Magenta McPhee

CATHERINE BATESON
writes poetry, verse novels and novels for both younger readers and young adults. She has won the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers twice – with
Rain May and Captain Daniel
and
Being Bee. Rain May and Captain Daniel
also won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award. Three of her other novels,
The Wish Pony, Painted Love Letters
and
Millie and the Night Heron,
were CBCA Honour Books.
Millie and the Night Heron
was shortlisted for the YABBA and KOALA children's choice awards.

Catherine lives in the Dandenongs, near Melbourne, with her husband, her son and daughter and her youngest stepdaughter, a labrador, a terrier and assorted tropical fish. She works as a writer in schools and teaches Professional Writing and Editing at TAFE.

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The letter –
my
letter – was not only printed, it was the Fave of the Month. I won a
Sammi
t-shirt – pink with a red heart – a bottle of fake tan, a CD from some try-hard girlie singer and a 1 gigabyte mp3 player – again pink with a red heart – that tried as hard as the girlie to look like a real brand name. I didn't care. I was a published writer.

My letter read:

And Dr Suzie's reply appeared beneath it:

Really, the best part of the whole letter was the PS. I read it over and over at breakfast until Dad told me to put that silly magazine away and concentrate on my muesli. As if muesli ever needed anyone's undivided attention. I longed to show him – but I could hardly let him read just the PS and the rest of the letter was private and about him. I wanted to call my mum, but I couldn't tell her either. She might get all guilt-stricken and cancel the wedding or something. So, I rolled the magazine and stuck it in my bag for school. I'd show Polly, my bestest friend in the whole world. She refused to read
Sammi
because she'd once counted the advertisements in it. But she'd read the letter. After all, she'd help write it.

‘You off?' Dad asked from the bedroom door, keeping his gaze strictly at eye level.

‘Nearly,' I said. ‘Dad, have you heard of Blue Day?'

Dad grunted, ‘If it's that band day in the park, no, Magenta, you're far too young.'

‘I think that's Big Day Out,' I said. ‘This is different.'

‘That's a relief. I didn't think you were into all that, Mags.'

‘Please don't call me Mags,' I said automatically, ‘and no, Dad, you have to be older for that kind of thing. I'm not developmentally up to that, yet.'

‘It's hard to tell,' Dad said gloomily, looking me up and down, ‘one day you're gurgling in a pram and the next you're wearing fake tattoos and reading magazines
that don't even have proper names. Also, can you please tell me when this silly moratorium on cleaning is going to stop? I hate having to keep my eyes on the ceiling every time I come in and it's an occupational health and safety issue. You could actually kill me doing this, you know. I walk in, eyes on the ceiling, trip on some kind of discarded footwear, or my foot gets stuck in a pair of tights. I fall, hit my head on the corner of the bed and that's it. I bleed to death while you're at school. You come home and find me dead. But that's not the worst of it. I've ruined the science project you've spent four weeks of your life doing.'

‘What are you doing in my room when I'm not here?' I ignored him. Dad enjoyed worst case scenarios.

‘The normal things. Trying to collect washing, finding the notes the school sends home with you, dusting the light fittings...'

‘Snooping.'

‘Parental management.'

I was pleased I took my journal to school every day, even though that put it at risk from Cameron and his gang. At least I could keep my eye on them.

‘I don't need managing,' I pointed out, ‘I manage myself quite well, thank you.'

‘We all need managing, pet,' Dad said, scuffing some socks over to a pile of other socks. ‘I'm assuming these are all dirty?'

‘Probably,' I shrugged. ‘It would be easier on both of us if you admitted that you needed some management at this point. Then I could clean my room.'

I could tell by the tightening of Dad's mouth that I'd gone too far. If I wasn't careful, I'd get a ‘young lady' right about now.

‘Young lady,' (see, I knew it!) ‘I've told you, I'm reassessing. There have been a lot of changes and I'm working out what I want to do for the rest of my life. It's adult stuff, Mags –
adult.
Obviously I can't make you understand that, but I'm asking you, yet again, to accept what I'm saying and end this stupid campaign.'

I stuck my chin out and lifted my head. It's a well known fact that most people who are really depressed can't admit it. It was in our health class. And we were told to keep an eye on anyone we thought might be suffering. E A R – Eyes Ask Reach. I'd been reaching for weeks but Dad was avoiding me.

‘I'll think about my room this weekend,' I said.
‘Think
– not necessarily do anything.' I was getting a bit sick of it, too. Dad was right when I thought about it. It was an occupational health and safety issue. I didn't believe for one second that Dad would die on my science project, but even a dirty footprint could ruin all the work I'd done.

‘You'll do more than think about it,' Dad warned, but I was nearly out the door by then so I could pretend I hadn't heard him.

Polly was late so I had to wait until recess to show her my first published piece of writing.

‘See,' she said when we'd both read it three times over, ‘I told you, you're going to be a writer, Magenta. This is the first positive evidence, but it won't be the last. You're on your way to fame and fortune.'

Polly likes making big statements. I wasn't so sure about the fortune bit. The last time we'd had a visiting writer at the school he'd looked a little frayed around the edges. Cameron had asked him if he'd ever met J.K. Rowling and that really sent him off. He was still ranting when the bell went and most people were out the door. I'd felt sorry for him. I knew what he meant. Just thinking about Harry Potter gave me writer's block, too.

‘It's just a letter,' I said, ‘and I'd have to say, Polly, that it's not particularly helpful. But I do like the PS.'

