The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley Read online

  ‘Yep. Look, right now Kite is asking Oscar to join, too. Oscar doesn’t do any acrobatics. But he has ideas. You know how to make things look good. We’ll all just throw in our own kind of flavours and stir it all together and see what comes out. I know it will be something, and I want you in it. Okay? Please Caramella? C’mon. We can all hang out together.’

  She nodded. Still she didn’t look at me. I knew she was embarrassed. So I didn’t press it. I got another pip and I blew it all the way to the road. I let out a triumphant yell.

  ‘Right on, Mr B.’

  Caramella giggled. Right on Mr B., was what my mum said when she got something right. She got it off an ad on tellie where Sammy Davis Junior was trying to sell record players.

  Before Caramella went inside, I pointed out the silverbeet that had little drops of glistening Stinky wee on it, and said she better tell her mum to hose it down before they ate it. I would have felt terrible if the Zitos all got sick because of the silverbeet.

  Before Oscar and Caramella joined us, Kite and I did a week of rehearsals with Kite’s dad, who I started to call Ruben. (He told me to.) In the first rehearsal with Ruben, we talked for ages about ideas and moves and how we could find some way of incorporating Oscar and Caramella. Ruben came back to the next one with a plan with all the rehearsals blocked in. Firstly we just had to workshop, he said, just playing around as if it was a game, which meant no getting fussed about what would work and what wouldn’t. When we did that, he started to kind of shape the play, make us repeat things or ask us to try it smaller or faster or in slow motion or as if we were dogs, or drunk, or shy, or as if we had strings from our fingers. It was great, because he was much better at spotting than Kite was, and I learned things even quicker with him. After a week, I could do a walkover without any help at all. See, it’s all about direction of momentum, pushing forward through your hips and lifting your chest.

  Kite and I didn’t flop around and talk so much, like we did when we were on our own. We had to concentrate all the time. After a rehearsal, I felt as if I was made of air. And then I’d go home and keep thinking about it, you know, getting big ideas on my bed.

  Ruben wasn’t like Mrs Mayberry. He wasn’t like a normal teacher who just told you things and then gave you tests. He asked us things instead of telling. He was always asking, ‘How does that feel? What do you imagine when you do that?’

  Kite says, ‘I feel curious, very curious.’ I say, ‘Like some kind of big prehistoric animal stomping through the long grass.’

  ‘I feel like a plank stuck in mid air.’

  Ruben says, ‘Can you imagine you are long and light reaching upwards to touch a cloud?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now, can you fold down over Kite’s shoulder?’

  ‘Kite, how do you feel?’

  ‘Like I’m carrying a big sack of potatoes.’

  ‘Push up into the weight. Hold your centre. Try walking as if it’s light. Cedar, can you roll round his shoulders and slide down forward, keep contact through your belly, put your hands on his knees? Kite, stand still and drop down through the hips. Hold Cedar’s shoulders. I’m wondering, Cedar, if Kite leans back and you lean forward and press your feet towards the ceiling, could you hit a handstand?’

  ‘Great! Can you look at each other as if you’re surprised? Surprised to see each other?’ (We laugh and lose balance at this point. I flop down over Kite’s shoulders again and he shakes me off, down his back.)

  ‘I like that!’ says Ruben. ‘Shake her off like that, wriggle even more, as if you wanted to get rid of her. Shall we try that whole sequence again? This time, Kite pick Cedar up into the high lift, just as if you were picking something off the ground and putting it up to the light to examine it. Then Cedar, open out as if you were asleep and stretching in the morning. Then, when you see you’re in the sky, look alarmed and fold back down to the shoulder.’

  Kite looked at me with a new look that I’d never seen before. He said, ‘That was good Cedar. You’re getting good. Can you do it again?’

  Could I do it again? I was whirling and reeling as if I’d just been hit by a major compliment. That was the first time Kite ever seemed impressed at all. Could I do it again? I could do it a million times more.

