Mira in the Present Tense

by Sita Brahmachari

  I’m lying in bed trying not to think of food and thinking how embarrassing it’s going to be seeing Jidé tomorrow, because he still hasn’t called, and this is the exact moment that a message jumps into my inbox.

  Just when I’d given up on Notsurewho Notsurewhat.

  Mira, sorry you’re ill.

  Hope you’re in tomorrow.

  See you.

  JJ x

  That’s only ten words, but it takes me the rest of the afternoon of staring at his text to try to work out exactly what it means. I wonder how long it took him to write, because it takes me about three hours to write this reply…

  Jidé, I’m much better thanks.

  I’ll be back tomorrow.

  See you.

  Mira x

  I spend at least fifteen minutes adding and removing the x before I finally press the send button with the x in place.

  Suddenly my belly rumbles, demanding to be fed. As soon as I hear Mum and Laila leave to pick up Krish from school, I sneak downstairs and rummage around for something to eat. Before I can hide, Mum’s back in the room, heading straight for the cupboard I’ve still got my head stuck inside.

  “Forgot a snack for Krish,” she says, removing the packet of Kit Kats from my hand. “Hungry?”

  I nod.

  “Good, then you can go back to school tomorrow.”

  And off she goes, slamming the door behind her and bumping Laila’s pram down our front steps. I think Mum’s got a sickness/wellness radar. I bet she knew I was faking it all along. As soon as she’s gone, I sprint upstairs at the sound of another message jumping into my inbox.

  Great!

  JJ xx

  Just that one word and those two kisses make me want to laugh out loud. By the time Mum comes in I still haven’t managed to wipe the stupid grin off my face.

  “Well, you definitely look better,” smiles Mum.

  “I knew she was faking it,” mumbles Krish, pushing past me on the stairs.

  Tuesday, 10 May

  Run, Mira, run! Faster! I can feel my legs stretched to snapping point, but all the time they are gaining on me, the usual suspects, Demi, Bo, and Orla. Around the trees in what is supposed to be our “oh so safe world” of the year-seven court-yard, I trip over the loose wood chippings, and as I stumble, they stampede.

  Demi grabs hold of my hair and pulls me roughly to the woodland corner of the courtyard.

  “You can stay right here, creep. Don’t you dare move an inch off this spot, even when the bell goes, or we’ll have you,” Demi whispers in my ear and walks away laughing.

  The bell rings. If only Millie wasn’t at the dentist. If she was here, she wouldn’t let them get away with this. But she’s not here, so I do exactly what I’ve been ordered to do like a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights, and before I know what’s happening the last person in the world I would want to see me like this is standing right in front of me.

  “What are you doing?” asks Jidé, staring at me as if I’ve gone completely crazy. This is so not how it was supposed to be between me and Jidé today.

  “Demi…she told me if…well…she just told me I wasn’t allowed to move,” I mumble.

  Suddenly, I see myself through Jidé’s eyes. I feel like such an idiot. What am I doing? All the things he knows about…what must have happened to his family…what could have happened to him…He must think I’m pathetic.

  “What’s stopping you leaving? There’s no one here, nothing in your way.” Jidé strikes his hand up and down through the air.

  I bet he wonders why he even bothered texting me now.

  “If you stand up to them,” says Jidé, “they’ll stop.”

  I have never felt so humiliated in my whole life, and by the time we get to the classroom I’m wearing the bright red blush of shame on my face like a beacon of embarrassment. I hang my head as Miss Poplar launches into her topic on drugs and alcohol. She says that the only drugs you should take are what the doctor gives you if you’re ill to make you better. As I sit there listening to Miss Poplar talk about a subject that I probably know more about than anyone else in this class because of what Nana’s going through, it feels as if my blood is literally starting to boil up in me.

  “They don’t always make you better. My Nana Josie’s got cancer and she has drugs to stop her pain, but they won’t make her better.”

