Mira in the Present Tense

by Sita Brahmachari

  “Take the easel, Mira.”

  I hear Nana’s voice order me, as clearly as if she was standing right next to me in this room. I fold down the legs and drag it toward the car. Dad sees me struggling and takes one end and we carry it to the car together. Nana’s easel is surprisingly heavy.

  As soon as we arrive at the hospice, Krish runs up to Nana to show her Granddad Kit’s things. He’s happy again, full of energy, but when he approaches Nana’s bed he sees how weak she’s become. Dr. Clem keeps trying to get the right combination of drugs for her so she won’t feel any pain. He has to keep changing her painkillers because the cancer pain is changing too…getting stronger.

  You can tell when Nana has been in pain because her skin goes gray and her eyes sink into her. If she’s had a bad night, she can hardly lift herself up off her pillows, but when she sees Krish, so enthusiastic, she tries really hard to look lively. Krish shows her the beret and the photos and the box and Nana puts on her glasses to read some of the letters from Granddad Kit.

  “I’d forgotten about these love letters from your dad.” She looks up at my dad and smiles. I think of Jidé’s secret note to me. I think it probably is my first-ever love letter.

  For a moment Nana is lost in the photographs of her and Granddad Kit, black-and-white photographs taken on the Embankment with Toro, their bulldog.

  “Look how young we were,” Nana whispers.

  “You look like models out of a retro photo shoot. Errol Flynn and Audrey Hepburn!” Dad says.

  Nana sighs as if to say, “Where has the time gone?”

  “Can I have Granddad’s beret then?” asks Krish.

  “Of course you can,” she says, but I can tell she thinks Krish has made a strange choice. I understand him though. It fills a gap in the jigsaw and there’s nothing Krish hates more than losing a piece of a jigsaw. He inspects the beret with all the medals on it and touches the textures on each one, as if trying to take hold of Granddad Kit.

  “It’s because I know you, Nana. I don’t really need anything of yours, unless you want to give me something…but I never knew Granddad Kit or anything about you two together, when you were young.”

  I think of Jidé…all he has of his sister and his mum and dad is a bit of cloth.

  Nana holds Krish’s hand for a minute and he looks at her with his bright blue eyes.

  “Oh, and I forgot.” Krish lifts up Nana’s painting for her to see. “I found something that both of you are in. You painted it and Granddad Kit’s in it. Can I have it, Nana?”

  “Yes, that one worked out well.” Her laugh trails away into a distant memory that belongs only to her. “It made Kit laugh too.”

  For a while Nana seems to be lost in the past, until her eyes come to focus on Mum feeding Laila, whose little body relaxes as her hand falls, slow motion, through the air. She’s still a bit weak after her illness. Nana picks up her thin wrist.

  “Shame she’s losing her fat bracelets. What did you choose for Laila?” Nana asks us.

  Krish shows Nana the silver rattle on a blue ribbon.

  “Apparently, that was my first rattle. Good choice, Krish.”

  Nana tries to rattle it, but she doesn’t even have the energy to make the little bells ring.

  Laila has fallen fast asleep. Mum lifts her gently and lays her on the bed next to Nana. Nana’s so small now, there is plenty of room. She puts her arm round Laila and sighs as if she’s the happiest person in the world. Mum sits close to the bed in case Laila rolls over, because if she needed to, Nana would not be strong enough to pick her up by herself. Somehow Laila looks bigger than Nana; even after her illness she looks plumper…more alive.

  My dad’s Uncle James and Aunty Ella arrive. Krish and me call her “Aunty Elegant,” because she is. Ella delicately picks up Laila’s rattle.

  “What an exquisite old rattle,” she says, inspecting it.

  “That was mine, Ella,” Uncle James tells her. “Mine had a blue ribbon and Josie’s had a pink one, but I won’t fight you for it, Josie!”

  “I should think not, James,” Aunty Ella laughs.

  The phone next to Nana’s bed rings. Dad picks it up.

