Being Bee

by Bateson, Catherine

  ‘Jazzi’s okay,’ I said. ‘She can knit.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Sally, you wanted to learn to knit when I started. You said you did. You said my scarf was cool.’

  ‘It’s too hot to wear a scarf anyway.’

  ‘It won’t be by the time I finish it.’

  Sally shrugged. ‘We don’t want to be your best friend anymore,’ she said. ‘You don’t tell the truth about things.’

  ‘I do so.’ I looked at Lucy. ‘You want to be best friends, don’t you, Lucy?’

  Lucy didn’t look at me. She was busy taking everything out of her lunchbox and putting it on her lap.

  ‘Lucy, you know what we agreed on,’ Sally said, kicking Lucy with her foot.

  Lucy’s head bobbed up and down but she didn’t say anything and she didn’t look up.

  ‘So there, Bee, we can’t be best friends with a liar.’

  ‘What have I lied about?’

  ‘If you don’t know, we’re not going to tell you.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I haven’t lied. I know I haven’t lied.’

  ‘What about the guinea pig letters?’ Lucy said softly, still examining her lunch with enormous concentration. ‘We all know that guinea pigs can’t write.’

  ‘I didn’t say they wrote them. I said my dad probably did, but that it was fun, pretending.’

  ‘You told us that Lulu and Fifi wrote you letters,’ Sally said, ‘and you told us that you could knit and you told us that Jazzi wasn’t your step-mum. That’s three lies, Bee.’

  ‘I can knit.’

  ‘Your scarf looks demented. It starts off small and then gets bigger and bigger in the middle.’

  ‘That’s because I keep picking up stitches,’ I said miserably. ‘Nanna says I’ll get better. And Jazzi’s not my step-mum.’

  ‘She will be, though,’ Sally said, ‘so it counts as a lie.’

  ‘You don’t know that. You can’t say that, Sally Nixon. You’ve got no right.’ I stood up, thinking I’d have to get away before I cried in front of them, and bent down to pick up my lunchbox. Sally deliberately kicked it with her foot so my sandwich spilled out on to the ground.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, looking up at me, ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  I looked at the perfectly straight part that divided her head and her hair into two neat plaits. I bent down, grabbed one of her plaits and yanked hard. ‘Oops, sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to.’ And I pulled harder with each word.

  I heard her wailing behind me, when I was halfway across the playground. I hadn’t even made it to the library before Sally, Lucy and Mrs Petrovsky caught up with me. Sally’s face was all streaky with tears and even her freckles looked pink.

  ‘Is this true, Beatrice?’ Mrs Petrovsky asked me, taking hold of both my hands as though she would know from the feel of them whether I’d pulled Sally’s hair.

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered looking at her shoes. They were dusty from the playground.

  ‘Why, Beatrice?’

  ‘Because she said I didn’t come from a proper family.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Sal hiccuped. ‘I said she’d be happy when she got a step-mum, Mrs P, that’s all.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, looking at Sal’s pink streaky face, ‘her part is too straight.’

  ‘That’s not a good reason for physical violence, Beatrice. Who is coming to collect you today?’

  ‘Jazzi.’

  ‘I’ll make sure I have a word with her and in the meantime you can apologise to Sally and stay on yard duty with me and help me pick up the rubbish.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs P.’

  Jazzi wasn’t impressed when she came out of the classroom.

  ‘No, I quite understand,’ I heard her saying. ‘Of course, I’ll be sure to explain to her father ... It’s a delicate time for us all ... Difficult, you know, particularly when ... But thank you. Yes, thank you.’

  We walked out of the schoolyard in silence.

  ‘Well, Beatrice,’ Jazzi said finally when we were halfway up the hill to home, ‘I must say I’m surprised.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Pulling someone’s plaits not once but four or five times is hardly an accident, Beatrice.’

  ‘You sound like a teacher.’

  ‘What am I going to tell your father?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Well, I care. I want to know what I’m to tell him.’

  ‘That Sally and Lucy were mean. I got into trouble at school. I had to pick up papers all lunchtime, too. My desk got moved to the front. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to where I used to be. Nothing happened to Sally and she was horrid.’

