by Robin Klein
And Mrs Cheale in the library who tried so hard to get kids taking books home even if they hardly ever did because they preferred watching Prisoner on TV.
And Miss Belmont, who was a fantastic teacher even though she was so fierce.
And there was pale gold Alison Ashley looking down her nose at our school, and she hadn’t even been there long enough to get clobbered by Barry Hollis!
‘Well, Miss Belmont told me to show you round, and I have,’ I said snakily. ‘So now I can get back to my FRIENDS.’
I went into the sick bay and put pre-sterilized, waterproof bandaids on both of my elbows. There wasn’t anything wrong with them, but bandaids always had a soothing effect on me.
hen school ended I hung round to spy on Alison Ashley to see if she got collected. There was always a line of mothers along the fence at 3.30. Alison was waiting by the gate looking as though she’d just that moment stepped out of a shower and got dressed in fresh clothes, instead of putting in a day at school. She was inspecting the Barringa East mums with her innocent expression to which only I knew the code.
None of the parents belonging to Barringa East Primary School was what you could call a natty dresser. Some of the mums had a cigarette dangling from one hand and a toddler dangling from the other, and some of them had their hair up in rollers. And the waiting cars certainly were not anything like the ones Princess Anne would have been collected in from school when she was a kid. There were old Holden station wagons, or vans with a firm’s name printed on the side, or old bombs that looked as though they wouldn’t even have a driveworthy certificate, let alone a roadworthy one.
Then someone turned up in a car for Alison Ashley. Glossy as a polished grapefruit, it just had to be her car. A lady reached over and opened the door and let old Alison in. Alison’s mum. She looked exactly like Alison, only even more elegant. Her hair was wound around her head like a glamorous turban, and her hand resting on the door looked as though it had never dangled a toddler or a shopping basket in its life. Her expression was the same as Alison’s, buttery smooth and showing no emotions or reactions or anything.
Alison got quickly into her golden coach as though she could hardly wait to get home and dive into a tub of disinfectant.
I dodged Jedda and went home by my private detour, which she hadn’t discovered yet. I wasn’t going to walk through Barringa East with a little kid who whinnied and got down on her hands and knees to eat the grass on people’s nature strips.
As I walked along thinking about Alison Ashley, my spirits sagged. I walked past the house where Miss Anastasia Wallace lived. She was out in her garden raving loudly to her plants. As usual, she was dressed in a tattered satin party dress, ankle socks, high-heeled shoes, and an old felt army hat with a bunch of poppies on the brim, only they looked more like bursting pomegranates. She was harmless, though she used to bail people up at the top of the escalator at the shopping centre and recite weird poetry to them. Only they never listened; they sidled away quickly, looking very embarrassed.
Sometimes she looked up from her plants and said hello when you walked past her house. She never remembered anyone, and it was quite interesting waiting to see what she was going to call you. Sometimes when I said hello, she’d say, ‘Oh, how are you today, Mrs Fawcett-Gibson?’ or ‘God bless you, Sister Veronica’, or ‘Hello, Jimmy, being a good boy?’ But right then I looked glumly over the fence at poor crazy old Miss Anastasia Wallace and felt depressed. I couldn’t be bothered calling out to her, but slunk past on tippy toes like a Hobyah.
I went by the Sellys’ house. Their front yard was filled with old prams and junk and cats, and they didn’t even have newspaper over their front windows. You could look right in and see Mrs Selly breastfeeding her baby and yelling at all the other kids, the whole eight of them.
All the way down the street I kept noticing depressing things. There was a hideous birdbath in someone’s front garden, made out of red concrete with a big green concrete frog on the rim. (It was so ugly that even the Eastside Boys left it alone, though Jedda liked it. She used to pretend it was a horse trough.)
No elegance anywhere. The street signs were bent at crazy angles from being swung on by the Eastside Boys, and the vandalised phone box outside the milkbar didn’t just have its phone ripped out – there wasn’t anything left of it except two walls. And every footpath had ‘Eastside Boys Wuz Here’ sprayed along it with aerosol spray paint.
