Back To The Mat by Mikaere Worthington My name is Jim MacLaren. I know that part is right, anyway. Everything seems misty, my brain will not work properly, but I am sure they call me MacLaren. My grandfather came from the Scottish Highlands they reckon, then he married a Maori girl from out Taupo way. My old man was the eldest boy; he married into a respectable Pakeha family; that makes me a quarter-caste, I suppose. Nobody would think it to look at me, though; I could pass for a European anywhere despite my brown eyes. When my father died I was only seven years old, and my mother took me back to her people who lived near Wanganui. Shots from my childhood flicker across my brain like slides in a magic lantern. There, once more, is the creek where we used to fish, and again I am back at school in the same old classroom. Then another picture comes before me. It is of the milk bar on the corner. As I gaze past the poles supporting the verandah I catch sight of the girl I love. There she stands, tall and beautiful, tossing back her golden hair nonchalantly as she measures out toffees for some small children. Poignant memories overwhelm me— those dances at the Ritz, the movies, or just walking along the streets on Friday nights, waiting for her to finish work. Then the great day when I ask her if she would marry me, and how old Mr Jenkins kept on winking when we chose the ring at his jewellery shop. I see myself talking to my fiancee in a restaurant. Her face has a hard expression, and there is a fore-boding of evil in the air. She says there is an important matter for us to discuss. ‘Jim, you've double-crossed me,’ she bursts out. ‘You never told me you were a Maori, my girlfriend says all those Maori MacLarens are your relatives.’ I was so stunned I could not reply at once, but then managed to say, ‘What if my grandmother was a Maori, I don't look like one—anyway you're marrying me, not my grandmother.’ The argument was becoming more and more bitter, she was almost hysterical, then she shouted ‘I know a lot of Pakehas marry Maoris, but they all go back to the mat’. I asked her to keep her voice down as people were staring, but her only answer was ‘I don't want any black babies and that's that’. I looked at her for a brief moment as my world crashed around me. ‘You really mean that, don't you?’ I said. Her only reply was to take off her engagement ring and put it on the table. I threw it on the floor and walked out of the cafe and out of her life forever.