At lunchtime registration Miss Poplar calls me over.
Just my luck that it’s my day for her to inspect the teacher’s notes in my planner.
“Mira, is there any particular reason why you’ve been late for just about every lesson this morning?”
As she’s supposed to be the specialist year-seven tutor you’d think she might have guessed.
“Sorry, miss,” I mumble.
Maybe I should tell her, because every few minutes I shift around on my seat and look behind me to make sure I haven’t leaked.
“Mira Levenson, what’s got into you today?” asks Miss Poplar. “Have you got ants in your pants?”
At the mention of “pants,” I feel like I’m going to die. Of course, I blush bright red, and Orla, Demi, and Bo fall about laughing.
All afternoon I duck into a loo every time I pass one…just in case.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” asks Millie.
“Dodgy stomach,” I lie.
“See you later, zit face!” Bo calls out as she pushes past me through the school gates, which is odd, because Bo’s forehead and just about her whole face is covered in acne.
“How was your day?” Mum asks when I get back from school.
“Good.”
And it has been a good day, because Jidé wasn’t in and nobody found out.
It’s swimming today, but I’m missing it, because we’re going on this “adventure,” as Nana calls it. To be honest I wouldn’t have minded going swimming today because my period is over. I thought it would go on for longer than this, but when I looked it up in this book called Questions You Might Not Want to Ask Your Parents that Mum “just happens” to have had lying around the bathroom for ages, it said that it is quite common for your first period to be really light. It hasn’t actually been that bad, except for the appearance of the period pustule, and even that has shrunk to half its size overnight. You could almost call it a normal-sized spot today. So, if it wasn’t for going away with Nana Josie, I would have gone swimming today. I like swimming in a pool, but I love swimming in the sea best, when the waves come crashing over you!
Wednesday, 4 May
We started swimming lessons in year six and I remember thinking that it seemed a bit late because the chances are, if any of us were going to drown, we probably would have done it before we were ten, so I always just assumed that everyone could swim anyway…but then there was Orla, who had never once in all her life been taken to a swimming pool. It’s not that unusual according to the not very subtle swimming teacher who shouted across the pool to her: “Don’t worry, dear. There’s usually at least one ‘non-swimmer’ in every class.” I think she was trying to make Orla feel better.
Now we’re in year seven, and while the rest of us mess around in the big pool, Orla is still in what she calls the “pee pool” with the mums and babies and the beginners. Mostly, though, she pretends she’s “got a stomachache.” The last time we went swimming, one of the teachers said, “You can’t have tummy ache every week,” and Orla looked at the woman and said in a really loud voice, “Actually, I’ve got my period, miss!”
As if you would actually say that!
So, for all the swimming humiliations that Orla has suffered she has come up with a strategy for revenge. Orla and her “glamorous assistants,” as she calls Demi and Bo, have devised a competition about who’s got the best (and worst) body. It works like this. There are three judges, Orla, Demi, and Bo. They hand out marks out of ten for each bit of your body. When it comes to judging, Orla is definitely the most scathing. She will literally dissect you, limb from limb. You could have a score of six for your legs and four for your tummy and three for your arms. If you’ve got boobs growing, you get a low mark from Orla, because that’s just embarrassing. She grades the boys too. Ben Gbemi always gets ten out of ten because he’s been working on getting a “six pack.” Jidé usually comes in second place. If you asked me anything, I would switch it the other way round.
Orla never gives any of the girls a ten, because she thinks she’s got the best body. Orla is definitely the thinnest girl in our class. You can see her hipbones and ribs sticking through her swimming costume. If you’ve got any fat on you at all, you get a low grade in Orla’s scoring system. I only get four out of ten because I’m a bit rounded. Millie gets a really good body score except that Demi always makes a point of saying something horrible like “shame about the four eyes,” But Millie doesn’t care what they say, and neither do I.
