Fly Me Home

by Polly Ho-Yen

‘Where are you?’ I asked. I wanted to picture him. Even though we’d only been away a few days, I felt as though my home was being washed out of my mind by the grey of London.

  ‘I’m at home,’ he said.

  ‘Where? In which room?’

  ‘Just in the kitchen. It’s a beautiful day. The sun’s pouring through the windows; everything is waking up.’

  I closed my eyes, and for a moment I wasn’t sitting on my lumpy mattress in London any more; I was back at home, in our old kitchen. I could smell the sunshine in the air; it smelled of promise, and of beginnings. I could hear the old sounds as clearly as if I was back there.

  ‘Are the birds singing?’

  ‘Yes, the birds are singing.’

  ‘Is the generator humming?’

  ‘Mmm,’ Dad said.

  ‘I wish I was there with you, Dad,’ I said, but he changed the subject.

  ‘Tell me about London.’

  Just then, a siren started up outside. I heard someone shouting something; it pierced the air angrily. The sound of that voice, so hard, so sharp, seemed to suit the weather here, so unforgiving and cold.

  ‘What’s your room like?’ Dad asked when I didn’t answer him.

  ‘It’s …’ I started to say, looking around. Tiber’s and my things were jumbled together in piles. We hadn’t brought much with us, but it seemed like there was a lot in here already.

  ‘Messy,’ I finished.

  Dad chuckled again. ‘Well, you’d better tidy it up then, Leelu.’

  I didn’t tell him that I couldn’t get comfortable in our new bedroom, that I couldn’t sleep through the night without waking and wondering where I was. That in those dark early hours of the morning I remembered that we had left home and that Dad wasn’t with us, and it stopped me from getting back to sleep. I turned over and over on my creaky, wheezy bed and thought of my old bedroom; I wished I was there.

  For starters, I didn’t have to share with Tiber in our old house. I had my own room. I could shut the door behind me and not have to worry about Tiber steaming in, teasing and tormenting.

  Before I came along my bedroom had been Dad’s study and he’d had to move his desk downstairs. It wasn’t huge. In fact, there was only just enough space for my bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers and little else, but to me it felt cosy. Dad called it my little cave.

  It had once been the room where he’d sat at his old, scarred desk and done his work. ‘This is where you can make things happen,’ he said to me, slapping the top of his desk and the papers that were scattered across it.

  I felt myself missing my old house; it was like a physical pain, a stab through the heart. Mum kept telling me that it was the people, not the place, that made a home, but I wasn’t sure she was right. I thought you needed both.

  ‘Dad, when are you coming? I miss you.’

  ‘Not—’ Dad started to say, but then the line began to crackle and his voice was lost in static.

  ‘Dad! Dad!’ I called out. ‘Can you hear me?’

  I caught flashes of his voice. Then parts of words that sounded like a robot was speaking them.

  ‘Dad! Don’t go!’

  I suddenly had an idea. I pulled up the loose floorboard and reached for the walnut that lay underneath it.

  Just as I had done before, I held it tightly in my hand. Wishing with all my might.

  Please don’t let the phone call end.

  Please don’t let Dad’s voice disappear.

  Please keep us connected.

  But this time the walnut didn’t move at all.

  I thought I heard Dad saying my name in a robotic drone.

  ‘Dad, don’t go,’ I heard myself say aloud.

  But I could barely make out the words he was saying any more; it was as though they had been cut into pieces and then stuck together again in the wrong order. And then, suddenly, one word rang out clearly through all the fuzz. For one moment I heard Dad again.

  ‘Help,’ he said, and then his voice dissolved into fragments.

  I squeezed the walnut so tightly that my hand began to hurt, but still it didn’t move.

  The phone went very quiet.

  When I looked at the screen, I saw that the call had ended.

  Dad was gone.

  8

  After my phone call to Dad, I rushed downstairs to find Mum and Tiber. They were pushing spoonfuls of soggy-looking cereal, a greyish mush, into their mouths as though they were robots.

