My Name Is Mina (18 page)

I walk the words.

A life-time to learn to paint like a child

A life-time to learn to paint like a child

“Wordsworth used to write as he walked,” she says.

“Did he?”

“Yes. He said that the rhythm of walking. helped him to find the rhythms of his poetry.”

“Makes sense.”

“It does.”

To write is to take some words for a walk

The words foll-ow the rhy-thm of the feet

The feet foll-ow the rhy-thm of the words

To write is to take some words for a walk

“And walking’s also a kind of meditation,” she says.

“Is it?”

“Yes. Meditation’s often about sitting very still and keeping the mind very still.”

“Like I do in the tree sometimes?”

“Yes. But there is also walking meditation. You concentrate on every step. You think of nothing else. You do nothing but walk. You hope to become clear and calm.”

We try it. We walk side by side along the pathway through the park. Now I don’t think about words or lines. I try to think of nothing but taking one step then another step then another step. We breathe slowly and regularly.

“Now think about nothing,” she says. “Just walk while you walk.”

But as we walk through the park, I suddenly can’t help thinking of the tunnel underneath and I get agitated instead of calm. Mum knows somehow. She stops. She looks at me. She waits. I find myself telling her about the day that I ran out of school and went down there all alone and saw the man and the dog. I tell her I thought I’d be able to go down there and bring Dad back, that I was trying to do what Orpheus was trying to do. I manage to laugh about it as I tell her.

“I must have been so stupid,” I tell her. “I
must have been so young.”

I keep on trying to laugh, but I’m nearly crying now.

She holds me tight.

“You should have told me at the time,” she says.

“I’m telling you now.”

“And you really saw a dog?” she asks me.

“Yes. A man and a dog. I thought the dog was Cerberus. I thought the man was some kind of guardian of the Underworld. I thought I was going down to Hades!”

“Oh, Mina!”

I manage to laugh again.

“He was probably just one of the workmen,” I say. “The dog was probably just a stray.”

I even manage to giggle now.

“Take me further, feet,” I say, and we keep on walking in the light as I remember walking in the dark.

“I thought if I kept on walking and walking,” I tell her, “I’d see Pluto and Persephone!”

“Oh, Mina! What a girl!”

“I had it all planned in my mind, I think,” I say.

“And what would you have said to Pluto and Persephone?”

I laugh.

“Give him back! Give him back!”

She shakes her head.

“Give him back!” she murmurs.

We keep on walking. We’re silent for a while. We listen to the birds and the city all around us.

She asks if I’m OK, if I’m really OK.

“Yes.”

I want to shut up but I find myself telling her about Sophie’s visit as we walk.

“That was nice of her,” says Mum. “Maybe she’ll come again.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe she could be your friend again.”

I shrug.

“Maybe.”

And I want to be clear and calm but I find myself thinking about the boy from the family standing in the street, and I find myself
telling her about him, too.

“And does he look interesting?” she says.

I shrug.

“Maybe.”

She smiles and seems about to say something more, but then she just takes my hand and squeezes it and says, “I’m sure he is.”

I turn my mind away from the underworld and from Sophie and the boy. I concentrate on the calming rhythm of walking.

My feet will take me where they wish to go

My feet will take me where they wish to go

My feet will take me where they wish to go

As I breathe the syllables at every step, the rhythm turns the words into a kind of music. The walking turns into a kind of walking dance.

We don’t ask each other where we should walk, but we walk upwards, on the pathway by the stream that runs through the park. It rushes and gurgles at our side. A road bridge carries noisy traffic over us. We pass a little field where boys are playing football and yelling wildly at each other. “Cross it! To him! To me! On me head! Yesss! Oh,
no!” We come to the little petting zoo where there are little goats with little horns and potbellied pigs and beautiful glistening noisy peacocks. There are tiny children sitting in buggies, and toddlers holding their mums’ hands. They lean down and whisper to the goats and pigs, just like I once did, and I watch, and it’s like looking back through time. I think of the new baby in the street. I think of the baby as “she.” She will come here, before too long, to lean down and whisper at the goats and pigs. Maybe I will bring her here. Maybe I will hold her hand and walk with her through the park and take her home again. I catch my breath at the joy of the thought of that. A little girl in our street. A little girl to be my friend!

We walk again. We climb the path towards the exit from the park. The birds are noisy in the hedges and the undergrowth. We step through the park gate. There’s a parade of small shops outside. A hairdresser named Kurl Up ’n’ Dye, a Chinese takeaway named Wok This Way, and Pani’s Pizza & Pasta Place.

We keep on walking. We don’t ask where we
should walk to but we both know where we’re going now. We pass the shops. We walk by a busy road.

The traff-ic is so noi-sy at our side

The traff-ic is so noi-sy at our side

The traff-ic is so noi-sy at our side

We arrive at another set of massive gates and we step through into the graveyard. We pause for a moment. So many graves, so many bodies, so many souls, so many people gone. Rows and rows and rows of them. And monuments, and angels, and crosses, and flat tables, and carved names and dates, and pots with flowers in them, and a great big sky above. And people like us, walking slowly by the graves, standing still, leaning down at particular ones, whispering and praying.

We hold each other’s hand and walk again. We come to Dad and stand there side by side.

“Hello, Dad,” I whisper.

“Hello, love,” Mum whispers, too.

I pick up a sweet wrapper that’s blown onto the ground above him. Mum tugs away a little weed. I remember him holding me as he read to me. Mum closes her eyes, clasps her hands, remembering,
too, I suppose, or praying, or maybe even telling him about Colin Pope.

I love you, Dad, I whisper.

