Since I can remember, whenever we visited my Aunty’s place in Wellington I would gaze into her glass cabinet and see a thin book, held together by two staples, with “Grandfather” across the top and “by Kirsty Ngaia” in the lower left corner. These words were obviously written by the teacher but the rest was done by my hand. Simple people and objects drawn in coloured pencil. The one object that I now laugh at as i read the book I wrote about 18years ago, and last read about 10 years ago, is the dart I drew. It no longer looks like a dart, it looks like a penis. I don’t even know if the story is true, I never have. I don’t know where I got the idea that these were the events of that night. The only thing I know is that he did have a heart attack and the only thing I remember about him is that at his Tangi (Maori funeral) I didn’t want to kiss him because he was dead and cold, but for some reason my Aunty felt the need to keep the book, and my other Aunty and Uncles would talk about it, like it was some great achievement. I see it as a really disturbing story by a weird little kid. I should have been writing about princesses and dragons, or something, not my grandfathers death.
The pages are now brown and faded, and the artwork can only vaguely be made out on most pages, but the writing is still as clear as if it were written yesterday. This is the story, that first made my family think I was destined for great academic achievement.
(NOTE: \n indicates that the next line is on a new page, and the way the story is structured is how it is written on the page, in my tidy-for-a-five-year-old writing)
Grandfather
by Kirsty Ngaia
A long long long long
time ago my
Grandfather died because he had \n
a heart attack
when it was
night time.\n
I was asleep and
Vicky-Lee was
awake. She was
going with Mum and \n
and Dad to
the pub. \n
She was
watching our
Grandfather play \n
darts. He threw
the dart and
the[n] he had a
heart attack.
