Six

This day didn’t start off a very good one for me.

Fiona the Moaner and Mum were having an argument before school. Fiona didn’t have a shower last night, and she didn’t want to have one this morning or she’d be late meeting her repulsive little mates to go to school.

So she was whingeing and moaning, and Mum was laying down the law, saying, ‘A growing child should have a shower every day. It’s simple hygiene.’

Then I said I reckoned a bath would be better for Fiona, and I’d run her one, provided she promised to hold her breath under the water for twenty minutes. Mum didn’t think this was very funny, for some reason.

Next, Fiona tried to get Mum’s mind off the shower by moaning that they were supposed to be having netball trials at school that day, and her netball boots were falling to bits, and Mum had promised she was going to get her some new ones, and Mum hadn’t, and now all the other kids were going to laugh at her. (Pause here to take deep breath before going into next moan.)

I’ll admit that Fiona’s got a point about her netball boots. They’d split open at the toes near the end of last season, and I’d mended them for her with insulating tape. Trouble was, we didn’t have much insulating tape left, so one boot is held together with black and yellow strips while the other’s got red and green on it. I keep telling her that at least she won’t have any trouble remembering which boot goes on which foot.

Anyway, she didn’t have to start whingeing to Mum right then and there. Mornings are always a rush in our place, with Mum getting off to her school where she’s a teacher aide, and Fiona and I trying not to be late for ours. But, no, this morning is the time my little sister chooses, just when she should be taking the dog for his walk.

Mum got the strained look on her face that she gets when she’s upset about something. ‘Sorry, honey,’ she said. ‘I just don’t have the money this week.’

‘But I need them!’ Fiona was moaning. No – she didn’t say need; she said neeeeeeed.

‘Look!’ sighed Mum. ‘I’ve got to pay the power bill and the car insurance this week. You don’t want to eat raw sausages and then have to walk to dancing lessons, do you?’

‘Why don’t you ask Dad to send you some money?’ Fiona said. Oh dear. I got ready to hide under the table.

But Mum just looked sad and tired. ‘Your Dad’s got his own life to build up again, love,’ she said. ‘He’s going without things he’s entitled to – even if he has complained about it, sometimes. We’ll go and look for some netball boots next pay-day, I promise. OK?’

Fiona skidded her arms around Mum’s neck and gave her a slobbery kiss. I felt my stomach heave. ‘Thanks, Mummy,’ she cooed.

‘Hey!’ I said to her. ‘If you go and have a shower now, I’ll walk the dog for you. Deal?’

Mum sent me a pleased look. Fiona seemed to be thinking about giving me a thank-you kiss as well. Over my dead body! So I pointed my breakfast toast-and-peanut-butter-and-honey-smeared knife at her till she went away.

‘Thanks so much, Nathan,’ Mum said.

‘No worries, Mum,’ I told her. I picked up the dog’s leash and then side-stepped to avoid being knocked over by a barking brontosaurus that thundered past me. Mum and her bag hurried off to the corner where Mr O’Rourke was waiting to give her a lift.

I didn’t bother telling Mum that the route the dog drags me on in the mornings goes past Brady West’s place, and there’s always the chance she might be coming out on her way to school. There wasn’t any sign of her today, though. Just as well, probably, when I noticed what the dog was doing to the flowering cherry by her neighbour’s letter-box.

Then, would you believe it, as I was coming out of our front gate after returning the dog to his cell, I bumped into Brady after all. Well, I didn’t actually bump, because I stopped at the last moment, unfortunately. But it qualified as a near miss.

‘Hi, Nathan,’ she said.

‘Grnggrrga,’ I said.

‘Saw you walking your dog before,’ she said.

‘Fnnffwlkuh,’ I said.

‘He’s cute, isn’t he?’ she said.

Cute is not an adjective that I personally would use to describe our dog. I prefer deformed or squalid or loathsome throwback. But if Brady thought he was cute, then cute was what he was. I gave her a slow smile and a sophisticated, man-of-the-world reply. ‘Aw yeah,’ I said.

Brady has blue eyes with a tiny golden fleck in the right one. Not that I’ve been staring, mind you. She’s got long, light-coloured hair that she wears pinned up behind, and her neck looks all soft and smooth. Jason’s bottom jaw hangs open even further than usual when he looks at her.

