My Name Is Mina (11 page)

It was always writing that got me into trouble with Mrs. Scullery. She said I just EXASPERATED her.

“You could be one of my very best pupils, Mina McKee – one of the very best I have ever had, in fact. But you are a constant disappointment! You let the school down, you let your poor mother down, and most of all you let YOURSELF down, time and time and time again. You are a silly and wayward and undisciplined child. Instead of concentrating on the task in hand, you spend your time playing about and drawing attention to yourself and your silly foibles!”

Draw attention to myself? That was just about the last thing I wanted. I wanted to disappear. I didn’t want to be there at all!

The day that brought it to a head was SATS day. SATS Day, the day she started out so calm and sweet, the day she ended screaming out loud in front of the whole class, the day she snarled that I was full of nothing but stupid crackpot notions, the day she put her hands on her hips, glared straight into my face and growled,

“Mina bloody McKee. You are full of sheer
bloody daftness and you are an utter bloody disgrace!”

Bloody. She said it in front of the whole class. It was unheard-of! A teacher said bloody in front of the whole class! That showed how bad things had become!

It was nonsense that did it. And it was SATS day! SATS day! Aaagh! Everybody just had to stay calm! It was nothing special! But everybody was so stressed out! Everybody was so scared! Everybody was so focused on making sure that the school was up to standard. Everybody was so concerned that everybody would all turn out to be better than the average of children of our age throughout the country! Everybody was so concerned that we would get Level 4 and Level 5 and Level 99! We shouldn’t get worked up about it, though! We should just treat SATS day as another ordinary school day! It wasn’t really a test at all! It was just a way of checking that things were going OK at St. Bede’s! It wasn’t really a test of the kids! It was a test of the school! So nothing to do with the kids at all! So just stay calm! So just
don’t worry! Just relax! JUST RELAX! SATS Day was just another ordinary day! But SATS Day was SATS Day! IT WAS SATS DAY!

It started quietly enough. There we were sitting in class, some of the kids white-knuckled as they gripped the edge of their tables, some of them, such as Sophie, chewing their lips, some of them slouched and not caring at all. Some were poised and well prepared and smiling in anticipation, like Samantha, with new pens and pencils laid out neatly on the tables in front of them.

Mrs. Scullery looked like she’d spent the night seeing ghosts. Her hair was sticking out. Her lipstick was slashed across her chops. Her dress was buttoned up all wrong. Her hands were trembling. She goggled red-eyed from her desk at us.

“Remember,” she said to us in a high-pitched wobbly voice. “You must simply do your best, children.” She gave especially appealing glances to the
ones she thought were cleverest, like me. “Just do your best. Please do your best. Please …”

I felt sorry for her. I really did. I felt that somebody should get up and go to her and give her a big hug and say,

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Scullery. It will all be all right.”

But nobody did.

Then she gave the papers out. We had to keep them facedown until she gave the word. Then she said it.

“Turn your papers over and you may begin.”

Oh my God I couldn’t stand it. Why should I write what they told me to write just because they told me to write it? What was the point of that? Why should I write because the school and everybody in it was so stupendously and stupidly stressed out? Why should I write something so somebody could say I was well below average, below average, average, above average or well above average? What’s average? And what about the ones that find out they’re well below average? What’s the point of that and how’s that going to
make them feel for the rest of their lives? And did William Blake do writing tasks just because somebody else told him to? And what Level would he have got anyway?

What Level is that? And what about Shakespeare? “Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble!” What Level’s that? Would Shakespeare have been well above average? And Dickens and Chaucer and Keats and Shirley Hughes and Maurice Sendak and Michael Rosen? Did any of them do stupid silly SATS! I SUSPECT NOT!

I stared out the window for a while. There were no flies dancing in the air that day, though the sunlight was particularly beautiful where it shone on the drops of water left on the glass after a little rain shower. Maybe I’d be able to write about that, or about the birds that kept flitting back and
forward. And there was a lovely pattern where the paint had flaked away at the edge of the window frame. Or maybe I could write a story about Mrs. Scullery’s night with the ghosts. I heard my name whispered. Mina McKee. I looked up. Mrs. Scullery was glaring at me. Everybody was heads down getting their writing done. Mrs. Scullery whispered my name again. I looked at her. I nodded at her and sighed. Poor Mrs. Scullery. I read the first instruction on the paper. “Write a description of a busy place.” Oh my God. I looked up again. THE HEAD TEACHER was looking in through the glass bit of the classroom door. He looked like he’d been with the ghosts as well. He looked like he was about to burst into tears. He caught my eye. He mouthed the words: WRITE. DON’T WORRY! PLEASE WRITE. The poor poor man. So I smiled at him, and nodded, and shrugged, and started to write, and this is what I wrote.