Magenta McPhee

by Catherine Bateson

  In fact, if the dog bit me and I had to be taken to hospital and get stitches, then maybe Sarah would be sorry and the whole class would make me a get well card, the way they had for Sam when he went to hospital that time. Sarah would sign the card I miss you so much Ruby, besties 4 eva.

  But the dog wasn’t in the front yard when I went past. Instead his owner was out there, surrounded by cardboard boxes and suitcases as though she was leaving home.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said looking up, and I tried to smile, though I was nearly crying.

  At the top of the hill, I had to walk an extra block, to cross at the lights. I thought about not doing that. How a car might suddenly swing around the corner, or out of the council car park and hit me. I’d be flung up into the air like a flopsy doll, every bone in my body broken. Then everyone would be really sorry. Sorrier than if I just had stupid old stitches.

  Mum and Dad would wish they’d never decided to have another baby. Mum would say, if only I hadn’t been sick, I might have walked down to pick her up from school the way I did before and this would never have happened.

  I was so busy planning the funeral I nearly missed the lights and had to turn back at the florist’s, but not before I’d decided to heap up rose buds onto the coffin – creamy yellow ones with a hint of pink – just like the bunch displayed in the florist’s window. They were so beautiful they made me feel sad, just looking at them. I felt almost snivelly. The coffin would be smaller than a proper one, despite the extra centimetres I’d grown over the summer. The rose buds and the size of the coffin would remind everyone there that I’d died very young, too young.

  ‘Need a tissue?’ a woman standing next to me asked. ‘It’s all the wattle around, I expect.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said quickly, ‘I’m fine. No, really,’ but it was too late, the woman stuffed a huge tissue in my hand. It wasn’t like taking lollies from a stranger but I still didn’t feel good about it. The way she watched me I had to blow my nose into it. I just hoped it wasn’t soaked in some kind of poison to knock me out and then she’d take me and sell me as a slave girl. That would make Mum and Dad really sorry. But the tissue didn’t smell of anything and after we’d crossed the road, the woman went into the supermarket, trundling her little shopping jeep after her.

  I trudged home. I should have taken a library book back, but I hadn’t finished reading it and the morning had been too rushed anyway. It was probably overdue though and there’d be a whopping big fine. On the other hand, maybe Mum had a good day and there’d be chocolate muffins when I got home. Or the new curtains she’d promised to make for my room.

  But when I got home, Mrs. Wiseman from across the road, whom we hardly knew because she’d only recently moved in, was sitting in the kitchen as though she belonged there, drinking a cup of tea and reading the local paper.

  ‘Ruby,’ she said, ‘oh good, I’m so pleased you’re here. Your mum’s had to go into hospital. Not that serious, no need for that long face. She just has to be on a drip for a while. She’ll be back tomorrow, good as rain.’

  ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Like I said, nothing to worry about.’

  But who went to hospital for nothing?

  ‘Did she go in an ambulance?’ Suddenly my stomach seemed filled with creepy crawly things trying to get out. How could I have been planning my funeral when Mum was so sick? If Mum died what would I do? I couldn’t imagine it. I sat down suddenly on the nearest chair.

  ‘No, of course not. Your dad came home from work and drove her in. He’ll be back by tea, he said. There’s no need to worry, Ruby – your mum will be fine. Now, have you got homework to do?’

  ‘No,’ I said and crossed my fingers behind my back. I wasn’t going to sit in front of Mrs. Wiseman and struggle through the Maths sheet.

  ‘I expect you’re hungry. Everyone is always hungry at four o’clock,’ Mrs. Wiseman lifted a cover from a plate on the bench, ‘so I brought over a bit of Boston bun for you. It’s yesterday’s but it’s still all right. With a bit of butter. Have you got any butter?’

  It was the very end piece of bun, where the icing ran out. It looked dry. ‘No, thanks,’ I said, ‘I’m not hungry, really.’ My stomach growled, as though it knew it was being betrayed, but Mrs. Wiseman was so old she was sure to be deaf.

  ‘Come on, who can refuse a bit of Boston bun? Don’t be shy. I brought it over for you.’

  ‘No, really, I’m fine,’ I said politely. ‘You can have it. There’s some butter in the fridge.’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Mrs. Wiseman said and popped the whole thing in her mouth without waiting for the butter. She sat back down and took another sip of tea. She was drinking it out of Mum’s special cup – the one Dad and I had chosen for Mother’s Day. Her red lipstick was smeared on the gold rim.

  ‘That’s Mum’s cup,’ I said without really meaning to. The words blurted out before I had a chance to stop them.

  ‘Very nice,’ Mrs. Wiseman lifted the cup up and peered at the bottom, ‘very nice indeed. Royal Albert. Quality. I like a good cup for tea – these thick mugs you get these days. Tea should be served in a cup. You can do what you like with coffee, but tea needs a cup.’

  ‘We bought it for her, Dad and I. For Mother’s Day,’ I couldn’t believe that she was just going on drinking.

  ‘A very good present,’ she nodded at me, ‘good choice. I bet your mum loves it.’

  ‘She does. No one else uses it,’ I said pointedly.

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t be old enough to drink tea, and your dad – in my experience men just don’t notice things like cups. If they’re tea drinkers they’d just as soon drink it from an old tin mug.’

