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He burst out of the house and was halfway down the street when he heard Janey yelling after him, her cry shrill with panic. He turned and saw her on the opposite pavement, appearing out of the night. As she passed under a street light her shadow reached out like a bird’s wing to ripple along the fence palings toward him.

‘Go back, Janey,’ he called.

She cried out his name again, and pursued her shadow across the street. A car screamed at her heels and slashed her with light as she fluttered into her brother’s arms. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. She wore a jersey and jeans over her pyjamas. In her hands she was carrying her sandals. She bent down and began strapping them on.

‘You’ll be a nuisance,’ Hema grunted. ‘Go home.’ He pushed her away.

‘No.’ She wrapped her arms and legs tightly around him. He wrestled her off and she fell on the pavement. He began running, down that long dark street of shadowed houses, away from Berhampore towards Newtown.

‘Don’t leave me,’ Janey cried.

He turned. His face was desperate. ‘You’re too small to come with me,’ he yelled. ‘Go home, Janey.’ But she was pursuing him again. He picked up a stone and threw it at her. She ducked. He picked up another stone. ‘Go back,’ he raged.

‘No.’ She gritted her teeth, opened her eyes wide with determination and launched herself at him. Hema felt her trembling in his arms.

‘You’ll just be a nuisance,’ Hema growled.

A year ago. Hema had been asleep when Janey began to peck at his dreams. ‘Hema,’ she whispered. ‘Wake up.’ The two children slept in the same bed in one of the two bedrooms in the flat. Hema turned on his side away from her. She began to shake him.

There was the sound of a crash. Hema sat up. He saw a crack of light under the closed door. Mum and Dad were back from the party. They were quarrelling again. Mum must have found out about Auntie Lena.

‘Don’t be scared,’ Hema said to his sister. He went to the door and pushed it open. How long Mum and Dad had been fighting he didn’t know. He’d never heard them as violent as this. He went back to the bed and sat on it. Janey crawled into his arms. They watched and listened as their parents fought.

‘Don’t you talk to me like that, Wiki,’ Dad was threatening Mum.

‘I’ll talk to you any way I like, you rotten bastard.’

‘And don’t you answer me back, Wiki.’

‘You don’t own me,’ Mum yelled. ‘You and your black bitch, you were made for each other. Next time I see her I’ll smash her face in.’

There was the sound of a tussle. Janey began to whimper.

‘Keep your hands off me,’ Mum said. She was panting and struggling with Dad. There was a ripping sound. A helpless woman-cry. A sudden crack of Dad’s open hand against Mum’s face. ‘You bastard.’

‘Shut your face, woman,’ Dad said, ‘or I’ll crack you one again.’

‘That’s all you can do, eh? Big man aren’t you. Why don’t you go and pick on somebody your own size. Get out. Get out.’ Mum spat into Dad’s face. He slapped her again and threw her against the wall. Janey gripped Hema with fright.

‘Damn bitch,’ Dad said. ‘You want me to go? All right, suit your fucken self.’ Dad’s shadow cut through the lighted crack of the door. Mum’s voice suddenly was filled with fear.

‘No, Jack. Don’t leave me.’

Dad laughed at her, scornful. Again, Mum’s voice changed. ‘All right then, you bastard, go to her.’ She pulled open the wardrobe and began to throw Dad’s clothes at him. ‘Here then. And here. See if I care.’ Dad turned the handle, ready to leave. Seeing that he really meant it, Mum’s anger became ugly. ‘You bastard, well, two can play that game.’ She ran to the telephone and dialled a number. ‘Hello? Is that you, Pera?’

Dad’s laughter stopped. ‘You been playing around, eh Wiki?’

‘You’re hurting me.’

‘You and Pera? Eh? Eh, you bitch?’

Hema ran to the door and opened it. Dad was holding Mum against the wall. He had one knee against her crotch. Both hands were around her neck.

‘Dad. Mum. Don’t.’

‘Get back to bed, you damn kid,’ Dad yelled. He pushed Hema back into the bedroom. The door cracked shut against Mum and Dad’s faces. Blood was streaming from Mum’s mouth.

‘Leave them alone you bastard,’ Mum screamed. She fell heavily to the floor. When Hema opened it, Dad was standing there, fists clenched, kicking at Mum. Hema tried to protect her by lying on top of her. For a while Dad kept on kicking and kicking. Then, ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said to himself.

Mum stood up. Her face was bruised and bloodied. She hugged Janey and Hema close to her.

‘Get out,’ she said to Dad. ‘Don’t think we’ll miss you. Get out, Get out.’

Uncle Pera came to stay.