  Every day, Ruben started by asking us if we had any new ideas or thoughts. It made me feel that my ideas were important. It made me want to keep thinking up things. I told him about how Caramella was artistic, and how I thought she could make designs, and how Oscar had an original mind and had written a book called Commonplaces and that maybe he would like to make up some ideas for the show. Kite had this idea of putting Oscar in the centre, like a narrator. I was feeling all puffed-up because Kite had come round to my way of thinking. But I didn’t say it. I just grinned a lot and did three cartwheels without stopping.

  ‘What about Volatile as a name for the show?’ I said.

  After that week, we had our first rehearsal with Oscar and Caramella. Caramella came with me and she lagged and bowed her head and fidgeted with her thumbs and turned red and pressed her back to the wall. Kite was lying on his back, warming up, swinging his legs out in full sweeping circles. Ruben came and shook her hand. She hardly spoke and wouldn’t unglue herself from the wall. Ruben was arranging mats. I wanted to help lay out the mats but I didn’t want to abandon Caramella to the loneliness of the wall. Kite’s legs swished on the floor, swish, swish, swish. The sound was somehow menacing, the way it scratched and itched at the quiet, while Kite seemed to be ignoring the situation altogether. I felt agitated as hell. I started jigging.

  Then, Oscar burst in. He blasted right through the tight stretched skin of the room, just as if he’d stomped on a balloon and exploded it. A confused tangle of legs and arms and there he was blinking, wide-faced and astonished, like a Martian who had just landed. Caramella unglued herself from the wall and smiled, because there was someone more awkward than her and everyone was looking at him. I flopped onto my belly in relief and said, ‘It’s good you’re here, Oscar.’ Kite stopped his annoying solo leg swishing and leapt up to greet him. It was as if the room, which had been frowning and anxious and awkward, broke into a loose old laugh as Ruben opened his arms wide and welcomed Oscar and suggested we make a circle and talk.

  I looked around the circle and thought if we were a soup we’d be one you’d never ever tasted before, one with such an unimaginable blend of flavours that you wouldn’t find it in any recipe book, not even a Hari Krishna one. Oscar was wearing his red cape. Caramella concentrated and fiddled and laid her hands over her plump knees while Ruben’s grey-cloud eyes shone and leapt about as he talked and asked questions. Kite lounged there in his comfortable way, shooting me one swift look from under his eyelids. I can’t tell you what it said, but I felt it as if it bound us together in a secret, satisfied way, for just an instant.

  We warmed up at first by playing kids’ games, like keepings-off and giant statues. Gradually Caramella began to brim and giggle and burst forward and untie the careful little scared knot in her heart. When it came to trying balances, she was willing and breathless. Oscar kept saying, ‘Oh dear,’ and frowning and shaking his head. Sometimes he said inexplicable things like, ‘Oh it’s a traffic jam, now,’ and ‘Yes I see the landscape, I am reminded of a seagull.’ Though he often stumbled, he had a kind of bumbling courage that spilled out like a fizzy drink, sometimes making a big mess, which he’d just wipe off with one awkward elbowed swipe, blinking and booming and stumbling onwards. He made me think of a kind of thirsty explorer battling through low branches, mud and beasts, bravely heading towards something, anything, just onwards. Sometimes he sat down and said, ‘Excuse me while I visualise.’

  Afterwards, Caramella and I walked home. She was quiet.

  ‘Well, was it okay? Did you like it?’ I prodded.

  She nodded a large slow nod. ‘I’m not very good though, am I? I can’t even do a proper handstand.’ Caramella tends to be tentative about things. She always needs you to re
assure her.

  ‘Yes you can. You just need to practise it.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  I nodded. ‘You’ll just get better.’ She swung her hands out a bit and her face looked like she had stuffed a secret inside her pink cheeks.

  ‘Oscar’s funny, isn’t he?’ she said.

  ‘Yep. Funny and brave.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  After two weeks of workshopping, Ruben came up with an outline. He sat us all together and drew out a plan on a big bit of butcher’s paper. I watched him explain it, because he seemed different from when I first met him in the kitchen. Not shy and floppy any more. He was more like a dad—how you’d expect them to be, anyway—tall and strong and leading the show. That’s the kind of dad I would’ve liked to have.

