The Naming of Tishkin Silk

by Glenda Millard

  ‘Why did she go away, Griff?’ The flame burning inside Griffin began to flicker as though someone was trying to blow it out, but he couldn’t stop now.

  ‘I think it was because I didn’t love her enough.’

  ‘Did you tell her that?’

  ‘No, but she must have known.’ Griffin felt the tears on his cheeks and was glad it was dark so that Layla couldn’t see them. The words came quickly as he tried to explain the way things had happened, before his tears put out the last of the flame of courage.

  He told Layla how excited everyone had been; when Mama had found out she was expecting another baby. Griffin was happy too, in the beginning.

  It was such a surprise, because Griffin had been the full stop at the end of the Silk family. Daddy had said so at his Naming Ceremony. He had reminded Daddy about that, and Daddy had laughed and said that he had made a mistake and that Griffin would be a comma instead. Griffin didn’t mind that so much, but after Tishkin’s arrival came the bad thoughts. Sometimes he wished that she had never been born. It had been nice to have a special place in the family, and now that he was just a comma, no one seemed to have time for him any more. Everyone was much more interested in the new baby.

  ‘But how could she know that, Griff? She was just a baby. How could she read your heart?’

  ‘I don’t know, but she must have, because babies are so perfect and not a bit worn out or anything. They don’t just die for no reason, do they?’

  Layla’s blue eyes opened wide. Her chest felt tight and it was hard to breathe. She hadn’t expected this. She’d thought Tishkin was away, somewhere else, maybe with a different family, maybe in a hospital, but somewhere … alive. Not this. Not dead. No wonder Griffin hadn’t wanted to talk about her.

  ‘Maybe she was sick?’ said Layla when she was able to breathe properly again. Her voice sounded like a stranger’s to her.

  ‘No, I went to look at her when Mama put her to bed. It was the night before she went away.’ Griffin remembered looking at his baby sister in the summer coloured crib. She was such a happy little girl. She had a big round face with red, dimpled cheeks and fuzzy yellow hair like an angel. She smiled at him and dribbled and he put his finger out for her to hold. He remembered thinking how lovely she would look in the daisy coronet he had made for her that afternoon. He kissed her goodnight and she laughed and caught his hair in her fat little fingers. Maybe it wasn’t so bad having a baby sister after all, he had thought. But it was too late. The next morning he had woken to find the crib empty and Mama and Daddy and Tishkin gone.

  ‘Nell told us that Mama had woken up to feed Tishkin and found that she had died in the night. They took her to the hospital in the Bedford, but the doctors couldn’t make her better. And now she’s gone and she didn’t even get a name because of me and I don’t know if Mama will ever come home either.’

  ‘Where is your Mama?’

  ‘In a kind of hospital.’

  ‘Is she sick?’

  ‘Sort of. She misses Tishkin and cries a lot and she can’t come home till she’s better.’

  They sat for a while in the darkness. Layla still kept hold of Griffin’s hand and he didn’t mind at all. It meant that even though she knew about the horrible thoughts he had had, she still wanted to be his friend.

  ‘Griff,’ she asked, ‘why don’t you write to your mother and ask her to come home? Maybe she thinks you don’t care that she’s not at home with you.’

  ‘I draw pictures and send them to her sometimes, so do the girls and they write to her.’

  ‘Yes, but does anyone tell her that they want her to come home?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why don’t you send her an invitation?’

  ‘An invitation to what?’ Suddenly Griffin realised the Bedford was at the gate.

  ‘To a party or something. Oh, Griff, I’ve just had a great idea … ’ Griffin turned to Layla just as the lights of the truck swept up the drive. Her eyes sparkled, ‘Why don’t we have a Naming Day Ceremony … for Tishkin!’

  10. Homecoming

  When a child is born on that most uncommon day, the twenty-ninth of February, arrangements must be made to celebrate their birth at some other time. For leap years occur only once every four years, which is what makes them so uncommon.

  It had become the tradition of the Silk family to celebrate Griffin’s birthday on the twenty-eighth day of February, so it came as a surprise when he asked Nell if he could have a party on the twenty-seventh day of February.

