The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull

by Barry Jonsberg

  It was the look on Kiffo’s face that was the best of all. He was completely taken by surprise. I mean, who wouldn’t be? And his look was saying, ‘This can’t be happening to me’, as Miss Leanyer’s fingers tightened around his throat. She was growling, like an enraged animal. Spit flecked her face. I believe that she would have killed him if someone hadn’t intervened. We didn’t, of course. Stunned, I guess. But the door crashed open and Mr Brewer, the teacher from next door, flew into the room. I imagine he was coming in to complain about some kid banging on the partition wall while he was trying to teach. But he took one look at the situation and leaped into action.

  The last we ever saw of Miss Leanyer, she was being dragged by Mr Brewer out of the classroom door, her eyes mad with rage, fingers clawing the air for Kiffo’s throat. A pity really. I reckon she would have had our attention and respect for the rest of the semester. Even Kiffo might have got his books out for her. He wouldn’t have written in them, of course. I’m not that much of a romantic.

  So that was that. We never found out what happened to Miss Leanyer. There were rumours, naturally. Some said that she had given up teaching and had taken to mud wrestling down south for a living. If her attack on Kiffo was anything to go by, she would have been good at it too. Others said that she was a stripper in Kings Cross. The story I liked best was the one that had her in a lunatic asylum stabbing scissors into footballs, drooling and screaming, ‘Are you Jaryd Kiffing?’ at all the visitors. That was my favourite, but as I made it up myself, you could say I was biased.

  Naturally, Kiffo took all the credit for getting rid of her. For a while he was the envy of the school. Even Year 12 students looked on him with respect. As if he’d attacked a heavily fortified enemy encampment with only a rusty tin-opener and wiped out an entire battalion. He was a legend. He told me later that his dad tried to sue the Education Department for a million dollars. When he found out that this was going to be a little difficult, his dad offered to forget the whole matter for a slab of beer and two hundred smokes. A bit difficult after that climb down to remain a credible plaintiff.

  Yeah, he had a good few weeks did Kiffo. But then Miss Payne appeared. And Jaryd Kiffing was a marked man. You see, Miss Payne was a different type of teacher entirely. If Miss Leanyer was the Snow White of the educational world, Miss Payne was the slash ’em up homicidal maniac. And Kiffo was home alone, and the phone lines had been cut.

  DECEMBER: Primary school, Year 6.

  The sky is swollen, the air heavy with darkness and the promise of rain. You skip down the stairs to the toilet block. In your right hand is a note signed by your teacher. You are all thin legs and arms and gingham school uniform. You pause outside the boys toilets, head cocked to one side, listening. From within, there is a dull thudding, as regular as a metronome. You stand for a while, hesitant.

  ‘Is anyone there?’ you ask, but there is no reply. The thudding continues. You enter the darkness of the toilets. Your heart is hammering in your flat chest because you know that you shouldn’t be there. Not in the boys toilets. Not with that thudding threat. There is a thick smell of stale urine. It makes your eyes water but you move further in. There is a urinal on your right. Empty. Further along there is a row of cubicles. The thudding is coming from the one furthest away. The door is open. You move slowly towards it.

  ‘Who’s there?’ you ask.

  Silence, apart from the thudding. It forms a counterpoint with the beating of your heart. You want to run, but you also need to see. It seems to take an age, but you reach the corner of the door. You peer slowly round it, matchstick legs tensed for flight.

  Chapter 2

  So just how many friends

  has John Marsden got?

  ‘Creeping hell!’ said Vanessa. ‘What in the name of God is that?’

  I was bent over my exercise book, putting the final touches to a character star sign entry, when her hoarse whisper caught my attention. I looked up at her face. Her eyes were glazed with horror and her mouth turned down in an expression that seemed to indicate that something exceptionally smelly had just been thrust under her nose. Naturally, I twisted my head to follow her line of sight. And when I saw what she had seen, my jaw hit the desk . . .

  Whoa! Hang on a moment. Let’s take a break here. To be honest, I’m a complete beginner when it comes to story-telling and I need to take a time-out. Collect my thoughts. Sorry.

