Tender Earth

by Sita Brahmachari

  I nod a bit too enthusiastically, which makes Mum laugh.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Kez to come over and help you plan out your new room?’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you, she’s not coming over any more?’

  Mum looks a bit taken aback.

  ‘Sorry, Laila. Yes! I forgot. Dad told me it was a bit awkward when she was over the last time.’

  ‘Just a bit!’

  ‘When did you last see her? Have you been over—’

  The home line rings. There are only a few people who call on it now that Dad’s had this code put on to stop the marketing calls. Mum says we only really keep it for Nana Kath, because she never thinks it’s a proper call unless it’s on the landline.

  ‘Sorry, Laila. I’d better get that,’ Mum says as she runs down the stairs.

  I sit on my perch and listen to Mum chatting away to Mira – I can’t believe she’s calling her from the car – she isn’t even at college yet! Afterwards she speaks to Krish, and it’s hard to describe how I feel, like nothing’s left here for me.

  I’m sitting on something, so I shift over. I’d forgotten about the letter. I read the envelope. The writing’s sort of shaky, as if the person was finding it difficult to keep their hand steady.

  On the back is written something that makes me think that whoever this is from hasn’t met up with anyone in our family for a long time.

  If the addressee no longer lives here, please return to:

  Simon Makepeace

  The Caring Community

  22 Railway Road

  Finsbury Park

  London, N4

  I’m about to call down and tell Mum about the letter when she comes running upstairs, grabs the little wooden stool on the landing and heads into Mira’s room. I follow her through.

  ‘I thought this was supposed to be my room now. What are you doing? Mira said I could have those books.’

  Mum’s standing on the stool, reaching for something pushed to the back. She takes down two books with Mira’s drawings all over them.

  ‘What are they?’ I ask.

  Mum sort of hides them under her arm like she doesn’t want me to see.

  ‘Oh, they’re Mira’s diaries. She forgot them. She wants me to store them up in the loft.’

  I hold out my hand for Mum to pass them to me because it looks like she’s struggling to keep her balance, but she won’t hand them over.

  ‘You haven’t read them, have you?’ Mum asks, looking at me strangely.

  ‘No! Have you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Mum says.

  ‘You’re not even tempted?’ I say as she heads for the door, but she doesn’t answer me.

  Mum is right above me in the loft storage cupboard putting Mira’s diaries away. I wonder what’s in them that she so desperately doesn’t want me or anyone else to know about. I pick up the letter for Mira and turn it over. I don’t know why I feel annoyed with Mira for not wanting me to read her diaries . . . after all that is the point of diaries, to keep things to yourself. But it’s like no one in this house thinks I’m capable of understanding anything.

  ‘You all right there?’ Mum says as she comes back down to the landing. ‘What’s that?’ she asks, looking at the letter.

  I place it by my side so she can’t see.

  ‘Nothing! Just a letter Kez sent me when she was at her summer camp. It’s private!’ I can’t resist saying.

  ‘Has something happened between you two, Laila, because if it has you can always talk to me . . . ?’

  ‘No! Everything’s fine!’

  ‘OK!’ Mum says, like she doesn’t believe me but she’s decided she’s not going to push any harder for now. ‘Do you fancy giving me a hand with the shelf-mess?’

  ‘Yeah! I’ll come down in minute,’ I say.

  When Mum’s gone I slip the envelope inside the little velvet cushion cover, zip it up and hide it behind some larger cushions. No one’s going to look in here.

  As I walk down the stairs I knock into the frame of an old black-and-white photo of Nana Josie when she was young. She’s on the South Bank by the river, selling her paintings. Now I stop to look, I can see that it’s true: I really do look like her.

  ‘Why keep all this stuff anyway? I should get a giant bin bag and chuck it all out! I mean, look at all these bits of old pottery . . . a lid for something . . . and there’s half a beach worth of holey stones here. We can keep a few, but honestly . . . !’ Mum picks up a big white pebble and looks through the hole at me.

  ‘Don’t throw those out, Mum – they’re from the competition Mira and me had this summer.’

