“Oh, for God’s sake,” shouts Dad, dusting off his suit, “there’s glitter everywhere.”
I laugh. By the time we’ve had breakfast we’re all covered in glitter…it feels like Nana’s joke. She wrote a note in the hospice to say that nobody is allowed to wear black for her funeral so I suppose it is right that I’m wearing my butterfly skirt, all pinks and greens and sequins…Nana’s birthday present to me. I’m beginning to think of this as my period skirt. After today, I will never wear it again.
Krish is wearing his new blue linen suit with an Indian collar, the one Aunty Abi and Aunty Mel bought him before he ran away. If my brother wears blue, his eyes sparkle. He keeps fiddling with his tie, like it’s strangling him. I think he feels about as comfortable in his suit as I do in my skirt.
Me and Krish have been given “roles” for the funeral. I’m going to read a poem from a book Nana gave me, and Krish is handing out our glittery programs with a biography of Nana’s life in it.
Nana’s body is being cremated at Golders Hill Crematorium. Dad says it’s the same place where Granddad Kit was cremated. Granddad Bimal says he wouldn’t mind ending up there too when his time comes, because he would like to follow in the footsteps of the maharajas, whose names line the walls.
“If it’s good enough for them, it will be good enough for me!”
Getting cremated means your body gets burned and what’s left is just ashes, but you get the ashes back. I remember Nana laughing when she told us that she wanted her ashes sprinkled in her garden in Suffolk because they would “improve the soil.” I think the ashes are just for the living people because it’s so hard to think that there is nothing left of the actual person’s body, and so people just want something to hold on to…and ashes are better than nothing.
We are all standing outside the chapel. Quite a lot of people I have never seen before are meeting each other and hugging.
Dad can’t speak to anyone. He’s trying to “hold it together.” He keeps looking at his watch…waiting for the funeral car to arrive.
The car is white. Just an ordinary car, one of those long station wagons. In the back is the coffin, which my dad, a friend of my dad’s, Uncle James, and Dunwich Dan are going to carry. Dan volunteered; he said it would be “an honor” to carry Nana’s coffin. It slides on wheels out of the trunk, and then they have to lift it up onto their shoulders. I think of Dad and Moses struggling to carry the plain white box out of the rusty blue Volvo. Today, these four men lift it up smoothly, counting one, two, three, and all lifting at exactly the same time. It matters that it’s done gracefully.
Even though the coffin is light and Nana was so tiny when she died, it’s quite hard for them to lift it up onto their shoulders. A blue silky cloth covers the coffin, but it slides off as it’s lifted. I hear a gasp. That’s when the painting is unveiled. Everyone stands in a circle, huddled close to get a better look, voices hush to silence and the circle starts to turn as people wheel round the coffin.
I feel so sorry for my dad, because he’s carrying his mum’s body in a coffin on his shoulders.
A noise comes out of me. It comes up through the earth, into my body, and out through my mouth. It’s a very old noise that somehow you recognize, even though you’ve never heard it before. It’s the same noise that came out of my dad, the day Nana died. Then I finally realize what it is, that noise. It’s the sound of a heart breaking.
The coffin bearers walk slowly into the chapel and everyone else follows behind. When the coffin is placed on the table, Jay, my nana’s friend, the cook and the artist, settles a white dove she has made out of pottery on the top of a nest of wild flowers. Nana’s coffin looks like a Matisse painting. On its corner I spot my tiny dog peeing into the sea. It’s as if Nana’s winking at me.
Aunty Abi walks behind the coffin, holding Nana’s Funeral Pyre painting, which she places on a table at the front of the chapel that’s something like a church altar. In front of the painting is Nana’s sandalwood Buddha candle. Abi lights it. For a moment I feel like rushing up to her and blowing the candle out to stop it from melting away.
“I’m not having my coffin disappearing on a cruddy old conveyor belt…that’s always such an indignity…let people file past me, but light my Buddha candle, and let it melt to nothing.” Those were Nana’s instructions.