  Tell me something. Have you ever read John Marsden’s Everything I Know About Writing? Rhetorical question! Of course, I could sit here until you answer, though I suspect that might take a long time. Sudden image of me sitting in the library for years waiting for the reply. I’m a skeleton in the corner, crumbling into dust, with a little sign on my rib cage saying, ‘still waiting for a reply’.

  New students come to the school: ‘What’s with the skeleton?’

  Librarian: ‘She was writing a book. Asked a rhetorical question. Still waiting for a reply.’

  Anyway, the reason I mention old John’s book is that there was a bit in there that went something along the lines of, ‘Just tell the story as if you were telling it to a friend.’ I’m not sure if they were the exact words, but frankly I can’t be bothered to look it up. You can, if you’re interested. I thought at the time that this was good advice. It sounds easy enough. Now I’ve started, though, it seems trickier than I thought. I mean, I don’t know you at all. I wouldn’t recognise you from a hole in the ground. If I was telling this story to some friends, then they would already know Jaryd Kiffing and they would know me and they would know the school and everything. I’d just be able to get straight into what happened with Miss Payne. But you don’t know anything. No offence. And that means I’ll have to tell you about things that I wouldn’t have to tell a friend.

  Maybe John Marsden is friends with everyone in the world. But I don’t think so. I’ve never had a phone call from him, for example. Unless it was that wrong number a couple of weeks ago.

  I suppose I should tell you something about Jaryd Kiffing. Kiffo. He is the most important player in this story, the chief character, the main protagonist. It’s a great word, protagonist. I love it. There are some words, I’ve decided, that have to be written in italics. Or in bold, underlined. Protagonist is one.

  Anyway, Kiffo. I could say all that stuff about how he is fifteen years old, of medium height, of limited academic ability and concentration span, with behavioural problems and freckles. The trouble is, that doesn’t give you a clue what he is really like. The thing is, Kiffo isn’t a character in a book. He’s a real person. A friend, God help me. When I think about describing him, I just know that ‘average height’ and ‘freckles’ won’t do it.

  You remember that assignment on similes? My teacher hated what I wrote, but I was pretty pleased with it. She thought I was being too smart. How can you be too smart, by the way? Most of the time your teachers are telling you that you’re being really dumb. ‘Stop acting so stupid!’ they say. And then when you do something intelligent, they say, ‘Are you trying to be smart? Don’t get smart with me, young lady.’ I wish they’d make up their minds.

  I got an afternoon detention for that simile assignment. Now I don’t mind detentions. But I also got the whole, ‘You are wasting a great talent. You should apply yourself, young lady,’ lecture, which was really boring. I’m good at English, you see. Everyone thinks so. That’s one reason me and Kiffo agreed that I should write down the whole business about him and Miss Payne. But my teacher wanted me to be good in her way. Do you know what I mean? Take the simile assignment. I liked it. I really did. I thought it was funny, but also accurate. I’d put effort into it. But she wanted something else entirely. She had often told us to be original, but when I did something that was original, she went red in the face and steam hissed from her ears. Did she want me to be original in the same way as everyone else? Doesn’t make much sense to me.

  Anyway, I’m starting to wander away from the point. Jaryd Kiffing, fifteen, uglier than a bucketful
of butt-holes, flaming red hair, bandy legs, really bad in all lessons, a waster, a hoon, disruptive, childish, violent at times, often cruel, class idiot, proud of his cultivated image of stupidity, part-time criminal. My friend.

  And me? Well, I hope you might be a little curious about me, since I’m the one talking to you. My name is Calma Harrison and you can forget all the jokes about my first name. I’ve heard every single one. ‘You need to be calmer, Calma,’ or, ‘You’ll suffer from bad karma, Calma,’ and all of that. The biggest thing about me is my boobs. I’m fifteen years old and my boobs are really huge. It’s not that I’m overweight or anything. It’s just that I seem to be saddled with a chest you could balance a tray on. As you can imagine, I’m a little self-conscious about this. Particularly in a Year 10 class filled with lads who are not exactly backward about making personal comments. I always wear baggy tops [uncomfortable, to say the least, in the heat of the tropics] but it still looks like I’ve got a couple of wombats tucked down there. If I turn quickly I’m liable to knock someone unconscious. You can probably imagine the kind of comments I’ve been getting. Not very original, of course. Things like, ‘How many of those do you get to the kilo?’ and, ‘Can I park my bike in there?’ and that sort of stuff. I hate Phys. Ed., of course. I wasn’t built for sudden movements. When I run, my chest stops half an hour after everything else.

