The Beloved (9 page)

Tim spent the holidays out on his bike. He and his mates went everywhere together: to Jackson's Strip to watch planes take off, to Mrs Scott's farm to see real cows and goats, to Boroko, Murray Barracks, even as far as Ela Beach and the movies in town.

Mama chased after stories and tapped them out on her new portable typewriter at the kitchen table. She tried to be home as much as possible over the holidays but I liked it best when she wasn't there because when she was, she gave me sums. ‘If I can't get you up a grade at least you can be top of the one you're in.'

Sometimes when Mama was out I visited Stefi but mostly I stayed at home with Josie. She let me plait her fuzzy hair and draw as many pictures as I wanted. One time I did a picture of her sitting cross-legged on the ground, pulling husk from a coconut. She had on a black dress with red and yellow polka-dots and behind her, hot pink and orange bougainvillea climbed over the roof of her little house. I drew the round outline of her body, bare dusty feet and springy hair and coloured the dress and dots. But her brown body looked drab in the black dress so I made her skin blue instead. I could see bougainvillea through the coils of her hair so I coloured pink, orange and green between the curls.

When I showed her the picture she laughed.

‘It's not supposed to be funny.'

Josie patted my head. ‘Namo herea, Bertie. Very good. Blue legs nice.'

‘You like it?'

‘Yes, number one picture.'

My first fan.

My colouring pencils were worn to stubs so I asked Mama for a box of Lakelands. She came home with a small packet of six gritty pencils.

‘I wanted seventy-two Lakelands.'

‘Lakelands? You still can't colour inside the lines for Pete's sake.'

‘I don't want to colour inside the lines.'

‘Do you want these or not?'

Dad came home early one afternoon to find Josie and me in the kitchen playing cards.

‘What's the game?' he said.

‘Poker.'

‘
Poker?
You're seven! What happened to Snap?'

‘I'm nearly eight. And Snap's a kid's game.'

‘But that's what you are, CP.'

He grumbled to Mama. When I knelt down on my pillow and pressed my ear against the wall I could hear them arguing.

‘Poker, for God's sake. At her age!'

‘Well, at least it'll challenge her mentally.'

‘She's a kid; she should be playing kids' games.'

‘I'd rather she played poker and used her brains than wasted her time drawing. Pencils and paints won't get her anywhere.'

‘She's seven. Drawing is what seven-year-olds do.'

‘Not like she does. She's obsessive. She needs to be reined in before it gets out of hand. Our daughter's a very wilful little girl.'

The holidays stretched on through January; hot, steamy and raining nearly every afternoon. Mama took me with her a couple of times when she went after stories. One time we drove deep into the jungle to a village where somebody said a giant python had swallowed a pig. When we got there we saw chooks pecking at the ground, pigs snuffling about and little black babies playing in the dirt but no sign of the snake. Either it had gone or the story wasn't true but Mama took some pictures anyway and I pulled out my pencils and paper.

‘Forget that stuff for once, Bertie,' she said. ‘I'll teach you to use the camera. Now watch. You hold it in both hands like this, and look through here, and when I move this ring . . .'

She moved the ring and a little girl with snot running from her nose blurred. The trees made a green halo around her head and you couldn't see the snot any more, just the dark blob of her face. I pressed the button.

‘No, not yet! You're wasting film. Here, let me.'

Mama walked around the compound taking photos of people, huts, dogs and pigs. Then she put the camera down and wrote in her notebook. I picked up the camera and looked through the viewfinder, fiddled with the dials and zoomed in on the tail of a parrot. Next, I found a knot on a tree. Seeing things up so close with the camera reminded me of the kaleidoscope; move it and you never knew what you'd see next. I pressed the button, moved the camera, found a pig's bum-hole and bristly skin and snapped again. I found Mama's ear and a tendril of black hair.
Click, click
.

A few days later Mama came home and spread a stack of ten-by-eight photographs on the kitchen table. Black and white, sharp and smart.

‘Nice,' I said.

‘Yes, they are nice. Except for these. Now who do you suppose took them?'

I recognised the parrot's tail but it didn't look like much, just some stripes. Mama's ear was a strange blurry blob but the pig's bum and the knot were wonderful. Clear and close, they didn't have to be a bum and a knot, they could be whatever you wanted.

‘These are good!'

