “Frank, a new friend? She know about your wife at home in Akwesasne?”
Frankie laughed, a full-bodied raucous laugh as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Hina, who lived her life with Angelo carefully, swallowed her envy.
“Uncle, I’m not stepping out on my woman. This is Hina, she’s Native but from New Zealand. You heard of that place? I just met her. Hey, is Barney here? He was with me in Korea.”
Moe’s smile was toothy and easy-going as if Māori walked into this place every day. “Barney’s not here but he will be. His girl is working tonight.” Moe nodded to the black-haired waitress and then turned to Hina, “What’ll you have? First drink is on the house.” He leaned towards her and winked. “That’s our Native welcome.”
She couldn’t go home smelling like booze. That would add an extra layer of tension with her husband. Besides, she didn’t need to drink. Her spirits were lifted by being in this place. “Can I get a Tab on ice, please?”
Hina tried not to stare at the people in the bar. Most were men wearing newsboy caps and overalls, like Frankie. A few of them had stripped down to their sleeveless undershirts. They reminded her of Dad who used to want nothing more than to relax in his singlet and shorts, beer in hand, at the end of a work day. These faces seemed familiar to her and they came in all shades of brown, just like her cousins back home. This felt comfortable, she decided, even as these people were strangers to her.
She sipped on her Tab, looking around, listening to the banter between Frankie and Moe. She had become part of a world hidden from her. One that she might need now like the first drink of water after crossing a desert.
“I was telling Hina that the best part of being in Korea was hanging out with the Māori guys. Those fellas did everything with heart.” Frankie gestured between Moe and himself. “Just like us.”
The doorbell sounded again, signaling the arrival of a new patron. Moe and Frankie looked to see who it was. Both Frankie and the pretty waitress yelled simultaneously, “Barney!”
Barney had the same wide smile as Frankie. Hina wondered if they were brothers. He strode over the waitress and kissed her loudly on the mouth. She smiled and patted his chest. “Take a seat. Want anything?”
He nodded to Frankie and Moe as he sat at the bar. He tipped his cap to Hina. “Barney, this is my friend, Hina. You’ll never guess where she’s from… New Zealand!”
Barney raised an eyebrow and clapped his hands once. “Eh, I miss those guys!” He turned to Hina, “You wouldn’t happen to know my best buddy, would you? His name was Errol Kingi.”
Hina shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t.”
Barney nodded seriously, swigging his beer. “Man, the way those guys cooked a pig. Never tasted anything so delicious.”
Frankie leaned toward Barney, whispering in his ear. He stared into space for a few seconds, nodded, and then headed to the back wall where a guitar hung over the jukebox. Taking it down, Barney twisted the tuning pegs on the instrument as he returned to stand next to Frankie.
With the guitar strapped across him, Barney called out to his girlfriend, “Babe, come listen to this.”
The two men took off their caps. Frankie nudged Hina. “We got something for you.”
Barney strummed a note and hummed, looking at Frankie. “You know what to do, eh?”
The first five notes were nondescript. Then Frankie opened his mouth, singing in rich tenor, and in came Barney’s voice, a baritone vibrato coming up through his diaphragm. Tears clouded Hina’s vision. It was a song of primary school concerts, of waiata sung on the paepae, of late night shed parties with her cousins. It was a song of home:
“Pōkarekare ana,
ngā wai o Waiapu
Whiti atu koe hine,
marino ana e.”
Grinning, Frankie watched her as Barney strummed the guitar. He raised an eyebrow. Do you know this one, Frankie was asking. Barney paused before the refrain and Hina joined in, the men's voices fading as her scratchy soprano took over.
“E hine e,
hoki mai ra.
Ka mate ahau
I te aroha e.”
By the time the men took up the next verse, all noise had ceased in the bar and everyone had turned their way. Frankie and Barney waited for Hina to sing the refrain again. She wiped tears from her jaw and pushed those notes out as if they were all that mattered.
The silence that followed “Pōkarekare Ana” was full of things unsaid. It held the weight of memories for these men and much more for Hina. Frankie broke it. “Those Māori fullas taught us all to sing that song. Those were the best times.”
The men clapped each other's shoulders and the bar patrons applauded and called out compliments.
Hina cleared her throat. What she felt were things she could not say. That this place and these people had filled her up. That she didn’t feel like she was coming apart at the seams for now. And maybe she could go home to Angelo and stick it out a little longer. Maybe she could return to this place, with or without her husband. She said her goodbyes, hugging her new friends. Frankie offered to walk her to the subway stop, but she turned him down. She wanted to be alone.
Outside, the night air had chilled but she hummed “Pōkarekare Ana” as she walked back to Atlantic Avenue.