  Mum smiles and puts the pile back on the shelf. ‘Well, perhaps we can return a few next time we go!’

  Now Mum’s holding up a drawing I did in Year Six that I thought was useless, nothing like Mira could have done. I know Mum only keeps it because she’s trying to make me feel good about my art.

  ‘You can chuck that!’

  Mum sighs and shakes her head.

  ‘I should have made a scrapbook for your art . . . like I did for Mira and Krish. Maybe now I’ll get around to it. I’ve been meaning to mend this old picture frame for about five years. I suppose that says it all!’ Mum shrugs and drops the broken frame into a bin bag.

  I pick up a dusty box with a crack through the lid. I’m about to hand it to Mum when I wipe a finger over the top and it comes up shiny. It’s painted in what looks like varnish and has a delicate painting of a bonsai tree on the lid.

  ‘It’s all chipped at the edges. We’ve got to be brutal. Bin it!’ Mum says.

  ‘I like this. Can I keep it?’

  ‘It’s broken, Laila!’ Mum sighs. ‘We’re not getting very far with clearing things, are we?’

  Seems like I’m annoying her, so I throw the box in the bag – but as I do, I hear something rattle. I lift the box back out and open it.

  Inside is a black silk drawstring purse. I loosen the strings and see a silver-grey bauble the size of a giant marble, with patterns of stars, moons and suns cut into it, like a tiny little universe. At the top is a hook with a cream-coloured ring, threaded through with a faded blue ribbon.

  Mum leans in to get a closer look.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness we didn’t throw that away!’ She inspects it more closely. ‘I’d given up on ever seeing this again. It was your Nana Josie’s rattle when she was a baby. We hunted and hunted for this after she died because she wanted you to have it. Has it still got its chime?’ I rattle it and it rings. ‘That’s what I remember . . . such a sweet soothing sound.’

  ‘But I thought Nana Josie didn’t give me anything.’

  ‘You were just a baby when she died, Laila. You were her last painting.’

  ‘I know all that. But you mean she actually gave me something, just for me?’

  ‘Yes, she did. She adored you, Laila. It made that time bearable, having a baby around.’

  Mum’s inspecting a few other little boxes more closely now.

  ‘So Mira had the easel and the charm thing that she lost, Krish got Grandad Kit’s war medals and one of Nana’s paintings, and I got a baby’s rattle that’s been lost for nearly eleven years?’

  ‘Perhaps it doesn’t seem like much.’

  ‘Yes, it does seem like much. It seems like a lot actually. Only no one bothered to tell me about it. Maybe you want to throw me away too!’

  My eyes are stinging with tears of anger, but I clench my teeth together so they don’t fall and I run up the stairs to the landing with the box. I go into Mira’s room and place it on one of her bookshelves, open the box, tip the chime out of the drawstring purse and take it back to my perch. I feel like I want to keep it close while I read . . .

  I find the ruby-red velvet cushion, take out the letter that’s addressed to Mira and open it.

  Dear Mira,

  You may not remember me . . . but we met once in the hospice. I was a great friend of your Nana Josie’s and I know the two of you were very clos
e. I seem to remember Josie used to call you her ‘fellow artist’!

  Anyway, the point of writing to you is that I would like you to come and collect the Protest Book Josie made me the guardian of. Of course if you’d prefer I could send it, but it’s heavy and the post isn’t what it used to be.

  Josie gave me firm instructions that one day, when I had done with it, I should pass it on to you. I was thinking of addressing this to your parents, but then it occurred to me that you must be an adult by now, and with the world as it is, I’m thinking now’s the time to hand it over.

  I hope your family still live at the address Josie left me – if not, I suppose I’ll have to do some research and see if I can trace you online. Hopefully I won’t have to! I thought I’d try by letter first. I do like a letter. Myself and your Nana Josie have written quite a few and got a few replies too, but you can read those in the Protest Book.

  I hope to meet you again soon to hand over a very special book – it contains so many of the things Josie and I stood up for . . . about fifty years of campaigning, letter writing and protesting all in all. No wonder it’s heavy!

