Mira in the Present Tense (10 page)

“Well, my mum and dad couldn't decide what to call me. They couldn't even agree on any names they both liked before I was born. My mum's Irish and my dad's Nigerian…that's where my surname ‘Gbemi' comes from…Nigeria. Dad told me that ‘Gbemi' means ‘favored one.' A long time ago the name used to be ‘Fagbemi,' which means something like ‘favored by the oracle,' but somewhere along the line, we dropped the ‘Fa' bit. My mum thought I should have an Irish first name but Dad wanted a Nigerian one, and even after I was born they still couldn't agree. So Mum says she just lay in the hospital bed thinking about what to call me. Then one day she looked up at Big Ben, because Mum was in the hospital just opposite, and she thought,
That's it
. The answer had been staring her in the face and blasting her ears all that time. That's why she called me Ben, and Dad said it sounded good with Gbemi. So that's it; that's why I'm called Ben Gbemi.”

Ben definitely speaks as though he's projecting his voice across London. He's tall too, probably the tallest boy in year seven.

Pat has been smiling all the way through Ben's explanation.

“Big Ben! I'm predicting a bold career in broadcasting for you!”

“What's broadcasting?” asks Ben.

“I'm thinking…you could be a presenter, no, maybe more daring…a journalist reporting while battling against the elements, earthquakes, or storms, or even in a warzone…surviving against all odds and still bringing us the news.” Pat Print is obviously enjoying herself making up a story for Ben's life.

Jidé laughs and slaps Ben across the back.

You can't help but smile, because you can just see Ben Gbemi in a job like that.

“Which comes first—the name or the personality?” asks Pat Print. It's one of those questions she's not expecting us to answer.

Ben looks down at his feet and tries hard not to show he's smiling underneath his copper glinting curls.

“Now, who's next?” Pat's sharp eyes settle on me. “Mira?”

“I'm sorry, Miss Print, I didn't do the name bit. I wrote the diary though.” There it is again, that thin little voice of mine.

“OK! I'll hear that later. Call me Pat, please. Now, Millie, what have you got for me?”

Millie needs no encouragement.

“My ancestors are Scottish and, further back, originally from France, dating right back to 1066. Dad's told me all about it, but it's a bit complicated. Apparently, one of my ancestors had Robert the Crusader or Marauder's heart locked up in a box.”

“Which was it? A crusader or a marauder?” Pat Print asks, looking amused.

“What's the difference?” asks Ben.

“Good question,” Pat laughs. “Sorry, Millie, I interrupted your flow.”

“Well, my ancestor's job was to keep Robert the Something's heart locked up in a box. That's why I'm called ‘Lockhart.'”

“Why would he have to keep the heart locked up?” butts in Jidé, forgetting again his own rule that he's not supposed to be this interested.

Millie sighs, fed up with being interrupted.

“Fascinating, Millie.” Pat smiles. “It's a great name, Lockhart—beautifully iconic. The heart is the subject of so many wonderful stories. I bet if I asked you, you could all write a different story about love. Now you've given me an idea.”

Ben and Jidé groan at the same time…back to their double act again.

“Write down as many words as come to mind when I say the word ‘heart.' Just make a list. I'm giving you fifteen seconds so don't think about it too hard, just scribble down whatever springs to mind…starting NOW! The word is ‘heart.'”

artichoke

blood

love

layers

break

pig

blood

black pudding

brave

stop beating

That's all I write in fifteen seconds.

“Now STOP! Swap papers and have a read of each other's,” orders Pat.

I was going to swap with Millie, like I always do, but before I can, Jidé Jackson has swapped papers with me. In fact, he's sitting shoulder to shoulder with me, and just that closeness makes me turn my most impressive crimson color. At least I can keep my head down while I read his list.

love

hate

murder

blood

machete

lost

scar

mother

father

sister

cloth

empty

river

“Now see what words you have in common and choose one word from the list that you would like to ask your partner about,” Pat instructs us.