‘I knew you’d be a nuisance,’ Hema said.

Janey tugged at his hand and, when he looked down at her, she was squirming and fidgeting and holding her other hand across the front of her jeans. Hema ignored her and pulled her along with him.

They reached Newtown Hospital, pushing fast through the tangle of busy streets. A taxi swerved into the curb in front of them. Inside was a man with a smashed face. As the taxi driver helped the man out of his cab the man started to scream through the red hole where his mouth used to be.

Janey tugged again at Hema’s hand. ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘I never had time to go.’

‘There was a public lav a few streets back. Why didn’t you tell me then?’

‘You were in a hurry,’ Janey said. ‘Anyway, I didn’t want a mimi until now.’

‘You’ll just have to wait until we get somewhere less crowded.’

Newtown was busy. Cars were double-parked all along the shopping centre, impeding the stream of traffic. People spoke in a babble of strange, frightening languages. They spoke past each other, their conversations not connecting, hostility brimming over: Go back to the country you came from. Shops spilled their crates of fruit, bolts of cloth and other wares into the street. A Salvation Army band exhorted passers-by to embrace God. A man in a fish shop swung his cleaver and cut off the gaping head of a large grey fish. Crayfish seethed in a tank. A small dark boy sold evening newspapers.

A woman haggled over the price of an old cabinet stacked with other junk outside a secondhand mart. In this alien land, her face was wan and desperate as if her very existence depended on getting the cabinet. Secondhand wares for secondhand people.

Janey began to fidget again.

‘Hema,’ Janey wailed.

‘Hold on, willya?’ Hema answered. He pulled her after him through the littered pavement towards the pedestrian lights at the corner of John Street.

While waiting to cross, he took a look back at the Hospital clock. Eight o’clock. He had left the flat immediately after Mum and Uncle Pera had caught a taxi to go to the pub. The pub didn’t close until ten and, if Hema was lucky, Uncle Pera would take Mum to a party. So there was plenty of time to get away, even if Janey slowed him up.

Not that Mum would miss them. She’d probably be glad they’d gone.

The lights turned red, the ‘Cross Now’ signal buzzed, and the traffic punched to a stop.

‘Come on,’ Hema said to his sister. Car motors revved and roared at them, ready to leap on them and crush them if they didn’t get to the other side in time. They made it. The lights turned green and the traffic leapt and sped through the intersection.

For a moment, Hema stood undecided. Which way should they go? They better take a detour. If they kept to the main street it would take them past the Tramways Hotel. Mum and Uncle Pera might be there. Be safer to go up John Street. But first, attend to Janey.

‘There’s some trees over there,’ Hema said, pointing to the nearby park.

‘It’s dark. Will you come with me?’

‘No. You’ll be all right. Just hurry.’

Janey rushed into the shadows and was swallowed up by them. Hema kept a lookout. Emerald lights were strung across the façade of the Winter Show Building. Suddenly, he heard Janey scream. She was struggling in the arms of an old man. The predator was pulling at her dress.

Frightened, Hema looked for a weapon. Saw a loose paling and pulled it away from the fence. Ran to the rescue and faced off against the man. ‘Fuck off,’ Hema said. ‘Fuck off or I’ll smash your head in.’ He threw the paling at the man. A lucky hit. The man yelled in pain and staggered back. Janey ran to Hema. Heart pounding, he pulled her after him. Only when they had turned the corner did he stop and hug his sister, brushing her down and checking to see if she was okay. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

Cars slewed past in a steady stream. A few streets ahead, people were arguing on the pavement. Two snake-sheathed girls began to fight. A beer bottle smashed on the asphalt. Hema and Janey skirted the arguing people, their sandals crunching on broken glass.

‘So where are we going, Hema?’ Janey asked.

‘I’m thinking,’ Hema answered. His mind was working fast. He’d planned just to run away, find some shelter under a bridge and live on the streets. Maybe he could find a gang house and become a gang member, yeah, that would be cool. Now that Janey was with him, he couldn’t do that. So what should he do? He checked in his pocket and felt the dollar notes he’d stolen from Uncle Pera’s wallet. ‘We’re going to the railway station,’ Hema decided. Yes, that’s what he’d do. He’d take Janey down there and put her on a train to Gisborne to Nani George. After all, she couldn’t live on the streets with him.

Onward they walked, past the lighted windows, the singing windows of the city.