  “Dan…?” He doesn’t know who it is. “Ah! Yes, Dan…from Suffolk…Yes, yes, Dan…of course I do.”

  Now he knows who it is.

  “Can you talk to him?” whispers Dad to Nana, so as not to offend Dan if she doesn’t want to speak. She hardly wants to talk to anyone these days.

  Nana nods.

  “I’m putting Josie on the phone for you. She might not be able to speak for very long, but she’s listening.”

  Dad holds the phone up to Nana’s ear. I’m sitting right next to her so I can hear exactly what Dan’s saying.

  “Josie, I’m calling you from your cottage. I’ve been sitting in your garden all morning watching the flycatchers. You’ve got three chicks. They’ve come back to the same old pot, mouths open. Mum and Dad are in and out, feeding them all day long. I wish you could see them.”

  Nana’s eyes have welled up. She can’t speak, but she passes the phone back to Dad and makes the shape of “thank you” with her lips. Aunty Ella and Uncle James look worried, so I tell them the news from Nana’s garden.

  “The flycatchers have arrived.”

  You wouldn’t think something like birds nesting could make you feel so happy and heartbroken at the same time, but it does. Dad speaks to Dan for a bit longer, thanks him for calling, and hangs up.

  Nana closes her eyes. These days, that’s the signal for us to leave. We all file past, kissing her. She doesn’t open her eyes. I am the last to say good-bye.

  “Did you take the easel?” Nana whispers through her tears.

  I nod.

  As we walk out into the corridor, we pass Question Mark. I stand in the doorway for a moment, watching him walk across the ward to Nana’s bed. He pulls up the comfy chair, sits beside her, and holds her hand.

  Question Mark feels me watching him and smiles up at me, a distant smile. Suddenly, I’m the stranger intruding on Nana and Question Mark…the stranger standing on the outside of their dying world.

  When I get home, I run up to my room and call Jidé and we talk and talk and talk…

  Sunday, 22 May

  The smoke alarm squealing, Mum wafting her tea towel around like a lunatic, Laila spitting out great gobs of baby porridge, and Krish dribbling his football around the table…Just for a moment it almost feels like everything is back to normal, just an ordinary Sunday.

  “How’s it all going now at school?” Dad asks, trying to sound like it’s just an off-the-cuff sort of question.

  “Yeah, all right. I like the writing group we’re doing.”

  “What are you writing about?”

  I’m not going to say Nana because somehow I think that would worry him.

  “Next week we’ve got to take in an object or something and we have to write about the object as if it’s got a personality.”

  “Ah, yes…personification, I remember it well.”

  “Pat Print called it something else. I can’t remember what…something about fallacy.”

  “I know what I’d take in, this blasted alarm!” shouts Mum as she stands on a chair and nearly topples off, reaching up for the red button of the smoke alarm and finally silencing it.

  “Language, Uma!” grins Dad.

  “I thought I’d take in Nana’s charm.”

  “Good idea. Go and get it then, and I’ll fix it on for you,” says Dad cheerily as I collide with Krish and his football in the doorway.

  “Do you have to be so annoying?”

  “Where else am I supposed to play?” he huffs.

  “I’ll take you out later for a kick around,” offers Dad.

  “Yes!” shouts Krish, punching the air and shooting me that look as if he’s got one over on me.

  “As if I care,” I mumble.

  I run upstairs to my room, and there’s the bracelet still sitting in the orange tissue paper on my
old-fashioned school desk that Nana gave me…but the charm…I’m sure I put it safely in the ink well. Maybe it’s rolled off. So I scramble down underneath, flattening my body against the floor to get a better look, but it’s too gloomy to see properly. I feel every inch of the carpet near my desk, but it’s not there. I’m starting to get hot and sweaty and I have an empty, sick feeling in my belly. I cast around the room for a glimpse of it, looking in the same places over and over again, but they are always empty.

  “Come on, Mira!” shouts Dad from downstairs.

  How can I tell Dad that I’ve lost Nana’s charm?

  “Let’s do it later,” I say, hanging on the banisters.

