Tender Earth

by Sita Brahmachari

  When she reaches Bubbe, I see Kez put her hand over her mouth and look up at me in panic.

  ‘Lai Lai!’ She screams my name.

  At first I think maybe Bubbe’s fallen and hurt herself. But she’s pointing at the graves, sobbing, and then I see what they’re both looking at. On Stan’s headstone, underneath his name, someone has spray-painted a red swastika. The headstone alongside and all the others as far back as the cemetery wall have all been defaced too. Bubbe stares and stares, tears running down her cheeks, as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing. She takes a handful of earth and scatters it across the gravestone to try to cover up the ugly red stain, but the soil slides off.

  I get out my phone to call Mum. Why do they have to be so far away right now?

  ‘Don’t bother anyone.’ Bubbe straightens up and begins to walk very slowly out of the cemetery without saying a word.

  Kez looks like she’s in shock too; she’s shaking, and when I take her hand, she clasps it so tightly that it hurts.

  ‘I’ll call Mum and Dad,’ Kez says.

  ‘No! Just wait by the van,’ Bubbe orders, and walks over to the lodge to ring the bell. The security man comes out and Bubbe points to the graves in the far corner of the cemetery. The guard shakes his head, takes her arm and walks her back to the car.

  ‘Appalling! It must have happened last night. I’ll make sure it’s dealt with straight away. I think we need to build the wall higher in that corner.’

  ‘I don’t think walls are the answer,’ Bubbe mumbles.

  ‘They must have got in over the footpath. Are you sure you’re all right to drive?’ the security guard asks. Bubbe ignores the question and climbs into the front seat. She doesn’t say a word as she drives away. We keep checking on her through the mirror, expecting her to say something, but she has her eyes fixed on the road ahead. I’ve never seen that look on Bubbe’s face before. It’s like all the softness has gone out of her, as if she’s turned to stone.

  When we get in she goes straight to her room. We make her tea and knock on her door but she doesn’t answer.

  ‘I don’t care what she says. I’m calling Mum.’ Kez dials the number.

  ‘It’s Bubbe . . . Mum, you’ve got to come back home now.’ Kez tries to say what’s happened but her voice slurs and even I can’t really understand her because she’s getting so upset.

  ‘It’s all right, Kez. We’re approaching home now anyway,’ I hear Hannah say.

  Five minutes later Hannah and Maurice are opening the door. They come into the kitchen and sit at the table while we tell them exactly what we saw.

  ‘Why?’ Maurice bashes the table hard and makes us jump. Tears spring into my eyes. Kez looks frightened.

  ‘Dad!’

  Hannah puts a hand on Maurice’s shoulder. ‘Don’t, Maurice. What good will that do?’

  But I think I understand how he feels. Janu was wrong to tell me to keep quiet about what those racists did to him, and I can’t get that vile message that Pari has to look at every day out of my head. If people are afraid to say or do anything about it, how are things ever going to change?

  ‘They’ve got to call this what it is . . . anti-Semitism . . . If they don’t call it—’

  ‘Calm down, Maurice – you’re upsetting the girls even more.’

  Kez’s dad walks to the other end of the room and rests his forehead against the wall for a while, till his shoulders start to relax a bit. He turns around.

  ‘Sorry, girls. Let’s go in and see Dara.’

  It doesn’t feel right for me to follow them, so I stay outside her room. I can hear them talking to her, but she doesn’t respond. I go through into the kitchen, walk over to the dresser and pick up the photos of the little girl and boy who grew up into Stan and Bubbe. All these conversations start flowing through my mind: Bubbe talking about Stan and why she came here; Grandad Kit’s voice on the tape describing marching down Cable Street; Simon handing me the Banner Bag; the girl with her tissues on the tube; Simon and Nana Josie chanting and marching for the things they believed needed changing. Me . . . keeping quiet about what happened to Janu on the tube and so many other things that I can see are plain wrong. I feel sick thinking about Bubbe lying in bed believing that nothing’s changed in this world . . . that everything’s just getting worse.

  When they come out of Bubbe’s room, Hannah calls the doctor.

  ‘I would say grief-stricken, traumatized, yes, that too.’

