“Who’s wearing jeans?”
“The hitchhiker back there.”
“Nope; it’s not jeans.”
Mum joined in. “Jacaranda?”
“What’s a Jacaranda?”
She pointed to a big tree that was just visible from the road. “That tree is, see the one with the mauve flowers?”
“Nope, that’s not it.”
Shortie looked baffled. There’s no way he’d guess what I spied. “Do you give in yet?”
“Hang on, give me a sec, I’ll get it?” He waited a respectable time and gave in.
“Geriatric,” I announced victoriously.
“Jenny,” Dad said, “Geriatric is spelled with a G not a J. You should know that.”
“Oops. It is too, I forgot.”
Mum turned to face us in the back. “Where are the geriatrics?” she asked. “I hope you’re not referring to your father and me.”
“No, I was talking about those old people back there.”
Dad laughed. “Jenny! Those old people couldn’t have been more than fifty.”
“So? How old do you have to be before you’re a geriatric?”
He sighed and shook his head in disbelief. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be ten years old again.”
“Nah,” I corrected, “I’m almost eleven.”
Dad laughed. “Well, I guess that makes you a year closer to being a geriatric.”
We drove under the Wangi Bridge and the horn beeped. “Don’t forget to wave to the man,” Dad called from up front.
Every time we go under the bridge, Dad beeps his horn. He reckons it’s the little man that lives under the bridge doing it, not him. Even though I haven’t caught him yet, I know that it can’t really be a man like he says. I’ve long since given up trying to catch him doing it, because even when I remember to check, which isn’t very often, he manages to do it without being seen.
“Did you tell your dad about yesterday?” Shortie asked.
“Nuh. I don’t think I’ll bother either.”
“Jenny! You said you would.”
“Yeah, but I had my fingers crossed, so it doesn’t count.”
***
We helped Mum and Dad carry the stuff inside. It’s mine and Shortie’s job to go around and open all the windows. Squinting, Uncle Harry put his face close to Shortie’s. “Who’s that?”
“Hello Uncle Harry, it’s me Shortie.” Shortie’s been coming to Uncle Harry’s with us for so long now he even calls him Uncle.
Uncle Harry eyed him suspiciously. “Oh, it’s young David. How are you?”
Shortie rolled his eyes and laughed.
Uncle Harry farted.
Mum tapped him on the shoulder, “How are you Uncle Harry?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, it’s just those bloody beans.”
He hardly eats anything except baked beans on toast. Mum laughed at him. “You’re good, I see.”
“Why don’t you kids go and get some fruit,” Dad suggested.
We each picked up a bucket and headed into the backyard. The yard was much bigger than ours. It was really deep and overgrown with trees and shrubs, most of which had fruit on them. We held our noses as we walked past the outside dunny, which always smells bad, even though it isn’t a pan toilet and flushes like an inside one. Apart from the old wooden door with the flaky paint, the entire structure was covered in passionfruit vines overflowing with fruit. Once you got over the fact that they were growing over a smelly toilet, the fruit was delicious, especially spooned over ice cream or made into passionfruit butter.
We left the passionfruit for later and walked further into the shady grove. Insects and butterflies were as much a part of the garden as the weeds and the long grass. Spiders worked hard building webs in every corner of the yard while bees hovered on nearby leaves. Without having a clue as to what an old tree looked like, I instinctively knew that Uncle Harry’s fruit trees were old. Actually, the whole garden felt old, and magical. If fairies were real and little people really did live under toadstools, Uncle Harry’s garden is exactly the kind of place I’d expect to find them.
Many of the trees were so large I could walk under them or hide in their hanging branches. I like the big droopy ones that grow down by the creek the best, they’re my favourite. Dad said they’re called Weeping Willows. I think they’re tops. The branches hang down so low. I can make a cubby under them.
Uncle Harry’s yard was also excellent for playing hide and seek in. Shortie and I have managed to lose ourselves in it for hours at a time without ever getting bored. Summer’s the best time. Most of the fruit’s ready to be picked by then.
