Marsh and Me

by Martine Murray

  ‘Hey, Marsh?’

  At first there is no response. I can tell she is there though. I just can.

  She looks out, just long enough to throw something at me, before she ducks down again and calls out, ‘Go away.’

  Whatever she threw, missed me. I call back. ‘I’m not going away. I’m coming up.’ I heave myself up the tree and into the treehouse. Marsh is sitting there, in the middle of all the small things, wearing her blank face. She is dressed in her usual style. It occurs to me that she’s wearing her mother’s clothes, as they are always too big for her. This time it’s a paisley dress with floaty sleeves, which hang in wafts around her thin arms. She raises a hand with her palm flat towards me. I think she is secretly glad I am there, even if she doesn’t realise it. I feel like telling her to stop sulking, but that would get us off to a bad start. So, instead, I ignore her performance and sit down.

  ‘Marsh, I came to ask you to help me out,’ I say.

  ‘So you’re not here to snoop, then,’ she says.

  That kind of hurt, but I’m feeling strong—I can take it. I flinch a bit. ‘Did you get the food I left you?’ I ask, just to remind her that I had plenty of chances for snooping and I didn’t take them.

  Her gaze drops. As it should. She should be thanking me, instead of accusing me.

  She is quiet. I am too.

  A breeze ruffles the branches around us. Shadows sway across the floor. The little things sit there, as if stopped in mid-conversation. In that moment, it’s as if the real world is waiting like an audience for the little things to continue. The leaves and air and even the birds seem to have hushed and the little things are there, bright and vivid in the moving shadows, as if they would burst themselves into life right in front of me. I look away from them and there is Marsh, staring at me too. Something is drawing me in. Marsh is still watching me. They all are.

  Marsh hands the acorn to me. ‘Here, you hold Mumija.’

  I hold the acorn, but I feel awkward, as if something is meant to happen. But nothing does, so I put it down.

  Marsh leans towards me and whispers, ‘My mama wants to tell you something.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Yes. Mama wants to thank you for the food you gave me.’

  ‘Marsh, where is your mum?’

  Marsh picks up the acorn again and curls her hand around it.

  I lean forward. ‘No Marsh, not Mumija. Your real mum. Did she run away?’

  Marsh stares at me, but she isn’t seeing me. She stands up and takes the tiny basket down from the shelf, placing it on the floor. It is full of dried red rose petals and oak leaves. She puts the acorn in it, as if she is putting it in its bed. She does this tenderly. Her eyes move back and forth between me and the acorn. And then gazing down at the acorn she gently covers it with an oak leaf, just as you would pull a sheet over a body that had died.

  ‘Your mum died?’ I exhale the words. It had never occurred to me that she could have died.

  Marsh nods slowly.

  I don’t know what to say. I look down. I say, ‘I’m sorry.’

  For a moment it feels as if the world turns a little darker and the sadness is so quiet you can’t hear it. Birds dart from branch to branch, the wind whispers in the leaves, and the shadows slip over both of us. Across the floor there are sharpeners and belt buckles and bottle lids—all ordinary objects again. But the acorn still lies beneath its leaf, as if it has died.

  Marsh looks up. She is sitting there, cross-legged, soft, almost wilted. ‘When I was at school,’ she says, ‘the other kids thought my mum was strange because her English wasn’t very good. She was shy. She was ashamed of how bad her English was, and so she tried not to talk. And her clothes were different. That’s why I didn’t want to be Ruzica. It seemed to make me strange like her.’

  It feels as if Marsh just became real in some way that she wasn’t before. I want to tell her that the way she is different is exactly what I like about her, but I wait for her to go on.

  ‘I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to come to our house because of my parents. I didn’t want Mama to come to the school. I wouldn’t even walk near her in the street.’ Marsh’s hand moves to her neck and hangs on there.

  ‘Did she mind?’ I say.

  ‘She laughed about it. At home we were close. When she died, I couldn’t stop thinking about that, about how I was embarrassed. I was ashamed of myself. I would have done anything for her to turn up at school to pick me up then. I felt angry. I was angry at the school, at the kids in my class. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I built the cloud platform to be closer to Mama. Mumija. She is up there now.’ Marsh nods at the sky.

