by Polly Ho-Yen
Another gift.
17
‘It was so real!’ Dad said. ‘I really thought I was there with you.’
Dad had told me there had been nothing wrong after we had last spoke, just that his phone had cut out. He said I must have imagined him calling for help.
Everything was back to normal. Well, as normal as it could be when he was so far away from us. He was describing a dream he’d had to me. He used to do that in the old days, at home, only back then it would be over the breakfast table and he would be right in front of us, brandishing a spoon and a wide grin.
‘You were wearing grey trousers and had a plastic bag with your lunch in it. And Tiber was there too. He was next to you. I was with the other parents, standing right by you.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t a dream, Dad,’ I said.
‘What’s that, my love? You’re breaking up a bit.’
‘I said, maybe you really were there.’
‘Well, it certainly felt like I was. It was very nice to see you and Tiber, even just in dreamland.’
I remembered wishing for Dad to be there with me as I held the conker in my hand in the playground. He was laughing with the other parents; I’d heard the sound of his chuckle – and then the whistle went and he had vanished.
‘Were you laughing in the dream?’ I asked.
‘Well, now that you mention it, I was. How did you know?’
‘Because you’re always laughing, Dad,’ I told him. He began to chuckle. I’d missed that sound; I felt my heart grow bigger just hearing it.
‘Now tell me, Leelu, how’s school going? Are you doing OK?’
Dad always asked questions I didn’t want him to ask. I knew that if Mum asked me something, I could distract her, but not Dad. He would always sense if you were avoiding the question.
I was saved by Tiber coming in and demanding to speak to Dad. I didn’t want to tell him that things hadn’t got any better at school, but I knew that, if Tiber hadn’t come along, I’d have ended up admitting it. Dad had a way of always extracting the truth of how you felt.
At school I was trying very hard to do the right thing, but it was difficult when I wasn’t sure what that was exactly.
‘Why don’t you speak?’ one of the girls in my class said to me one day. She was called Terri.
I opened my mouth to answer, but then I realized that I didn’t know what to say, so I closed it again.
‘She never speaks,’ said Aisha, who wore her hair scraped back from her face in a high, dramatic ponytail. She looked thoughtful. ‘I’m not sure if she knows how.’
‘Oh,’ said Terri. She frowned at first, but then she nodded as though she had understood something, and walked away from me.
For some reason I couldn’t blurt out that at my old school I’d talked all the time. That I’d once even got in trouble for chatting too much; Dad had given me one of his talks about not distracting other people from their work.
Despite what Tiber had told me on my first day, I didn’t make friends at school.
For him, it was a different story. He spent most of his time on the mobile, not trying to ring Dad but sending messages to his new friends. I gave up trying to talk to him because he was always bent over the small screen, his fingers tapping the buttons, only responsive to its beeps and vibrations.
He hadn’t left at night again, but sometimes he came back well after school had finished. He’d say something like, ‘Homework club was on,’ or ‘There was an after-school talk,’ but from the way he tilted his head to the side and the bright gleam in his eyes, I was pretty sure he was lying. But Mum never questioned him and I wondered if I’d got it wrong.
He did seem a little more distant on those days though. His eyes were never still; they didn’t settle on anything. And he seemed more agitated, like the house wasn’t big enough for him any more. Sometimes he smelled of smoke, like car exhausts. And I noticed that he always took a shower when he came in. But I didn’t think about it too much really. I had my own worries.
At school I was more and more alone. Whenever one of the other children smiled at me or asked me something, Terri or Aisha or one of the other girls would quickly explain that I didn’t speak, that I didn’t know how, that they shouldn’t bother talking to me. I was left well alone – because who wanted to speak to someone who wouldn’t talk back?
I grew quieter and quieter – until one day I realized that I hadn’t spoken at all at school apart from saying ‘Yes, miss’ almost silently to the register in the morning. Mrs Winters never pushed me to say it louder, and for that I was grateful. She’d look over at me with large eyes, but she didn’t urge me to speak up or chide me for being too quiet as she did with the other kids.
When Mum asked me about my day, as she always did, I told her that it had gone fine and she would pinch my cheek gently, affectionately, like she used to when I was little. She would never ask me anything more, as Dad would have, and so I said nothing more.
I never lost the feeling of loneliness that had begun on that first day, sitting outside Mrs Charlton’s office on that scratchy blue chair. Nor the feeling of being watched. I felt like people were always looking at me; they could see how alone I was. It was as though I had a line drawn around me that no one wanted to cross.
No one but Betsy.
‘You got to speak,’ she would say to me. ‘Speak up! No mumbling!’
We’d got into the habit of spending the afternoons together. Betsy went to another school that was a bus ride away. When her family first came to this country, they had lived in another part of the city and she’d started at a different school, and her dad didn’t want to move her.
‘My voice just clenches up and I can’t say anything,’ I tried to explain.
‘How can voice clench up?’ Betsy said, her head cocked to one side, which I knew by now meant that she was thinking about something.
‘It’s too late now,’ I told her. ‘Everyone thinks I can’t speak. Even my teacher. She won’t ask me a question any more because she’s worried I won’t say anything and there will be silence. Which there probably will be because I don’t know the answer anyway.’