  ‘Dad’s got a special mug. Mum and I got it for him. It’s a funny one, about him being an accountant, but I didn’t get the joke at first.’

  Mrs Wiseman smiled, nodded and kept on drinking her tea. I would just have to wash the cup very carefully and remove every last trace of lipstick. That would have to do.

  ‘Well,’ I said, after some time had passed in silence and the tea was finished, ‘I guess you could go now, Mrs. Wiseman. I mean, it was lovely of you to come over and look after me, but really I’m fine now by myself.’ I didn’t want to be marooned at the kitchen table forever. I could be playing on the computer or watching television or finishing my book. Instead I was sitting here watching the second hands of the clock tick over.

  ‘Leave you by yourself? Oh I don’t think so, Ruby. Your mother asked me to look after you till your father gets home and that’s what I’m going to do. She said there was some frozen food to heat up for dinner, so I’ll get a move on with that in a little while. No rush. Your dad said he’d call on his mobile when he was leaving the hospital. What we did before mobiles were invented I simply can’t remember. But, do you know, there was a time when not everyone had an ordinary telephone?’

  I stared at Mrs. Wiseman. She was quite ancient, then, even though her hair was a faded blonde and her lipstick was so red.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘the world was very different then. Of course, I embrace technology. I have my own mobile,’ she said, and raking around a strange oversized basket, withdrew a large mobile phone which she held out to me, proudly.

  ‘It must be quite old,’ I said. ‘It’s huge!’

  ‘I don’t like the small ones,’ she said, ‘they get lost too easily.’

  I knew that. Dad was always losing his.

  ‘So, Ruby,’ she said after a short silence, ‘we should use this time to get to know each other better. I know – describe yourself in five words.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, find five words to describe yourself. Honestly, mind, no fibbing.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘All right,’ she sighed, ‘I’ll start. I’m vivacious, sharp, diverse (which some people might call scatter-br
ained), multi-talented and neighbourly.’

  ‘That’s more than five words,’ I pointed out.

  ‘No, the bit about some people calling me scatterbrained wasn’t part of my five words. That was their five words – actually one word. It’s hyphenated. Do you see now?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said slowly, ‘well, I’m – what does vivacious mean?’

  Mrs Wiseman looked at me with her head on one side. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘bright, talkative, excitable. If vivacious was a colour it would be red or orange. The life of the party. If it was a piece of music, it might be a jig. Get it?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m vivacious. I’m friendly,’ I said. That was safe. It was hard to describe yourself, though. Wasn’t that something you left to other people?

  ‘Tick for friendly,’ Mrs. Wiseman said encouragingly. ‘What about things you’re good at?’

  ‘They’d take up more than five words,’ I said.

  ‘Not if you do it properly. You just need to use your brains a bit. So, if you’re good at reading, you could say I’m a reader. That would only be one word.’

  ‘Okay, I’m friendly, a reader,’ I stopped. What else did people say about me? My teacher said my head was in the clouds and that I was off with the pixies. How could I reduce that to one word? ‘I’m a dreamer,’ I said triumphantly.

  ‘Very good,’ Mrs. Wiseman said, approvingly. ‘I’d add smart to that list.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ I said. ‘I can’t do the maths sheets or tell the time.’

  ‘Time, maths,’ Mrs. Wiseman waved them away with one hand as though they didn’t matter. ‘Smart is more than time and maths. Two more to go.’

  Dad had said recently I was selfish, but I didn’t want that going on my description. Sarah said I was a drama queen, but that wasn’t fair either.

  ‘Drama queen,’ I said hesitantly.

  ‘Melodramatic,’ Mrs. Wiseman nodded, ‘quite useful, really.’

  Melodramatic sounded much better than a drama queen. ‘A good shopper,’ I said, remembering Mum’s tea cup.

  As though she read my thoughts, Mrs. Wiseman smiled, ‘Ah yes, as witnessed by the Royal Albert tea cup. Discriminating. Good list, Ruby. I think we will get on just fine. Now, favourite food?’

  ‘For dinner, afters or snack?’ I was beginning to like Mrs. Wiseman, even though she was pretty weird.

  ‘Oh, let’s start with breakfast and work our way down through the day.’

  Mrs Wiseman and I both liked pancakes. She didn’t like peanut butter and Vegemite and thought wraps were silly.

  ‘Grilled cheese sandwich with a sprinkling of paprika and the cheese just bubbling.’ she said.

  We both liked roast chicken, lasagne and fish and chips. Mrs. Wiseman liked Christmas pud best but I liked double choc ice-cream, though I hadn’t thought of Christmas food but I didn’t want to admit that, particularly now that I was smart.

  ‘Books?’

  But the books I had read Mrs. Wiseman hadn’t even heard of and the books she loved were ones I didn’t know – except for Seven Little Australians.

  ‘Did you cry when Judy died?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘doesn’t everybody?’

  ‘You’d think so,’ Mrs. Wiseman said. ‘I could lend you some books, if you like. The Secret Garden – you might enjoy that. I loved it.’

  ‘Oh, yes please!’ Never turn down the opportunity to borrow a book. I was rapidly running out of reading material, what with Mum being so sick and Dad not realising the library opening hours so we always turned up twenty minutes after it closed.

  Then it was time to heat up dinner and we agreed that if we did the biggest spaghetti sauce, Mrs. Wiseman could stay, have dinner and meet Dad ...