  ‘I think Dad’s in trouble,’ I told them breathlessly. That made them drop their spoons with a bang.

  ‘What happened?’ Mum said as Tiber grabbed the phone from me, furiously pressing the buttons.

  ‘We got cut off, but before that I heard him say, “Help,” like he was in trouble or something.’

  Tiber looked up from the phone. ‘I can’t get through to him.’

  ‘There’s no need to worry,’ Mum said, standing up. ‘That happens with phones all the time. You just had a bad connection. Did his voice go a bit funny – like unclear?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You can’t hear what people are saying when that happens,’ Mum said. ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘There’s no need to worry,’ she said again with a hard stare that made my lips fasten to one other. ‘Put it out of your mind. We’ll speak to him again soon. For now, we need to think about getting you ready for school tomorrow.’

  Mum had sounded very certain, but a little later I noticed her picking up the phone and trying to make a call. When there was no answer, she put it back down again, her forehead creased with worry.

  The day dragged by, although there were lots of things we needed to do. Mum took us to a shop with clothes balanced in precarious piles, and made us try on trousers, jumpers and T-shirts. They were all grey, of course. The hard shade of the roads.

  I couldn’t understand why, when I tried to keep the call from Dad going, the walnut hadn’t worked; I kept looking outside to see if anything else had been left by the bin. If I did find something else, I could wish that Dad would ring us back. But the space remained empty for the rest of the day.

  9

  Tiber walked just ahead of me on my first day of school.

  I tried to catch up with him, but he simply extended his long legs effortlessly, lengthening his stride, so he was always, always just out of my reach, a few steps in front.

  ‘Hold hands when you cross the road,’ Mum had told us the night before. She would still be at work when we woke up in the morning because her job went on right through the night. She was going to work in one of the big clothes shops, and during the night she had to put everything out, ready for the morning shoppers. But she promised me she would be there to pick me up from school at the end of the day.

  ‘Tiber, you listening to me? You must hold Leelu’s hand crossing that busy road.’

  ‘YesMum.’ Tiber said it so fast that it sounded like one word.

  But when we approached the busy road, Tiber was still ahead of me and I had to half walk, half run to keep up with him.

  The cars seemed angry. They either stampeded past us in a blur or sat in unmoving lines, impatient, sounding their horns. The smell of petrol made my head hurt and I wanted to be somewhere else.

  ‘The road, Tiber.’ I found it hard to speak because I was trying to keep up, and my words were lost in the roar of traffic. I was sure he hadn’t heard me.

  In my pocket I felt for the old, wrinkly conker I had found that morning. I’d spotted it in the space between the bin and lamppost as soon as we left the house, and I’d managed to shove it into my pocket while Tiber was locking the door.

  A red bus came steaming past. It churned through the air, making me feel very small, my flesh and bones insubstantial and flimsy.

  ‘Mum said …’ I tried again, but Tiber had speeded up once more. I broke into a run on the hard pavement and the plastic bag with my lunch in it knocked against my leg painfully.

  ‘Tib
—’

  But then he spun round with the grace of a dancer and, with a darting look both ways, he took my hand and pulled me across the road through a tiny gap between the cars that existed only for seconds.

  We arrived on the other side as the traffic closed behind us, and he dropped my hand just as swiftly as he’d taken it.

  He was ahead of me, just like before.

  And I had to run to catch up.

  I heard the other children before I saw them.

  There were shouts. A light, happy bumble of chatter. As I heard those sounds, I felt my own voice binding itself up, coiling tightly within my throat. I knew that if I opened my mouth to speak, no words would come out.

  ‘Your class must be over there,’ Tiber told me, gesturing towards a group of children who looked roughly the same size as me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I looked at the other children in the playground, and their voices seemed to get louder. My ears rang with their shouts and screams. The sounds rattled through my head as though I was quite empty, full of echoes.

  There were too many differences between us.

  I was as still as they were fast, sprinting, running, skipping, filling the space.