  Anyway, enough about my boobs. I just thought I should be honest about myself and that’s the thing about me that I’m most aware of. And everyone else, apparently. As for the rest of me, well, I’m reasonably normal to look at. Fairly attractive, I suppose. Long dark hair that comes halfway down my back. None on my head, just down my back. Joke! Shortsighted, so I wear glasses. I like glasses. I’ve got about five pairs. The ones I like best at the moment [I keep changing my mind] are bright blue, thick plastic things. They are so in-your-face. And on your face, I guess. They do stand out like a nun in a betting shop. Maybe I reckon that if everyone is staring at my glasses, then they won’t be looking at my chest. Isn’t psychology great?

  I’m a fairly hard worker at the subjects I enjoy, like English. Other stuff doesn’t really interest me too much. Science is okay because it’s quite beautiful and well worked out, like a poem. And some of the words are really cool. But Phys. Ed. sucks. I hate physical exercise and I can’t see the point of it. And while we’re on the subject of pointlessness, can anyone explain the value of Drama lessons? Swaying like a tree or holding sweaty hands in a circle or pretending you’re a bird. Call that adequate development of lifelong learning skills?

  Q. And what makes you think you will be a good journalist/ teacher/copywriter/politician/organised crime boss?

  A. Well, even though I’m crap at reading and writing, I can do one hell of an impersonation of a sulphur-crested cockatoo in a cyclone.

  Look, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a rebel or anything. I tend to do what the teachers tell me to do because it’s easier that way. I’m not like Kiffo in that sense. He seems to think that anything the teachers want you to do is a direct challenge to do the opposite. That’s okay, though. We’re all different. I just keep my head down and my chest in.

  That’s probably enough for the time being. I’ll get back to the story.

  Oh, hang on. There is one other thing you just might find interesting. Then again, maybe you won’t. Who can tell? Anyway, here is another interesting/boring revelation about Calma Harrison: my mother is a Westinghouse refrigerator.

  So where was I?

  Chapter 3

  Enter the Pitbull

  ‘Creeping hell!’ said Vanessa. ‘What in the name of God is that?’

  I was bent over my exercise book, putting the final touches to a character star sign entry –

  [Vanessa Aldrick – Scorpio. You seem to labour under the delusion that wearing appalling 1960s clothing and affecting an air of considerable boredom makes you an interesting and mysterious character whereas you are, in fact, a royal pain in the arse.]

  – when her hoarse whisper caught my attention. I looked up at her face. Her eyes were glazed with horror and her mouth turned down in an expression that seemed to indicate that something exceptionally smelly had just been thrust under her nose. Vanessa would have yawned if the Archangel Gabriel had materialised in front of her on a skateboard, so naturally I twisted my head to follow her line of sight. When I saw what she had seen my jaw hit the desk . . .

  Imagine a pitbull chewing a wasp and you’ll have some idea of Miss Payne’s expression when she entered our classroom the day after Miss Leanyer’s dramatic departure. And I’m not talking about a normal, plug-ugly pitbull. I mean a pitbull that wasn’t only at the end of the queue when looks were being dished out, but a pitbull that had missed the line altogether. The whole class gasped. One or two of the boys, the ones who spent all their time in the library playing chess, were on the point of passing out entirely. I’m fairly certain Melanie Simpson wet her knickers. I couldn’t blame her. The vision in front of us would have made Attila the Hun soil his pants.

  Miss Payne paced backwards and forwards at the front of the class for a few minutes. Built like a Russian shot-put champion, even her bulging biceps had muscles on them. The walls of the classroom shook as she paced, and small wisps of plaster drifted from the ceiling. She was wearing an enormous black dress that could have doubled as a six-person tent. We are talking an imposing presence! But it was her face that held our attention most. Small, red, beady eyes darted here and there, looking for the slightest sign of disruption. Fat chance. None of us would have blinked if we’d been plugged into the mains electricity. A thick forest of eyebrow hair matched a bushy growth on her upper lip. Her mouth was twisted into a sneer, with little beads of drool starting to dribble. I mean, if she really had been a dog someone would have shot her before she had the chance to bite anyone.

