Chook Chook squirmed in my arms, and I dropped her by my feet on the pavers. She went on her way, to hunt grasshoppers, or climb the mandarin tree, or scratch up the garden beds and make my mother mad. I held out my hand to shake his, because that was what my parents did when they met someone new, and I wanted to get it right. I did hold within me a desire to get things right. If he found it odd, or formal, or cold, he certainly did not show it.
‘I’m Fran, we just moved in next door. The green house with the really pointy roof. I’m ten,’ he said, gripping my hand lightly but shaking it vigorously, like he was getting sand off a towel.
‘I’m Nora, we’ve always lived here, I’m eleven,’ I replied.
We stared at each other with curiosity and our hands stayed gripped long after the introductions were over. We were babies, really, but already ourselves. Or at least Fran was. His hair was long, longer than mine, his smile bookended with the loveliest dimples, and his T-shirt hung down to his knees, waiting for a growth spurt that would take another four years to arrive. I remember staring at his face, taking it in, and thinking I would work hard to make him my friend. I sensed goodness in him and hoped I could hide my not-goodness for as long as it took to reach the point of friendship no-returnsies. He did not, to my knowledge, go to my school and did not know how I could be. It felt important at that time to have a friend who did not know how I could be.
‘Hey, do you like Zappos?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, I love them,’ he replied.
‘Do you want to come into my room and hang out? I’ve got a whole bucket of them.’
‘What flavour?’
‘Strawberry.’
‘Oh yeah, they’re so much better than grape.’
‘I know, they’re my favourite.’
I led him in to reveal the plastic container of sweets I had saved up to purchase at the bulk-buying place Mum insisted on driving to a few times a year to buy toilet paper and olive oil. We did not talk for a while, partly because Zappos had a way of sticking your teeth together that made it impossible to open your jaw, and partly, it felt, because we were absorbing other information from one another, the kind that needed silence to take it in. Fran moved in a way that felt alien to me, loose-limbed and soft and unaware. I envied that, and the ease it brought to me in his presence. I noticed that I was twirling the signet ring my grandfather William, Dad’s dad, had given me for my tenth birthday, my last gift from him, the one with the diamond in it. Fran was watching too.
‘It’s a diamond,’ I said, holding out my hand to show him.
‘Cool, it’s really nice,’ he replied.
‘What is your birthstone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, what month were you born in?’
‘September – it’s my birthday soon.’
‘I don’t know the September one, let me look it up.’
It was thrilling to have something to share with him, and I flicked through my gem book with too much haste, unable to find the right page. I took some deep breaths to slow myself down and find what I was looking for.
‘Sapphire, oh that’s a good one,’ I told him, holding open the page for him to see.
‘Wow, so it means . . .’
He took the book and read the paragraph that described all the ways a sapphire symbolised and protected those people born in September, his eyes alight.
‘So, it basically means I’m royalty,’ he said, enthusiastic and proud.
I took the book back from him and read it for myself.
‘You’re sincere and faithful and honest,’ I explained.
‘I am,’ he agreed.
These kinds of things – star signs and birthstones and the Chinese zodiac – all meant so much to me at that age. Mum and Dad had been raised Catholic, casual observers by the time they had us, though definitely still present enough to choose to enrol us in the school run under that banner over the state school that was much closer to our house. They were on friendly terms with the local priest, Father Jason, as if this was Mum’s backup plan if things ever went south. But no sickness or tragedy befell us, and so we never had any reason to go to Mass on Sundays, much to my Grandma Sue’s disappointment. This left me to find my faith in other predetermined things that could tell me who I was. It gave me the sense that I could focus my energy on my strengths, and forgive myself a little for the weaknesses that were built into my making. My explosive temper was because I was an Aries, rather than a fundamentally broken and bad kid.
‘What does diamond mean?’ Fran asked.
‘I’m strong and determined,’ I replied, not needing to look it up as I had learned it by heart.
