Blue’s mother examined her closely. ‘Hmph. I might have known. You don’t look any different to me. Still your old sad-sack self, I see. You’d think by now you would have at least cracked a giggle.’
Yet again, Blue felt like a disappointment. Just as she was about to explain how musical medicine worked, Blue’s mother’s attention evaporated. Her eyes shifted to the front door.
‘Careful with that, will you!’ she screeched. ‘Your three wages combined wouldn’t cover the cost of a nostril.’
Blue turned to see what was going on. Nudging open the front doors was the head of the horse, and barely visible beneath its huge abdomen was Melvin, Luz and Tracee. Bent over, each holding a leg, they were struggling to manoeuvre the enormous stuffed animal inside.
‘Go left … now right, Melvin,’ instructed Luz, from the back flank.
‘I bought that for your father. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Blue’s mother. ‘Put it down here, Melvin, in the middle of the hall. It’ll be the first thing he sees when he walks through the door. You know how he loves animals. Well, dead ones, anyway.’
‘Put front leg down first, Melvin, me and Tracee stuck! This not part of horse I like to spend much time up close with. Nor you, either, Melvin. Your mabungo right in my face!’
‘Sorry, Luz, beg your pardon. I thought it was down. Hang on …’ Melvin tried to bend his knees a little more to get the horse’s hoof onto the floor, but as he did, his left knee gave way beneath him. ‘Oorrhh, possum droppings!’ groaned Melvin, as he crumpled in slow motion onto the ground.
The horse wobbled, dipped, leaned to the left and crashed to the floor.
Luz and Tracee went with it. They were both trapped beneath the horse’s rump. Blue rushed to help them. Blue’s mother rushed to check the horse.
‘BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!’ laughed Blue’s mother. ‘You lot are better than Funniest Home Videos! At least you cushioned the horse’s fall. It seems to be in one piece, thank god. I need a glass of bubbly; the stuff they served on the plane was not to my palate. And if there’s even a scratch on that horse, Melvin, you’re the weakest link – it’s coming out of your wages!’
Blues mother click-clacked off to the kitchen in her high heels.
‘Are you okay, Melvin? Luz, Tracee, are you hurt?’ said Blue, scrambling to help them out from under the horse and back on their feet.
‘Life is like a wheel, Blue. Sometimes you up, sometimes you down,’ said Luz, dusting herself off. ‘You know why horse is always happy? Because they not try to impress other horse. Ha ha ha! Maybe having horse is good role model for your mumma, Blue. Come on, Tracee, we better get back to bathroom five.’
Luz and Tracee disappeared upstairs. Melvin shuffled off, rubbing his left hip and muttering one of his own made-up swearwords.
All weekend, Blue’s mother couldn’t stop moaning about how devastating Blue’s lack of progress was for her. How she’d been expecting to arrive home to the glorious sound of a house filled with laughter. How a mother loves nothing more than a good laugh with her daughter. How every day without laughter was a day wasted. Blue tried to tell her about the throat singer from Tuva who sounded like he’d swallowed a metal detector and a didgeridoo. She tried to show her the way the Doctor danced as if the bones in his legs were made of rubber. And she tried to tell her about plasmaphones and cities made of instruments and music that made your hair stand on end.
But Blue’s mother didn’t hear any of it. All she could talk about was how difficult and unfair it was for a mother not to hear her child’s laugh. ‘I feel like I’ve been robbed, Blue. Robbed! This is grand theft on an unimaginable scale! Your laughter has been stolen from me,’ she said.
Blue’s mother droned on and on about the unfairness of it all, yet she never stopped once to think how Blue might feel. Blue being Blue, she felt extra terrible. She hated making other people feel bad. She wished she could laugh as much for her mother as she did for herself.
The clock ticked above the rumbling low sshhh of her mother’s white noise. After consulting Bernice, the acoustics counsellor, Blue’s mother cranked it up even louder to ease her distress. Without music, Blue felt as though the weekend went on forever. She counted down the hours till she could return to the Boogaloo Family Clinic of Musical Cures. Forty-eight, forty-seven, forty-six …
CHAPTER 10
Leonard
‘Now, you can swim, can’t you?’ said Bessie, as she zipped Blue up into a full-length wetsuit.
‘Yes.’
Bessie hung a towel round Blue’s neck. ‘Right then, let’s go, luv.’
Blue followed Bessie out of the music lounge and into the sprawling gardens. Although humans like to think they invented music, there are of course plenty of animals who can hold a tune. And the Boogaloo Gardens were full of them!
That morning, the birds and beetles were singing up a storm.
After such a terrible weekend, the throb of their song was like a massage. Blue felt every muscle in her body relax.
‘Where are we going?’ yelled Blue, above the din.
‘To the lake. There’s someone I want you to meet.’
Bessie led Blue along a path towards a forest. Inside the forest, the throb of beetle- and birdsong changed to a quiet thrum, like a choir in a church. As if knowing where they were, Bessie’s pygmy possums tumbled down her skirt and ran along the forest floor. They chased each other up trees and rolled down humps and bumps on the path. After a time, the deep blue of the lake became visible