I headed for the plum tree and suggested that Shortie fill his bucket with oranges. The oranges were the nicest I’d ever eaten. The thick skin peeled off easily like a mandarin and there were no seeds to pick out. They were almost impossible to eat without leaving sticky trails all down our faces, but we didn’t care.
I could already see that he’d have no trouble filling a whole bucket. The tree was decorated with orange balls, with loads more on the ground that were still good. I managed to half fill my bucket with plums, making sure I didn’t take any that weren’t ripe. As I walked towards the pomegranate tree, I felt something hit me in the back of the head and turned around to see what it was. Shortie was poking through one of the Mulberry branches, grinning like a lunatic. I couldn’t see the rest of him, just his face. “You look like a monkey,” I told him.
He climbed down and swung from the branch with one arm. “Hoo hoo, ha ha.” His mouth was purple from eating mulberries. “Go get a bucket, there’s tonnes of ripe ones.”
“Get it yourself. I’m going to pick pomegranates.”
Another mulberry hit the back of my head. I knew I’d have two purple splotches in my hair now. Once we had a huge mulberry fight and my hair got covered in them. By the time I washed them out my hair was stained and I had to walk around for days with purple marks on my head.
I climbed to the top of the tree to get the ripe ones. There were lots up high, but none down low. I regretted making Shortie get his own bucket now, because I needed him to give me a hand. “Hey Shortie, come and catch these for me?”
He came straight away and stood under the tree. Shortie never holds a grudge.
“Here, catch.” I reached out and dropped the fruit, trying to miss the branches on the way. It fell straight through and Shortie caught it. After filling the bucket, I climbed down and went to help him pick some mulberries. If you’re really lucky, you can find silk worms on the branches. Mum never lets me take them home though. She says it’s cruel to take them out of their natural habitat.
We lined the buckets up at the back door and went inside to tell Mum we were going down to the creek. The house smelt much better now that all the windows were open. Mum was vacuuming the lounge room. “Don’t go too far,” she told us, “we’re almost done.”
I said we wouldn’t and headed off towards the creek with Shortie. The creek wasn’t a normal creek like the one that runs through the bush at my place, it was massive. In fact, it was more like a river than a creek. We sat on the edge of the jetty with our feet dangling in the water. I threw my orange peel into the water, but stopped when I realised it was floating.
Uncle Harry’s place wasn’t far from Dora Creek Bridge. We watched the tops of the cars drive across, but couldn’t see what kind they were because the walls were too high. We could even see people walking across the bridge. Last summer I saw two boys jump from the bridge into the water. There was no way I’d do that. Mum told me once that when she was a little girl, someone jumped off and never came back up. She reckons there are all sorts of cables and stuff under the water and that they got tangled up and drowned. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
We watched as someone walked across the bridge and leant over. They dangled something that looked like a bag of rubbish. Then turning their head from side to side to check that
no one was watching, they dropped the bag and ran away.
“Did you see that?” Shortie asked. “They threw something over.” The bag landed right on the edge of the creek, half in and half out of the water. “Let’s go check it out.”
Mum said we couldn’t go far, so we had to be quick. We looked around for somewhere to put our peels and decided to throw them in the creek after all. We rinsed our hands in the water and ran up the jetty. I followed Shortie who ran too fast for my sore tummy. It was much further than it looked from the jetty, so I slowed down and let him run ahead. When I caught up with him, he was leaning over to grab the bag from the creek’s edge. It was a plastic garbage bag tied into a knot. “It’s probably full of smelly prawn heads or something,” I warned.
Something in the bag moved and I jumped back in fright. Shortie put the bundle down and ripped open a hole near the top of the bag. “Ah look,” he said, “kittens.”