By the time we got down the road a bit further, I was making quite smooth conversation. At any rate, I’d got past grnggrrga and oh yeah.

Simon was waiting at the dairy. I could hear him telling some primary school kids that yeah, those were real turbo rockets on his wheelchair, and yeah, that was a real emergency ejector seat, in case his chair got stuck in a piranha-infested swamp or something.

He gave me his know-all grin as Brady and I approached. ‘Wondered what had kept you,’ he said.

Then my so-called friend proceeded to hog the conversation with Brady all the rest of the way to school. He talked, and she laughed at his jokes, and I walked along beside them, getting more and more hacked off.

To make things worse, Nelita Travers caught up with us and insisted on talking to me all the time, saying she wished she was as good at Science as I was, and telling me more gross jokes like, ‘Why didn’t the butterfly go to the ball? Because it was a mothball.’ Nelita’s little and dark, and OK, she’s nice-looking. But not as nice-looking as Brady.

By the time we got to school, it was my turn to be in a foul mood. We had English first lesson, and I hardly spoke to Simon as we went in. He’s always in the limelight; people are always paying him attention. Let him see what it’s like to be ignored for a bit.

Simon doesn’t sit at a desk in class. The wheels on his wheelchair won’t fit under the desk properly, and now that he’s having trouble with his arms and shoulders, it’s difficult for him to lean forward and do his work on a desktop.

At home for meals, he takes off his wheelchair arms – they just lift out on rods – and he drives himself in so his legs are right under the table. At school, he’s using a special desk that the hospital made for him. It’s a hinged board like a small tray that folds down against the side of the chair when he’s not using it. There’s a rim around the sides of it to stop ball-points and things rolling over the edge.

At the end of the tray nearest to Simon’s body, there’s even a small hollow where he can rest his elbow to keep it steady while he writes. His arm gets tired quickly, and it sometimes starts giving sudden jerks and quivers. ‘Hello, my arm’s ringing me up,’ he says.

‘Ok, you lot,’ said Ms Kidman when we were all sitting down, and Jason had finished rubbing the shin that he’d banged against the desk leg, and Alex Wilson had finished thumping the guys on either side of him. ‘Pay attention. Anyone found talking will be shot and then given a detention.’

Ms Kidman is a choice teacher. She makes you work, but she makes English enjoyable. Partly it’s the interesting things she gets us to do, like writing your own words for songs, or the class video we’re going to start making soon. And partly it’s because in her class you feel that what you write and what you say gets treated with respect. It makes you feel you’re worth listening to.

The only time I’ve ever seen Ms Kidman go wobbly was when Jason gave a wrong answer – a very wrong answer – and Brady (yeah, Brady) whispered ‘Geek!’ to him.

‘The only geek in this class is a person who sneers at those who try, and who hasn’t got the guts to try herself, Brady West!’ Ms Kidman said then. She didn’t raise her voice, but you felt as if someone had opened the door of a deep-freeze and icy air was blowing past you. Brady’s cheeks turned an interesting ripe tomato colour.

‘Right, will you turn to the Personal Writing part of your folders, please,’ Ms Kidman asked this morning. Groans from the class.

‘No suicide attempts, please,’ grinned Ms Kidman. ‘I don’t want any nasty stains on my floor. Anyway, you’re not going to write an essay.’ Sighs of relief from the class.

‘Some of you apparently heard a rumour that you were going to write a story about Being Yourself. Well, you’re not.’ Murmurs of pleasure from the class.

‘You’re going to write a poem about Being Yourself instead.’ Groans and whimpering noises from the class. I looked around to see if Fiona the Moaner had somehow come to the wrong school.

But as usual with Ms Kidman, it got interesting. She drew a series of circles on the board, one inside the other. ‘Eccentric circles,’ she announced.

‘Concentric circles, Ms Kidman’ Simon corrected her. Ms Kidman blew him a kiss and got Nelita to take him a jellybean from the jar on her desk. You’d think that sort of thing would be childish and stupid at high school, but Ms Kidman knows exactly how to do it.

‘These circles are the layers of yourself,’ she said. ‘The skins you cover yourself with, to protect you from the world.’ A classful of onions, I thought.

