And sometimes I think that too. Who needs the wild girl?
Mum writes out poems and sticks them on the fridge. Not her own poems, just poems she likes. When I go to the fridge to get the milk for my Weetbix there is a new one.
You that come to birth and bring the mysteries.
Your voice-thunder makes us very happy
Roar, lion of the heart,
And tear me open.
Rumi
Like I said, Mum is a bit supernatural. She senses things. She is always standing there looking at something, getting the sense of it. She is standing in the doorway looking at me in that way now.
‘Joey, do you want to go for a walk?’ she says, as if she knows what I want or need more than I do.
I do want to go for a walk. I can’t stop wondering about the wild girl, the Queen of Small Things.
But I can’t go up the hill without feeling like I’m going to battle. She has turned the hill into a place to be fought for. But I’m not going to accept defeat either. I may be a nice guy, but I’m not a quitter.
After school, I’m striding up the hill. I may not have a spear, but I’ve got something. Gall? Readiness? Determination? Courage? Did Burke and Wills have that? They were the explorers who are famous for not making it. Funny thing to be famous for. Though they don’t know this, of course, as they died along the way. Somewhere between Melbourne and the Gulf of Carpentaria they died of starvation and beri-beri.
Apparently Burke, who was the leader, foolishly shot at some Aborigines who would otherwise have given him seedcakes. Poor Wills. What could be worse than being second-in-command to an incompetent leader on a failed expedition and dying while you’re at it?
Speaking of second-in-command, I’ve got Black Betty bounding beside me. I would have had Opal too, but I got her off my trail by showing her Mum’s chocolate stash in the desk drawer. It was a hard secret to give up, but that just shows how determined I am.
This time, I approach the treehouse with stealth. Not because I’m afraid, but because I need to be alert, ready for anything—it could be bombardment with small hard objects, or it could be just a plain but gutting attack of meanness. I have to be strong inwardly and outwardly too. Ready.
Roar, lion of the heart.
There is a path that leads around and up the hill. It’s yellow dirt with white quartz stones that gleam rough and hot. On the right of the track the hill falls away to a tangle of scrub, gorse, wattle and grasses where the slope is cut into for the railway track. On the left is the sweeping mound of the hill, straw-coloured, blanketed in weeds and scattered with peach and nectarine trees and hollyhock in spring when it all turns green again. I am coming up the left side, which means, if she’s in the treehouse, she won’t see me coming.
I can hear a sound that is so soft I am almost under the tree branches before I can tell what it is.
It’s singing, as pretty and melodic as birds.
Wild Girl, the Queen of Small Things, is singing.
I picture her lying on her back gazing up at the leaf-dappled sky, enjoying her empire in the trees, singing to the sky. Her voice is so much sweeter than she is. The song is tuneful but strange. It’s old fashioned and not in English. It’s not in Spanish either. (I know because we learn Spanish at school.) In fact, there is nothing familiar about it, not the words, or the melody or the way she is singing it. Wild Girl sings like a shepherdess in an ancient village, herding her sheep. She sings as if her song is a dream.
I stand still to consider this. Wild Girl is a puzzle that doesn’t make sense to me. I have to get her to talk to me. I make my way quietly and stand beneath the treehouse. I don’t know what I want, maybe just to work out who she is. Or to show her that I am…whatever it is I am.
I climb up the wooden struts. The singing continues. I put my head through the opening.
She sees me the same moment I see her. She is crouched down on her knees, but she sits up, startled, and swallows her song whole.
She doesn’t shout at me. She doesn’t turn fierce at all. Her whole face opens, as if something wondrous has happened, and she stares at me as if I’m a long-lost friend returned. Then she blinks and drops her gaze. In her palm is an acorn, and she holds it tenderly, as if she had been soothing it with her song.
She says, without looking at me, ‘We’ve been expecting you.’
Who does she mean? Who is expecting me? Have I walked into a trap?
‘We?’ I ask.
‘Yes, we.’ She sweeps her hand towards the floor where her strange game is set out. ‘Us,’ she says.
