The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley Page 8

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  ‘Just the same kind of thing he always wears. I don’t think he thinks about it.’

  ‘Did you ask him about the tall guy at the circus?’

  ‘Oscar. Yeah, I asked but he didn’t really answer me. I don’t think he wanted to talk about it.’

  ‘Hmm. That’s funny. What was his dad like?’

  ‘He was nice. There was no cordial. He was going to go and buy some. Actually, I think he was sad.’

  ‘How could you tell he was sad?’

  ‘Just could. He had a sad look, and he spoke quietly, like a kid who’s shy. Anyway, Kite said he was. Because Kite’s mum left him and now she’s with a man called Howard who’s like a weasel and Kite’s dad has to work in a library.’

  ‘Oh, that’s bad.’ Caramella bit at her nail and frowned and considered the situation. Then she said, ‘What kind of house do they live in?’

  ‘A small one. It’s dark, but out the back there’s this ace garage with mats. That’s where we train.’

  ‘Was Kite pleased that you wanted to keep training?’

  ‘I dunno. He didn’t say. You know what he’s like, he doesn’t say how he feels.’

  ‘Well, couldn’t you tell?’ (It becomes a girl’s job to read a boy’s unexpressed feelings in other ways. Girls get good at looking for signs.)

  ‘No. Maybe.’

  ‘Did you get that funny feeling?’ (The funny feeling is when you like someone and your tummy goes all empty and pounding and words bury down blunt inside and suddenly erupt out your mouth all wrong, like a spew, so you go red in the face, because it matters a great deal that you make a good impression.)

  ‘At first I did, but after a while I felt normal.’

  ‘So, you’ve got a crush on him, haven’t you?’

  ‘He put his hand on my shoulder,’ I said, faintly sidestepping the question, because I wanted to draw it out, make it last, like eating an ice-cream slowly.

  ‘How long did he leave his hand on your shoulder?’ said Caramella.

  ‘For a while. I felt it go through me.’

  ‘You have got a crush. I can tell.’ She folded her arms triumphantly, as if she’d just won a game of Fish.

  I went home and thought about whether I had a crush or not. I only wanted to have one if he had one, otherwise it would be awful. There was a card from Barnaby.

  Sometimes Barnaby can say things in a sideways way. I used to go and bug him after dinner, when he was meant to be doing homework but never was. He was just sitting on his bed playing guitar.

  ‘Barn, do you love Laura Pinkstone?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Then why were you kissing her on the couch in the living room?’

  ‘Well. I guess I loved her when I was kissing her.’

  ‘But not afterwards?’

  ‘Well, not all the time.’

  ‘So, sometimes you love her, and sometimes you don’t?’

  ‘Yeah. One third of the time I love her but two thirds I don’t.’

  ‘How can you tell how many thirds?’

  He put his guitar down and leaned close.

  ‘Cedy, I may be wrong, but the way I see it, there’s three parts to love. Three ways of doing it—mind, body and soul. When you get all three happening at once, that’s it. That’s the real thing.’

  ‘Which part is it with Laura?’

  ‘Body.’

  ‘Oh.’ I frowned because that seemed to me to be the dodgiest part. Not that I know. I only know what you see in the movies and sex always leads to trouble.

  ‘Look, Cedy, Laura’s nice. I like her, but hey, (at this point he opens both his hands and grimaces) she doesn’t get it. She thinks straight up and down, she can’t go round corners. And I myself like to bend the view a bit. That’s all.’

  ‘Have you ever had all three parts going on at once?’

  ‘Not yet. Have you?’ He smiled.

  ‘Get real.’ I screwed up my chubby nose and gave him a punch. Barnaby started singing Love Serenade, and I pondered the three-part theory. After a while I decided that love shouldn’t have anything to do with maths and parts. I told Barnaby, and he said, ‘You’re right, it shouldn’t. Love and maths, they’re in a different ball park.’ Then he started singing it, Love and maths, they’re in a different ball park.

  And I think I’m exasperating!

