Being Bee (4 page)

‘Can't spare more tea bags,' he said. ‘They count them, you know.' He jerked his head towards the front door which still swung open. ‘They count everything – squeezes of toothpaste, bristles in the brushes, teeth in the comb, soap suds, dishes in the sink, tea bags, plastic bags, empty wrappers, biscuits in the barrel. You should get a job counting, I told them, but what could they count? What could they count, Bee?'

‘I don't know.' I couldn't think of anything and then
I thought of those signs outside parking places, 226 spaces upstairs. ‘Empty parking lots,' I said, ‘for shopping centres and special events.'

‘You can bring her all the time,' Harley told Jazzi, holding her slightly away from him as she tried to hug him good-bye. ‘She's all right. I like her. She doesn't work for them, she's too small and she doesn't care what bun she eats. Jasmine, you will bring her again, I like her.'

I looked from Harley's big grin to Jazzi's pale face and stepped forward. ‘I like you, too, Harley,' I said and nearly offered him my left hand – I had remembered! – but didn't at the last minute, in case he got scared.

‘I don't see why you don't tell Dad,' I said on the way home. ‘He'll like Harley. Harley will like him. They'll get on. Dad gets on with everyone. He's laidback.' Uncle Rob's phrase didn't sound as right when I said it.

‘Harley was good today.' Jazzi smiled a small, tight smile as though it was all she could afford at that moment. ‘I think that was partly you. He liked you. He often doesn't like people. It takes him a while to realise it but in the end he doesn't like them and sometimes he tells them that and they feel—'

‘Sad?'

‘Sad, angry, whatever.' Now Jazzi sounded a little like Harley but more sarcastic, but I decided not to tell her that.

‘The people he lives with are pretty weird,' I said instead. ‘Maybe he should live somewhere else – your place. Why doesn't he live with you, Jazzi – oops, I mean,
Jasmine.
'

‘I am not Jasmine!' Jazzi hurtled through an orange light. ‘I'm Jazzi. And Harley can't live with me. He can't even remember not to call me Jasmine, but that's not the reason. He's not stable. He's not actually normal. He's just as weird as the people he lives with and he needs to live with people like him. He's out of control. You're too young, Beatrice, to understand...'

‘Bee,' I said. ‘Jasmine – Jazzi. Beatrice – Bee. If you'd just remember that we'd get along a lot better, I reckon.'

There was complete silence until we drove up outside our house and then Jazzi turned to me. She'd bitten all her brave lipstick off so her mouth was nearly the same colour as the rest of her face.

‘It's a shame,' she said softly. ‘I just wanted to call you by the name your parents gave you. It's such a good name – strong and passionate, but gentle. I thought of how your mother might like you called by your whole, complete name. But it doesn't matter, I suppose, Bee. Let's have pizza for dinner, okay?'

When I got up the next morning, my scarf had been coaxed out of the zipper and was carefully rolled up beside my school backpack. Neither Jazzi nor I mentioned Harley to Dad.

So you've got a step-mum now?' Sally said at lunch time. ‘Is she nice?'

‘Jazzi's not my step-mum.'

‘Well, she's picked you up every afternoon this week, so that means she must be living at your place and that means she's your step-mum.'

‘She doesn't live with us. She's got a flat all of her own. She just visits. She's my dad's girlfriend.'

‘She'll be your step-mum soon,' Lucy butted in, ‘that's what happens.'

‘I don't want a step-mum.'

‘Well, you need one, that's what my mum says.'

‘I don't need one. Dad and me, we're fine. We've got each other and Nanna. And we see Uncle Rob and Aunty Maree.'

‘And Jazzi now,' Sally said, nudging Lucy with her elbow. ‘You guys see a lot of Jazzi.'

‘Well, they have to,' Lucy said. ‘She's going to be Bee's step-mum, so of course they see a lot of her.'

‘She isn't going to be my step-mum. She doesn't even live with us. Will you stop being mean?'

‘It'll be good,' Sally said. ‘You'll be like a proper family again.'

‘We are already,' I said. I could feel tears stinging behind my eyes. ‘Dad and I are a proper family.'

‘Well, you're not a nuclear family and that's what you should be. Nuclear families have a mother and a father and something else but I've forgotten the other thing...'

