Class notes? Parade is a story about a young woman who has been away from home for a while and her family misses? a sad story about a young woman who accepted her family’s invitation to

PATRICIA

GRACE

Collected Stories

PENGUIN BOOKS

For Kerebi TVaiariki Grace

PE1'IGUlN BOOKS Penguin Books (ITZ) Ltd, cur Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,

Auckland 1310, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

Penguin Putnam Inc, 375 Hudson Street, New York.1'.ry 10014, United States Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 487 Maroondah Highway,

Ringwood, Australia 3134 Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto,

Ontario, Canada M4V 382 Penguin Books (South Africa) Pty Ltd, 5 Watkins Street,

Denver Ext 4, 2094, South Africa Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

New Delhi 110 017, India

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Hermondsworth, Middlesex, England

The stories in this book were first published as; Waiariki and Other Stories. published by Longman Paul, 1975

Tbe Dream Slttptrs and Other Staries, published by Longman Paul, 1980 Eiearic City and Other Stones, published by Penguin Books, 1987

Copyright © Patricia Grace 1975, 1980, 1987

The right of Patricia Grace to be identified as the author of this work in terms of section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.

This Print on Demand digital edition created by Penguin Books (1TZ) Ltd, 2001

Designed by Richard King Typeset by Egan-Reid Ltd, Auckland

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin PU8S

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and

the above publisher of this book.

Acknowledgements are due to umdfaJJ, the New Ztalimd Listener and Te Ao Hou, in which some of the stories in this book first appeared.

ISBN 978 014 1006093

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Parade

YESTERDAY I WENT WITH HOAN!, LENA, AND THE LITTLE ones up along the creek where the bush begins, to cut fern

and flax. Back there at the quiet edge of the bush with the hills rolling skyward and the sound of the sea behind me I was glad I had come home in response to Auntie's letter. Itwas easy, there, to put aside the heaviness of spirit which had come upon me during the week of carnival. Itwas soothing to follow with my eyes the spreading circles of fern patterning the hills' sides, and good to feel the coolness of flax and to realise again the quiet strength of each speared leaf. Itwas good to look into the open-throated flax blooms with their lit-coal colours, and to put a hand over the swollen black splitting pods with the seed heavy in them.

And I thought of how each pod would soon cast aside its heaviness and become a mere shell, warped and empty, while that which had been its own heaviness would become new life. New growth and strength.

As we carried the bundles of fern and flax that we had collected and put them into the creek to keep fresh for the morning I was able to feel that tomorrow, the final day of the carnival, would be different from the ones recently passed when realisation had come to me, resting in me like stone.

'Please come for the carnival,' Auntie's letter had said. And the letter from my little cousin Ruby: 'Please come, Matewai. We haven't seen you for two years.' I had felt excitement in me at the thought of returning, being back with them. And I came for the caruival as they had asked.

Itwas easy this morning to feel a lighmess of spirit, waking to a morning so warm and full-scented, with odours rising to the nostrils as though every morning comes from inside the

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earth. Rich damp smells drenched every grass blade, every seeded stalk, and every cluster of ragwort, thistle and black- berry. Steaming up through the warming rosettes of cow dung. Stealing up the stems of lupin and along the lupin arms, out on to the little spread hands of lupin leaves.

And a sweet wood smell coming from the strewn chips and wood stack by the shed. A tangle of damp stinks from the fowl- yard and orchard, and from the cold rustiness of the cow-holed swamp. Some of the earth morning smells had become trapped under the hot bodies of cows, and were being dispensed, along with the cows' own milk and saliva smells, from the swinging bellies and milk-filled udders as the animals made their way poke-legged to the milking sheds. That was what it was like this morning.

And there was a breath of sea. Somewhere – barely dis- cernible since evening had been long forgotten and the night had been shrugged aside – somewhere the sea was casting its breath at the land. Itwas as though it were calling to the land, and to us as we woke and walked into the day, 'I'm here, I'm here. Don't forget about me.'

The sun fingered the ridges of hills as we pulled the flax and fern from the creek and began to decorate the truck for the parade. We worked quickly, tying and nailing the fronds and leaves into place. And when we had finished, Uncle Hirini drove the truck in under some trees where the sun could not reach it, while we went inside to change into our costumes.

Auntie had sent all the children to wash in the creek, and as I watched them from the window it was like seeing myself as I had been not very long ago. As if it were my own innocence that they cast on to the willow branches with their clothes. Light had filtered through the willow branches on to the creek's surface, spreading in small pools to the creek banks and on to the patches of watercress and shafts of reed.

The sun had put a finger on almost everything by now. It had touched our houses and the paddocks and tree tops, and stroked its silver over the sea. The beach stones were warming from the sun's touching, and black weed, thrown up by the sea,

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PARADE

lay in heaps on the shore drying and helpless in the sun's relent- less stroking.