  ‘Why won’t she speak to us, Mum – why won’t she talk?’ The muscles in Kez’s face and neck are spasming. She shouldn’t get into this much of a state. Maurice is encouraging her to take some medicine to calm her down.

  It’s so wrong. This is the same Kez who just one week ago was flying, she could have done anything, and now she’s having to take medication to calm her because of hateful racists. I have to think of something I can DO about this . . . like Nana Josie and Simon did when they saw things that were so unfair. After everything Bubbe’s done, bringing us all together at the bat mitzvah. All she and her husband went through to survive as children on the Kindertransport. Janu’s wrong. This is not a time to stay quiet. Nothing’s healed. I’m not going to let Bubbe think that it’s all happening again and we’re just going to sit by and watch.

  ‘Laila, I think your parents are home now; we bumped into them on the way back,’ Maurice says. He’s turned an ash-grey colour.

  ‘Oh yes . . .’ I say, placing the photos gently back on the shelf. ‘Of course, sorry, I’ll go and pack my things.’

  When I’m ready to leave, Kez, Maurice and Hannah are all still in with Bubbe, sitting around her bed. I don’t want to disturb them, so I let myself out, quietly closing the door behind me.

  ‘You’re family too, Laila!’ Bubbe’s words run through my mind as I walk home.

  Dad meets me halfway up the street. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and walks me home.

  Only . . . it doesn’t look like home, more like a building site. The whole of the front wall has gone but it’s nowhere near finished yet. Instead of steps there’s a muddy ramp up to the front door. Everything looks different now, even our house.

  I run upstairs to Mira’s room, slam the door, crawl under the bed and take out Nana’s Protest Book. I turn the pages that I’m starting to know off by heart. When I look closer at the photographs, I see that the same banner is in a few of the different marches that they went on. It just says: ‘Not In My Name’. I think I saw that slogan on the march we saw on TV at Pari’s flat too.

  Mum and Dad let me be for a while and then the knocking starts.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  They do for a bit, but then they come back. First Mum, then Dad . . . I ignore them and call Pari and tell her about Bubbe. She hardly says anything. I keep asking her if she’s still there.

  ‘Pari . . . ?’

  ‘I’m still here!’ she says. ‘Sorry, my mum’s talking at the same time. Hang on, Mum.’ I can hear Leyla speaking in Arabic. She sounds upset. ‘Mum’s saying she saw it on the news . . . it’s happened in other areas too. She’s worried there will be a backlash against us.’

  ‘I don’t get that!’ I say. ‘Why? They don’t know who’s done it.’

  ‘But still . . . she thinks it will cause more tension.’

  ‘OK, Mum, OK. I’ll tell them. I will make sure they understand . . . Mum says she wants you to tell Kezia’s family that she’s going to say her prayers for them. There was enough trouble back home. She wants us all to have peace. Anything she can do to help she will do.’

  ‘OK, tell her thank you,’ I say.

  After I put the phone down, I sit there for a while. What Pari’s mum said has made me think. Maybe there is something we can all do together?

  ‘Listen to this.’ Dad reads from the news on his phone over breakfast. ‘A council spokesman said that “our sincere condolences go to the Jewish Community and we will endeavour to remove the hateful graffiti as quickly as possible. Anti-Semitism wi
ll not be tolerated in this country or any borough of this city.”’

  I have never felt like this before. Everything people are saying is feeding my plan . . .

  Kez is not at school. I text and call her, but she doesn’t answer. I walk past hers on the way home, but the shutter blinds are closed like someone has died. I drop a note through her door asking after Bubbe and telling her to call me when she gets a chance.

  When I get back home there’s the beginning of a concrete-shaped path, and a man with a mini-digger is pouring soil on to both sides of the pathway. The grinding of the digger drills into my head and I get a sharp pain behind my eyes.

  ‘When’s it going to be finished, Dad?’ I ask as I walk inside.

  ‘Shouldn’t be long now . . .’

  I head upstairs and pull the Banner Bag out from under the bed. I press open the catches. They feel a bit looser now. I take the Protest Book out, lay it on the floor and open the bag up as wide as it will go. On the inside, in the faded leather, I spot something I haven’t noticed before, someone’s handwriting . . . it looks like Simon’s. I turn the bag on its side. The words are a bit faded but I can just about make them out:

  ‘Days are scrolls – write on them what you want to be remembered’.

