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Rose came back yesterday; we went down to the bus to meet her. She’s just the same as ever Rose. Talks all the time flat out and makes us laugh with her way of talking. On the way home we kept saying, ‘E Rohe, you’re just the same as ever.’ It’s good having my sister back and knowing she hasn’t changed. Rose is the hard-case one in the family, the kamakama one, and the one with the brains.

Last night we stayed up talking till all hours, even Dad and Nanny, who usually go to bed after tea. Rose made us laugh telling about the people she knows, and taking off professor this and professor that from varsity. Nanny, Mum and I had tears running down from laughing; e ta Rose, we laughed all night.

At last Nanny got out of her chair and said, ‘Time for sleeping. The mouths steal the time of the eyes.’ That’s the lovely way she has of talking, Nanny, when she speaks in English. So we went to bed and Rose and I kept our mouths going for another hour or so before falling asleep.

This morning I said to Rose that we’d better go and get her measured for the dress up at Mrs Frazer’s. Rose wanted to wait a day or two but I reminded her the wedding was only two weeks away and that Mrs Frazer had three frocks to finish.

‘Who’s Mrs Frazer anyway?’ she asked. Then I remembered Rose hadn’t met these neighbours though they’d been in the district a few years. Rose had been away at school.

‘She’s a dressmaker,’ I looked for words. ‘She’s nice.’

‘What sort of nice?’ asked Rose.

‘Rose, don’t you say anything funny when we go up there,’ I said. I know Rose, she’s smart. ‘Don’t you get smart.’ I’m older than Rose but she’s the one that speaks out when something doesn’t please her. Mum used to say, ‘Rohe, you’ve got the brains but you look to your sister for the sense.’ I started to feel funny about taking Rose up to Jane Frazer’s because Jane often says the wrong thing without knowing.

We got our work done, had a bath and changed, and when Dad came back from the shed we took the station-wagon to drive over to Jane’s.

Before we left we called out to Mum, ‘Don’t forget to make us a Maori bread for when we get back.’

‘What’s wrong with your own hands,’ Mum said, but she was only joking. Always when one of us comes home one of the first things she does is make a big Maori bread.

Rose made a good impression with her kamakama ways, and Jane’s two nuisance kids took a liking to her straight away. They kept jumping up and down on the sofa to get Rose’s attention and I kept thinking what a waste of a good sofa it was, what a waste of a good house for those two nuisance things. I hope when I have kids they won’t be so hoha.

I was pleased about Jane and Rose. Jane was asking Rose all sorts of questions about her life in Auckland. About varsity and did Rose join in the marches and demonstrations. Then they went on talking about fashions and social life in the city, and Jane seemed deeply interested. Almost as though she was jealous of Rose and the way she lived, as though she felt Rose had something better than a lovely house and clothes and everything she needed to make life good for her. I was pleased to see that Jane liked my sister so much, and proud of my sister and her entertaining and friendly ways.

Jane made a cup of coffee when she’d finished measuring Rose for the frock, then packed the two kids outside with a piece of chocolate cake each. We were sitting having coffee when we heard a truck turn in at the bottom of Frazers’ drive.

Jane said, ‘That’s Alan. He’s been down the road getting the Maoris for scrub cutting.’

I felt my face get hot. I was angry. At the same time I was hoping Rose would let the remark pass. I tried hard to think of something to say to cover Jane’s words though I’d hardly said a thing all morning. But my tongue seemed to thicken and all I could think of was Rohe don’t.

Rose was calm. Not all red and flustered like me. She took a big pull on the cigarette she had lit, squinted her eyes up and blew the smoke out gently. I knew something was coming.

‘Don’t they have names?’

‘What? Who?’ Jane was surprised and her face was getting pink.

‘The people from down the road whom your husband is employing to cut scrub.’ Rose the stink thing, she was talking all Pakehafied.

‘I don’t know any of their names.’

I was glaring at Rose because I wanted her to stop, but she was avoiding my looks and pretending to concentrate on her cigarette.

‘Do they know yours?’

‘Mine?’

‘Your name.’

‘Well … Yes.’

‘Yet you have never bothered to find out their names or to wonder whether or not they have any.’

The silence seemed to bang around in my head for ages and ages. Then I think Jane muttered something about difficulty, but that touchy sister of mine stood up and said, ‘Come on, Hera.’ And I with my red face and shut mouth followed her out to the station-wagon without a goodbye or anything.