  After a minute or two, she stopped pacing and stood, like a brick wall, in the centre of the classroom, completely blotting out the blackboard. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall. Finally, the thin lips parted and she spoke. Imagine a voice that has the quality of rough sandpaper rubbing over solid granite and you will get the general idea.

  ‘My name is Miss Payne,’ she growled. ‘You will address me either as “Miss” or “Miss Payne” or “Generalissimo” or “Führer”. [I made those last two up.] Anyone who speaks without being asked will receive a detention. Any moving around without permission will incur a detention. Any slacking of any kind,’ and here she swept her formidable gaze across the entire class, ‘will incur a detention. No extensions of any kind will be granted for assignments. Late submission will result in a mark of zero and a detention. Any unauthorised consumption of any material whatsoever will result in a detention. Any lateness, for any reason whatsoever, will result in a detention. Unauthorised breathing, smiling and generally enjoying yourself will result in ritual disembowelment and a detention. [I made that up, as well.] Do I make myself clear?’ The silence within the class was broken by a strangled sob from somewhere at the back and the faint drip, drip, drip from Melanie Simpson’s knickers. Miss Payne stepped forward, rattling the desks, and drew herself up to her full height of something in excess of two metres.

  ‘I said, do I make myself clear?’

  Thirty kids reacted as one.

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘Yes, Miss what?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Payne.’

  ‘That’s better. Now get your books out. Failure to get your books out at the beginning of each lesson will result in a detention. Do not forget to bring writing materials. Failure to do so will result in a detention.’

  Call me silly, if you like, but I was beginning to think that the notion of detention was becoming a recurrent linguistic motif.

  ‘Now, I have been given some information about this class.’ Miss Payne resumed her pacing. ‘It has been brought to my attention that this is a particularly poor class in terms of attitude and work rate. This will change immediatel
y. I have also heard that you have a history of treating teachers badly. In particular, your last teacher received totally unacceptable treatment at your hands. I will not tolerate any repetition, or attempted repetition, of such behaviour. Should you attempt to do so,’ and there could be no doubt that her eyes were riveted to Jaryd Kiffing at this point, ‘then you will regret it. I promise you that. Do your work and behave yourselves and you will find me, if not friendly and fuzzy, then at least tolerable. Cross me and you’ll wish you had never been born. Right, spelling test. Thirty commonly misspelled words. Anyone getting fewer than twenty words correct will receive a detention. First word – “iridescent”.’

  I got twenty-nine. ‘Diarrhoea’ was the only stain on an otherwise clean sheet. Kiffo got one. Pretty remarkable. I would have put money on him getting a big fat zero. Actually, over half the class got fewer than twenty. I mean, they were tough words. At least two thirds were words that the likes of Kiffo had never even heard, let alone read. It was a little unfair. Still, never mind. I was okay.

  Of course, I was interested to see what Miss Payne would do with over half the class. You couldn’t give that many kids a detention.

  I was wrong.

  ‘I will see you eighteen here at lunchtime,’ she said, ‘and we’ll go over those words again. Now, quiet reading for the rest of the lesson.’

  I’ve already told you that I love English, but I was really glad when the bell finally went for recess. I’d often thought that a quiet classroom would be great – concentrate on the work, do some uninterrupted reading without Kiffo recreating one of the battles of Gallipoli with the other boys at the back of the class. But it was strange. The silence was complete, but it wasn’t a silence that felt right, somehow. It was strained to the point that you couldn’t even read without the pressure forcing itself into your consciousness. I suppose that at least I’d learned there can be different types of silence. When the bell did go, we all looked up at Miss Payne and waited for her to dismiss us. Normally there would have been a rush for the door and the smaller members of the class would be in physical danger of getting trampled to death. Not today. Miss Payne glowered at us for about thirty seconds.