  It’s my voice I hear saying these words.

  Miss Poplar is staring at me. I know it’s because she never expects me to say anything at all in class and the way that came out was all wrong. I mean, I can just about talk like that in Pat Print’s class, but what was I thinking of? In front of this lot. I might as well have offered them my head on a plate. Whenever I say anything in class, Demi rolls her eyes up to make me nervous. It’s always worked until today.

  “You’re right, Mira. This is a very complicated issue. Of course when it comes to pain relief that’s different.”

  Jidé’s eyes are burning into me.

  “She’s different,” Demi whispers under her breath, rolling her eyes into the back of her head to look like a zombie…and that’s the moment when something inside me sparks and the words flair up and spread around the room like a raging fire.

  “Stop it! Just stop! I don’t know what you get out of being so vile to me, but you’ll have to find someone else to pick on. I hope you never have to watch someone you love dying right in front of you, because the way you carry on you’d better hope there’s no such thing as bad karma…because you lot have got it coming!”

  As soon as it’s out, I cover my mouth with my hands in case anything else escapes. Where did that come from? I don’t really know what happens to me when I get this angry, because I’ve never felt like this before. The whole class is stunned into silence and Miss Poplar is gawping at me as if I’m a total stranger.

  “Who exactly are you talking about, Mira?”

  “Demi, Bo, and Orla,” I say in the clearest and loudest voice I can find.

  I have never seen Miss Poplar look so stern.

  “You three, to my office, right now. The rest of you get on with some reading. I’ll be sending someone in to sit with you in a minute,” she barks at the rest of the class. “Mira, come and see me at the end of the lesson, please,” she says in a tone you would use to comfort a wounded animal.

  The tears are stinging my eyes now, so I keep my head low as they file out of the room. There is silence.

  The kind of silence that until now I’ve only ever felt at school in Pat Print’s class. I hear someone get up, walk toward me, and sit down in Millie’s empty seat. It’s Jidé. I daren’t look up in case he sees me crying.

  When I come out of Miss Poplar’s office, I feel taller than I did when I went in. Walking between lessons, where you have to crisscross the school with the thousand or so other giant-sized people, is usually the bit I dread most about my day. Most days when I make this journey, I concentrate as hard as I can on becoming invisible, but not today. It’s as if I’m seeing this school for the very first time and all the kids who come here…and some are taller than me, and some are smaller, but they all have a human face. As I walk through the crowded corridor, I feel a buzz in my pocket, so I duck into the nearest loo, locking the door behind me.

  That was brave.

  See you later.

  JJ xxx

  Three kisses. I think about texting him back, but it would probably take me hours, and I’m already late for French so I close my phone, check myself out in the mirror, concentrating hard on losing my “Jidé Jackson just texted me three kisses” face, and walk into French.

  “Tu es en retard, Mira.”

  “I’ve got a note, miss,” I say, showing her the note from Miss Poplar explaining why I’m late.

  Answering Jidé’s text is just about all I can think of through what’s left of French. As I leave the classroom, I catch sight of him across the language corridor as he comes out of Spanish. I blush just about the most ridiculous color crimson
that I’ve ever turned. He grins at me, and I, without being able to stop myself, grin back before being mercifully swept away on a sea of bodies. I duck into the toilets again to text him this.

  Thank you.

  Mira xxxx

  It took me all of French to pluck up the courage to send those four kisses. Well, I suppose French is supposed to be the language of love.

  By lunchtime Millie’s back, wearing her new braces. We sit on the high wall and I tell her about the shame of Jidé finding out what a coward I am and my explosion in Miss Poplar’s class.

  “Sounds like I missed all the action, but I wouldn’t worry…he probably liked playing the hero to your damsel in distress!” teases Millie.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So why did he want your number then?”

  “I dunno because he hasn’t called.”

  Strictly speaking that’s not a lie. Who am I kidding? I am even lying to my best friend now. What is going on with me? Why can’t I just tell Millie the truth?