‘
Good
? A pig's . . .'

‘It looks like a star!'

She dropped her head back and shut her eyes and I knew what she was thinking. Why did I have to be the kind of kid who took photos of pigs' bums and knots?

My eighth birthday fell at the end of the first week of the new school year and Mama wanted me to have a party. My idea of a party was to have her and Dad, Tim and Stefi, toasted cheese sandwiches, chocolate cake and seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils. Stefi's mother could come but not her father.

‘I don't want Mr Breuer,' I said.

‘Of course not,' Mama agreed. ‘It's your party.'

‘But Stefi can come.'

‘Naturally. And who else?

‘Mrs Breuer.'

‘Children, Bertie. Your friends. Who do you want to invite? We need to make a list.'

‘I don't want anyone else.'

‘Of course you do. Friends are important.'

‘I don't want anybody.'

‘If you don't tell me who to invite, I'll ask Stefi.'

On my birthday, Mama came home with an oblong box. Too big for seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils but not too big for a dress. It lay in folds of tissue; a pink gingham skirt with miles of petticoats and a pink satin top. It looked like a cup-cake. How could Mama think I'd like it?

‘What do you say, Bertie? Scrumptious, isn't it?'

‘It'll look silly with my boot and stick.'

‘Ah!' She grinned. ‘I have something else, made specially.'

Another box. Even worse. A white lace-up platform boot and shoe. I didn't know what to say.

‘You'll be the prettiest girl at your party.'

She'd asked Stefi to invite six kids, so Stefi had chosen the ones no-one else wanted. ‘We don't want the show-offs,' she'd said, but I knew she'd been worried the popular kids mightn't come.

After lunch, my mother fussed around the table laying out hats, balloons, prizes and plates of food. ‘It's nearly time,' she said. ‘Go and get changed.'

I went to my room and sat on the bed. On a piece of paper I drew a grid of pink checks that looked like a cage made out of chicken wire. Inside the cage I put a face with its mouth open, shouting to be let out. A car pulled up outside. Mama poked her head in. ‘Your first guest is here . . . Why haven't you changed?'

I put down the pad and pencil. ‘I don't want to.'

‘Roberta, get those clothes on. Now.'

When I didn't move she hauled me off the bed and tried to pull my smock over my head but I clamped down my arms. She pulled harder and I jerked away, so hard I fell over. She bent down, yanked off my smock and flung the clothes at me.

‘Get them on.'

I shook my head.

She picked up my colouring pencils and drawing paper. ‘Put that outfit on now or this stuff goes into the bin and I won't be buying you any more.'

I pulled on the clothes. My mother dropped the pencils. When she left I hid them under a stack of tee-shirts but I had a feeling it was too late. She'd find them wherever they were.

In the living room, eight pairs of eyes stared. Mrs Breuer came over waving a cigarette.

She smiled and kissed my cheek. ‘Happy birthday,
drágám
; sweetie girl.'

Stefi handed me a parcel and stared at the floor.

‘You think I'm a freak,' I mumbled.

‘Not you,' she said, ‘only your dress.'

Some time after Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Pass the Parcel but before the candles were lit, before the cake was cut, before Happy Birthday could be sung and a hideous photo taken, I went out the back door and down the stairs. At the far end of the house, the ground rose to a narrow gap beneath the floor. I crawled up there and lay on my side in the dirt. Overhead, voices, footsteps and party sounds came and went. I heard Mama calling, laughter and singing and scraping chairs, and Mama calling me again. Voices burst and faded and cars pulled into the driveway. Feet clattered down the stairs, perfect feet in black patent-leather shoes. Doors slammed, engines started, cars drove off and still my mother called. When all the cars had gone and her voice wavered between anger and desperation, I crawled out.

‘God almighty, Roberta. I was worried. Where have you been? You're filthy.'

I didn't answer.

‘You ruined your party. How could you treat your friends like that?'

‘They're not my friends. I didn't invite them.'

‘I don't get you, Roberta. You want to be normal but you won't behave like other people. Normal people have friends. You push them away. Those children were your guests. You should be ashamed.'

I was ashamed. Of my dress, my boot, my limp, myself and my mother.

She dragged her fingers through her hair. ‘I can't punish you on your birthday but if you ever pull a stunt like that again – birthday or not – I will.'

