The Weight of Water (5 page)
Read The Weight of Water Online
Authors: Sarah Crossan
Through the walls.
Mama invites Kanoro
To eat with us,
To share our evenings.
Sometimes he brings his bright rice
with him.
And he always brings his smile and
Twinkling eyes.
Mama is wasting money
We don’t have.
She prints posters
With Tata’s picture on it
And the word
MISSING
.
She makes one hundred copies
On purple paper,
So people will notice them
Stapled to the trees
Around Coventry.
They are like wanted posters,
But Tata is not a criminal.
They are like posters people
Put up when they’ve lost a cat,
But Tata is not an animal.
I’m embarrassed for him
In case he
is
living in Coventry
And doesn’t want to be found –
Like some criminal or animal.
When we’ve put up
half the posters
I tell Mama
it’s enough.
Her mouth becomes a hard line.
She snatches the pile of papers from me.
‘Kasienka, do you know
That you are useless?’ she snaps.
The answer to this question is
YES:
I know.
I am useless.
They have come up with a
Civil way for saying we are slow,
But it all means the same thing:
I get extra time because
I have
special needs
.
No one wants to be special at school.
I simply want to be the same as everyone else.
No one wants to have special needs.
In the maths exam I don’t need the extra time –
Finishing the paper is as easy as
Finishing a plateful of raspberries.
I have an hour left over
Which annoys the invigilator
Marking his own exams.
‘Read over your workings,’ he grumps.
But I don’t.
I don’t need to read over
Anything.
Because I don’t have special needs.
And I’m not eleven.
I teach Kanoro chess.
He doesn’t even know
Where the pieces sit.
So we take our time
Setting up the board,
Making our moves,
Watching for mistakes
And ignoring the clock.
We are competitive,
And we are generous.
Kanoro wins game three –
Checkmate.
He laughs, his mouth a wide
Sunlit cavern.
And Mama laughs too,
Lips barely parted,
Her nostrils giving it away,
And her eyes, which,
For a moment,
Lower their longing,
And seem to see
Me clearly.
Mama offers to restore
The family pride –
Takes my seat
And lines up her troops.
‘I’m a lucky man,’ Kanoro says,
Looking closely at the squares
On the chess board,
And I don’t know if he’s
Talking about his win
Or something else entirely.
Babcia arrives carrying two heavy suitcases,
Though she’s only staying one week.
She doesn’t like Coventry
at all:
It’s too warm to be winter and
No one speaks Polish.
‘Why don’t they try?’ Babcia bleats.
Mama points a finger at Babcia –
‘You don’t speak English, Mama.
Only a little Russian.
Why don’t
you
try?’
Babcia sniffs –
‘I’m an old woman,’ she says
and Mama smiles.
Babcia tells Mama to come home.
‘For the New Year concerts.
For the skiing.’
Mama turns her back on Babcia
And continues with the cooking.
Babcia sings as she sews,
Old parsnip fingers guiding the thread.
She quilts patchwork bedcovers
From old shirts and skirts –
Clothes no one wants
Babcia turns into magic.
Kanoro comes to dinner
On Christmas Eve
And Babcia shrieks –
‘So so black!’
in Polish of course.
Mama frowns and we sit to eat.
We sing carols,
Eat boiled ham,
Open small boxes
Wrapped in bows,
And it is good enough.
In Poland, Mama and Babcia
Didn’t argue. They were on the
Same side.
The opposite side
To Tata.
In England, Mama gets prickly
Whenever Babcia
Mentions Tata
Or complains about him.
Mama gets prickly about
A lot of things.
She won’t let Babcia
Help in the kitchen
With the cooking,
Won’t let her mend the curtains
Which are ripped and frayed,
Or take me shopping
For new goggles.
‘She’s
my
daughter.
I
can buy her what she needs,’
Mama says, though this is a lie.
Mama is always annoyed with Babcia,
But Babcia hasn’t done anything wrong
That I can see.
The night before Babcia leaves
I am in Kanoro’s room
Watching television
When the squabbling soaks through the wall.
‘You must think of the child, Ola.
You come back to Poland
When you find him.
It isn’t fair on the child.
Let me take her home.’
‘Her home is with me, Mama.
I can take care of her. Don’t
You see how happy she is?’
‘Are you blind, you mule?
You live in a dump.
Her only friend is that black man.’
‘He is a good man.’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘He is a doctor.’
‘You are pigheaded.’
‘Pigheaded, Mama,
Is better than old
And ignorant.’
‘Lord have Mercy!’
I shoot Kanoro a look,
Embarrassed,
Wishing he hadn’t heard,
Wishing the walls were stronger,
When I remember he can’t
Understand the Polish they are using.
And I am grateful.
I do not want to go back to the
room.
I do not want to choose
Between Mama
And Babcia.
But when dinner is ready
Mama knocks on the wall, as usual,
And there is no more
Quarrelling in the room.
They make an excellent effort
To pretend everything is well.
When they say it might snow
I sit by the window,
My fingertips pressed against glass,
Waiting.
I know it’s childish,
But I want to
Build a tubby snowman,
A man with button eyes
And a long carrot nose.
Kanoro watches with me;
He’s never seen snow
And never built a snowman,
So we’ll make it
Together –
And it will remind me of home
For the few hours it lives.
When they say it might snow
We sit by the window,
Our fingertips against glass,
Waiting.
Suddenly a scattering
Of children emerges
And dance to silent music
Together in the street.
A few flakes are falling.
They melt into the ground
Like stones thrown into a lake.