Being Bee (2 page)

‘It's not that I don't like her,' I told Lucy and Sally at recess. ‘She's okay. It's just that Dad's different when she's around and he wants to do things with her and not with me. They kiss all the time, too.'

‘Eeuuww.' Lucy screwed up her face.

‘Well, they have to,' Sally said, rolling her eyes at us, ‘they're going out. That's what people do.'

‘But not when other people are watching,' Lucy said.

‘Well, my brother and his girlfriend do it all the time,' Sally said.

‘In front of you?'

‘Not always, only sometimes.'

‘I think it's disgusting,' I said. ‘Dad and Jazzi aren't even young.'

‘That's a point,' Sally said. ‘It is more horrible when old people do it.'

‘I think it's just completely yucky,' Lucy said. ‘And I'm not going to let anyone kiss me.'

‘But what happens when you've got a boyfriend?' All the teachers told Sally she was the practical one. She always asked the sensible questions.

‘I'm not having a boyfriend,' Lucy said. ‘I don't like boys. They smell.'

‘I might kiss someone,' I said, trying to imagine what it would be like. ‘But I won't do it in front of anyone else.'

‘I bet you do,' Sally said. ‘I bet you a million dollars.'

‘You don't have a million dollars.'

‘Anyway, my mum says you need to grow up a bit. She says you're becoming a little bit ... a little bit ... I can't remember. It was a word beginning with “e” but basically it means weird.'

‘I'm not weird. I'm no weirder than you are!'

‘Eccentric,' Lucy said. ‘The word was eccentric. But it doesn't mean weird exactly. Not exactly, but almost.'

‘I'm not eccentric!'

‘Mum says it's because you live with just your dad. So maybe this girlfriend is a good thing, Bee. She'll stop you being eccentric and weird.'

‘I wasn't eccentric last term. You didn't mention anything then.'

Sally and Lucy both looked at me. Sally put a hand on her hip, just like her mother did. ‘Maybe we've just realised it,' she said.

‘Lucy? You don't think I'm eccentric, do you?'

‘I don't know that it's such a bad thing to be,' Lucy said, but she didn't sound very sure about that.

I didn't want to be weird, but I didn't want Jazzi changing me, either.

‘
You
are both getting weird,' I said to Lucy and Sally. That's what
I
think. I'm just me, the person I've always been.'

‘Not according to my mother,' Sally said, and then the bell went, so I didn't find out exactly
what
Sally's mother thought of me.

‘It's not that I don't like Jazzi,' I told Nanna when she picked me up from school. ‘It's just that everything is different when she's around. She calls me Beatrice, too.'

‘Well, darling, that is your name, and a lovely one.'

‘It's an old-fashioned name, Nanna.'

‘Fashion, pff,' and Nanna blew a raspberry into the air. ‘Who cares about fashion? It's a good name. It's got style.'

‘She cooked these scones but they weren't real scones. They didn't rise properly either. They were flat.'

‘The self-raising flour was probably old – your dad's pantry! It's a wonder she found any.'

‘Why are you taking her side, Nanna. You haven't even met her.'

‘I am not taking sides. I'm just giving the poor woman a chance.'

We walked past the Star cinema and the expensive café and on to the bakery where Nanna ordered a coffee for herself and a hot chocolate for me. I was in for a talk. When she added yo-yo biscuits to the order I knew it was a long talk. Sometimes these are good. She tells me about my mum and when I was a baby. Sometimes she gives me lectures about how I need to look after Dad, as if I was the grown-up, not him.

‘You have to understand, Bee, that your dad has been a lonely man since Lindy died. We've all been lonely. God only knows how much I miss my girl. Children shouldn't be allowed to die first. It's cruel. But that's neither here nor there. Your father has sacrificed time and energy to raise you, Bee, but you're growing up and now it's time for him to find companionship. This Jazzi sounds quite acceptable. It's a pity she doesn't have any children, but I don't suppose that can be helped.'