I watched the bodies falling into water warmed from the sun's touching, and fingers, not his, squeezing at large bars of yellow soap. Fingers spreading blistery trails of suds up and over legs and arms. Bodies, heads, ears. 'Wash your taringas.' Auntie from the creek bank. Backsides, frontsides, fingers, toes. Then splashing, diving, puffing and blowing in this pool of light. Out on to the banks, rubbing with towels, wrapping the towels around, scrambling back through the willows, across the yard where the sun caught them for a moment before they ran inside to dress. It was like seeing myself as I had been such a short time ago.

Auntie stood back on the heels of her bare feet, puffing at a cigarette, and looking at me through half shut eyes. Her round head was nodding at me, her long hair which she had brushed out of the two thick plaits which usually circled her head fell about her shoulders, and two more hanks of hair glistened under her armpits. The skin on her shoulders and back was pale in its unaccustomed bareness, cream coloured and cool looking. And there was Granny Rita stretching lips over bare gums to smile at me.

'Very pretty, dia. Very pretty, dia,' she kept saying, stroking the cloak that they had put on me, her old hands aged and grey like burnt paper. The little ones admiring, staring.

Setting me apart. And I stood before them in the precious cloak, trying to

smile. 'I knew our girl would come,' Auntie was saying again. 'I

knew our girl would come if we sent for her.' We could hear the truck wheezing out in the yard, and

Grandpa Hohepa who is bent and crabby was hurrying every- one along, banging his stick on the floor. 'Kia tere,' he kept on saying. 'Kia tere.'

The men helped Granny Rita and Grandpa Hohepa on to the truck and sat them where they could see, then I stepped on to the platform which had been erected for me and sat down

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for the journey into town. The others fanned their lines along each side of the tray and sat down too. In town, in the heatoflate morning, we moved slowly with

the other parade floats along the streets lined with people. Past the railway station and shops, and over bridges and crossings, singing one action song after another. Hakas and pais.

And as I watched I noted again, as I had on the other car- nival days of concerts and socials, the crowd reaction. I tried not to think. Tried not to let my early morning feelings leave me. Tried not to know that there was something different and strange in the people's reaction to us. And yet I knew this was not something new and strange, but only that during my time away from here my vision and understanding had expanded. I was able now to see myself and other members of my race as others see us. And this new understanding left me as aban- doned and dry as an emptied pod of flax that rattles and rattles into the wind.

Everyone was clapping and cheering for Uncle Hirini and my cousin Hoani who kept jumping from the truck to the road, parrerning with their taiaha, springing on their toes and doing the pukana, making high pipping noises with their voices. Their tongues lolled and their eyes popped.

But it was as though my uncle and Hoani were a pair of clowns. As though they wore frilled collars and had paint on their noses, and kept dropping baggy pants to display sparred underwear and sock suspenders. As though they turned cart- wheels and hit each other on the head, while someone else banged on a tin to show everyone that clowns have tin heads.

And the people's reaction to the rest of us? The singing, the pais? I could see enjoyment on the upturned faces and yet it occurred to me again and again that many people enjoyed zoos. That's how I felt. Animals in cages to be stared at. This one with stripes, this one with spots – or a trunk, or bad breath, the remains of a third eye. Talking, swinging by the tail, walk- ing in circles, laughing, crying, having babies.

Or museums. Stuffed birds, rows of shells under glass, the wing span of an albarross, preserved bodies, shrunken heads.

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PARADE

Empty gourds, and meeting houses where no one met any more.

I kept thinking and trying not to think, 'Is that what we are to them?' Museum pieces, curios, antiques, shells under glass. A travelling circus, a floating zoo. People clapping and cheering to show that they know about such things.

The sun was hot. Auntie at the end of the row was beam- ing, shining, as though she were the sun. A happy sun, smiling and singing to fill the whole world with song. And with her were all the little sunlets singing too, and stamping. Arms out, fingers to the heart, fists clenched, hands open, head to one side, face the front. Piupius swinging, making their own music, pois bobbing. And voices calling the names of the canoes – Tainui, Takitimu, Kurahaupo, Te Arawa … the little ones in the front bursting with the fullness of their own high voices and their dancing hands and stamping feet, unaware that the crowd had put us under glass and that our uncle and cousin with their rolling eyes and prancing feet wore frilled collars and size nineteen shoes and had had pointed hats clapped down upon their heads.

Suddenly I felt a need to reach out to my auntie and uncle, to Hoani and the little ones, to old Rita and Hohepa.

We entered the spons ground, and when the truck stopped the little ones scrambled down and ran off to look for their mates from school. Auntie and Hoani helped Granny Rita and Grandpa Hohepa down. I felt older than any of them.