  ‘So it’s your mum you talk to on the wind telephone? Mumija is your mother?’

  ‘Yes. I tell her everything.’

  ‘Can you hear her? Can you really see her?’

  ‘I can see her with my mind.’

  Marsh closes her eyes for a moment as if to test this out. Then she takes a sharp breath. ‘I’m frightened that one day I will close my eyes and she won’t be there. I’ll listen for her voice and it will be gone.’

  ‘Is that why you imagine the Plains of Khazar?’

  Marsh looks away and shrugs. ‘What did you want me to help you with?’ she says. Her voice sounds like it’s been lifted out of a well.

  I want to say something, but nothing I can say is going to have the right kind of weight. All I know is my plan might have worked, but now I’m not sure quite how to carry what she has told me. All I can do is press on with the plan and hope that I’ll work it out as I go along.

  I lean back against the side of the treehouse, bend my knees up and sigh.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Here’s the problem. I accidentally told the guys at school that I had a band. With you in it. You and me. And there is a band competition coming up. And I said we were doing a song in it.’

  Marsh doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Could we do it? It’s in three weeks. We could practise every day. What do you think?’

  She gives a tiny smile. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’ve been making up songs.’ I can feel myself blushing before I’ve even finished saying it.

  Now, she really grins. She takes her hand off the acorn and leans back on her arms.

  I grin too. I’m excited. For the first time I feel like I’m in the running for something. I don’t mean to win; I just mean to participate. What a word. Participate. It’s sort of blockish. There should be another word for it—like flow, or whirl, or soar…

  Before I whirl too far, I remember the plan. I lean forward. ‘But Marsh, here’s the deal. No stealing. I’ll bring food. And no grudges.’

  She looks indignant. ‘I don’t like rules.’

  Of course, Marsh doesn’t like rules. Obedient is not something Marsh is. I have to put it another way.

  ‘What if you get to make rules, too? And they won’t be rules, just stuff we believe in.’

  Her mouth edges up into a sort of half-smile but her eyes look black and defiant. She folds her arms and sits up straight. ‘I will be the lead singer of our band.’

  ‘Deal,’ I say, and I extend my hand to shake on it.

  She shakes.

  ‘I even have a band name. Just a suggestion,’ I say. ‘Do you want to hear it?’

  She nods.

  ‘Dark Horse. You know…it means, the one not expected to win. It’s meant to be funny.’ I don’t confess that it was Max who thought of it.

  She rolls her eyes. ‘I get it.’

  ‘Do you like it?’ I ask.

  She shrugs and pushes the yoyo, which is dangling from a branch, the yoyo she calls Euphemia after the empress who wrote poems.

  ‘I don’t care so much what it’s called. I’m more interested in what we sing. Have you got a song?’ Marsh is funny about names. It’s as if she ripped up her own name and tore it into little pieces. I don’t know why she doesn’t want anyone to know she has a name, an age, a house, or a family.
/>   But having a song is something I’m funny about. I have a song, but I’m afraid for my song. I’m afraid it isn’t good enough.

  ‘Do you have one?’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  Of course she does. Marsh is fearless in that way. She wouldn’t care if her song wasn’t really the sort of song that kids listen to. She would just sing it because to her it’s worth singing.

  ‘It has to be something with easy chords,’ I say. I realise in that moment that Marsh could just take over and, since I’m just as afraid of not getting my song out as I am of keeping it in, I have to push my song forward or it won’t even get a chance. But we can do two songs in the Battle of the Bands. We can do Marsh’s song first.

  ‘Listen, I’ll sing it and then you can sing it too,’ she says.

  She closes her eyes for a moment, as if to find the song. And before she has opened them again the song pours out. Like honey. It’s mournful, golden and thick. But how can I learn it? It’s not even in English.

  ‘What do you think?’ she says.

  ‘Can you translate it? I think I would have more of a chance of learning it if I understood the words.’