Us? Wild Girl and the little things? She isn’t kidding. I can see she expects me to enter her game.
I’m sort of used to this. Because of Opal. Opal does it with her friends. They wear old hats and pink wire wings, and they build palaces in the wormwood bush, make potions out of calendula petals and invent worlds where they are queens. If you happen to see them while they are in that world, you have to play along. It’s only fair with little kids.
But Wild Girl isn’t a little kid.
I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure I want to be a part of her game. But if I say the wrong thing, I feel like I will ruin the game, and I do want to make peace, after all. If I ask her to explain, that would be like breaking the spell. I’ve read enough fairy tales to know that. And Wild Girl is a bit like someone in a fairy tale. She wears a rustcoloured dress, which is way too big for her, with a sky-blue spotted tie for a belt. Around her neck is a sea-worn pebble on a piece of string, and her feet are bare. Her hair is as black as night and her skin is white—she is half day, half night, half Queen, half wild girl.
‘Okay, so introduce me,’ I say. ‘Like I said the other day, I’m Joey.’
She gives a sly smile of approval. Then lifts her nose in a superior way.
‘Not everyone is ready to be introduced. Names are private. You give yours too fast.’
Too fast? A name is a name. Why make mysteries out of simple things? This is why girls make me squirm. I try again.
‘What were you singing?’
Her eyebrows lift. She is surprised I heard her but she shows no embarrassment. I get the feeling her singing is private, but not in a shameful way like my guitar playing. She leans forward, glues her gaze on me as hard as she can and whispers, ‘I am singing them down.’
‘Singing who down?’
She flicks her head, glancing down at the small things, then back to me.
We stare at each other. I had expected her to be secretive or proud, but this is just strange. I have no idea what she means.
‘Down from where?’ I ask.
She nods her head up towards the blue sky. ‘From the Plains of Khazar.’
‘The Plains of Khazar?’ I repeat. It seems I have landed in a fairy tale.
‘It’s where Mumija is.’ She picks up the acorn between her thumb and forefinger and shows it to me. ‘This is Mumija.’
I don’t know what to say.
‘There! You have a name now,’ she declares. ‘Mumija. She is the queen. She protects you from storms. From loneliness.’
She whispers this last word. Loneliness. It’s as if she didn’t want me to hear it. She quickly looks away.
I lean closer. ‘When you say you sing them down, what do you mean? Aren’t they already here?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, I sing them down from the Plains of Khazar.’
Then she jumps up and, as if none of this has happened, and she pushes her hands up towards the Ford-Falcon-bonnet roof.
‘Can you help me, please? I need someone to hold it here, while I hammer in this nail.’
The Plains of Khazar have vamoosed. She has closed the door on her fairy tale.
I stand up and help her heave the roof towards the trunk of the tree where she has nailed some wooden struts to support it. I have to watch where I stand to avoid knocking over any of the small things.
‘Do all of these things have a name?’ I ask.
She hammer
s a nail and frowns. ‘Of course they do. You have a name… Everything does.’
‘What’s the tree’s name?’ It occurs to me that maybe she is right. Maybe I just haven’t thought about this before.
‘I don’t know everything’s name. What’s his name?’ She points down at Black Betty, who is curled up at the bottom of the trunk.
‘She’s Black Betty.’
She gazes down at Black Betty and calls her name. ‘You’re lucky to have a dog. I just have the birds.’
‘What birds?’ I say.
She stares up into the tree. ‘All of them: the little crows, the wood swallows, the white-winged choughs and magpies. I’ve even seen a pair of rose robins. Their nests are made of lichen and moss and they’re lined with fur and bound with cobwebs. If I was very small, that’s where I’d sleep.’
‘Which school do you go to? It sounds like you go to bird school.’
‘I don’t go to school. I learn everything here.’
‘I thought everyone had to go to school.’
‘Who says? I make up my own mind.’
‘Don’t your parents tell you to go to school?’
She turns away from me and stares out over the hill. Her arms rest on the side of the treehouse. I guess she makes up her own mind about what she wants to talk about, too.
