Fly Me Home

by Polly Ho-Yen

  She gave me another one of her gappy-toothed grins and was gone.

  When Catherine left, I was very aware that I really was alone. Somehow she’d made me not feel that way when Tiber walked off. I had the feeling that I was trapped there, sitting on that scratchy chair. Not in a normal way, not like being locked in a cupboard, or surrounded in a corner; I felt like I was trapped in my own body. I couldn’t move, I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want anyone to notice me.

  A sensation of heat, a burning, rose from the base of my spine. It filled my head, hung around my neck and ears. It made me feel stiff and unwieldy, as though I was becoming rusty and cumbersome like an abandoned car.

  I could hear phones ringing, children chatting in the corridor, all the sounds of school life continuing around me. They got louder and louder, those sounds, until my ears burned with them. And then suddenly there was a sharp tap, tap, tap, and everything was a normal volume again.

  It came again: tap, tap, tap. Insistent and cross. I moved my head ever so slightly in the direction of the sound, and then I saw that it was Mrs Charlton who was making the noise. She was using a pen to rap on the glass in front of the desk.

  ‘Yes, you,’ she said. She beckoned me over, wielding her pen as though it was a baton. As soon as I started to approach, she looked away and her eyes locked onto her computer screen. She did not look at me again.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she said. She typed loudly on the keyboard, and the sound made me think of her rapping her pen against the glass.

  ‘Leelu,’ I said.

  ‘Leelu?’ Mrs Charlton squawked. ‘I haven’t got a Leelu down here.’ She leaned towards the computer screen, her eyes narrowed. ‘Only a Lillian.’

  ‘That’s my other name,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Are you Lillian or not?’

  In the end I said, ‘Yes,’ in a small voice.

  ‘Right, now we’re getting somewhere. Michael! Michael! Come here,’ she shouted to a boy who was walking past, so loudly that I couldn’t stop myself from flinching.

  ‘Take this girl to Class Fourteen. Tell Mrs Winters she’s just arrived and I’ve registered her.’

  The boy nodded and disappeared out of the room.

  Mrs Charlton continued to type. Without looking up she said, ‘Go with him, then.’

  I ran out into the corridor and saw Michael just as he was turning a corner. I thought he might speak to me, but he walked on in silence while I trotted alongside. He finally stopped in front of one of the doors and knocked three times.

  We heard someone shout, ‘Come in,’ and Michael opened the door, repeated Mrs Charlton’s message and abruptly left. I stood there in the doorway, and suddenly I found I couldn’t move my feet.

  There was a large group of children sitting on the carpet. They all turned their heads to look over at me.

  Pairs and pairs of eyes before me.

  They seemed to be looking right at me, but their stares also streamed through me somehow; as though I was a pane of glass, transparent and thin.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ the teacher said. She smiled warmly, but it made me feel uneasy; I remembered my old teacher from home, who never smiled. Her face was held immobile by a glare that would silence everyone in the class without her having to say a word.

  ‘Would you like to come and sit down over here?’ my new teacher said, pointing to a little space. ‘We’ve just started Literacy.’

  I wasn’t sure what Literacy was, but I forced my feet to move and walked slowly towards the space she had indicated.

  ‘I’m Mrs Winters. It’s Lillian, isn’t it?’

  ‘Leelu,’ I said. Some of the boys tittered.

  ‘Leila?’ my teacher asked.

  ‘Leelu,’ I said again. The titter was louder this time.

  ‘Settle down,’ Mrs Winters said. ‘Quiet! Quiet!’ But the laughter didn’t subside for a few moments, even when she shot a meaningful stare at some of the quaking shoulders.

  ‘Well, come and sit down,’ she said eventually, and then she quickly muttered a word under her breath that sounded a bit like Leila and Leelu rolled into one.