I knew from the first that I could confide in Betsy. She knew all about Dad not coming with us; how Tiber had changed since we’d arrived; everything that had happened at school.
She in turn told me what it was like to have so many brothers who were always shouting and fighting. How she missed Colombia and her cousins who still lived there. She had adjusted to the cold weather by keeping moving and by wearing two T-shirts under her jumper.
Betsy told me a little more about her family. She didn’t seem to like talking about them that much. Her dad worked nights like Mum, but at the hospital. Sometimes he got so angry that he was controlled by his anger. She made it sound like his anger was quite separate to him; a person who sometimes came to visit and was unwelcome but who insisted on staying over for a while anyway.
‘My mum left for long time now,’ Betsy said with a shrug. ‘She didn’t like my father being angry also.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said immediately.
She shrugged again. ‘It’s the way it is. She was scared.’
But Betsy wasn’t scared of her dad; she wasn’t scared of anybody.
She was a good listener, though she was also good at calling a halt to conversations when there was nothing more to say.
‘Let’s play now,’ Betsy said, as she so often did when she deemed that we had, in her own words, ‘done enough talking’. ‘Today we shoot on goal.’ She nodded to herself at the suggestion.
Betsy thought the answer to most things was football, and when I first told her about my troubles at school, she’d immediately said, ‘I definitely teach you football. It make everything much, much better.’
I had my doubts about that, but in fact she was right: I always felt better after we had played together, even though I wasn’t particularly good at football.
But I could only see Betsy for those few hour
s after school. The rest of the time I was very, very lonely. I always stowed one of the things I’d found by the bin in my pocket. Mostly it was the walnut, but sometimes it was the wooden, ridgy thing, or the matchbox. The last surprise – the package that had been carefully wrapped in newspaper – was some sort of dark green, dried-out leaf. I couldn’t carry that in my pocket or it would have fallen apart. I always left it in my hiding place under the floorboard.
I had figured out a little more about how these things worked. I could only use them once. After that they were used up. So I stowed my leaf away very carefully. I would use it only when I really, really needed it.
Although the other things wouldn’t work any more, having them in my pocket made me feel a little less lonely somehow. Someone was leaving those things for me; someone who knew that I needed them, knew that I would like them. So, I supposed, I did have friends after all. I had Betsy. And someone else too; someone I had never met.
Just as I got used to not talking, I got used to being alone at school. It wasn’t so difficult in class because we had to be quiet in lessons, but, unlike everyone else, I didn’t look forward to playtimes.
I felt much more alone when I was surrounded by all the other children, playing, shouting to one another, running past me as though I was invisible.
I started to dread going to school. My feet dragged along more and more slowly each morning. One day Tiber was annoyed with me for making him late, and started to pull me along by the hand.
It hurt, but he said it was my fault. He told me I would get used to going to school here. He had, hadn’t he?
But I wasn’t so sure I would.
18
One morning, though, Mrs Winters came over during Literacy and said that she wanted me to spend some time with a different teacher.
The new teacher met me outside the classroom. She had very long brown hair that snaked down her back, and a friendly smile. Around her neck she wore a large pendant – a bright blue-green stone – and through her nostril, the shiny curve of a nose ring. When she spoke to me, she bent right down so that her face was level with mine.
‘Hello,’ she said. She looked genuinely pleased to see me, as if we had met before. Like the mother in the playground, Catherine; like Betsy in the garden. ‘I’m Ms Doyle. How do I say your name?’
I whispered it, but because she was so close to me, she heard me and said, ‘Leelu! Am I saying it right? That’s a lovely name. Leelu, Leelu.’ I think she liked saying it out loud; she kept repeating it.
‘Leelu, right. What we’re going to do is visit my room today. I have all sorts of things in there that I think you might like. Do you want to do that?’
I nodded.
‘Let’s go, then,’ she said. She held out her hand and when I took it, I felt the edges of her silver rings. They held large, bluish stones that caught the light.
‘I like your rings,’ I said quietly. Again, I wasn’t sure if she would hear me, but she beamed down at me and said, ‘They’re called moonstones. On my rings. They look a little like the moon, don’t they?’
We came to a very narrow staircase. ‘It’s best to run up here if you can,’ Ms Doyle said and, with that, sprang lightly up the steps ahead of me. The stairs bent round and round, so when I turned each corner I wondered if she might have disappeared.
‘There, we made it.’ Ms Doyle pushed open a door and beckoned me in.
Her room was full of stuff. The ceiling was draped with scarves; the shelves were full of interesting things. Pictures covered every available space. It didn’t feel like I was in school any more but in some sort of treasure chest, where the light was pink and blue and yellow. On one table there were all sorts of animals. On another was a box full of puppets. On every bit of wall hung photographs or bookshelves with books of all shapes and sizes.
I didn’t know where to look first.
‘Would you like some water, Leelu?’ Ms Doyle asked me, and poured me a cup before I could answer. ‘There’s a lot to do up here, but today we are just going to have an explore. Sound good?’