  “Why not now?”

  “Because…I can’t find it,” I whisper.

  We search all day, everywhere. Mum even empties the vacuum cleaner bag in case it’s been hoovered up.

  “Dad! You promised you’d have a kick around with me,” moans Krish.

  “All right, all right…I’d better go.” Dad sighs. “You just keep looking, Mira. It’s bound to be around here somewhere.”

  By the time Krish and Dad come back we’ve given up hope. Dad keeps saying, “It’ll turn up,” but by the end of the day, it seems like it’s not going to.

  “Maybe Laila’s eaten it,” suggests Krish, which is not as funny as you would think, because in the past she’s had to be taken to the emergency room for eating money, beads, and buttons and sticking sweet corn in her ears and peas up her nose—not all at the same time of course. Anyway, the thought of anything else happening to Laila is too horrible. When she hears her name, Laila crawls over to Krish and clambers up his leg.

  “Have you swallowed the charm, Lai Lai?” Krish sings in his squeaky baby play voice.

  “Kish Kish,” Laila chants as Krish picks her up and cuddles her.

  “That’s all we need! I’ll check her nappies,” offers Mum.

  “Gross!” groans Krish.

  Before I get into bed, I hunt through the whole of my bedroom for Nana’s charm, opening every box, bag, and drawer. I think it’s lost.

  Monday, 23 May

  Nana says, if you think about it, dying is just like a battery running out. Your heart stops beating and then you die. For some reason I can’t stop thinking about my furry dog I gave to Laila that used to yap and walk and do a somersault, but we never replaced the batteries because it was actually quite annoying, so now it just sits there on the shelf. I tell Nana about the dog and she laughs and says, “Yes, something like that,” but then, when I think about it, it’s not at all like that, because we could put batteries in it if we wanted to, and make it bark and do somersaults, and you can’t do that with a person; you can’t just make them come back to life. I tell Nana that I think she’s wrong. Dying is nothing like a battery running out. She laughs and hugs me to her.

  “So young and so opinionated, Mira.”

  Nana holds my wrist, feeling for the charm.

  “Still no charm, Mira. Don’t you like it?”

  “I love it, Nana. Dad just hasn’t had the time to fix it on,” I lie, praying to Notsurewho Notsurewhat that she doesn’t ask him.

  “You know, I was thinking about those protective layers I was telling you about. I don’t need them anymore. I’ve shed them, all of them…All these people I love have come to see me and I’ve made my peace. Maybe that’s the journey…getting back to that state of love.”

  I flick through a catalog from the William Blake exhibition we went to together. It’s full of paintings and drawings of angels and people dying.

  “Can I borrow this for religious ed?”

  She just waves her hand as if to say, “Take it. It’s no use to me anymore.”

  Then she closes her eyes and drifts. That’s what Nana calls it now, not sleeping, “drifting.” Sometimes, I get the feeling that it’s all the same to Nana now…the drifting and the talking to whoever’s visiting. It’s as if she’s in a dream, moving farther and farther away from us. I get up to go, but Nana shocks me by grabbing hold of my wrist with a strength I didn’t know she still had.

  “Wear the charm, Mira,” she whispers.

  When I get home I hunt all over the house for the charm. I even get a flashlight to shine under the furniture, but it’s no good. I slump down on my bed and pick up my mobile to call Jidé but then change my mind, flipping the lid closed again. What would I tell him—that I’m so upset because I’ve lost Nana’s charm?

  Question Mark is leaning over Nana’s bed, holding her hand. He takes off his white coat and underneath there is one huge, white, feathery wing. He holds it tight and rips it off his back, hard and quick, like you pull off a bandage, because otherwise it hurts more. There is a loud cracking noise, like a bone breaking. His whole face is full of pain. Then he hands his wing to Nana and she smiles at him.

  Tuesday, 24 May

  School is getting in the way of me and Jidé. We can’t find any time just to be alone together, without all the rest of them gawping at us. At the end of school he runs after me, slipping his hand into mine, and we stroll along the walkway together.

