by David Almond
“You must be joking!” I said.
“No,” answered Sophie. “I prefer Jammy Dodgers.”
I had to admit I’d never tasted a Jammy Dodger.
“What?” she said. “Never tasted a Jammy Dodger? Where on earth have you been all your life?”
Next day she brought some Jammy Dodgers into school. She gave me one at break.
“Well?” she said.
“Delicious!” I said, so she gave me another.
We were friends for a while, I suppose. We used to walk around the yard at breaktimes. One day I took a deep breath and said,
“I know it’s nothing to do with me, but why do you limp?”
“I had a disease when I was little,” she said. “It left a problem with my leg.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Does it worry you?” she said.
“No,” I answered. “Of course it doesn’t.”
We walked on.
“I’ll have an operation to sort it out when I’m a bit older,” she said.
“That’s good.”
“It’ll mean some pain, but I think it’ll be worth it.”
Then she looked at me and said,
“Can I ask you something?”
“I suppose so.”
“Why are you so …?”
She stopped.
“So what?” I said.
She shrugged.
“So strange, I suppose,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Kind of. A bit kind of complicated.”
I looked at the kids in the yard, running round together, hanging out together.
“I don’t mean to be,” I said. I laughed. “Maybe I should have an operation to fix it.”
She laughed as well.
“Maybe you should. But what kind of operation would fix strangeness?” she said.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“A destrangification operation!” she said.
We laughed together at the word.
“Does it worry you?” I said.
“No,” she said.
She reached into her pocket and brought out a package wrapped in silver foil.
“Have a Jammy Dodger,” she said.
I grinned.
“Delicious!”
Sophie Smith. I wonder where she is now. In the same school? Has she moved away? Does she like fig rolls at last? Has she had her operation? Probably I’ll never find out. I did think I saw her passing by the end of the street one day, while I was sitting in my tree, but I wasn’t certain. I almost called out to her, but I didn’t. Would I like to see her again? Yes, I suppose I would.
I would only ever whisper it, but I do sometimes think I will have to go back to school one day, and make some new friends. Sometimes I would quite like to go back. And I should also whisper that all of the teachers weren’t Mrs. Scullerys. Some were nice, and interesting, and creative. Like Mr. Henderson, who told us about the tunnels under Heston Park. And like some other teachers I had in the past. And there were nice kids like Sophie. Sometimes I find myself thinking that a school could be (could be!) a wonderful place. Sometimes I even find myself thinking that there already are schools that are wonderful places. But that makes no real difference. Schools are still CAGES and PLACES TO BE AVOIDED!
FIG ROLLS! WOW! I like to nibble the top of the biscuit off first, then chew away the lovely figgy stuff (it’s lovely slooched around inside the mouth with chocolate milk), then eat the bottom bit.
Went up to the loo. Listened to the lovely tinkling sound of my pee splashing down into the water. Thought about water running through me, water and my pee being flushed away into the drains, how it’ll end up in rivers and seas and how it’ll evaporate into the air and come back down again as rain. Lovely to think of water that’s been my pee coming down as rain! Maybe that’s why people say it’s pissing down!
Water’s moving all the time, running, flowing, swirling, splashing, gurgling, evaporating, condensing. Some of the water molecules that are in me now were once in the Red Sea, or in the Mississippi, or in Ernie Myers, or in a blackbird, or in an orange, or a sprout, or inside a dinosaur, or in a caveman, or a saber-toothed tiger, or a three-toed sloth or …
I spat down into the water and flushed again and off went my spit into the world. It’ll change from being spit. Some of it will turn up in somebody else and then in somebody else’s spit and pee. It’ll become a bit of the Pacific Ocean or the Nile. It’ll turn up in whatever kind of beings we become in the future. And on and on and on and onto the very end of time.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
Go to the loo. Flush your pee away.
Consider where it will go to and what it will become.
Swigged some water from the tap to replace the water I have lost through spit and pee and sweat. The human body is 65 percent water. Two-thirds of me is constantly disappearing, and constantly being replaced. So most of me is not me at all!
Gulp!
Caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. Stepped back and had a good look. I am indeed very skinny. This must be an organic thing, given my fondness for fig rolls and Jammy Dodgers and chocolate. And I’m rather small. When I was young Mum used to call me her little bird, which I loved. But however small and light I might be, I can’t be as light as a bird is. They have air cavities within their bones. The correct word for this fact is pneumatization. Pneumatization. What a word! NEW-MA-TIZE-ATION.
I, along with all other human beings, am not pneumatized. Therefore I am earthbound. Or am I? Maybe not. After all —
MY PEE AND MY SWEAT AND MY SPIT RISE INTO THE AIR
AS VAPOR AND FALL TO THE EARTH AS RAIN.
MY SKIN DANCES IN THE AIR AS DUST.
MY BREATH MERGES WITH THE AIR AND WITH THE SKY.
SO I AM EARTHBOUND BUT ALSO AIRBOUND!