  I feel this ball of fire in my stomach and I know what I have to do.

  I unroll a clean scroll and lay it out across the carpet. I think for a long time about the message. I pick up a paintbrush and choose the same blue paint Nana Josie used for the banner on her last march.

  Everything kaleidoscopes through my mind. Those men’s faces on the tube, mocking Janu with their chanting, the hateful words in Pari’s lift, what her parents had to go through, Bubbe and Stan arriving as children, Grandad Kit marching on Cable Street against the fascism growing in the city, Bubbe’s tears at the refugee children on the news, at Stan’s grave . . . what if . . . what if no one can tell when they’re actually living in a time that’s losing its heart? What if that’s why evil things happen? No one says and does anything until it’s too late; they just change carriage and pretend they haven’t seen what’s going on.

  I want Bubbe to remember us all standing together like we did at Kez’s bat mitzvah – and I want Janu to know that I haven’t stayed silent, that this is for him too. I think of the sign above Mrs Latif’s whiteboard. I want all religions, no religions, don’t even know about religion – just people from here, there and everywhere – to come together. I can’t stop thinking about the look on Bubbe’s face when she drove us back from the cemetery, like she’d given up hope. What if . . . what if Bubbe dies and all this hate is the last thing she remembers?

  I paint in bright blue capital letters.

  ANTI-SEMITISM

  ANY RACISM

  NOT IN OUR NAMES

  I unroll all the blank banner scrolls and write the same message over and over. Painting in Nana’s colours, with the brush she held in her hands, and all these feelings whirring through my head, I feel like she’s guiding me through this. Maybe everything from the day I found her chime has been leading to this. Each letter I paint makes me feel closer to her, and I know that this is the right thing to do.

  When I’m done I slide the banners under my bed to dry.

  I google the address of the Jewish cemetery and write:

  Anti-Racism Vigil

  Sunday December 10th – 3 p.m.

  Crosslands Cemetery

  Bring warm clothes, a jam jar and nightlights

  Now that I’ve written it down it starts to feel real.

  I don’t want to email or text anyone in case Dad checks my account and tries to stop me. I copy the invite over and over and over, then cut them into thin strips and put them in my school bag. By the time Mum peeps her head around the door to say goodnight, I’m all tidied up.

  ‘What’s that smell of paint?’

  ‘Working on some art homework,’ I lie.

  ‘Reminds me of Mira!’

  ‘Have you heard how Bubbe is?’ I ask.

  ‘They’ve cleaned up the graves but she’s still devastated. Very depressed. Kez too, I think. Just dreadful, isn’t it?’

  I’m so tired, but the thought of Bubbe and Kez spurs me on.

  I scroll down my phone contacts to:

  Tomek

  Maybe in the morning I’ll pluck up the courage to call him.

  I wake up determined to speak to Tomek, but when it comes to it, I text him instead. I write ‘Dear Tomek . . .’ then delete it. ‘Hi Tomek . . .’ and even that looks strange, so I delete that too and just text him the details. At least it makes sense me inviting him to this, and if he’s not interested, it’s not embarrassing for me to have got in contact. Remembering what he did for Janu that day on the train makes me even more sure about doing this.

  No text from Kez and she isn’t in school again.

  I tell Pari everything. I talk through my plan and she says she wants to be part of it.

  ‘Don’t tell your mum, Pari. This has to be our thing, to show Bubbe that she’s right to have hope in us.’

  ‘I won’t say anything. But if anyone would understand, my mum would. I’ll tell her I’m coming over to yours,’ Pari says.

  I pass a wodge of information strips to Rebecca and she promises to spread the word to the people I don’t know who came to Kez’s bat mitzvah.

  ‘What are you all whispering about?’ Stella asks at break-time. I take out a slip from my bag and hand it to her. She looks at it and puts it in her pocket. ‘Thanks!’

  Mrs Latif is off sick and it’s the longest, most boring week in school ever. We don’t hear anything from Kez or Maurice or Hannah. It’s like they’ve closed the rest of the world out.