  ‘But the twenty-seventh is a Friday. Wouldn’t it be better to have it on the weekend?’ asked Nell. ‘We could have it on the Sunday, the first of March, if you really want to have a change.’

  But Griffin was determined. ‘Please Nell, I really want to have it on the twenty-seventh,’ he pleaded, hoping Nell wouldn’t guess why.

  ‘I might need to take the day off school to help you,’ he said hopefully. But Nell just smiled and shook her head.

  Layla offered to go home with him after school on the day of the party and help with the organising. She was delighted when Griffin told her she was invited. ‘You’ll have to dress up,’ he said. ‘Nell will loan you a hat and some high- heeled shoes if you want them.’

  Layla had brought a stamp and an envelope from home and at lunchtime she helped Griffin to write an invitation to his mother. ‘I’ll post it on the way home and then it will be a secret,’ she said and Griffin could tell that Layla liked secrets.

  There are some days when heaven seems much closer to earth than others, and Friday the twenty- seventh of February was one of them. At dusk the sky was watermelon pink, furrowed with apricot. Sweet sunbaked fruit still clung to the branches of the Cox’s Orange Pippin and filled the thick, warm air with the smell of apple pie.

  The Rainbow Girls loved parties and had helped Layla dress up in an old straw hat of Nell’s with a peacock feather stuck in its crown and a pair of high-heeled red shoes. They loaned her long strands of glittering glass beads and an elegant pair of black evening gloves, which came right up to her armpits. Griffin wondered how they would feel when they found out the real reason for the party.

  While Nell and the girls prepared the food and drink inside the house, Griffin and Layla scattered cushions like coloured confetti on the grass. Blue, looking splendid in a red satin bow tie, sat down on the biggest of the cushions. Griffin wanted to put Mama’s old cane chair under the tree, but he thought he would wait and see. He hadn’t had a reply to the invitation he had sent Mama, but Layla said it took a long time for letters to get all the way down to the city. He hoped it had arrived.

  Daddy had promised not to be too late for the party, but already it was starting to get dark. Nell lit some portable gaslights and hung them from the branches of the tree and Violet and Amber arranged terracotta pots with candles in them along the table. Just as Griffin and Layla got to the veranda to wait for the Bedford, Scarlet called out from inside the house and asked them to take some plates of food down to the table. By the time they had finished, Griffin could hear the familiar whine of his father’s truck.

  He stood still for a moment, almost afraid to go and look. Layla took his hand and together they walked to the front of the house. As the truck neared, Daddy began to sound the horn. Nell and the Rainbow Girls came running to see what the fuss was all about and as the truck wheeled to a stop in front of the shed, Griffin felt as though his feet had been nailed to the ground.

  It was too dark to see inside the windows of the truck. Daddy jumped down from the cabin and ran around to the other door. He swung it open and leaned inside and when he turned, there was Mama in his arms. The girls all rushed over to greet her.

  ‘Gently, girls, gently,’ said Daddy and he carefully let Mama down on to the rough gravel path of her home. She kissed them all and then hung on to Daddy’s arm. And as she slowly walked towards Griffin and Layla, Griffin saw that she held in her hand the envelope, which he and Layla had sent her with the invitation ins
ide it.

  ‘Thank you, Griffin,’ she said softly and knelt down to hold him close.

  She held him with warm, strong, loving arms. This was Mama. Not the sad frail stranger they had all visited at Christmas, who had looked through them, past them, as though she was trying to see someone else. This was Mama, almost as she had been before Tishkin went away.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she whispered, ‘for making me see that it was time I came home to my family.’

  She stood up then and said, ‘You must be Layla.’

  Griffin wondered how his mother knew Layla’s name. Layla nodded happily and although she wasn’t wearing a crown tonight, she extended her elegantly gloved hand.

  ‘I’m so pleased to meet you, Layla,’ Mama went on, ‘and thank you very much for the little note you put in with the invitation.’

  Then Griffin realised how Mama knew Layla’s name. Layla hadn’t told him that she was going to put a note in his invitation. He wondered what she had written on it.