‘I think we're going to have to take your dad in hand ourselves,' Polly said. ‘Clearly we're the only ones who know he's in trouble. I suggest a meeting at my place on the weekend. I'll talk to Jane about it in a roundabout way and do some research on the Net. Do you think your dad will let you come for a sleepover?'

‘After I clean my room he will, but that could take all weekend.'

‘Nonsense,' Polly said firmly. ‘Tell you what, I'll drop over first thing Saturday and help you clean. It's above
and beyond, of course – but I'll do it for you.'

Dad welcomed the idea of Polly coming to help me clean.

‘She's got a real practical bent, that girl,' he said, ‘for all her eccentricities.'

‘You can talk,' I said rather sharply, ‘you've become just as bad!'

‘I have chosen to downsize my technological dependencies, but that is hardly eccentric. It's just common sense.'

‘It's ridiculous not even having a mobile phone, Dad. What if there's an emergency?'

‘There are very few emergencies that have relied on a mobile phone. Anyway, you've got one, so what's the big deal?'

‘That's the big deal – you use mine. It's just hypocritical.'

‘I don't use yours. Your mother occasionally rings me on your mobile phone on matters she considers can't possibly wait until we're back home from wherever we've been. She's always been impatient.'

‘At least she lives in this century,' I muttered, but Dad pretended not to hear me.

Since he'd been retrenched, Dad had got rid of most of our gadgets, as he called them. We no longer had a dishwasher, a clothes dryer or a microwave. He'd kept the freezer because it allowed us to buy seasonally
and freeze. I made him keep the TV and the DVD player, although he hadn't wanted to. He voluntarily kept his computer, so he could look for a new job. He sold his mobile phone, his laptop and his PDA on eBay and went out and bought a diary and address book instead. He bought a pasta machine but gave the breadmaker to my mother. The pasta machine, he pointed out, doesn't require electricity. We've made pasta once.

I thought he'd gone a bit bonkers. It was part of the depression. He could call it downsizing or whatever he liked, but it was clearly the behaviour of someone suffering from some kind of emotional and mental problem.

It's different Polly not using electricity except when strictly necessary. That's a phase she's going through, or so Jane, her mum, says. She's Green – well, apart from her computer use which I'd say pushes her into the red zone. But there is something quite beautiful about walking into her candlelit bedroom. You could actually blame Jane. She started Green Box Caterers just before anyone else thought about organic vegies or recycled cardboard plates. She's now a caterer to the stars. She specialises in photo shoots. It's no wonder Polly is eccentric, given that her dad is a pessimistic sculptor and her mum an upbeat cook.

‘The last time Polly helped me clean up,' I told Dad,
‘she threw away most of my stuff and I had to spend the next day rescuing it.'

‘One day that girl will have a de-cluttering business,' Dad said, ‘and make millions, if she inherits her mum's business sense.'

I checked him out quickly. I think other people earning money must get him down, when
he's
unemployed. But he sounded cheerful enough. Of course, you can't tell. Depressed people get good at hiding their true feelings behind light-hearted jokes. I'd read that somewhere.

Polly arrived at ten on Saturday morning.

‘What are you wearing?' I asked when I opened the door to her. She had a bandanna wrapped around her head, gumboots on her feet and washing-up gloves on her hands.

‘Cleaning clothes, of course. Where are yours?'

‘My room's not a toxic waste dump,' I said, eyeing the gloves.

‘Oh isn't it?' Dad interrupted. ‘Hi Polly, how are things?' Dad looked her up and down.

‘With me – fine. But life as we know it is doomed.' Polly spoke with gloomy pleasure. ‘People of your generation, Max, are responsible and my generation was probably born too late to reverse the damage.'

‘Well, well,' Dad said, ‘nothing like an optimistic view to brighten up your Saturday morning.'

‘I'm not a pessimist,' Polly said, ‘just realistic. If I was pessimistic I wouldn't bother trying to do anything about it.'

‘We all have to do our bit,' Dad said. ‘Tea, coffee?'

‘I don't drink anything with caffeine,' Polly said, ‘and anyway, coffee exploits third-world countries.'

‘Water? Milk?'

‘No thanks, Max, really I'm fine.'

‘I'll leave you girls to it, then. I'm going to the library. Any overdue books, Magenta?'

I shook my head. I couldn't afford to take out library books anymore. I still had a fine on my card that I hadn't paid.

‘The only place he goes these days is the library,' I told Polly as she surveyed my room. ‘He used to play golf and do other stuff, but now it's always the library.'

‘Golf's expensive,' Polly said, ‘and boring.'

‘Dad says he only played it for business but I think he's lying. He had his own set of golf clubs. He sold them. Sometimes I think he's sold his life.'

‘Well, we'll clean this up. It's not quite as bad as I thought it might be, although whatever was in that lunch box has become a health hazard.'

‘Oh that,' I looked at it with interest. ‘I think that might have been dip once.'

‘It's disgusting.' Polly pulled her bandanna down over
her nose and carried the lunch box into the kitchen. ‘You can borrow my gloves to wash it.'

‘Can't we just chuck it?'

‘Magenta! We're Green, remember. It's a perfectly good lunch box underneath that mould.' She peeled off her gloves and I put them on, reluctantly.

Finally my room was neat enough. I drew the line at Polly organising my books into alphabetical order or tidying any drawers that could just be closed on the mess inside.

‘Okay,' she said, propping Teddy up against the pillows so he looked uncomfortably straight, rather than his usual slumped self, ‘now we work on your other problem. Get a piece of paper, Magenta, we're going to do this scientifically.'

By the time Dad came home from the library, we had googled ‘depression' and written our list: