The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley

by Martine Murray

  So that rules out Albury.

  What about learning the drums and getting in on the Badlands tour? I couldn’t possibly learn something that required me to sit down and keep counting over and over, and even if I could learn drums it would take me years and years to be good enough. Plus Ada doesn’t like me.

  ‘Hey.’ That voice just cut right through my thoughts and plunged in somewhere else.

  Kite, I said to myself as I stopped dead and then swivelled around.

  He was leaning up against the school gate, hands in pockets, head slightly tilted. He looked sad and careless, as if in secret communication with the sky. But when he moved away from the gate and came towards me, he seemed to be moving with a slow purpose and his eyes looked darker than usual. I dropped my school bag to the ground and shoved it between my feet. I stood still and tried to act steady.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He seemed to yield.

  Right then, I admit it, a very superficial thought came to my mind. I wished Marnie would walk through the gates and see me standing there with Kite. Kite who was tall and leaning, with hair uncombed by wind, and arms that didn’t try, and who stood there, shining and true and waiting for me.

  Shining and true in my eyes, anyway.

  I didn’t say anything. He was leaving, after all. Suddenly he didn’t look so shining and true. He looked like a deserter. I just looked at him as if I was Jesus Christ and he was Judas, the traitor.

  ‘You’re mad at me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Nope,’ I lied. I looked up into the sky. Yellow leaves swirled through the grey air. The trees shook and waved their branches in the air, as if appalled, somehow.‘Well, maybe.’ I corrected myself and frowned. Jesus Christ wouldn’t have blamed anyone. ‘See, I’m mad at the situation. Not at you, because you can’t help it, but I’m mad that the circus will have to stop when we’ve just got it going.’

  He glided closer. ‘Cedar, it doesn’t have to stop. You can keep it going.’

  As if, I thought, but I maintained my fierce frown. He laughed at me because he could see right through my ferocity, and he knew he could have bent it out of shape with one smile.

  ‘And think of the new tricks I’ll bring back with me.’ He made a little cheerful shoulder move, as though we were boxing and he’d just dodged a blow.

  I nodded with obvious reluctance. As if, I thought again. As if he’d be coming back. Anyway, it wasn’t just the circus finishing. It was more than that. It was more selfish than that. As I stood there in front of Kite I was suddenly aware that some icky, lurking feeling was about to leap out of my depths like a fish yanked out of the ocean by a hook. Some feeling so icky and so bad-tasting that I’d been keeping it under, keeping it simmering beneath the righteous display of huffiness. But now, now that I was face-to-face with Kite, that feeling was writhing and twisting like it had been dropped in a bucket and it needed to breathe. It was making me pale.

  It was jealousy.

  That’s what it was.

  Writhing and twisting.

  I was jealous.

  See, even worse than the fact that our circus was being replaced by a better one was the fast encroaching and alarming probability that I would be replaced. Me. When it came down to it, the thing that hurt the most was this: someone else, some better, real acrobat would be doing the helicopter with Kite. Okay, let’s be honest, not just some other acrobat but some other girl acrobat. To me that was unbearable.

  ‘I can’t imagine you’ll be coming back to our circus, Kite.’ I kept pretending that this, this was what mattered most. This, I was allowed to care about, because the circus was important.

  ‘Yeah, I will, I’ll come back here. I won’t live in Albury.’

  I looked down. The world seemed like an odd, confusing place.

  ‘I’ll write to you,’ he said.

  I sighed, and then he sighed, and his voice went soft. ‘Don’t be mad, Cedy. I have to do this.’ He turned his face away from me and looked out towards the trees, as if he was seeing into the distance, to the time when he would be in Albury and I would be here, at school. I looked too, and I felt as if I’d been hollowed out, as if a great empty space was about to swallow me. It made me feel lonely. And then I felt sad and I wanted him to take my hand again. But he didn’t. He looked down at me as if he knew that I was hollow enough to break. The look landed so softly that it felt as if he had somehow touched me, even though he hadn’t.

