So, all in one day, Kite announced his departure and my skinny Aunt Squeezy announced her arrival, and life started all over again with its onslaught of change.
Mum and I and my new skinny Aunt Squeezy had dinner together that night, and for a while I even forgot about the terrible, terrible thing because, I had to admit, it was interesting to meet my dad’s half-sister. I kept watching her curiously and listening to her talking about India, and I was kind of impressed because she had studied loads of weird things in India, like yoga and tabla (a drum that talks) and meditation (sitting down and thinking about nothing, which is harder than you think) and, what’s more, she could do a headstand and an elbow stand. Not all aunts can do that. I was glad my dad had a nice half-sister even if he never knew her.
In the end, we moved the chairs in the living room and she showed me some yoga and I showed her some balances and Mum took photos and drank wine. She said wine was just as relaxing as yoga but required less effort. Then she started doing the proud mother thing and telling my aunt all about our circus and our benefit show and I started to feel bad again. I interrupted her.
‘Yeah, but Mum it’s all over now. Finito. Kite and his dad are moving to Albury. They’re joining the Flying Fruit Fly Circus.’
‘What’s that?’ said my new aunt.
‘That’s a real circus,’ I said.
‘Oh, Cedy, that’s bad luck,’ said Mum, ‘Can’t you go on without them?’
‘Nup. No way. Not without a trainer.’
‘You’ll miss Kite.’
I wasn’t sure what my mum knew about Kite. There are some things you just don’t tell your mum, and if she suspected something she didn’t let on, and neither did I. I didn’t answer her. I managed to hold back the emotional torrent, partly by picking at my toenail and partly as a result of all the yoga, which makes you breathe deeply.
‘What about finding a new trainer?’ said my aunt.
‘I don’t think we could. We can’t pay anyone, and anyway, no one would be as good as Ruben.’
It was actually quite good to find myself talking about it in a practical way, as if suddenly there was simply a problem, as if it was a table with a broken leg and all I had to do was find a way of fixing it. It meant that I could see a way of separating one thing from the other. There were the feelings, the Kite feelings, and they were like air; you couldn’t fix them. You can’t patch up the air, you can only find ways of making sure you breathe it in and then you breathe it out. (Oh, see how I was already becoming a yogi.)
But then there was also the circus. This was a real thing, not a thing like air but a thing with a broken leg or two. Perhaps this was a thing that could be fixed. Didn’t matter that I hadn’t a clue how, because right then I wasn’t in a mood for working with it, I was in a mood for getting gloomy and staring bug-eyed at the mess. I sighed dramatically and said I had to go to bed, the yoga had made me too relaxed, and they both agreed that bed was a good idea all round. But I think I really kind of killed the mood.
We put my new aunt in Granny’s old room, which was still called Granny’s room even though she had long since gone from it.
‘And what about Barnaby? Where’s he?’ asked Aunt Squeezy. Mum and I gave each other that look, which meant, ‘Who is going to try and explain Barnaby?’ I had a go.
‘He’s got a new girlfriend at the moment. So he’s always out with her. You’ll meet him tomorrow, probably.’
‘Is she nice?’
‘She’s a Goth,’ said Mum.
‘Her name’s Ada,’ I said.
‘She’s a bit troubled,’ said Mum.
‘They’re in a band together,’ said I.
‘I see,’ said Aunt Squeezy, nodding understandingly, but both Mum and I knew it would take a lot more than that for her to really understand either Barnaby or Ada, let alone what they were together, but we didn’t say.
Once I was in bed I was glad to be able to finally plummet into my despair in private. It was as if the suffering sat squelched inside me, like a cork, and nothing else could get in and out until that cork had been let loose.
Oh why, I wailed to myself, as I lay in my favourite pondering position on my back, staring at the ceiling, why must I constantly adapt? You work so hard to get things just right and then they spill out in exactly the direction you hadn’t counted on. And you have to start all over again. It’s as if you are a hungry little beetle who has spent days trudging towards a pile of crumbs it has spied in the distance. It has made great growing plans for those crumbs. It has been thinking up crumb recipes…it will feed its whole family on these crumbs and there’ll be crumb dinner parties for all its friends, enough crumbs for the whole of winter and no need to work, just a lot of sleeping in the slivers of sun, rocking on fat blades of grass and baking crumb casseroles. ‘Oooh, what a lucky beetle I am,’ thinks the beetle, and then, just as
it’s getting near, a human wipes away the whole pile of crumbs with a pink sponge Wettex and they’re gone.
So the beetle must turn around and go back. It isn’t lucky anymore. Now it’s unlucky.
Before it saw the crumbs it was neither. Not lucky or unlucky. Just a beetle.
I wish I was just that, just a beetle with not a crumb in sight. Imagine if you could live without little hopes always budding. Imagine if you never looked ahead and never expected great things to happen, never hoped for a greater pile of crumbs than what you already had. No doubt about it, I was a dreamer, but worse, I was a greedy dreamer. I was a small, skinny girl dreaming giant, fat, champion dreams, I was dreaming piles of circus and love – but how do you stop it?
Maybe it’s not about stopping, it’s about choosing the right pile.
All I knew was that Kite must have been holding up my dream, and now it was sagging like a tent without its pole.
I wasn’t ready to prop it up with new poles, so I let my mind sink into the withering, watery wretchedness that I knew was waiting for me. I knew I had to feel it. Just lie there and feel it.
Then I started to cry. Just a little bit. Just a few fat tears rolling down my face like little slugs.