Chapter Nine

Stefi and I stood in the toilet block at school, examining our faces in the mirror. My reflection showed how much I'd grown in the last ten months compared with Stefi – almost two inches.

She screwed up her nose. ‘My father says I look like a rat.'

‘You don't look like a rat. Rats have long noses and whiskers. You look like a pixie.'

‘I'd rather look like a ballet dancer.' She scraped back her ginger hair. ‘Or like you.'

‘
Me?
'

‘My father says you're a looker.'

I felt my face grow hot. I liked being called a looker but not by Stefi's father. I gazed at the tiny ripples of brown and red that flickered from my friend's head and wondered what she was thinking. I'd told her I saw auras but had sworn her to secrecy. She'd been surprised but said there was probably some scientific explanation and had gone to her encyclopaedia.

‘Crikey. It says here epileptics see auras before an attack. Do you have fits?'

‘You know I don't.'

‘All the same . . .' she'd sniggered.

I never knew what was coming next with Stefi. One minute she was bouncing around and chattering, the next she was as silent as a pillow. Chattering Stefi had too much energy to hang about while I drew pictures but quiet Stefi sat beside me on the swings while I sketched, twisting around and around until the chain tightened and then spinning undone, staring at the ground, sometimes so far gone inside her own world it was like she'd slid from her body and left behind a pile of clothes.

The bell clanged for class.

‘I suppose we'd better go,' she sighed. ‘More stupid Rootey-Snooty.'

Miss Roote was our grade three teacher; sharp and bony with a mouth like a ruler. The kids hated her but, thank goodness, there was only a month left to the end of the school year.

‘Boring and thick,' said Stefi as we walked to class. ‘She gets everything out of a book. Rootey-Snooty, silly old cow, wants to teach but doesn't know how. Hey, it rhymes. I wouldn't be a teacher for quids. When I grow up I'm going to be a famous scientist and discover things.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘Oh, Bertie, honestly! How do I know until I've discovered them? Planets maybe, people on Mars, killer germs. What are you going to be?'

‘An artist. And a mother I suppose. Everyone grows up to be a mother, don't they? Except fathers.' And Aunt Tempe . . .

‘I don't like fathers,' said Stefi, tugging a blade of grass sprouting between the stairs. It snapped, its sharp edge drawing a razor-thin line of blood across her finger. She watched the blood well up then stuck her finger in her mouth.

‘Why not?' I asked.

She shrugged. ‘What else are you going to do, besides being a mother?'

‘I told you, I'm going to be an artist. Mrs Potts wanted to put one of my pictures in the Sogeri Show last year but then she left.'

Stefi rolled her eyes. ‘A picture in the Sogeri Show is nice, Bertie, but it isn't a career.'

‘You sound like my mother.' Aim high, get on top of math. Be somebody, Bertie: a lawyer, a scientist, a doctor or all three. Imagine being able to cure polio, Bertie – wouldn't that be wonderful?

Curing polio, yes. Being a doctor, no. Stinking of hospitals, leaning over people and poking them with horrible instruments? No.

Dad was at his desk when I got home, totting up columns of pounds, shillings and pence so fast it made me dizzy. I looked at the roundness of his sixes and nines and the fat little tummies of his fives and it gave me an idea. I sat at the other side of his desk, ripped a page from my exercise book and drew a pair of twos back-to-back. They looked like eye sockets and a big nose. Inside the curve of the twos, I put noughts for eyes and ones for pupils and over the top, two sevens facing down for eyebrows. Under the nose I put a one lying on its back for a mouth. A face made from numbers. It looked, oddly enough, like the headmaster, Mr Boswell. I wondered what I could do with Miss Roote. Sevens for eyebrows and a nose, fours for eyes and a pile of threes and sixes for her wild hair. One for her mouth. Arms and legs – ones and sevens. Next, feet. No, not feet, roots. A jumble of threes, sixes and nines at the bottom, and Miss Roote was complete.

Tim banged through the screen door.

‘Look,' I said, holding up the drawings.

‘Oh, clever. All numbers. That one looks like Miss Roote.'

‘It is Miss Roote.' Beside the drawing I wrote,
Miss
Rootey
-
Snooty,
and Stefi's ditty.

Rootey-Snooty, silly old cow
.

Wants to teach but doesn't know how
.

