Shine, page 3
My fingers clattered on the laptop and my reply bubble appeared, eager, quivering, my avatar grinning.
NO, ROSA! What are you doing?
But the clamour of questions I was dying to ask him drowned out all good sense. Who are you? Do you live on my street? was what I really wanted to know.
There was a long pause. My heart was banging so loudly in my chest I almost didn’t hear the beep when another bubble popped up.
I bit my lip. Now what? Was he going to switch off, go away, delete me?
The seconds inched past.
Then another bubble plopped open on the screen.
Yes! I take pictures! Lots of them! Be anybody you want to be, Rosa! Fake it!
But my fingers had a mind of their own.
Oh! It sounded so lame! But honesty was probably a good policy when you wanted to make friends properly.
I shook myself. Make a friend? After all the avoiding and blocking and deleting, you want to make friends?
The screen beeped again.
Annoyance flared and my fingers had tapped a reply before I could stop myself.
Oh God. Where did that come from?
I was so stunned it was like I’d turned to stone. ‘Feel free to stalk me’? This wasn’t what I was expecting.
A cold finger ran down my spine. How could I forget that he could look me up just as thoroughly as I could him? My heart was suddenly in my throat, as if Yaya was already standing there looking over my shoulder, crookedly-pencilled eyebrows high on her forehead, finger wagging. I told you so! The Internet is not safe! You should disconnect!
I began running through all my social profiles on the net. What did they reveal about me? It was all jokey pretend stuff, wasn’t it? I didn’t post photographs, so there was no visual evidence to link me to anything. I kept to silly things, jokes, generalities, lists of my likes and dislikes, favourite books, favourite films, favourite songs.
I let out a sigh of relief.
He found NOTHING.
So there you have it. Here I was saying Ansel95 was trying to be Mister Anybody when the truth was I could be anybody, anywhere. Stroppyweather was a digital dummy. I was Miss Anybody.
The beep of another message pierced the silence in the room.
I tried to sound casual, but I was tense, vigilant.
For a moment I thought there had been an earthquake. I was suddenly light-headed. Like I was falling. I closed my eyes. He knew where I lived. He KNEW.
Stranger danger, I could hear Yaya hissing in my ear. Stranger danger.
I gritted my teeth. Right. If he was asking for confirmation then he couldn’t be sure, could he? He was guessing. I rubbed my palms together as if I had to warm them, even though it was hot in the room. Took a deep breath before I made my fingers type out a reply.
6
WE WERE TEN years old when we swapped places.
Oh, Kat, I couldn’t believe that we’d waited so long. It was a brilliant plan but you weren’t sure, Kat, were you?
How we argued! I said twins in the movies did it all the time. You said the movies were not real life. You said: Miss Emily will know it isn’t me. I said: didn’t you tell me the other day that Miss Emily was as blind as a bat and not even as smart – that she could barely tell one girl from another in your class.
And then you said: my friends would know it wasn’t me!
And I looked steadily at you until you had to look away. Your friends didn’t know, did they, that there were two of you. They wouldn’t suspect a thing.
And then you reached over and tugged my plait in that maddening way that you always do when you think you know better than me.
What about the Calm? you said, smirking. Even if you covered up your neck, the moment you opened your mouth, they would know.
Ah yes. The Calm.
How was I going to spend an entire day at school without revealing that I couldn’t speak a word?
It did give me pause.
But only for a few days.
And then I had that idea, and I could tell by the look on your face that it was genius! If we could convince everyone that you’d lost your voice, if we could both become mute, then there was nothing to stand in our way.
You couldn’t argue because I was right, wasn’t I? I could feel your sudden nervousness, your sudden realization that this crackpot idea was not crackpot stuff any more.
So we got the coughing started two weeks before the day of the swap.
As we expected, Mama went into full fuss mode, making us drink disgusting teas the colour of poo. She smeared our necks with thick pastes of aromatic eucalyptus oil, then wrapped Papa’s big handkerchiefs round our throats.