  “Here comes trouble,” scowls Millie as Demi and Bo stroll toward us.

  I feel my whole body tense up. In a minute I’ll know if they’re going to take their revenge, but they just keep on walking without even glancing up at us.

  “Result!” grins Millie, shaking my hand.

  “All right, Mira?” mumbles Orla as she trails along behind the others.

  “All right,” I say.

  Wednesday, 11 May

  The phone rings.

  “Will someone please pick that up,” shouts Dad.

  “I’m in the bathroom. Mira, can you pick it up or they’ll ring off,” yells Mum.

  I don’t know why they even bother. It’s always me who answers the phone anyway. Krish won’t because it makes him nervous.

  “Hi! Millie…Poor you! Does it really hurt?…OK, I’ll tell her…Yep, I’ll call you later.”

  “Who was that?” asks Mum, carrying Laila all cozied up in a towel, down the stairs.

  “Millie. Her teeth are hurting. It’s her new braces giving her headaches. She’s having the day off. Can I go and see her after school?”

  “If you like, but be back by five and take your mobile,” Mum says, trying to be relaxed about everything, but then she blows it. “Do you want me to walk you into your writing group if Millie’s not coming?”

  “No, Mum. I’m fine on my own.”

  Pat Print walks ahead of me through the great metal gates. When she spots me, she stops and waits.

  “How was the rest of your stay? I nearly got blown off that beach.”

  “Fine.”

  So she really was there. We walk along in silence for a minute or so.

  “How’s your nana?”

  “In the hospice.”

  “I see.”

  “She knows Moses,” I tell Pat Print.

  “Who does?”

  “Nana. We saw you walking him. We could see you from her room in the hospice. She thinks Piper and Moses know each other.”

  “Now I think of it, I’ve heard Tilly talk about a Piper. Tilly walks Moses on weekdays mostly. I just don’t have the time. Strange I’ve never bumped into your nana on one of my Suffolk jaunts though…So she’s in the Marie Curie. That’s just behind my flat. She’ll be well looked after there,” she says, touching me on the shoulder in her awkward, trying-to-be-comforting way.

  “Millie can’t come today. She’s got new braces and her teeth are aching,” I explain, changing the subject.

  “Ouch! Poor Millie, but I don’t see why everyone’s got to have such perfect teeth these days. It’s all part of this gruesome path we’re all supposed to follow to physical perfection.”

  Pat Print and my dad have this much in common.

  “Well, you’ll have to fill her in. And then there were…three,” Pat counts, walking into the classroom where Jidé and Ben are sprawled out over their desks as if they would rather be in bed. Ben’s wearing his baseball cap today.

  “Great cap,” says Pat Print, pulling the brim down over Ben’s eyes and making him squirm.

  She takes off her coat. It’s one of those green wax things Nana wears in Suffolk—you hardly ever see anyone wearing one in London.

  “Where’s Moses?” asks Ben.

  “I got the impression dogs aren’t allowed in school. So I’ve left him at home today.”

  “Ohhh!” groans Ben.

  “Have you got any pets?” asks Pat.

  “Mum won’t let me. She thinks they’re filthy.”

  “She’s got a point!”

  Before I can think of what’s happening I hear Nana’s words escape from my mouth, “With love comes cack.”

  Now Pat Print, Jidé, and Ben are all rolling around in hysterics. Pat finally calms down enough to ask, “Who says that?”

  “Nana Josie.”

  I can’t believe I let that out.

  “I’m tempted to steal that for the title of my next book!”

  Pat Print can see that I’ve blushed up bright red, so she tries to change the subject. “Now…what have you got for me, Jidé?”

  I want to talk to Jidé, I want to ask him so many questions about Rwanda, but if I ever did, he would know I’d been spying on him and what would he think of me for wanting to know?

  “I’ve written the beginning of my book,” he says.

