It's Not All About YOU, Calma!

by Barry Jonsberg

  BARRY JONSBERG was born in Liverpool, England and now lives and works in Darwin, Australia. As a student, he was so desperate to avoid work that he stowed away in a university department for years, eventually emerging into the real world, blinking and pale, with two degrees in English literature. The whole business with Kiffo and the Pitbull was first published in Australia in April 2004 where it was short-listed in the 2005 Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Awards, Older Readers. It was published in the UK and the US in 2005.

  Barry is a supporter of Liverpool FC and, after the 2005 Champions League final, believes firmly in miracles. He also enjoys watching cricket and is convinced England will regain the Ashes before he dies. It’s not all about YOU, Calma! is his second book for young adults.

  PRAISE FOR

  THE WHOLE BUSINESS WITH KIFFO AND THE PITBULL

  ‘This is the best teen fiction I have read in years. Barry Jonsberg’s first novel is an absolute riot. As hilarious as it is poignant, The whole business with Kiffo and the Pitbull should be on every Year 10 syllabus in the country. If this book doesn’t make them want to read, nothing will.’

  Cameron Woodhead, THE AGE

  ‘This first novel is very funny, serious and brilliant.’

  Centre for Youth Literature

  ‘Calma [has a] chatty, verbose style, crammed with hilarious asides and observations of school and life . . . please Barry Jonsberg, write another story for Calma.’

  Diana Hodge, VIEWPOINT

  ‘Witty and original, this is one story not to be missed.’

  Bea, YARA WEBSITE

  Barry Jonsberg

  It’s not all about YOU,

  Calma!

  First published in 2005

  Copyright © Barry Jonsberg 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Jonsberg, Barry, 1951– .

  It’s not all about YOU, Calma!

  ISBN 1 74114 484 1.

  I. Title.

  A823. 4

  Design by Ellie Exarchos

  Cover image: photolibrary.com/CathyCrawford

  Set in 11/16 Minion by Midland Typesetters

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Teachers’ notes for It’s not all about YOU, Calma!

  are available from www.allenandunwin.com

  For Nita . . . by far

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Six snippets

  Chapter 2: Getting to know your narrator

  Chapter 3: Pressures on the Fridge

  Chapter 4: Peace offering

  Chapter 5: All about relationships

  Chapter 6: Vanessa gets excited

  Chapter 7: Keeping the Fridge up to speed

  Chapter 8: Finding the Fridge is a fibber

  Chapter 9: Just your average week

  Chapter 10: Just your average hairdo

  Chapter 11: A reflection on the positives in life, after mature consideration

  Chapter 12: Just your average date, part one

  Chapter 13: Just your average date, part two

  Chapter 14: Calma hits the trail

  Chapter 15: From harlot to heroine

  Chapter 16: Fifteen minutes of fame

  Chapter 17: Sunday, bloody Sunday

  Chapter 18: The seal on the Fridge comes unstuck

  Chapter 19: Vanessa and the stars

  Chapter 20: A different kind of statement

  Chapter 21: Time for action

  Chapter 22: Facing the demon

  Chapter 23: Trying to move the Fridge

  Chapter 24: Many miserable returns

  Chapter 25: Thai died

  Chapter 26: Fallout

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Six snippets

  One

  It was a wet-season day in the tropics. Swollen clouds swept in from the south and squatted over my house. A massive clap of thunder shook the floors and gave the signal for the clouds to discharge their load. A gentle drumroll of rain on the roof built to a thrumming crescendo. The temperature dropped instantly by ten degrees. Through the window I could see water flooding off the roof, a curtain enveloping the house. The roar of rain drowned out all other noises.

  No one deserved to be outside in that.

  The doorbell rang. It usually had the decibel count of a nuclear warning siren, but I could barely hear it against the background clamour. I put down my book and peered out the front window. Even under the best viewing circumstances you could see only a small portion of anyone standing at the door. Perhaps a profile of buttocks and, if you were lucky, the back of a head. But with the rain the way it was, I couldn’t see anything.

  I hesitated. Mum was at work and I was home alone. Not normally a problem, but the weather made me wary. Who would be out in such a downpour? To my mind, there were only two possibilities – a mad axe-murderer or a religious fundamentalist. If I was really unlucky it would be the latter. I suppose I could have pretended not to exist, but I’m a person with a social conscience. The weather was foul. I’d have let in a cane toad for shelter and a mug of Milo.

  So I opened the door.

  The man was below medium height. Actually, well below medium height. He was wearing a white shirt and a broad silk tie decorated with Santa Clauses. He held a dripping bag in one hand and swept sodden, thinning hair from his eyes with the other. Niagara Falls flowed over him. His clothes stuck to his body and as he shifted position I heard the squelch of rainwater in shoes. He looked at me and blinked rain. A small smile, hesitant, unsure, played around his lips.

  ‘Hello, Calma,’ he said.

  ‘Dad!’ I yelled. ‘My God! Dad! Don’t stand out there in the pouring rain, Dad.’