She made us both go to bed an extra hour early.
You made faces at me, and several times you wanted to quit, but I begged you not to, promising all the enticements that I could think of: I would give you full access to my watercolours, give you a fifty-fifty share of all my desserts for a week, do your maths homework for a month.
So you hung on.
And when it came time for you to pretend you had lost your voice, you could have won an Oscar for Best Actress.
Mama didn’t suspect a thing.
We were all set to forge a fake To-whom-it-may-concern note from Mama, but we didn’t have to. She wrote one without any prompting: Kat’s laryngitis is bad today, please make sure she avoids using her voice . . .
So nobody was the wiser when it was you that stayed behind for home school with Mama, and it was I who skipped off to school in your place, dressed in your school uniform, hair tied back exactly like yours, your backpack on my shoulder, neck wrapped in a handkerchief smelling of mentholated eucalyptus oil.
I was full of confidence when Papa dropped me off at the school gates, but when I saw the school yard full of smiling girls in their navy skirts and blue ties I was suddenly overcome with shyness.
You and I had gone over and over your sketch mapping the school, so I found your classroom with no difficulty at all. But I couldn’t bring myself to march up to the front of the class and take your seat right under the nose of Miss Emily.
Instead, I found an empty chair in the back row, next to a smiley girl with a straight fringe. Mila was her name, I discovered, when Miss Emily took the register.
Mila was great fun, passing me hilarious notes and drawing funny cartoons of the teachers. At break, we had lunch together.
It was a wonderful day.
When I got home I found you glumly sitting up in bed with a cup of Mama’s nasty tea. She had declared you (me) too ill to do home school and banished you to bed. Poor Kat, I guess you didn’t have much of a day off.
When you came home from school the following afternoon, your face was like thunder.
‘What did you do to me?’ you cried. ‘What did you do?’
I stared at you. What were you talking about?
But as you told me what happened it all began to make sense.
When you got in, you sat where you always sat. In the front row.
All morning you could hear whispering behind you, you said. But when you turned to share in your friends’ secret chatter, the other girls stopped talking. They looked at you with unfriendly eyes. Something was wrong.
At lunch time, you took a tray of food and went to join your friends at your usual table. But nobody had saved a chair for you. In fact, they all looked through you as if you’d become invisible.
Embarrassed, you turned away, pretending that you’d forgotten something.
And then you saw her. In the far corner of the cafeteria. Mila. She was waving and pointing at the seat she’d reserved at her table.
‘Kara, you sat with her! You ignored my friends!’ Kat raged. ‘Mila is not my friend, Kara. She’s nothing. I’ve never spoken to her. Now what am I supposed to do with a friend I don’t want?’
But . . . but I had liked Mila. Surely you would like Mila too, if you gave her half a chance.
But you were beyond reasoning with. When my hands flew up to explain, you held both my wrists and stopped me. You didn’t want to know.
‘How am I going to make things go back to the way they were?’ you complained. ‘You’ve ruined everything! You’ve ruined my life! You were only borrowing my identity for the day. Now you’ve made me the laughing stock of the class and I will never ever swap places with you again.’
Your fingers were tight on my wrists. I struggled but, of course, I couldn’t talk back. Couldn’t say anything to reassure you. Not that I wanted to.
Kat, we were so alike, you and I. We liked the same colours, the same clothes; liked the same shows on TV, the same books, the same music.
You could have been me.
And that afternoon, long ago, I wished it were so.
I wished that you were the chosen one.
That the Calm had claimed you instead of me.
7
EVERY EVENING AS darkness swallowed the mountain, I knelt at the windowsill to light the candles for Mother. I always pretended that my withered throat was whole, that words took shape when I whispered, that the sounds that issued from my lips were not rasping grunts but language that made perfect sense.
As I flicked the lighter and one candle after another sputtered into flame, I shivered with anticipation. I had news for Mother tonight.