  I was as silent as they were loud, shrieking in their game of tag.

  I was as alone as they were tangled in their friendships. I thought I could see the connections between them, shimmering in faint lines, like spiders’ webs in the air, tying them to one another.

  I took a few small steps towards the children that Tiber had pointed out, but there seemed to be a huge expanse of playground between us.

  There were as many mothers and fathers there as there were kids. They stood a little way off, but their gazes kept returning to their children. Their faces were dominated by watchful, devoted eyes.

  The sound of them filled my head too. They laughed easily. They chatted and joked. They spoke in that loud sort of way that showed they didn’t care who overheard them. Now and again they’d break off to call out their child’s name, their voices turning into a shriek, a warning. Mya! Abbie! Shai! It sounded not unlike the sirens that flooded the busy roads outside.

  I felt a fluttering in my chest, something beating as though it wanted to escape. My breaths came quickly but I couldn’t take in a proper lungful of air. My mind started to reach out for something that would steady me, but everything seemed to be revolving. Or was I the one who was revolving and everything else was staying still?

  I stuffed my hands into my pockets and slouched a little, making myself smaller. My fingers closed tightly around the hard shape of the conker. I thought I felt it shift in my fingers, making the smallest of movements.

  With closed eyes, I imagined Dad standing in the playground.

  I wished that he was there with me, taking me to my new school.

  When I opened my eyes again, I thought I saw him. Just a little distance away from me, talking to the other parents, standing and smiling and being Dad.

  His eyes darted towards mine now and again, checking in with me; where I was, how I was doing.

  As I saw him there, I found I could suddenly take in a full breath of air again. I felt my chest loosen and my shoulders relax. I hadn’t realized that I’d been holding them so tensely.

  Among the hum of talk I heard Dad’s light chuckle. It rose above the chatting and shouting, and carried in the wind around me. When he laughed like that, his eyes lit up as though a fire was burning inside him, fierce, bright and true. Now, through the parents, I saw his profile. The round of his belly, the snub of his nose. The way he rested one hand upon his tummy if he was laughing, as though trying to contain it.

  I ran towards him, darting in between the groups of parents, the bags and pushchairs. Dad was here! He had come over after all. Did Mum even know, or had she been in on the surprise?

  I was only a few metres away from him, my hand outstretched. In just a few more steps I would be able to touch him.

  Then I heard the hard, sharp sound of a whistle being blown and the children dispersed into long, winding lines. Their parents clucked around them, putting them in their places, handing over lunch boxes, school bags and kisses.

  In the bustle, Dad had vanished.

  10

  ‘Come on, Leelu,’ Tiber said, gesturing towards the children he’d pointed out before. ‘Get over there!’

  But I didn’t move. Or couldn’t.

  I was standing alone, some distance from the lines they had formed, and for a moment I wondered if I could actually become invisible.

  Thinking of everything that I had already made happen with the walnut and the ridgy wooden thing, I wondered if I might really be able to do it.

  I thought hard. I clenched the conker again.

  I pictured myself very, very small.

  My toes were facing inwards, and then my feet turned more and more in on themselves, my shoulders slumping downwards … until I could no longer be seen.

  It felt as though it was working.

  For a moment I wondered what the day that lay in front of me would look like if I did become invisible. The children would disappear into the school, the parents would make their way home, and there I would stand, silently, until the playground was quite empty.

  I would go down the slide first, I decided. As many times as I wanted. Now that there was no queue.

  Tiber’s voice broke into my dreams.

  ‘Leelu, come on. Quit playing around – open your eyes. Stop being so weird.’

  I opened my eyes to see him looking at me, slightly puzzled.

  ‘Why did you close your eyes?’

  When I didn’t reply, he made a sort of huff of annoyance, like a dragon expelling smoke.

  ‘Well, never mind that now – go over to that line. I’m going to be late.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I admitted.

