‘There was a carton, I remember. Is that what you mean?’
‘It had my stuff in it.’ I was trying to stay patient, but it was hard.
‘Well, the carton I found had some weird old things in it, some of which I threw out and some of which I op-shopped.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘I did, Beatrice, yes.’
‘But that was my stuff.’
‘Well, it wasn’t particular stuff. It was just a bunch of rubbish. That’s all.’
‘There was my old bee bowl I used when I was a baby.’
‘There may have been something like that.’
‘It had flowers on the side and a bee on the inside.’
‘I don’t remember,’ Jazzi said.
‘It was important,’ I said. ‘It was the bowl my mother used to feed me from. And there was a skirt she made. It was moss green and had a bee flying to a flower appliquéd on it.’
‘Oh yes, I remember that,’ Jazzi said. ‘I thought it was very pretty. I left that at the op-shop for some other little girl to wear.’
‘That was my skirt,’ I wailed. ‘My mother made that skirt for me.’
‘Well, I didn’t know that,’ Jazzi said. ‘Your father said to clear out anything that was in the room, so that’s what I did.’
‘There was a little pincushion, too.’
‘It was torn,’ Jazzi said. ‘I just...’
‘I bought that for my mum. I bought it for her on the last Mother’s Day we ever had.’
‘Oh, Bee, I didn’t know that. No one told me.’
‘They were my precious things. There was a spoon with a daisy on top.’
‘The daisy was chipped.’
‘And a glass with painted flowers on it.’
‘I didn’t think. The flowers looked, I don’t know, kind of...’
‘I painted those flowers. It went with the pincushion.’ I was crying properly now. I’d rescued those things from Dad’s big clean out. They weren’t precious to anyone else, I knew that when Dad tried to throw them out, and they weren’t things like photographs that you could display anywhere, but they were special all the same.
‘Oh, Bee.’ Jazzi turned away from the chicken and tried to hug me without touching me with her stuffing fingers. I tensed all my muscles so she couldn’t, and we stood there awkwardly until she gave up. When she pulled away we were both crying, but I pretended not to see her tears.
‘I hate you,’ I told her. ‘I really do. You’ve ruined my life, Jasmine.’
I wouldn’t come out for dinner that night. Even the roast chicken smell wasn’t enough to coax me out. I pulled out all my photos of my mother and me and I started a gallery on my wall. I snuck out later, when they were watching TV, and stole the photograph of Dad and Mum on their wedding day from where Dad kept it in the top drawer of the side dresser, and I took the big one of Mum and me as a baby, for good measure. He didn’t deserve them.
I stuck them in my school bag. I couldn’t live with Dad and Jazzi any longer. I wasn’t sure where I was going to go but I certainly didn’t want to live with her. If you saw the old things she kept! A set of old jars with Flour, Sugar and Tea on them, some little spoons – too little to even eat ice-cream with – that had windmills on top, an old teapot with a cracked lid, and some hats no one would dream of wearing that Dad had to hang on a hook thing he had to put up in our entrance hall. Anyone who loved me, anyone who even liked me a little bit, would have seen the bees on my stuff and known.
I put my favourite jeans, a couple of tops, my best skirt, my five-year diary which had three years to go, my best glitter pens, my wombat cap Uncle Rob brought me back from Wilson’s Promontory and all my knickers and my frog pyjamas in my school bag. I took out my old lunch box but left a couple of fruit bars that were right at the bottom.
I wrote a note for Lulu and Fifi:
Dear Lulu and Fifi
I’m sorry I can’t take you with me but I don’t know whether I’ll end up anywhere guinea pig friendly, so you’ll have to stay here for the time being. I hope Dad remembers to feed you. Don’t accept anything from the woman. It might be poison. She’s the reason I’m running away. She threw away my bee box and I hate her. I will always hate her because she’s hateful and she doesn’t even understand who I am and she doesn’t care.
Love
Bee-who-is-never-Beatrice-except-on-the-school-roll.
I didn’t run away that night. I don’t like the dark much. Running away was scary enough without it being dark.