Mother, I whispered. I think I’ve got a friend.
The candles were new and their waxy teardrop tips were still perfect, unmelted by the yellow flames. Their wicks caught fire quickly, and when I switched off the overhead light they glowed bright and strong in the window.
He’s nice, Mother. Very good at photography. You would like him.
I cupped my hands around my eyes to shield them from the candle glow, to speed their adjustment to the blackness outside the window. I couldn’t see the ocean but I could hear it breathing quietly. The rain rustled and trees swished in the wind. There was a distant pinpoint of light on the promenade where the only working street light had switched on. Slowly, slowly, my eyes got used to the darkness. Mother, I whispered, are you there?
As I did every night, I waited for a shape to appear, a smiling face upturned to the candle light, a hand raised, waving.
Tonight, Mother? Will you come tonight? Please?
But in the gloom below me there was nothing.
It was Yaya who gave me the idea.
I was just five when she first came to work for us after Mother died, and at first impression she seemed so self-assured, sturdy, unafraid. A strapping old boot.
But come nightfall on Yaya’s first day, to our surprise she turned into a cowering, scaredy old thing.
We were all sitting around the dining table when she suddenly jumped up with eyes round and staring like fried eggs. She rushed to the living room and began dragging curtains over the windows. As she hurried up the stairs she called over her shoulder by way of explanation, ‘We don’t want them looking in.’
‘Them? Who are you talking about?’ Father asked.
‘Ghosts, of course!’ she said, glaring at him like he’d asked a stupid question.
Father looked like he’d just swallowed a bone. But I was fascinated. Ghosts?
This was how Yaya explained them:
When the dead have unfinished business – a crime unconfessed, a message undelivered, an apology unspoken – their souls get stuck on Earth.
Ghosts hide by day and emerge at night, searching for the life force that has gone from them. That’s why they follow the living around at night. And that’s why they are drawn to candle flames. A candle’s flicker and heat has the same throb of life.
‘Why do you think we light candles in churches, eh, Rosa?’ Yaya said. ‘The spirits cannot help themselves, they follow the light, enter the church, and once inside the angels and saints can sort them out. Give them a leg up to Heaven.’
Whenever darkness fell in that first month that she lived with us, Yaya rushed around the house, slamming shutters and drawing the curtains. ‘Don’t let them see the lights!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have a mercy on those poor lost souls!’
She refused to go out at night. ‘I can feel them behind me! I can feel a coldness hovering there, I can feel something breathing on the back of my neck.’
‘Yaya!’ Father protested. ‘How can you believe in such claptrap?’
But that only made Yaya dig a fist into her pocket and produce a handful of salt. ‘This is what you need,’ she cried. ‘Salt! It throws their sense of direction, halts them in their tracks!’ And then she sprinkled it over her shoulder.
Father couldn’t stand it. Every evening when he got home, he swept up the white trail Yaya had laid across the front doorway. ‘This has got to stop, Yaya,’ he barked. ‘This is going to cost us a fortune in salt. It’s a wonder the ocean’s still salty at the rate you’re using the stuff up.’
But without the salt Yaya became a bundle of tics and nerves, startling at the smallest noise, listening to every rustle and thud around the house.
‘Jesus Mary Joseph!’ she would yelp, crossing herself, when a sharp blast of wind through bamboo turned into an eerie moan, or if the branch of a tall acacia rapped sharply on the window pane.
And I would run to her side and slip my hand into hers.
One night when I was ten, I was startled out of bed by a series of sharp screams from Yaya’s room.
I heard the clumsy stumble of Father climbing out of bed next door. I leaped to follow, and as I fumbled to open my door I could hear Father’s deep voice outside, agitated at first, then soothing, as Yaya responded in high-pitched squeaks, like an unhappy mouse.
I came out into the hall to find Father gesticulating in the doorway of Yaya’s room. ‘Look, Yaya, look, it’s just your dress on that hanger,’ he said. ‘You had your electric fan on too high and it blew the dress onto your bed.’
