The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley (10 page)

‘So, how was the Learning Network? Did you enjoy it?'

‘I did, actually.' I have to admit it, even though I hate to let her know that she was right about it being good for me. But I don't give her too much. She presses me for more, of course.

‘Well, tell me, what did you do?'

‘Oh, mainly I was just meant to talk to kids who need help with their English.'

‘Ah,' she says, and by the look on her face I can tell her attention is drifting. I wonder then if this could be the right moment to bring up the audition. You have to pick the absolute optimum moment when asking for something that you know is going to be a very enormous ask. If you ask too early, it's like opening the oven door on a cake and making it sag. I decide first to enthuse a bit about my new position in the world as a volunteer; puff up the moment with examples of me as her wonderful, deserving child.

‘I met this great little boy called Sali from Sudan in Africa. He has the most beautiful laugh. His dad is driving cabs here. Also, there's this older boy who has no bottom teeth, because he comes from a tribe where all teenage boys have their teeth removed to prove they can bear pain and become a man. Now Eliza is trying to organise a dentist to replace them because here he feels self-conscious.'

‘Oh God, I can imagine.'

‘But guess who else I met?' I take her foot and remove her shoe.

‘Who?'

‘The girl who Mr Abutula brought here with her mum and brother. We saw them arriving, remember? The night Kite left.' I'm massaging her foot and she is closing her eyes slightly.

‘Oh yes, I remember. What was she like?'

‘Well I haven't really spoken to her yet, but I will next time.'

‘So you're going back again?' She smiles as if I'm an angel. So I'm almost ready to land it on her.

‘Yep. I'm going back next week.'

Silence for a while.

‘Mum?'

‘Mmm.'

‘Kite asked me to go do an audition for the Flying Fruit Flies.' There, I said it. It's landed.

First she sighs (bad sign). I let go of her foot and she shifts a bit on the couch. She turns to face me.

‘Cedar, it's wonderful he asked you. He and Ruben must have a lot of faith in your abilities. But you know we can't move to Albury. I have my job here. Can't you join a circus here, love? Or wait until you're a bit older and clearer that circus is really what you want to do? You're still so young.' She pats my leg and sighs again.

I know she doesn't like to disappoint me, and I experience a tiny second of understanding for her, but then I quickly move on to the more important issue of me. Why does everyone think I'm still too young to know what I want? Anyway, how can I know what I want until I try it out?

‘I'm not too young to know what I love doing the most.' I look at her pleadingly, even though I know it's useless. She looks back at me with a look so full of sympathy and sadness that again I almost feel bad for making her feel bad about making me feel bad.

‘How much do you think this is really about the circus and how much is it because you like Kite and you want to do what he's doing?'

‘It's about the circus.' I'm looking at my hands, which are squirming on my lap. I'd hate anyone to think I'd do something just for the sake of a boy, and not because I wanted to do it myself. I'd even hate myself to think that, so I deny it out loud, straight away, and then I try very hard to believe it. My hands are still squirming. Mum says nothing. And then slowly it seems that we're both watching
The
Simpsons
again, though I'm not concentrating as I am trying very hard to banish that thought and I'm not sure I'm succeeding. Would I want to go to Albury if Kite wasn't there? Yes or no? I try to think of something else. After a while Mum starts up again.

‘Cedar?'

‘Yes.' I keep staring at the telly.

‘I know this might not be a good time, but there's something I want to talk about with you.'

‘What?' I'm grumpy now. Why doesn't she choose her moments better, like I do? I always create the right time by giving foot massages. But she's not reaching for my stiff old neglected foot.

‘It's about all the secret stuff that's been going on around here.'

‘Oh, that.' I'm a bit more interested now, so I turn away from the telly.

‘It's about Tirese.'

‘What about her?'

‘Well, she's pregnant.'

‘Oh,' I say. And then I say,‘Wow!' and then I say, ‘But I didn't even know she had a boyfriend.'

‘She doesn't.' Mum looks at me as if she's working out whether I'm really old enough to understand this. I strike a serious pose, tilt my head to the side, just like Aunt Squeezy does when she's considering. It seems to work. Mum explains.‘Well, she had one, obviously, while she was in India. She was studying yoga at some yoga centre, and she met a man there from Italy who became her boyfriend. He had to go back to Italy, and then she came here and discovered she was pregnant. So she wrote to him. He wrote back and told her that he had a wife and children already.'

‘And hadn't he told her that before, while he was her boyfriend?'

‘No.' Mum shakes her head disapprovingly.

‘So he's a cad?' I say, and she laughs.

‘Maybe – we don't really know. We all make mistakes, especially with affairs of the heart. It's easy to fall in love when you're on holiday, even if you shouldn't.'

‘Is Aunt Squeezy sad?'

‘Well, she's been confused, but she's decided to have the baby anyway, and that's why I thought she could stay here with us, because it's very hard to look after a baby on your own.'

‘Like you had to with us?' I say. She nods and lowers her eyes.

‘Kind of like that.' It always makes her sad when she thinks of our dad. But after a moment she looks up again and grabs my hand. ‘Anyway, Cedy, how do you feel about it? How do feel about Tirese living here while she has her baby? I mean, it's okay with me as long as it's okay with you and Barnaby.'

‘It's fine by me. It's great. You know me. I always want there to be a big family. I'd love there to be a baby here too. Does Barnaby know?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Really?'