  She thinks about this. Her hand fiddles with the leaf. ‘I’ll have to ask my dad,’ she says.

  ‘Why? Can’t you translate it? It’s in Serbian, isn’t it?’

  Marsh sighs. Her head sways as if she is loosening it.

  ‘Yes, it’s a Serbian song. And it should be sung in Serbian. In English, it wouldn’t make sense and my dad would be sad. Mama missed Serbia a lot. She always talked about Serbia, about my grandparents there, and her grandmother Vera, who taught her to sing and to read. She missed her village. They only came here because of the war. Mama’s grandfather used to shout out a poem to her on the phone. Mama would always repeat it to my father, especially when she got sick.’

  She stops, but I want her to go on. ‘What was the poem?’ I ask.

  Again she sighs. ‘I don’t know if it will sound right in English.’

  ‘Give it a go,’ I say.

  She draws herself up. Now she is Ruzica. She is Serbian. She says the poem slowly, as if each sentence hurts her.

  ‘The sun of alien skies,

  Will never warm you as our sun does;

  Bitter shall be each bite of your bread there,

  Where you are alone and there is no brother.’

  She sits still, waiting. I don’t know what to say, again. I’ve never had to leave my family or country.

  ‘Bitter bread—it makes you sick,’ she says hastily, sweeping the floor with her hand. She looks down to hide her face.

  I remember the story, then. Mumija, hiding on the hill, had eaten the bitter bread. The Plains of Khazar are a land where no one gets sick and no one dies. Marsh’s story is all to do with her family. And her grandfather’s poem sounds like a warning.

  ‘Was your grandfather angry that your mother left Serbia?’ I ask.

  ‘He blamed my father. Mama also blamed my father. That’s why he drinks sometimes and sleeps a lot. He is too sad to be awake. I was singing the song he sings to me. It’s a Serbian lullaby. In English the words are funny. It’s like this:

  ‘My little girl is full of big wishes

  My little girl is full of grand ideas:

  Papa, buy me a car, a bicycle and two oranges,

  Buy me a bear and a rabbit

  Papa buy me everything.’

  She sings it like a mournful plea. It makes me sad. But before I can say anything, Marsh jumps up.

  ‘I told you it makes no sense in English,’ she says.

  The next two weeks of my life are exactly how you would like the next two weeks of your life to be: sunny days with a friend, working on a project together up a peppercorn tree, all to the tune of a Serbian lullaby played on a cheap guitar.

  I am brave. Marsh is eager. In fact, even though officially Marsh is the lead singer, the band—Dark Horse—feels like it’s our band equally. We argue a lot, but it’s not the sort of arguing that makes you mad, it’s just the sort that it takes to make a song the best song it can be, especially when you are trying to make a Serbian lullaby into a rock song.

  It only takes me a couple of days to put my song up for consideration. I sing it to Marsh:

  ‘I know this girl

  She’s a wild girl

  Head in the sky

  Won’t tell you why

  No, she won’t tell

  Heart in her hand

  She’s hiding herself

  In a world of little things…Yeah a world like

  that…A girl like that…’

  She cocks her head. ‘Is that about me?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah. Sort of. It started out that way.’ I’m headlong into bravery now.

  She pauses. She scratches her head, wriggles her mouth. ‘Wild girl, huh?’

  ‘Yep.’

  She makes her hands into claws and lets out a roar.

  I roll my eyes.

  She laughs. ‘It’s funny you say that.’ She shakes her head and then snatches up the acorn. ‘Mama always called my dad the wild goatherd when he played the guitar. It was probably because sometimes he played like a wild person. When my father was a young boy, he left school and worked as a goatherd for four years. He spent most of his time wandering the mountainside with a flock of goats. And he probably sat under a tree and played his guitar while the goats grazed.’ She paused and smiled to herself, as if amused by this image.