  On Friday I text Kez again, but there’s no answer.

  The weather’s turned cold. Really, really cold – so your breath turnes to mist. I decide to wear a vest and one of Mira’s old school jumpers like Mum’s been nagging me to do for ages. There’s a frost on the ground that doesn’t thaw all day. Even after school the leaves are crispy white with ice like those sugared leaves you can buy to decorate cakes with. I think of Pari. I hope her mum can keep the electricity on tonight.

  On Saturday I don’t sleep all night, thinking about Kez and Bubbe. I go into Mira’s room and sit on the bed. I open the curtains at about 3 a.m. It seems very light. The moon is almost full. As I look out the snow begins to fall. It’s just a bit of sleet at first but then it falls heavier, in great soft flakes that fill the sky. I kneel by the window and watch it cover everything with a soft white coat. All the hard edges in the garden are gone . . . I wonder if the snow will stop anyone from coming.

  In the morning I run downstairs and look at the road. Nothing’s moving. I open the front door. I can’t hear anything. It’s so quiet, like the whole city’s been wrapped in a soft white blanket.

  Rebecca phones me. ‘Should we cancel?’

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘It’s not that far. It’s not till the afternoon. Transport might be working by then. If people come, it’ll show that they care even more. Anyway, we’ve all got time to walk there.’

  My phone rings. It’s Pari.

  ‘Sorry, Laila. I had to tell my mum or she wouldn’t let me come. The tubes are off, you see. She says she’s proud of us and she’s going to let me walk.’

  I give her directions to the cemetery from our street, but she and her mum have already looked it up.

  ‘One hour twenty-three minutes by foot according to Journey Planner,’ I tell her. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Sure! I know about the cold. I might meet up with Stella on the way.’

  ‘Is she coming?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes! She said so.’

  I usually hate wearing hats, but the one Pari’s mum knitted is so soft. I pull it down over my ears. Mum and Dad are out when I set off. The Banner Bag doesn’t seem so heavy without the paints and Nana’s big banner in it, but still the further I go the heavier it feels. When it’s too much for one arm I switc
h it to the other. Even though the streets are eerily empty I have the strangest feeling that I’m not on my own. Every time I put a new footprint in the snow I think of all the people this is for: Bubbe, Kez, Stan, Maurice, Hannah, Janu, Pari, Leyla, Nuri, Nana Josie, Grandad Kit, Grandad Bimal, Nana Kath, Mira, Krish, Mum, Dad, Anjali, Priya . . .

  Those are the names that come into my head first – then other names drift through my mind . . . Stella, Rebecca, Selina, Adam, Tomek . . .

  Most of the way to the cemetery I’m walking in untrodden snow.

  I’m the first to arrive. I go over to the lodge where the security guard was when we came last time so I can talk to him about what we’re planning, but it’s all locked up. Maybe he can’t get here because of the snow.

  I keep looking at my watch and worrying. What if no one turns up except me, Pari and Stella? That would still be something, I tell myself. They should be here soon. I think about phoning Pari again . . . and just as I’m about to, I see someone waving. It’s Pari, wearing her red pom-pom hat – and I suppose that must be Stella. They’re wearing identical bright blue snowsuits.

  ‘I met Stella on the way!’ Pari says. ‘She lent me all this warm gear. I’m not cold at all!’

  ‘We’re twins!’ Stella explains, and smiles at me.

  I’m not sure if she’s talking about me and Pari and our matching red hats, or about her and Pari in their snowsuits.

  ‘Not us!’ Stella laughs. ‘Me and my brother. That’s his kit!’ She points to Pari’s snowsuit.

  We wait, the three of us, for more people to turn up. After about ten minutes a whole colourful crowd of bright coats and hats walk towards us.

  I hand Stella and Pari a long taper each – I found them in the Banner Bag.

  ‘Will you light people’s candles?’ I ask.

  Other people arrive with their night lights and their jam jars, and one by one Pari, Stella and me light the candles. All Kez’s friends from the bat mitzvah are here, and some people from her tutor group too. There are loads more than I thought would come. I count over fifty of us. There aren’t even enough banners to go round.