  His smile broadened.

  ‘No,’ I added. ‘Piss off!’

  And I slammed the door in his face.

  Two

  My local store glories in the name of Crazi-Cheep, which probably gives you a clue about its marketing philosophy. From the outside it looks like a brick dunny. The inside is more depressing.

  It’s one of those places that prides itself on delivering the lowest prices to customers. It advertises on local TV channels by assembling a cast of plug-ugly employees dressed in spectacularly nasty uniforms and forcing them to sing a song with banal lyrics, written by a tone-deaf lower primate. The employees all look embarrassed, and so they should. You could force slivers of red hot bamboo up my fingernails, lash me with rusty barbed wire, and I still wouldn’t do it.

  The staff are very young, presumably so the company can pay them about two dollars an hour and pass on the savings to customers. Crazi-Cheep closes the checkouts by degrees during peak times, so that ultimately there is a queue of fifty people at one till, staffed by a pubescent operator prone to pimples, lank hair
and narcolepsy. You can visibly age in one of their queues. Not that anyone would notice, because most of the customers are so old they’d be candidates for carbon dating. You’d think that, perched on the brink of extinction, they’d have better things to do than stand around waiting for service or death. It’s often a fairly tight call which will come first.

  Crazi-Cheep is not high on my list of not-to-be-missed shopping experiences.

  This, however, was an emergency. I braved the depressing canned music – a compilation CD probably entitled Major Manure of the Seventies – and took my place in a queue whose length might have been justifiable if they were handing out free hip replacements. The old lady in front of me was certainly a worry. It was only the fact that she wheezed from time to time that indicated she was still breathing.

  Time passed. I grew a few centimetres and the old lady shrank a few. The CD was on repeat and a particularly annoying track came on again. It was like being poked in the ear with a sharp pencil. Finally, it was almost my turn to be served.

  In Sicily they call it the Thunderbolt. I read about it somewhere. It’s when you see someone and all these hormonal reactions kick in. Your heart thumps, you sweat profusely, your stomach dips to your shoelaces and bits and pieces you didn’t know you possessed start tingling like you’ve been plugged into the mains electricity. Well, that’s what happened to me when I saw . . . him.

  I don’t want you to think I am a shallow, superficial person, so I won’t start with his physical appearance.

  Stuff it. Of course I will.

  He was tall and rangy. As I watched him scan a tin of Spam [and he did it so effortlessly, with such grace and ease of movement, like a balletic sequence] I caught the hint of lean muscles flexing beneath the uniform. I could picture him on a beach, the sun reflecting off defined biceps and pectorals you could graze your knuckles on. His face was classically sculpted, high cheekbones framing a pert and flawless nose. His eyes were deep brown, liquid with sensitivity and hidden passion; his skin olive and gleaming beneath the overhead fluorescent lights. During a particularly tricky scanning manoeuvre, involving shrink-wrapped bok choy, he parted his full lips to reveal faultless, even teeth that flashed one brilliant shimmering star. Glossy black hair fell in a perfect curtain over his left eye.

  Basically, he was all right, if you like that kind of thing.

  As for his personality [the most important factor, of course] well . . . hey, how the hell would I know? I stood there with a glazed expression on my face, like someone had smacked me around the head with a frozen chicken carcass. Luckily the old dear in front of me was not the most efficient of customers. The Greek God had finished scanning her groceries and she was gazing into the middle distance with rheumy eyes.

  ‘That’ll be twenty-five dollars and fifty-five cents, please,’ he said.

  I loved him for the ‘please’. What a polite and considerate young man! And his voice was like honey dripping over truffles . . .

  ‘Hey?’ said the crone.

  ‘Twenty-five dollars and fifty-five cents, please.’

  She looked amazed, like the last thing she had been expecting was to have to pay for the groceries. I knew what would come next. She’d burrow into her bag for her purse, which would be right at the bottom. She’d pull out bus passes, framed photographs of her grandchildren, a prosthetic leg and a packet of surgical bandages and each item would be placed carefully on the counter. Finally, when she had accumulated enough material to fill a wheelie bin, she’d find the purse, count out the sum in five cent pieces and painfully repack. Then she’d want her FlyBuys card, which would be in a secret compartment at the bottom of her handbag, and we’d go through the whole process again.

  Trust me. I’ve been there. I’ve known glaciers that move quicker than some of these people.

  This time, though, I wasn’t complaining. It gave me the chance to drink in every detail of Jason’s appearance. Jason. He had a little name tag. I love the name Jason. Don’t you love the name Jason? It’s classical and conjures images of flashing swords, short tunics and Golden Fleece. I was so struck I didn’t have time to panic. It hadn’t occurred to me that once the old lady had hobbled off it would be my turn to be served and, for a moment at least, Jason’s attention would be focused on me.

  When he turned to me my hair clogged up with grease and four pimples spontaneously erupted on my nose. I wanted to die.

