and we all said,
‘Good morning, Ms.’
Except Cameron, who yelled,
‘GOOD MORNING, MS!’
Ms Arthur smiled patiently
and asked, ‘How are you today, Cameron?’
‘GOOD, MS,’ he shouted.
Ms Arthur sighed, gently,
and said, ‘Remember, class, I explained
you should say well not good.
I’m asking about your health,
not your moral standing.’
She walked to her desk
and sat down.
‘Now, Cameron, how are you today?’
‘WELL, MS!’
‘And you, Rachel?’
‘Well, thanks, Ms.’
‘Mick?’
‘Very well, Ms.’
‘And you, Alex?’
‘Sick as a drunk parrot, Ms.’
Then he ran out of the room,
all the way to the toilet
and didn’t return until after recess.
RACHEL
At recess I go to the canteen
and buy a can of lemonade
and I ask Mrs Casey
if I can have an extra plastic cup.
I pour two equal cups of lemonade
and I sit on the verandah
watching the fizz fizzle out,
for what seems like hours.
When the lemonade is finally . . . fizzless,
I take both cups into the sick bay
where Alex is sitting on the daybed
looking very sad and lonely
until
I offer him a cup,
‘My mum says it helps.’
Alex tries to smile,
all the time holding his stomach.
I stand in the doorway
and
he sits on the daybed
both of us
drinking
the flat lemonade
until there’s none left
and I say,
‘I can get some more if you want?’
But the bell rings
which is lucky
because I don’t think I have enough money
for another can.
SELINA
As soon as we finish roll call
Cameron raises his hand,
‘Ms, I’ve lost my mobile phone.’
Ms Arthur says,
‘Have you tried phoning it, Cameron,
to see if anyone answers?’
And Cameron replies,
‘I can’t, Ms. I don’t have a phone
to phone my phone because I’ve lost my phone.’
PETE
Ms Arthur says
that when she lived in the city
sometimes
in the middle of the night
she’d hear a fire-engine siren
and she’d imagine
an old man
stuck in an apartment building
with the kitchen on fire
and the man would be coughing and spluttering
with smoke billowing from the open window
and the neighbours,
all in their nighties and pyjamas
would be frantically spraying water
from their garden hoses
even though it would never be enough
and the dogs would start howling
as they heard the siren getting nearer
and the fire truck would screech to a halt outside
and all the men
would grab ropes and ladders
and hoses and extinguishers
and axes to break down the door
and . . .
Everyone in class
is waiting for the end of the story . . .
Ms Arthur shivers a little,
even though it’s blazing hot outside,
and she tells us
she’d stay awake all night
thinking exactly what we’re thinking now.
Did the old man survive?
Did the firemen make it on time?
CAMERON
Banned!
For life!
That’s what Mrs Davenport said
when she caught me
reading the comic
at the back of her shop on Friday
and I only had two pages left to finish.
I still don’t know
if Spiderman survived
or if the Green Goblin’s
superhero insecticide was fatal!
All week
I’d been careful to read only ten pages
each afternoon
hidden behind the shelves
until the suspense sucked me in
and I forgot where I was
and that’s when
Mrs Davenport (the Grey Goblin!)
swooped
grabbing the comic
except
I held on tight
and the paper ripped.
I don’t know who was the most surprised
but
Mrs Davenport
said a few words
popular with truck drivers and drunks
before pointing to the door
and sentencing me to
life imprisonment,
no,
life exprisonment.
And where will I go when Dad
flicks a dollar my way
and asks me to buy him a newspaper?
LAURA
Mum has never said
that I can’t look at her treasures,
not in so many words.
So before she gets home from work,
after I’ve put the chicken and potatoes
in the oven for dinner,
I go into her sewing room
to the bottom drawer of her cupboard.
I take out the photo album
and slowly turn each page.
I never get bored,
no matter how many times
I see the same photos
of Mum and Dad at university.
Dad’s haircut makes me giggle,
his ears stick out like a bat!
Mum looks so young,
wearing jeans and riding boots
and a T-shirt with an anti-war slogan.
Mum never wears T-shirts!
In one photo they’re standing
in front of Dad’s car
and he’s got his arm around her shoulder
and she’s hugging him
and her face is turned away from the camera.
It’s like they’re sharing a secret
and no one else can ever know what it is.
When Mum and me have dinner at night,
and Mum’s dabbing butter on my potatoes
and I’m pouring the cold water into our glasses,
I so much want her to tell me the secret.
The secret to how she was ever so happy.
SELINA
As soon as we finish roll call this morning
Cameron raises his hand,
‘Ms, I’ve lost my mobile phone again.’
Ms Arthur says,
‘Have you tried calling it, Cameron?’
and Cameron replies,
‘I can’t, Ms, it doesn’t have a name.’
JACOB
At lunchtime
on my first
day at school
without the bandage
I visit Mr Korsky in his work shed.
He points at my arm and says,
‘How’s the damage, laddie?’
I hold it up
all white and skinny
and stiff and still a little sore
and I say,
‘Free! Free at last!’
Mr Korsky laughs
then he rubs his back
and looks a little worried
as if I might jump on him again
so I say,
‘No more flying, sir.’
He smiles,
‘Not without a plane, laddie.’
MICK
I’ve never seen so many kids in a circle before,
all pushing and trying to get a look at
whatever is inside the ring.
I’d like to know just what that is
but I’m stuck on detention
for what I did to Pete’s watermelon.
How could I know it would make such a mess
if I dropped it from the verandah?
That’s why Pete brought it to school
only he didn’t want to throw it
on account of School Rules.
I told him I’d never seen a rule that read,
No dropping watermelons from verandahs.
