9
‘Is That Your Homework?’
‘Is that your homework? Is it?’
Kate sat at her desk and Lucy hung over her shoulder, her warm breath tickling the back of her sister’s neck.
‘Yes, ’ said Kate shortly. She’d hardly done a thing: only printed the title and begun to circle it with a border of bright green ivy leaves.
Lucy pointed a stubby finger at the words inside the leaves. ‘What does that say?’
‘Who am I?’
‘Is that what you have to do? Write about who you are? Is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I could do that! It’s easy!’
‘You can’t write.’
‘But when I can, when I go to Big School, next year, I’ll write heaps and heaps. About me! About who I am!’
She would too, thought Kate.
‘I can write my name – nearly. I can write “L” for Lucy.’ A chubby hand reached out towards the box of pastels. Kate pushed it away. ‘Don’t touch! You know you’re not allowed to use them! They’re my special ones!’
For once Lucy didn’t argue, but she kept on standing there, close up beside Kate’s chair. Why did Lucy always have to follow her? Ten minutes ago Lucy had been in the kitchen, pestering Mum to take her to the zoo. A bout of pestering from Lucy could go on for hours, yet the moment Kate sat down at her desk to think, here she was again.
‘You’ve hardly done anything!’
‘That’s because I’ve only just started, ’ said Kate, struggling to keep her temper down. ‘I’m making the heading look nice, see?’ She reached for the green pastel, to finish her ivy leaves.
It wasn’t there.
‘Where’s my green pastel?’
Lucy’s hands were hidden behind her back.
‘Did you take it? Did you?’
‘No!’ Lucy held her hands out, empty. ‘It’s there!’ She pointed to the desk. Kate’s crayon had rolled behind her pencil case.
‘Oh.’ Kate picked it up and drew more leaves around her heading.
Lucy watched. ‘Now are you going to start writing? Writing about who you are?’
Kate’s scalp began to itch, as it often did when Lucy started to annoy her.
‘Are you? Now?’
Kate scratched wildly at her head. ‘In a minute. But I can’t do it with you standing there watching me; I can’t think when you do that. Why don’t you go somewhere else?’
‘Mum told me to come up here.’
Kate clenched her teeth. Trust Mum.
‘It’s my room too, ’ said Lucy. ‘Half of it is mine.’
‘You go over there, then, ’ said Kate. ‘Play with your Noah stuff.’ She pointed to a far corner of the room, where the ark and its little plastic animals lay scattered on the floor. Lucy stomped towards it. ‘You’re mean! That’s what you should write! “My name is Katie and I’m mean!”’
Kate didn’t answer. She bent her head over her desk.
‘Make notes of your thoughts, ’ Ms Dallimore had told them. ‘Do it quickly, before they fly away. That will get you started.’ But what if you didn’t have any thoughts, let alone flying ones? Kate chewed grimly on her pen.
‘Look! Look, Katie!’
‘What?’
Lucy was back by the chair, the tiny figure of Mrs Noah clutched in her hand.
‘See how she’s got no head? Guess what happened? Mrs Lion said to Mr Lion, “I’m feeling very hungry, darling, because I’m going to have a cub.” And then Mr Lion said, “Don’t be sad, my dear. I know where there’s a most delicious lady–”’ Lucy planted a foot on the rung of her sister’s chair, and swung on it. ‘And then–’
‘Get off!’ roared Kate. ‘You’ll tip the chair over!’
‘No, I won’t! You’re sitting in it, and you’re so big and fat it can’t fall down.’
Kate pushed her off and got up from the desk. She marched to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ demanded Lucy.
‘To the bathroom. At least I can be private there.’
Kate sat on the edge of the bath and dreamed about her sleep-out. She imagined the little room all finished and ready for her – pictured the windows in place, the floor polished, a rug put down and curtains hung, her bed along one wall, her desk against the other – she imagined privacy and peace, and falling asleep without the sound of Lucy snoring.
When she’d calmed down she went back to her real room, and Lucy was still there.
She was lying on her bed with her eyes closed, but Kate could tell from the tiny glimmer beneath her lashes that she was still awake.