And it was hot. The sun threw down his spinnings of heat and weavings of light on to the cracked summer earth as we walked towards the pavilion.

'Do you ever feel as though you're in a circus?' I said to Hoani who is the same age as I am. He flipped onto his hands and walked the rest of the way upside down. I had a feeling Hoani knew what I was talking about.

Tea. Tea and curling sandwiches. Slabs of crumbling fruit cake, bottles of blood-warm fizz, and someone saying, 'What're you doing in that outfit?' Boys from cousin Lena's school.

PATRICIA GRACE

'Didn't you see us on the truck?' Lena was saying. 'Yeh, we saw.' One of the boys had Lena's poi and was

swinging it round and round and making aeroplane noises. Mr Goodwin, town councillor, town butcher, touching

Uncle Hirini's shoulder and saying, 'Great, great,' to show what a great person he himself was, being one of the carnival organisers and having lived in the township all his life amongst dangling sausages, crescents of black pudding, leg roasts, rib roasts, flannelled tripe, silverside, rolled beef, cutlets, dripping. 'Great.' He was Great. You could tell by the prime steak hand on Uncle's shoulder.

Uncle Hirini believed the hand. Everyone who saw the hand believed it too, or so it seemed to me. They were all be- lievers on days such as these.

And the woman president of the eWI shouting at Granny Rita as though Granny were deaf or simple. Granny Rita nodding her head, waiting for the woman to go away so she could eat her cake. It was stuffy and hot in the hall with the stale beer and

smoke smell clinging to its walls and floor, and to the old chip- ped forms and sagging trestle tables. Bird dirt, spider webs, mice droppings. The little ones had had enough to eat and were running up and down with their mates from school, their piupius swinging and clacking about their legs. Auntie round- ing them all up and whispering to go outside. Auntie on her best behaviour wishing those kids would get out and stop shaming her. Wanting to yell, 'Get out you kids. Get outside and play. You spoil those piupius and I'll whack your bums.' Auntie sipping tea and nibbling at a sandwich.

We began to collect the dishes. Squashed raisins, tea dregs. The men were stacking the trestles and shifting forms. Mrs President put her hands into the soapy water and smiled at the ceiling, smiled to show what sort of day it was. 'Many hands make light work,' she sang out. We reached for towels, we reached for wet plates to prove how right she was.

Outside, people were buying and selling, guessing weights and stepping chains, but I went to where Granny Rita and

PARADE

Grandpa Hohepa were sitting in the shade of a tree, guarding the cloak between them.

More enrerrainment. The lines were forming again but I sat down by old Rita and Hohepa out of the sun's heat.

'Go,' Granny Rita was saying to me. 'Take your place.' 'I think I'll watch this time, Nanny.' 'You're very sad today, dia. Very sad.' Granny Rita's eyes pricking at my skin. Old Hohepa's too. 'It's hot, Nanny.' A crowd had gathered to watch the group and the singing

had begun, but those two put their eyes on me, waiting for me to speak.

'They think that's all we're good for,' I said. 'A laugh and that's all. Amusement. In any other week of the year we don't exist. Once a year we're taken out and put on show, like relics.' And silence. Silence with people laughing and talking. Silence with the singing lifting skyward, and children playing. Silence. Waiting for them to say something to me. Wonder- ing what they would say.

'You grow older, you understand more,' Granny Rita said to me.

Silence and waiting. 'No one can take your eyes from you,' she said. Which is

true. Then old Hohepa, who is bent and sometimes crabby, said,

'It is your job, this. To show others who we are.' And I sat there with them for a long time. Quiet. Realising

what had been put upon me. Then I went towards the group and took my place, and began to stamp my feet on to the cracked earth, and to lift my voice to the sun who holds the earth's strength within himself.

And gradually the sun withdrew his touch and the grounds began to empty, leaving a flutter of paper, trampled heads of dandelion and clover, and insects finding a way inro the sticky sweet necks of empty bottles.

The truck had been in the sun all afternoon. The withered

curling fern and drooping flax gave it the appearance of a scaly monster, asleep and forgotten, left in a corner to die. Ihelped Granny Rita into the cab beside Grandpa Hohepa.

'This old bum gets too sore on those hard boards. This old bum wants a soft chair for going home. Ah lovely, dia. Move your fat bum ova, Hepa.' The old parched hand on my cheek. 'Not to worry, dia, not to worry.'

