Mira in the Present Tense (7 page)

I try to keep Laila entertained by reading her books, but she can't keep still for very long; she's always crawling into trouble. She's drinking the water out of Piper's bowl now, but when I bring her a cup of her own she screeches in that high-pitched way that makes you give her anything she wants.

Mum's in the kitchen making Nana some soup. After about an hour I can smell it all around the flat. It makes my tummy rumble and I don't even like lentils. I hear Nana get out of bed and sniff her way into the living room…

“Something smells good.”

We sit down at Nana's long table where I always check out what new bit of food, jewelry, or art stuff has fallen down the cracks. Probably every person who has ever sat at this table has a bit of the food they ate stuck down the gaps between the wooden slats. Laila swallows a few mouthfuls, then discovers how to blow soup bubbles, spraying orange-brown mush all over the table so that it dribbles down the cracks to mulch with all the other spilt food. We try hard to ignore her, but Nana has to turn her face away so Laila doesn't see her laughing. Now I really do feel like puking.

As I follow the path of the soup along the wooden grooves, I feel…I feel something change. I wander to Nana's bathroom, trying to make everything look as normal as possible. I thought so…the brown stain has turned to…what would it be called on one of Dusty Bird's labels? Bloodred.

Mum has spent all morning turning Nana's front room into an artist's studio. There are white plastic paint pots, mixing sticks, all sizes of brushes and sponges, and a palette. Now Mum clears the table and covers it in newspaper and when she's done I help her lift the coffin onto the table. It's quite heavy for me, but I just about manage to lug one corner up onto the tabletop, sliding the rest over by tugging at the cloth beneath. It reminds me of a magician's trick; if only I could make this coffin disappear.

Mum says she'll be gone for a couple of hours, but not to worry because, if we need her, she can be with us in five minutes. Our flat, I mean Nana's, is only one road away from Hampstead Heath where Krish does his running.

“In case you need me,” Mum whispers, handing me her mobile number.

“I've got it saved in my phone book, Mum.”

“Ah! Yes, the mobile, have you used it yet?” chips in Nana. “You can always use the landline if you need to call your mum.”

“But she wouldn't be able to call
me
if I didn't have my mobile,” Mum explains.

“Which is my point.
You
need the mobile, not Mira.”

Mum winks at me as if to say “Don't worry about it.” Nana's like that—once she gets hold of an idea, she won't let go, which can seem a bit mean because the phone was Mum's present to me.

For a moment I let myself think of the reasons why I might need to call Mum. If Nana gets breathless, I will help her to lie down. If…

I look at Nana and she seems to know what I'm thinking, as she so often does.

“I'm having a good day today, Mira. I'm on a mission and nothing is going to get in my way, except maybe Laila!” she jokes, taking hold of my hand. Mum's having to wrestle Laila into her pram. She's arching her body, making her back as stiff as a rod. Mum tries everything to distract her, but in the end she has to press Laila's tummy hard until she's forced to fold like a rag doll. Quickly, Mum straps her in, before the next wave of protest begins.

Laila's in a rage and the whole street knows about it. I feel sorry for her, because she doesn't really have a choice about what she wants to do. I'm helping Nana, and Krish is already out there doing his warm-up, but Laila just gets dragged about. She thinks she should be able to choose what she's going to do too. Mum says when I was little she had a lot more time for me. I think Laila's decided that she would prefer to help Nana and me with the painting, but there is no way that's going to happen! I do feel sorry for her, but not
that
sorry.

The flat is filled with Laila's wailing. You can hear her screaming all the way up the path.

“An excellent protester,” jokes Nana, covering her ears with her hands.

We sit at the table staring at the white coffin, listening to Laila's high-pitched wail fade into the distance.

“Any ideas for painting?” asks Nana.

I tell her about my dream, not all of it, not about the drowning. I don't want to upset her because that's the thing Nana's most afraid of…drowning. I tell her how the coffin looked in my dream, about the doves, the silver butterflies, the leaping dolphins, and the little dog peeing into the sea. She laughs when I tell her about the dog.

She puts on a CD. It's Italian and I like the tune, but I can't understand the words. The woman's voice sounds like it's skipping through the music: “diddli di diddli di diddli di, di di, di di di.” Nana mixes paint and dips a sponge into the colors, dabbing shades of blue, white, and green all over the coffin. As she paints, she tells me what the woman's singing about…It's a house, but the house she's describing is really the whole world. Nana listens and translates.

I want a house…with bright colors to…delight the eyes.

I want a house, where you can hear…birdsong.

I want a house full of laughter and…light…and…love.

I want a house where no one is…hungry…or lonely…or sad.

I want a house,

I want a happy house, diddli di diddli di diddli di di di, di di di.

“I can translate the diddli di bit,” I tell Nana, which makes her laugh.

“You'll make sure they play this at my funeral, won't you, Mira?”

I nod, though I'm not sure it's going to be up to me to decide. What if no one else agrees with me? I'd be left with Nana's voice ringing in my ears. This is the sort of thing that wakes me up at night worrying. Anyway, I don't want to think about Nana's funeral because right now she feels so alive.