  ‘What did she do?’ Jazzi asked. ‘Bee? What did she do? I want to hear your side of the story, too, you know.’

  But I couldn’t tell her, so we walked home in silence.

  At home she tried again, making a cup of herbal tea for herself and pouring me a glass of water from the fridge, which was better than juice, she said, because it actually quenched your thirst. We both sat down at the kitchen table and ate half a muesli bar each.

  ‘So,’ she said after a while, ‘Sally was mean. What did she say?’

  ‘That she and Lucy didn’t want to be best friends with me anymore because I told lies.’

  ‘Lies about what?’

  ‘Just stuff.’

  ‘That’s not a good answer, Beatrice.’

  How could I tell her? It sounded as though I didn’t want her as a step-mum, and it was true, I didn’t, but I still couldn’t tell her. I looked at her watching me. I knew when she got up in the morning she always put mascara and eyeliner on and that she had a special little brush to brush her eyebrows. That had always struck me as being strange, but now, looking at her little surprised eyebrows, I realised how thin they were and how, if there was even one hair out of place, they’d look crazy. No wonder she brushed them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I muttered. ‘They were just being mean.’

  ‘Beatrice, this is your last chance. If you can’t tell me the whole story, I shall simply have to report what I know to your father and let him deal with it.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Dad didn’t do more than grunt at me when she told him.

  ‘Flash in the pan,’ he said, sweeping it all away with his arm. ‘Girls, they’re always doing this kind of thing, aren’t you, Bee? You must remember that, Jazzi, from your days at school.’

  ‘No, I don’t, Nick,’ Jazzi said in a tight little voice. ‘I certainly didn’t pull anyone’s plaits three or four times.’

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t pull hard. Bee, you wouldn’t have pulled Sally’s hair hard, darling?’

  I thought of how I’d seen the hair strain against the clean skin of Sally’s parting. How hard was hard? I decided it was having hairs come out in your hand. ‘No, not really,’ I said.

  ‘It’ll blow over,’ Dad said. ‘The important thing is that we’re all here having a lovely dinner – another lovely dinner, thanks to Jazzi.’

  After I’d gone to bed, Jazzi came into my room and sat down on the end of my bed, without me even inviting her to.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘in my experience, things between friends need to be sorted out. If I can help at all, Beatrice, I’d be happy to. I’m very fond of you, and your dad, of course. You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘But you’re not my step-mum,’ I said quickly, ‘are you? I mean, for you to be my step-mum you’d have to live here and you don’t. You’ve got a flat and you live there.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s true. No, I’m not your stepmother, Beatrice, but I hope you think of me as a friend, nonetheless.’ She looked sad when she said that.

  ‘I just want to know,’ I said, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘Is that what the girls said you were lying about? Did you call me your step-mum and they said I wasn’t?’

  ‘Something like that.’ I couldn’t tell her the truth.

  ‘Oh, Bee, I think the inte
ntion is just as important as where someone lives. I want to look after you like a stepmother would. You’re very important to me. Don’t you worry about what the girls said, I’m sure your dad’s right and that it will all blow over.’

  She offered to tuck me in after that, but I was tucked in already so I couldn’t see the point. She smoothed my hair back off my face and I thought she would have liked to have kissed me goodnight but I rolled over before she had a chance. I didn’t mind her getting the story wrong but I didn’t want to encourage too much stepmotherly behaviour.

  Just before I went to sleep I thought of what I should have said to Sally. I should have asked her if she thought the nuclear bomb was a good thing. Then I should have said that if the nuclear bomb was such a bad thing, what made nuclear families so good? Didn’t it just mean that they’d blow up too, like the bomb?

  I didn’t have a chance to tell Sally that because neither she nor Lucy talked to me for the rest of the week and I had to tag along after the teacher on yard duty and play Pick Up Papers. I couldn’t wait for the whole thing to blow over but it looked as though it was going to hang around for a while.