Kate sat down at her desk and at once she saw something funny had happened there. It was so very odd that for a moment Kate couldn’t quite take it in. And then she did. Her pastels – her beautiful, special pastels that Aunty Marie had bought her from the art shop – were laid out in a long neat line beneath her workbook. And every single one of them had been neatly broken in half.
‘Lucy!’
Lucy’s eyes snapped open.
‘Did you do this?’
Lucy nodded.
‘You wicked, wicked–’ ‘Girl’ was too nice a word for Lucy. ‘You wicked little pest!’
Lucy began to sob. ‘I was helping you!’
‘Helping?’
‘Yes! Now you’ve got two of all of them. If you lose one, like you thought you’d lost the green one, then you’ve got an extra–’
Kate rushed to the door. ‘Mum!’ she bellowed down the hallway. ‘Mum! Mum! Mum!’
It was late. Kate lay listening to Lucy snoring. Like an engine ticking over, she thought, stoking up for a fresh new day. ‘I hate that sound, ’ Kate whispered to herself. ‘I hate it more than any other sound in the world.’ She glanced across at her sleeping sister. ‘And I hate her.’
All at once she remembered what Molly Matthews had said on the day Ms Dallimore had handed out their essay: how what you loved showed who you were.
And if that was true, then wouldn’t it be the same with what you hated?
Kate slipped from her bed, grabbed her workbook and hurried down the hall. The living room was empty: Mum and Dad had long since gone to bed. It was quiet and peaceful; the dark at the windows made Kate feel as if she had the whole world to herself.
She opened her workbook and picked up her pen. ‘I am a person who hates my little sister, ’ she began, and then, beneath the garlanded title, her pen began to fly. Across the page, and the next page, and the next – it was wonderful, marvellous. She could actually describe stuff, the way she’d never been able to do before: like the way her scalp began to itch when Lucy got her really angry, as she’d done tonight, an itching which grew and grew until it was like the pricking of a thousand little knives . . .
It was two in the morning when her mother appeared at the door.
‘Kate, what are you doing?’
Kate looked up with a dazzling smile. ‘I got an idea for my essay, and I wanted to write it down before l forgot, so I came down here.’ She added virtuously, ‘I didn’t want to turn the bedroom light on in case I woke Lucy up .’
‘Oh, ’ said her mother, startled by the wild gleam in her daughter’s eye. Mrs Sullivan padded across the carpet in her old felt slippers and placed a cool hand on her daughter’s forehead. It wasn’t hot at all.
‘Well, go to bed now, ’ she told her. ‘It’s very, very late and you’ve got school tomorrow.’
‘She was doing homework, ’ Mrs Sullivan told her husband a few minutes later, when she was sure Kate was safely tucked in bed. ‘At least that’s what she said – I hope she’s not sickening for something.’
‘She’ll be right, ’ said Trevor Sullivan sleepily.
‘Perhaps she’s growing up, Trev.’
Kate’s dad sighed and turned over. ‘I’d better get on with that sleep-out then – sometime soon.’
‘Very soon, ’ said Mrs Sullivan firmly.
10
Awkward
Neema lay on
her bed thinking about the flying boy. She’d seen him again this afternoon; she’d glanced through the window halfway through music and there he was playing cricket on the oval with the Year Eight boys. The way he ran, with a long, loping stride, had seemed utterly familiar to her. Now she knew he was in Year Eight, only a year older than her. But she still didn’t know his name and she didn’t want to ask anyone. It could be embarrassing to ask the name of a boy at school.
Sheep, shepherd, lamb: if she could work out why those words kept coming into her head whenever she thought of him . . .
‘Nirmolini?’
A small wrinkled face peered round the edge of the door. A wisp of floaty white sari.
Nani!
Neema sat up quickly, pulling her skirt down over her knobbly knees.
Nani had been with them a whole week now, and she wasn’t the least bit like bossy old Gran, but it was all sort of – awkward. How Neema wished she’d learned Hindi back when she was younger, as Mum and Dad had suggested. But it hadn’t seemed important then. Why learn Hindi when Mum spoke English all the time, and Gran too, when she was here? Why waste every Saturday morning at the Indian Culture School, when there were so many other things you could do?