I keep on looking. I know that the girl I see in the bathroom mirror will evolve and grow. Mum says I am poised on the threshold of a time of wonder. I look at the little creature in the mirror and it seems impossible. But yes, I do feel poised. And I’m also happy to wait, and to be a baby in those times I need to be a baby, like when Mum wraps her arms around me on the sofa and whispers that she loves me, and sings her songs to me, and whispers that I’m her lovely little chick.
Mooched about some more. Went to my bedroom and mooched through my bookshelves. Pulled out three books, three of the extraordinariest books in the world: Where the Wild Things Are, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Dogger! Lay on my bed and read them and looked at them just like I did when I was a little girl. And danced the dance of the Wild Things with Max, and tiptoed into the bear’s cave with the family, and felt really sad with Dave about his lost toy, Dogger, and really happy with him when he found it again.
I read them all again, a second time, and got all dreamy, and remembered Dad, the way he was when he used to read these books to me just before I went to sleep. I never really have a strong picture of him in my mind. I sort of half-hear him and half-see him, like he’s somebody in a dream that gets harder to remember the more you try to think of him. When I read the words to myself I can kind of half-hear the sound of his voice as he read them to me.
I half-remembered the smell of his breath and the stubble on his cheek as he kissed me good night, the slight roughness of his skin as he stroked my cheek, his voice as he whispered his Good Night. And I lay with the books around me and the strange half-vague, half-intense memories[8] inside me, and felt very small indeed.
This activity has made me rather sad. I will cheer myself up by writing all the words for joy and loveliness, two whole pages filled with nothing else!
skylark Mum blackbird owl moon tree park
Icarus wing weird cat black shining silver
smooth joy yes egg tree nest light toast
marmalade raspberry yogurt park Mina
Dad bat Orpheus angel night whisper
journal Sendak book abundant story sing
dance Grace starling Mina mess clutter sing
beak God fly typical William joy pollen
nonsense sloth wild painter poet Blake
savage coal fig tender wander Rosen
wonder banana transmigration Hughes
flush unimaginable Dave paint clay dangle
alarm witch Buddhism saint skin weirdo
pebble crow pissing grandpa Oxenbury
Ernie heaven universe Max star Dogger
imagine tinkling alive glisten bud beat
beautiful inside soul tatty hatch chick wet
creature book lullaby Maurice sloosh light
water pizza love paradox alive hoot giggle
Hinduism darling purr lass zimmer
Persephone pee poo soul fig bloke strange
bee imagine Shirley chocolate goggly word
Grace metempsybeautifulchosis bony wallop
Himalaya cloud body hatch universe stupid
bloody archaeopteryx poem word yawn
nothingness mystery click tongue
mysterious sprout thump carrot philosophy
see pomegranate sweat Helen dead concrete
Corinthian stop play index finger biscuit
space saber madness spring Michael cheese
strange world winter frost extraordinary
earth this dream dust silver sleep o sun
When that was done, I looked out into the street. The blue car was back. The pregnant woman and the man got out. There was a boy with them. The woman looked at Mr. Myers’s house with distaste, but the man guided her to the front window. They peered in. The boy stood with his hands in his pockets and stared glumly at the earth. He stared glumly along the street. The man grinned at him and called him forward. The boy didn’t move. Then another car came, and a man in a suit, carrying a plastic folder, got out. He shook the hands of the woman and the man. The boy just looked away. The man in the suit laughed. He seemed to say something, probably something about “kids.” He rubbed his hands and took some keys out of his pocket and opened the front door. They went inside.
I sat at the table. I doodled. Wrote some nonsense. Kept looking from the window. Saw Whisper slinking along by the low garden walls.
The family were inside the house for an age. I imagined them moving from room to room, moving through the molecules of Ernie Myers. I imagined them inspecting the collapsing ceilings, the toilet in the dining room, the dilapidated garage at the back.
“Don’t be discouraged,” I said inside myself. “We need things to be born around here!”
Then they came out again at last.
The two men shook hands. The man in the suit drove off. The other man grinned, and opened his arms wide as if he wanted to wrap the house in them. The woman brushed herself with her hands, trying to get rid of dust and dirt. The man whispered to her. He stroked her belly. They both held her belly. She laughed. The boy stared down at the earth. He kicked it hard. He scowled. He probably swore. He kicked the earth again. And again.
They went away. It was turning to dusk. There was much birdsong in the street.
I went downstairs.
“More visitors to Mr. Myers’s house,” I say.
“That’s good,” says Mum. “Boring visitors or interesting visitors?”
I shrugged.
“Don’t know. They went in with the estate agent.”
“Must be quite interested, then.”
“The woman didn’t look interested at all. Nor the boy.”
“The boy?”
“Yes, Mum. The boy.”
“Now that’d be nice.”
“Would it? And the woman’s going to have a baby.”
“Now that definitely would be nice!”
She smiled and reached out and tousled my hair.
“Anyway, what have you been up to?”
“Talking to an old lady with bad bones, dancing for Persephone, being in somebody else’s dream, thinking about pee and sweat and spit, reading Where the Wild Things Are and writing a thousand words for joy.”
She laughed again.
“Sounds like a fine day’s work to me.”
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
(JOYOUS VERSION)
Write a page of words for joy.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
(SAD VERSION)
Write a page of words for sadness.