There were three kittens and a rock in the bag. Shortie picked up one of the kittens and handed it to me. It was a tiny ginger cat with white socks. It was so small and cute. I couldn’t imagine who would want to drown it. He handed me another one, which was totally black except for a white spot on its throat. They were both wet and shivering, so I lifted my shirt up and wrapped them in it to keep them warm. Shortie lifted the third one out. It was another ginger one.
“I think this one’s dead.” He lifted it up, but it didn’t move.
“Oh no! Poor thing. Are you sure?”
He turned it over to look at its front. Instead of having a cute little face like the other kittens, it had a bloody mess. We hadn’t noticed at first, but the other two had spots of blood on them also. We checked them over, but they looked okay. The blood must have come from the dead kitten. “We better take them with us,” Shortie advised, “if we leave them here, they’ll die for sure.”
“There are two chances that my mum’s going to let me keep them,” I said, “Buckley’s and none.”
“My mum will. She loves cats.”
“You sure?” I doubted her love for cats would be sufficient to let him keep two kittens.
“Yep, she used to have three cats, but one got run over by a car and one died of a tick, so now she’s only got Sylvester.”
It sounded promising. I looked down at the little bundles of fur in my arms. I was envious of Shortie for having a mum who loved cats. “We better get going,” I said.
“Yeah, hang on a sec.” Shortie dug a small hole and buried the dead kitten. He covered it with dirt and put a big rock on top. “There! Nothing will be able to dig it up now.”
***
Dad looked uncertain. “You sure your mum’s not going to hit the roof? Why don’t you give her a call first?”
“Um, she’s not home at the moment.” He said in a not so convincing fashion. “I guarantee she won’t mind though. She loves cats. She was just telling Dad the other day that she missed Chester and Chloe, so I’m going to give them to her for Christmas.”
Dad put his hands up and laughed. “Okay, okay, I give in.”
We said goodbye to Uncle Harry and loaded our stuff into the car. We didn’t have anything to put the kittens in, so we had to nurse them all the way home. “What are you going to call them?” I asked.
“Dunno, what do you reckon?”
“I think we should call this one Bluey.”
“But it’s red.”
“Exactly, that’s why he should be called Bluey.” It made perfect sense to me. Shortie looked a bit puzzled but agreed it was a good name.
“I think I’ll call this one Rex.”
I screwed up my nose. “That’s boring. Besides, Rex is a dog’s name.”
“How about Caesar then? It means emperor you know?”
Dad looked at us through the rear view mirror. “They better not wee in my car.”
“They won't,” I assured him.
I kept my fingers crossed all the way home and hoped that they wouldn’t let me down.
Chapter 11
Sunday, 16 December 1979
Mum gave Shortie a shoebox to carry Caesar and Bluey in. We poked holes in the top so fresh air and light could get in and put them in the box and closed the lid. He couldn’t carry them on his bike so he left it at our place and walked home. I walked with him as far as Tom’s place. “What are you going to do with them if your mum won’t let you keep them?”
“She will.”
“But what if she doesn’t?”
“She won’t be able to say no if I tell her it’s an early Christmas present.”
He had a point. It’s very hard to tell someone that you don’t want their present. I’m not sure it’d work with my mum, but I could see he had a good chance of it working on his. Mrs O’Connor loved cats; my mum hated them.
Shortie crossed the road at Tom’s place and headed off up the hill. “See ya.”
“See ya. We’ll wait for you here.”
“Okay, I’ll be as quick as I can.”
I knocked on Tom’s door and was greeted by Mrs Simmons. “Hi Jenny, how are you?”
“Good thanks. Is Tom here?”
She opened the door and let me in. “He’s in Jim’s room, I think.”
I could hear music coming from down the hall. I was pretty sure it was Jimi Hendrix. Tom plays it all the time. I don’t know if he really likes the music or if it’s because there’s naked ladies on the record cover. Jim lets Tom play his records when he’s not home, but only if he doesn’t scratch them. I always ask him to put Bob Dylan on. He’s my favourite. I like that song, ‘Blowin in the Wind’. It reminds me of something, but I don’t know what. It’s really weird; I get to a point where I almost remember where I know it from, but I can never work it out. I reckon Mum must have played it lots when I was a baby or something. It’s like that song ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ on the Seekers’ record she has. It makes me feel the same way. Mum says she didn’t have the record when I was a baby, but that the Seekers were very popular and were always on the radio.