And now . . .
Nani stood in the doorway.
‘Soti ho kya?’ she asked Neema, making a small rocking motion with her hands.
That must mean ‘sleep’, thought Neema. Nani must be asking if she’d been asleep.
‘Oh, no, no, ’ she said quickly, politely, the way she always spoke to Nani. ‘I wasn’t asleep, you didn’t wake me up or anything. I was just having a rest, lying here, thinking about, um . . .’ she tailed off, hearing her own silly voice rattling round the room.
She was gabbling again. She sometimes did that when she found herself alone with Nani – talked really fast, as if she couldn’t stop, because she was embarrassed that she couldn’t understand a word her great-grandmother said. And Nani kept trying to talk to her. Nani would try to tell her something, and then stand there silently, waiting, as if she expected Neema to reply. But how could she, when she didn’t know what Nani had said, and couldn’t give any answer that Nani might understand? So Neema gabbled on in English to fill the silence up.
There was a silence now.
Nani stood patiently, a little way inside the room, her gaze fixed intently on her great-granddaughter’s face. Studying it, thought Neema, as if her face was some kind of map and Nani was searching for a special landmark there. It made Neema long to run away – and then it made her feel mean, for wanting to.
Because Nani was lovely. She was gentle and kindly, and she loved all three of them; you could see it in her face. You could see it especially at dinner-time – now that Nani insisted on doing all their cooking – in the way she ladled her marvellous food onto their plates (Mum didn’t think it was marvellous, but Dad and Neema did) and then watched while they ate it, as if giving food was a kind of love.
Neema sprang up and began to bustle round the room, picking things up and putting them away, a set stern expression on her face, as if she was very busy and had important stuff to do. She went to the desk and shuffled the folders there, and Nani followed her, two small steps behind. She pointed to the sheet of paper, still blank except for Neema’s name and the title of Ms Dallimore’s essay.
‘Iskool ka kaam?’ she said.
Neema could tell it was a question because Nani’s voice went up a little at the end. ‘It’s homework, ’ she said.
‘Kaisa kaam?’
Now she must be asking what kind of homework it was, like Gran did when she came to visit; only Nani’s voice wasn’t bossy like Gran’s, it was soft and rather shy.
‘For English. It’s an essay.’ Neema’s voice sped up again. ‘Well, it’s not an essay yet, because I haven’t really started it. No-one has, except for Kate, and she’s actually finished hers. Can you believe that? Kate! And it’s the kind of essay where it’s really hard to think of anything to say. Like, I don’t know–’ Neema broke off on a sudden gasp, and Nani stood there, still studying her face.
Neema smiled uncertainly, and then Nani studied the smile, frowning slightly, as if there was something wrong with it, as if it was the wrong sort of smile.
It was. Neema could see her face reflected in the wardrobe mirror, a face that hardly looked like hers. Her mouth was a stiff quirky shape, and her little dimple didn’t show. Oh, how she wished Nani would leave her alone!
And as if she’d heard that very thought Nani turned away sadly and walked out through the door.
Gone.
Neema stood and listened to the soft brushing sound of Nani’s bare feet on the polished boards of the hall. ‘Nani!’ she called guiltily, running after her.
Nani turned round.
‘Goodnight, ’ said Neema. ‘Goodnight, Nani.’
Goodnight. Kalpana knew that word. Indeed, she knew many English words which she’d picked up from Usha, long ago when her daughter was small and had gone to the English Language School. But she couldn’t bring herself to say them out loud to other people; she was afraid they might sound thick and stupid in her voice. That people might laugh . . .
‘You are too proud, always, ’ Sumati often said, ‘too proud in little things.’ And she was, thought Kalpana. Too proud to risk one single word, even to her lovely great-granddaughter, Nirmolini.
‘Soja beti, ’ she said instead, which meant, though Neema didn’t know it, ‘sleep well, my child’.
