Mira in the Present Tense (16 page)

I think Clara and Nana must have been chatting in the night, because when they sit up in bed they smile at each other like old friends even though it might look from the outside as if they wouldn't have much in common. For a start, it's Clara's clothes—she wears this long, flowery nightgown that stops just above her knee. These are the sort of old ladies' clothes they sell in Blustons in Kentish Town. Whenever we used to pass that shop, Nana would say how much she loved the name, because it conjures up the image of “blouses on bustling old ladies, squeezing onto buses.” When we walk past Blustons, Krish stares through the shop window at the models with enormous bosoms advertising their bras. Clara is definitely wearing a Blustons nightgown, but it's about three sizes too big for her. I wonder whether she was once actually quite what Nana calls “Blustony.” Whatever Clara used to look like, now she is thin, like Nana. Clara mutters to herself from time to time, saying things like, “Bloody awful business this…Can you get me out of here?”

She asks me that when I'm passing her bed, and she makes me feel sorry I can't help her, but, as Doris keeps trying to explain: “Nobody's keeping you here, Clara, my dear, it's just we want to make sure you're looked after.”

Clara doesn't have any visitors.

“I don't want to bother them—my boy's got his own life to get on with,” Clara tells us, then she goes back to chanting, “Bloody awful business this…Can you get me out of here?”

Sometimes, when we're all crowded around Nana Josie's bed, I see this look cross Clara's face, like she wishes someone would go over and talk to her. She loves Piper, and he loves her. From time to time he jumps onto her bed and she makes “a right old fuss of him.” You can hear her muttering, “Piper, good sort, isn't he, Josie?”

Crystal takes this personally, as Clara doesn't seem to pay any attention at all to Lad. Sometimes, Clara adds under her breath (just to annoy Crystal, I think), “Never been fond of big dogs.”

The only reason that Crystal, Clara, and Nana Josie are together in this room is because of cancer. I sometimes dream that cancer is like a monster's shadow and I try to fight it, but it's not even solid enough to kick or punch. I walk all around it, trying to find a way to scream at it to get out of my nana, but it doesn't have a face or eyes. I don't really know how to kill it, so I just shout at it really loudly until I wake myself up. I have this dream quite a lot since Nana got ill.

There is a therapist lady downstairs in the hospice where you can go to draw pictures of how you feel. She asked me and Krish if we wanted to see her room. Krish didn't want to. Her room has children's pictures all over the walls, beanbags on the floor, and paints and crayons everywhere. I drew her my dream of the monster's shadow in dark smudgy charcoal-y shadows. She said that my dream is my way of facing my fears. I just think that cancer is very, very frightening if you're asleep or awake, but Nana says that one day, probably in my lifetime, they will find a way to kill it off.

When I tell Nana about the therapist, she explains to me that the hospice looks after people in all kinds of pain. She says that some people are in pain because their hearts are breaking and they are about to lose the people they love.

“Like us,” I whisper.

Nana nods.

“Can your heart actually break, Nana?”

“That's what we call it, Mira, but it doesn't exactly break. It's something more complicated than that—it's more like a sore than a break. When the wound is raw, it feels like it will never heal. I think that's why they call it a break.”

“Has that ever happened to you?” I ask Nana.

“Oh yes.”

“Can you fix it then, a broken heart?”

“No, that's what I mean. It's not as simple as that…it sort of heals over in time, but it always leaves a scar. Each time you get hurt, you put a little protective layer round the wound, like a bandage, so that the next time you can't be damaged quite so easily. Remember the artichoke leaves?”

I nod. “What does it feel like, Nana?”

“Hard to say. There are so many different kinds of heartbreak.”

“How many?”

“Let me think…Ah yes! If you draw the most beautiful picture for someone and you put all your energy and love and imagination into it, and then you give it to the person and later you find it in the trash. It's called rejection, as if they've thrown a little bit of you away.”

Nana always does that—if she's describing something complicated, she gives you examples of things she knows you'll understand, but even since my birthday Nana doesn't know how much I've changed. How can she even start to guess at how much more I know now? She's thinking about the time when a teacher told me that the poem I wrote about India was all wrong and I had to start again because it wasn't what she'd asked for. I had researched it in the library the night before and asked Granddad Bimal to describe the place where he was born. So when Miss Fallow threw it in the trash it was a bit like she was throwing a part of me away too. Nana could see how upset I was so she got her famous poet friend to read it, and he wrote me a note to tell me how much he liked it and a note for Miss Fallow too. Then Nana marched into school with Piper by her side and stood outside the classroom till Miss Fallow came out.

