Mafalda! I’ll reply, and the cherry tree, or rather the giant, will shake his head to make some pink and white flowers fall around us, and me and Grandma will play guess-what-shapes-the-clouds-are.
But I’m going to need my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass. I don’t feel right without it, and it was a present from Dad. I can’t go to the tree without something to remember Dad by.
The bell rings for lunch, and the teacher follows us all out of the classroom. Kevin bolts out double-quick and goes to hide in the bathroom. I lean against the wall near our classroom door, arms folded, and sink to the floor, letting my back slide down the wall. I saw someone do it in a movie. I realize it’s been ages since I last watched a movie, and there’s little chance I’ll see many more before—or after—I end up in the dark. I hide my face between my knees and start to cry.
“Why are you crying?”
Sugary crumbs that smell sweet fall on my hands. I look up. I see a pair of sneakers and two legs in jeans. It could be anyone, but I recognize the voice.
Filippo sits down on the ground beside me and listens while I tell him what happened with Kevin. If I talk too much, Filippo stops listening. I learned that after I got to know him, so I try to give him a quick summary. He jumps to his feet before I finish the last sentence. He throws his croissant wrapper in the trash, which I think is quite far away, and congratulates himself on his aim, then makes a move toward my classroom.
I get up too and squeeze the hand he has on the door handle really tightly. We’re not allowed into the classroom during break. “What are you going to do?”
He pushes me out of the way, gently but firmly. “Help you get your things back. Stay here and tell me if someone comes.”
I try to stop him because I’m scared I won’t see anyone coming in time and we’ll get found out, but Filippo darts into the classroom as quick as lightning and starts rummaging through all the backpacks. I’m half in, half out of the classroom and can feel my stomach lurching in fear. “Under the desk. The desk behind mine, look underneath!”
I don’t need to tell him which desk is mine. I see he goes to the right one.
A hand on my shoulder. “What’s going on here?”
One of the older teachers, whom I don’t know very well, is standing behind me and looking into our classroom. I’m so scared I can’t move. Someone else comes over to see what’s going on.
“What are you doing?” the teacher asks Filippo, speaking over my head. Filippo is still kneeling, hidden between the desks, but it’s too late; they’ve seen us. Then there’s a scream from behind the teacher. “That stuff’s mine! They’re stealing it!”
Kevin pushes me aside, runs to his desk, and starts yanking Filippo to get the pencil and my magnifying glass back. Filippo won’t let go. “They’re not yours. You took them from Mafalda; they belong to her!”
“She gave them to me! They’re mine now!”
“You tricked me!”
While they shout and yank, even throw the odd punch, the deputy headmaster arrives and splits them up. He demands to know what’s going on. Kevin shouts that Filippo started it, that he was stealing Kevin’s things, so I start yelling that the things were mine.
“But you gave them to me, you idiot!”
I’ve no idea what comes over me, but I throw myself at Kevin’s stupid voice and end up without my glasses, throwing punches, some of which land in midair, some on something soft, hopefully Kevin’s face. So, fighting is something I can do without glasses. I must remember to add that to my new list.
* * *
The hard chairs in the corridor beside the school office are as uncomfortable as the ones Doctor Olga has, only this time I don’t have Mom and Dad with me but Filippo, who also has a behavior note to be signed by the principal and his parents.
It’s the first time that I’ve ever been sent to the principal. And that I’ve stolen something. I’ve done lots of things this year that I promised at confession I’d never do. I had no choice, though. I didn’t want to behave so badly. I didn’t want to run away from home, and I definitely didn’t mean to hit Kevin. Okay, so maybe I did want to hit Kevin, but he tricked me, and I hate it when people don’t tell me the truth.
“I know you don’t like lies, but I’m going to have to tell one in a minute, so you shut up, okay?” Filippo touches my arm gently. What lie do I have to tell? I don’t like lies. Always the truth, Estella says. “If I don’t say this thing, you’ll end up in trouble too, so just zip it.”