I reached our house. Mum was not the sort of person any garden club would break their necks to get on their committee. (She liked plastic flowers because you never had to change the vase water, and they lasted longer.) Harley sometimes mowed the grass at the front of our place, usually when he’d spent his unemployment money and wanted to borrow some from Mum. He never finished doing all the lawn at once; just enough to butter Mum up. So our front yard was just an expanse of half-short, half-long grass and clover.
Mum’s room was at the front of the house. She was mad about little ornaments and had them arranged along the windowsill so passers-by could see them. Her ornaments were pink poodles with glitter collars, Spanish ladies, china kittens holding parasols, and pixies sitting on velvet mushrooms. I imagined I was Alison Ashley looking at them, and felt more depressed.
I went round the back of our place, climbing over Jedda’s horse float, which she made at the weekend on the back steps, just where people wanted to get in and out. It was made from a ladder, the wheelbarrow and the shower curtain, but Jedda was so spoiled that Mum didn’t even tell her off.
Mum was sitting at the kitchen table and Valjoy was giving her a manicure. You never saw so many bottles of nail varnish! The table looked as though it was a battlefield for hundreds of little white-helmeted marching soldiers, all wearing frosted plum, coral rose or pearl lustre tunics. Although Valjoy was taking a lot of care to give Mum a really professional-looking manicure, they were fighting. They were always fighting about something.
Mum was really yelling. She was yelling, ‘Valjoy, I’m sick of telling you off about those louts! You can say what you like, madam, but for sure that kid called Blonk or Spike or whatever nicked my gold-mesh sunglasses case last Saturday. He was the only one here in this kitchen except you. Charming, isn’t it, when you can’t leave a nice gold-mesh sunglasses case lying around in your own kitchen! Lennie gave me that last trip he made to Adelaide. It cost nearly $20. I went over to the chemist and priced it, and the only person could have nicked it apart from Blonk was you! Hullo, Erk love, how was school?’
Depressing.
She didn’t even look up. She was watching Valjoy like an international chess champion to make sure she didn’t use too much nail-bonding solution. Valjoy didn’t look up, either, but she said, ‘Listen, Erk, this is the last time I’m warning you to stay out of my room. Don’t deny that you’ve been at my Charlie perfume, you creep. I made a secret mark on the bottle.’
Mum and Valjoy’s perfume collection was nearly as large as their nail varnish one. I liked to wear perfume to school. It made me feel exotic.
I suddenly thought of Alison Ashley. She hadn’t smelled of perfume. She had smelled of hair conditioner, apples, Pears soap, fresh Kleenex tissues, dry cleaning and new writing paper.
I opened the fridge to get a drink. Our fridge didn’t look one bit elegant inside. It was crowded with left-over things on saucers, and tins of opened, Gladwrapped cat food. And frozen food such as pizzas, hamburgers, potato chips and Sara Lee cakes. Also a stockpile of Lennie’s tinnies.
Alison Ashley’s refrigerator would look straight out of a magazine advertisement, with beautiful desserts in parfait glasses, baked turkey garnished with parsley, jelly castles decorated with cream and mandarin slices, and jugs of freshly made orange juice with ice beads frosting the sides.
‘THERE’S NEVER ANYTHING TO EAT OR DRINK IN THIS HOUSE EXCEPT JUNK FOOD!’ I yelled furiously. (Sometimes after concussion you don’t feel the reaction until hours later. And that was what was happening to me. I was sufferi
ng delayed culture shock from sitting next to Alison Ashley all day.)
I stood at the open fridge, like a primitive life form being engulfed in its ice-age breath. I looked with hatred at the packets of frozen ready-made donuts and frozen spaghetti bolognaise. A plastic bag tumbled out of the clutter and landed at my feet. It was full of grass clippings and had a label on it saying OTES. (Jedda was not very good at spelling.) I kicked the bag of otes across the floor and threw my school bag on top and jumped up and down on both and swore.
‘That’s lovely,’ said Valjoy, as though she never ever said anything worse than ‘Oh, dear’ or ‘Alas!’.