  The plan was good. He said he thought we could have a playground theme. We would act out stuff that happens to kids in the playground, only we’d try to put it into a physical language.

  ‘Excuse me, but what do you mean by physical language?’ said Oscar, who was wearing his red cape again.

  ‘I mean, say we take something that happens at school, a situation like the way kids might make up a game to play together and that’s how they become friends, through playing the game, or imitating . . . Well, we try to represent that situation in acrobatics by making up a kind of game. Maybe it starts with the kind of handshakes kids do and then the handshake becomes a grip, and from the grip there evolves a balance, out and in, out and in. Repetitive. Or double cartwheels, maybe, or a sense of tug of war, like a game. You know, the idea of balance is interesting because you have to trust someone and make a kind of relationship; you depend on them to support you, and they depend on you too, which is the same thing that happens with friends.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Oscar wobbling his head a bit and opening his arms wide. ‘Let the body speak.’

  ‘Yes. Although not only that—I think of this circus as a type of very physical theatre, which means we bring in many elements. Perhaps we could have you on the stage, acting as the umpire or narrator or supervisor. From there you can call out the rules, only they won’t really be rules, they’ll be your own commonplaces, from your book. Kite and Cedar can try to physicalise them.’

  ‘What about me?’ says Caramella rocking up on her chubby knees.

  ‘Well, apart from the trio balances, I want you to be the stage designer, the costume designer—no—no—the artistic director. Your role is to work with me to design the visual part of the show—how it looks. That’s crucial.’

  Caramella blushed and puffed up. I was sitting there thinking how everything felt very important, like a conference, like what men in suits do, not an odd bunch of kids and a sad father. I reckoned Harold Barton and Marnie Aitkin and all the other kids had never ever had discussions as important as we were having. Maybe they had, but probably not. Maybe Barnaby had. Which reminded me—

  ‘What about music?’ I said.

  ‘Haven’t got that far yet. Do you know any musicians who might want to be involved?’

  ‘Only my brother, but he’s away.’

  ‘What will the show be called?’ said Kite.

  ‘Well that’s up to you. Cedar suggested Volatile. I thought of a name you could use for your troupe.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Acrobrats.’

  We all liked that idea. Oscar roared with laughter and fell over backwards.

  The Acrobrats went into full rehearsal and production action. We didn’t get an ad on tellie, because Ruben said it would cost a lot of money, but he did organise for the local newspaper to come over and interview us, because that was free. (Kite says the newspaper came because Ruben is still known around town.) A photographer took a photo of me and Kite doing a candlestick balance, and it was on the front page. The headline said, ‘Acrobrats act for Bambi’.

  AcroBRATS Act For Bambi

  Renowned Circus performer, Ruben Freeman, directs four local youth who have banded together to perform their own brand of acrobatic theatre in a fundraising event to be staged next week at a local venue. Funds from the event will go to a neighbour’s dog, (Bambi), who needs an operation in order to survive. See page 2 for inside story.

  Page two told more about us. It told about how Ruben was forced to retire from performance due to serious injury. It gave our whole names and talked about Kite being Ruben’s son, then it said how such projects should be commended for ‘fostering a strong sense of community’, for ‘bringing together able and disabled bodies’, and for ‘encouraging youth in positive innovation and creative forms of self-expression’. I don’t know quite what they meant by all that, but it sounded important. It gave the date and place. It made us sound like a real company . . .

  The Acrobrats perform ‘Volatile’ on Saturday 20 September, 7p.m. at 45 Hickford St garage. One show only. Enquiries call 9380 4785. Entry by donation.

  When I saw us in the newspaper, I felt half excited, half terrified.

  ‘That picture, it made me feel nervous,’ I said to Kite, after a rehearsal when everyone else had gone. Kite shrugged.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s only the local paper—hardly anyone reads that.’ He was acting tough. It’s a boy thing.

  ‘It makes it seem like a proper show. It makes it real.’