  ‘When do you go?’ I said.

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘That’s in four days.’

  ‘Yep. It’s soon.’

  ‘I’ll be sad.’ I said it. I just went and said it. It fell out of me in a pile of small broken up words – the truth. I felt like I’d just busted through a wall and come out in tatters. It didn’t matter, though, because next thing I knew his arm looped out and pulled me in towards him and we hugged, just for an instant, and he looked down and said, ‘I’ll miss you, Cedar.’ Then he turned around and walked up the street, arms swinging in a brilliant way.

  Chapter 9

  It wasn’t the last time I saw him, but it was the last time I saw him alone.

  Ruben organised a bit of a dinner party, mainly for the circus, but he also invited Mum and Barnaby and Ricci and Oscar’s parents and Caramella’s too. Aunt Squeezy came along, and so did Stinky, of course. So there were a lot of people, and there was a lot of commotion since Ricci was very excited because she never goes to dinner parties and she was squawking and pulling everyone on the nose.

  Ruben had made a big lasagne, and Ricci brought along some spicy chicken dish with beans. We all squashed into the living room with plates on our knees, and I perched on the arm of a couch between Aunt Squeezy and Caramella’s mother, who hardly speaks but keeps patting your knee and smiling. Kite was sitting on a cushion on the floor, and he spent most of the night speaking to Barnaby. I kept trying to hear what they were saying but could only make out bits, because if Mrs Zito wasn’t passing me some bread or piling more beans on my plate, Ricci was screeching and yelling out and laughing at any old thing and making indelicate observations, like, ‘Oooh Cedar, why the long face?’ I just rolled my eyes and acted like a moody teenager, and Barnaby winked at me.

  Aunt Squeezy elbowed me and whispered, ‘Hey, he’s a good sort, that Kite, isn’t he?’

  I said, ‘He’s okay.’

  She said, when she was my age she was in love with a boy purely for his blue eyes and fragile smile. She said he wore hand-knitted jumpers and long pants, and he hung back in the playground and didn’t play footy. But she could never speak to him because she was too shy, and then he left the school and she never saw him again. Now, she said, I’m all for courage. If you’re scared of something it’s a good sign you need to go towards the thing you’re scared of.

  ‘I’m not scared of things,’ I said.

  She laughed as if that was a very funny thing to say, but before I could ask why, Oscar made a commotion by knocking over a glass of wine on the carpet while waving his arm around and making some declaration. Ricci yelled for salt and Kite went to the kitchen to get some. When he came back, my mum stood up and said we should raise our glasses and toast Ruben and Kite. She said, ‘To their new beginnings. Best of luck.’ I looked down at the wine stain on the carpet, now covered in a tiny mountain of salt. Everyone clapped and Ruben stood up and made a speech about The Acrobrats, and he especially thanked me. Everyone looked at me, which was the last thing I wanted. Kite didn’t look at me, though – he looked at his dad.

  Ricci came and squeezed me to her chest and said, ‘Chin up, they’ll be back, won’t you, Ruben?’

  Ruben said, ‘’Course we’ll be back,’ and he smiled at my mum and she smiled quickly and then looked at the floor. Kite shot a look in my direction; he simply raised his eyebrows and grinned.

  Oscar said, ‘But only after Paris, after your world tour, after the
nights on the river.’

  Everyone laughed at Oscar’s poetry, but I noticed how the mountain of salt was becoming pink at the base. As if it was bleeding. As if it was trying very hard to do what it was meant to do.

  Had it all been done? I wondered, as Oscar’s mum brought out a passionfruit sponge cake. She’s a librarian, and librarians happen to be very good at cooking sponge cakes, as far as I know, because I’ve met two and both cook sponge cakes, so that’s good odds there’s a link. Boy, am I a sleuth. But why was I wasting my time making links between librarians and sponge cakes when I should have been lip-reading the conversation between Kite and Barnaby? I could tell they were really digging in on something and I was sure I heard my name. I tried to watch, but Oscar’s mum was going round the room, pushing the plate of sliced-up cake

  towards everyone, blocking my view. Was she in on it? Was there something going on that I didn’t know about?