I stare out through the peppercorn branches to the sky and the curve of the hill and the tops of the town’s houses. It’s still my hill. But maybe it can be hers as well. I haven’t decided.
For a while we don’t say anything. It feels okay to say nothing. Usually silence between people makes me uncomfortable, but with Wild Girl it’s different. She doesn’t seem to care whether I speak or not. I like it. I like the feeling of being in a game, of not knowing what to believe. I can be Mohammed Ali. I can be Neil Armstrong.
Maybe I can walk on the Plains of Khazar.
‘Do you need any help?’ I ask. ‘I’ve got lots of stuff at home that you could use. I mean, did you build this on your own? Did someone help you?’
I’m imagining raiding my dad’s shed. In an instant I have switched from resenting Wild Girl and the treehouse to wanting to help her finish it. So much for my speech about not owning the hill.
She pushes the side of the treehouse to show its stability. It’s not really very stable at all, but I don’t mention this.
‘No one helped me. I learned how to build it myself, from a book. The hardest thing was finding the roof and getting all the stuff here. It took me a long time.’
‘Where did you get the tools?’
‘I know someone. He has a shed full of stuff. He let me have them.’
I can tell she is lying. She isn’t looking at me. She is frowning into the distance. I figure now is not the right time to talk about lying. Maybe I’m wrong anyway.
‘Why did you build a treehouse? It’s a big project to do on your own.’
She turns to me. ‘A treehouse?’ She scoffs and shakes her head. ‘This is not a treehouse.’
‘What is it then?’
She looks confused. Either she has never really thought about what it is or she has a secret purpose for it, which she isn’t ready to disclose. She turns back to stare out over the hill.
‘It’s halfway to Khazar,’ she says. ‘It’s a platform. So I can reach the clouds. I have a wind telephone, too.’
‘A wind telephone?’
‘Yes, the wind carries the voices down to me, and I speak through the phone.’
She turns towards me, drawing herself up. It’s as if she is trying to make herself bigger, more believable. ‘If you want to help me you can bring me some food. Bread and Nutella. My dad never buys stuff like that. That’s what I want. Do you sing?’
‘Not really,’ I say. I’m perplexed. What has singing got to do with this cloud platform? Or the wind telephone?
She shrugs. ‘So I’ll teach you. You bring me some food; I’ll bring you some songs. Deal?’ She holds out her hand to shake.
I don’t want to sing, and I’m not really one for making deals, but I shake on it anyway. For her sake.
I turn to leave and then I remember I don’t even know her name. But I have an idea.
‘Since I don’t know your name, and your platform looks like a spaceship, I’m going to call you Martian. Marsh for short. Okay?’
I don’t tell her that even though I know the chance of a Martian spacecraft visiting Earth is miniscule, I still like to imagine it’s possible. She certainly doesn’t let reality get in the way of her ideas.
‘Marsh?’ She says the word and tilts her head, as if trying it on for size. She acts nonchalant, but I can see she is pleased. She likes it. She holds out her hand to shake again, as if this is also a deal.
‘Well if I’m a Martian, that makes this hill Mars, so see you tomorrow Joey planet walker,’ she says.
‘See ya, Marsh.’
At home, Mum is making dinner. She is peeling a sweet potato. Opal and Dad are playing cards.
‘Nice walk, Joey?’ Mum is checking, since it was her idea for me to go for a walk.
‘She’s making salad again,’ says Opal, screwing up her face in disgust. Mum often makes elaborate salads, as she calls them. Opal hates them, elaborate or not. Opal won’t eat anything that isn’t cooked and at least partially covered with cheese. It’s a constant battle between her and Mum. Mum sneaks lettuce leaves into Opal’s cheese sandwiches. Opal pulls the cucumber out of her nori rolls.
‘Snap!’ says Dad, slamming his hand on the card pile.
‘Oh, nooo!’ cries Opal, slumping on the table. ‘I lost concentration.’