I ran away early the next morning. It was pretty easy. Jazzi and Dad were still asleep. I put the ten dollars I’d been saving in my pocket, picked up my bag, put the note in Lulu and Fifi’s mail box, made myself a sandwich, and took the rest of the box of fruit bars, a huge piece of carrot cake and three green apples. I had three pieces of toast for breakfast even though I normally have only two and drank a glass and a half of milk. Then I cleaned my teeth, packed my toothbrush and simply walked out the door, up the driveway and on to the road.
It wasn’t until I got past the shops – looking into the aquarium shop because I always do – that I realised I couldn’t go to Nanna’s because she wouldn’t be there and I couldn’t go to Stan’s because he was with Nanna and they were paddling in Lake Jindabyne and eating trout Stan caught from his boat. I couldn’t go to Uncle Rob’s because I wasn’t really sure how to get there. I certainly couldn’t go to Lucy’s or Sally’s because their mothers would send me straight home again.
There was really only one place I could go.
I went back to the shops and used some of my ten dollars on two sticky buns – one with pink icing and one with apple – and then headed for Harley’s house.
The lounge chairs had been moved. At first I thought I might have the wrong house, but I knocked at the door anyway and Harley opened it. He had streaks of grey all over his face and there were blobs of paint in his hair.
‘To Be!’ he said and peered around me. ‘It’s not Wednesday, is it? Have they taken some days away?’
‘Jazzi’s not here,’ I said. ‘And no, it’s Saturday. I was wondering if I could use your phone, please. I’m running away.’
‘There’s no phone here,’ Harley said, ‘so I’m afraid you can’t.’ I thought he might shut the door on me, so I put my foot firmly against it.
‘I brought some sticky buns,’ I said.
‘Do you want to come in?’ Harley asked but he didn’t actually open the door any wider.
‘Yes, please.’ I squeezed in under Harley’s arm. He smelt a little. Painting is obviously hard work.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Harley was obviously ignoring the running away bit. It was a shame about the phone. I wasn’t sure how I was going to contact Uncle Rob. I had decided, walking to Harley’s, that living with Uncle Rob and Aunty Maree would be the best thing I could do. They were my family, after all. Maybe when Nanna came back I would go and live with her. Then Dad could walk over and see me whenever he wanted to.
‘No, thank you. I wouldn’t mind a glass of water, though.’
Harley looked around wildly. All the glasses I could see had paint water in them, or paintbrushes soaking.
‘I could wash one,’ I offered. I was very thirsty.
‘A cup of water, perhaps?’
‘That would be fine, thanks. Shall I cut up the buns?’
We sat eating buns. Harley didn’t seem to mind which one he ate today. Perhaps that was only a Wednesday thing.
‘How’s the painting going?’ I asked.
‘The painting is fine. Arthur is a thorn in my side. No rose, he, but thorns all the way down. He intends to sabotage my work. He has decided he is the chief loony. Why? Because his work is madder than the rest of ours. I should be running away, not you, To Be. Why are you running, anyway?’
‘Jazzi threw away my Bee box.’
‘Your Bee box?’
‘You know, a box with things in it that were mine. She didn’t really know but she sh
ould have. Anyone who called me Bee all the time would know they were Bee things.’
‘Oh dear.’ Harley’s face crumpled up. ‘What were the Bee things?’
‘Things from when I was little and my mother was alive.’
‘That’s terrible.’ Harley pushed a big piece of bun on to my plate. ‘But Jazzi can be like that. She likes clean and her own way. She made me run away, too.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, yes. When I was younger, of course, and we lived with our mother. Jazzi didn’t believe the things I told her. She said I was making up stories to get out of looking after things. I said she was the looker-afterer but she said I should be too.’
‘Hang on, Harley.’ He was talking so fast I could hardly catch up. ‘Why didn’t your mum look after things?’
‘Some things she looked after, but she worked very hard, so Jasmine was the next looker-afterer. That’s how it worked. Jasmine shouted at me because I did things wrongly. So Pepi and I ran away.’
‘The dog, Pepi?’
‘Yes. That was a very wrong wrong thing to do and I was punished – everyone punished me.’
‘What happened?’
Harley shook his head and stuffed his mouth full of sticky bun.
‘Oh, come on, Harley, tell me. As a fellow runner-away.’
‘It was horrible.’ Harley spat out bits of icing as he spoke. I pretended not to see, even though it didn’t seem to worry Harley.