Nana hands me another sponge so I can start on the lid. Next, she takes her brush and dips it into the Lilac Pearl paint, swirling waves onto the sea…waves and gentle ripples. I watch how she works in the colors. Underneath, the paint is wet so the colors run into each other: blues, greens, and ochres flowing into the sea. Nana hands me her brush to finish the waves on the other side of the coffin. Then she takes another brush and starts to paint her first dolphin, leaping out of the waves.

My nana can transform a hardboard coffin with her imagination. She can make it dance…
diddli di diddli di diddli di di di, di di di.
Another brush dipped in white paint, this time Titanium White, makes a dove rise out of the spray. Nana doesn't stop for a second. She's in the waves, leaping with the dolphins, flying with the doves. Last of all she paints the little dog with his leg cocked over the coffin corner. It's a Piper dog with a wiry brown coat.

“Here, Mira, dip your brush in the Yellow Ochre—Piper needs a pee!” she orders, handing me the pot.

I take hold of the thickest brush and get ready to splatter the pee across the sea. The yellow spray hits the coffin sides, splatting back into Nana's face.

“You've peed in my face,” she laughs.

Then she dips her brush into the blue paint and, with her thumb, flicks the end of the brush at me! This time the spray covers my face.

“You look like Shiva,” she says admiringly.

When we get our breath back from giggling, Nana dips her hand into the blue paint and presses her palm against mine like a high five. She holds my wrist and presses my right hand hard and flat against the side of the coffin. Then she places her left hand next to mine to make her own handprint as if we were one person with a left and right hand of the same size. Two bright blue handprints, one left, one right, one mine, one Nana's. Only when you look at the lines on the palms of our hands, can you tell they belong to different people.

The doorbell rings. I hear Krish's voice before I open the gate. He pushes past me, practically knocking me over as Mum parks Laila on the porch in her pram.

“Guess where I came?” Krish shouts.

“Shhhh,” hushes Mum, pointing to sleeping Laila.

“Nana, Nana, guess where I came?”

“Now what was it? The under tens?”

“Yep!”

“How far was it?”

“Five K, and the start was up Parli Hill. That was a killer!”

“How many runners?”

“About a hundred.”

“Considering everything…I would say you came…in the first twenty.”

Nana plays with Krish like a cat with a mouse.

“Nope.”

“I don't know, Krish…tenth?”

“Try again.”

“Fifth? Fourth? Third? Second?”

Nana knows he's come first, because Krish wouldn't be making a fuss if he came second or third or anything, in fact, except first.

“Nope!”

“First place!” yells Nana, clapping her hands in excitement and reaching out to give Krish a hug. “It takes such stamina to do what you do. I used to try and race when I was your age, but I just couldn't keep going.”

Nor me, I think.

We first found out that Krish could run when he was six. We were staying with Nana Kath and Granddad Bimal in the Lake District, and we went to this country fair, where they had all sorts of sports including fell running, which basically means you have to run up a mountain and down again. Why would anyone want to do that? Mum said the people entering the race would have trained a lot so it might not be a very good idea, but Krish just walked straight up to the starting tent and signed himself in. Then the man stuck his official race number on his T-shirt. Number fifty-two.

We watched him running up that fell, above Grasmere Lake, scrambling up and up for miles in the pouring rain and finally disappearing into the cloud. I didn't like that feeling of not being able to see him; neither did Mum. She paced up and down, biting her lip, her eyes scanning backward and forward across the fell for a glimpse of Krish's bright blue shirt. Then I saw him, my brother, skidding and sliding down toward the bottom of that mountain, smeared in mud from head to foot, so you could just make out his eyes peering through the dirt as if he'd fallen into a bog. When Krish appeared through the rain-mist, Nana Kath jumped up and down, like she was on springs.

She announced to everyone around us that number fifty-two was her grandson and that her own Granddad Billy, my great-great-granddad, had been a famous fell runner.

It looked as if Krish was going to come in third place. Then suddenly, right at the end, he made his arms and legs pump faster, and pelted straight past the other two boys.

“Aye, there's no doubting, the lad's got it in his blood,” croaked the old man in the green tweed cap standing next to Nana Kath.

Krish had this look of complete determination on his face, like he just
had
to win. Nana Kath, Mum, Dad, and me, and the old man with the cap were all cheering him on, and I saw Granddad Bimal, who was sitting in the car, punch the air as Krish ran for the finish line.

After the race, Krish had to stand in the middle of this podium, on the first place stand, which is the highest bit, and two other boys, who came in second and third place, stood on either side in the pouring rain. The loudspeaker played “God Save the Queen,” like it was the Olympics or something. Dad said that was a bit over the top, but I thought Krish was lucky to be standing on a podium in the middle of those mountains…Even in the pouring rain, it's one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It's like he belonged. Watching Krish standing there did feel like a historic occasion in our family, even though they announced the winner to be someone else…“Chris Levenson.”

It was then that I saw Granddad Bimal hoist himself out of the car and walk very slowly over to the trailer where the man was chattering away on the loudspeaker. The next thing I heard was Loudspeaker Man's voice.