  ‘Is that how he learned guitar?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess so. But let me tell you a story. It’s a Serbian tale. The Goat’s Ears of the Emperor Trojan. It is about an emperor who had goat’s ears.’ She cups her hands over her ears to demonstrate. ‘He would ask each barber who came to cut his hair if they noticed anything strange, and if they mentioned the goat’s ears, he had them killed. Eventually he found one who pretended not to notice, so he made him the emperor’s barber. But after some time the emperor’s barber found it hard to keep his secret, so he dug a hole and whispered the secret into the hole. From the hole grew an elder tree, and from a branch of the elder tree a wooden flute was made. But the flute would only play ‘The Emperor has Goat’s Ears’. When the news spread, the emperor was furious. He had the flute burned and another made from the same elder tree. But it played the same song.’

  ‘What happened to the barber?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, he lost his job, but his life was spared.’ Marsh is amused by this. She smiles at me. I can’t tell if she is smiling because she thinks this story is funny or if she is just enjoying telling me a Serbian tale. I smile back. In fact, I do quite like being told a story, but really I’m smiling because she is smiling, and when she is smiling my heart feels jumpy.

  ‘Mama said that my father whispered his past of wild living with the goats into his music, and the music told that story, just like the wooden flute.’

  ‘So you are Wild Girl, daughter of a wild man.’

  She shrugs. ‘Maybe.’

  There is an awkward silence. Marsh fiddles with the acorn. I start plucking my guitar. I wish I was wild too.

  ‘Anyway, I like your song,’ she says, at last.

  ‘Will you sing it?’ I ask

  ‘Why not? Give me the words.’

  Just like that. She doesn’t think twice. She sings it. She adds notes, or she warbles around on her way to the note, so the song gets more decorative, more bird, more sound, more frills, just more.

  I say, ‘That’s too much there.’

  And she pouts. She thinks. She sings it again. A little straighter. And so it goes.

  In fact, it’s all going so well that later I even agree when Mum asks me to invite Marsh for dinner.

  ‘How about you invite your new friend for dinner?’ she says.

  ‘Her name is Marsh,’ I say. Even if it does give Mum and Dad something to wonder about, which it probably will. But if Mum thinks anything about girlfriends and love, she doesn’t show it.

  ‘Marsh
? I’ve never heard that name before. Is it short for Marsha?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘She sings. We’re starting a band together.’ I’m not ready to explain the whole story about her hanging out in a tree instead of going to school.

  Now Mum is excited. She puts her book down. ‘What a great idea, Joey. I think that’s wonderful.’

  ‘I’ll see if she can come to dinner,’ I say. I don’t want Mum to get too excited. Everything with Marsh feels a bit fragile. Who knows? It might explode any minute.

  I know Opal wants to meet Marsh because she suspects Marsh lives in a tree. Dad probably wants to meet Marsh too, but he wouldn’t press the point.

  I ask Marsh the next day. ‘My family wants to meet you. Do you want to come for dinner?’

  Marsh pales. She leans backwards. She doesn’t say yes.

  ‘You don’t want to, do you?’

  She shakes her head. Her large dark eyes are fixed on me. She is like an animal, frozen and watching.

  I’m not offended if she won’t come, but it’s disappointing. I want to tell her my family are okay and, as I think it, I realise it’s the first time I’ve ever stuck up for them. And into my heart they all land with an unexpected gush of warmth.

  I smile. Marsh seems relieved. She leans forward to explain.

  ‘When my parents came here, all they brought with them were tomato seeds, cigarettes and eight Coke bottles of sljivovica. And now…We’ve even lost the tomatoes. We’ve lost so much. My dad—’

  Marsh looks away. I wish I hadn’t asked her. Maybe if my mum had died and my dad was not really being a dad, then I wouldn’t want to go sit around a dinner table with another family either.

  I hesitate. I put the guitar on my knees.

  Marsh sighs. She looks helpless. She puts both her hands over her mouth. Her eyes are full of feeling. But she can’t seem to speak. Tears creep into her eyes. If I had a little more courage I would hug her.

  Instead, I pick up the guitar again. I start singing. I sing just to sing it all to the surface. All the things we can’t hold on to: life as it once was and isn’t any longer, I guess.