1001 Nights Cast

I’m down at the park, and bloody hot. The new weather, God love us. Threadbare grass, more dirt than anything else now the drought’s the worst in living memory. What’s dead memory, by the way, the kind that hazes out all trace of what a stinker you really are? The kind you can’t be expected to bear? I won’t go down that track.

Any way. I’m down at the park. It’s a Saturday, so you can’t expect to have it to yourself, but still you don’t expect a minibus-load of loonies to arrive with a big sweating fat man in charge, just when you’ve got your ice-cream and settled in the shade with it. Such as it is.

The ice-cream’s pretty good but since it’s 35 degrees on the first day of spring I’m sweating, and the thing’s half melting down my arm. I’m hardly a mere slip of a girl, though you’d never believe the way I looked at fifteen. It hurts to look at the old photos now, it’s the drugs, they hide you away inside a mountain of fat and still you’re not safe it turns out. I’m a big, white, marbled kind of thing now, an effort to get around, a bit stiff, too. I’m just about finally comfortable, when they make a bee-line for my tree.

Six of them there are, two in wheelchairs, the rest the walking wounded. One looks almost normal—big boy, hunched, pink-cheeked, fat legs akimbo in what looks like an out-grown school uniform, but he mutters at the ground in an unbreakable heatwave of anger and then it’s easy to work out. Autistic. Plenty of them at the old place, and no two ones alike. Next to him’s a little one all skin and bones and dented—well his head slopes to the side—and I recognise a head-banger. He rocks the moment he arrives, hugs his tiny knobbly knees to his caved in chest and never looks up from the rocking. And then I see his legs have the body-hair of a man.

The rest, well who’s to say but cerebral palsy’s a good bet for the two in wheelchairs. The girl’s almost pretty, though she’s probably not a girl at all. She’s anything up to forty, but no word comes out un-mangled. The little fellow gets me though. A collapsed set of pick-up sticks in a baby stroller, Chinese or something, gorgeous black hair, eyes squinted shut, blind I’m guessing, and of course not a word can slip through all that damage. Why would it want to, words bring enough grief. But boy this one can laugh. Seems his name is Tony. Laughs every time he hears it.

The big man’s sweating as he hauls them all into the scrappy shade. The smell of fish and chips arrives with them, and the first of the interested flies. The sea-gulls will be next. He’s German—heavy accent, huge laugh that teeters off into a high giggle the way the Germans do, unnerving, but I see how much he cares for all these little buggers and I hold my fire. They’re out for a treat with maybe $60 worth of greasy food now coming out, and it’s not my tree anymore. And it’s not the fault of any of us under it, either. We find each other, don’t we.

Three women walk by with some kind of dog that no doubt ends in ‘oodle’. One says something and they all laugh. Another complains there’s nowhere nowadays where you can walk without having this sort of thing shoved in your face.

The big man and I look at each other.

They get stuck into their food and I have to say, it smells good for the first five minutes. A little walking curiosity with bottle glasses and a kind of failed Mohawk, oddly hennaed on a curly top-knot leans over with a squashed chip in his grubby hand.

‘Want one, lady?’

‘No I’m right’, I say. I’m not, of course, but the last cool shreds of my dignity reside in phrases such as this.

‘We can’t share your tree if you won’t let us share our food with you,’ says the Kraut, and he comes over with a little packet of chips. ‘Eat them before they get too hot’ he jokes, and begins to laugh his head off. Tony chimes in too. I watch his low shaved hair-line crinkle with every expression on his big red face and I have to laugh as well. Actually, the chips taste good.

I realise anyone looking now will see I’m one of them.

Then the other helper gets the camera and it seems it’s photo time. One says he needs his shoes off for the photo, it’s the red-topped Mohawk kid who’s plainly somewhere in his thirties. He finally gets them off but then a large ant’s loudly spotted by the girl in the wheel chair. He wants his bright red Crocs back on again.

At last they’re ready. Only this is a very odd photo. No-one looks at the camera at all except for the big man, who leans on the back of the stroller that contains the tumbled heap of Tony. The way he leans is so simply proud and happy I don’t care quite so much that I must be spilling into the frame as well.

‘Hey Alan!’ calls the helper, and Mohawk looks up. ‘The henna looks great. Your Mum did a good job. D’you like your new haircut?’

Alan goes back to closely monitoring the rather large grey-green ant. We wait once more.

‘Not yet’, he gravely replies. I have to laugh but it’s in admiration really. It’s a bloody work of art. ‘Not—yet.’ No one can be offended, nor can Alan possibly be sold short. Dignity a king would envy. Can anyone stay this honest while they tell the exacting truth?

Not yet, I’d say. Not—yet.