Mira in the Present Tense (6 page)

“What's that?” asks Nana, pointing to a spot on my cheek that's mushroomed like magic overnight. It's just as I thought…this oozy red spot is doing its best to blow my cover.

“Oh! Darling Mira. Such a shame…and you've always had such perfectly peachy skin,” Nana exclaims, poking the head of my painful pustule and making me flinch away from her.

My mum is shooting Nana a “Do you have to?” look, not that Nana notices.

“It all starts to change from now on. It'll be boyfriends and periods next. You know it might not be long, Uma,” Nana announces, giving me the once over, before turning to Mum. “They're starting earlier and earlier these days, you know. It's something to do with their weight. How old were you?”

Great! Now she's talking about my weight as if I'm not even in the room. I know every detail about periods. There is nothing that my mum hasn't told me about why you have periods, how they can make you feel, and, yes, I know when Mum started her period—she was twelve like me, and Nana Josie was fourteen. Aunty Abi was thirteen. And this is probably the moment I should tell them, right now, except that Nana would probably get dressed up and do some ancient ceremonial dance around the room, or light a candle or something to celebrate me becoming a
woman
. So I don't tell because that's what a diary's for, isn't it?

“It's hard to believe I've been buying art materials from Dusty for half a century,” sighs Nana as we munch on leftover birthday cake. Even Nana's tucking in today.

“Let's see how the old boy's getting on.”

Nana stands up and shakes the crumbs off her lap.

She's determined to make this trip.

Half of a hundred. I can't even imagine fifty years.

Actually, I can't imagine anything in numbers. I'm rubbish at math. If someone asks me one of those questions like, “If your Nana was born in 1931 and she lived till 2005, how old would she be when she died?” (which, of course they wouldn't ask), I would know how to work it out, but it would take me so much longer than everyone else. Krish would jump in with an answer way before me. I'd spend ages just staring at the numbers, and when I look at numbers my mind goes blank.

Nana is seventy-four years old. That sounds really old to me, but she doesn't feel like an old lady. My math teacher is always nagging me to learn my “number facts.” The problem is I don't really believe in number facts because Nana is seventy-four years old, but, to me, she's younger than most of the mums and teachers at school. I don't mean how they look, I mean…they're just not as young or as fun as she is: they don't get excited about things like painting or music or wrapping presents, not like Nana Josie does. Maybe, if you stop getting excited about things, that's what makes you old. Then, when I think about it, it's the exact opposite with Laila, because she's so new, only ten months old, but it seems like she's been in our family forever. So I don't think how old you are is really a number fact at all. Nana says she has never felt older than sixteen, but time took no notice of how she felt—it just kept on ticking.

We park right next to Dusty Bird's art shop. Nana leans on my arm as Mum and I walk her inside. She wants acrylic water-based paints. Nana says it's very important to choose the exact colors she has in her mind. I can't believe how many shades of the same color you can buy. First we go down the white row.

When you really look, most of the paints aren't white at all. Nana reads my thoughts.

“It's a good lesson in relativity, isn't it? Something that looks white next to red can look mauve next to another shade of white. Does that make any sense?” she asks.

I nod. It sort of does.

“It's not all white, innit!” That's Nana's terrible East End accent.

“Look at this.” She picks up Opaque Titanium White, which is actually bright white, then she pulls out a paint called Lilac Pearl, that makes Titanium White look lilac.

“See what I mean?” Nana lifts the bottle up to the light.

I do.

Next, we walk along the rows of yellows; Nana knows the exact color she's looking for.

“Ah! Yellow Ochre, you'll get a lot of use out of this one.”

Nana talks to me as if I'm already an artist, like she knows something about me that I don't really know myself yet. Dad says it's natural for grandparents to want their grandchildren to follow in their footsteps. I can understand that, but when Nana Josie talks about art it's not about what I'm going to be in the future. It's about what I am now. Sometimes Nana really embarrasses me when she introduces me to her friends, saying things like…“This is my granddaughter, Mira, a fellow artist.”

