The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley

by Martine Murray

  Caramella is watching surreptitiously and so is Harold, and even I can’t help glancing over. Inisiya rushes up to me with eyes bulging.

  ‘Look,’ she whispers ‘look at Mohammed.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s amazing.’

  We both stand there watching as Harold Barton gives some guidance to Mohammed, who tries with three balls, manages one round, and then drops a ball. As he picks it up, his eyes are suddenly ablaze and his whole face comes up smiling.

  Smiling!

  ‘You see that? He smiles!’ cries Inisiya.

  I look at Inisiya and then at Caramella and all three of us can’t wipe the smiles off our own faces. In fact I feel like cheering, but I hold back. Harold Barton claps his hand on Mohammed’s shoulders and nods as he walks away.

  ‘It’s the most unlikely thing in the world,’ I say, kind of to myself, or to the world.

  ‘What? That Mohammed would ever smile?’ says Inisiya.

  ‘No. Well, maybe. More that Harold Barton would be the one he smiled at.’

  ‘Why?’ says Inisiya, and then I remember that she doesn’t know Harold, and because I don’t want to ruin the good impression he’s making I shake my head.

  ‘Harold seems nice, though,’ says Inisiya as she races over to tell Nidal what we just witnessed.

  I stand there, watching. It’s as if I’ve floated up into another stratosphere. Actually, I don’t even know what a stratosphere is, but if there is another one I feel like I’m in it. It’s as if I’m separate from what’s going on, even though I’m right in the middle of it. Mohammed’s smile, although such a tiny, tiny crack, has opened up some unimaginably huge and invisible surface and I’ve floated up through it.

  It feels as though I’ve just found a better trapeze than the one Frankie was hanging from, because it isn’t mine, and it isn’t anyone’s. It’s like a hammock of expanding and linking hearts that has joined together without knowing; from Aunt Squeezy to Inisiya to Caramella to Ruben and even to Harold Barton. All of them who’ve simply been willing to try to understand someone else.

  I am so proud. I feel like a very small portion of the universe has shifted and no one is taking any applause. It is quite unspectacular and gloriously beautiful, and there I am, swinging from that moment like some kind of drunken gardener perched on an imaginary tree, feeling amazed by the splendour of the surrounding garden.

  Meanwhile, no one even knew what had happened. Probably Mohammed would never know how much it meant to me to see him smile, or at least what it did to me after that.

  Chapter 43

  I skip in the door after training and Mum says, ‘Kite called. He wants you to call him back. I wrote down the number.’

  I stop dead still and I feel like laughing. For the first time all week I haven’t been wishing he’d call. It’s always the way.

  I wait for Mum to leave the kitchen and then I call. I’m not even feeling nervous because somehow I’m in a mood where I feel a little bit less precious about my own life. Kite picks up the phone.

  ‘Hey, Kite, it’s me, Cedar.’

  ‘Cedar.’ He says my name like it’s a slow sigh of a word.

  ‘How are you?’ I say.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m sorry I haven’t rung earlier. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to talk to me or not.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ (Note the bravado.)

  He pauses and I picture him frowning.

  ‘I thought you might have been upset about not getting selected. I wasn’t sure…’

  I make it easy for him. ‘You mean you didn’t want to deal with a weeping fit?’

  ‘No, no, I mean yes, I would have – I just wasn’t sure how, but it doesn’t matter now because I’ve got some great news. They’re offering you a place after all. The other girl couldn’t take it up. Her father got a job in Melbourne. They’re moving.’

  ‘So they’re offering me the place?’

  ‘Yeah. Dad let me ring and tell you. How great is that? Can you take it?’

  I know what I’m going to say, but before I say it I have some straight talking to do.

  ‘Kite, if I took it, would I be, you know, cramping your style? With Lola I mean?’ (Harder than I thought to talk straight.)

  ‘Lola! Oh God, you know me better than that. You know I wouldn’t be interested in a girl like Lola.’

  There’s another pause. Then a sigh.

  ‘It’s Frankie,’ he says.

  ‘Frankie?’ I feel suddenly like I just lost the jousting spirit. My courage seems to fall away. Of course it was Frankie. Frankie was lovely, and besides, she could fly.

  ‘Yeah, I guess Frankie and I had something going on when you came up. It was difficult because I didn’t know… I didn’t know what you wanted or thought…’

  ‘No. Well, I didn’t either. And I didn’t know what you wanted.’

  This time there’s a silence; a long enough one for it to start to become loud and deep, like a black hole. Eventually I try to climb out of it. I sigh.

  ‘So are you with Frankie now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, because I wasn’t ever sure. Anyway, then you came up. Things got messy. Didn’t seem like a good idea in the end; we have to see each other all day every day.’

  I think I’m hurt, I’m not sure. I see myself pulling inwards and around me the quiet seems larger and larger. I don’t know what to say so I don’t speak. Instead, there’s another crunching silence. This time it’s Kite who sighs.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. Maybe we need to make things clear. I mean, between us.’

  ‘I can’t take the place. In the circus.’ I burst out with it.

  ‘Because of this? Because of Frankie?’

  ‘No, because of Mohammed’s smile.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a long story. But basically I’m kind of committed to The Acrobrats now. I want to work with them. At least for this year. Then I’ll see.’

  ‘Are you sure? Maybe you should sleep on it.’

  ‘No, I don’t need to think about it, I’m sure.’ (Oh God, am I temporarily insane?)

  Kite says,‘Well, okay.’

