One hundred and twenty steps.
There are sixty meters between my eyes and the cherry tree.
Part Three
* * *
Fifty Meters
8
Not Being Alone
I’m really good at bandaged man’s buff.
I know the game’s not really called that, but I don’t like the other word—“blind.” I prefer “bandaged” because you’re in the dark only while you’re playing the game. I’d like to have a dream about playing bandaged man’s buff, wake up, and realize I’ve still got the bandage on so I could take it off and see clearly again.
No one ever wants to play bandaged man’s buff with me. They think I’m cheating because I always find them, even when my eyes are blindfolded. I have a secret tactic—I stand right in the middle and listen for someone moving. It’s so easy to catch people when they move—you just run to where the noise is coming from. No one expects it. After a while they get angry, saying that I must be able to see from under the blindfold, and get the Dragon Ball cards out. I couldn’t cheat at Dragon Ball even if I wanted to. I can’t read the cards.
So I’m playing by myself in the garden. Mom lets me stay here while she takes a shower, but she wants me to be back by the time she’s dry. Mom is superfast in the shower and doesn’t even use the hair dryer so she can get back to watching me as quickly as she can. This means I can stay outside by myself for eight or nine minutes, more or less. I’m using a fluffy scarf I took from her wardrobe—a dark one—and tied it over my eyes so I can’t even see out by mistake. My plan is to go from the toolshed to the fence on the other side of the garden without stopping and without stretching my arms out in front of me like a zombie.
I’ve no idea why I play this game, but I want to know what it feels like to walk in the dark. It was really scary the first few times I tried, and I pulled the blindfold off after just a couple of teeny-weeny steps. I can do it easily now. Walking in the dark is weird, like swimming through the black, liquid leaves of trees whose branches reach out to stop you—in a kind way, not ripping your T-shirt. You keep going, feeling the danger, but also balancing alone, as if someone you don’t know is watching you and not your mom on the balcony.
Grandma used to say you have to try things to understand them. So, I’m trying.
My fingers brush against the dry hydrangea shrubs along the garden wall. I stick close to them so I don’t wander into the middle of the garden. I always go the wrong way when I walk with my eyes shut, even when I think I’m going straight. I’ve only taken a few steps when something fluffy rubs past my legs and gets in the way—Ottimo Turcaret. I have to stop so I don’t step on him, and to pet him too. I pick him up and walk to the bottom of the garden, Ottimo Turcaret purring against my chest. He’s warm and heavy. If I didn’t know he was gray, I’d swear he was one of those big fat ginger cats with a huge head and a fat neck. Cats with ginger coats are rounder than the others. I wonder why.
My toe touches the wooden fence and I stop. While I’m deciding whether to turn around and go back or continue along the fence, I hear a bicycle brake squeal very near me, probably someone in the parking garage behind our block of apartments.
“Hi.”
I whip my blindfold off. The afternoon light flashes stars in front of my eyes, but I put my glasses back on as quickly as I can. I see Filippo in his blue jacket, sitting on what looks like a girls’ bike, a yellow one with no basket. He has his hands on his hips, fists clenched, legs apart, and he’s on his tiptoes so he won’t fall off the bike that probably belongs to someone else—maybe his sister or his mom. He’s wearing the same jacket as on All Saints’ Day, even though that was a month ago and it’s much colder now. He must really like having his name written on the back. It means everyone recognizes him and knows who he is.
I’d like to go back in and not have to speak to him. I’m scared he’ll hit me the way he does with everyone else, although I’d stick up for myself. I pull Ottimo Turcaret closer. I don’t think he’d protect me in a fight. Dogs do that. Cats are opportunists. And they don’t know how to come down cherry trees.
“Do you know why cats can’t come down cherry trees?” The question just tumbles out before I realize it. Grandma always said there was no such thing as a stupid question, although I feel a bit stupid now.