I nodded. While I was looking around, I saw something I recognized on what Ms Doyle called the ‘nature table’. It was just like the stuff I’d found in the matchbox.
‘I have some of this,’ I told her.
‘Moss?’
‘Moss,’ I said, repeating the word.
‘It’s great stuff, isn’t it?’ Ms Doyle said, and passed her clump of moss from hand to hand in much the same way as I had mine when I first found it. ‘It’s so soft. I found this little piece in the woods near where I live. It had completely covered the ground. Where did you find yours?’
‘I just found it in the street,’ I said. I couldn’t help sounding a little sad because the truth was, since I’d found the leaf wrapped in newspaper, nothing else had appeared. For some reason the person had stopped leaving things.
‘Moss can grow in most places, especially on walls,’ Ms Doyle said. ‘We could have a moss hunt, if you like.’
I nodded, and then I spied something else on the nature table that I knew. ‘Miss Doyle?’
‘Oh, you say my name like “mizz”. Like a bee. Mizz Doyle.’ She buzzed a bit more and laughed. ‘What have you noticed, Leelu?’
‘I have one of these too. But my one looks a bit different to this.’ I pointed to another object. It was like the wooden thing I’d found after my first day at school; the thing I didn’t know the name of.
‘A pine cone. They grow on pine trees. Do you know what a pine tree looks like?’
Ms Doyle reached up for a big book, which she flicked through. ‘Here we are,’ she said, showing me a picture of a huge, towering tree with a shaggy mass of leaves; it came to a point at the top.
I looked at the other things on the table. There weren’t any walnuts, but one of the leaves looked like the one I’d found wrapped up in newspaper and tied with string like it was a present. The last surprise.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘That’s just a little piece of bracken. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I love the shape.’
I nodded in agreement. I hadn’t used my piece of bracken to do anything yet – though I was sure that I’d be able to make something happen with it if I wanted to.
‘So, Leelu, is this your favourite part of my room? The nature table?’ Ms Doyle asked me.
I nodded. ‘I like …’ I started to say, but I was so unused to speaking at school that the words stuck somewhere in my throat. I didn’t finish the sentence.
But Ms Doyle smiled warmly and looked at me as though she was carefully considering what I was saying – and I felt my chest loosen. I felt able to speak.
‘I like these things,’ I said, and gestured to the bracken and the moss and the pine cone that I’d placed around me in a circle. Then, all of a sudden, words came bubbling out of me. ‘A friend used to give me things like this. They were like … treasure. But now they’ve stopped and I don’t know why.’
‘Have you asked them why?’ Ms Doyle said gently.
I shook my head.
‘Well, maybe you could give them something back. Have you tried that?’
‘That’s a good idea,’ I said.
Ms Doyle looked at her watch. ‘Gosh, Leelu, it’s time to get you back to your class already. But we’ll meet again. In two days’ time. On Friday. OK? Maybe you would like to bring in some of the things your friend has given you? Sounds like you are quite the collector.’
My face fell at the thought of going back to the classroom. Ms Doyle went quiet for a moment when she noticed. She looked like she was thinking. Her nose ring twinkled in the light.
‘Why don’t you choose one of the things from the nature table?’ she suggested. ‘To give to your friend?’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘I can take something?’
‘Yes, of course. What would you like to take? What do you think they might like?’
I looked from piece to piece, and in the end I took a little bit of what Ms Do
yle told me was bark from a silver birch tree. It felt a bit like paper and was white with brown markings.
For the first time since I’d come to school, I felt myself begin to relax.
I tucked the silver birch bark carefully in between the pages of my reading book so it wouldn’t get damaged in my bag, and smiled.
I hoped that the friend I had never met would like it.
19
The day after I met Ms Doyle, Betsy and I were sitting on the patch of scrubby grass across the road from our houses. Betsy had told me last week that she and her family were going back to Colombia for a couple of weeks but I’d tried not to think about it.
Though I knew that she would come back, two weeks without her felt like a long time.
It was the last afternoon we had together before she left.
The ground beneath us felt cold and we had to keep getting up and running around and stamping our feet to keep warm. I remembered my home, where the earth was baked by the sun and radiated into the soles of your feet. The heat eased into your limbs and your bones, so you never felt truly cold.
‘I go get the football,’ Betsy said, and at that moment her brothers burst out of her house, calling out and jostling one another, the football on the ground in front of them.
‘Hey,’ Betsy shouted out to them. She stood up, lifting her shoulders and straightening her back so that she was as tall as she could possibly be. ‘It’s our turn now.’
‘You had your go, Betsy. You had it yesterday,’ one of the taller boys said.
Betsy had told me their names: Miguel, Juan, Alejandro, David, Diego, Pedro. But I couldn’t tell them apart.
‘Hey!’ Betsy shrieked, and sprinted over to them. Even though she was much smaller than them, she was louder. The boys flinched a little as she shouted. ‘My turn. Me and Leelu. We are cold.’
One of the shorter boys, who was holding the football, looked as though he was going to hand it over.
‘No, Pedro,’ the tall one said, and stood in front of him. ‘Betsy, you and your little friend can’t have it. You can play with us if you want to, but you can’t have it all to yourself.’