I was so wild with Rose. I was wild. I was determined to blow her up about what she had done, I was determined. But now that we were alone together I couldn’t think what to say. Instead I felt an awful big sulk coming on. It has always been my trouble, sulking. Whenever I don’t feel sure about something I go into a big fat sulk. We had a teacher at school who used to say to some of us girls, ‘Speak, don’t sulk.’ She’d say, ‘You only sulk because you haven’t learned how and when to say your minds.’

She was right that teacher, yet here I am a young woman about to be married and haven’t learned yet how to get the words out. Dad used to say to me, ‘Look out, girlie, you’ll stand on your lip.’

At last I said, ‘Rose, you’re a stink thing.’ Tears were on the way. ‘Gee Rohe, you made me embarrassed.’ Then Rose said, ‘Don’t worry, Honey, she’s got a thick hide.’

These words of Rose’s took me by surprise and I realised something about Rose then. What she said made all my anger go away and I felt very sad because it’s not our way of talking to each other.

Usually we’d say, ‘Never mind, Sis,’ if we wanted something to be forgotten. But when Rose said, ‘Don’t worry, Honey, she’s got a thick hide,’ it made her seem a lot older than me, and tougher, and as though she knew much more than me about the world. It made me realise too that underneath her jolly and forthright ways Rose is very hurt.

I remembered back to when we were both little and Rose used to play up at school if she didn’t like the teacher. She’d get smart and I used to be ashamed and tell Mum on her when we got home, because although she had the brains I was always the well-behaved one.

Rose was speaking to me in a new way now. It made me feel sorry for her and for myself. All my life I had been sitting back and letting her do the objecting. Not only me, but Mum and Dad and the rest of the family too. All of us too scared to make known when we had been hurt or slighted. And how can the likes of Jane know when we go round pretending all is well? How can Jane know us?

But then I tried to put another thought into words. I said to Rose, ‘We do it too. We say, “the Pakeha doctor,” or “the Pakeha at the post office”, and sometimes we mean it in a bad way.’

‘Except that we talk like this to each other only. It’s not so much what is said, but when and where and in whose presence. Besides, you and I don’t speak in this way now, not since we were little. It’s the older ones – Mum, Dad, Nanny – who have this habit.’

Then Rose said something else. ‘Jane Frazer will still want to be your friend and mine in spite of my embarrassing her today; we’re in the fashion.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s fashionable for a Pakeha to have a Maori for a friend.’ Suddenly Rose grinned. Then I heard Jane’s voice coming out of that Rohe’s mouth and felt a grin of my own coming. ‘I have friends who are Maoris. They’re lovely people. The eldest girl was married recently and I did the frocks. The other girl is at varsity. They’re all so friendly and so natural and their house is absolutely spotless.’

I stopped the wagon in the drive and when we’d got out Rose started strutting up the path. I saw Jane’s way of walking and felt a giggle coming on. Rose walked up Mum’s scrubbed steps, ‘Absolutely spotless.’ She left her shoes in the porch and bounced into the kitchen. ‘What did I tell you? Absolutely spotless. And a friendly natural woman taking new bread from the oven.’

Mum looked at Rose then at me. ‘What have you two been up to? Rohe I hope you behaved yourself at that Pakeha place?’ But Rose was setting the table. At the sight of Mum’s bread she’d forgotten all about Jane and the events of the morning.

When Dad, Heke and Matiu came in for lunch, Rose, Mum, Nanny and I were already into the bread and the big bowl of hot corn.

‘E ta,’ Dad said. ‘Let your hardworking father and your two hardworking brothers starve. Eat up.’

‘The bread’s terrible. You men better go down to the shop and get you a shop bread,’ said Rose.

‘Be the day,’ said Heke.

‘Come on, my fat Rohe. Move over and make room for your daddy. Come on, my baby, shift over.’

Dad squeezed himself round behind the table next to Rose. He picked up the bread Rose had buttered for herself and started eating. ‘The bread’s terrible all right,’ he said. Then Mat and Heke started going on about how awful the corn was and who cooked it and who grew it, who watered it all summer and who pulled out the weeds.

So I joined in the carryings on and forgot about Rose and Jane for the meantime. But I’m not leaving it at that. I’ll find some way of letting Rose know I understand and I know it will be difficult for me because I’m not clever the way she is. I can’t say things the same and I’ve never learnt to stick up for myself.

But my sister won’t have to be alone again. I’ll let her know that.