  “Do you want to come back to mine?”

  “I’d love to, but I’ve got to see Nana.” I smile at him.

  “Sorry I haven’t called you…I just can’t seem to think of what to say to you now, on the phone.”

  “Nor me!”

  “If we could find somewhere on our own, I could show you how I feel,” he says, winking at me.

  I giggle and elbow him in the side.

  “That hurt!” He doubles over in mock pain, looking up at me pleadingly.

  “Get up, Jidé!” I laugh.

  “All right! I’ll walk you back home,” he says as if accepting defeat, taking my hand in his as a consolation prize.

  When we get level with my door, he makes his move to kiss me, but just as our lips are about to touch I catch sight of Mum in our front window. She smiles and moves away.

  I am crimson red when I get in, so I run straight up to my room.

  “Get ready to go and see Nana,” Mum calls up the stairs.

  As soon as I see Nana, I show her the sketch I’ve drawn of my dream of Question Mark Angel.

  “Do you believe in angels, Nana?”

  “Guardian angels maybe…people who look out for us, but if you really believe in angels, then you have to believe in devils. I’ve never really gone in for all that…but I think maybe there is something otherworldly about Mark.”

  Her voice is so weak and cracked now you can only just make out the words.

  She points for me to pin my drawing on the wall right above her bed.

  Later, when Question Mark comes to sit with Nana, she points to my sketch of him. He looks up and studies it. When he peers back down at me, I have the strangest feeling that he’s looking down from a very high mountain.

  “Do you think there are angels?” he asks.

  I shrug.

  “What do you think?” I ask him.

  “I don’t have any answers, I’m afraid,” he sighs.

  Krish is driving me crazy. He has snuck into my bed, and now he’s insisting on keeping the light on because he says he’s got to finish his Aboriginal drawing tonight.

  “Why can’t you do it in your own room?”

  “I don’t want to be on my own,” he shrugs, trying not to make a big deal of it. Sometimes I forget that Krish is younger than me. Suddenly, it feels like there’s much more of a gap between us than two years.

  I must have fallen asleep at some point during the night, but when I wake up the light is still on and Krish is still working on his picture. Dark rings circle his eyes. I peer over the duvet. It’s amazing what he’s done. Billions and billions of tiny pinhead-sized dots, starting with dark colors on the outside and getting brighter, spiraling into the middle. The dots in the center are oranges, yellows, and reds like fire, or the sun. When you look at Krish’s picture, it feels as if all the energy he’s put into it is leaping off the page at you, like swirling
sparklers in the dark on bonfire night. It makes you breathless. I tell Krish that I think it’s the best thing he’s ever done. I ask him if he didn’t get bored doing all those millions of dots, but he just shakes his head. I ask him if he was thinking about Nana when he was drawing it, but he says no; he wasn’t thinking of anything at all except the colors.

  Wednesdsay, 25 May

  “No sign of the charm?” asks Dad at breakfast.

  I shake my head.

  “Best not to bother Nana about it then,” says Dad, wrapping his arms round my shoulders and pulling me toward him. “It’s a bit of a mystery that, but it’ll turn up…when you’re not looking for it anymore probably.”

  “I’ll always be looking for it,” I say.

  “I lost Nana’s heart,” I whisper to Millie as Pat Print reads out an example of…that was it…the pathetic fallacy. Millie shoots me her “What are you talking about?” look.

  “Millie, tell everyone your Lockhart story,” shouts Ben, who’s wearing his baseball cap back to front today.

  So Millie reads it out.

  “I really wanna read that book,” Ben booms.

  “There you are, Millie. You can’t get a better endorsement than that,” beams Pat.

  “The problem is I still don’t know what happens next,” sighs Millie.

  “You know that expression ‘She’s lost the plot,’ well, that’s just it. In real life most of us haven’t got much of a clue what the plot of our life is. We might think we have, then something random comes at you and suddenly you’re in another plotline…That’s one of the joys of writing—you have a bit more control to pull the plot out of your imagination.”