Was that goodnight? wondered Neema. Should she repeat it, then? But what if it meant something else? Like, ‘Go away, you heartless girl!’ Or what if it was a phrase that, in India, only old people were allowed to use?
So Neema only smiled again, that stiff uncertain smile she always gave to Nani, which froze her soft features and concealed the small dimple that showed when she truly smiled.
11
Dear Sumati
Dear Sumati, wrote Kalpana.
I am happy to hear that you have arrived safely at your sister’s place after the long train journey from Ahmedabad and those many troublesome hours on the bus.
Yes, you are right: some of these bus drivers are ignorant fellows indeed! To think that he would boss you around: refuse to let you take your sack of sweet potatoes onto the bus – the sweet potatoes you bought for your sister Lakshmi from Ratan Lal’s stall! Everyone knows that Ratan Lal’s sweet potatoes are the best in all India, perhaps even in the world. That this bus driver should throw them on the roof-rack! And that later, in the mountains, you would look out through the window and see them tumbling down! And hear the other travellers cry out in distress, believing your potatoes were stones and avalanche!
I am not surprised to learn your throat is sore from shouting (take lemon and best honey, mixed together, warm) and yes, you may be right again: that driver may have been a school teacher in his former life, and for his sins will surely be a cockroach in the next.
Here it is very strange, Sumati, so strange it would take many pages to tell. The city is as big as Delhi, and yet the street where my granddaughter and her family live is empty in the middle of the afternoon! And at night, Sumati – at night it is so quiet you would not believe! At home, even at the latest hour, there is always some small sound to remind you that you are among other humans on this earth: the rumble of an ox-cart on its way to market, the chatter of late travellers passing by, a little snatch of film-song from the rickshaw wallahs’ camp at the bottom of the road . . .
Kalpana put down her pen and walked to the window, drawing the curtain aside. The street outside lay still and silent; nothing moved except for a large white fluffy cat stealthily crossing the road. As Kalpana watched he leapt onto the gatepost and began to clean himself, then raised his head to stare at her with big round yellow eyes.
‘A cat, ’ said Kalpana, out loud in English. It was the first English word she had really learned, printed in big letters in her little daughter’s first English primer. They’d learned
it together, all three of them, she and Sumati and Usha, on the verandah back home, long, so long ago.
Kalpana’s gaze drifted to the big tree in the garden, whose branches spread over the low flat roof of the garage. She’d known the moment she saw the tree that it was the same as the ones she’d seen in her flying dream: it was the same grey silvery colour and had the same long thin pointed leaves. ‘A gum tree, ’ Priya had told her, and in the streets of this suburb there were many gum trees, and somewhere, Kalpana knew, there would be a lake like the one in her dream with a bank of the silvery trees alongside.
Now there was a sound from the street. Faintly, in the distance, she heard a soft rhythmic clicking noise: ticktock, ticktock, ticktock – what could it be? The sound grew louder, the white cat sprang from its post and ran away and there, by the glow of the streetlight, Kalpana saw a tall thin boy sailing past the house, so fast he seemed to fly.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes. When she looked again the boy was gone. Perhaps she’d dreamed him, though as she listened, she could still hear that faint tick-tocking, growing softer and softer until it was swallowed into the thick silence of the foreign night. ‘Uran khatola, ’ she whispered. And then, more slowly, as she worked the English words out, ‘the – the flying boy!’
I have been having that flying dream again, she wrote on to Sumati. You know, the one you laughed about, where I was flying, faster and faster, but only a simple hand’s height above the ground. But you didn’t laugh, my dear Sumati, when I told you the feeling of my dream: how if I flew fast enough, I would see my dear Raj’s face again; I would see his special smile . . .
Gull Oliver skimmed along the moonlit street, heading back to his home in Delphi Drive.
That had been her house back there: he was certain of it now; he remembered that big gum tree, the way it leaned a little, spreading its branches over the flat roof of the garage. Back at Short Street Primary, Mrs Flannery had made sure all the Grade One kids who’d been chosen as ‘shepherds’ knew the houses where their lambs had lived, ‘Just in case, ’ she’d said.
Kalpana's Dream Page 5