Nana has a brilliant rant about what a load of rubbish it all is, people worrying so much about how thin they can get. “Haven’t they got anything better to worry about? What a bore to be so weight obsessed!” The other day when I was sitting with her and she saw me looking at how thin she is now, she said, “To think, some people actually aspire to being a size zero.” She kept stroking my cheek over and over.
“Don’t you ever get into all that dieting crap. It’s the quality of your skin, its plumpness, that makes me want to paint you over and over. You’re a beauty, Mira Levenson.”
I get really embarrassed when Nana talks like that, but I know she really means it, and the truth is that most of the time I don’t think too much about what I look like and I would hate to be bony like Orla. I just am how I am.
Yesterday, Mum had a word with Miss Poplar and she’s given permission for me to take the rest of the week off as “compassionate leave.” Nana Josie wants us all to go to her cottage in Suffolk. I think she sees it as a kind of family pilgrimage. I actually woke up early this morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep, thinking about Jidé and Pat Print’s writing group.
Clank, clank, clank. Last night I got my keys ready so I wouldn’t be so hassled.
“We’re late. It’s already quarter to eight,” Millie says, peering through the letterbox and snapping it closed as I unlock the door.
“I’m ready, Millie.”
“I’d be ready too, if I were you, only coming in for the best bit of the day!”
She runs flat out to school. I trail way behind her, because when I got up this morning I made one of my—don’t ask me why I do it—pacts with Notsurewho Notsurewhat, that if I trod on a single crack in the pavement along the walkway to school, our car would break down on the way to Suffolk. Which is not a great pact to make when the probability is pretty high that our car will break down as it’s so decrepit. Why did I do that? If it does break down with Nana in it, it’ll be really awful, and now, for no reason at all, except for having the stupid thought, I’m going to feel like I made it happen. Not only that, but it also means I look like a lunatic weaving around all over the place when I could be walking in a straight line.
“For God’s sake, Mira, what on earth are you doing?” Millie shouts as I pick my way like someone demented between the cracks in the pavement.
By the time we get into the “safe haven” of our year-seven block that Miss Poplar has tried to make all cozy so as not to shock us because our new secondary is one of the biggest schools in London, Ben and Jidé are already talking to Pat Print and fussing over her sheepdog. But when Millie and I come in, the dog spirals round, practically knocking us over with its frantically wagging tail.
“Moses, behave yourself, my boy. You’re so excitable anyone would think you’re still a puppy,” she laughs, dragging him by the collar back to her side.
Pat Print either doesn’t care, like Nana, or she just doesn’t know that dogs aren’t allowed in school. I love the way she talks to him, as if he can understand exactly what she’s saying.
“Why did you call him Moses?” I ask, and as soon as I speak Ben elbows Jidé in the side. Jidé elbows him back as if to shut him up. Of course, I can’t look him in the eye but what I do notice is that Jidé has gelled up his hair at the front, he’s not wearing his tie, and his shirt is all hanging out. I blush again, even though there is no way on earth that Jidé Jackson can know how much I’ve been thinking about him, even dreaming about him…One day som
eone will make a fortune inventing an anti-blushing device. Whenever you feel one coming on, you could just press a button and stop it in its tracks.
“You’ll have to read my book if you want to find that out. I collect strays!” Pat says, smiling at me.
It’s weird how that happens. Before last week I had never heard of anyone actually being called Moses, apart from Moses in the Bible, and now within one week I’ve met Eco-Endings Moses and sheepdog Moses.
“So what have you all found out about your names?” Pat asks. That’s when I remember what we were supposed to do. She looks around the room, letting her eyes rest on Jidé.
“My full name is BabaJidé. It’s an African name…it means ‘father has returned,’ that’s what Jai, my dad, told me anyway. He said Grace liked the ‘Baba’ bit when I was a baby, but when I started to grow up they dropped ‘Baba’ and just called me Jidé, and Mum says it goes well with Dad’s name…Jai.”
