That evening, Aunt Squeezy comes home with an ultrasound picture of her baby. I’m sorry to say, but it looks like a large beetle. Mum sticks the photo on the fridge, but Aunt Squeezy seems sad. I tell her not to worry, probably even I looked like a beetle when I was a growing thing inside my mother and now look, I’m almost normal – well nothing like a beetle, anyway.
Aunt Squeezy says that isn’t what’s making her sad, she’s just sad that she’s alone. I tell her she isn’t alone because we’re her family and I’ll help her change nappies and so will Mum. Barnaby probably won’t, but he’ll do other stuff like put the baby on his shoulders just the way Dad is doing to me in the photo I have of him.
I know that Aunt Squeezy might prefer a real dad to carry her baby on his shoulders, so I say, ‘You know what? I never really had a dad and look at me, I’m okay. A little unusual and a bit demanding and occasionally unruly, but still, if you get a good mum you can survive. Look at Inisiya, she doesn’t have a dad either and she’s not even unruly. Also, there’s other possible dads you can find, like Ruben.’
Aunt Squeezy grins and glances briefly at Mum, who blushes and sinks into a chair, probably because I just said she was a good mum. But I can tell Aunt Squeezy has given up her sadness because she seems interested in my dadless theories.
‘So, you like Ruben?’ she says. Before I have a chance to answer, Barnaby himself walks in. He’s holding a skateboard, which he puts on the floor, points in my direction and pushes towards me with his foot.
‘Courtesy of Harold Barton,’ he says, eyebrows raised. ‘I thought you guys were enemies.’ He gives Mum a look and she in turn gives me one.
‘We are.’ (I feel the panic rising again.)
‘Well, he was just leaving this on the doorstep when I arrived, and he asked me to give you this as well.’ Barnaby reaches into his back pocket and with another suggestive grin he flicks an envelope across the table. It’s sealed and it has my name written on it.
Just to prove there’s nothing schmaltzy going on between Harold Barton and me, I grab the letter and rip it open in front of everybody. Inside there’s another sealed envelope addressed to the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, plus a note that says, ‘Good luck with your trip to Albury. Please pass this letter on from me to the head of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus. Thanks, Harold.’
Boy, am I in a pickle. I can’t read that aloud. I feel the blood creeping up towards my face and I desperately dive into my mind to find a way out. It delivers me with a brilliant half-truth.
‘Oh, it’s just, he wants me to forward a letter to Kite. That’s all. The skateboard’s a bribe, I guess.’
‘A bribe,’ says Mum. ‘You don’t even use skateboards.’
Luckily, Barnaby steps in before I have to deal with that one.
‘Hey, why don’t you give it to me, then? I can deliver it next week when I pass through Albury.’
I’m not sure if he believes me. I can’t tell if he’s testing me, laying a trap, or if he’s just trying to be helpful. (Unusual.)
‘Nuh,’ I say, standing up. ‘It’s okay. I’ll send it, ’cause I’ve got to send one of my own anyway.’ I look away from Barnaby because he knows me well enough to see through any faking, and then, just because I’m feeling a bit hot under the collar, I pick up the board, tuck it under my arm and slink out saying, ‘Anyway, I’m going to see if it’s any good.’
‘Don’t be long, dinner will be ready soon,’ calls Mum, as I bang the door behind me.
It’s unusually quiet in the street. Our street is a dead end, a small dead end, so there’s no through traffic, which makes it seem like it’s just ours, as if all of us who live here own the street. Which is why people like Ricci and me and Caramella and the Abutulas treat the street like it’s our front garden – for hanging out in. But this afternoon I’m the only one here. I sit on the board.
For one thing, I’m burning, burning, burning to open Harold Barton’s letter to the Flying Fruit Flies. Even though he’s given me the skateboard, it all seems a bit suspicious, a bit Secret Operation. It isn’t ticking or anything obvious, but I stare at the envelope. Why did he just leave it at the door? I still don’t trust him. I still figure he must be up to something. But does that entitle me to open a letter that’s not addressed to me? I have a feeling it doesn’t. This is an annoying feeling to have. It’s getting in my way, creating a little battle in my head between what I want to do and what I know I shouldn’t do. I stuff the letter in my back pocket and try a handstand on the skateboard, which is much harder than I thought it would be. Luckily, the challenge it presents takes over and for the next half hour I doggedly try and try to hit a balance, and I forget about the letter (at least until a week later when I am packing my bag for my stowaway trip to Albury).
After about fifty tries, I heave a big huff and march over to Caramella’s. She’s on the couch, cross-legged, doing a drawing.
‘Hey, Caramella, can you help me? I need some spotting. I’m trying to do a handstand on a skateboard but I can’t seem to hit it.’
‘Why are you trying that?’ she says.
‘What are you drawing?’ I go over and have a peek. It’s a pencil drawing of a sad, young face. I don’t know how she makes it look sad and young, because the mouth isn’t turned down. The sadness is in the eyes. Caramella screws up her face at the drawing, and holds it away from her.
‘The drawing’s wrong,’ she says.
‘It’s very sad,’ I say. ‘I think it’s a great drawing.’
‘It’s meant to be Mohammed,’ she says. ‘Not exactly him, but you know, something of him.’
Mohammed is the Afghan boy who never joins in; the one who just appears in the doorway like a small, dark ghost. I realise that it isn’t exactly sadness that’s in the face, but an absence, a sense that something isn’t there.
‘It looks as if he’s haunted,’ I say, and I wonder if he remembers what he has lost.
‘Yeah. He is. I wish he could join in but I think he’s shy. I think he’s proud too. He’s afraid he might make a fool of himself.’
I look at Caramella with her soft, round face studying her drawing, and I can see she has really been thinking about Mohammed, and she’s concerned. I think even in some way she might feel she understands him. I remember how shy she was when I first dragged her along to training, how she glued herself to the wall pulling her T-shirt down and how, bit by bit, she became more willing to have a try.
‘After all,’ she says, looking up at me as she stretches her legs and puts the drawing down, ‘that’s the point, isn’t it? I mean, the whole reason we’re teaching circus there is to teach them something that makes them enjoy themselves.’
‘Yeah. For sure. That’s the point. But also it’s good for anyone to feel they’re learning something. You keep trying and you get better at it. That’s why I just tried to hit a balance on a skateboard.’
‘And still you haven’t given up?’
‘No way.’
Caramella laughs.
‘Ah, Cedar, that’s when you’re great. That’s when you’re at your best. When you don’t give up.’
We both look at each other. I’m sitting on the back of the couch. There’s a tiny serious moment when I have a feeling that she’s just said something meaningful, something that reaches further than skateboard hand balances. I know it has something to do with me giving up on the circus, and then not giving up on the circus. Sometimes your own importance wells up way beyond your self and submerges the real things, the things that count. I guess meeting Inisiya had reminded me that the circus didn’t have to be about me, it could be about something else, about the things Caramella was talking about. I feel very warm right then, in that serious moment, and without really knowing exactly why I reach down and give Caramella a big hug. And then I drag her outside to spot me while I keep trying to hit that balance. I’m like a dog with a bone when I really want to learn a new trick.