  And then there’s another silence in which I can feel my old dreams battling with my new feelings. I feel myself slipping into this battle. It’s almost as if I forget I’m on the phone.

  ‘Hey, Cedar – ’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I know you shouldn’t do this on the phone, but I guess I want to clear this up. Do you want to go out with me? I mean, should we be together?’

  I already know what I’m going to say to this too, but before I do I take a big breath and I close my eyes and I feel as if I’m on the very edge of something and I just want to stand at that edge and feel the great expanse of life before me.

  ‘Yes.’ My eyes have closed.

  He laughs. Then I laugh.

  He says, ‘I wish I was there,’ and I say, ‘I wish you were too.’

  And that’s all I remember because after that I wasn’t concentrating. I’d gone floating up again and I knew I wasn’t mad.

  Chapter 44

  Of course, it wasn’t just Mohammed’s smile. It was Oscar’s transforming blue rocks, it was Caramella’s understanding heart, it was Aunt Squeezy’s lessons on compassion, it was Inisiya’s spirit and her story, the fact that everywhere there were stories you wouldn’t have guessed. Grasshopper had one, Ada had one, even Harold Barton had one, and all this seemed to me to be where my living should be lived; in the messy, sad, huge, transforming muck that both bound us and separated us, not in the purely glorious heights of the circus.

  Oh, don’t worry, that circus dream still hovered there like a glass cloud above me, and one day I will climb up and grab it, but sometimes there’s other stuff to be done before you’re ready. It’s like you have to build yourself a ladder; build the rungs out of real experiences. You have to know how to walk before you can fly. You have to especially know how to fall down
, get dirty and then pick yourself up again. Along the way, you’ll find out what you want and how to lose what you want. You have to learn know how to be a friend and stand underneath, and believe that against all odds you might one day do a handstand.

  Above all, you should stay with your dog.

  All this can only be done on the ground. I explained it to Kite in a letter and I think he understood because he wrote back:

  Cedar, I’m not sure I really get you, but I know that’s what I love about you. You’re your own man, and you’ll always live your own life.

  At the station

  So, here I am at the train station, for the second time this week. It’s two days before Christmas. Yesterday we all came to see Aunt Squeezy off. It was very sad and everyone cried, even Barnaby, who never cries. Or maybe he didn’t cry, but he looked like he could. Aunt Squeezy told me she was proud of me for staying. She said if she has a red-headed baby, and she hopes she does, that baby’s second name will be Cedar. I said thank you for teaching me about lentils and hope, and bigotry and differences, and she laughed and winked and waved her hand, which tinkled in the air from the silver bracelets. Mum put her arm around me as we waved goodbye, and I think she was as sad as me to see Aunt Squeezy go.

  Now I’m here again. It’s warm. I’m wearing the green sundress that I mentioned earlier, but what I didn’t tell you is how it has a white edge on the bottom and along the top, where it dips down in a very sexy way.

  I also have some dark sunglasses on so I feel quite grownup. It’s making me walk in a certain way too, as if I’m sure. And, actually, I am. I am sure. It happens every now and then. It’s like you and the day and your intentions meet up in perfect harmony and sing out a good loud note that’s just right – not too loud or sharp, just right. And today, as I walk down the platform in my green sundress and my dark sunglasses, I feel sure it’s a good-note day.

  I know you can already guess who’s arriving on the train just by the fact that I’m wearing something special. But I want to say it in a particular way. Like this:

  It’s my boyfriend.

  My boyfriend.

  Those two words together just keep putting more and more of a spring in my step. I kind of wish I might bump into someone, like say Marnie Aitken, or even just some old lady would do, though Marnie would be better, but still anyone. Someone who would ask, ‘And what are you doing here?’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, I’m just meeting my boyfriend.’ I’d say it in a casual way, though, just as if it was a normal thing to do, and they’d think, ‘Oh, she’s lucky, she’s lucky to be meeting her boyfriend. And if that someone stood around to watch the train roll in they’d see the doors open and the guards come down with the luggage trolley, and the girl in the green dress take off her glasses and sit on a bench watching the passengers pour out, and there’s a chunk of sun she’s sitting in, which makes her red curly hair shine, and then she smiles because she has seen her boyfriend, but she doesn’t stand up, not right away because he’s already standing there in front of her with a bag slung over his shoulder and she wants to just look at him for a moment, since he’s quite a handsome boy in a rough kind of a way, with nice brown arms that drop the bag just as she stands up, and then those nice brown arms wrap themselves around her and she leans up on her tiptoes and puts one arm over his shoulder and then they kiss. And at this stage the person watching turns away, because she feels it isn’t the kind of kiss that you should watch for too long, so she walks off down the platform and goes to the newsagent where she buys herself a romance novel instead.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to acknowledge the support of Anne Horrigan-Dixon and Sarah Maher at the Fitzroy Learning Network. Thank you for letting me come and see the great work you do and meet all the wonderful people who go there, especially Sara, who showed me how brave people can be.

  Also I would like to acknowledge The Flying Fruit Fly Circus and Kim Walker who let me visit and watch, and made me wish I was still doing cartwheels.

  A big thank you to Marnie Cruickshank, who lives on a cattle station in the west and wrote me the best letter in the world.

  To Antoni Jach, thanks again for your support and encouragement, and to Sally Rippin, thanks for everything.

  As usual, thank you Rosalind and Sue with whom it is a joy to work, and thank you to the dodgy hearts club with whom it is a joy to live.