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Emma-Kate and the Fickleness of Playground Life

Wendy Taylor

    When Emma-Kate arrived at our school, we jostled around her at break and lunch time. We asked her loads of questions and invited her to join our games. We liked new kids and tried our hardest to involve them in our games. But, Emma-Kate just peered at us from under lowered lashes, eyes dark and distant, and turned away. We gave up trying to interact after two days. We had games to play and gossip to pass on.
    When she retreated to the blue painted seats outside the library and sat, shoulders hunched, we laughed and galloped around, ignoring her.
    When summer skies pulsed, we all turned up in garish singlet tops, tiny shorts and feet in floppy sandals. Emma-Kate continued to wear her black, stretchy, long-sleeved top, grey, slouchy, track pants and stained high top sneakers.
    When we asked her, ‘aren’t you hot?’ she pulled her frayed cuffs over her hands and mumbled, ‘no, not really.’ We let her be. She went back to sitting outside the library.
    When Emma-Kate turned up late, one Tuesday, arm in plaster, we all gasped, ‘what happened?’
    When, ‘I tripped over the dog,’ fell from her trembling lips, we lined up to draw hearts and flowers on her cast. We could be nice sometimes. Emma-Kate cried a little.
    When Emma-Kate came to school with a bruise above her eye we all asked her, ‘are you ok?’ She shrugged and said, ‘I need to be more careful.’ After the third time she came to school with a bruised face we stopped asking. It seemed she was always hurting herself. She did need to be more careful. But we tried a little harder to involve her in our games.
    When we had team sports at school, playground sprinklers chugging in the background, the kids selecting who they wanted on their side, picked Emma-Kate last. No one wanted a clumsy kid on their team.
    When our teacher announced, ‘Emma-Kate will not be at school for a while, as she has been in an accident and is in hospital, in intensive care,’ voice gravelly with emotion, we shrugged and continued on as normal. After all she did seem accident-prone.
    When our teacher suggested we make Emma-Kate get well cards, we dutifully drew happy pictures, coloured them in with happy colours, sprinkled over glitter, and wrote “get well soon, from your friend,” inside, in our neatest handwriting. Some of us glued pungent flower petals on the front, stolen from the school’s memorial garden.
    When Emma-Kate didn’t come back to school, we pretended she had moved away to somewhere nice. Perhaps she had.
    When we came to school, the day after the night we all saw her photograph on the television and on-line news channels, and footage of her dad being led away in handcuffs, we giggled nervously and whispered about them behind fluttering fingers. Most of us cried too. Then, we ran out to play.
    When our teacher scratched off the sticker, with her pearly painted nails, saying, “Emma-Kate,” from above her coat hook in the cloak room and replaced it with one saying, “Jake,” we all wondered what he would be like and if he would join in our games.

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