I push my glasses up my nose and stare at him. “What?”
“Nothing.” Filippo swings his legs under the chair. “Say nothing. Want a game of ball-in-the-basket?”
He scrunches the demerit note into a ball and throws it at a fake plant in the corner of the corridor, near the photocopier. There must be a basket over there. I hear his ball plop into it. “You try.”
Since I have nothing to throw but the note, I scrunch mine up too. I may as well; I’m already in trouble. I throw my ball toward the basket and hear it hit the wall and roll on the ground. I missed. Filippo runs over to retrieve the balls and gives me mine back. “Let’s try again.”
I’m on my sixth attempt when the principal comes out of his office to sign our notes. “What on earth are you doing?” I don’t need my third eye to see that he is really, truly angry with us.
My courage vanishes, wrapped up in the paper ball on the floor behind the photocopier. I’m about to confess to this offense too (Isn’t that what it’s called when you break a rule?), but Filippo steps between me and the principal. “It was my fault.”
The principal is a tall, skinny man with thinning hair and light blue veins on his forehead. I remember him. He’s not evil; he just spends all his time shut away in his office and doesn’t speak to us children much. A bit like the janitor with the sauce stains. Maybe they’re secretly friends and get together to talk about us over coffee. No, that’s impossible. They’re too different. But Filippo and I are different, and we’re friends. The principal seems to know Filippo quite well.
“It’s my fault. I went into her classroom, she tried to stop me, and then I forced her to play ball-in-the-basket with the note.”
It’s not true. I want to tell the principal this. I stand up, but he’s already facing the other way and walking back into his office, heaving a huge sigh. “This is not good, Filippo, not good at all. I think we should let Mafalda go and you and I have a chat.”
Filippo doesn’t even look at me, and when I try to stop him, he pulls his arm back and tells me to go away. I follow him almost inside the principal’s office. The last thing I see between the door closing and the wall is his glasses.
Filippo is my Garrone, just like in The Baron in the Trees.
Only in this case, the headmaster hasn’t noticed that Filippo was lying to protect me.
I need to run.
It’s been ages since I went running, fast like the wind, like the others who run in the park and on the track.
I look around me. There’s no one about, no sign of life by the entrance or in the corridor. I hear a door opening to my left and secretaries laughing. A woman wearing, I think, a very smart black skirt walks past me holding some sheets of paper. She needs to use the photocopier. I hear her press buttons and lower the lid, and then a green light lights up my eyes with electric sparks. I look the other way. The secretary asks me if I need anything. I start walking toward my classroom. I can’t do anything for Filippo here.
The secretary picks up the balls of paper and retreats into her office. I hear the door close. I really am the only one in the school now. I stand absolutely still and count to ten in my head. No one goes past; no one comes looking for me. So I make a dash for Estella’s room. I only have to cross the big space where we do recitals. The floors in my school are light blue, the walls are gray, and the doors light blue and gray. It’s like running through nothingness. I come to a stop with a bang, my whole body slamming into the door of the janitors’ room. I open it
, go inside, and shut it hastily behind me. I stand with my back against it, heart thudding in my chest like my cousin Andrea’s bongo drum.
To calm myself down, I look around, even though my glasses are dirty and blurred, or maybe it’s my eyes that are dirty and blurred, like the windshield on Mom’s car. I could use some wipers to clean away the dirt. But they haven’t invented such small ones yet. The room is in darkness—no one has opened the blinds. There’s only a very beautiful shaft of light pouring through one of the small windows that looks out onto the playground.
I place my hand into the shaft of light and play with the dust, moving it around, then open my white hand to see the straighter-than-straight shadows that appear behind my fingers. Light and dark things are all that I can see now, although it’s easier when they’re side by side. Keeping my hand inside the shaft of light, I move around and try to follow the shadow my hand casts on objects in the room—the swivel chair, the desk, the chips cupboard.