‘Erica!’ yelled my mum. ‘If my nails weren’t still wet from this protein-reinforced base coat that cost $7.95, I’d get up and tan you! Next thing you’ll have your little sister saying all those nasty words!’
‘She never says anything except whinny and neigh,’ I said bitterly. ‘And I don’t know why you’re picking on me about swearing when you and Valjoy do it all the time.’
‘Don’t be cheeky.’
‘And Lennie. You never say anything when he sits there swearing his head off, and that’s just when he’s making ordinary conversation. If you can call what he says conversation.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mum demanded. ‘Lennie’s very good company. You don’t have to go to a university to get an education. Lennie’s very brainy. He does all his own repairs and maintenance on his truck, and he’s widely travelled. I won’t have you making digs at Lennie behind his back, young lady. I’m warning you!’
‘I’d certainly appreciate a warning if Lennie’s coming to our place tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ll go down the street and visit that crazy Miss Anastasia Wallace and get her to read some of her poetry. Even that’d be better than listening to boring old Lennie.’
Mum was very sensitive about Lennie, so she ordered me to go to my room and stay there, and good riddance. And that furthermore, I couldn’t have any frozen Bavarian cream cheesecake for dinner tonight, either.
I didn’t care. I slammed the kitchen door so hard that the plastic tulips and plastic maidenhair fern on the hall table fell off. I stomped into my room and Jedda’s, which was 90 per cent her room and the rest left over for me. I slammed that door, too, and then sat down and had a good cry in front of the mirror.
I always enjoyed having a good cry. The part of me that wanted to be an actress stood aside and looked on whilst I was bawling. I carefully studied the effect of my hooked hands clawing through my hair, and the best way to blink so that the tears rolled down evenly.
‘It’s not fair!’ I sobbed into my hands. ‘Life is full of injustice!’ Then I thought of another good line, trying it out with different facial expressions. ‘Just one more mile for to tote the weary load,’ I said, and it sounded beautiful, though very sad and depressing. I cried some more, and wound it all up with a very powerful statement that always sounds exactly right when you want to end a crying session.
‘I wish I were dead!’ I said. I said it five times, each time stressing a different word and listening to the result, and then dried my eyes and felt a bit better. I looked round for something I could do to pay Jedda back for having to share a room with her. And for keeping me awake at nights making hoof noises in her sleep. She made them with the length of her tongue clamped up against her palate. (I investigated one night with a torch.)
She had about a thousand little plastic model horses all over her 90 per cent of the room, even on top of the wardrobe. I went around and laid each one on its back, so they looked as though they’d been stricken with a serious horse-disease.
Then I got out my magnifying mirror and had a good look at myself in the strong light. I wasn’t pretty, but actresses shouldn’t be, anyhow. What they really need are dynamic and compelling looks. I felt that I had dynamic and compelling cheekbones, and also a warm, generous mouth. (Though Valjoy said it was just plain big.)
But while I was examining my face in the mirror, I kept thinking of Alison Ashley. Suddenly I craved to look like her, and talk like her and have a mother and a car like hers, and the same clothes and pretty manners, and that she would let me be her best friend. Even if I hated her. I thought gloomily that Alison Ashley most likely never in her life was sent to her room for swearing. Probably she didn’t even know any bad words, though going to Barringa East would soon fix that. And if she ever did get sent to her room, she would probably sit down and clean her nails, which never got dirty anyhow, or use the time to revise her tables, which she already knew off by heart. Or tidy all her socks into paired rolls. And furthermore, I bet that every six months when she went to the dentist, she never had cavities.
Life was full of injustice.
ext day at school Miss Belmont handed back our projects. At the start of the term, our school had gone to see a ballet, Peter and the Wolf. It was supposed to be a back-to-school treat, but Miss Belmont made our grade do an assignment on it. I hadn’t minded. She had mine at the bottom of the pile on the desk. It was about ten times as thick as anyone else’s. I’d got a bit carried away.
Before she handed them back she told off the whole grade for being time wasting and lazy (all except Alison Ashley, who hadn’t started at our school when the assignment was given out. And me.). ‘Erica Yurken’s was the only project worth looking at,’ Miss Belmont scolded. ‘As for this disgraceful effort of yours, Barry Hollis, words fail me!’
