My Name Is Mina (7 page)

I love afternoons like that, like when we talk about things like metempsychosis, when we learn so much, and wonder so much, and explore so much, and ideas grow and take flight, like the idea about the universe and the egg. I love being homeschooled, when we don’t have to stick to subjects and timetables and rules. We’ve been doing it for nearly a year now, ever since the dreaded SATS Day. It seems much longer – maybe because it feels like we’ve got so much freedom and so much space and time. And we’re very happy with it. Mum says it can’t last forever, though. She says I’ll become too isolated, especially as I’m an only child. She even says that schools aren’t really prisons and cages. Yes, they bloody are! I tell her. She shakes her head and grins. Language! she says.

I love being on my own and with her (and with whisper the cat and with the blackbirds and the owls). She knows that, and she says I’m coping very well, but just the other day she sat me down beside her and said,

“There’ll come a time when you’ll need more than this.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will. You’ll need some friends, for instance.”

“Friends?” I whispered.

She stroked my hair. She cuddled me, like I was tiny again.

“Yes, Mina. Friends. You’ll have some lovely friends once you get started. And one day soon, of course, you’ll even start thinking about boys.”

“Thinking about what?”

“About boys.”

I sniffed and looked away, even though I knew it was true.

“No I bloody well won’t!” I said.

She laughed.

“Language! But don’t worry. We’ll take things slowly, step by step.”

Is it true? Will I need to go to school again? I can’t imagine it. Mum says I’m too extreme, but in my view schools are prisons and always have been and always will be. Here’s a poem. I wrote it a couple of years back. I’ll paste it into my journal now.

I love this poem! I love this poem!

I wrote the poem after stupid Mrs. Scullery (or Sculley or whatever her name was) was trying to teach us about tenses, and about the differences between the present and the past and the future.

“Now listen carefully, children,” she said, like we were slow and stupid or really young or something. “If I do something in the present I say I do it. If I say I did it in the past I say I did it. If I say I will do it in the future I say I will do it. Verbs are doing words
^*
, and they have tenses – past tense, present tense and future tense. I have prepared an exercise for you. You must change the tenses of the verbs as indicated. You understand? Of course you do. It is very plain.”

And she handed some worksheets out. They contained a very boring story about a girl walking through a town and meeting lots of people along the way. Yawn, yawn. We had to change the present tense into the past. We got lots of sheets like that
from Mrs. Scullery – sentences with gaps where we had to stick in the missing words, or sentences with the words all mixed up and we had to unmix them to get them to make sense. They were all dead easy and all dead stupid. Usually I’d just put up with it and get on with it, but that day I must have clicked my tongue or something.

“Yes, Mina?” said Mrs. Scullery. “You have something to say?”

Usually I’d just say, No, Miss, but on that day I said, “The thing is, Mrs. Scullery, that it really isn’t very plain at all. The past and the present and the future are much more mysterious than you say they are.”

“Oh, are they? Then please do enlighten us.”

That was so typical of her. SARCASM! I HATE SARCASM! Especially the kind that’s done by teachers.

If I had anything to do with the running of schools, I’d have a big notice put into every single classroom:

Anyway, I did enlighten her.

“Yes, Miss,” I said. “They are much much more mysterious. The past, for instance, was present to the people who lived in it. And the future will quickly become the present and will just as quickly become the past. And in our thoughts, the past and the present and the anticipation of the future exist together.” She stood with her arms folded, waiting for me to go on. So I went on. “Right from the beginning of time, people have attempted to understand time, and they have not managed yet.”

She sighed.

“Finished yet?” she said.

“No. So the mysteries of time cannot be reduced to a worksheet about tenses.”

She sighed more deeply. She stared out of the classroom window into the darkening afternoon. I could see she was thinking that it would have been better for her to be something like a traffic warden or a police constable. Or a sprout, maybe.

“And that’s to say nothing of our dreams,” I said.

“Now you are finished. So please shut up! We are not doing Philosophy, Miss. McKee. This is an English lesson. So do your work!”

I did my work. I seethed inside. What about the dead? I wanted to ask her. They’re supposed to be in the past but what if they’re around us still (even as flakes of dust, for instance, to say nothing of souls)? Are we present when we’re alive and past when we’re dead? And what about the notion that we will rise again? What does that say about the present and the past and the future being different things? The things that the Mrs. Scullerys of the world take for granted and that they think are so plain are not plain.

I scribbled my stupid worksheet. Scullery sat at the desk and dreamed about being a sprout. I grabbed a piece of clean paper and started composing my concrete poem.

That day was near the end of my school days. Not much longer to go till I was at home with Mum. Before that, though, there’d be SATS Day. O my God, SATS Day! That’s another of the tales I’ll have to write. Then there’d be the day
at the Corinthian Avenue Pupil Referral Unit. Now that’s a day to write about.

Even though I hate school, I sometimes think it’d be very interesting to work in one. Or even to run one. I’d make sure there were some really interesting lessons, though I wouldn’t call them “lessons.” That’s what my “Extraordinary Activities” are – much more exciting and productive than the worksheets put out by the Mrs. Scullerys of this world!

Here is another. I expect I will put in others as I go along.