Grandpa, Missing Monkeys & Owls
Now it’s night. No stars. Mist is hanging in the street. Frost is glittering. “IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE SPRING!” I want to yell. “SO GET LOST, FROST!”
An owl hoots, from the direction of Mr. Myers’s house. It hoots again, and something hoots in answer.
Owls. I feel so close to them. I share a home with them.
“Good night, owls,” I whisper. “I’ll write your story tomorrow.”
Hoot. Hoot hoot hoot.
Mina’s mother’s father was a seaman. Ever since he was a young man, he had sailed the world. He had been everywhere, to so many exotic-sounding places with such exotic-sounding names: Santiago, San Francisco, Cairo, Casablanca, Java, Buenos Aires, Fiji, Honduras, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Manila, Singapore, Bangkok, Abu Dhabi, Hanoi … The list could go on forever – or for as long as a list of exotic places could last.
Mina remembered getting postcards from those places when she was a tiny girl. Her grandpa traveled so much that Mina only met him a few times. She remembered a busy and funny man with a big laugh and skin the color of hazelnuts. She remembered his stories about the lions and tigers and crocodiles he’s fought in distant jungles, the whales he’d swum with, the whirlpools he’d escaped from, the treasure he’d discovered in sunken galleons. He said he’d bring back a treasure chest for her one day. He said he’d bring her a monkey. Even then, she knew the tales and promises were made up. She knew, for instance, that lions don’t live in jungles. But she did kind of hope that the tale about the monkey might come true!
He always said he’d stop traveling, that he’d retire and return to the house he had on Crow Road, but Mina’s mum knew that he never would. He went on sailing long beyond the time he could have stopped. He ended up doing trips in little sailing boats for tourists in the Indian Ocean. In his last postcard, he said he would be back very soon. He also said that he was looking for the right kind of monkey. He also said that he was in Paradise.
When he died he was buried at sea, in the Indian Ocean at dusk.
In his will, he left everything to Mina’s mum, but said the house on Crow Road should go to Mina when she became twenty-one. He said she was “the little girl that I have carried in my heart across the seven seas.” Mina liked that thought, that while she was at home in Falconer Road, she was also traveling around the exotic places of the world.
Inside the will, there was a folded note with her name written on it. It said:
P.S. Remember: It’s just a house. Don’t get stuck in it. Be free. Travel the world.
P.P.S. Sorry about the monkey!
P.P.P.S. Sorry we didn’t get to see each other much.
P.P.P.P.S. Live your life.
P.P.P.P.P.S. The World is Paradise.
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Sorry I died (which I must have done as you’re reading this!).
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Bye-bye. Lots of love, Grandpa.
Mina had hardly been in the house until then. It was a big three-story place on Crow Road near the park. Mum had been born in it, but had no memories of living in it. When she was three, her dad started his traveling, and she moved with her mum to a smaller house, and grew up there.
The big house was never sold. Mum said it was always there as a reminder that her dad might come back again and settle down, even though she and her mum knew in their hearts that he never would.
“Did Grandma keep on loving him?” Mina asked one day.
Mum shrugged and sighed. “She said she did. But it’s hard to go on loving somebody that’s always on the seven seas.” She smiled. “Grandma was quite a force herself, of course.” She winked. “She was liked by lots of men.”
For a few year
s while Mina was growing up, the house was rented out to students. Mina remembered seeing them sometimes, going in and out of the house, rolling bicycles into the hallway, sitting in the front garden eating sandwiches, throwing Frisbees, playing guitars. She remembered wondering what it would be like, to live in a big house like that with lots of friends, and to throw Frisbees in the garden, though she found it hard to think of herself with lots of friends. Then she thought, Maybe I’ll find friends who are rather like me, and we’ll be able to put up with each other.
The students didn’t last forever. The house was getting run-down. It needed decorating, some of the window frames were starting to rot, the electrics needed to be fixed up. Mina’s mum wrote to Grandpa about it. He said he’d sort it out soon. They knew, of course, that he never would. So Mina’s mum locked the house, put boards across the windows and put a sign on the door that simply said:
And for a long time, the house was almost forgotten about.
One afternoon, just after the reading of the will, Mum got the key to the house out of a drawer. She found a torch. She and Mina put on old clothes, and they walked to Crow Road, to the dark green gate that led to the house. Mum unlocked the gate and they walked through the garden to the DANGER door. Mum unlocked that too. She pushed it open, stepped aside and bowed.
“Welcome to your inheritance, Mistress McKee,” she said in a spooky-sounding voice, and she ushered Mina into the inside darkness.
The house had big rooms, bare floorboards, bare walls. Mum shone the torch up into the corners to show the heavy plasterwork, the wallpaper curling away from the walls, the dangling light fixtures. There were cobwebs everywhere. Little creatures kept scuttling across the floors. Chinks of light shone through the cracks in the boards on the windows. Dust (skin!) danced through the torch beam. They climbed the wide stairways. Their footsteps echoed and echoed through the house.
“What on earth will you be doing with something so large?” said Mum.
“I shall live in it with my servants, of course,” said Mina. “Or I shall establish a school.”
“A school, my lady?”