  Yours,

  Simon Makepeace

  I should tell Mum about this. I know I shouldn’t have opened it, but I’ve heard Mum and Dad talk about the protests Nana Josie went on. Sometimes when we sit and watch the news together and there’s a march like the one to make refugee people welcome, Mum or Dad say, ‘Josie would have been there with her banners.’ I asked Dad why we don’t do that, and he said he’d been on his fair share – but I’ve never been on one with him.

  I had no idea there was an actual book with the things Nana Josie felt so strongly about written down in it. At least Mira and Krish remember her. It doesn’t seem fair that Mira gets to go and meet Simon and have the book too. I put the letter back in the envelope and tuck it inside the cushion cover. What if I went to pick it up for Mira, just to have a read and give it to her when she comes home?

  I rattle the chime and it makes a sound like a sweet clear voice that carries on singing in my ears for ages until it gets interrupted by the home phone ringing.

  It’s Dad. I can hear Mum talking to him.

  ‘Is Krish OK? I know she’s going to spoil him rotten. You drive carefully up to Glasgow; make sure you’re not too tired. Laila’s been in a bit of a state. I’m leaving her to cool off for a bit. I know, emotions running high! It’s odd, isn’t it . . . of all the things, she decided to open that little box. No, no, I won’t, don’t worry. I’m going to go through everything with a fine-tooth comb from now on.’

  Mum comes upstairs and sits down gently next to me, like I’m bruised or something and she’s afraid to put any pressure on me in case I hurt more.

  ‘Funny how you love this little landing sofa so much. When I see you sitting up here I always wish your Nana Josie had lived long enough to get to know you.’ Mum looks up at the paintings of Mira and Krish sitting on this very same sofa.

  ‘She waited for you to arrive, you know. She loved you to bits.’

  ‘But she didn’t know me!’ I pick up the little rattle and make it ring again.

  ‘I’m so glad it hasn’t lost its chime. I know we’ve been a bit taken up with Mira and Krish leaving and you starting secondary school too –’ Mum cuddles me – ‘but you do know how much we all love you, Laila, don’t you?’

  ‘You don’t have to say it, Mum. I know.’

  ‘All right then. I’ve made the bed up for you in your new room. Why don’t you go and start getting moved in?’

  ‘I will in a bit.’

  I always thought the night before secondary would be me and Kez together, and in a way it is . . . with me going over that vile day at the beginning of the summer holidays when everything seemed to change between us. I don’t know why I keep raking over every detail. It’s not going to make a difference going back over it. No one else except me and Kez seem to understand how awful it was. I let the chime roll around my hand. Maybe if Nana Josie was alive and she’d got to see me and Kez growing up, like Bubbe has, I could have talked to her about that day. I’ve been over it so many times I’ve actually got a name for it. It feels like a lot longer than two months ago . . .

  The Day of the Unfriendship Bench

  ‘By the tree,’ I text Dad.

  He comes straight out, opens both sides of our stupidly narrow doors and joins us on the pavement.

  We start walking up the steps while Dad folds Kez’s chair and carries it up after us.

  ‘This is neat. Much easier to fold than the old one,’ Dad says as he stacks it down the side of the house.

  ‘My motorized one’s coming in the summer,’ Kez says, pausing halfway up and holding tight on to me until my arm trembles too. ‘I didn’t realize I was so tired. I’ll never make it up to your room. Let’s just stay in the kitchen today, Lai Lai.’

  She’s not making a fuss, but she’s in pain – I can tell. I can always tell.

  We’re just sitting at the table listening to a bit of music when a text pops up on Kez’s phone.

  ‘It’s Bubbe. I forgot I’ve got physio today. I’ve got to go anyway. Nature calls!’

  ‘Sorry, Kez. I wish we didn’t have so many stairs. Are you OK?’

  ‘Not great. They’re adjusting my medicines again.’

  ‘Dad! Kez has to go!’ I call upstairs.

  ‘You’ve just got here!’ Dad shouts down. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to call you right back.’ He looks a bit stressed as he runs down the stairs and opens up both sides of the front door again so we can walk out together. He’s got Kez’s wheelchair carried down, opened and ready for her before we’ve even made it to the door. ‘Come on then, girls!’