I do shed a tear. I do know that wherever he is or whatever he is now, there’s no way for him to come back again. There’s no Underworld to go to. There’s no Pluto to go to. But it’s lovely standing there, the two of us, sharing the memory of Dad. I think of his breath in the air around us, the molecules of his water in the drifting clouds, the echo of his words in my memory as he read to me.

The sky’s so huge, so blue. There are blackbirds singing, and a single loud and lovely lark. I try to see it, but it’s so so high and so far away that it can’t possibly be seen. I look down again and a single white feather is tumbling slowly past our feet. Mum stoops down and catches it. She presses it against my shoulder.

“A perfect fit,” she says. “Must be one of yours, Mina.”

“Must be.”

She hands it to me. I spread my arms and pretend to fly, holding the feather out with my
fingertips. Then I let the feather go. It falls slowly towards the earth and drifts away again across the pathways and graves.

“Now the breeze is taking the feather for a walk,” I say. “And it won’t know where it’s going till it gets there.”

We stay a little longer. We murmur more words, then we whisper goodbye and we walk away.

Time’s passing fast. The sky’s already reddening as it heads to dusk. I feel so light, so loose, just like a feather on a breeze, like a word wandering without any definite rhythms, like a weaving wandering line. The air’s so gentle. It feels like Persephone’s really on her way.

“Let’s treat ourselves,” says Mum. “Pizza? Or a Chinese to carry home?”

She looks at the menu of Wok This Way.

“Fried King Prawns in Kung Po Sauce!” she says. “Spring Rolls! Pork Cha Sui!”

I look at Pani’s.

“Spaghetti Pomodoro! Pizza Quattro Stagione!”

She laughs and guides me to the door of
Pani’s Pizza & Pasta Place. A waiter greets us like we’re long-lost friends. He calls us two fine ladies. He gives us both a red rose. We sit at the back of the restaurant, the only ones at first, then other little families and couples start coming in. Music’s playing, someone singing “O Sole Mio.”

She sings quietly along for a line or two.

I order a pizza margherita with anchovies and olives and garlic.

Mum orders angel-hair pasta with clams and shrimps.

We grin at each other. She drinks white wine. I drink lemonade.

The food comes and is delicious.

“Fantastico!” she sighs.

“Marvelloso!” I say.

“O sole mio!” she quietly sings.

The day continues to darken outside.

I have pistachio and strawberry and vanilla ice cream. Mum has Panna Cotta con Caramello.

“For the sound of it as much as the taste of it,” she says. “Say the words: Panna Cotta con Caramello.”

We say the words together. With two long-handled spoons we eat the sweets together. We sigh at such deliciousness.

Mum drinks coffee, then we go out into the gathering night. We retrace our steps towards home, go down into the park again. We follow the stream. We hear birds settling down in the hedges and the undergrowth. A couple of cats, black beasts, are prowling, hunting.

We sit on a bench by the stream in the dark.

“That was lovely, wasn’t it?” says Mum.

“Delicioso!”

“And the walk? And the visit to Dad?”

“Fantastico!”

“You are OK, aren’t you?”

“Yes, mostly.”

“Mostly’s pretty good.”

She puts her arm around me. We watch the stars intensify. We stand up and slowly walk on. We follow the footpath.

“When you grow up,” I said, “do you ever stop feeling little and weak?”

“No,” she says. “There’s always a little frail
and tiny thing inside, no matter how grown-up you are.”

“Like a baby?” I say.

“Yes. Or like a tiny bird, right at the heart of you,” she says. “It’s not really weak at all. If we forget it’s there, we’re in deep trouble.”

We walk on, heading for the gates, but she takes my hand and turns me away from the path.

We walk to the darkest part of the park, beyond the swings and the bowling green. A few lights mark the pathways behind us. Lights from Crow Road and Falconer Road and from the city twinkle through the trees. The night’s dead still. I think again of the Underworld, and I shudder, then I turn my thoughts away. I feel the solid earth under my feet. I feel the air on my skin. I lift my eyes to the sky, to the millions of stars.

Mum shows me Saturn and Venus. She points out the constellations: Virgo, Cancer, Leo. She shows me the cluster of the Pleiades. We try to look further, further, through the stars that are scattered like dust across eternity. We try to make out the beasts and weird winged beings that the Greeks
described up there: bears and dogs and horses and crabs and Pegasus and Daedalus and Icarus. We imagine a sky filled with beasts and beings.

“We’re looking across billions and billions and billions of miles,” she says. “The light from some of the stars has taken millions of years to reach us.”

“We’re time travelers!” I say.

“Yes.”

“And we’re made of the same stuff. The stars and us.”

“Yes. No matter how far away we are from each other.”

We stand dead still and we listen to the night. The city drones. An owl hoots and a cat howls and a dog barks and a siren wails.

We let the stars shine into us.

I stare. Is there anyone else out there? There has to be. Are they like us? Is there another Mina and another Mum looking toward us through the darkness that goes on for billions and billions and billions of miles and billions and billions and billions of years? Are their joys and their pains the same as ours? Will we ever know the answers to
things like that? And how did everything get here, anyway? And why? And will it go on forever? And what’s right out there at the very edge of the stars and the darkness? And what’s at the very heart of things?

Mum cups her hands around my head.

“Look,” she murmurs. “I can nearly hold your whole head in my hands, Mina. Your head holds all those stars, all that darkness, all these noises. It holds the universe.” She holds me against her. She rests her head against mine. “Two heads, two universes, interlinked.”

After a while, we make our way back towards home. She holds my hand as we walk and she’s happy at my side.

We hold each oth-er’s hand and walk back home

We walk back home and hold each oth-er’s hand

We …

We come to a lamp beside the pathway, and suddenly we stop our walking, and we start to dance, and we glitter in the shafts of light, like stars, like flies, like flakes of dust.