And on the back of the truck we all moved close together against the small chill that evening had brought in. Through the town's centre then along the blackening roads. On into the night until the road ended. Opening gates, closing them. Crossing the dark paddocks with the hills dense on one hand, the black patch of sea on the other. And the only visible thing the narrow rind of foam curling shoreward under a sky emptied of light. Listening, Icould hear the shuffle of water on stone, and rising above this were the groans and sighs of a derelict monster with his scales withered and dropping, making his short-sighted way through prickles and fern, over cow pats and stinging nettle, along fence lines, past the lupin bushes, their fingers crimped against the withdrawal of the day. Itook in a big breath, filling my lungs with sea and air and

land and people. And with past and present and future, and felt a new strength course through me. I lifted my voice to sing and heard and felt the others join with me. Singing loudly into the darkest of nights. Calling on the strength of the people. Calling them to paddle the canoes and to paddle on and on. To haul the canoes down and paddle. On and on –

Hoea ra nga waka E te iwi e, Hoea hoea ra, Aotea, Tainui, Kurahaupo, Hoea hoea ra.

Toia mai nga waka E te iwi e, Hoea hoea ra,

PARADE

Mataatua, Te Atawa, Takitimu, Tokomaru, Hoea hoea ra.'

ENG205Z, Fall 2022

Explication Paper (1500–1750 words)

Due by 7 October 2022, 11:59pm

Attach/upload your paper as an MS Word document—that is, any other document formats are unacceptable. Do not use Bb’s

text editor for this assignment.

Objective. Etymologically, the verb explicate carries the following associations: to unfold, to unroll, to level out, smooth, to extricate, to

disentangle, to solve, to spread out, expand, to develop, to display, to make clear and to make known. For our purposes, such an

unfolding of meaning(s), or disentanglement of narrative knots, entails a careful elucidation of the literary work in question—that is, a

process which closely explores not only what that work means but also how it means what it means. Explication thus always takes as its

raw materials the actual words on the page. Whenever you elaborate on even a small segment of a literary work by carrying out a

meticulous close reading that relates it to the whole, you are essentially explicating. As such, a perceptive literary explication

makes plausible interpretive claims;

makes debatable claims;

supports claims with textual evidence;

argues for a thesis about the literary text;

explores the complexity of the literary text.

To that end, a compelling explication therefore considers all relevant elements of a work—for example, voice, point of view, (narrative)

structure, figurative language, imagery, connotative words and double meanings, allusions, sound, and rhythm. Finding deeper meanings

beneath the surface layer of the text, therefore, is central to any serious explication. It always entails and proceeds from close reading

(close examination) of specific words/phrases/lines/passages/moments—sometimes line by line or word by word—in relation to the

whole work. Close reading often aims at identifying, exploring, and interpreting surface–depths relations/tensions, patterns,

comparisons/analogies, and (binary) opposites in relation to setting, characterization, perspective, ironies, and time and sequence.

Explication therefore involves a circular process whereby we read the parts in light of the whole, yet cannot assume to know the whole

until we have read all the parts: We understand, for instance, the individual words over against the context of an unfolding sentence

which cannot, however, be said to be com​plete until we have finished reading each and every word one by one. Such an interpretive

bifocality—in terms of surface/depth, form/content, and part/whole—constitutes the core of the explicative method. A sustained focus

on and close reading particular moments in the literary text combined with their interpretation in relation to the whole is central to any

explication.

Prompt. Closely reread Patricia Grace’s “Parade” and consider the prompt below. In doing so, rethink, refocus, revise, and expand the

explication you have already turned in on “Parade”:

A dominant thematic strand in “Parade” seems to turn on a nostalgic focus on the representation of rural Māori life in relation to

the sociocultural pressures faced by the urbanized Māori. Exploring the setting, characterization, and narrative perspective, stage a

compelling explication of the ways in which “Parade” paints a vivid picture of the minutiae of place, its affective elements, color and

texture as well as the warmth of interpersonal relationships. Connect the significance of such descriptive and visual components,

as well as their metaphorical overtones, to Grace’s primary preoccupations in the story.

N.B. Following the MLA style guidelines, you must properly cite and format all direct and indirect references you make to literary texts

(i.e., quotation, paraphrase), along with ideas/concepts/notions/definitions that are not yours. (See Principles of MLA Style under

Research Guides on Bb; in-text citations

(https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_in_text_citations_the_basics.html),

Works Cited page

(https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_page_basic_format.html),

and this sample MLA paper

(https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_sample_paper.html) on Purdue OWL;

and the academic integrity requirement on the syllabus.)

Form & length. Your paper must meet the expected word count (1500–1750) excluding the Works Cited page. In formatting your paper,

use the MLA style and follow standard academic format: typed, one-inch margins on all sides, double spaced, 12 pt. serif font such as

Times New Roman. Use indentation to distinguish paragraph breaks. No extra spacing between paragraphs, no fancy fonts, no wide

margins. Keep it simple: name, instructor, class and date in the top left-hand corner and a title top centre will suffice. Do not use a lot of

space to do this, though. Your paper should start within 2–3” of the top margin. Your list of works cited should begin on a new page after

your concluding paragraph.