  I sat down in the space, which was so small that I had to tuck my legs beneath me awkwardly. Then I saw Mrs Winters frown slightly and I looked around. Everyone else was sitting with their legs crossed, their knees pointing out at sharp angles. I quickly copied them, and Mrs Winters nodded her head ever so slightly in approval and looked away.

  I wish I could say that was the only mistake I made that day.

  But it was just the beginning.

  11

  ‘How was school?’ Mum said as I ran over to her. She was waiting in the playground as she’d promised. She stood a little bit away from the other parents. Their heads were dipped in conversation whereas Mum was stifling a yawn. She was wearing a brown cardigan and hugged her arms around herself as though she was cold.

  I didn’t speak. I pressed my head into her body so she couldn’t see my face. She smelled so familiar. Like a day at home when the earth is baked by the sun. A hint of spice from cooking up a stew. And something else, something indescribable: the scent that was just her. For a moment I imagined that we were back in our old house with Dad. London was just a faraway, nondescript place that I had heard other people talking about.

  ‘You must be Leila’s mother. I’m Mrs Winters,’ I heard my teacher say. ‘Have you got time for a quick word?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Mum said. She barked the words as though she was cross. She pushed me away from her stiffly and looked at Mrs Winters through narrowed eyes, her lips pursed. ‘Leelu, go and play over there while I talk to your teacher.’

  I was reluctant to leave her, but I walked away a little and stood by a wall that had been painted to look like a forest.

  I saw Catherine picking up her two sons. They ran around her, excited, delighted, in circles. She noticed me standing there and gave me a thumbs-up, a bright smile. I tried to smile back but my face felt like it had become stiff, frozen. I’m not sure it would have looked like I was smiling.

  ‘Hope you had a good day, Lou!’ she called out to me – but then one of her sons ran into the other and they both started crying.

  I looked back over at Mum and Mrs Winters. Mum was standing very straight, staring at Mrs Winters fiercely. The grim line of her mouth seemed to set, become permanent and rigid. Her eyes flamed. She opened her mouth and I thought she was going to shout, but she thought better of it and dropped her head, defeated. When she looked back up at Mrs Winters, her eyes seemed empty, expressionless. She nodded a few times, little curt movements, but did not speak.

  I walked up behind them to see if I could hear what they were talking about, but Mum noticed me. She quickly ended the conversation and turned to tell me we were going now.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ I asked her once we were walking down the road away from the school and were no longer surrounded by other children.

  ‘Well …’ she said.

  ‘What did Mrs Winters say to you?’

  ‘She said … She said …’ But Mum didn’t seem to want to tell me.

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Nothing you did was wrong, Leelu.’

  ‘Did some of the other children in class say something about me?’

  ‘No – why would they do that? What would they have to say about you?’ Mum asked.

  I was sure the other children were talking about me behind my back. I stuck out somehow, even though all I wanted to do was fit in.

  Dad always said that if people said something about you, it was actually more about them.

  It was always after dinner that he started talking about things like this. When we were all round the table together.

  ‘Listen up, kids. This is important,’ he’d say. ‘If someone says something nasty about you, it’s because there is something about themselves that they don’t like.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ I said. ‘Why woul
d they do that?’

  ‘The thing is,’ Dad said, ‘they don’t even realize they are doing it. They have no idea. But, mark my words, it’s always about them really. Not you. You are just caught up in it – you just got in the way.’

  In spite of Dad’s words, I still felt sick at the thought of everyone talking about me behind my back. I reached into my pocket for the conker I’d found and squeezed it hard. Somehow, just doing that took my mind off the tears I could feel building.

  ‘It’s just … It’s just …’ Mum started to say, but then she thought better of it. ‘Well, it will be OK. It’ll just take time, huh? You’re a quick learner. You’ll soon catch up with everyone. You’ll get used to it.’

  I nodded, and Mum looked relieved. She squeezed my hand and gazed up at the sky where, for a moment, the sun’s rays beat down, warming us.

  How could I tell her that I didn’t think I ever would?

  12

  All day at school I’d felt like everyone was speaking a different language.