‘Why? What happened?’
‘Bad bad bad, dark, rain – too cold, too windy. Couldn’t see. The voices were trying to help me but they couldn’t get through. Problems in the wires in my head. The rain. It made it too hard to hear them. I tried, in the phone box, but the numbers wouldn’t work.’
Harley’s fingers were drumming on the table, both hands, all of his fingers. He started smacking the table as though it were a bongo drum. He kept chewing his bun, even though I could have sworn he’d swallowed it all.
‘Harley,’ I said as quietly as I could while still being heard above the bongo drum. ‘Harley, it’s okay. That happened years ago, right?’
‘It was the beginning,’ Harley said, ‘and in the beginning there is always mud and coldness and you never know if you’ll be one of the saved or one of the damned. Someone or something dies. I didn’t know. I was in the phone box and I didn’t know. I was scared, Little Bee, I was too scared to go out of the phone box. I knew I had to stay there until they came to get me – they couldn’t hear me because of the rain. So I had to stay there. But I couldn’t breathe because there were no windows.’
‘There aren’t windows in phone boxes,’ I said, ‘but there aren’t doors either.’
‘There were then. There aren’t now but there were then. There were doors and no windows and the door was shut and there was no air coming in and I couldn’t make them speak to me through the rain. So I took off my shoe. My good school shoe. The one Jasmine had helped me buy and I tried to make a window myself so I could breathe. They came but the wrong ones came. That was the beginning and it was dark and cold and the dog died.’
‘What?’ This wasn’t a story I understood. ‘Why did the dog die?’
‘I can’t remember. I can’t remember everything. I’m not one of those people who remember. I’m a forgetter most of the time. I forget everything. It’s better to forget. They’ll let you begin again. Pepi was frightened by the breaking glass, and he ran out on to the road. A car came. See it’s better to forget.’
‘Oh, Harley, that must have been dreadful.’
‘It was. It was awful. I shouldn’t have taken Pepi. He was Jasmine’s dog, not even mine.’
I felt a little bit sick. It was the sticky bun, I thought, and too much toast for breakfast.
‘Maybe I’ll just have to find a phone,’ I said, getting up. I was going to take my glass and plate to the sink to wash them. That’s all I was going to do, but Harley jumped up and grabbed my arms.
‘You can’t do that,’ he said fiercely. ‘I won’t let them get you, Little Bee. They’ll turn you from To Be to Not to Be. That’s what they do. They keep you in rooms like phone boxes and there’s no one there except other ones that aren’t you but they say you’re the same as them and you miss Jasmine who cried and cried but didn’t ever stop loving you even after what you’d done. But it wasn’t your fault. If there’d been windows you wouldn’t have smashed anything. If it hadn’t been raining. If it wasn’t so dark. You can’t go, To Be. You don’t want to go there.’
He was much bigger than I was and he was holding my arms really tightly. He bent down so his face was too close to mine and I could see the patches where he hadn’t shaved very well and little black hairs were bristling out of his skin. But his eyes looked very scared and his mouth sort of looked like mouths do before their owners begin to cry.
‘Harley,’ I said, not moving. ‘Harley, it’s not raining today and it’s still very light outside. Is there anyone else here? The people who live here with you, are they here?’
I felt his grip on my arm lessen a little.
‘No, they aren’t here. They’ve run away too. They’ve run from my drawings. The drawings give us nightmares. But Tony says the drawings are good and need to be drawn. I don’t think you need to run away, Little Bee.’
‘I’ll be safe,’ I told him firmly. ‘I’m going to Uncle Rob and Aunty Maree’s. You’ve met them. They were at Jazzi’s dinner party.’
‘Jasmine will be so sad. She came to find you and even though you had taken Pepi and Pepi was dead she walked you home, holding your hand. She cried and cried behind her door but she kept looking after you. Your mother got sick because the cancer grew in her. Jasmine will keep crying.’
‘My mother’s dead, Harley, and I haven’t taken anything of Jasmine’s so she can’t be sad. She doesn’t even like me.’
‘No, you’re wrong. She will miss you and miss you. She wants someone small like you. Always. And the Worrier, of course, but you too. She will be scared and sad all over again forever.’ Harley’s chin began to wobble. I knew what that meant. I could almost feel mine start.