  When Mum got home I showed her the card from Barnaby. ‘Do you think he’s really in love?’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘I hope not. He might never come home if he is.’ She sat down on the couch, took off her shoes and started rubbing her foot.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you know when you were in love with Dad?’ I took her foot and started squeezing it for her. She loves it when I do that. She lay her head back on the armrest and heaved a big, long sigh.

  ‘You can just tell, by the way you feel, I guess.’

  ‘How did you feel?’ I wondered if it was the funny feeling, if that was love.

  ‘Well, you feel like you want to be close to that person, you feel happy when you’re with them, or you do at first.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Well, it’s different for everybody. With your father and me, love got complicated by other things.’

  ‘What other things?’

  ‘Oh, just life, you know, dirty dishes, different dreams. Why the questions, Cedy? Are you in love already?’

  ‘No, course not. Barnaby said there were three parts to love.’

  ‘Did he? Oooh, that’s good (referring to my thumb action on the sole of her foot).You’ll have to do the other foot now or I’ll feel lopsided. One foot will be envious of the other.’ We swapped the feet over.

  ‘Barnaby said there’s three parts to love: mind, body and soul,’ I said, not letting up. She smiled, but she didn’t reply, not straightaway.

  ‘Soul, that’s the main one,’ she said. Then she closed her eyes.

  ‘I heard you whacking last night. Was it the rat?’ said my mother at breakfast. We have to eat brekkie quickly, because she drops me at the tram stop on her way to work and we’re always running late. I got out the Vegemite and spread it on cold raw bread, because I didn’t have time to toast it.

  ‘Aren’t you having butter?’ said my mother.

  ‘No, the butter’s too hard. It only works on toast. It makes the bread rip.’ Mum only has coffee for breakfast, so she doesn’t understand the fine art of toast and spreading. She won’t buy margarine either. Always just hard unsalted butter.

  ‘You were whacking the wall at two o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah, it was the rat again. It woke me up.’ The rat lives in the walls of our weatherboard house. It’s a big mother. I can tell by the noise it makes, especially when it decides to do major nest renovations right in the wall next to my bed. It wakes me up. I used to throw shoes and books at the wall, but now I just whack it with Barnaby’s old cricket bat, which I keep by the bed. That night, I whacked like crazy since I was particularly annoyed at the rat for waking me up from a good dream. In the dream I was on a mountain and there were animals lying down and Barnaby was there and we were climbing up, because our father was at the top waiting for us, and then I saw Kite and he gave me some chewing gum which made me feel dizzy, and then scratch, scratch, scratch went the blasted dream-disturber rat. So I never got up the mountain to see my father, but that’s how it always goes in dreams—you never get where you really want to go.

  Mum said it’s the chooks that attracted the rats and the mice. Barnaby brought them home from the Vic Market for Mum’s birthday. So, since it was a birthday present, she had to be grateful and keep them, even though I don’t think she really wanted them. They live in the backyard. I named them Rita Hayworth and Door. Rita Hayworth is red but she doesn’t sing. Door is a follower—you know, like a door—just getting pushed around, open and shut. Not much personality, but lays a lot of eggs. Whereas Rita Hayworth, she squawks and looks a
wfully good. I like naming things. Sometimes I walk along the street, naming all the little bugs that live in the holes in fences and on leaves and the middle of flowers.

  ‘I’m seeing Oscar today,’ said Mum. We were in the Ingswood on the way to the tram stop. I was eating my bread and Vegemite in the car. I told Mum to say hi from me. Then I remembered that Oscar was in my dream; he was on the mountain eating a boiled egg and I said I’d bring him back another one, but I got distracted by the sleeping animals and wanted to lie down, too.

  I dug into my school bag and grabbed a pen and bit of paper and wrote a quick note.

  I gave it to Mum to pass on to Oscar. I didn’t even care if she read it.

  ‘Cedar, get down!’ Kite yelled and grabbed my ankles. I was just swinging a bit from the trapeze, like this:

  He had gone into the house to get some water. While he was gone, I just thought I’d try out a bat position on the trapeze. And then I just let it swing a bit. And then I let it swing out even more. And then I felt my body sailing through the air, all the bones loose and free, and it wasn’t me doing it, it was another force, a force that lay and waited in the air and caught up birds and balls and falling leaves and everything that falls and flies. It made me feel I was knowing something special, at least until Kite came and yelled at me and stopped the swinging.