‘She doesn't like Fifi and Lulu much.'

‘Bee,' Nanna said sternly, ‘you can't judge someone on whether or not they share your obsession with guinea pigs.'

‘I'm not obsessed,' I said. ‘That's when you have posters and stuff on your wall. I have horses on my walls, not guinea pigs. I just like them, that's all. And they like me. It's good to own something that likes you, isn't it?'

‘Well, that's probably how your dad feels about Jazzi – without the owning, of course. She likes him, obviously, or she wouldn't be staying the night and cooking scones! Nick needs someone to like him again.'

‘I don't just like Dad, I love him. Why don't I count?'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Bee, of course you count. This is just different and I'm sure I don't have to spell out to you why. You're not a baby anymore. Good heavens, another couple of months and you'll be taller than I am.'

‘They were kissing in the kitchen. I saw them.'

‘How lovely for them – the kissing bit, I mean, not the being spied on bit.'

‘I wasn't spying, I just wanted a drink.'

‘Well, make sure you don't hang around them all the time. The last thing a new couple needs is some great girl poking her nose in where she shouldn't.'

Honestly, Nanna was beginning to sound like one of those people on the radio who solve your problems for you. I didn't like being called a ‘great girl', either. It didn't mean what it normally meant, which was ‘wonderful' or even ‘marvellous'. It meant tall for my
age and gangly. I knew by the way she said it. She said it that way when I bumped into her in the kitchen, too, when she was cooking. ‘Out of my way, you great girl!' and a whack on my bum if I didn't move fast enough.

‘I think you should meet her before you decide you like her,' I said crossly. ‘She wears very dark lipstick.'

‘I'll be meeting her today,' Nanna said, sounding a little smug. ‘She's picking you up from my place today.'

‘But I can just walk home.'

‘I know that, but Jazzi wanted to collect you and I didn't see anything wrong with it.'

‘I'm not a baby. I always walk home.'

Sally and her mum walked past. I hoped they wouldn't see us but they did and Sally's mum stopped to talk to Nanna.

‘I hear Nick's got a girlfriend,' was the first thing she said.

‘He has,' Nanna said, ‘and there are going to be a few teething problems.' She looked at me as though I couldn't understand what she meant. I made a face but they were too busy talking to notice.

When we finally got home Stan was already at Nanna's, pulling some weeds from around her front gate. He's lived next door to Nanna for the longest time. He has a crush on her. His eyes crinkle up when he sees her, he always carries her groceries in for her, and he calls her Patreeeecia.

Nanna gets all fluttery when he comes over, as if he doesn't visit her every day, and uses the blue and white willow plates. Dad calls them her romantic interest plates. Sometimes Stan brings around some of his homemade liqueur for after-dinner and they sit close together on the couch and argue about television programs and politics.

‘Here are my girls,' Stan said. ‘Patreeecia, time for a quick card game? What will it be, poker or blackjack?'

When Jazzi came around, I was winning at least two dollars in twenty cent and ten cent pieces, Stan was down to fifty cents and Nanna claimed she was breaking even, but she was just as likely to have slipped a couple of fifty cents into her pocket when she refreshed the teapot.

‘You open the door, Bee, you know her. Then you introduce her to me and Stan. Properly. The way I've taught you.'

‘Do I have to?'

‘Bee!'

Jazzi's hair was pulled back into a frazzled pony tail, as though she was trying to look older than she really was. She still wore her plummy lipstick, though, and big earrings. She had a white shirt on, tucked into a denim skirt.

‘Jazzi, this is my grandmother, I think she'd want you to call her Patricia. And this is Stan from next
door. Nanna, Stan, I'd like you to meet Jazzi, Dad's girlfriend.'

‘Jazzi, how lovely to meet you. We're playing cards. We're inveterate gamblers around here. Stan's influence.'

‘Poker?' Jazzi said. ‘Oh, I like poker. Can you deal me in?'