I think it sounds really weird calling your mum and dad by their first names, especially when your mum’s a teacher at school…she’s Ms. Jackson to everyone else.
“Interesting, isn’t it, how some names are better for babies and others feel too grown up to call an infant,” Pat Print comments.
Jidé doesn’t reply. He seems lost in his own thoughts so Pat Print turns her attention on Ben. He’s funny because he just launches into things; he often makes me jump. I peer over his shoulder at his notebook. Ben always does as little work as he can get away with. He’s got about three notes written down, that’s all, but he tells Pat Print this whole epic story of his name, hardly even glancing at his book. He seems to have no nerves at all.
“Well, my mum and dad couldn’t decide what to call me. They couldn’t even agree on any names they both liked before I was born. My mum’s Irish and my dad’s Nigerian…that’s where my surname ‘Gbemi’ comes from…Nigeria. Dad told me that ‘Gbemi’ means ‘favored one.’ A long time ago the name used to be ‘Fagbemi,’ which means something like ‘favored by the oracle,’ but somewhere along the line, we dropped the ‘Fa’ bit. My mum thought I should have an Irish first name but Dad wanted a Nigerian one, and even after I was born they still couldn’t agree. So Mum says she just lay in the hospital bed thinking about what to call me. Then one day she looked up at Big Ben, because Mum was in the hospital just opposite, and she thought, That’s it. The answer had been staring her in the face and blasting her ears all that time. That’s why she called me Ben, and Dad said it sounded good with Gbemi. So that’s it; that’s why I’m called Ben Gbemi.”
Ben definitely speaks as though he’s projecting his voice across London. He’s tall too, probably the tallest boy in year seven.
Pat has been smiling all the way through Ben’s explanation.
“Big Ben! I’m predicting a bold career in broadcasting for you!”
“What’s broadcasting?” asks Ben.
“I’m thinking…you could be a presenter, no, maybe more daring…a journalist reporting while battling against the elements, earthquakes, or storms, or even in a warzone…surviving against all odds and still bringing us the news.” Pat Print is obviously enjoying herself making up a story for Ben’s life.
Jidé laughs and slaps Ben across the back.
You can’t help but smile, because you can just see Ben Gbemi in a job like that.
“Which comes first—the name or the personality?” asks Pat Print. It’s one of those questions she’s not expecting us to answer.
Ben looks down at his feet and tries hard not to show he’s smiling underneath his copper glinting curls.
“Now, who’s next?” Pat’s sharp eyes settle on me. “Mira?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Print, I didn’t do the name bit. I wrote the diary though.” There it is again, that thin little voice of mine.
“OK! I’ll hear that later. Call me Pat, please. Now, Millie, what have you got for me?”
Millie needs no encouragement.
“My ancestors are Scottish and, further back, originally from France, dating right back to 1066. Dad’s told me all about it, but it’s a bit complicated. Apparently, one of my ancestors had Robert the Crusader or Marauder’s heart locked up in a box.”
“Which was it? A crusader or a marauder?” Pat Print asks, looking amused.
“What’s the difference?” asks Ben.
“Good question,” Pat laughs. “Sorry, Millie, I interrupted your flow.”
“Well, my ancestor’s job was to keep Robert the Something’s heart locked up in a box. That’s why I’m called ‘Lockhart.’”
“Why would he have to keep the heart locked up?” butts in Jidé, forgetting again his own rule that he’s not supposed to be this interested.
Millie sighs, fed up with being interrupted.
“Fascinating, Millie.” Pat smiles. “It’s a great name, Lockhart—beautifully iconic. The heart is the subject of so many wonderful stories. I bet if I asked you, you could all write a different story about love. Now you’ve given me an idea.”
Ben and Jidé groan at the same time…back to their double act again.
“Write down as many words as come to mind when I say the word ‘heart.’ Just make a list. I’m giving you fifteen seconds so don’t think about it too hard, just scribble down whatever springs to mind…starting NOW! The word is ‘heart.’”
artichoke
blood
love
layers
break
pig
blood
black pudding
brave
stop beating
That’s all I write in fifteen seconds.