“What?” Filippo puts his hands on the handlebars and pulls the brakes even though he’s not moving. He seems taken aback by the question.
“Forget it.”
“Do you live here?”
“You don’t even know who I am.”
“Yes, I do. You’re the girl from the soccer game.”
“My name’s Mafalda.”
“And I’m Filippo.”
I put Ottimo Turcaret down. “I know.”
Filippo leans forward, still sitting on the bike, and puts a hand through the railings to stroke Ottimo Turcaret. I’m a bit nervous because I’m scared he’ll hurt him. But Filippo rubs behind the ears and Ottimo Turcaret seems to like it.
“What’s he called?”
“Ottimo Turcaret.”
“Your cat has a last name?”
“It’s a double-barreled name. From a book.”
“Really? What book?”
“You won’t know it. It’s for grown-ups. It’s my dad’s favorite book.”
“My dad likes reading too. He always used to read me a story at bedtime.”
“Mine does too.” It doesn’t seem polite to ask why he said “used to.” Maybe his mom and dad are divorced and his dad doesn’t live with them anymore. Usually people whose parents are divorced get really upset if you ask them. So, I don’t say anything.
“Which book is it, then?”
“What book?”
“Your dad’s favorite.”
I don’t want to tell him, but his fists are clenched on his hips again and I’m a little scared. “The Baron in the Trees.”
“Have you read it?”
I don’t understand why he’s so interested.
“Yes. My dad read it to me.”
“That means he read it, not you.”
“It’s the same thing.”
Filippo puts his elbows on the fence and rests his chin in his hands. “Did he read it to you because you’re blind?”
I feel my face go red and my glasses steam up. “I’m not blind.” I lift up Ottimo Turcaret to go home, but Mom’s scarf falls to the ground and I have trouble finding it.
“But you can’t see much, can you?”
I ignore him and keep looking for the scarf, feeling the cold, dry grass with my free hand. In the end I decide to give up and just go home.
I turn my back on Filippo. That was mean of him—I didn’t ask him if his mom and dad are divorced. I hear a clatter of pedals and bicycle chain, then a thud and his feet coming up beside mine on the dry grass in the garden. “Go away,” I say without turning round.
“Here.”
When someone says “here,” it usually means they’re giving you something, so I reach into the mist and my hand touches something silky soft. The scarf.
“Mafalda!”
Mom’s worried voice reaches me from the French doors. I think more than eight or nine minutes must have gone past since Mom went into the shower. My instinct is to run straight for the front door, but I remember that when someone picks something up from the ground for you, something you couldn’t find and that wasn’t yours to begin with, something you took without asking, you’re supposed to say thanks.
I stop on the path and see a fuzzy blue blob disappearing into the distance.
I don’t feel like shouting “thank you,” not with Mom watching me from the balcony.
“Come inside!”
I go in. As the door closes behind me, I hear a bike in the street outside, trilling its bell cheerily, and the ting-ting continues until the sound is too small even for me to hear. I can only imagine where the bell’s owner can be going; he sounds so happy and free. I’d like to as
k him to come back, to give me a ride on the back of his bike, because I haven’t been fast on a bike for such a long time, or on foot, for that matter. But he’s free; he has clear glasses and can go wherever he wants. Not me. I’m in prison, as if the police have put me in jail but the bars are made of fog and all my cellmates have already escaped.
* * *
I’m in my room, still in my bathrobe, lying on the bed. I reach over for my personal organizer and open it to the second page, the one with the important things on it. I draw a black line through Not being alone.
I found a note, folded in four, on my desk at school this morning.
I thought it was a white butterfly when I first saw it, but thinking about it, that would be impossible. It’s too cold for butterflies now—they’ve all gone away on vacation or to a tree trunk like Grandma and her giant.