Barry Hollis’s project, written on the back of an old envelope, had only two sentences saying, ‘I never been to a theaer in my hole life and I dont wantto’, and ‘If I knew any guy lerning ballay I would bash him’. Miss Belmont was waving it around angrily while she was telling Barry off and I saw Alison Ashley lean forward to read the two sentences, but she didn’t look shocked or anything. Maybe she was getting used to sixth-grade life at Barringa East Primary.
Shane Corbet’s assignment had a heading, ‘The Killer Instinct in Wolf Packs’, and a biro picture of a pack of wolves dragging some startled-looking Russian peasants off a sleigh. It didn’t contain one word about ballet. Miss Belmont made him tear it up and put it in the bin with Barry’s. By the time she reached the bottom of the pile of assignments, the bin was choked with torn-up paper. Then she picked mine up.
One agreeable thing about school was when you had a chance to make everyone else in the grade look dumb. For my project, I’d borrowed some of the silky paper Mrs Orlando used for the spirit copying machine, and also a new manila folder. I had drawn a picture of two theatre masks on the cover, with a border of ballerinas. I put on an expression of dignified modesty while Miss Belmont was showing my project to the class and saying how well presented it was and why couldn’t they do the same. I even stopped minding so much that Alison Ashley wore a new outfit: beautiful white jeans, pale-blue broderie-anglaise blouse, tiny pearl-stud earrings, and her hair brushed back and caught up in a pearl clasp.
‘Take your project down to the office, Erica,’ Miss Belmont said. ‘It might be a consolation for Mr Nicholson to find that SOME people in this grade are capable of work.’
Mr Nicholson was very impressed with my assignment and asked if he could borrow it for display purposes when the inspector came around. He really liked it, I could tell, so I spread my assignment out on his desk and started at the front, turning the pages over very slowly so he wouldn’t miss out on anything. I showed him the places where Miss Belmont had written ‘excellent’, and the centrepiece I painted of red-velvet curtains with gold tassels. I read aloud the text on each page in case he had difficulty with my writing. But I was hardly three-quarters of the way through when he remembered that he had some important telephone calls to make, and said that he’d look at my project some other time when he had more chance to do it justice.
Then I showed it to Mrs Orlando, but she didn’t really appreciate culture, even though she was a highly trained secretary who could do Pitman’s shorthand. She went on typing maths stencils like a runaway steam train, and just glanced up and said, �
�Yes, Yuk, very nice.’
So I took it along to the library and showed Mrs Cheale, and then as I thought it was a shame the other teachers didn’t have a chance to see it, too, I called in to every classroom. Also the tuckshop to show the mothers on duty there. On the way back I dropped in to the sick bay and checked the contents of the first-aid box, which was used on excursions. I made a list of supplies that were running low, and also put down some new medicines that I’d seen advertised on television. Mrs Orlando wasn’t terribly grateful when I gave the list to her. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in art and craft right now?’ she demanded.
Our art-and-craft teacher, Miss Lattimore, really did her best to make our art classes interesting, even though having a kid like Barry Hollis in a room along with jars of poster paint and wet clay must have been like teaching next to a ticking bomb.
Our art classes had been even more interesting since we got the darkroom and could learn about photography. Only Barry Hollis wasn’t allowed to set foot in the darkroom anymore, because once he’d fixed the electric timer so that it buzzed non stop and couldn’t be turned off.
We took photographs with the school camera whenever we went on school excursions, and Miss Lattimore always managed to get one of Barry Hollis sitting somewhere in disgrace. On every excursion, he did something to give our school a bad name. Or a worse one, Miss Lattimore said, than the one it had already. There was a whole stack of Barry Hollis-in-exile pictures – one of him the time he got sprung opening the emergency exit in the bus instead of using the steps like everyone else. And one of him getting yelled at by a man at the Victoria Market for pulling a coconut from the bottom row of a display. And pictures of him getting told off by officials at National Trust houses, security guards at Tullamarine Airport, VicRail guards, and a very cross lady in a sari at the Handcrafts of India fair.