The smell of sandalwood fills the air. Its perfume changes everything. Now the chapel feels more like a temple sealed off from the outside world.
I look at the Funeral Pyre painting Nana did when she went off to Thailand after she found out that the cancer had come back. Two girls stand in the foreground with their backs to us, their long black plaits snaking down their backs. They have their arms wrapped around each other, standing close to the bright red and orange flames where someone they loved is being cremated. A little bit farther away is a crowd: old people, children, and babies sitting on the floor. They are also looking toward the fire. The people facing us do not look sad, they look more—well—interested really. This is the brightest painting of clashing colors I have ever seen Nana paint. You can feel the heat of the flames. There is nothing private about this way of dying. Not like it is here in this chapel.
The celebrant lady speaks too slowly, even though, when we met her, she kept saying that “on the day” we’ve got to make sure we don’t take too long when we speak!
She says some things about Nana, I don’t remember what. I think Humanist people believe in humans and not God but I don’t think they believe in the spirit like Nana did. Piper’s yapping is putting her off a bit, because she keeps shooting Aunty Abi and Aunty Mel not very kind looks as if to say, “Can’t somebody shut that dog up!”
Then all the family stand up together and say something about Nana. It’s all the things we worked out beforehand so we know exactly what we’re going to say and which order to say it in. I only hear a few things that other people say, because my mind empties. The sun comes streaming through the window at the back of the chapel, casting everyone in a pool of bright colors and lighting up the modern stained-glass angel. All I can see is the glitter sparkling off people’s clothes, hair, and faces, and casting the chapel in a silver glow.
Uncle James says even as a child, Nana was a rebel…she used to sneak out of her bedroom window to go dancing when she was only fourteen years old. Mum talks about what a wonderful grandmother Nana was to me and Krish and how happy she was to be around for long enough to meet baby Laila. Dad tells everyone that Nana was a fierce campaigner, always writing letters…he says at her height she was writing a letter a week to Margaret Thatcher. Dad thinks somebody should probably write to Margaret Thatcher and tell her that she has lost an old foe.
It’s my turn. I look at all the faces in front of me. I see Granddad Bimal and Nana Kath and that makes me feel better. Mum wraps her arms round me and gives me a little squeeze, but I can’t speak. I shake my head. Celebrant Lady was right…I can’t do it; the words are all swallowed up by my tears. My head is spinning. Celebrant Lady is shuffling her papers, getting ready to read out my poem. There are so many people at Nana’s funeral that there are two or three rows of people standing up at the back. Then I see them, Jidé Jackson and, standing right next to him, holding his hand, is the little girl I saw in my dream…Jidé’s sister, and next to her is Pat Print. They smile at me, the same encouraging smile…and suddenly the words are in my mouth and I don’t even recognize the way I sound. That high-pitched squeak, like a violin grating on the wrong note, has gone. My voice is soft and strong…
I am about to start the poem I picked to read out, but somehow that’s not what I want to say anymore. Suddenly I hear Nana’s voice in my head…“Tell them some of my anecdotes,” she orders me.
“Nana used to tell me funny things…that I loved. If I got too serious, she would tell me to stand on my head because the world looks funnier upside down…She said it’s better to have a motor home than a mansion, because you can always change the view with a motor home…”
>
I hear Pat Print’s hearty laugh coming from the back of the chapel and I look up at her and smile.
The celebrant lady is staring at me as if I’ve gone crazy. This is not in her plan, but Pat Print has sent a ripple of laughter through the chapel.
Nana’s silver charm glints on my wrist, willing me on.
“She gave me this tiny charm for my birthday. It’s in the shape of an artichoke. Most of you have probably seen her wearing it. When she gave it to me, she told me all about it. I didn’t really understand then, but now I think I do. She told me that when we are children our hearts are tender, like the heart of the artichoke, and that’s the precious bit. But then the things that happen to us, the difficult things, they make us grow tougher and tougher layers to protect ourselves from getting hurt. But those layers also stop us from feeling so much. A few days before she died, she told me that she had shed all the layers she’d built up in her life, she had no fear and she just felt love for everyone around her…all her friends and family…everyone here.”