  The Jazzi-free weekend

  I stayed with Nanna on the weekend because Dad and Jazzi wanted to go away. I suggested they take me too, but Dad laughed and tugged my hair and said that wouldn’t be the most romantic thing now would it? They wanted some child-free time, he said, not that I wasn’t the best girl in the world but he and Jazzi wanted to go out for dinner and tell each other soppy things over a glass or two of champagne.

  I told him that I didn’t mind, but asked if he and I could have a Jazzi-free weekend sometime too. I reminded him that I hardly ever seemed to see him by himself these days, and although Jazzi might be wonderful I wanted to do some of the things Dad and I used to do together, before Jazzi.

  ‘It seems fair,’ I said, ‘if you and Jazzi can go away without me, that you and I can stay home without her.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so, Bee. But let’s not put it to Jazzi quite like that, okay? She might be hurt.’

  ‘You put it to me like that,’ I said.

  ‘But I’ve known you all my life,’ Dad said, ‘and I can trust you to understand and not be hurt. You’re a sensible kid, Bee. You know that adults need time away together and that I love you and always will and that has nothing to do with Jazzi and me.’

  I didn’t feel sensible. I felt hurt but I couldn’t tell Dad that.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Daylesford,’ Dad said. ‘It’s got everything – good restaurants, some shops that Jazzi will love, and I’ll book a spa for us, too. The water is supposed to have special healing properties. I think Jazzi would like that, don’t you?’

  ‘I guess so. Is it the beach?’

  ‘Good heavens no, it’s the mountains.’

  I felt better then. I wouldn’t have been able to be sensible about the beach.

  In the end I had a good weekend anyway. I beat Nanna and Stan at poker and won seven dollars and eighty-five cents. We went to see a movie together and to the Jade Cherry Blossom for dinner.

  ‘Makes a change,’ Nanna said.

  ‘Not as spicy as Thai,’ Stan said. ‘I think I’ll have sweet and sour pork.’

  ‘Jazzi doesn’t like Chinese food,’ I said. ‘She said it’s got too much MG something in it and that they use too much food colouring to make things look red and shiny.’

  ‘Ssh, Bee.’

  ‘Sorry.’ I thought I’d whispered quietly, but Nanna looked around worriedly in case someone had heard me. They hadn’t though, because they brought us over free prawn crackers. That could have been because of Stan. He always ate there on movie night. He had pizza or pasta at Bella Mama’s on Tuesdays, the Polish Club on Thursdays, his own cabbage soup on Fridays and the rest of the time Nanna took pity on him.

  ‘I enjoy a multicultural diet,’ he told me once. ‘In this beautiful country of ours, I can eat a different nationality every night of the week.’

  ‘So where were your dad and his girlfriend going again?’ Stan asked.

  ‘Daylesford,’ I told him. ‘It’s in the mountains.’

  ‘Ah, Daylesford. They will be enjoying a romantic spa together. It is a beautiful place. I should take your Nanna there. What do you say, Patreeecia. We deserve a romantic weekend too.’

  ‘Oh, Stan, at our age. What a suggestion!’

  ‘Well, if not at our age, when? Soon we’ll be dead, Patreeecia. That’s what happens at our age.’

  ‘You’re not that old,’ I said, ‘either of you.’ But secretly I thought even Dad was a bit too old for a romantic weekend.

  ‘I think we should do more at our age.’ Stan reached across the table and grabbed Nanna’s hand. ‘It is nice at our age to do unexpected, pleasurable things. There are some things you should never be too old to do. Like a spa, for example. It would be good for our arthritis.’

  ‘You get these essential oils put in them,’ I told him. ‘They probably have something for arthritis.’

  ‘There you are, Bee agrees with me.’

  ‘Oh, Stan.’ But Nanna didn’t take her hand away, I noticed, and Stan held it until our meal arrived.

  I meant to ask Nanna if that meant she was Stan’s girlfriend, but I forgot because we didn’t get home until late.

  When Dad got back from Daylesford I told him he should give all his Daylesford brochures to Stan, so that he and Nanna could chose somewhere to stay. Dad looked a bit surprised, so I didn’t tell him about the hand-holding at the Jade Cherry Blossom. He and Jazzi brought me back a bead bracelet from Daylesford and Jazzi had some wool she’d bought there.