‘Just the thought of cucumber and you’re a gonna,’ I say, keeping the conversation away from my walk. I don’t want to tell anyone about Marsh yet. I sort of like the secret. It makes me feel like I’ve got something special going on that needs privacy and tenderness if it’s going to grow in any way. If I say anything about my walk, Mum will see that I’m covering up something—she always does. And then it will be out. Best to steer the talk away from the walk.
‘What’s Opal having?’ I ask. Opal usually ends up with something different if it’s elaborate salad for dinner.
‘Cheese omelette!’ Opal beams.
For me, cheese omelette and elaborate salad are pretty equal, though possibly because I sort of suffer all the salad stuff in the hope that it will make me tough and sporty or give me some other heroic quality. Nothing so far. Still, I hear it takes a lot of greens and you have to chew them well.
I go to the fridge to get Black Betty her meat-and-oat mash for dinner, also to see what food I could get for Wild Girl. For Marsh. As soon as I say it like that in my head, it sounds like I know her, like Digby or Max.
Marsh.
The truth is we don’t have Nutella here. If we did, Opal would just guts it all down when no one was looking. We have peanut butter and honey. So either I buy some Nutella or I just take her some peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches instead. I could make myself extra for lunch tomorrow. No one would notice.
Does she want Nutella or is she just hungry and Nutella came to mind? She is pretty skinny, but then so am I, and that’s just the way I am—it’s not because I’m hungry.
But Marsh could be hungry. She could be anything. She could be completely crazy or a fine actor or wildly imaginative or really living in another reality. I can’t tell, but I’m interested to find out.
What does Marsh admire? Digby is a straight shooter, it’s all bugs and creatures, the wonders of the natural world. I admire that. He’s not influenced by what everyone else thinks. It’s not cool to be into insects, but he doesn’t care. He sees the other guys almost as if they were insects. He watches them with distant curiosity, and then he walks along the creek and hunts for dragonflies. Whereas I walk past the music room at school where Kenny and the guys are rehearsing for the Battle of the Bands, and I look in with intense yearning, and then I walk on, acting as casual as anything, when really I’m churned up.
B
ut Marsh…I get the feeling Marsh isn’t even looking at anyone else. Marsh is in her own world. Marsh even makes her own world—a world of clouds and wind and birds and small things.
I don’t like to wonder about where we all fit. It’s like imagining yourself in a big race with every kid you know, and no matter which way you picture it, you aren’t winning, you aren’t even in the running. In fact you gave up early on, kicked off your running shoes, hung them over your shoulder and walked away, acting like you didn’t care anyway, because some part of you really didn’t care.
But some part of you did. And the part of you that did care is kicking the part of you that didn’t care, and the part that didn’t care just wants to wake up in the sun and not worry about anything.
At school, Pim Wilder tells the class that eleven per cent of the world’s population is left-handed. He also tied a papier-mâché angel with cockatoo-feather wings and peach-pip eyes to the flag pole, and it was hoisted up instead of the flag. It caused a good commotion. Teachers got stroppy. Kids threw stuff at it. Pim never said he did it, but I know he did.
I’m one of the eleven per cent of the world’s left-handers. But I don’t pipe up about it. Part of me wants to. The other part doesn’t care. If I could shine on the sporting field, maybe I’d be up for a bit of boasting. Or if I had a band, like Kenny’s, that would be something. If I had that Neil Armstrong grit, I’d just go in and ask Kenny if I could join.
I walk home with Digby. The frogs sound lazy like summer and fat and full of their croaking song, and dragonflies zip around as if in a mad tizz. The reeds have that tall, secretive air, which means they are probably harbouring snakes. Digby is looking out for water boatmen and mayflies. I’m not looking out for anything; I’m just looking. I’ve got my extra peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches as well as an apple, some roasted cashews and a blueberry muffin—all squirrelled away for Marsh.
Digby says, ‘A snail can sleep for three years straight. Imagine that. You could go to sleep a kid and wake up a teenager. Or you could skip puberty and go straight to the pub!’
Marsh and Me Page 3