‘Inside those skins, those circles, is the real you,’ Ms Kidman went on. ‘It’s a you that you’re very nervous about letting people see, because you all feel that there are things about you, fears and problems and embarrassments, that other people will laugh at. Right?’

There were nods from the class. Even Alex Wilson nodded – or maybe his brain rolled from the back of his skull to the front.

‘And the funny thing is, if you ever do tell someone about the fears at the centre of your circles, they often turn out to have the same sorts of fears and worries too, and you feel better for having told them. Right?’

More nods. The Wilson brain rolled backwards and forwards again.

‘OK, and that’s one of the things poetry can do,’ Ms Kidman continued. ‘Poetry can let you get your fears out into the open, so you can share them with yourself and feel better. And maybe share them with others – but only if you want to. Poetry written in this class is allowed to stay private.’

Then Ms Kidman got us to scribble down on rough paper the sorts of places which made us feel lonely or depressed. Then the times when you felt bad. Was it grey winter weather? Blue summer weather? When you had to go home to an unhappy house? When you had to come to English? No one laughed; we were all getting too wrapped up in the possibilities. Was it worse having other people around when you felt miserable? What colours do you associate with feeling depressed and sad? What movements – are you sitting still or wandering around?

‘Here’s a possible beginning,’ said Ms Kidman. On the board, she wrote two words: I am …

‘Now just spend the next five minutes seeing if any of the things you’ve scribbled down can build into sentences or lines,’ said Ms Kidman as she put down her chalk. ‘Don’t worry if the lines don’t fit together. Don’t worry about whether it makes sense. Don’t worry about rhyme. Just go for the middle of those circles.’

The classroom was silent except for ball-points scribbling and scratching out. Even Alex Wilson was writing. Mind you, he’s probably written quite a lot of poetry already, on lavatory walls.

I was pleased to hear the ‘don’t worry about rhyme’ bit, because the only words I could think of to rhyme with Brady West were lady’s vest, and that didn’t seem likely to win a Nobel Prize. I looked across to wink at Simon the way we often do in class, but he was busy writing. Then I remembered I was in a bad mood with him anyway.

When the five minutes was up, Ms Kidman read us some lines she’d been scribbling too. They were about how scared she got when she faced a class for the first time. I’d never thought of teachers getting scared.

‘OK, now remember that poetry is allowed to stay private,’ Ms Kidman said. ‘But is there anyone who’ll read what they wrote down?’ Your fears can’t be any sillier than mine.’

Nobody wanted to go first, of course, but after a couple of seconds hands started going up. That’s another sign of how people feel sort of worthwhile in Ms Kidman’s class.

Lana Patu had a good one about her Nana dying and the shock of seeing her father cry. Nelita had a surprisingly sensible one about being afraid of nuclear war. Haare had a really hilarious one on being scared he was going to fart in assembly. ‘Great! Great!’ said Ms Kidman. ‘The little funny fears can be as bad as the big ones.’

Then she looked over towards our side of the room, and I saw that Simon’s hand was up. ‘Yes, Simon? You’ve got one?’

Simon took up the sheet of paper from the desk-tray on his wheelchair. He held it for a second, then he read.

I am here in the bright summer days.
Outside, the world gleams and glitters;
Inside, my chair and I watch leaves in the sun,
Or listen to distant laughing voices.
There, boys swim, surf, smile at girls;
Here, I sit in my chair and read,
Or watch old midday movies,
Or push myself from room to room.
When my friends break in from their shining worlds,
Part of me breaks too.

When he’d finished the last line, Simon put the paper back down on the tray and looked straight ahead.

The guys in the class were all staring at their desks or at their feet. The girls were doing much the same. Nelita and Lana, I think it was, made little swallowing noises. Every bit of bad temper and jealousy I’d ever felt about Simon vanished down the cracks in the floorboards.

Ms Kidman was great. She was as silent as the rest of us for a few seconds. Then she spoke very quietly.

‘Every so often, a poem will say something that you know straight away you’ll never forget, no matter how long you live. I think we’ve heard one of those this morning. Thank you from all of us, Simon.’

And the bell went for the end of the lesson.