We are walking down a corridor of golden colors. The precious golden paint is on the very highest shelf, but Nana's so small she can't reach. Dusty Bird, who is as short as Nana, comes over with a ladder. As he climbs up, I can hear his knees creek on every rung. Dusty Bird looks older than Nana, or maybe it's just that I don't think of her as being old because I know her.

“What kind of gold are you after, Josie?”

“Nothing yellowy, nothing sharp or brassy, more of a deep burnt gold, Dusty.”

“You were always a class act.” Dusty Bird peers under his glasses down the ladder at Nana and winks.

“Thanks, Dusty,” Nana giggles, running her fingers through her spiky silvery hair, as if remembering how long and silky it once was.

I love the way Nana talks about colors, like she thinks each one has a personality. Dusty brings down a few bottles for her to inspect. In the end she chooses Dark Gold.

We are moving through Dusty Bird's corridors of colors, passing through a rainbow…red (just the sight of it brings up that tin-metal taste in my mouth) and yellow and pink and…

“This is the one: Golden Green Lake.” Nana reads the label fondly, as if she's just bumped into an old friend.

Dusty Bird follows us around with his ladder, offering to help as Nana scans her memory for the names of the colors she's used before. Purple and orange and…

“We're painting the sea…ultramarine, I think, Dusty.”

“Ultramarine Blue Light?” he guesses.

“That's it, Dusty.” Nana grins and claps her hands together.

It's a new game, where Dusty has to match the description to the paint.

“Turquoise?” Nana asks, testing him.

There are about ten different shades, but he picks out Deep Turquoise Blue.

“That's your usual, Josie.”

Nana nods and drops the bottle into the basketful of paints that Mum's carrying for her while attempting to distract Laila from pulling every paint pot in her reach off the shelves.

“Just the gray, I remember,” groans Nana, “Payne's Gray. Well-named, that one, Dusty, because if pain has a color it's definitely gray.”

Dusty Bird peers at Nana with a question in his eyes, but he doesn't ask her anything. When we finally get to the check out, Dusty offers Nana a seat.

“What are you up to these days, Josie?”

“I'm working on dying at the moment.” Nana smiles at Dusty as if she hasn't said anything out of the ordinary. “It's my swan song, this coffin. It's all going up in smoke, Dusty, that's why it can't be oil based, you see,” Nana explains, smiling at him.

Dusty Bird smiles back.

“You're an original, Josie. Damien Hirst's got nothing on you.”

Laila starts gurgling and Dusty Bird crosses over to our side of the counter to coo at her.

“This your latest?”

Nana nods. It sounds funny, as if Laila is Nana Josie's baby. He doesn't seem to notice my mum.

“Pretty little thing, isn't she?” Then he looks from me to Laila. “Another beauty, just like her nana.” Dusty Bird winks at Nana again. She pushes him away, as if to say, “Stop talking such nonsense,” but she's pleased with the compliment, all the same.

Dusty takes Nana's hand and walks her to the car. They're like toddlers supporting each other…a delicate gray-haired girl and a tubby bald boy. By the time Nana finally gets into the car, all the color has drained from her skin. She can't seem to catch her breath; it's as if she's been running. Dusty scurries back into the shop, returning with a glass of water. Nana takes tiny sips, but it's a huge effort for her to swallow.

“This blasted pain,” Nana gasps.

She carries on sipping, swallowing deep breaths of air, and eventually her breathing slows. Dusty Bird leans into the car. They look straight into each other's eyes for what seems like ages, but it's probably just seconds ticking slowly. Then he holds Nana's face in his hands and kisses her right on the lips…the kind of kiss that means something.

When someone is dying, everything you say and do means more than it normally does. When someone is dying, you notice things…everything really. The whole of life is in slow motion. Dusty Bird's eyes fill up with tears. My nana holds his hand for a moment and then he quickly closes the car door and gives the roof a tap. His rooftop tapping says, “Go on, get out of here. I can't bear to say good-bye.”