Jidé Jackson nods at me solemnly.
There is a lot of crying going on now. I suppose it must be the point of funerals really, to cry and laugh together. When Nana was dying, I learned more about her life than I ever knew before, but when I look around this room at all these strangers…I know that I will never piece it all together, her life, because only the pieces I have belong to me. Now Nana’s Italian song starts to play, the one we listened to together when we painted her coffin.
On their way out of the chapel, people walk past the coffin, Nana’s Funeral Pyre painting, and the melting Buddha. Aunty Abi has placed a bowl of ruby-red rose petals at the end of the coffin so that people can scatter them as they pass.
“She was a wonderful woman,” the man standing next to me says as he walks around the coffin, inspecting it from all sides, and smiling as he catches sight of Piper peeing into the sea. “Such a sense of fun.” It takes me a while to recognize him in his smart gray suit. It’s Dusty Bird from the art shop. Then he sees the little blue handprints on the side of the coffin. “I suppose that’s her signature.”
“One’s hers and one’s mine,” I tell him.
He peers closer at the two identical-sized handprints with different lines, and nods.
“What’s the color?” he asks, smiling at me.
“Ultramarine Blue Light,” I answer.
“I’ll be seeing you in the shop,” he laughs, taking a handful of rose petals and scattering them over Nana’s coffin.
When I walk out of the chapel, the first person I see is Pat Print.
“I warned you about that voice!” she smiles, resting her hand on my shoulder.
I look up at her questioningly. Is she really here?
“I heard your nana on the radio…as soon as I heard her, I knew it must be her. I popped into the hospice and they told me the funeral was today.”
“Thank you…I mean…for everything.”
Sometimes words are just not enough, are they? To say the things we want to say…
“Now, I must get on, there’s someone else here, keen to talk to you.”
And before I can think of what else to say to her she’s disappeared through the crowd. I look down at the ground; there is not a trace of mud in sight.
Jidé Jackson is walking toward me with his arms outstretched, just as he did in my dream. We hold each other, in the middle of all these people…and I don’t even care who sees, because I can feel his heart beating against mine and that is all that matters.
Jidé takes my hand and we walk into the sunshine to look at the flowers that are placed by Nana’s name.
“A lot of people loved your nana,” Jidé says.
I don’t say anything, but he can obviously read the question on my face…“Why are you here?”
Jidé points to Grace and Jai, who are sitting away from everyone else in the rose garden as if they don’t want to intrude.
“I told them about your nana dying…that you called me. We listened to her on the radio, like you said…and I was upset for you when I heard her voice, and I told Grace I didn’t know what to say to you or how to help. I couldn’t even phone you. Then I think she called your mum and she asked me if I wanted to come…and…I’ve never been to a funeral before…I hope you don’t mind?”
How can I tell him how much I love him for being here?
Jidé’s mum and dad sit with their arms round each other, looking toward us. They both seem so quiet and sad.
“So many people in Rwanda with no funeral at all,” sighs Jidé.
Now I know why she came here…Jidé’s sister. To say good-bye. I think about telling him that I saw her standing right next to him…how she sang to me in my dream…but then I hear her softly sighing shhhhhh…
Dad’s standing next to us. I can tell he’s waiting to be introduced. Mum looks over too and smiles. I think Dad’s trying to listen in on our conversation. It’s so annoying, because I can feel myself blushing for the first time today.
“This is Jidé, my friend from school, Dad.”
Dad shakes Jidé’s hand, looking him squarely in the eyes.
“It’s kind of you to come along.” Dad smiles…a sparkly smile…he’s got glitter on his teeth!
Jidé shifts from one foot to the other. I’ve never seen him looking nervous before.
“I’m sorry about your mum,” mumbles Jidé, wrinkling a deep frown into his forehead.
Dad just peers from Jidé to me with a question in his eyes, but before he can say anything else someone is leading him away.