‘A dog?' Lucy asked. ‘I think a proper family should have a dog.'

‘I don't think Dad said anything about a dog.' Sally sounded uncertain. ‘But I remember the mum and dad bit.'

‘We were nuclear but then we became different. It's not our fault. Lots of people don't live with their dad and their mum. What about Josh and Sam?

‘They see their dads on weekends,' Lucy said. ‘And anyway Sam has a step-dad.'

‘He's cool, too,' Sally said. ‘He gives Sam great presents all the time and he plays footie.'

‘Jazzi's okay,' I said. ‘She can knit.'

‘So?'

‘Sally, you wanted to learn to knit when I started. You said you did. You said my scarf was cool.'

‘It's too hot to wear a scarf anyway.'

‘It won't be by the time I finish it.'

Sally shrugged. ‘We don't want to be your best friend anymore,' she said. ‘You don't tell the truth about things.'

‘I do so.' I looked at Lucy. ‘You want to be best friends, don't you, Lucy?'

Lucy didn't look at me. She was busy taking everything out of her lunchbox and putting it on her lap.

‘Lucy, you know what we agreed on,' Sally said, kicking Lucy with her foot.

Lucy's head bobbed up and down but she didn't say anything and she didn't look up.

‘So there, Bee, we can't be best friends with a liar.'

‘What have I lied about?'

‘If you don't know, we're not going to tell you.'

‘That's not fair. I haven't lied. I know I haven't lied.'

‘What about the guinea pig letters?' Lucy said softly, still examining her lunch with enormous concentration. ‘We all know that guinea pigs can't write.'

‘I didn't say they wrote them. I said my dad probably did, but that it was fun, pretending.'

‘You told us that Lulu and Fifi wrote you letters,' Sally said, ‘and you told us that you could knit and you told us that Jazzi wasn't your step-mum. That's three lies, Bee.'

‘I can knit.'

‘Your scarf looks demented. It starts off small and then gets bigger and bigger in the middle.'

‘That's because I keep picking up stitches,' I said miserably. ‘Nanna says I'll get better. And Jazzi's not my step-mum.'

‘She will be, though,' Sally said, ‘so it counts as a lie.'

‘You don't know that. You can't say that, Sally Nixon. You've got no right.' I stood up, thinking I'd have to get away before I cried in front of them, and bent down to pick up my lunchbox. Sally deliberately kicked it with her foot so my sandwich spilled out on to the ground.

‘Sorry,' she said, looking up at me, ‘I didn't mean to.'

I looked at the perfectly straight part that divided her head and her hair into two neat plaits. I bent down, grabbed one of her plaits and yanked hard. ‘Oops, sorry,' I said, ‘I didn't mean to.' And I pulled harder with each word.

I heard her wailing behind me, when I was halfway across the playground. I hadn't even made it to the
library before Sally, Lucy and Mrs Petrovsky caught up with me. Sally's face was all streaky with tears and even her freckles looked pink.

‘Is this true, Beatrice?' Mrs Petrovsky asked me, taking hold of both my hands as though she would know from the feel of them whether I'd pulled Sally's hair.

‘Yes,' I muttered looking at her shoes. They were dusty from the playground.

‘Why, Beatrice?'

‘Because she said I didn't come from a proper family.'

‘I didn't,' Sal hiccuped. ‘I said she'd be happy when she got a step-mum, Mrs P, that's all.'

‘Anyway,' I said, looking at Sal's pink streaky face, ‘her part is too straight.'

‘That's not a good reason for physical violence, Beatrice. Who is coming to collect you today?'

‘Jazzi.'

‘I'll make sure I have a word with her and in the meantime you can apologise to Sally and stay on yard duty with me and help me pick up the rubbish.'

‘Yes, Mrs P.'

Jazzi wasn't impressed when she came out of the classroom.

‘No, I quite understand,' I heard her saying. ‘Of course, I'll be sure to explain to her father ... It's a
delicate time for us all ... Difficult, you know, particularly when ... But thank you. Yes, thank you.'

We walked out of the schoolyard in silence.

‘Well, Beatrice,' Jazzi said finally when we were halfway up the hill to home, ‘I must say I'm surprised.'

‘It wasn't my fault.'

‘Pulling someone's plaits not once but four or five times is hardly an accident, Beatrice.'