  ‘I can’t get down while you’re holding my ankles,’ I said. He let go and helped me down, even though I didn’t need him to. His face was white and angry.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

  ‘Are you stupid? Don’t ever hang upside-down without mats underneath. And even then, don’t do it all on your own. You haven’t learnt yet, about safety. It’s really dangerous if you fall like that.’

  I’d never seen him angry before. He was almost yelling and his hands were making jerking movements in the air, like Mr Zito when he’s mad at Mrs Zito.

  ‘Okay, okay. I won’t,’ I said, but I felt a bit huffy or funny or battered so I went and sat down. For a horrible moment I thought I was about to cry. I turned and faced the wall just in case. He didn’t say anything, and it seemed to go on like that for ages with me just sitting, facing away from him biting back tears, and him just standing there being silent and angry. I didn’t know how to stop it. I thought I might just leave but I couldn’t. I couldn’t picture it working right. He’d think I was a big sook.

  ‘Cedar, shall we try the flag?’ He sighed and put his hand on my shoulder again, in just the same place, only this time he squeezed it a little.

  ‘Okay.’ I turned around.

  ‘Sorry for yelling,’ he said and grinned. I nodded, but I didn’t quite let a smile out. Not right away. I had to warm up to it.

  This is what the flag balance looks like when you get it right:

  This is what it looked like when we did it:

  Sometimes we do it easily, but I was flustered and forgot the right grip and kept falling off. I was getting discouraged and annoyed and about ready to throw a tantrum, so I gave up.

  ‘Hey, Kite, do you wanna just go walk through the Motts’ hedge instead?’ I said. After all, I was truly tired, because of the rat-induced sleep deprivation. Too tired for concentrating on what grip for what balance.

  ‘Sure.’ He did a head-flip and landed on his feet. ‘Enough training, let’s go.’

  The Motts’ hedge is long and bushy at the top, like used paintbrushes. It runs between the Motts’ house and the Bartons’. Once you get up at the level where the branches fork out, you can travel along all the way from one end to the other, hidden on the inside in a tunnel of trees. The thing is you’ve got to walk, not climb or clamber like the little kids do. You have to walk with the same assurance that Jesus must have had when he was showing all the disbelievers that he could walk on water. You have to try to stay straight-up, and without looking find places for your foot to go. You get lots of scratches, but it’s worth it. To walk through trees, makes you feel brilliant, like a super hero. Once, Hoody Mott jumped out of the hedge for a dare, but he broke an ankle, so now we’re not allowed to jump.

  Kite was better at hedge-walking than anyone. I knew he would be. When he went up the tree he went all monkey. He seemed to know just where to reach, where to lean out, when to make a little jump. And he seemed to know it without thinking, as if his body knew it.

  ‘You’re like a monkey,’ I said. We were at the end, where Hoody had jumped. We sat up high in the hedge, dangled our legs down and looked out at the street.

  ‘Yeah, when you climb you think monkey, when you run you go panther, when you fly you become bird. It’s a trick my dad showed me.’

  ‘Whaddya mean?’

  ‘Well, the body thinks faster than the mind. And it doesn’t think in words. It’s no point telling your body what to do, but if you put an image in there, an image it can feel, then it can use it. Like, if you want to jump really high, you imagine yourself having springs inside you, you imagine your chest is being pulled upwards by a rope, you imagine your arms are reaching to catch hold of a balloon high up in the sky. That’s how my dad teaches me things. He makes me imagine. Dad reckons you could fly if you could feel it right.’

  ‘If you become bird?’

  ‘Yeah. See, that’s why he called me Kite, after a bird, so I might fly.’

  ‘Does he want you to fly?’

  ‘Not until I’m ready.’

  ‘Are you ready yet?’

  ‘Nuh, not yet.’

  ‘Do you wanna fly?’

  ‘Course I do. That’s what I’m gonna do. Don’t you want to?’

  ‘No,’ I said. But I was just saying no because I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to anyway. For now, I told myself, a good back-flip out of a round-off would be enough of a flying kick for me.