Mr Drury said it’s called déjà vu when you see something for the first time and it feels like you’ve seen it before. He said déjà vu is French for “having seen”, but that it works the same way with things you hear too. He reckons people only forget they’ve seen or heard them before and that it’s just a forgotten memory that causes it.
I knocked on the door and waited. Tom stuck his head out. “Oh it’s you. I thought it was Mum coming to tell us to turn it down.” He opened the door and let me in. I sat on the bed next to him. Jim carefully lifted the needle off the spinning record and put it to the side. He waited for the record to slow down before taking it off the player and handing it to Tom to put away. Tom slipped the record into the cover that was lying on the floor and put it on top of the stack. Jim took the Split Enz record out of its cover and carefully placed it on the player.
“Where’s Shortie?” Tom asked.
I told him about the kittens and how Shortie reckoned his mum would let him keep them. “I hope she does, they’re so cute. Dad said they’re both boys, so we called them Bluey and Caesar.”
Tom couldn’t wait to see them. He used to have a cat, but it got run over. He said he didn’t want to get another one after that. You can tell he still likes cats though; he always pats Greg and Max’s cat when it’s in our yard. Cats like him too. They never run away from him like they do when I go near them. Tom reckons cats can tell if you like them or not, and if you do, they purr when you pick them up.
We felt very grown up hanging out with Jim and listening to music. It’s better than being with Kate and Tracy. Jim’s in the Army and drives a car. Kate and Tracy still go to school. When the last song ended, Jim took the record off and flipped it over. I handed him Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. “Can we play this one next?”
He turned it over and read the back cover. “Sure, I’ll put it on now.” He took the Split Enz record off and replaced it with the one I handed him. “You have good taste, Jenny.”
<
br /> When song two finally came on, I sat back and let the feeling of déjà vu wash over me, “... Yes 'n' how many times can a man turn his head an' pretend that he just doesn't see? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind…”
The spell was broken by a knock on the door.
Shortie was back, grinning from ear to ear. “Mum said I can keep them.”
***
The kittens were far more exciting than Jim’s records. We took them into the back yard and watched them play. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said they were putting on a show for us. Their antics were as entertaining as any circus clown I’d seen. Not that I’ve been to a real live circus or anything, but I have seen one on telly. I still couldn’t believe someone tried to drown them.
I lay back on the grass and put my head next to Bluey. He was a lot more active than Caesar. He jumped around excitedly at the smallest thing. Tom flicked a tea towel near his face and he jumped up to snatch it, catching his little claws and tumbling down to wrestle with it when Tom put it within his reach. Caesar watched intently, but wasn’t quite ready to join in.
“Who wants to come to Kennelly’s with me? Jim gave me four Sunnyboy wrappers.”
“Unreal, where’d he get them from?” Shortie asked.
“He stole them, what do ya think?”
Shortie snatched the tea towel from Tom, spun it around until it was long and thin, and flicked him with it. “I mean, why give them to you? If I were him, I’d keep them for myself.”
“Well lucky for me, you’re not him.”
Shortie caught up with Bluey just in time to prevent his escape under the back fence. “What about the kittens?”
“We can take them with us.”
Shortie carried Bluey and I carried Caesar. We took our time getting there, stopping to show the kittens off to some kids along the way. There was no doubt about it; they were cute. No one could resist asking to hold them and everyone cooed over them like they would over a newborn baby.
Tom walked along the top of someone’s brick fence. He walked with his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. Anyone would’ve thought he was ten feet off the ground, not two. When he got to the end of the fence, he jumped off. “When I grow up, I think I’ll join the circus.”
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