‘You sound like a teacher.'

‘What am I going to tell your father?'

‘I don't care.'

‘Well, I care. I want to know what I'm to tell him.'

‘That Sally and Lucy were mean. I got into trouble at school. I had to pick up papers all lunchtime, too. My desk got moved to the front. I don't know if I'll ever get back to where I used to be. Nothing happened to Sally and she was horrid.'

‘What did she do?' Jazzi asked. ‘Bee? What did she do? I want to hear your side of the story, too, you know.'

But I couldn't tell her, so we walked home in silence.

At home she tried again, making a cup of herbal tea for herself and pouring me a glass of water from the fridge, which was better than juice, she said, because it actually quenched your thirst. We both sat down at the kitchen table and ate half a muesli bar each.

‘So,' she said after a while, ‘Sally was mean. What did she say?'

‘That she and Lucy didn't want to be best friends with me anymore because I told lies.'

‘Lies about what?'

‘Just stuff.'

‘That's not a good answer, Beatrice.'

How could I tell her? It sounded as though I didn't want her as a step-mum, and it was true, I didn't, but I still couldn't tell her. I looked at her watching me. I knew when she got up in the morning she always put mascara and eyeliner on and that she had a special little brush to brush her eyebrows. That had always struck me as being strange, but now, looking at her little surprised eyebrows, I realised how thin they were and how, if there was even one hair out of place, they'd look crazy. No wonder she brushed them.

‘I don't know,' I muttered. ‘They were just being mean.'

‘Beatrice, this is your last chance. If you can't tell me the whole story, I shall simply have to report what I know to your father and let him deal with it.'

‘I don't care.'

Dad didn't do more than grunt at me when she told him.

‘Flash in the pan,' he said, sweeping it all away with his arm. ‘Girls, they're always doing this kind of thing,
aren't you, Bee? You must remember that, Jazzi, from your days at school.'

‘No, I don't, Nick,' Jazzi said in a tight little voice. ‘I certainly didn't pull anyone's plaits three or four times.'

‘I'm sure she didn't pull hard. Bee, you wouldn't have pulled Sally's hair hard, darling?'

I thought of how I'd seen the hair strain against the clean skin of Sally's parting. How hard was hard? I decided it was having hairs come out in your hand. ‘No, not really,' I said.

‘It'll blow over,' Dad said. ‘The important thing is that we're all here having a lovely dinner – another lovely dinner, thanks to Jazzi.'

After I'd gone to bed, Jazzi came into my room and sat down on the end of my bed, without me even inviting her to.

‘You know,' she said, ‘in my experience, things between friends need to be sorted out. If I can help at all, Beatrice, I'd be happy to. I'm very fond of you, and your dad, of course. You do know that, don't you?'

‘But you're not my step-mum,' I said quickly, ‘are you? I mean, for you to be my step-mum you'd have to live here and you don't. You've got a flat and you live there.'

‘Well, yes, that's true. No, I'm not your stepmother, Beatrice, but I hope you think of me as a friend,
nonetheless.' She looked sad when she said that.

‘I just want to know,' I said, ‘that's all.'

‘Is that what the girls said you were lying about? Did you call me your step-mum and they said I wasn't?'

‘Something like that.' I couldn't tell her the truth.

‘Oh, Bee, I think the intention is just as important as where someone lives. I want to look after you like a stepmother would. You're very important to me. Don't you worry about what the girls said, I'm sure your dad's right and that it will all blow over.'

She offered to tuck me in after that, but I was tucked in already so I couldn't see the point. She smoothed my hair back off my face and I thought she would have liked to have kissed me goodnight but I rolled over before she had a chance. I didn't mind her getting the story wrong but I didn't want to encourage too much stepmotherly behaviour.

Just before I went to sleep I thought of what I should have said to Sally. I should have asked her if she thought the nuclear bomb was a good thing. Then I should have said that if the nuclear bomb was such a bad thing, what made nuclear families so good? Didn't it just mean that they'd blow up too, like the bomb?

I didn't have a chance to tell Sally that because neither she nor Lucy talked to me for the rest of the week and I had to tag along after the teacher on yard duty and play Pick Up Papers. I couldn't wait for the
whole thing to blow over but it looked as though it was going to hang around for a while.