  “Is that all?” laughs Pat, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s have it then.”

  Jidé starts to read:

  He could imagine the heat and the red-brown soil, but he could not remember it. When he looked in the mirror he could imagine what his mother and his father looked like.

  He often wondered whose eyes he had, whose nose, whose mouth, whose skin, whose voice his sounded like, but he knew that there was no way he was ever going to find out.

  He didn’t want people to feel sorry for him, because he was one of the lucky ones. You hadn’t watched his body on the nine o’clock news floating down the river of corpses. If you had known them, you might have caught sight of his parents though. But would you have recognized them as human beings, or just a mass of disconnected limbs? If your past is hell—where only by an act of good luck…God…whatever you believe in…only you’d survived—why would you look back? You can have too much history when you’re only twelve years old.

  That’s why he always looked tough, joked about, or played the fool, because although he didn’t know the “derivation” of his name, at least he was alive.

  Pat Print takes off her glasses and wipes her eyes. She’s not a crier like my mum, but when Jidé has finished, she stays quiet, looking straight at him and nodding her head as if to say “that’s right.” Her silence is full of respect. You don’t often get that feeling between teachers and students.

  My eyes are also brimming over with tears. I stare at the ground so that nobody notices, but I feel Jidé glance my way and I want him to know that I care, so I force myself to look up into his eyes. We hold each other there for what seems like forever until he nods, releasing me from the spell of his gaze.

  “Jidé, it wouldn’t surprise me if I were to read that opening in a prize-winning novel. You should write on,” she says, smiling at him.

  Then she turns to Ben and me.

  “I would like you both to pick a line or an idea from Jidé’s writing that stood out for you…Ben?”

  “I like the last line, where he explains why he’s a joker. Before today I didn’t think there was much behind that.”

  Jidé shrugs.

  “There’s always something behind a character. Reasons people behave the way they do,” says Pat. “How about you, Mira?”

  I can feel Jidé’s eyes on me, waiting for me to speak.

  “The line about ‘You can have too much history when you’re only twelve years old’…because it made me think…it made me feel…that you don’t really know anything about anyone. I thought Jidé was born here, I didn’t know anything about Rwanda, or about him, until this writing group. You think you kno
w the people in your class, where they come from, but you just don’t. It’s the same with Nana; I thought I knew her, but I only know a tiny bit of her.”

  “Maybe you’re not supposed to know,” says Jidé, with his eyes fixed on me.

  “If you don’t know, how do you ever really get to understand another person?” asks Pat.

  “Maybe you only see the sides of them they want you to see,” answers Ben, patting Jidé on the back.

  “That’s an astute observation. Have you written anything for me this week, Ben?” asks Pat.

  “Not much,” Ben mumbles. “Nothing serious, like Jidé’s, just something about skateboarding. It’s more of a poem really…or song lyrics.”

  “Let’s have it then.”

  Ben fixes up his baseball cap and begins, quietly for him, as though he’s embarrassed by his own writing.

  On Saturdays I go up the Palace with my skateboard, meet my mates.

  On Saturdays I wear my skate gear, like my mates.

  No helmets,

  caps turned back to front.

  No knee pads, bloody scabs instead.

  We watch the graffiti artist “O” spray his purple tag on

  the wall where you’re allowed

  And the wall where you’re not,

  Then we go flying, zipping, twisting mid air.

  On Saturdays I go flying

  on my skateboard

  with my mates.

  Pat Print claps. “Excellent, Ben Gbemi with a silent G. You’re a performance poet.”

  Ben hides his grin under the low brim of his baseball cap.

  “Now, Mira, what have you got for me?”

  “Some more of my diary, if you want.”

  “I most certainly do want,” Pat Print smiles.

  I flick through, trying to find something I want to read. I don’t feel like reading about Nana or the hospice, so I pick out yesterday in the classroom. Just the thought of it makes me feel stronger.