  When we left we all gave Kite and Ruben a goodbye hug. There was a queue. It was like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and it happened so quickly I hardly had time to take it in. When it came to my turn, Ruben took both my hands and told me I was an angel and an inspiration.

  ‘I want you to carry the torch. This is for you.’ He pressed a book into my hands. The Tumbler’s Manual.

  ‘Thanks, Ruben.’ I felt quietened by the gift.

  ‘Come and visit us any time. I really mean that. We see you as one of the family.’ He looked right in my eyes to make sure, and then he gave me a big hug and I hugged him back. Suddenly I felt terribly sad about Ruben leaving. I hadn’t even realised that he meant something to me. He was important. His big, gentle way was something I loved without even knowing it, not until it wasn’t going to be there. Maybe I even wished I was his child and that I could always depend on him, and he could always show me how to do something without trying too hard. I didn’t say a word, though – I was feeling too emotional to speak.

  Kite was leaning into the doorway. His arms were folded and he was laughing with Barnaby. His laugh tumbled out, and he moved with it, as if he was light, as if he could have floated up and lain in the sky, laughing. And I felt better just hearing it because it clattered in my head and loosened up all the hard thinking in there. I felt real. I felt like I didn’t need to try and think of anything, not even a good thing to say. He must have known I was coming because even though he didn’t look, even though he was still talking to Barnaby, his arm reached towards me like a wing and folded me in close. And I stood under his arm, tucked in by his side, just like a real girlfriend. And never had I felt happier. Never had I felt warmer. Never had I wanted to stay so still. And it had all happened as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Before I had a chance to even know it, Barnaby was winking at me and saying goodbye and it was just us, just Kite and me and the small, pressed distance between us. Kite turned towards me with his unguarded eyes. While we hugged he whispered in my ear, ‘I’ll be back.’ And I nodded but I didn’t speak. I could tell then that it hadn’t all been done and, more importantly, I could tell that he knew too. And with this, like a little hot coal in my heart, I turned away and walked.

  And I swung my arms in a brilliant way.

  We all walked home together, except for Oscar and his family, because they don’t live in our street. Mum and Ricci walked with Mr and Mrs Zito, and Aunt Squeezy walked with Barnaby. Caramella and I lagged behind.

  The sky was black and clear, but in Melbourne the stars don’t shine out because there’s too much light coming from the city and the stars just can’t compete. They look like smudged dots of white. But the houses have a golden light glowing through the windows, which makes you want to look inside. It makes it seem as if there are a lot of soft welcoming couches in the world; even if there aren’t, it makes it seem as if there are. Still, I sighed a big sigh since I knew I wasn’t going to see Kite again for a long time. Caramella said, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll think of something. You always do.’

  Do I? I wondered. I looked at Caramella trudging along, steadfast and solid and sweet, and I suddenly realised that somehow it wasn’t just me who needed me to think; it was also Caramella, and maybe Oscar too. Maybe they were expecting me to think us out of this, or at least into something else. Boy, what a responsibility. I shivered and looked up into the sky as if it would have an answer, it being so much bigger than me. But if it answered I didn’t hear, because instead my ears were filled with the faintly disturbing sound of a snigger and then a giggle. It didn’t exactly surprise me, since we’d just walked past Harold Barton’s house, but I’d been staring into the sky and not noticed who was sitting on the wall.

  Not only Harold but also Marnie, Aileen Shelby and one or two other tall guys I’d never even seen before. A whole gang of them, smoking, sniggering and whispering.

  ‘Night out with the family, Cedar? Paint the town red?’ said Harold, now that he had my attention. Marnie and Aileen acted like this was a hilarious joke and started to smirk. Caramella sighed and looked at the ground. I folded my arms across my chest.