  Mrs Winters asked questions about things that I had never heard of. There were words everywhere. Words I didn’t understand, words I had never heard of before. They were on different coloured cards covered in shiny plastic, plastered all over the classroom walls. They even covered up the glass of some of the windows, blocking out the light.

  The worst thing was, I was the only one who couldn’t follow. Everyone else in the class seemed to know the answers. They chanted them as casually as saying hello or goodbye. My mind was racing, trying to listen, to understand. I could feel myself leaning forward, straining to catch up with what I couldn’t follow. At times I felt that I was beginning to grasp what Mrs Winters was saying, but then she’d veer off in a different direction. She talked quickly, and showed us pictures and sentences on the whiteboard that flashed before us at an alarming speed.

  When it came down to doing the work, I had no idea what I needed to write. Instead of sitting there doing nothing though, I filled the pages with any word I could think of. I even copied some of the longer ones that were on the walls. I kept my handwriting neat: each letter the same size as all the others. When Mrs Winters came round and saw the page of writing I’d completed, she smiled, but as she read it, her face fell.

  ‘OK, I think that’s enough for today. Good try,’ she said. Her voice sounded flat, a little dull. ‘Why don’t you go and choose a book from the book corner and have a read for the rest of the lesson?’ She took my writing book and turned away.

  I nodded and carefully put away my pencil and tucked in my chair while everyone else in the class carried on writing. I felt their eyes on me again, as I had when I’d first walked in that morning. It seemed to take a really long time to walk from where I was sitting to the book corner; it was as though everyone’s stares had made my legs slow down.

  When I got there, I sat down behind a shelf on one of the cushions that were scattered on the floor, so no one could see me.

  I realized that someone, Mrs Winters probably, had tried to make the book corner comfortable and nice, and it was maybe this that made me feel even more upset. I couldn’t really explain it, but sitting on the nice cushions, on the brightly coloured rug with the pile of blankets that felt soft between my fingers, I felt worse than when I was sitting on the hard plastic chair at the table, trying to do work I didn’t understand.

  I peeked over the top of the bookshelf. All the other children were still scribbling away, lost in their own world of words, and Mrs Winters was reading something at her desk, frowning a little.

  Just then the classroom door opened and Louise, the teaching assistant Mrs Winters had introduced me to earlier who works with our class, came in carrying several piles of paper.

  I watched Mrs Winters beckon Louise over. She said something to her and handed her whatever it was she was reading. I saw immediately that it was the new writing book she’d given me that morning, the one I had just been working in.

  Louise stared at my book, her eyes scanning the page, and then looked back at Mrs Winters. They both began to laugh. I could see that they were trying to stop; they looked away from one another, and Louise even clamped one hand firmly over her mouth. But it was too late. The wisps of their laughter carried across the classroom to me and whipped across my face like a slap.

  I wished I could be anywhere else but there. I wished, as I had in the playground, that I could make myself invisible and slip away from this classroom without anyone’s eyes on me. I remembered seeing Dad in the playground. For those few moments he really seemed like he was there. I felt sure that I had done that. That, once again, by using one of the things I’d found by the bin, I had somehow found a power to make things happen.

  Could I do it again?

  I reached into my pocket for the hard, shiny conker and squeezed it tightly.

  Please let me be somewhere else, I thought. Please let me not be here.

  The conker didn’t move, and so I tried again. I squeezed it harder, and closed my eyes.

  Please, please, please, I thought. Please let me leave, with no one seeing me go, no one stopping me.

  But it didn’t twitch; nothing changed around me.

  It hadn’t worked.

  I couldn’t understand why, so I clung on tighter still, and this time I whispered it: Please get me out of here. Turn me invisible. Please, anywhere but here.

  Just then I heard someone stifling a giggle, and when I opened my eyes, one of the boys – I learned later that his name was Drew – was looking over the bookshelf at me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said. His eyes were wide with embarrassment. But not for himself; for me.