‘Don’t cry, Harley,’ I said. ‘Please don’t cry.’
‘You have to take me with you,’ Harley said. ‘You have to. The dark and the rain and the sudden lights will come and I won’t be able to stop them. Not by myself. Not just me, Harley Raddle. I couldn’t before and you’re too small, Bee. You’re only To Bee, you need to be more and bigger.’
‘Harley,’ I said, ‘I think you might be getting sick. Maybe we should both go back together to Jazzi, I mean Jasmine. She’ll know what to do, won’t she?’
‘I can’t.’ Harley dropped my arms and sat right down on the kitchen floor. He drew his knees up under his chin and wrapped his arms around himself as though he was very cold.
‘You can,’ I said kneeling beside him. ‘You can, Harley. I know the way and there are no phone boxes at all. We don’t need to make a phone call, we can just walk there. You and me together.’
‘What about the dog?’
‘I haven’t got a dog, Harley.’ I thought quickly. I had to make him come with me. I was too worried about him to leave him by himself. ‘I have these guinea pigs. They’re pretty cool. You haven’t seen them yet.’
Harley was rocking backwards and forwards, but when I mentioned Fifi and Lulu he stopped for a minute.
‘What have guinea pigs got to do with it?’
I shrugged. What had anything got to do with anything? Harley was crying soundlessly now, big tears rolling down his face, streaking the charcoal worse than ever.
‘They’re pretty good,’ I said. ‘They write me notes.’
‘You’re mad,’ he said. ‘Guinea pigs don’t write notes.’
‘Mine do,’ I said.
‘You’re crazy,’ he said. ‘You’re not To Be, you’ve been there, too.’
I didn’t know what he was talking about but at least he’d stopped rocking. I stood up and held my hand out to him.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can meet them.’
‘I will,’ he said and took my hand. He was surprisingly heavy to pull up but we managed and I put my bag on my back so he knew I really meant to go. I talked him out of the house. No, Harley, you don’t need to bring a tea bag. Yes, Harley, it would be okay to bring a hanky but we need to go now. No, I think your hair looks fine but you might want to wash your face. Okay, if you don’t want to, that’s fine. It was just an idea. Fifi and Lulu won’t mind.
‘I have to take the guardian doll,’ he said just when I thought we were out the front door at last. ‘If I don’t, Jasmine will think I let her die too.’
He darted inside while I tapped my foot on the front step. When he finally emerged again, he was cradling one of Jazzi’s dolls in his arms.
‘I look after it,’ he said, ‘and it should be the other way round if it’s a guardian doll. I’m always picking it up off the floor.’ He showed me the face he’d painted on it. It looked sort of like Jazzi, with a mouth that wanted to smile but didn’t seem able. He’d painted little hearts, like teardrops, on one cheek. One of her eyes was open and frightened and one was shut with words written across the lid but I didn’t have time to read them.
‘She’s not pretty,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have to make her pretty.’
‘She’s not pretty,’ I agreed, ‘but I don’t see why she should be. She’s who she is and that’s what’s important. Let’s go.’
We had managed to walk half a block, with Harley looking behind him for the darkness and up to the clouds for the rain, so we were walking pretty slowly, when I saw Jazzi’s little car zooming towards us. She did a screechy U-turn in front of us.
‘Oh, my heavens,’ she said, getting out all in a rush. ‘Oh, my goodness. Bee, Harley!’ And she ran and hugged us both together, so hard we were all crunched up and I’m sure my elbow went into Harley’s stomach but he didn’t say anything.
‘I think we’re safe,’ Harley told her, pushing her away. ‘To Be is a Been and she knows what’s going on.’
‘I went to the op-shop when I got up,’ Jazzi said, pulling me into her, ‘and I found the bee skirt. It won’t fit you any more but I wondered if we could make it into a cushion cover. I went home to find you but you weren’t there and I was so worried. I went down to Fifi and Lulu and found the note. Then I went back to the shops and that nice woman in the bakery said you’d been in for two sticky buns so I knew where you were and I just flew here as fast as I could. I was so worried.’
Being Bee Page 8