  I thought Tiber might start to get cross with me. I heard him take a deep breath as though he was getting ready to shout. I braced myself, but when he spoke, his voice was soft. So quiet that I could barely hear him.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he said. He came over and ducked down so we looked each other directly in the eye. ‘Let me tell you a secret.’

  He looked around as though to check that no one was listening. ‘I’m feeling scared about my first day too, Lulu.’ His eyes changed for a moment; they softened, widened. Not often does he ever look afraid of anything. It took me a moment to realize that this was what his eyes were telling me.

  ‘But we’ll make friends,’ he said. He was trying to sound convincing but his voice seemed just a note too high. ‘We both will. It’ll be easy, you’ll see.’

  ‘But what if—’ I started to say, but then one of the mothers came marching towards us. Tiber straightened abruptly, and when I looked up at him, his expression changed again to one of indifference. Boredom, almost. The children had started to plod inside now, still in their wonky-looking lines, and people had begun to stare at us. I wasn’t with them, I wasn’t in the right place, wasn’t doing the right thing.

  ‘Hiya!’ said the mother. She waved at us like she knew us, like we were old friends. When Mum meets new people, she looks at them hard, her mouth fixed in a rigid line. She says she’s making her mind up about them. It takes her a long time to make her mind up about most people.

  The mother in the playground smiled at us so widely that I could see she had little gaps between her front teeth. She was perhaps the same height as Mum but, with her shoulders back, arms swinging by her sides in a relaxed sort of way, with her bouncing stride, she seemed much taller.

  ‘Just thought I’d see if you guys were OK over here,’ she said. She spoke in a funny way that I hadn’t heard before. Her voice went up and down all at once so everything sounded like a question.

  ‘My sister is starting school today,’ Tiber explained.

  ‘Your first day, huh? I remember it from when we started here. We had no idea where to go. It’s confusing, huh?’ The words seemed to bound from her mou
th.

  I made my head nod, just a tiny bit.

  ‘Ah! Well, welcome, welcome!’ She knelt down so she was on my level. Her eyes reminded me of the sky at home in the morning, when the sun is shining and there’s no suggestion of rain. ‘My name’s Catherine. What’s yours?’

  I didn’t call adults I knew at home by their first name. My parents had taught me to be respectful, as was the way of our tribe, and I’d call adults ‘Auntie’ or ‘Uncle’. Did she really want me to call her Catherine?

  ‘Tell her your name, Leelu,’ Tiber hissed.

  I tried to say it in a normal way, but without meaning to, I whispered it.

  ‘OK, Lou,’ said Catherine. ‘Shall we find out what class you are in? What do you say? I can show you where the office is, if you like.’

  ‘I need to go, Leelu,’ Tiber said. ‘Will you be all right?’

  Again I gave a tiny nod.

  Quite unexpectedly he reached down and hugged me quickly. I felt the strength of him through his skinny arms. I didn’t want him to let go, but all of a sudden I was released and he turned away. I watched him stalk out of the playground with long, giraffe-like strides, until he was gone.

  ‘You have a nice brother,’ Catherine said. ‘I have two boys and they seem to spend the whole time wrestling each other into headlocks.’

  I followed her through one of the doors and we walked along a corridor to the school office. There was a smell in the air which seemed both familiar and not. I couldn’t work out what it was, but I think it was something cooking.

  ‘Here it is,’ Catherine said to me. We’d reached a long desk that had a glass panel all along the top; it reminded me of a cage. ‘Mrs Charlton will know what to do. Why don’t you sit down on one of those chairs?’

  The fabric on the seat felt scratchy and pricked my bare skin. I saw Catherine talking to a lady who sat behind the glass and they both looked over. Catherine smiled at me again reassuringly, but the lady behind the glass frowned a little.

  ‘All right, Lou? Mrs Charlton is going to take you to meet your new class. Just wait here, OK? It was nice to meet you.’

  I said, ‘Nice-to-meet-you-too,’ very, very quietly, and then, more quietly still, ‘Catherine.’ I wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear me, but she winked at me and said, ‘Nice manners,’ and ‘Catch you later.’