My birthday present! Estella told me she was going to leave it in here. I kneel down under the desk and open the confiscated-property drawer. Feeling around with my hands, I find a paper parcel tied with a crumpled ribbon. I pull it out and place it on the desk. It’s a soft, odd-looking parcel.
It’s the second time in not very long that I’ve been given something soft. I wonder what it is.
I sit on the swivel chair and very slowly unwrap the parcel. I definitely don’t want to ruin the wrapping paper. But I can’t resist and end up ripping it off. A star. That’s the first thing I see. A large, white star. Made of fabric, because it’s printed on a T-shirt, a black T-shirt, like the ones Filippo’s mom makes in her shop. Maybe Estella ordered it from there. The thought of Filippo and Estella being connected makes me very happy. I bury my face in the T-shirt. Estella has washed and ironed it with the same washing powder she uses for her own clothes; I can smell her perfume. The star is a bit shiny—I can also see it with my fingers. They see another star too, a smaller one on the front of the T-shirt. I turn it round and hold it up against me. The smaller star, white like the first one, is right over my heart.
18
No One Shot It
It’s always really hot in Mom’s car.
It’s even hotter today because I have to tell her about the demerit note and how I crumpled it up and threw it away.
But she’s chatting away as usual, so I let her speak. I rest my forehead against the window, breathe out on the glass, and draw a star with my finger. It vanishes almost immediately, before I get time to look at it. It doesn’t matter. I have Estella’s T-shirt in my bag, and there are two stars on that, one for me and another bigger one for her. At home, I hide it under the bed so I can take it with me to the tree, and when spring comes I’ll put it on and Estella will have three stars just for her (including the one in her name—she told me once “stella” means “star”).
I go up the stairs to our apartment and think that maybe I should call Estella to thank her before I tell Mom and Dad about the demerit note because I might not be allowed to use the phone after. When I climb stairs, I’m always really careful, especially somewhere new, because you never know how high each step might be. At home, my feet go up by themselves. I’ve been climbing them since I was born, or not long after, so I could do them with my eyes shut. Or in the dark. That’s something else to add to the new list.
“Watch out, young lady, make way, make way!”
A talking wardrobe nearly runs me down, but I jump out of the way, into the handrail on the wall, just in time. A walking, talking wardrobe. And it has just come out of my house. “Where are you going?” I ask.
The head of a sweaty man pops out from behind the wardrobe. The sweaty man puts the wardrobe down, so I’m stuck between the handrail and the wardrobe. He is so close to me, I can feel the heat from him. I see him rooting around in his pockets for something. A sheet of paper. He looks at it and says, “Twenty-Three Via Gramsci. That’s where I’m going.”
He picks up the wardrobe again and, with great difficulty, resumes his journey down the stairs.
I run home and trip over a box in front of the door. “Wha—”
“Mafalda, be careful, darling.”
“Mom, what’s happening?”
Mom comes out of the kitchen with a saucepan lid in her hand and her bag still over her shoulder.
“We’ve started moving. Don’t you remember the new house? You saw it too. We have to start taking our things there because we’re moving in next week.”
I reach out to touch the chest of drawers by the front door, the one with Mom and Dad’s wedding picture on it, but my hand swings straight across without touching anything. There’s only air and gray light where the drawers used to be. They’ve taken it away. I wonder if they put the photo safely into a box. I’d be sad if they broke it. I like that photo, even though I can no longer see it very well.
Misted glasses alert. I head for my room. Boxes are stacked up in the hallway. I have to be careful not to bump into them because they’re not an easy color to see. An ugly color, to be honest, the color of recycled toilet paper. Mom follows me holding the pan lid. I look at her over my shoulder, and for a second, I’m not even sure it’s her.
“Mom, can I go to my room on my own?”
“All right, on you go. Be careful where you put your feet. I’ll call you when the pasta’s ready.”