I couldn't believe how quickly my two dollars disappeared.

‘Jazzeee, you've got Lady Luck riding on your shoulder,' Stan said, folding. ‘What a run of luck!'

‘You've cleared me out. Time for a cup of tea?'

Jazzi left her winnings in the centre of the table. ‘Do you have a jar or something?' she asked. ‘My dad always kept a jar of change so we could play again.'

‘We do, too, dear. Nice of you to suggest it.'

Jazzi got up and walked around the lounge room. ‘Is this you, Bee, and your mother?'

‘Yes. That's when I was very little.'

Jazzi peered at the photograph. ‘You look like your dad,' she said, ‘except around the mouth and forehead, where you're just like her. She was beautiful, wasn't she?'

I looked at the photograph Jazzi held out. Everyone told me how much like Dad I looked, how I had his eyes. It worried me, having eyes like Dad. His sagged underneath in great baggy circles and the corners were
a mass of fine crinkles. Dad's eyes had been like that ever since I could remember, and even in the photos of his wedding they were starting to sag and he was quite young back then.

My mother's mouth was the kind supermodels have – full and curvy. I had never thought of my mouth before.

‘See?' Jazzi traced her finger over my mother's mouth on a photograph just of her, taken way before she married my dad. ‘And here,' she said, ‘your forehead, Beatrice, with your little widow's peak.'

‘Yes,' Nanna said, coming up behind her, ‘you're quite right, Jazzi. I hadn't noticed how much Bee has changed in the last couple of years. She used to be the dead spit of Nick, but now she's much more like her mother. You're growing up, Bee, see, I told you so. It's lovely to hear you call her by her proper name, Jazzi. We've just all got lazy and now she's so used to Bee, she won't hear of us changing it back to what it should be.'

‘I like Bee. Mum called me Bee, you know.'

‘Your mum called you all sorts of things,' Nanna said, putting her arm around my shoulders. ‘Mums always do. I heard her call you her little Beatrice many times when you were young. No, Bee was Nick's name for you, mostly. His little busy bee, the constant buzz buzz, he'd say. That was when you were babbling. That's what babies do when they're learning to talk.
Lindy liked the joke and made you a skirt with bees on it. Do you remember that? I knitted a little green vest to go with it.'

‘You knit?' Jazzi asked.

‘Oh, yes. It's back in fashion now, I believe. I've tried to teach Bee. She isn't as patient as she could be.'

‘I keep getting more stitches than I should have. It's not patience.'

‘Have you shown Jazzi your knitting? She's doing a scarf. I don't know why we always start with scarves, singularly boring if you ask me.'

‘Everyone's wearing them,' I said, ‘and Lucy and Sal thought it was cool.'

‘You'll have to show me, Beatrice. I had no idea!'

For the next hour I watched Nanna bring out photos and samples of her own knitting. Jazzi exclaimed over them, even the boring ones. I sat and yawned loudly on the couch, hoping they'd notice me.

I missed my favourite television show because Nanna wouldn't let me have the television on when there was a guest. By the time Jazzi was ready to go, I was grumpy.

‘I really like Patricia,' Jazzi said later to my dad. ‘All that knitting, and it's quite beautiful. Really crafted, Nick. None of this kind of flash stuff we're all doing, relying on novelty yarns, but great craft work. And she's a lot of fun. They were playing poker with the
next-door neighbour when I arrived. He's obviously crazy about her. I had the best afternoon!'

‘I had the worst afternoon,' I said, pushing Thai chicken salad with lime and chilli dressing around my plate. I didn't like the little green leaves under the chicken or the beans or the snow peas. They all tasted too green. When I tried to explain that to Jazzi and Dad, they just looked exasperated. ‘I lost at poker and I had to miss
Pony School
and
Feral Felines and Crazy Canines
because Nanna and Jazzi were talking about boring old knitting. It's always either kissing or knitting around here.'