  11. Naming Tishkin

  Most special occasions celebrated in the Silk family were done so according to a pattern. And each celebration had its own pattern. Griffin found it comforting to know the way things would be. For birthday parties, the food was eaten before the present giving and speeches. Naming Day Ceremonies were different. First came the speeches and then the feasting. So Griffin knew that he had to start the Naming Day Ceremony right away.

  He picked up his school-bag and walked to the end of the long table, where Daddy usually stood on Naming Days.

  Layla said, ‘Shush everybody.’

  And the breeze held its breath and the girls stilled their tongues and it seemed that the whole world waited, while Griffin took something from his bag with shaking fingers. It looked like a flower press. It was a flower press. It was the one Daddy had carved him for his third Christmas. There was silence as he unscrewed the brass wing nuts and removed the carved wooden top.

  ‘I thought we should have a Naming Day for our baby sister,’ he said without lifting his eyes from the press in front of him. ‘That’s why I wanted the party today, because the twenty-seventh day of February was her birthday. I haven’t got a proper Naming Day book for her, but I thought we could use my flower press to start with, because that’s where I put her daisy chain.’ He lifted the tissue from the first page and underneath was the baby sized crown, pressed flat and kept perfect since Tishkin went away.

  Griffin picked it up carefully and it swung like a hoop of tiny suns from his finger. He looked up and saw the candlelight dancing in nine pairs of eyes as they waited for him to speak again and all the words that he wanted to say stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  Daddy stood up and walked to the end of the table. He put his arm around Griffin’s shoulders and said, ‘You’re right Griffin, we should have had a Naming Day, but we’ve been too sad to do it. We’ve stopped talking about our baby, all of us, because in some way each of us felt that there must have been something we could have done to stop her from dying, that in some way it was our fault.’

  Griffin looked up at his father, surprised. He hadn’t known that other people felt like that too.

  Daddy continued, ‘But there was nothing any of us could have done,’ he said. For a while there was silence while images of the baby Silk floated before each one of them. ‘It has taken the courage of a lion to do what you have done today, Griffin,’ said Daddy. ‘You are right. Though your sister stayed with us such a short time, we must celebrate her life. We should offer her a name.’

  He had placed a brown paper parcel on the table and began to unwrap it. ‘I started to carve a cover for her book, but I haven’t put the name on it yet.’ It was a beautiful cover, there was a baby on it with plump cheeks and curly hair and from her back sprouted two little wings, so that she looked like an angel. ‘When Mama got your invitation, there was a note inside from Layla. She said that you had a special name that you call our baby. Mama and I talked about it on the way home and we would like it very much if you would offer that name to our baby. Then I’ll carve it on the cover.’

  Griffin looked down to where Mama sat in her cane chair under the gas-lit apple boughs with her yellow hair streaming down her back and on her lips the most beautiful smile. Nell sat beside her in the grass, with Zeus perched on her shoulder, his white eye bright in the darkness. The lipstick smiles on the Rainbow Girls were as wide as clowns’ mouths. At Griffin’s bare, brown feet sat Blue, feeling the vibrations of his master’s voice. And Layla, his friend, lay on her back, carefully watching the patches of moonlight between the gaps in the leaves. It was like a photograph in Griffin’s head, one he knew he would never forget.

  Just then a gentle breath of wind passed by the Kingdom of Silk and rustled the leaves of the Cox’s Orange Pippin. Griffin heard them whisper and he raised his mighty wings and lifted his head to the heavens and called out in a loud clear voice, ‘To my little sister, I offer you the name of Tishkin Silk.’

  Copyright

  The ABC ‘Wave’ device is a trademark of the

  Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is used

  under licence by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.

  First published in Australia in 2003

  This edition published in 2011

  by HarperCollinsPublishersAustralia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  www.harpercollins.com.au

  Copyright © text Glenda Millard 2003

  Copyright © illustrations Caroline Magerl 2003

  The right of Glenda Millard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Millard, Glenda.

  The Naming Of Tishkin Silk./ Glenda Millard

  ISBN: 978-0-7333-1314-1 (pbk.)

  ISBN: 978-0-7304-9547-5 (ePub)

  1. Family – Juvenile fiction. 2. Missing persons – Juvenile fiction. I. Magerl, Caroline. II. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. III. Title.

  A823.3