I never get notes. Whenever the teacher turns to write on the board, the people in my class start throwing notes around. I don’t know what they say—they don’t throw them to me. I sit in the front row, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to read anything on the board and I’d miss all the homework, but I still hear the paper flying around behind me. Every now and then, one will hit my back and fall to the ground with a phut. When I turned round to pick one up once, the teacher saw me. She shouted because she thought I’d written the note. Everyone laughed, so I decided to forget about the notes.
This one was just for me, waiting on my desk like a butterfly poised delicately on a flower. I went into the bathroom to read it in private. I don’t want my classmates to see me reading—that would be embarrassing. I need to get my face so close to the paper, even to read the really big writing; I’m like old people at the supermarket who can’t see the sell-by date on the bags of salad. But I’m not old; I’m ten. Dad bought me a magnifying glass. He says I could use it like Sherlock Holmes, the detective we often read about in Dad’s books and sometimes see in movies. I would never ever use it in front of other people.
That’s why I go into the girls’ bathroom—note in one pocket, magnifying glass in the other—and lock myself in.
I open the note. It says: You go all red when you answer questions. You are my little princess, or better, my baroness.
9
Playing My Pavement Game Where if You Fall off the Lines, You End Up in the Lava and Die
The school cherry tree is awfully sad in winter.
The leaves go away on vacation with the butterflies, and the giant inside the tree takes the flowers off the branches to make them into a colored blanket.
Without its beautiful foliage, I can’t see it from very far away. Luckily, I know I’m almost there when I hear Estella’s whistle, although Dad would tell me anyway. In the past I was too young to come to school by myself, and now that I have Stargardt mist, I’ll never be allowed out without an adult.
If Ottimo Turcaret were a dog, like Cosimo’s dachshund in the book (although it wasn’t really his; it was Viola’s), he could guide me. I would have to train him because he’s not the cleverest cat. It doesn’t matter, though; I love him just as much because he waits for me outside school and no one else has a cat that waits for them outside school.
When the bell rings at the end of the day, we’re supposed to wait in line, but my class is all over the place and the teacher can never check if we’ve left with the right parents. Estella usually takes me to the gate—my parents asked her to. But she’s not here today. I go into the janitor’s office to ask if they know where she is, and the other one, the one with no hair whose T-shirt is always splashed with pasta sauce, tells me she left early for a checkup. I wonder what she needed to check. He doesn’t bother to ask me if I need help walking to the gate. This janitor always shuts himself away in the office, making coffee, and he couldn’t care less about the children, except when they get sick. That’s only because he has to clean it up.
I go out of school and stop just outside the gate. Mom and Dad want me to wait here. They’re sometimes a few minutes late because they both work in another town and have to rush over by car to pick me up on time.
There’s hardly anyone around. The bus has gone; the cars of all the other parents are leaving. Some children go past on bikes, and amid the shouting and squealing, I think I hear a bell that I recognize. When he emerges from the group, or rather the mishmash of colors moving in unison along the white line on the pavement, I recognize the noise of the brakes and the blue jacket.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Are you waiting for your mom and dad?”
Something soft passes through my legs the way it did the other day. I lift up Ottimo Turcaret and, on the spur of the moment, decide to start walking home.
“No. I was waiting for him.”
Filippo strokes Ottimo Turcaret’s head as I go past him, but I soon leave him behind as I head away as fast as I can along the street. Mom will be furious when she arrives and can’t find me. She’ll think I’ve been kidnapped, but I keep walking anyway. I want Filippo to think I’m going home alone and that I do it every day. I have to look relaxed. If Mom or Dad appear now, I’ll get into so much trouble and look like an idiot in front of Filippo. So instead of going straight, I turn down the first street on the right then turn again into another street.
I hear Filippo’s bike braking near me again.
“Which way are you going?” he asks, pedaling slowly.
I’d forgotten he knows where I live. I blush and don’t answer.
“If you ask me, you’re going to get lost. I’ll take you.”
“No, thanks.”