I look sideways at Jidé and for a second I do what I can never usually do…look him in the eye. Jidé makes a tiny movement with his head that tells me not to ask him anything about his words, so we talk about black pudding and pig's blood and how my Nana Kath's friend tricked me into eating it by telling me it was a vegetable.

“And you believed her!” Jidé laughs.

Then he asks me about the artichoke, so I tell him about Nana Josie's artichoke-heart charm and what she told me about it, and all the time I'm talking I'm thinking of what
his
story might be behind those words.

“Let's have a couple of examples then,” calls out Pat Print as Jidé and I go back to avoiding eye contact with each other and her. For a moment I forgot we were even in class. Now that I've actually looked into them, I realize that Jidé's eyes have a hazel light in them.

It takes me a while to get my head back into the room, and by the time I do Millie's reading out the word “transplant,” from Ben's list, because what he didn't tell us earlier is that he was one of the youngest babies in Britain ever to have a heart transplant. It's hard to believe that Ben Gbemi could have ever been small and weak.

“I've got the newspaper clippings. I can bring them in to show you, if you want,” Ben booms.

I can't help thinking of Big Ben's tiny baby heart.

“You see,” smiles Pat Print. “You were only just born and you'd already hit the news.”

Then Ben reads out Millie's word: loyalty.

“We talked about Millie's ancestor guarding the heart,” Ben says. “He must have really cared about the person whose heart he was protecting, to stay loyal to them for all that time, even though they were dead.”

Ben's dad left home a few years ago. I bet that's what he's thinking about, but he's not the type to say anything.

Pat nods. “The heart is probably the most powerful symbol in life and literature. My guess is that Millie's ancestor could have either been protecting the heart because it was such a precious symbol or preventing it from being returned to its people, like a scalp or a macabre trophy. You might have to dig a bit deeper to find out,” Pat Print tells Millie. “So what do you think? If Millie did the research, would you want to read that story?”

“I would, for definite…that's what I go for…adventure, mystery, that sort of thing,” perks up Ben.

“Indeed. You've got an epic historical novel on your hands there, Millie Lockhart. If anyone can handle it, you can. Why don't you write the opening paragraph for next week? Let's see if we can help you out a bit. Jidé, if you were reading that book, what would make it a page turner for you?”

Jidé doesn't even need to think before he answers.

“She'll have to make a link between herself and that story, like an adventure through time.”

Millie nods.

“I think I'll just give up my day job,” jokes Pat Print. “With a writer's note like that, I may as well pack up and go home.”

A noise that never escapes my mouth in school fills up the room. It's strange and low and loud and it shocks everyone, my laugh, because I don't think, except for Millie, the others have ever heard it before. It's so embarrassing. I don't even know why I'm laughing.

“Now, that's a first!” Jidé Jackson nudges me on the arm playfully.

My face is as hot and red as if I've been running a very high temperature. How did that slip out? And now my laugh and Jidé's nudge have made my temperature shoot up to boiling point and left behind a stupid grin that I can't wipe off my face. I can't even look up. Pat Print must realize that I am paralyzed with embarrassment because she switches back to Jidé instead.

“Jidé. What about your surname? Did you find out any-thing more?”

Jidé shakes his head. Suddenly Jidé the joker looks miserable. It's like we've swapped roles.

“That's a shame,” sighs Pat.

“‘We don't have that information.' That's what Grace said when I asked her if we could ever trace my original surname. I wasn't always a Jackson.”

I've never heard Jidé talk so quietly.

“I don't know what my birth name is. I had a sister, she was about three, they think, older than me anyway…but she wouldn't speak, not even to tell them her name or mine. Grace said she was too traumatized to talk. Grace and Jai, they gave me the name BabaJidé when they found me. I told you, didn't I, it means ‘father has returned,' and even though Jai saw so many children out there, he had a feeling as soon as he saw me that he should be my father. I was about a year old, they're not sure. I have a made-up birthday. And…my birthparents, who knows? You probably saw them on the news, floating down the river.”