I stretch my legs under the table
and look at the clock on the wall,
counting down the seconds,
fifteen, fourteen, thirteen . . .
right on time,
Ms Arthur comes into the room
and tells me to ‘not use fruit as a projectile again’.
That’s an easy one to promise,
especially when I’ve got all my fingers crossed.
Teachers never check those things.
You’d think they’d learn that stuff
at university, wouldn’t you?
Anyway, I run down the stairs two at a time
and nearly knock Laura Wright over.
She’s eating an apple
and it flies right out of her hand
but I manage to catch it before it lands in the dirt
which is pretty impressive.
Our school should have security cameras
so they can record such brilliant acts of athleticism.
I mumble ‘sorry’ to Laura
but she may have heard ‘snotty’.
How can one girl produce so much runny stuff?
I reckon it’s all the fruit she eats.
Can’t be healthy for you, can it?
Laura grabs me by the arm.
Grabs me!
I’m about to punch her, of course,
but I remember what Mr Hume
said about violence.
Well, I don’t actually
but he goes on about violence
every week at assembly.
I reckon he watches too much television.
So I don’t punch Laura.
I wait until she wipes her nose on a hankie
and rubs the apple on her shirt,
in case of boy germs, I guess.
But she doesn’t say anything.
She just holds my arm.
I say, ‘What?’
I put on one of those dumb expressions,
like people do on TV game shows
when they’ve won a new washing machine
and can’t believe it and are waiting for the host,
the guy with the shiny hair and even shinier suit,
to tell them, for the third time,
that, yes,
they’ve won something to wash clothes with.
Can you believe people get excited
about doing the laundry?
Anyway, Laura wipes her nose, again,
and says, ‘Forget it.’
That’s all.
Forget what?
At that very moment the bell rings.
I turn and start running to the circle of kids.
And you know what?
I was too late.
For the rest of the afternoon in class
all I heard were whispers from Cameron,
Pete and Alex
about what I’d missed.
Do you know what it was?
Nah.
Me neither!
LAURA
I don’t know why I grabbed Mick,
it was an impulse.
I’ll check the dictionary when I get home.
Impulse is the word I’m searching for, I’m sure.
Mum says I’m like that.
Unpredictable.
Just for a second, today,
when I grabbed Mick Dowling’s arm,
I wanted to ask him why
he looks at me funny all the time,
ask him straight out.
He’d have to say something?
And then I’d know why the kids in class,
don’t say anything to me.
They act like I’m not here.
A vacant chair in the third row.
Someone to push in front of in the canteen line.
The only time they seem to know I’m around
is when they’re making jokes about me.
At least, I think that’s what they’re doing?
Impulse.
To act on initial emotion. On first thought.
Yep.
That’s why I grabbed Mick’s arm.
But you can’t ask people questions like that.
They freak out and reckon you’re a total nutjob.
I don’t really care what they think
but, the truth is,
Mick wouldn’t have answered anyway.
He would have told me to wipe my nose.
Snotty!
Hasn’t he ever heard of hayfever?
The bell rang and I walked slowly to class.
I sat down, closed my eyes
and waited for the afternoon.
MR KORSKY
It happens once a year, without fail,
a few weeks after school begins.
A girl screams from down in the corner of the oval.
You can tell how close she came
to stepping on the poor thing
by just how loud she yells.
Usually it slithers away before anyone else notices
and the girl gets to tell the story
of the two-metre monster for the rest of term.
But sometimes, like today,
it’s just too hot and the snake can’t hear anyway
so no amount of yelling and hollering
is going to bother him.
He just lies there in the sun,
head up, just slightly,
feeling whatever breeze he can,
with the whole school gathering around
at a safe distance.
These kids are smart enough not to go too close,
except maybe Mick Dowling.
As I walk through the crowd I notice he’s not here.
That’s a blessing.
It’s a red-bellied black,
who looks kind of sleepy,
so I get the children to move well back,
to give the young fellow the idea
that heading over into the saltbush might be wise.
The trick is not to do anything silly
like stamping on the ground close to them.
Just wait.
I keep talking to the children
about how snakes swallow their food
and how much venom it takes to kill a person.
They all listen to me
but keep their eyes on the snake.
And pretty soon, the bell goes
or the snake slithers away
and we all go back to doing
what we’re supposed to.
I know where he’s going.
Down to the river to have a swim.
Just like some of the boys in Year Six do,
at lunchtime,
even though they’re not allowed.
I worry about the boys doing that,
but I remember that’s what I did
when I was their age.
A swim in summer.
Who can resist that?
RACHEL
After the excitement
of the snake at lunchtime,
Ms Arthur
decides to play our favourite
two words game.
She elaborately writes
POOKIE ALEERA
on the whiteboard
and everyone wriggles uncomfortably
in their chair.
Cameron whispers,
‘Never heard of him.’
Mick adds, ‘Or her?’
Selina says, ‘Or it?’
And then I understand,
so I quickly raise my hand and say,
‘A chicken cooked in a Pookie sauce!’
Everyone giggles.
Cameron adds,
‘A steam-powered toilet seat.’
Ms Arthur smiles,
nodding encouragingly.
Pete says, ‘Harry Potter’s Italian cousin!’
Laura adds, ‘An eighties pop band!’
Selina, ‘The woman who invented ping-pong!’
Alex, ‘A fish that walks on water.
No, a fish that swims on land!’
Mick, ‘A car that can go from zero to sixty
in two seconds.’
It goes on like this for the next few minutes
everyone throwing in silly suggestions
until Cameron raises his hand
and says,
loudly, of course,
‘Pookie Aleera is your boyfriend, Ms!’
and everyone laughs,
even Ms Arthur.
PETE
A few weeks before he died
Grandpa told me a story
about a man in jail
who had no friends
Pookie Aleera is Not My Boyfriend Page 3