Six months ago. When Uncle Pera came to stay, for a while life got better. He was younger than Mum and flattered by an older woman’s attentions. He even liked the idea of being called uncle by Wiki’s two kids, and staying in with his woman on the weekends, playing the guitar while she cooked the kai. After a while, however, his eyes flickered with boredom and so he began telling his mates to come over to Wiki’s for a party. Hema would watch Mum drinking, dancing — her hair swinging free, sweat dripping down the neck of her dress, thighs grinding — and wish that everyone would go away and leave her alone. In the mornings, while Mum and Uncle Pera were still sleeping, he and Janey would clear up the debris, sweep the floor, wash the glasses and open the windows to get rid of the stink of beer and marijuana. Once, they found Mum, pissed and doped out of her brain, flaked out on the floor; Uncle Pera had made it to bed and had left her there. Hema wiped her face and mouth with a flannel.

‘You bastard,’ Hema said to the sleeping Pera as he put his mother beside him. He wanted to smash Uncle Pera’s face in.

But partying at home was not enough for Uncle Pera. He began pulling Mum out on the usual pub and party circuit. Before Hema realised it, he was back to the familiar routine of being home alone with his sister.

‘Hema, look after your sister, eh? Uncle Pera and I are going out for a while. Can you get tea for yourselves? Here’s some money. Get some burger and chips, eh?’

As for Janey, she hadn’t minded Uncle Pera at first. She liked the way he made Mum laugh. But when the boredom came, and when Uncle Pera began to demand Mum’s time, Janey became frightened. What frightened her most was that Mum was frightened, watching Uncle Pera with scared eyes as if he was going to walk out the door at any moment. His lips had always been moist for pleasure, his eyes always reckless for fun.

‘What was that, Pera? You want some biscuits with your tea, honey? Hema, go down and get some biscuits for Uncle Pera. Don’t be too slow. He wants them now.’

Mum’s anxieties to please Uncle Pera began to affect Hema and Janey. They were careful when he was around, treating him with as much caution as Mum did, because if he left Mum he also left them — and Mum didn’t have a job. Trying to please him, trying to make sure he would stay. None of them realised they were turning into his slaves.

But Uncle Pera knew it, and he began to play on it. Whenever he was irritated with Hema and Janey, all he had to say was, ‘Do your kids always have to eat with us?’ and Mum would push them away from the table and tell them to have their kai in the sitting room. Or, whenever he wanted to watch television, Mum would say, ‘Go to bed now. Uncle Pera and I want some time to ourselves.’ To make things easier, the kids began to have dinner before Uncle Pera came home. They watched television but, when Uncle Pera came into the sitting room, they went to bed without being asked.

One night, Uncle Pera played his trump card. Mum was cuddling him in the sitting room. Uncle Pera had one hand up her dress, stroking her thighs, but his eyes were on Hema, taunting him.

‘I’m the man, aren’t I, Wiki,’ Uncle Pera said to Mum. ‘Not many men would take on an older woman and her two kids, eh.’ All the time, those eyes on Hema. You get the picture, boy? You get the score?

‘You’re my man,’ Mum answered. ‘My sweet, loving man.’

Uncle Pera smiled at Hema, stretched his legs and began to unbutton his trousers. ‘Show me how much you love me, Wiki,’ he said, winking at Hema. ‘Show me. You know you love it.’ He twisted Mum round his finger whenever he wanted to.

Later that night, Hema watched his mother making herself up, readying herself to go out to another party. Uncle Pera had twisted and twisted until, snap, Mum came to him at his every command. She had become his.

Wiki was smiling at herself in the mirror, trying to look pretty. When she saw Hema, her smile dropped away. She might be strong at times, but she was not strong when it came to men. She needed a man to affirm herself. She couldn’t survive without one. All she had to trade was her looks, the kind that appealed to male vanity, and her sex. She looked at her reflection again. Saw the desperation written in it and how dependent she had become.

‘I’m sorry, son,’ she said to Hema. ‘Your mother was always lousy at picking her men.’

Hema and Janey watched from their bedroom window as Mum got into the car with Uncle Pera and zoomed off into the night. Janey went to sleep. Hema watched the lighted windows across the road and the people sitting or laughing behind them. He glanced at Janey where she fluttered in her dreams. For them there were no lighted, singing, windows.

The night cracked open. Through the gap came helmeted bikies on silver-chromed wings. Their bodies were carapaced with leather and studded silver. As they roared through the dark they trailed scarves from their necks like clotted blood.

‘My feet are sore, Hema,’ Janey said. She sat on a ledge beneath some huge billboards on Taranaki Street. Taggers had been at work. Across the smiling paternal face of the local Member of Parliament, someone had sprayed the words: THE TREATY is A FRAUD. On another, a picture postcard scene of New Zealand: AOTEAROA, LAND OF THE LONG WHITE SHROUD.