The words from Jidé's list echo around my mind.

A blueberry-colored rash starts to spread up Pat Print's neck and over her face. I didn't have her down as a blusher.

“Rwanda…is that right?”

Jidé nods.

“What did Grace and Jai do out there?” she asks gently.

“Aid workers in one of the refugee camps, the one my sister walked into with me. I suppose I could research what happened to people
like
my birthparents, but I could never find out my proper name,” explains Jidé. “Anyway, I'm lucky to be alive, aren't I? Because my sister…she didn't…” Jidé trails off.

He suddenly looks exhausted. I don't think he talks about his past to many people. I haven't really understood this before, about Jidé, how much he doesn't say. The layers of his heart are well protected. Even the way he tells us all this is said in a matter-of-fact sort of voice, but he can't disguise the fact that he's angry. Now I think I understand why there are all these different edges to him. Jidé the joker, Jidé with attitude, Jidé trying his best to hide how clever he is, although at least in Pat Print's class he seems to be giving up on that one. Nana thinks I'm lucky because I haven't had a reason to grow protective layers. Jidé has, and suddenly this all makes me feel like I live in a very cozy little world. A minute ago we were discussing names. Now, suddenly, we're in Rwanda. I don't even know where Rwanda is.

I've been trying to work out what's different about this class. I don't know what it is about Pat Print, but she's definitely got this way of letting people say what they want to say. Once she gets us all talking it's as if she's almost not here at all; she sort of disappears from the room while the conversation's flowing and only really steps back in to start it up again, like keeping one of Laila's spinning tops whirling. Maybe that's why Jidé Jackson has talked about himself for the first time ever. I don't think anyone in this room knew that about Jidé, and I've been at school with him since primary. By the look on Ben's face, he didn't know either.

Pat Print sighs deeply. That's the other thing about her. She's not scared of long silences like some teachers are. It's weird, but you don't get embarrassed in the silence in her class and it doesn't feel like a punishment either. It's actually a relief to have the time to feel whatever it is you're feeling, and after what Jidé's told us I think she's right…we need a bit of time to let it all sink in.

“Now, how did you get on with your diaries?” Pat asks, breaking the quiet.

“Nothing happened to me this week,” booms Ben.

“Nothing never happens,” replies Pat, smiling.

“It does to me,” sulks Ben.

“I did it,” perks up Millie enthusiastically. “But I'd rather not read it out loud.”

“You're just trying to get us interested,” jokes Ben.

“Did it work?” laughs Millie.

I think Millie and Ben are flirting with each other!

“Fair enough,” says Pat. “Jidé?”

He shakes his head.

“Now you said you've got something for me, Mira. Will you read it out to us?”

I take out my red leather diary. I have already decided which bits I don't mind them hearing about—obviously there are some things I wouldn't want any of them to know, not even Millie and especially not Jidé!

“I got this diary last week. It starts on my birthday, but I'll read last Sunday. That's the day me and Nana went to buy paint,” I explain.

We park right next to Dusty Bird's art shop. Nana leans on my arm as Mum and I walk her inside. She wants acrylic water-based paints. Nana says it's very important to choose the exact colors she has in her mind…

All the way through reading this, I feel Jidé watching me and properly listening, and all I can feel is guilty, because I'm talking about my nana dying…and in a way she's had her life, and such a good life and a rich life. I just wish that Jidé's family were alive. I wish that his little sister hadn't died so young and that he knew her name. Because I can't stop thinking about Jidé, I've forgotten how much I hate reading aloud. Anyway, reading out your work isn't so bad because at least you can lean on the words you've already written. I don't manage to get to the end because the bell rings for the start of school. Usually everyone jumps up and starts packing their things away, but today, nobody moves till I get to the end of my sentence.

When someone is dying, everything you say and do means more than it normally does. When someone is dying, you notice things…everything really. The whole of life is in slow motion.