1001 Nights Cast

Today, the Wonder Book of

Do you know…

A girl curled up on old lino pretending to be a cat.

Do you know what I am? she asks the woman who’s sweeping up broken glass.

Do you know I am a cat asleep in the dirt?

The woman sweeping has a hot tone in her voice, the edge of annoyance, the edge of the great heavy hot clouds that roll over this afternoon.

Do you know why?

A child can get to a certain age, which can produce a hot tone in a distracted adult, an adult who is ploughing through her Sunday, getting ready for something, impatient, the child cat’s purr, meow and ‘why’ are like hair triggers.

There is a young boy, with punched red cheeks and he is staring at a globe of the world that features North America. Behind this rosy young boy from the Wonder Book, behind his tousled hair and blazing red patriot shirt is the blue of heaven. The universe, spinning out beyond him, with his eyes gazing, dreamy with intention at ‘somewhere’, some Country that is not the USA because we see this twisted to the front of the Wonder Book. A stab at geography tells us he is staring right at the Middle East, with the universe deep behind him, foregrounding the curious child.

Why?

Turning the boy over, opening the casket of the Wonder Book we are confronted with a set of Do you knows, like an insistent finger poking the woman’s leg as she scoops up cut glass with her gardening gloves.

Do you know…
How an Atom Bomb Bursts?
What Jet Propulsion is?
Why the tide goes out?

Do you know…
Why and How the pyramids were built?
What a bore is?
What light is?

The woman spins around to prise a sliver of glass from the child’s hand. In the other hand the child clutches a greasy peanut butter sandwich. Big grin, she wants to balance on one leg on the drain pipe with a shard of glass in her palm. The woman says, No. Trying to water down the tone but it bubbles up. No.

The small girl child is alive, alive-alive-oh. She has fish bouncing in a net from Maningrida on her t-shirt, she has a will like a woodpecker, and shouts back a bark like the rusty bird, No, No, No and laughs maniacally, still trying to balance, hold, eat and shout at once.

The woman, who is not her mother, has decided to change tack on the glass thing. Okay, there is glass everywhere and a small child. What can be a distraction? Questions. Take glass gently from child, while asking questions. A child can spend ages pondering the surface of a rock, the tassels of a weed, the shell of a slater if she is asked the right questions. Questions, like a triangular wedge, focus and redirect a mind away from (for example) a woman working and bad glass.

Do you know…
Why a compass points to the North?
What a totem is?
What the different kind of clouds are?

Alto cumulus clouds make lenticular banks (of cloud). From the picture we can see this means like Biblical clouds; clouds parting to reveal a deep long universe that is hard to wrap our head around.

The next photo is a mother and daughter in a rugged pastoral landscape and the mother is enthusiastically pointing to the clouds and the young daughter is watching on. Caption: A fine Cloud formation.

What do you call hot heavy clouds? Sunday afternoon and work-to-be-done clouds? Bluesy deep Australian suburb clouds? Reckless desire to gag child clouds?

The child has found a washer in the dirt. This is a relief because it is round, it is metal and relatively unrusted, it intrigues her and will not harm her. She is past the age of putting everything down her gullet.

What is this? Meow…What is this?
A washer.
A ring.
A washer.

Okay, I like it, I do.

She skips past the woman into the house. Singing with her washer. It is round. It is round. It is round.

The woman can shut the gate soon. The rest of the glass can be dealt with later. She follows the child through the dusty house to the living room. One space where there is a bit of order. The girl child has pulled the Wonder Book off the shelf and spread the contents all over the floor, balancing the washer in her lap. The woman forgot that she had kept some photos and cards inside the Wonder Book because it was big and heavy, keeping things flat as she moved house one more time.

One image is Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde on a postcard from a gallery. Another image is of the woman (who does not have children) holding a baby.

It’s me, sparks the child. This one, this baby is me. You are holding me.

The woman says, No that is not you.

The girl won’t believe it. It has to be her. She begins to bend the photos.

No.

What?

No don’t bend that. It’s special.

Do you know…
Whence we get our numbers?
How time is reckoned?
That skyscrapers sway in the wind?
Why?

There are a pack of cards on the shelf above the stereo. The girl opens the pack and smears them over the floor boards with buttery hands. The woman worries that the child hasn’t drunk any water and it is so hot.

Do you want water?

Shuffle them.

You can. Are you thirsty?

The child puts the tip of her tongue through the washer and mouths a big NO. Drops it out and says YOU can. Shuffle these and the Queen. And the Queen is mine.

Wait.

She looks up, Meow, Can you, can you, can you?

The woman spins around into the kitchen to fetch two glasses of water, leaving the child for a couple of breaths.