Hema and Janey ran across the road to Pigeon Park. The bikies rumbled on down the steel canyons of the city. Janey unstrapped her sandals.

‘Let me have a look,’ Hema said. He found a small sharp stone in one of the sandals. It had bruised his sister’s left heel. He rubbed it. ‘No wonder your feet are sore,’ he said. ‘All better now. Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I’ve already been a nuisance.’

The two children sat watching laughing people walk past and the traffic glittering in the streets. Further along, on another bench, some Maori kids were laughing at a mate who was vomiting his guts out. The ground was splashed with his vomit. Hustlers stood on the corner, touting the crowds heading for Courtenay Place, fifty bucks a blow job, a hundred bucks a fuck.

Suddenly a police car screeched to a halt. Two cops got out and waded into the Maori kids. ‘We’d better get out of here,’ Hema said. He wasn’t frightened by the attack. What he was more concerned about was that the cops would turn on him and Janey and ask questions. Quickly he pulled Janey towards Cuba Street. Neon signs announced layby, discount, bargain, sale price, special for one day only. Further along, a window display showed an underwater grotto. Plastic mermaids gambolled within it, trailing price tags from their swimsuits. An octopus languidly waved its arms. On each arm were draped watches, bracelets, fake diamonds. Hema and Janey’s reflection swam into the octopus’s arms. On the outside looking in.

‘Shall we take a bus to the railway station?’ Janey asked.

‘I haven’t got enough money.’

‘I have,’ Janey answered. She reached into the pocket of her dress and showed her brother some coins. Hema smiled at her. ‘Better keep it for later,’ he said. ‘Just in case we need it for something else.’ Nine dollars and fifty-two cents, yeah, that would get them a long way.

‘Okay,’ Janey said. She grinned proudly and put the coins back in her pocket.

At the intersection, Hema saw a man thumbing through green notes and stuffing them carelessly into his wallet. He hated the man for being on top of his world and not needing to worry about the next day. If Hema had been older, he would have done the arsehole.

The intersection was crowded. ‘I don’t want you to get lost,’ Hema said to Janey. ‘If we get separated stop right where you are and don’t move. I’ll find you.’ Thrusting through the crowd was like struggling through a land of giants. ‘Are you following me?’ Hema shouted. Janey nodded back. She was getting cross. Couldn’t people see her down here? Over her head she saw a movie poster of a grim-faced man pointed a gun at her. In a television shop a woman was being stabbed to death. A gaunt youth staggered out of a pub, knife in hand, shoving past her. Suddenly she couldn’t see Hema at all.

Hema looked back. Adrenalin pumped. Where the hell was Janey? He pushed against the crowd and saw her fluttering far back among them. She was in the middle of the intersection — and the lights were changing. The intersection cleared. Only Janey was there, turning round and around, looking for him. As if she was a bird trapped in a cage with nowhere to go.

‘Janey —’

Hema rushed out from the pavement. The traffic roared on both sides, drivers yelling at the two kids. This time, the traffic would really get them, but Hema didn’t give a shit. A car braked in front of them. The traffic came to a stop.

‘Get your sister off the road, boy,’ a voice called.

Hema picked Janey up. Someone muttered something about mothers who let their children roam the streets at night. Eyes pierced him like sharp needles.

‘You told me to stop right where I was and don’t move,’ Janey said.

Hema tousled her hair. ‘You did right,’ he answered. ‘Not far to go now.’ He pulled her down Lambton Quay. Behind the glass-paned window of a coffee bar a woman jabbed at her blood-red steak with a fork.

Last night. Mum had jabbed at her food in the same way. Over the table, Hema and Janey watched her, silent. Over the last few weeks they’d stopped talking when they got home, too afraid that anything they might say might lead to a reprimand. It wasn’t just Uncle Pera they were cautious about; it was Mum as well.

Mum’s face was tight. Her hands kept smoothing down her dress, moving down her thighs and up again, brushing the room with tension.

‘Is there any pudding, Mum?’ Hema asked.

But Mum didn’t hear him. She never heard them anymore. She was looking at the clock on the wall. The week before. Uncle Pera had moved out. He was tired of her, he had said. He was sick of having the kids around. He was pissing off. But Mum had been telephoning him every day, asking him to come back. Please come back to me, please, please, please. Tonight, he had said he would. He’d just wanted to teach Mum a lesson. Just to let her know who was boss. Did she really want to see him? Oh yes, she’d crooned. Yes. Yes.

‘When Uncle Pera comes,’ Mum said to Hema, ‘I want you both to go to bed and I don’t want to hear you or see you until tomorrow. You got that, son?’