  ‘Well, it will be a proper show.’ He stood up and did a beautiful handspring and a bow. ‘Now you,’ he said, nodding at me as if I was just about to step up onto a horse, while he held the reins. If only it was that easy.

  ‘You know I can’t do handsprings,’ I sighed.

  ‘No, you know you can’t do them, whereas I know you can. That’s the difference. I’ll spot you. Remember what Dad says. Shoot your feet up and press from your shoulders.’

  I shook my head and screwed up my nose.

  ‘You can do them, Cedy. I can tell. It’s only your mind stopping you.’

  He called me Cedy. I smiled. It was the first time he’d ever called me that. And then, since I’d accidentally smiled, I kind of had to give it a go. I stood up and helicoptered my arms.

  ‘Picture yourself doing it,’ he said, lining himself up on the mat to help. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my body, doing the beat in, a lean to a skip, and then a snap as the legs arc over and the hands push out of the floor, head coming last, knees bending into the landing . . .

  I didn’t look at Kite. I just breathed out and willed my body to take over.

  It wasn’t quite perfect, but it was way closer than I’d ever been. I got over, and the landing was crummy, but both hands came off at once—usually I leave one on, just in case. And Kite hadn’t even touched me. I was amazed.

  He just laughed and said, ‘What did I tell you? By the end of the week you’ll be doing them perfectly. You didn’t even need me. See, it will be a real show.’

  But I could tell he was nervous, too. I could tell by the way he was suddenly very focused, very attentive, not so much mucking about. With only one week to go, and the story in the newspaper, there was a growing sense of urgency about. It made things happen quickly.

  The next rehearsal, Caramella turned up with a costume for Oscar. It was made of white paper and it was just a long cone shape that covered him from neck to foot. She had painted the walls of the garage white, and drawn a black line across the centre of it and a net shape underneath, like chicken wire. The rest of us would be wearing black T-shirts, since we each had a black T-shirt already, and black shorts which Caramella found at the Salvos. (So much for the glittering dress and the horse—obviously for the next show.) She said the show would be completely in black and white, because it was cheapest and easiest, yet still theatrical, like a Charlie Chaplin movie. We put Oscar in the cone and stood him in the middle. He looked fantastically odd.

  Ruben loved it. He clapped and said Caramella was a natural born designer, a real artist, and resourceful. He’d never seen such a good design with an almost zero budget.

  (He’d paid only twelve dollars for the paint and
the shorts.) We all said Caramella was the best. Caramella smiled from one end of her face to the other. With her hands on her hips, she looked almost grown-up. You could tell she’d put a lot of thought into it.

  ‘Yes. Sensational, without being flashy,’ said Oscar who always chose his words carefully. ‘Stark contrast, bold shapes. I like it. Especially since I’m kind of untouchable here in my paper cone. I’ve a fragile skin but a strong outline, a strong centre. That’s just like me.’

  That was true. Oscar’s disability made him fragile on the outside, but something strong and true shone through him. Ruben must have been thinking the same thing. He stroked his chin and pursed his lips and had a good idea.

  ‘It would be really good if we could start it in darkness, just Oscar on stage with a light underneath his cone, so that he’s shining out like a big lamp.’

  Why didn’t I think of that? Kite nudged me.

  ‘Cedar and I know where we can get a light,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but how much does it cost?’ said Ruben.

  ‘It’s free. We’re just borrowing it from Cedar’s good friend, Harold.’ Kite winked at me and I got it. How perfect!

  ‘We could collect it tomorrow, before rehearsal,’ I said.

  ‘Great, and remember to hand some of these out at school,’ said Ruben, passing us a handful of the fliers that Caramella had made.

  The next day, before rehearsal, we all went to the hole on our street. Kite brought a steel rod with him for jemmying the lid off. We waited for the street to be quiet and then we set to work. Well, Kite set to work, and we were meant to keep watch. But Caramella went and dragged Oscar over to her house, to get some biscotti. I practised cartwheels on the road. The street is never quiet for long.