  I pulled a seed ball off the branch and let it drop. We watched it plonk on the ground and roll a bit. The time I got Harold’s dad with a cumquat from up in that hedge, he freaked out a bit, and pounded on our door like a bear with a sore head. I watched him from the hedge. Barnaby said Mr Barton deserved a cumquat in the head because he was having a love affair with Mrs Mott, and everyone knew except Mr Mott, who was a slowpoke. Mum said you shouldn’t listen to idle gossip, and Mr Mott wasn’t a slowpoke. He just wasn’t a match for Mrs Mott, and whatever the case, I had no right to cumquat Mr Barton. She grounded me for two weeks.

  From up where we were in the hedge we could see Pablo de la Renta in his front garden, snipping at roses. He had his plastic-coated apron with hearts on. I yelled out hello and he stood on his toes, flapped his secateurs at me and asked how my rib was. ‘Much better,’ I said. Pablo de la Renta had a roly poly melody in his voice; it broke out like waves.

  ‘Don’t fall from the tree,’ he said, and he frowned like a mother would, and bent back over his roses.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Kite.

  ‘He’s one of the boys. The other one, Robert, is a doctor. They live together in that white house there. They have very, very posh furniture, and a banana tree and sundeck out the back, and Mum says they complain about our chooks because the chooks attract mice, and they complain about Ricci feeding the birds because the birds poop on their cars. But otherwise they’re okay.’

  ‘And what’s going on over there?’ Kite pointed down the street. It was Harold Barton, and sitting in the gutter nearby were Hailey and Jean-Pierre. They were just watching. Hailey was holding a rabbit. Harold had a bit of metal. He was jamming it into the manhole on the road and trying to lever the lid off. Barnaby said that Hoody Mott had opened the manhole once with just his little finger in the hole, but I don’t know if that’s true. If you looked through the hole you couldn’t see anything, but you could feel a wet-dirt smell coming up and hitting you in the eye.

  When he got the lid off, Harold went and came back with a big, dark, heavy object. I couldn’t tell what it was. He put it in the hole and then he put the lid back on.

  I called out, ‘Sprung, bad Harold, we saw you!’

  ‘Saw wha
t?’ said Harold, squinting upwards. I wished I had a cumquat to drop on him. ‘Well, look, it’s young No-hoper Hartley.’

  ‘What was that you put in the hole?’

  ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

  ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know.’ He used his sneery voice and put his hands on his hips as if he was the boss. Jean-Pierre yelled, ‘Car’s coming!’ and everyone got off the road. Harold gave me the finger and ran inside. I looked for something to chuck at the car. Another seed pod, that was the thing. If a car came by and you were in the hedge, you had to throw something. That’s how I got Mr Barton with the cumquat, right through the car window. Bull’s Eye.

  ‘Let’s go see what he put in that hole,’ Kite said, and then he jumped, from exactly the same place as Hoody Mott. He didn’t even check or consider, he just sprang outwards, opened his arms wide and pressed his chest upward. I swear, for a moment I thought he was about to fly over the whole street. But he didn’t. He dropped and landed on the Motts’ lawn, folding at the knees. He looked back up over his shoulder at me. ‘Think bird,’ he called up. But no way was I going to jump. I’m not that stupid. I climbed down.

  ‘You’re mad to do that. I know a guy who broke his ankle jumping from there.’

  ‘’Cause he didn’t land properly, that’s all. It’s not that high.’

  Hailey came up, still holding the rabbit. She looked at Kite as if he was Superman, as if she was checking to see if he was real.

  ‘Did you hurt yourself? Hoody Mott broke his ankle. We drew flames on the plaster.’

  ‘Nuh. I’m fine. What’s your rabbit called?’

  ‘Madge.’ Madge had grey ears. Kite patted Madge and then he jerked his head towards the manhole. ‘Let’s go check it out.’ I knew Hailey and Jean-Pierre would be envious of me because I was hanging out with the guy who could jump out of a hedge better than Hoody Mott. I tried not to gloat, not on the outside. I gave them an obliging look which said, ‘You can come too.’