  Kez and I are on the top step when Dad runs up and scoops her off her feet like he used to do with both of us when we were little.

  I hear Jidé’s voice as he comes around the corner. He’s on the phone to Mira. When are they not!

  ‘Yeah! Right outside; I’ll be up in a minute!’

  ‘Need any help?’ Jidé asks.

  Kez blushes and holds her face away from Dad’s chest, but then he wobbles and nearly loses his balance.

  Jidé runs up the steps and holds Kez’s back to steady them both.

  ‘Thanks. I just lost my footing for a minute,’ Dad says.

  ‘Hi, Kez, how’s it going?’ Jidé asks, touching Kez on the shoulder. She flinches away from him as he climbs the steps. ‘Hi, Lai Lai!’

  I move aside to let him through.

  Kez closes her eyes like she wants everyone to disappear.

  Dad’s still out of breath as he lowers her into her seat. He wipes the sweat off his forehead as if the weather’s the reason he’s so puffed out.

  ‘There you go, Kez.’

  ‘Thank you!’ she whispers. Her head’s bowed.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Dad puffs. ‘Really is a nice bit of new kit this! So much lighter than the old one.’

  I wish he would stop going on about the chair, like it’s a new car or something.

  ‘At least the chair’s lighter,’ Kez says.

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  I glare at Dad.

  As soon as he’s out of earshot, Kez’s smile fades. We don’t talk as I follow her into the park to the nearest bench on the main path that leads to school.

  ‘Can we just talk here for a moment?’ Kez asks.

  I sit down on the bench and she looks straight into my eyes and comes out with it. ‘That’s the last time that’s happening. I’m never being carried up and down your steps again.’

  ‘I’ll tell Dad he should ask you if you want help . . . being carried.’

  ‘I never want to be carried,’ Kez snaps.

  ‘Sorry, Kez!’

  ‘It’s not your fault, but I mind, Lai Lai. I really mind now. Maybe if I was built like you I could put up with it for a bit longer, but it feels wrong, especially in front of Jidé too. I felt like an oversized kid.’

  ‘Jidé wouldn’t think
anything—’

  ‘You don’t get it! I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I’m the one who had to be carried by your dad. Maybe after they’ve tried this tendon-lengthening thing I’ll be able to get up your steps myself . . .’

  ‘But when are they doing that?’

  ‘Not sure. But in any case it might not make that much difference. We’ll just have to switch things up. You can come over to mine any time.’ Kez wriggles around a bit in her chair. ‘I really need a pee! Now I do have to go! Don’t worry about walking me back.’

  I watch Kez till she’s on the pavement. I tell myself if she looks back and waves it’ll be all right.

  But she doesn’t.

  ‘We’ll just have to switch things up.’ Kez’s voice echoes through me. It started that day – the feeling that everything was going to change. I ring Nana Josie’s chime till it starts to sing through my mind and calm me down like a lullaby.

  I wake up on my perch with my hand still clasping Nana Josie’s chime. Someone’s put a duvet over me. I must have fallen asleep so early. I tuck the chime inside the cushion cover, and as I do I feel the letter from Simon Makepeace.

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb you. You must have been exhausted. At least you’ve had a good night’s sleep.’ Mum yawns her way downstairs. ‘I can’t believe you actually slept on that!’

  ‘I did!’

  ‘It can’t be that comfortable; there’s no room to stretch out.’

  ‘I curl up anyway.’

  Mum sits down next to me and tests the springiness of the seats. There is none.

  ‘It’s got horsehair stuffing. The upholsterer asked me if I wanted it restuffed – maybe I should have . . .’

  It’s like Mum’s been hit by a thunderbolt. She suddenly grabs hold of my arm, where my eczema is definitely getting worse. It’s started itching on the other arm now, and a bit in the crease behind my knees. The thing about the scratching is that most of the time I don’t even realize I’m doing it.

  ‘It could be the sofa you’re allergic to! Make this the first and last time you spend the night here, OK?’