  I couldn’t answer him. My mouth opened but nothing came out, and then, out of nowhere, I felt tears building behind my eyes. They gathered there and began to fall.

  ‘Are you …? Are you …?’ stuttered Drew, and then he turned away abruptly and I heard the sharp hiss of a whisper. I didn’t need to peek over the bookshelf to know that he had told everyone on his table what he had seen me doing.

  I turned quickly and, without looking, picked out a book and pretended to read, fiercely wiping my tears away. I tried to concentrate on the words on the page but they seemed to swim in front of me. Moving, floating almost, just out of reach.

  ‘Leila?’ Mrs Winters said.

  I looked up at her. I didn’t bother correcting her.

  ‘What are you reading there?’

  I shrugged and showed her the cover.

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  I shrugged again and pretended to keep reading.

  ‘Can you read it to me?’ Mrs Winters asked.

  I stared down at the words in front of me and concentrated hard. I knew that this was what people looked like when they were reading – I had seen them do it.

  ‘Maybe you could start from here,’ Mrs Winters said, and pointed to one of the words. ‘The next best thing …’

  ‘The next best thing,’ I said. ‘The next best thing …’ I stuttered, and then fell silent. I could feel tears growing behind my eyes again.

  I tried once more. ‘The next best thing … is … to …’ but after that I lost my place and couldn’t find it again.

  ‘OK,’ said Mrs Winters quickly. ‘Maybe you’d like me to read some to you?’

  I nodded, and handed the book to her and concentrated on not letting myself cry. I gritted my teeth, swallowed hard.

  ‘The next best thing is to look at the spokes and the metallic hawsers of the Eye itself,’ Mrs Winters read. I couldn’t follow the story, but the sound of her voice was comforting somehow. I focused on the words on the page and I didn’t cry again.

  Mrs Winters didn’t ask me to do anything else that day.

  13

  When I got back that afternoon, I noticed something new stuffed between the lamppost and the bin.

  As soon as I spotted it I ran over, able to forget for a moment all that had happened at school that day. I shrugged off the stiffness I felt from t
he cold wind that had buffeted us on the walk back and made me long for the warmth of home. I missed the feeling of heat in your bones that you carried with you throughout the day there.

  This thing looked different from the other items; only when I got closer did I realize that it was a matchbox. I plucked it out and shook it, but it didn’t rattle with matches. I thought it might be empty; it felt light in my hand. But before I got the chance to open it, Mum called over to me.

  ‘Leelu, don’t hang around that bin. Come inside, away from there.’

  I quickly stuffed it in my pocket, out of sight.

  ‘How’s school, Lulu?’ Tiber probed as soon as he walked in, a little later. He dumped his bag on the chair, and in one fluid movement leaped up to sit on the work surface.

  I didn’t answer him.

  ‘That bad?’ He leaned in towards me. He smelled a bit like smoke mixed with what the rubbish by the bin smelled of, and his eyes, like before, looked wide, worried. I thought it might be one of those rare times when he said something comforting and kind or private, just between the two of us, but at just that moment Mum walked in.

  She turfed him off the work surface with a ‘Get down from there!’ and as he leaped, she sniffed the air. She started spraying a can of air freshener around. It smelled cloying and artificial; its sweetness made my head swim.

  I wondered how Tiber’s day at school had gone, but I didn’t want to ask him. That way, I wouldn’t have to explain about mine.

  ‘Is Dad ringing us tonight?’ I asked instead. I felt I might have been able to tell him what happened today; he might have had an idea for how to make it better.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Mum said. She was distracted, sorting through the pile of dirty clothes that had mounted in the corner. ‘I don’t think so.’

  I carried the day with me for the rest of the evening. It was a heaviness that weighed down on my shoulders. I’d always known that I wasn’t especially good at reading and writing. Sometimes, when I stared at a page, it was as though the words were shifting around. At other times it was as if they had turned into balloons; they rose up off the page and floated away, out of my reach.