The door opened downstairs. Mum gave a cry and ran down the steps to her man. He was drunk. She didn’t care. She kissed him and started to bring him upstairs. Her eyes were shining with happiness and tears.

‘Go to bed now,’ she said to Hema. ‘Take Janey with you.’

Uncle Pera was already mauling her. A hand up Mum’s dress, feeling her. His lips whispering to her, ‘You wet for me, honey?’ He looked at Hema and winked.

‘We don’t want you,’ Hema yelled. ‘Janey, Mum and me, we can look after ourselves.’

Mum hadn’t understood what Hema was doing. Her eyes were filled only with terror that Pera might leave, go back out the door, just when she had managed to get him back in. ‘Go to bed Hema,’ she screamed.

‘No.’

‘Do as your mother says,’ Uncle Pera said.

‘You’re not my father,’ Hema answered. ‘I don’t take orders from you.’

Who knows what triggered Pera’s rage? Maybe, at the pub, he’d tried a line on some younger woman and had been rejected. Or maybe he’d got into an argument with a mate and lost. Whatever, he came roaring up the stairs and chopped at Hema’s windpipe with the back of his hand. Stunned, gasping for breath, Hema fell to the floor. Pera grabbed him by the throat and threw him into the bedroom.

‘Pera, no,’ Wiki called. ‘Hema didn’t mean it.’ Janey ran to her and hid her face in her mother’s dress.

‘The little bastard needs a lesson,’ Pera answered. ‘He needs to know that even though I’m not his fucken Dad I’m the one who puts the meat on the table. You got that, kid?’ He took off his belt and began to thrash Hema with it. He kicked the door closed.

‘Mum—’

The pain. Hema held his body tight against the blows. The belt whistled and whistled.

Half an hour later, Hema limped to the bathroom. He stood shivering in the shower. He was towelling himself when Mum came in.

‘Me and Uncle Pera are going out,’ Mum said. She reached out to caress him.

‘Don’t touch me.’

‘Try to understand, Hema.’

‘Don’t touch me.’

‘Never interfere, son. You only get hurt if you interfere.’

Finally, the railway station. Fists thudded in a sudden fight outside the main entrance. Two men argued over ownership of a taxi at the rank. Within the pillared shadows thin faces gleamed.

Mum had never even come to stop Uncle Pera. She had let Uncle Pera give him a hiding. She let him.

Above the clamour, the loudspeaker announced departure times, platform numbers, welcomes and farewells to passengers. Everyone seemed to have a place to go, a destination. Everyone, except Hema and Janey. Of course he hadn’t realised that at that time of the night no trains went to Gisborne. Trains only went as far as Napier anyway and from there you had to take a bus. Gisborne where Nani George lived was a faraway land, remote, at the other side of the rainbow.

Meanwhile, train after train pulled out of the station, carriage after carriage of lighted windows flowing past, dream after dream.

‘I’m hungry, Hema,’ Janey said.

Nodding, Hema took Janey into the station cafeteria. He bought a pie to take away and a Coke. They went outside and sat on the entrance steps.

‘I wouldn’t have gone without you,’ Janey said. ‘You could have thrown all the stones you like, but I wouldn’t have left you.’

‘Yeah,’ Hema answered. ‘You’ve always been a nuisance.’

The railway station began to grow silent. It became a derelict place strewn with cigarette butts, spilled food, ripped porno magazines — all the rubbish discarded by people, piling up at the huge door of the night. The luggage depot, florist, bar and cafeteria began to close down. Only a few people remained. An old tramp who had nowhere else to go. A young couple who had missed the last unit to the Hutt. Three skinheads looking for fun.

A late-night porter whistled his way across the concourse. He cast a curious look at Hema and Janey.

‘Do you think Mum will be home yet?’ Janey asked.

‘Too early,’ Hema answered. And when she got home and saw they weren’t there she would cry out their names and run from room to room and down the street looking for them and …

‘Where shall we go?’ Janey asked. ‘We can’t stay here, eh Hema.’

Looking around, Hema felt so lost, so utterly lost. There was nowhere to go. All around were street signs: ONE WAY. TRAFFIC LIGHTS AHEAD. NO STOPPING. NO PASSING. NO EXIT. He began to think of his mother. Understanding of her overwhelmed him. Their mother was a weak woman. She needed men. One day when they had all left her, she might need Hema and Janey again. But until then, there was no safety at home either.

Hema made up his mind. He and Janey would just have to make the best of it. He took his sister’s hand.

‘You’ll never leave me, eh Hema?’

‘No,’ he answered. Not now. Not ever.

They hurried through the night. A patrol car screamed along the street. A star burst across the sky. The lights of the city tightened around them.