The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley by Martine Murray Read Free Book Online Page B

from one position to the next.
    â€˜Everyone thinks they’re different.’ She waved a wooden spoon at me and then dunked it in a pot. I was lurking and leaning in the doorway, not quite ready to go or stay. To tell you the truth it was beginning to bug me that she kept pointing out how I was just like everybody else.
    I stood up straight and said, ‘No, but I really am different. I’m slightly unusual. I’m not in the main swell, I’m in a puddle.’
    â€˜Oh, you mean you feel left out. You feel like you don’t fit in.’
    â€˜No, I feel like I make my own puddle because I like it better there.’
    â€˜I know that feeling.’ She sighed a big earth-moving sigh.
    I was suspicious. I felt she was stealing my feelings. My unique feelings. She was flouncing round, tipping spices into a big pot of lentils and stealing my feelings. It was kind of great having her around because she cooked food all the time, and since Mum was always at work and too tired to cook, and Barnaby only knew how to make spaghetti with a can of tomatoes, and I only made cheese and tomato Brevilles, it was exciting to have someone making a big deal about meals. She even made porridge in the morning, with dates in it and grated apple and almonds on top. But, best of all, she was always up for a talk. And I mean a real talk. A chewing and burrowing and blazing-up kind of talk, not just a how-was-your-day kind of talk. She and I got to talking about real things. I’d never met someone who wanted to talk about life as much as I did; about the big stuff like love and difference and hope and lentils and the nervous system and bigotry. And if you don’t know what that means (I didn’t either), you should find out because there’s a lot of it going round and I believe it’s catchy, and if you get it you become very mean spirited, especially towards people who are different.
    â€˜But I’ve always been slightly unusual. Ask anyone. Mrs Duffel said it on my school report.’ Mrs Duffel was my grade four teacher and she had red hair too, and she wore short dresses covered in swirly patterns. She was lovely.
    Aunt Squeezy said, ‘Oh Lord, Cedar, we’re all slightly unusual.’ And she giggled.
    I bit my lip and sulked for a moment. I plonked myself down at the kitchen table as I could tell we were heading for a session. Sometimes she really got me thinking in ways I didn’t want to have to be thinking.
    â€˜So who is usual then, if everybody is slightly unusual?’ I was quite pleased with that bit of logic. I felt I had laid a very fine trap. In fact I was so pleased with the excellence of my trap that I forgot that my slightly unusual life was under siege, and I sat back and grinned.
    Aunt Squeezy stopped moving for a minute.
    â€˜Hmmm. Maybe you can be. Then you’ll be the only usual one and you’ll be special, for your usualness. Imagine that?’ She laughed. ‘Cedar B. Hartley, the only person in the world who is usual.’
    â€˜I’d be an outcast!’ I pronounced.
    She laughed again but she didn’t say anything, and I knew I was meant to do the thinking. Just as I got going she butted in.
    â€˜Oh, but really, don’t you think it’s the most perfectly beautiful thing in the world to discover the tiny singularities that are stitched into the seams of our souls?’ She sat down opposite me and her eyes lit up as if she was seized by a great excitement. ‘There’s nothing more necessary and beautiful than the differences between us.’ She gazed through the window and her eyes flickered out. I knew her mind was floating back to something else, something that made her quiet, maybe the same something that had made her stay on with us. When Mum had told her we’d love her to live with us as long as she liked, Aunt Squeezy got tears in her eyes and hugged my mum, and since then it just seemed as if she’d always