“Now STOP! Swap papers and have a read of each other’s,” orders Pat.
I was going to swap with Millie, like I always do, but before I can, Jidé Jackson has swapped papers with me. In fact, he’s sitting shoulder to shoulder with me, and just that closeness makes me turn my most impressive crimson color. At least I can keep my head down while I read his list.
love
hate
murder
blood
machete
lost
scar
mother
father
sister
cloth
empty
river
“Now see what words you have in common and choose one word from the list that you would like to ask your partner about,” Pat instructs us.
I look sideways at Jidé and for a second I do what I can never usually do…look him in the eye. Jidé makes a tiny movement with his head that tells me not to ask him anything about his words, so we talk about black pudding and pig’s blood and how my Nana Kath’s friend tricked me into eating it by telling me it was a vegetable.
“And you believed her!” Jidé laughs.
Then he asks me about the artichoke, so I tell him about Nana Josie’s artichoke-heart charm and what she told me about it, and all the time I’m talking I’m thinking of what his story might be behind those words.
“Let’s have a couple of examples then,” calls out Pat Print as Jidé and I go back to avoiding eye contact with each other and her. For a moment I forgot we were even in class. Now that I’ve actually looked into them, I realize that Jidé’s eyes have a hazel light in them.
It takes me a while to get my head back into the room, and by the time I do Millie’s reading out the word “transplant,” from Ben’s list, because what he didn’t tell us earlier is that he was one of the youngest babies in Britain ever to have a heart transplant. It’s hard to believe that Ben Gbemi could have ever been small and weak.
“I’ve got the newspaper clippings. I can bring them in to show you, if you want,” Ben booms.
I can’t help thinking of Big Ben’s tiny baby heart.
“You see,” smiles Pat Print. “You were only just born and you’d already hit the news.”
Then Ben reads out Millie’s word: loyalty.
“We talked about Millie’s ancestor guarding the heart,” Be
n says. “He must have really cared about the person whose heart he was protecting, to stay loyal to them for all that time, even though they were dead.”
Ben’s dad left home a few years ago. I bet that’s what he’s thinking about, but he’s not the type to say anything.
Pat nods. “The heart is probably the most powerful symbol in life and literature. My guess is that Millie’s ancestor could have either been protecting the heart because it was such a precious symbol or preventing it from being returned to its people, like a scalp or a macabre trophy. You might have to dig a bit deeper to find out,” Pat Print tells Millie. “So what do you think? If Millie did the research, would you want to read that story?”
“I would, for definite…that’s what I go for…adventure, mystery, that sort of thing,” perks up Ben.
“Indeed. You’ve got an epic historical novel on your hands there, Millie Lockhart. If anyone can handle it, you can. Why don’t you write the opening paragraph for next week? Let’s see if we can help you out a bit. Jidé, if you were reading that book, what would make it a page turner for you?”
Jidé doesn’t even need to think before he answers.
“She’ll have to make a link between herself and that story, like an adventure through time.”
Millie nods.
“I think I’ll just give up my day job,” jokes Pat Print. “With a writer’s note like that, I may as well pack up and go home.”
A noise that never escapes my mouth in school fills up the room. It’s strange and low and loud and it shocks everyone, my laugh, because I don’t think, except for Millie, the others have ever heard it before. It’s so embarrassing. I don’t even know why I’m laughing.
“Now, that’s a first!” Jidé Jackson nudges me on the arm playfully.
My face is as hot and red as if I’ve been running a very high temperature. How did that slip out? And now my laugh and Jidé’s nudge have made my temperature shoot up to boiling point and left behind a stupid grin that I can’t wipe off my face. I can’t even look up. Pat Print must realize that I am paralyzed with embarrassment because she switches back to Jidé instead.
Mira in the Present Tense Page 6