Then I added two lines of my own:

All she knows is how to moo,

Her colours are like cowpats, too!

Miss Roote was droning on about glaciers. I wiped the dampness from my forehead and thought about the marbles I'd won at lunchtime from Billy Brough – eight in one hit. Shooting marbles was the one schoolyard game I was now able to play and I was good at it. I seemed to be good at anything that needed a straight aim. Mama had bought me twelve marbles to start with and now I had ninety-eight. She preferred I play marbles to painting or drawing because marbles was a
social
game.

Miss Roote tapped the blackboard. ‘Copy this into your books.'

I opened my exercise book and the drawing of
Miss Rootey-Snooty
fluttered to the floor.

‘What is that, Roberta?'

‘Nothing, Miss Roote.' I bent down and grabbed the picture but fumbled and dropped it again.

Miss Roote came down the aisle. ‘I asked you a question.' She snatched the drawing from the floor and studied it. ‘I suppose you think this is funny. It isn't. It's vulgar and offensive. No doubt Mr Boswell will agree. You can take it to him.'

Mr Boswell gave me a week's detention and a mountain of sums. He put a note and the drawing in an envelope and told me to give it to my father and mother when I got home.

That evening, while Mama was getting supper and Dad sat in his chair with the newspaper and a beer, I handed him the envelope. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

‘You in strife, CP?'

He opened the picture, studied it and then read the note. Mama came to lean over his shoulder and scowled as she read.

‘When drawing gets you into trouble,' Mama said, ‘it's gone too far. What's this, here, about colours like cowpats?'

For a moment my brain went dead. ‘Um, um, her ah . . . dress. Kind of poo-brown.'

Mama's eyes bored into mine. ‘Is that right?'

I turned and went to the drawer for cutlery. I felt sure Mama could see into my mind, with or without colours, so I busied myself setting the table.

‘I'd be careful if I were you, Roberta.'

I put a knife on the table, feeling its sharp edge against my thumb. ‘Why?' I asked, trying to sound normal.

‘Unflattering pictures of your teachers, people with green faces and no mouths. For someone who dislikes attracting attention, you're going about it the wrong way.'

‘They've got green faces because they're jealous and they've got no mouths because people won't listen to them.'

Dad set aside the drawing. ‘Hey, girls . . .'

‘You tell her, Ed,' said Mama.

‘Next time, CP, leave your drawings at home. Still, it's a good caricature.'

‘What's a caricature?'

‘Oh, Ed! You're supposed to be the disciplinarian, not the cheer squad.'

‘I'm just explaining. A caricature is an exaggeration. Big ears get bigger, a small mouth gets smaller.' He thumbed through the
South Pacific Post
and found a photo of a man with a big jaw and too many teeth. Beside it was a sketch. The artist had turned his jutting jaw into a tray and made his teeth like fence-palings. It was clever because it showed what made the man different from everyone else.

‘It's good,' I said.

‘It isn't good,' said Mama. ‘It's silly.'

I knew she didn't think it was silly. She just didn't want me encouraged. She didn't like my drawings because they showed what people were like inside. Mama wanted me to be the same as other kids, except smarter. But I wasn't like other kids – my leg made me different. She'd been teased when she was little for having darker skin, so why didn't she understand that you couldn't help being different; you couldn't help being the way you were?

Dad stood with a snowy towel wrapped around his middle, bellowing for socks. His drawers lay open and stuff was chucked all over the bed.

‘Bertie,' said Mama, ‘would you mind checking with Josie?'

‘I've got some of his socks,' I said, and brought four socks bulging with marbles from my wardrobe.

‘Bloody hell,' said Dad. ‘They're stuffed. Why don't you use your own damn socks?'

‘Yours are bigger.'

‘How many have you got?'

‘Ten.'

‘Ten? No wonder I can't find any.'

Mama giggled. ‘Give him some of those socks, Bertie.'

‘What about my marbles?'

‘Sod your marbles,' said Dad.

‘I need a bag.' I lusted after a big flashy bag.

‘It's nearly Christmas,' Mama said. ‘I expect Santa could organise something of that ilk.'

‘I don't want a reindeer, Mama, I want a bag. Anyway, I'm nearly nine. I don't believe in Santa.'

‘You're still eight and of course you believe in Santa.'