I stand in the doorway. It’s dark in my room. All I have to do is reach out with my hand to turn on the light, but I shut my eyes. I take one step into the room, then another, until I know I’m in the middle. I turn round slowly. And I know. I know everything is still in its place, that nothing has been moved or removed yet. As I swing round, I can feel the presence of things on my hands and on my face. I’m in no doubt. The furniture is where it has always been, as are my things. This is the last room they’ll empty. I walk toward my wardrobe, brush my hand against it. The wood is light-colored, I know. Another two steps and I’m at my desk. So that’s where I left my sharpener—I couldn’t find it at school. There’s a loose tile on the floor, one that moves a little. There it is. When I walk on it, the fake crystals on the ceiling light, above my head and over to the left a bit, make a barely perceptible tinkling noise. The last time I looked at myself in the mirror, I stood right here. I open my eyes. Where the mirror used to be, there’s nothing.
I move closer. One step. Another. And another. Maybe my mirror was the only thing they took away, you know, to get started. I hardly have time to put out my hand to check where the mirror is when there’s a bang and it explodes into a thousand pieces. It was there, right there, and now . . . I’ve cut myself. The blood smells like house keys.
“Mafalda, what happened?” Mom comes screaming from the kitchen, then screams even louder when she sees the broken glass and my blood. “Stay right there. I’ll get something to put on it.”
She runs to the bathroom. I hear her rummaging through cupboards, the ones that are left.
I broke the mirror. I bumped into it; it fell over and smashed.
Okay, we’ve reached no steps from the mirror. It’s Wednesday today. On Monday, I’m moving, or rather, they’re moving, to the new house. Because in three days’ time I’ll be in the tree and won’t be coming down again.
* * *
Voices from the kitchen wake me up. Someone’s crying and talking to Mom. It’s morning. The mist isn’t thick yet, so I need to take advantage of it. I want to know who came to visit so early in the morning.
First things first, I stick my feet into my slippers—I wouldn’t want to tread on a shard of broken glass—and then I go into the kitchen, watching out for furniture that’s been moved and boxes stacked up in the hall.
“Good morning, Mafalda. Sorry if I woke you.”
Ravina’s voice and the jet-black of her hair. “What are you doing here?” I ask her.
Mom has me sit down at the table and gives me a mug of tea and a muffin. “Ravina came to say goodbye. She’s going back to
India for a while.”
I almost spill all my tea on the tablecloth—what a disaster that would’ve been. I push my glasses up my nose and look at Ravina, mouth agape. “Why are you leaving? When are you coming back?”
She sighs. Her eyes are dark, like when Mom forgets to take off her makeup and the next morning she looks like the panda I once saw at the zoo. I’m almost certain this is what happens when grown-up women cry.
“Andrea and I have broken up. I’m going back to live with my grandparents. I’ll help them around the house and they’ll keep me company.”
“Why have you broken up?”
“Mafalda, Ravina might not want to talk about it.”
Ravina pats my arm gently and tells Mom it’s okay, that she actually came to spend some time with me. Mom warns me not to harass her, then starts washing last night’s dishes. I’m still not used to her being at home all the time. I keep thinking she’ll go to work any minute, but she doesn’t, and she is here to constantly check up on me.
Ravina explains that it was her decision to split with Andrea because he never tells her that he cares about her. I’m not sure I understand, so I ask, “Isn’t caring about someone what you say to your mom and dad, your relatives, your friends, your pet, people like that? Whereas boyfriend and girlfriend are supposed to say ‘I love you,’ except for in France, where they say ‘Je t’aime’ to everyone. The assistant French teacher told me that.”
“That’s true, and he never told me he loves me either.”
“Not even in French?”
“No, not even in French. I told him that I love him at least a hundred times.”
No way! Ravina said I love you a hundred times! I need to warn her!
“But you’ll have a hundred babies!”
“What’s this about babies, Mafalda?” Mom turns to look at me, confused.
The Distance between Me and the Cherry Tree Page 9