  ‘Harold,’ I said in an exasperated way, ‘haven’t you got a new act yet? Because we’re really bored of your superior one.’ Harold snorted, pushed out his lower lip at me, and since he obviously couldn’t think of a comeback he leaned over to whisper something to one of the tall guys.

  ‘Who’s your brother talking to, anyway?’ said Marnie. ‘He didn’t even introduce us.’ She had her special sneery girl voice on, which makes her sound like she’s not quite real, like she’s just saying some lines she learnt from a bad teen movie.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t notice you, Marnie,’ I said, because if there’s one thing Marnie puts a lot of energy into it’s getting noticed. I walked off, dragging Caramella with me. I wasn’t going to tell them who Aunt Squeezy was. Let them wonder, I thought.

  ‘See ya, Zit-face,’ yelled Harold, once we were a safe distance away.

  He’s such a coward. He just had to hurl one last witless insult so he could look as if he’d been victorious or something. But it kills me when he says something hurtful to Caramella because she has no confidence; she dies a little inside when he says stuff like that. Whereas I, I just get mad. I looked at her, but she was already tugging at my arm and pointing at something else.

  ‘Hey, look at that,’ she said.

  A van had pulled up outside the Abutula’s house and out of the van came three people: first a girl, then a woman and last a small boy. It appeared to be a mother and two children, but it was dark and they were on the opposite side of the street so it was hard to see them, and they seemed not to want to be seen. The girl was thin and taller than me and she turned away from us. Her younger brother, however, stood and faced us. He didn’t smile; he just looked and stuck his finger in his mouth. The mother kept her face lowered, but glanced quickly at us and then ushered her children towards the house. Mr Abutula had picked up the suitcase and was leading the way.

  ‘See,’ said Caramella, triumphantly, ‘something is going on there.’

  ‘Sure is,’ I said, and already I was getting ideas. The thing about the mother and her children was that you could tell they came from somewhere else. They weren’t from here. They were different.

  Chapter 10

  The thing is, I understand what it’s like to be different because I’m just slightly different myself. In some ways I’m exactly the same, of course. For instance, I’ve got skin and it hurts when someone pokes it. And the main way I’m exactly like everybody else alive and breathing and pooing is that I don’t like it when I’m sad or lonely or angry – I much prefer to be excited. If I had it my way, I’d always be just about to do something lovely, like a cartwheel.

  Also, if I had it my way, everyone, absolutely everyone, would love me. Not up-close, and not in the way the big guns like Jesus and Saint Francis of Assisi and Gough Whitlam were loved; not even as much as Cathy Freeman is loved for being a fast runner who doesn’t show off and who carries the flag for Aborigines.
I just want the people who know me to love me just for being me, in an everyday kind of way. They don’t have to sing songs about it.

  Aunt Squeezy says that doesn’t make me any different from anyone else, because all people want to be loved, even if they wear safety pins in odd places. Even if they say mean things or forget to take a bath, they still want to be loved.

  But I don’t have it my way, and so some people don’t love me at all. Like Harold Barton. He doesn’t love me; he thinks I’m a no-hoper. And Marnie thinks I’m so uncool, absolutely in every way, and sometimes Barnaby thinks I’m a pain. And Kite can’t be sure if he loves me or not, because he just went off and left.

  But no one has it all their way. Aunt Squeezy says we think we’re steering the ship, but really the ship is steering us, so we may as well let go of the wheel. You can’t make people like you, you can only try to like people. Even Harold.

  So, in that way I’m still exactly the same as everybody.

  But I’m sure I’m different in some way. I feel as if I am. I told Aunt Squeezy that I was and she just looked at me with her owl eyes and grinned. We were in the kitchen, and she was cooking. She had a pale green scarf tied in her hair and she looked like an exotic bird, because of the way she hopped from one position to the next.