“A poet friend of mine has made a dedication to you. Would you like to read it? It's very short,” Nana announced without waiting for an answer.

Then she thrust the poem in front of Miss Fallow who blushed bright red and did not look very happy. The poem said:

Dear Miss Fallow,

Feel it in the marrow

Poems aren't wrong!

Miss Fallow just looked at Piper and announced, “Dogs aren't allowed in school.”

“Neither are bullies,” Nana shot back, stomping off down the corridor with her nose in the air. My nana doesn't do rules.

She says it's the parents' and grandparents' job to protect children's hearts.

“What if their parents are dead?” The question is out before I can think about what I'm asking.

“Your parents aren't going to die, Mira…not for a long time.”

Nana thinks I'm worrying about myself. Since I decided to keep my period a secret, it's easier not to tell other things too. I always used to tell Nana exactly what I was thinking about and she would always have an opinion. But Nana doesn't know everything about me anymore, and something about the way she's looking at me, right at this very moment, makes me think she knows that I'm holding a little part of me back from her.

“Nana, some people at school think I shouldn't see you so much when you're dying,” I say to avoid her piercing look.

“That's the wrong kind of protection, Mira. This is a necessary heartbreak.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you've loved someone and you have to say good-bye, there's no avoiding it, but about Miss Fallow…tell me, when you do something like that now, a poem or a painting, would you show it to her again?”

“I would know the kind of person to show it to. I'd let Pat Print see it…I would trust her. It wouldn't bother me now if Miss Fallow liked it or not.”

“Aha! You see. You've wrapped a little protective layer round your heart, like the leaves of the artichoke charm. Who's this Pat Print anyway?”

“A writer, she's doing these workshops in my school…”

But Nana's not listening to me anymore. Looking at her as she drifts off to sleep, I realize that she thinks I'm so much younger than I am. What she doesn't realize is that Miss Fallow and the poem…that is so in the past. The truth is right now I don't know if I want to see my nana slowly fading away like this. Is this…a necessary heartbreak?

Still no call from Jidé Jackson.

I am starting to lose faith in Notsurewho Notsurewhat.

Just as I arrived at the hospice today, Nana's eyes were growing heavy. She told me yesterday that when she nods off it feels like she's stepping off a mountain and falling, but it's not a horrible feeling; she says it's a bit like floating. I thought of the reed beds and the swaying golden grasses as her head rocked back onto her pillow. I have been sitting here for nearly an hour just watching Nana sleep.

She's wearing my favorite orange gauzy cotton top. It has sequins round the neck and little ties with bells. Her body is the size of a skinny child. Nana's arms are more like Laila's when she was a newborn, as if they need stuffing with something to fill the loose skin. I am bigger than my nana now, taller and more solid.

Mum and Krish wander along the corridor to the Family Room to make some tea. I don't like it in there because you always see someone crying, and when they see you, they pretend they're making a cup of tea or getting something out of the fridge, which is always empty, except for Nana's health food. But there is a television in there, which Krish loves, and some toys and books, which Laila loves, so you can sort of use it like your own living room. You can even sleep there if you want. People do.

I look at Nana and find myself wondering for the first time in my life what I will have to say to her when she wakes up. I suppose I could ask her about Rwanda and she would definitely know and she would definitely have an opinion, and if I told her about him she would want to know everything that I know about Jidé Jackson. I walk over to the window and look out onto the street.

“What's going on in the outside world?” asks Nana, jolting me back to her. “Be my eyes, Mira.”

“Nothing much…There's a woman walking her dog.”

As she gets closer, I recognize her. It's Pat Print and Moses. This is starting to freak me out.

“What's so interesting?” asks Nana, propping herself up on her pillow to get a better view of the street.

“It's that writer woman I was telling you about from school.”

As Pat Print walks farther down the street, Nana props herself up to get a closer look.

“That's Mo.” Nana points to Moses. “Piper and Mo are great pals.”

“Do you know her then, Nana?”

Nana studies Pat Print's back for a while as she makes her way up the road.

“I suppose I might have seen her about the place—she looks vaguely familiar—but it's a young girl with two or three dogs who walks Mo.”

So, instead of asking Nana about Rwanda I tell her about Pat Print's writing class and seeing her in Suffolk on the beach…and what Millie found out about her ancestor actually having Robert the Something's heart locked up in a box…and Millie's ancestor being the only one with a key.

“The guardian of the heart…she's a good friend to have,” smiles Nana as Pat Print disappears round the corner at the end of the road.

“It's a bit weird, don't you think, Nana? That I keep seeing her, the writer woman?”

“Perhaps she's your guardian angel. Or, more likely, me and her, we just walk the same paths!” Nana says, winking at me.