I don’t know why he’s following me. Maybe he wants to steal Ottimo Turcaret. He seems to like him a lot. I need to turn off this street and get rid of him. But I’ve stopped paying attention and now I don’t know where to go. I try to read the street name, but all I can see are ants where the words should be.
Filippo is still behind me.
“I told you you’d get lost. Come on, I’ll take you.”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to go home?”
“No. I want to go for a walk.”
The make-up-pathways-on-the-pavement game comes to mind. I walk over to the edge of the pavement and start playing.
Filippo follows me. “What are you doing?”
“Playing a game.”
“What game?”
“You have to walk along a line, and if you fall off, you end up in the lava and crocodiles eat you.”
“There are crocodiles in the lava? How do they survive?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s made up. But if you fall off, you lose.”
“How long do you have to keep it up?”
“I don’t know. As long as you can.”
“What a stupid game.”
Filippo jumps on the pedals and scoots away without saying goodbye.
There you go, I’ve embarrassed myself and I’m lost. To be on the safe side, I keep playing weird pathways because I think I can still hear Filippo’s bike, and if he comes back, it has to look like I really am just hanging out.
I get home almost by mistake, and an hour has passed since school finished. This is another thing I can do, count time in my head. Not that it’s much help right now.
Mom is standing in the doorway of our building, cell phone at her ear. She runs toward me as soon as she sees me, falls to her knees, and hugs me so tight I can hardly breathe.
“We were worried to death. Thank goodness you’re safe. What happened to you?”
Dad runs down from the stairs and scoops me into his strong arms.
I can’t face telling them I walked home on my own, not right away. They’re bound to shout at me. But they look so worried, so I tell a half-truth.
“I really wanted to come home on my own, but I got lost. Sorry, Mom.”
I try to look concerned and sad. It usually works, but not this time. Dad starts shouting, “We’ve told you a million times to wait outside the school! You can’t come home on y
our own, you know that.”
Mom lays a hand on his arm and says, “John.” Mom always does this when something serious happens that makes Dad angry. She calms him down. Other times she calls him “J, darling.” Dad goes back upstairs, stamping his feet on each step, muttering to himself. We go up too, and by the time we reach our landing, I can smell pepperoni pizza, my favorite. Mom takes me into the kitchen and gives me a huge slice even though I worried her to death. She also gives Dad one. He doesn’t say thank you, but he lays a hand on her arm as she leans over his plate with the pizza, and looks at her. At moments like these, I think that Mom and Dad could almost be friends.
It’s evening. I put on my blue pajamas and pick up Ottimo Turcaret. I go over to my bedroom window, but I don’t put Ottimo Turcaret on the window ledge so he doesn’t get cold. I look out.
For a second my heart skips a beat, then starts hammering under the soft fabric of my pajamas. I can’t see the North Star. The moon’s there, right in front of me, shining like a streetlamp, but the star that’s usually beside it is not. I can’t make it out. I want to shout for Mom, tell her that Jesus’s match has gone out, but I decide to say nothing. I screw up my eyes, close one, then the other. Nothing. The dark blue sky looks clean and smooth and cloudless. The only clouds are in my eyes, and they’ve covered the North Star. For Christmas, I’ll ask for one of those lamps that projects stars onto the ceiling; that way I’ll still be able to see some—five or six, maybe even fourteen or fifteen, since they’ll be closer than the sky. Meanwhile, I know what I have to do. I get my personal organizer out, turn to the right page, and draw a black line through Playing my pavement game where if you fall off the lines, you end up in the lava and die.
Cosimo, when are you going to give me a hand?
It almost felt like you were helping me these past few days, I’m not sure why. But then something bad always happens, and I realize you’re not with me; you’re playing chess on a branch with my grandma, fur hat on your head, not giving me a second thought. You’re all nice and cozy in your fur hat, whereas I’m running from monsters in the dark. If they catch me, they’ll eat me up, and what am I supposed to do then? Will you tell me, Cosimo?
The Distance between Me and the Cherry Tree Page 3