He stands in the doorway of his shop and waves us off. Mum waits for a gap in the traffic. I turn round to look at Dusty Bird as he walks inside. The last thing I see is him “man crying” (that's what Mum calls that sort of choked-up cry). His back, round like a tortoiseshell, heaves up to his ears, and then drops down again. He rubs his eyes with his fists in a rough way, like he's angry with himself, but his tortoiseshell back carries on heaving up and down, up and down.

At last there is a space in the traffic and we turn out onto the road.

By the time we pass the Forum, where a line of people, all with the same quiffy hairstyle like Elvis Presley, are queuing up for tickets for a gig, Nana has finally got her breath back, enough to laugh at the “characters,” as she calls them, in the queue. Nana thinks, compared to the '60s, we live in a dull, ironed-out world where everyone pretty much looks the same.

“Dusty Bird's always had a bit of a soft spot for me. We used to show paintings together on the Embankment. Dusty would flirt outrageously with me and then he and Kit would start their usual banter…‘What's your secret, old man?' he'd ask Kit, and your granddad would always answer the same way…‘Charm, Dusty. If you've got to ask, you haven't got it.' ‘Then make sure you don't lose it,' Dusty would tease…“

Nana stares out of the window. I don't even know if she's talking to us or herself. It's like her memories are kaleidoscoping her back in time.

“He wasn't bad-looking in his day. He had this long mane of curly black hair and green eyes, a bit of a gypsy look, a real beatnik.”

“What's a beatnik, Nana?” I ask.

“Arty types, writers, us lot, in the fifties and sixties…rebels, protesters. We couldn't stand being told what to think or how to behave. We had a lot of battles to fight,” she sighs. “We were young! You'll do the same one day, hopefully.”

For some weird reason, when Nana talks about having battles to fight, I can't help thinking of Jidé Jackson, but then again it seems like I can't help thinking about him, whatever anyone says.

“I thought you were a hippy?” I say.

“We evolved,” laughs Nana.

It's impossible to think of Dusty Bird as a beatnik or a hippy, or whatever. He's bald and quite fat and old. But when he looked at Nana I think he could see her as she was when she was young, and she could see him too. Sometimes you just think of people as old and you don't think about who they are or what they've done in their lives.

It's easier for me to imagine Nana when she was young because I've got photos of her, and she was more beautiful than most people I've ever seen, even in magazines and films. She had long, thick black hair with short bangs, and huge dark brown eyes. She was small and slim…as small as me. She looked a lot like that actress in the old films Nana likes to watch—I think her name is Vivien Leigh.

It's not just the photos that make it easier to imagine her being young. Nana still wears clothes from the '60s. Aunty Abi calls it “vintage gear,” but Nana says it's just her original bohemian wardrobe that she's never grown out of. She says she's been waiting for a new fashion that would make her ditch her old look, but she hasn't been convinced by anything else yet, and now, apparently, “the wheel of fashion has turned full circle.”

Nana Josie has got to be the most stylish person I know. She always wears beads and jewelry and something—a scarf, a ring, a handbag, anything really, that nobody else has, because you wouldn't know where to buy the things she wears. I can see why Dusty Bird wanted to go out with Nana and I can understand why he cried man tears for her and kissed her on the lips, even though he is bald and old and fat and Nana Josie is seventy-four years old and dying of cancer.

When we get back to the flat, we walk Nana to her bedroom. She's trying to slow her breathing. Mum eases Nana's shoes off and helps her onto the bed. Then she opens a pot of lavender cream, and starts to massage her feet. Since we were babies Mum has always massaged our feet, so I kind of know how to do it. I take Nana's other foot and massage the cream into her hard skin. Nana sighs the air out of her lungs as if to say, “Thank you.” Her foot is getting heavier and heavier in my hand. You can hardly hear her breathing now and I can tell, by the weight of her foot, that she's fallen asleep. We cover her with the duvet, then Piper jumps up onto the bed and lies on top of her feet. I think he likes the smell of lavender. Usually I like it too, but right now it's making me feel quite sick.