  And then it got worse. I remembered what I had been standing in line for half a millennium to purchase. It was clamped in my hand. I froze. I wanted to turn back, but forty-five pensioners were behind me and they didn’t look friendly. Four and a half thousand years of accumulated age gazed at me with implacable bloodshot eyes. With a sinking feeling I placed my purchase on the belt and watched it slide towards Jason.

  Feminine Hygiene Products. Or FHP, as I like to call them.

  Hang on. Don’t get me wrong. I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, what was I going to say if it had been a jar of pickled gherkins? ‘Hi, Jason. My name is Calma Harrison. I don’t menstruate, but I love spicy stuff.’No. The trouble was it was Crazi Brand FHP. I mean, Crazi Brand. Not even FHP in a cool, sophisticated box that hinted at a high-flying businesswoman with a mobile phone and investment properties on the Gold Coast. Just a tacky white box with Crazi Brand in big green letters. They should be labelled Cheapskate Crap for Losers. It would be more honest.

  Jason smiled at me.

  ‘How are you today?’ he said.

  It briefly crossed my mind to reply, ‘Great, thanks, Jason. In full flow and deliriously happy.’ I didn’t, though. Instead I mumbled, ‘Good.’ Can you believe that? Good! Boy, I blew him away with wit and sharp repartee there, didn’t I?

  ‘That’ll be two dollars twenty cents, please.’

  I dug in my purse for a five dollar note. I could feel the pimples on my nose pulsing. They were probably flashing in sequence. If it had been dark they could have used my face for disco lighting. Forty-five pensioners breakdancing in the aisles.

  Look, by that stage, I just wanted to get out. With any luck, Jason might not have noticed me. Not properly. Not enough to recognise me in the future. I tried to keep my lank, greasy hair over my face, though he could probably still detect the pimples jutting through like some malign upheaval. Thank God I wasn’t wearing a name badge.

  ‘Calma Harrison, is that you?’

  The woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder. There was not much I could do. I turned. It was Mrs Elliott from the municipal library. I had known her since I was four years old – I virtually lived at the library until the age of eleven. She was well past retirement, but no one cared because she was popular with customers, sharp as a razor blade and knew her books. The way she talked about Charles Dickens, you got the impression they had hung out together at the local mall. Normally, I would have been happy to see her. Now, I wanted to shrivel.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Elliott,’ I said.

  Jason handed me my change and I tried to slink away. Mrs Elliott was having none of it. She piled the rest of her groceries on the belt and continued to talk.

  ‘My goodness, Calma. Those pimples look angry. Are you washing your face properly, dear?’

  Not knowing she was one remark away from hospitalisation due to an unfortunate accident with my fingers and her eyes, Mrs Elliott continued blithely.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, glancing at my purchase through the transparent supermarket bag. The plastic was so thin it could be measured in microns. They have expensive machines in hospital laboratories that can’t cut as thin. ‘I understand. I always used to get a bad complexion at that time of the month myself.’

  I was surprised she could remember that far back. I wasn’t surprised things were getting worse and worse. An involuntary fart would have capped the whole experience.

  ‘They’re for my mother,’ I said.

  Calma, you are a sad, depressing individual.

  ‘Look, Mrs Elliott, I’ve got to fly,’ I continued, backing away.
‘See you soon.’

  ‘Get some ointment for those pimples, dear,’ she yelled at me as I scuttled through the automatic door. ‘And resist the urge to squeeze them.’

  I headed for home. There was a small crawl space in the roof and I was staying in it until I was forty.

  Three

  I’m learning heaps in English. Year 11 sure is a step up in complexity.

  My class learned about unreliable narrators today.

  Okay. Pin back your ears and pay attention. I’m only going to tell you once and there will be a test at the end. Ready?

  I am a narrator and I am unreliable.

  All narrators are unreliable, because all people are unreliable. We might not lie, exactly, but our narration is coloured by our experiences, our prejudices or our misconceptions. One person’s truth is not another person’s truth.

  With me so far? Good.

  Readers of a novel written in the first person, therefore, shouldn’t necessarily believe the ‘I’ within the narrative is telling the objective truth. Because the objective truth doesn’t exist. Try as the narrator might, he or she is bound to be unreliable because human frailties afflict us all.

  Good stuff, eh?

  So. Where does all of this leave us: you – the reader – and me – the narrator? Let me tell you. Unless I am much mistaken, you want to know about my father. You are probably curious about why I was so hostile towards him. Something has happened in the past, you are thinking. Well, take a prize off the top shelf. And guess who is going to tell you the nasty, sordid details? Me, obviously. I’m the narrator. But as a narrator, I’m unreliable, so how do you know if what I’m saying is accurate? It’s a problem. So, here’s what I’m going to do. I am going to try, really hard, to be as objective as I can. I’ll let you know the facts in plain words, like a newspaper article. I will avoid:

  1. any display of emotion;

  2. any use of colourful language;

  3. reference to any event that is not historically [herstorically] accurate;