Being Bee

by Bateson, Catherine

  ‘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.’

  Dad shot me The Look and then actually shifted his chair a little so he was facing Jazzi square on and could only look at me sideways. It was so rude I didn’t bother showing Jazzi my scarf and I went to bed very early without being told, but no one even noticed that.

  The guinea pig letters

  As it turned out, Jazzi’s idea of cleaning out the guinea pig hutch myself wasn’t all that bad. Jazzi was at our place more and more and cleaning up after Fifi and Lulu gave me something to do while she and Dad gazed into each other’s eyes, held hands and they drank endless cups of tea. At least with Jazzi around so much, the guinea pigs never ran out of apple or celery or broccoli.

  Fifi and Lulu began to come out of their little bedroom when they heard me coming. I would squat down next to the hutch and hold out bits of food without moving, even though sometimes my legs began to hurt. Eventually Fifi, she was the brave one, would dart forward and grab the celery or apple or broccoli and then rush away and nibble at it down in the far corner. Once she’d done it, Lulu would come in twitching and nervy to get the other piece.

  But there were other ideas of Jazzi’s that weren’t so good.

  ‘Why do I have to make my bed in the morning?’

  ‘Because it looks neat and pretty.’

  ‘I don’t have time in the morning.’

  ‘Get up a little earlier. It only takes five minutes.’

  ‘Five minutes when I could be asleep and dreaming.’

  ‘Or five minutes when you could be up, enjoying the day.’

  ‘I’d rather enjoy my dreams.’

  ‘Why do you always have to argue?’

  ‘I don’t always argue. It’s just that I do prefer dreaming. Once the morning starts it’s just go, go, go and everyone ends up grumpy.’

  ‘I just want you to make your bed. It’s not much to ask.’

  ‘I didn’t have to do it for Dad.’

  ‘But you do have to for me.’

  ‘It seems like I have to do a lot of things for you when you don’t even live here and we’re not even related. I don’t think it’s fair. You’re not my mother, Jazzi, and you never will be.’

  Jazzi stopped making my lunch sandwiches and just looked at me. I swallowed hard. I didn’t like the way she was looking. I didn’t mind it if she got mad, but she didn’t look angry, she just looked very sad. Her eyes went all wavery the way mine did right before I started to cry. She sniffed, turned away and did something in the sink. When she turned back her eyes were okay again and I thought I must have been imagining things.

  ‘I know I’m not your mother. I’m not stupid enough to think I can replace her in either your life or your dad’s.’

  ‘I don’t like how everything’s changed,’ I said. ‘I liked things the way they were, before you came along and ruined everything.’

  I called good-bye to Dad and walked to school with Jazzi without talking once. She pointed out things on the way like she always did – a puppy in a car window, a baby so new its face was still all crumpled, and some bright pink flowers on a bush – but I didn’t even look at them.

  Jazzi worked five mornings a week at the high school up the road as an integration aide.

  ‘Which is terrific,’ Dad said, ‘because it means that she’ll be able to drop you off at school some mornings and then some afternoons she’ll pick you up and some afternoons Nanna will pick you up.’

  As it turned out, Nanna hardly ever picked me up. Some afternoons I used to walk over to her place because I missed her. Then we’d all sit around playing cards just like we used to. Often, though, Jazzi had things she wanted me to do.

  Some of these were okay. If it was hot, we’d go swimming at the pool across the road. Nanna didn’t like going to the pool because she had to sit out on the grass or in the sun and she said she was too old to do that. Jazzi didn’t mind. She’d bring her knitting or a book and a big hat and sit there wrapped up in a sarong. Sometimes she came and did some laps of breaststroke, holding her head high out of the water.

  Other things weren’t good.

  ‘Let me see that project, Beatrice. That looks quite exciting. Japanese culture is very interesting and very different from our own. We’ll walk up to the library together and see what books we can find. Look, Bee, you can do a whole section on cooking. That will be fun.’ Sometimes it felt to me as though Jazzi actually enjoyed my homework.

  When she had things she had to do, she’d tell me to go and see what Fifi and Lulu were up to.

  It was one of those afternoons that I found the envelope. It was stuck through the cage, but high up. Lulu pointed it out to me. She was standing on her hind legs, sniffing at it. It was a tiny little envelope with ‘Bee’ written on it in gold pen.

  I sat down on the hay bale and opened it. Glitter fell on my lap and skirt and then an insy little folded-up piece of paper.

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ I said to Lulu and Fifi, who were both squeaking and darting around. And then, because even guinea pigs like to know things, I said, ‘That’s from Alice in Wonderland. You’d like that book because it has a rabbit in it.’

  I unfolded the note. It said:

  Dear Bee

  Thank you for the celery, apple and broccoli and for cleaning out the cage so beautifully. We like it when you read to us, too. ‘Wind in the Willows’ was good but the Wild Wood was scary.

  Love

  Lulu and Fifi

  It took me a while to read it even though it was quite short. The printed letters were very small.

  I had a stationery set from my last birthday which I’d never used because I had no one to write to. The paper had daisies on it and I thought the guineas would like that. I cut a sheet in quarters very carefully, ruling the lines first. I practised making my writing small enough on scrap paper.

  Dear Lulu and Fifi

  What is it like having fur on all the time? Would you like a bath? I asked Jazzi if I could bath you but she said you might be frightened and that it would have to be a very very hot day. I have an old baby bath and you could both swim around. I bet Dad would let me do that some time.

  Love

  Bee

  ‘The guinea pigs wrote me a note today,’ I told Dad as soon as he got home from work, ‘so after dinner I’m making a special postbox. Then we can post letters to each other in the box and they won’t be tempted to eat them.’

  ‘That�
��s a good idea,’ Dad said.

  ‘What a lovely imagination.’ Jazzi smiled. ‘Do you want any help making it?’

  ‘No thanks, Jazzi. Dad, did you hear me? I said that after tea I’d put my letter for the guineas in their new postbox.’

  ‘I heard, Bee. Very nice. I’m sure they’ll appreciate that. Jazzi’s offered to help too. I must say, Jazzi, another delicious meal. Thank you. What did we do before Jazzi, Bee?’

  ‘We had pizza, ‘I said, ‘and noodles and chicken in plum sauce. Nanna made casseroles sometimes and soup in winter and we had barbeques, too. I was planning to learn to cook.’

  ‘I’m sure Jazzi would teach you to cook, Bee, if you asked her nicely.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter anymore because Jazzi cooks all the time.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to teach you. Maybe after dinner we could think about something to cook for tomorrow night.’

  ‘Are you going to be here tomorrow night as well?’ I didn’t mean the words to sound as horrible as they did and I bit my lip as soon as they’d left my mouth, but it didn’t help. Dad looked furious and Jazzi was flustered.

  ‘I just thought—’

  ‘That’s enough, Bee.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m doing the postbox for Fifi and—’

  ‘I said that’s enough. I don’t think we’re interested in what such a rude girl has to say.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I muttered, but it was too late and I didn’t get any ice-cream.

  I made the postbox though. I wrote POSTBOX on it in large letters and wired it to the outside of their cage. I stayed in the cubbyhouse until it was quite dark hoping that Dad would come out to see where I was and what I was up to, but in the end I gave up because the tree ferns made scary tapping noises on the cubby roof and it seemed sensible to go inside where the lights were on.

  Harley and To Be

  When Jazzi picked me up from school later that week she wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Beatrice, come on, hurry up. We’ve got to go somewhere.’