My Name Is Mina (13 page)

They flew away, the charm of goldfinches. Fly, goldfinches! Sing and fly!

Now I sit in the tree and wait. I sit in the blue-green dappled light. I rest my notebook on my knees. I watch Mr. Myers’s house. No movement there. I move my pen across the page.

I play about with my name and my pen and I come up with a concrete poem that shows that Mrs. Scullery was right. Mina McKee truly is hard as iron!

I keep on playing with words and my pen. I look at an empty page and it’s like an empty sky waiting for a bird to fly across it. I imagine a charm of goldfinches flying freely across it. I imagine them disappearing from sight and the sky, and the page is empty again. Then I think of another bird, a skylark. I imagine it flying upwards on the page. I recall the extraordinary fact that the skylark, unlike any other bird, sings as it rises from the earth, sings as it hovers high in the sky and sings as it drops to ground again. The skylark really does seem to be carried on its song!

As I write the skylark high above I see Whisper down below. There he is, prowling in the shadows. The cat is on the hunt. For mice, perhaps. For victims.

BLACK BEAST BLACK BEAST
CREATURE OF THE DARK
CREATURE OF THE UNDERWORLD
CREATURE OF THE HOUSES OF THE DEAD
CREATURE VELVET AS THE VELVET NIGHT
BLACK BEAST PROWLING
THROUGH MY WEIRD DREAMS
BLACK BEAST PURRING
IN MY RED RED HEART
BLACK BEAST YOWLING
IN MY YEARNING SOUL
BLACK BEAST BLACK BEAST
YOUR BLOOD IS MY BLOOD
YOUR CLAWS ARE MY CLAWS
YOUR FUR IS MY FUR
YOUR HEART IS MY HEART
YOU CAME TO ME FROM DARKNESS
YOU ARE MY BLACK BLACK BEAST OF DEEPEST DARK
AND YOU ARE WHISPER
.

I write for what seems like hours in the blue-green dappled light. And my mind and my hand move smoothly together and I am lost in my thoughts and lost in my words and the minutes pass and the minutes pass, and at the secret hidden center of the blue-green eggs the secret hidden creatures grow.

And then I blink and look up and the family is in the street again. I am hidden from them, and my songs are silent so they don’t know that I’m here. I look out through the leaves.

The boy is sullen as always.

The parents are pleased.

They leave in the little blue car.

I watch them leave the street and leave my page.

I think of the mysterious connections between words and the world, and my pen soon moves again, as if I can’t stop writing, perched up here beside the blue-green eggs in the blue-green afternoon.

I SIT IN MY TREE WITH A BOOK AND A PEN AND I WRITE. FOR INSTANCE:

“THERE IS A BOY AND A WOMAN AND A MAN IN THE STREET AND THEY ENTER A HOUSE WHICH ONCE WAS THE HOUSE OF A MAN CALLED ERNIE MYERS.”

FOR INSTANCE:

“THERE IS A CAT NAMED WHISPER WHICH SLINKS PAST THE HOUSE TO THE OVERGROWN GARDEN AT THE BACK OF THE HOUSE.”

FOR INSTANCE:

“THE BLACKBIRDS HAVE MADE THEIR NEST AND THERE ARE THREE BLUE-GREEN BROWN-SPECKLED EGGS IN IT.”

AND SO THEY ALL APPEAR IN MY BOOK:

THE BOY, THE WOMAN, THE MAN, THE CAT
,

THE HOUSE, THE GARDEN
,

THE BLACKBIRDS, THE TREE, THE EGGS, THE NEST
.

AND SOMETIMES I HESITATE
.

AND SOMETIMES I WONDER
,

IS THERE SOMEONE WHO WRITES
,

“THERE IS A GIRL CALLED MINA SITTING IN A TREE.”

IS THERE SOMEONE WHO WRITES
,

“SOMETIMES SHE HESITATES AND SOMETIMES SHE WONDERS.”

AND IF THERE IS, WHO IS IT?

WHO WRITES MINA?

WHO WRITES ME?

I could have gone on writing until darkness came, but Mum called me in. I climbed out of the tree. It felt so weird, like I was coming out from a dream. Or like I was coming out from a poem or a story, or like I was a poem or a story myself. Or like I was coming out from an egg! Spaghetti pomodoro helped me to feel ordinary again. Spaghetti pomodoro! I curled it around my fork and plunged it into my mouth. I slurped the dangling threads of pasta. I licked the sauce that dribbled down my chin. I chewed and rolled it all around my mouth. Delicious! So delicious! One of the most delicious things in the known universe!

Mum says that one day we’ll go to Italy together and eat spaghetti pomodoro in the land of its birth. We’ll have Parmesan cheese and Parma ham and sun-dried tomatoes and polenta and risotto and olives and garlic and fettuccini and ice cream and
tiramisu and zabaglione in the land of their birth, where they taste far better than anywhere else. I haven’t traveled much yet but Mum says I will, when we can afford it.

When we finish the spaghetti, and the lovely tomatoey garlicky taste is still on our tongues, we sit on the sofa and eat ice cream as the sun goes down outside the window.

I tell her about the blackbirds’ eggs and the goldfinches and the family at Mr. Myers’s house who look as if they will soon move in.

Then we’re quiet, and we watch the sky darkening and reddening as the sun goes down. We see birds flapping nestward. We see an airplane far far away and oh so high. I think of the astounding journeys that birds make across the world. And I think of the journeys I could make one day.

“Bologna,” I say softly.

She smiles. Sometimes we do this, just list the names of the places we’ll go to one day.

“Andalucia.”

“Luxor.”

“Trinidad.”

“Seaton Sluice.”

The reason that we have so little money is that she cut down on the work she did when I left school so that she could care for me properly and have the time to teach me. But she never mentions it. She only says that until the day we set off together, I will have to travel in my mind.

“And in my dreams,” I say.

“Yes. You can travel in your dreams.”

“To Ashby-de-la-Zouch,” I say.

“Or Vladivostok.”

“Corryvreckan, Trinidad, Peru.”

The sky outside is almost black.

“I found out such an interesting thing today,” she says.

“Did you?”

“Yes. It seems that some birds fly right through the night, and sleep as they fly.”

“They sleep as they fly?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of birds?”

“Swifts, it seems.”

I smile at the thought.