GUEST BLOG: Kelly Ellis – The smell of freedom

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It seemed like forever since his name was called, but eventually the medieval sound of key turning in a heavy lock could be heard. She hunched down in the back row of the public gallery as the door to the cells opened on its well-oiled hinges and the prisoner stepped blinking into the bright light. He looked through the glass behind him back into the public gallery of the Court, his eyes, roving like searchlights, catching her frozen in their glare.

His look said it all – anger and betrayal and the clear message that this wasn’t over as he slowly responded to the judge’s demand that he face forward.

He jutted his chin and crossed his arms, the muscles sculpted by a hundred thousand repetitions. The ta moko rippled as he flexed them and tilted his head left, then right, cracking his neck audibly. He gathered himself and looked at the Judge, head still slightly tilted, an eyebrow raised within a millimetre of a contempt charge. He knew she was cringing in the back of the Court. Bitch.

When he lost hope all those years ago, nothing mattered any more, not even freedom.

My bitch, he thought, her living black-eyed presence in the court testimony to his ownership. He had even given her his name. She was sorry now. He could see that. The only reason she was there was because she had narked on him. Rather than sucking up a few bruises that’d be gone in a week or two, she’d put him in this pakeha cage to be judged by a pakeha dude who is part of a pakeha clobbering machine. She did this to me, he thought. He’d rather be sentenced by that Maori judge. He’d rather take a jail term off that dude than something less from some weak pakeha trying to act stern. There is honour in defiance.

The prosecutor is a pakeha and the lawyer might as well be, for all the influence a brown voice has in this whare. Anyway, they all speak in the same coded language. Words like rehabilitative and reprehensible, recidivism and remorseless. Who the Hell do they think they are? Now they’re laughing about some Latin phrase. All of them. He doesn’t even know what they’re laughing about while he stands there waiting for the jail term to be imposed. His lawyer laughs the least, flicking an eyebrow at him, telling him to chill, and that this is all part of the dance.

The judge looks down and he looks back into the gallery. Her head is still down. As it bloody well should be, dragging, he thinks, their name through this shit hole. He admits to himself he shouldn’t have whacked her again, but she knows what he’s like when he’s been on the turps. It wasn’t like he’d asked her to cook some eggs. She knows that when he’s like that she should keep clear. She knows. She’s said she can see it when he gets that look in his eye. He thinks he gives her fair warning.

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Which isn’t to say there’s no remorse. But surrendering to this is a worse indignity than her bruises. Who will help her with the kids now? Who will fix her waka? And where will I be?

You know, they even called it a dream. “The Quarter Acre Dream.” The one where there was room to park the caravan and the boat. A shed with a Masport in it not a mokopuna

Maybe the kids would be better off without me and, besides, that bloody Jap car never breaks down. Perhaps they’d all be better off without me. What happened to the dream?

You know, they even called it a dream. “The Quarter Acre Dream.” The one where there was room to park the caravan and the boat. A shed with a Masport in it not a mokopuna. That was the deal wasn’t it? He remembers looking at Homer Simpson on the TV. What a loser. The biggest loser in the World, eh?

But he’s got a job, a two story house, a car, a missus who drives a bloody V8, three kids, one with a brass saxophone and lessons to boot. He takes vacations all the time and drinks at Mo’s Tavern most nights. If he’s a loser, then what am I?

He remembers a time when he was full of hope. At time when he believed in what they taught him at primary school; that this was the best country in the world; the land of milk and honey, not this shithole where the bees are dying by the billion and the rivers run green with dairy dung and jobs are for people on TV.  That was before he realised that the high schools were just warehouses unable to contain the kids who spilled out on to the street where the only qualification that mattered was graduation from Youth Court to the District Court.

He remembers the hard years. The times when they couldn’t even live together because the welfare payments would be reduced. Even now there’s no way to make ends meet. A big TV like Homer Simpson’s can’t be gained by honest toil. The only people who’ve got those in his whanau nicked them or bought them with dope money. That’s how it’s done. There’s no lazy grand lying around for that. There’s nothing this judge can do to him that hasn’t already been done. When he lost hope all those years ago, nothing mattered any more, not even his freedom.

The deep sigh is the last straw for the judge who is trying to fill out the paperwork. “If there’s any more of that Mr Smith, I’ll…” He stepped forward in the dock and with a contemptuous sneer said: “You’ll do what? Send me to jail?” and snorted out a laugh. The judge, knowing he had nothing left in his toolbox, bowed his head and continued the paperwork.

Her whole life smelled of him, 

right down to the inside of her car

From the back of the court, she looked at the man passing down the jail term and wondered. Why is it always men? Aren’t women allowed to be judges? She didn’t need another man to look after her, pakeha, Maori, or whatever. We need people who understand what it’s like to be here, she thinks. Men looking after me, she laughs quietly: That’s how I got here. If a woman sentenced him, he’d know we had power and weren’t pathetic people with black eyes in the back of a court waiting for a man to save us.

She could still smell him in the car on her way home from court. Beneath the smell of sweat, booze, baccy and dope there was something else that was peculiar to him.

It was not an unpleasant scent at first but had soon become another part of his continued domination. She’d noticed it the first time they’d made love, fragrant like a spice; later she’d smelled it on his knuckles as he’d ground them into her face, cloying and oppressive.

Now her whole life smelled of him, right down to the inside of her car where he rode, always a passenger, disqualified for drunk-driving, of course. Suddenly it was darker as the sun went behind a cloud. She reached for her sunglasses, remembered she was still in town and kept her blackened eyes hidden. She felt nausea, slid down the window and smelled freedom.

 

 

Kelly Ellis, Whangarei Labour Candidate, former journalist and current lawyer grubs her living from the criminal justice coalface but dreams of being a better parent and more dutiful partner to her long-suffering family.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks Kelly, Whangarei and the north are doing it hard at the moment, as it ever was. I recall reading about a government minister at the turn of last century saying the far north should be fenced off at Awanui and be left to blow away, and since then not much has changed except the mental fence has probably shifted south to the Brynderwyns…leave it and let it blow away.

    Kia kaha from Ngunguru as you push the proverbial uphill like Sisyphus!

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