People stand around and talk. Actually people don’t talk a lot, they just sort of huddle together like cows in the rain. Jidé is humming to himself…a nervous hum. I’m not sure he even realizes he’s doing it.
“Is that your sister’s song?” I whisper.
Jidé nods at me. He looks as if I’ve jolted him out of another world.
I watch Jidé, Grace, and Jai walk off toward the Tube.
Jai has his arm round Jidé’s shoulders. Now I know why he said he was lucky…to have a family like that. Pat Print’s right, Jidé Jackson has courage, so do Grace and Jai…and Jidé’s sister.
All the people from Nana’s funeral start to get into their cars, all except Protest Simon, who is busy refusing rides. People don’t seem to understand that Simon not only doesn’t have a car but also refuses ever to get into one.
“I’m walking,” says Simon. “I’ll be there in half an hour…If the traffic’s bad, I’ll probably get there before you!”
As he predicted, Simon is one of the first back, but eventually Nana’s flat does start to fill up with people. The table is covered in salads, bread, and cheese. Nana’s friends have all brought a dish. A lady with long gray plaits and sparkly eyes wraps her huge arms around me and my brother. Krish squirms out of her grasp as she tries to gather us into the folds of her flowery purple dress that brushes the floor. It’s called a kaftan. Nana had a few of those, but when she wore them she looked like a little girl in a nightgown. This lady looks as if she’s wearing curtains.
At first, people’s voices are quiet, almost whispers, but then they start to get louder and some people smile and laugh. I go out to the pond to look for frogs. Simon is sitting there like a garden elf with Piper lying quietly by his side. Simon points to a frog’s eyes peeping out of the water. We watch it, all three of us, and it watches us. We do not move an inch. Then suddenly it leaps and splashes gloop at us, sending Piper into a frenzy of yapping.
After everybody has gone there is a lot of clearing up to do. I curl up on the garden bench next to the pond, where I used to sit with Nana. Out of the corner of my eye I see the frog make a dash back into the water. I get the feeling that it’s been watching us all this time. I think of all the fairy stories Nana loved to tell me, about frogs turning into princes, about princesses sleeping the sleep of the dead but, right at the last moment, being magically woken by a prince’s kiss…all those happy endings.
/> I watch Dad’s sad shoulders as he locks the wooden gate onto our secret garden…and a time when I still believed in fairy stories.
Sunday, 5 June
Today, I don’t feel like me anymore. It’s like my whole life, up to now, I was someone else. I look at this me in the mirror, trying to see who she is. I brush her hair and wash her face where a rash of spots coats her once-smooth forehead. I choose some clothes for her to wear. Everyone will just have to get used to the idea…this girl in the mirror is me.
Mum comes in and puts her arm around me and we sit together looking at our reflections. I try to fix this in my mind, the way my mum’s head leans in close to mine, the place where her hand rests on my arm, the slight curl up to nearly a smile on the corner of her lips. The way that she is like me, skin color, same hair, same little nose, same round face, same look in her eyes…and the ways that she is not.
She walks over to the easel and picks up my painting and studies it for a long time.
“That one’s for you, Mum,” I tell her.
“You’ve had your ears pierced already,” smiles Mum, looking back at me.
“Can I?” I ask, getting ready to explain the whole period thing to her.
“Yes, I promised, didn’t I?”
No questions, nothing.
“What a mess!”
Mum scurries around my bedroom, tidying, folding, and picking up the clothes I have scattered all over the floor. Usually she’d tut and tell me off, but today she just starts sorting through, occasionally asking me if I’ve worn this or that.
She opens my wardrobe and sighs as the pile of clothes I have flung in there in one of my tidying-up sessions avalanches toward her. I pass her the clothes and she places them on hangers in my wardrobe. I wonder how it is that Mum doing something so normal, like picking up clothes and folding them and just not saying anything at all about my periods starting or Jidé Jackson, can make me love her so much.
Mira in the Present Tense Page 21