Aunt Effie and Mrs Grizzle (7 page)

“‘I’
M NOT
E
UPHEMIA
,’ I told my mother. ‘I made the minister christen me Brunnhilde!’ At the sound of my heroic name, the horses reared and whinnied, but I had tied my mother in the saddle, so she didn’t fall into the water and get eaten by monster pukekos or crocodiles. She cried and went back to sleep.”

Crocodiles? Monster pukekos? We looked at each other but most of us dared say nothing in case Aunt Effie stopped telling her story.

“Your mother
slept a lot,” said Jessie.

“She needed her sleep; she was growing down.” Aunt Effie glared around and went on with the story of Mrs Grizzle.

“M
Y MOTHER
was scared of cows. Each morning, she fell asleep as soon as we got to the milking shed, and I had to pick her up before the cows stood on her.

“It took ages, milking by myself. I was still pretty small, so I had to stand on a box to reach the cows’ tits. I stood on another box to reach the separator handle. And I stood on another box to tip the skim-dick into the pigs’ trough. I even stood on the can of cream, as I drove the sledge down to the gate.

“I’d make lunch. There’d just be time to do the dishes, and the cows would start bellowing to be milked again. We’d put on our gumboots and run to the shed. My mother would fall asleep. I’d pick her up and start milking again.

“One day, I said to her, ‘I’m sick of getting up early so we can have breakfast early and get down to the shed early so we can get home early and have lunch early so we can get down to the shed and milk early so we can go to bed early so we can–’ but she didn’t hear me because she was already asleep.

“I finished milking, carried my mother up to the house, went back for the billy of milk I’d left in the shed, ran back to the house to see my mother was all right, and started cooking her lunch.

“I’d have liked to go to school and learn to play footy and skipping like other kids. The only trouble was I couldn’t see how I could fit school in between milking the cows and looking after my mother.

“By this time, the water was so deep over the Turangaomoana Road, the cream carrier couldn’t drive his wagon through it. Instead, he paddled across on a raft of koraris – you know, those flax sticks – and collected the cream from the farms this side of the Great Waharoa Swamp. Even then, we were lucky if the cream reached the Hopuruahine dairy factory.

“The last Guy Fawkes, somebody had fired a sky rocket through the ozone layer and caused global warming. My mother blamed my father. She said the sun got through the hole and melted the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. With all the melted water, the sea rose, flooded the Hauraki Plains, covered the Turangaomoana Road, and made the Great Waharoa Swamp.”

“The Great Waharoa Swamp!” Lizzie whispered.

Aunt Effie swallowed and continued.

“A
FTER THE ELECTIONS
in 1840, an unsuccessful politician opened the Auckland Zoo gates in revenge on the people who didn’t vote for her. The crocodiles escaped, hid in the Great Waharoa Swamp, and ganged up with the monster pukekos that already lived there. Together they started stealing our cream. They sometimes ate the man on his korari raft, but they preferred the cream.

“When I said I wanted to go to school, my mother said she needed me to do the milking. ‘I’ll learn you to read and write,’ she promised. ‘You’ll soon catch up to the other kids when you start school next year.’

“The trouble was that my mother always went to sleep as soon as she started teaching me the alphabet. We never got past A is for Apple.

“Each morning I got up, cooked the porridge, woke and dressed my mother, fed her, washed and dried the dishes, put on her gumboots, and piggybacked her down to the shed where she went to sleep. I made her a bed on some sacks in the separator room, let the cows into their bails, put on the leg-ropes, and started milking again.

“After separating, sweeping the yard, shovelling the muck into the drain, and washing the separator, I sledged the cream to the gate, cooked lunch, woke up my mother and fed her, then piggybacked her down to the shed again. If there was no moon, I had to finish the evening milking by candlelight while my mother snored gently.”

“Don’t mothers do anything?” asked Jessie.

“Pay attention!” Aunt Effie took out her false teeth and snapped them. Jessie sat up straight, folded her arms, put her hands on top of her head, and paid attention.

“A
LL THIS TIME
, the Great Waharoa Swamp was getting swampier, the crocodiles crocodilier, and the pukekos pukekier.

“One morning, I looked under my pillow and found my father’s plans for building a scow. I taught myself some mathematics and, by that night, I could understand the plans. Next morning, after milking, I chopped down a giant totara, pitsawed the timber with Bonny’s help, and built my first scow, the
Betty Boop
.

“When we ran out of stores, we led the pack-horses up a plank on to the deck of the
Betty Boop
and set sail for the other side of the Great Waharoa Swamp. Sometimes it took months because I was still teaching myself spherical trigonometry, so I could navigate. When we found the other side, we’d tie up the scow and ride down the Turangaomoana Road into Hopuruahine.

“I rode Bonny into Mr Bryce’s store and gave him our order. Mr Bryce gave us our huge bundles of the
New Zealand Herald
, the
Auckland Weekly News
, the
Woman’s Weekly
, and my mother’s favourite, the
Girl’s Crystal
. We read them all the way down Seddon Street to the Post Office, and collected our sacks of mail. Then, while my mother read her letters, I took the horses across the road to Mr Whimble, the blacksmith.

“I remember one trip into Hopuruahine when I was about six months old. As Mr Whimble hissed, trimmed hoofs, and nailed on new horse-shoes, my mother reeled towards us, crying and waving a letter. ‘Read this!’ she said and fell fast asleep.

“‘It has come to our notice,’ said the letter, ‘that you have a child named Euphemia who should be wearing shoes and going to school. We are sending the School Inspector to put shoes on her, and make her go to school.’ The letter was signed by the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Desmond Kelly.

“Mr Kelly was the first man to be made prime minister of Waharoa. Actually, he only got the job because he was really a bit of an old woman. Women had held the job ever since the Treaty of Waharoa had been signed. Things were different in those days.” Aunt Effie sighed.

“Tell us about the School Inspector?”

Aunt Effie looked at Jessie, and took another swig of Old Puckeroo.

“T
HE BLACKSMITH
turned the handle so the bellows roared, and the fire in the forge glowed. He seized a red-hot horse-shoe with his tongs, fitted it on a horse’s hoof, and I threw the Prime Minister’s letter on the forge. Stinking yellow smoke rose from the scorching hoof, so nobody noticed the pong of the letter burning.

“As Mr Whimble drove in the last horse-shoe nail, I muttered, ‘No School Inspector’s going to nail red-hot shoes on my feet!’ I hung my sleeping mother from the hooks on one side of a pack-saddle, balanced her with a barrel of gunpowder on the other side, threw on a sackful of old horse-shoes as a top-load, and jumped on Bonny.

“We galloped to Mr Bryce’s shop, and loaded the packhorses. Sacks of flour, sugar, rolled oats, salt, and cascara sagrada. Bottles of Parrish’s Food, Lane’s Emulsion, and castor oil. Tins of Hardy’s Indigestion Remedy, baking soda, and Edmonds Baking Powder. Cases of Polar Gelignite, Bushells Tealeaves, Highlander Condensed Milk. White pine boxes of Anchor butter, cases of Blue Pennant kerosene, sacks of Lighthouse candles, and cartons of wax matches – Fern Brand Royal Wax Vestas that you could light in the rain.