The Weight of Water
Read The Weight of Water Online
Authors: Sarah Crossan
For Mum and Dad
Contents
If I Were on the Swim Team They Might See Me
The wheels on the suitcase break
Before we’ve even left Gdańsk Główny.
Mama knocks them on some steps and
Bang, crack, rattle –
No more use.
There are
plastic bits
Everywhere.
It’s hard for Mama carrying a suitcase
And a bulging laundry bag.
It’s hard for Mama
With everyone watching.
She’s shy about the laundry bag,
An old nylon one
Borrowed from Babcia.
Tata took all the good luggage
When he left us,
When he walked out
On Mama and me.
‘There are clean clothes in it,’
Mama reminds me,
Like this were something
To be proud of.
And she won’t let me carry a thing
Except
my own
small bag.
‘You guard our passports, Kasienka.
Good girl, Kasienka.
And the money.
We’ll need those pounds.
Mind the money and the passports.
Good girl, Kasienka.’
Mama prattles as I scuttle along
behind her
Dodging business suits and
backpacks.
There is no one to recognise Mama
In the crowded station.
But all the same, she is shy
About that laundry bag.
‘Now keep close, Kasienka.
Keep close,’
Mama mutters as we leave Gdańsk Główny
And step aboard a bus for the airport
While I cling to the belt of her coat,
Too old for holding hands,
Even if she had one free.
We weren’t on a ship.
Immigrants don’t arrive on
Overcrowded boats any more,
Swarming wet docks like rats.
It isn’t 1920, and it isn’t Ellis Island –
Nothing as romantic as a view of
Lady Liberty
To welcome us.
We flew into Stansted.
Not quite London
But near enough.
At immigration we queue
Nervously and practise English in our heads:
Yes-thank-you-officer
.
I know I am not at home
When talking makes my tummy turn
And I rehearse what I say
Like lines from a play
Before opening my mouth.
At baggage reclaim
The laundry bag
Coasts around the carousel
And people look.
Someone points,
So Mama says, ‘Leave it, Kasienka.
There’s nothing in that bag but long
underwear.
We won’t need them here.
We’ll need galoshes.’
Mama is right:
The air in England is swampy,
The sky a grey blanket.
And rain threatens
To drench us.
Mama rented a room
In Coventry.
This is where we’ll live
Until we find Tata:
One room on the fourth floor
Of a crumbling building
That reminds me of history class,
Reminds me of black and white photographs
Of bombed
out
villages.
There is a white kitchen in the room,
In the corner,
And one big bed,
Lumpy in the middle
Like a cold pierogi
For Mama and me to share.