‘No.’ Yaya was sitting up, her sheet drawn to her chin, her yellow skin paled to the colour of coffee with too much milk in it. ‘I SAW her. I saw her with my own EYES!’
My hands were signing frantically like flapping birds. Who? Who was in the room with Yaya?
I pushed past Father and Yaya looked at me with eyes the size of dinner plates. ‘It was your DEAD MOTHER, Rosa,’ she cried. ‘She was sitting at the FOOT OF MY BED. May the Lord have mercy on us.’
I was so amazed that I couldn’t stop myself from crying out. ‘Ungh ungh ungh!’ I rushed towards the bed, throwing myself on the floor to search under it, patting all the lumps to see what hid under the sheet, opening and closing the wardrobe doors.
But Father was right. Mother was nowhere to be seen.
And there was Yaya’s dress with its blue and green diamond pattern, on a hanger dangling from the wardrobe handle. The electric fan had indeed blown it askew. Its long skirt draped gracefully over the end of the bed and I half expected legs to appear beneath the hem. Every time the electric fan oscillated in its direction, the dress stirred, shrugging its shoulders and rearranging its skirts.
I stared at it in dismay. So it wasn’t Mother?
‘You’ve frightened Rosa now. See, what did I tell you?’ Father grumbled.
But Yaya already had her arms around me. ‘Don’t be scared, little Rosa, it’s all right. Your daddy is right, there are no ghosts in this room.’
The truth was, I could barely contain myself. Yaya had given me an idea. A wonderful idea. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.
All I needed was a candle to light. And a window for it to shine in. Then perhaps Mother’s ghost would come to see me.
I told them my plan after breakfast the following morning when we were marching about, clearing the table.
Of course, I knew that Father would hate the idea. I was totally prepared for his snort of derision, and the superior way he said, ‘BUT THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS GHOSTS!’
But I had not expected opposition from Yaya. She was always looking for ghosts, wasn’t she?
She was frightened last night – but only because it was so unexpected. Otherwise, she would like Mother, even if she was a ghost. Mother would be a good, kind spirit, I was sure of it! How many times had Yaya said, ‘Oh, I wish I’d met Mam Kara before she died.’ Well, this was just her wish come true.
But, no. The horror on Yaya’s face was a sight to behold. She was scowling so hard her forehead knitted together like rope. Her mouth was turned down so severely I was afraid the corners would join under her chin and then her lower jaw would fall off.
‘Oh no, Rosa,’ she said in a voice so sharp with revulsion Father jumped. And then it was as if she couldn’t stop the long moan that streamed from her throat. ‘Nononononononononooooo.’
‘Yaya!’ Father admonished. ‘No need to be so dramatic.’
But once she started, Yaya couldn’t stop. ‘This is not good! Not good, Rosa! The dead are dead! We have no business with them. Leave it to the churches to summon the spirits!’
She was actually shaking, her normally narrow eyes round as buttons, her skin blanched, sweat shining on her forehead. I half expected her to collapse into a steaming heap on the floor.
Father looked at her helplessly. He raised an arm as if he was going to put it round her but then seemed to change his mind. ‘There there, Yaya,’ he soothed finally, pulling a chair from the dining table. ‘Sit here. Let me get you some tea. Try not to think about it.’
Yaya sat down, both hands clasped in front of her, rocking a little. ‘Maybe she won’t come? Maybe Mam Kara’s spirit won’t see the candles?’ she muttered to herself.
It made me cross. Mother will come, I signed emphatically.
Father glared at me from where he was pouring out the tea. ‘Well . . .’ he said, carefully laying the cup in front of Yaya. ‘Let’s talk about this later, OK? OK, Yaya?’
She nodded and wrapped her hands around the china cup. Father patted me on the head and fled out the door with such a sigh of relief I almost burst out laughing. Even after five years of living with Yaya, Father found her outbursts mysterious and confusing.