I felt great. I grinned a big smug grin just because I knew something that Barnaby didn't know. I was in on the secret and he wasn't. For a moment I was so puffed up I almost forgot the life disaster that Mum had just inflicted upon me. But then I remembered it again and I decided to huff off over to Caramella's, just so Mum knew it meant a lot to me. Maybe she'd even reconsider.

Chapter 16

‘I doubt it,' said Caramella. ‘She won't reconsider. There's no way your mum could move to Albury. How would she work there?'

Caramella can be so practical. I stared at my chocolate macaroon gloomily. I knew she was right, but sometimes I just want her to play along with my dreams, or at least accompany me into the drama and tragedy of it all.

‘Anyway, guess what?' I decided to change the topic.

Caramella never guesses, so I carried on. ‘I did some superb sleuthing today. Kind of incidental sleuthing, but still.'

‘What?' she said. She wasn't really looking at me, she was fiddling with the packet of biscuits. I wasn't sure, but suddenly I suspected she was upset about something.

‘Are you okay?'

‘Yeah,' she said, still not looking. ‘Tell me what you discovered.'

‘I met that girl who got out of the Abutula's van. She's from Afghanistan.'

‘Oh. How did you meet her?'

‘At the place where Aunt Squeezy volunteers.'

There was definitely something wrong. Where was the excitement? ‘Caramella, tell me what's wrong. I know something's wrong.' I pulled the biscuits away from her.

‘It's nothing.'

‘No, it's something. Tell me. Have I done something?'

‘No, you haven't done anything. That's the problem.' She looked up at me for the first time since the conversation began, her short bunched pigtails dangling above her shoulders as she hunched over the table and squeezed her plump little hands into a knot.

‘What do you mean?' I said it quietly and gently. I could tell she was struggling to explain. She looked down again and bit at her lip.

‘It's just, remember how when Kite left the circus you went on and on about him not caring about us and our circus? Well, now it seems you want to do exactly the same thing. You just want to leave and be a star and you don't seem to care about what happens to us.' She shrugged and pushed her lip out and looked at me like I was a traitor. I blushed and took a deep breath.

‘No,' I said, shaking my head. ‘It's not like that. I do care, of course I care…it's just…It's just, God, I just don't know how or what to do with us, with our circus.'

‘Have you tried?'

Before I could answer, Mrs Zito waddled into the kitchen, pinched my cheeks and asked me if I wanted to stay for dinner. I was blushing because somewhere deep inside I felt guilty and I didn't feel I could stay for dinner, so I stood up and said thank you but Mum was expecting me home for dinner. I smiled at Caramella and said I'd see her tomorrow. She nodded feebly and I felt like a skunk as I left. I felt like I was scurrying off and leaving a bad smell in the air between us, because I couldn't face it, I couldn't work out how to clean up the smell. Maybe Caramella was right. But I couldn't figure it out on the spot. I knew there was a bit of thinking to do but I had to go do it before I could know what was what.

Chapter 17

I lie on my bed and stare up at the ceiling, because ceiling-gazing always brings on my loftiest thoughts. Stinky hops up on the bed with me, as he can tell I'm in for a stint.

This is how it seems to me: all of a sudden there are a few too many circuses and a few too many people pulling me in different directions. I feel as if I'm swimming down a river and on one side of the bank is the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, with Kite and Ruben and lights and proper equipment and my potential waiting, and on the other side there's Oscar, sitting alone with his pieces of blue; and there's Caramella, eating chocolate macaroons with her hands in a knot; and then there's Mum, who is trying to tie me to the shore; and then Aunt Squeezy on the banks with her pregnant belly, cutting the rope and calling out, ‘Follow your dream'; and Barnaby in a boat, strumming his guitar singing, ‘Oh I'm following mine.'

What do I really, really want? Seems like such a simple question. And if you answer it with your heart, you want whatever it is that makes your heart leap and brim and bound forward. If I listen to my heart I would be running away to audition for the Flying Fruit Flies. But then if my mind steps in (and it usually does), thinking happens, and once you start thinking everything gets complex and confusing and bigger than you. For instance, I start wondering, is my longing to join the circus for Kite or for me? And then I get to wondering about The Acrobrats. Aren't they my friends, my true friends, and isn't that more important than anything? Isn't that the right thing to do, to stay and hold the fort? And shouldn't I want to do the right thing? Because then I'll be a better person, a compassionate person like Eliza and the Buddhists.

But will I be boring? Even resentful?

Here, something else joins the battle, and this is a part of me that must come from my past life as an ancient Greek philosopher, because it takes an impossibly broad view. It asks, even if I do know that I should do the right thing, how do I know that what I think is right
is
in fact right? For instance, who's to say that to follow your heart or to live your dream is not the right thing, while trying to be a good person might just be like trying to wear something fashionable, even if it isn't you, even if it's high heels and you've got a back ache, or if it's a pink parka and you're allergic to synthetics? I mean, maybe I'm just not meant to be good. Maybe I'd come out in hives if I was good! Maybe the whole point is to find out not what you should do, but what you're meant for.

Of course, what I'm
meant
for is cartwheels and thoughts, but what I
want
is for everything, every person and reason and beat of my heart, to hop over to the same side – to the Flying Fruit Flies' side, because then it would be easy. But, as all good former Greek philosophers know, life doesn't come in easy packages. It's meant to be difficult. Otherwise you wouldn't have to think and wonder and make mistakes and learn, and then you'd really be boring.

Here's what I think:

All interesting people make mistakes.

All interesting people get themselves into a pickle at some stage, and then they have to figure out how to get out of it.

And it's the getting in and out of pickles that gives you character.

But was I getting anywhere with my pickle or was I just stewing in it?