  ‘For a vest for your dad,’ she said. ‘It has to be a vest, not a jumper.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the Boyfriend Jumper Curse.’ She laughed but she looked hard at Dad when she said it.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Knitting wisdom says that as soon as you make a jumper for a boyfriend, the relationship breaks up.’

  ‘That’s just not going to happen,’ Dad said, hugging her.

  ‘That’s right – because I’m not making a jumper. I’m making a vest.’

  ‘Why would someone dump you for making them a jumper?’

  ‘You should see some of those jumpers,’ Dad joked, keeping one arm around Jazzi. ‘But not my chocolate vest – it will be the envy of the office.’

  ‘So has that happened to you?’ I asked Jazzi.

  ‘No, but I’ve never knitted a boyfriend a jumper.’

  ‘Because of the curse?’

  ‘Well, you have to like someone an awful lot to make a jumper for them.’

  ‘What about husbands? Is there a husband jumper curse? And what about Stan and Nanna? She’s making him a jumper.’

  ‘Husbands are different,’ Jazzi said, ‘and Stan’s different too. He wouldn’t dump your Nanna.’

  ‘So you can make a husband a jumper?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because ... well, I suppose because once you’re married to someone ... well, I don’t know, Beatrice, I’ve never been married. Ask your dad.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about knitting,’ Dad said, ‘but I do know there’s ice-cream in the freezer for anyone who wants dessert.’

  ‘Is there a girlfriend jumper curse?’ I asked. This cursing thing was getting to me. I wanted to know.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, suppose I knitted something for Sally or Lucy, not that I would because we’re not talking anymore, but if we were and I did, then would she dump me as a friend? Or suppose I was going out with a guy who knitted ... I mean, I don’t know that any guys do, but if they did and I was with one and he knitted me a jumper, a really cool jumper in my favourite colours, would I dump him? And if you dump someone when they’ve knitted you something, do you have to give it back?’

  ‘Bee, I think this is taking an odd little superstition just a bit far, okay?’ Dad said.r />
  ‘There are some knitters,’ Jazzi said, ‘that get their boyfriends to sign contracts before they start knitting a jumper.’

  ‘Contracts?’

  ‘Mmm. So, for example, I’d get your dad to sign a contract stating that if he dumped ... I mean, if the relationship between us ended, say, up to six months after the jumper was finished, I’d get to keep the jumper. He’d have to give it back.’

  ‘You’re making this up,’ Dad said, laughing.

  ‘No, Nick, it’s true. Why not? Think of the time and effort that gets put into something like a man’s jumper. The yarn alone – well, the yarn for your vest wasn’t exactly cheap. If you spend time making something, you want it to be the best possible thing you can make, don’t you? You don’t want to skimp on the yarn or do a second-rate design. You want it to be a work of art. It should be a work of art. Something you can hand over with pride and something the other person can wear with pride.’

  ‘It’s only knitting.’ Dad smiled. ‘I mean, it’s not Michelangelo’s ceiling or anything. It’s just a jumper.’

  I thought for a minute I could see tears coming into Jazzi’s eyes, but she turned away from us before I could be certain and busied herself in the cutlery drawer, getting ice-cream spoons. When she turned back, she wore a half-smile on her face.

  ‘Perhaps knitting is as close as you can get to the Sistine Chapel. Perhaps knitting is your way of expressing, not just love for the recipient of the knitting but love of colour, texture and pattern. And you know you’re not Michelangelo, because you failed art because the art teacher was some ghastly woman who thought you should be more like your ... well, someone else, and you weren’t, but you were good with some things and colour and patterns were those things. So what you do with your knitting is as important to you as Michelangelo’s chapel was to him. I’d want a contract to get back that knitting.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Dad said, ‘I’m sure you would. And I’d be happy to sign one, believe me.’

  ‘Oh, Nick, I didn’t mean you. I’m sorry. I just meant in general.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if they wore it and felt really bad because they’d dumped you?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Jazzi said.

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ Dad said. ‘Who wants this ice-cream?’