Mimi

Monday is Granny’s day. That’s where I go after school every Monday. But first I always visit Mrs. Lemon’s shop, to buy a candy bar with the rest of my lunch money, and Mrs. Lemon always says, “And what can I do for my good friend Miss Mimi today?”

“I’d like a Spiff bar, please, Mrs. Lemon.”

“One Spiff bar coming up, young lady . . . and a few sweeties just for you.”

And I hold out my hand, and Mrs. Lemon puts three or four sweets from the Pick ’n’ Mix onto my palm and then she closes my fingers into a fist over them. Mrs. Lemon has been giving me free sweets every day since Mammy died.

So every day I make sure to drop into her shop. So does Sally, my big sister. She gets sweets too, but today Sally is late because she’s hanging around with her Goth friends. Which means I get to Granny’s first.

“Well! If it isn’t young Mimi herself visiting her ancient grandparents,” declares Grandad when he opens the door, as if it is a big surprise seeing me on the doorstep.

“It’s Monday, Grandad,” I tell him. “I come every Monday.”

“Well, blow me down, so you do!” And he slaps his forehead with his hand as if to say how could he have forgotten. He does that every week.

And every week Granny comes bustling out of the kitchen, wiping her floury hands on her apron, and scolds him. “Well, are you going to let the poor child stand there all day? Come in, Mimi — don’t mind the old fool.”

Of course, Grandad is not really an old fool — well, he is old, but he’s not a fool. Anyway, he doesn’t mind Granny at all; he just laughs at her and winks at me.

Today Granny has made chocolate éclairs for me, and for Sally when she turns up, and for Conor (he’s my big brother, but he has soccer on Mondays so he doesn’t get here till later). Every Monday Granny cooks cakes — and that’s why she’s so fat, says Grandad.

“I am not!” she says in her pretend-to-be-cross voice. “Now sit down there, Mimi, and I’m going to pour you a big mug of hot chocolate to go with those chocolate éclairs!” So I sit at the table pushed up against the wall, and Granny puts on the red check tablecloth and the plate with the purple flowers on it and six fresh chocolate éclairs oozing with cream. Grandad reaches for one straightaway, but Granny slaps his hand. “Ladies first!” she tells him.

“Thank you, Granny,” I say as she puts one on my plate first and on her plate second, and I smile in a ha-ha way at Grandad, who puts on his poor-me look.

“Now you may have one,” Granny tells him as if he was a naughty little boy.

Sally arrives just as I have finished my second éclair. “I hope you’ve left some for me, you greedy pig,” she says, and starts stuffing one into her mouth without even putting it on a plate. The cream squashes up her nose, but Granny just laughs.

“Who’s the pig?” I ask her, but then Grandad drags me away to teach me chess and we leave Sally and Granny alone to have one of their big boring chats.

This is my second chess lesson. My first lesson was last Monday and it lasted about twenty seconds because I had to watch my favorite soap opera,
Southsiders.
I always have to watch
Southsiders
so that I can fill in Aunt M. on the episodes that she misses.

“Now we have ten minutes today before your rubbish show starts,” says Grandad, spilling out the chess pieces. “So let’s get cracking.”

“It’s not rubbish, Grandad — it’s educational.”

“Educational my bottom! Now, what’s this piece called?” He holds up this little black upside-down cone.

Luckily I know this one. “It’s a prawn, Grandad,” I tell him confidently.

He laughs — that’s how I know I’ve got it wrong. “No, not a prawn, Mimi, a PAWN.”

“Prawn, pawn, what’s the difference!” Sometimes, I find, adults fuss about nothing.

“One is a shellfish and one is a chess piece — that’s the difference.”

“I think my show is going to start, Grandad,” I say. I don’t think chess is going to be my game, somehow. I reach for the remote — but Grandad grabs it first.

“Not so quick, young lady.” He holds up another black piece. This one looks like a horse’s head. “Now, this piece is a knight.”

“Then this must be a day,” I say, holding up the white horse’s head.

“What?” says Grandad, looking really puzzled.

“If the black one is night, the white one must be day,” I explain.

Grandad just slaps his forehead with his hand and groans. “
Knight,
not
night
!” he says, which makes no sense to me. Then he sees that I’m only messing and sighs. “Oh, you! OK then, let’s watch
Southsiders.
” He ruffles my hair and we settle back on the couch to watch the TV.

Grandad wants to teach me chess because I’m Chinese and the Chinese invented chess about a million years ago, apparently. Personally I don’t know what anyone sees in the game, but I don’t tell him that.

Soon Grandad is snoring and I’m sucking my thumb and watching telly, and everything feels nice and comfy and peaceful and I wish I could stay there all evening, but at six o’clock we have to go home.

It is not a long drive home. Granny and Sally and I squash into the backseat of the jalopy, and Conor sits up in the front. Granny always tells Conor to get in the front because of his long legs, but he tells her that it is only because she is afraid to sit in the front when Grandad is driving.

“You could be right, Conor,” Granny said, laughing. “Keep your eyes on the road, old man!” she tells Grandad.

“Are you driving the jalopy or am I?” asks Grandad as he drives through red lights.

“Those lights were red!” yells Granny. “Are you trying to kill us all?”

All my aunts say that Grandad shouldn’t be driving anymore, but none of them has been brave enough to tell him yet. I hope they don’t, because it would really upset him. Anyway, he hasn’t had a crash yet, and when he drives he goes as slow as a snail.

Before we get back, Sally has to be dropped off at her weirdo friend Tara’s house, which is good because I want to read her diary before she comes home.

The house is dark when we get home, and chilly. Dad is fast asleep on the couch. He hasn’t shaved again and his hair is all rumpled. I can see his toe sticking out of his sock. He looks so tired and sad and old that I don’t wake him up. Anyway, Conor will soon enough when he gets started on his drums.

As usual Conor disappears into his bedroom and I turn on all the lights in the house before I slip into Sally’s bedroom and lift up her mattress and pull out her diary. It is a lovely, heavy, hardback diary with little pictures of wildflowers on each page. Sally has a great collection of stationery in her room — markers of every color, folders and notebooks of all sizes, glue, tape, staples, paper clips, sharpeners, erasers, thumbtacks, pens, pencils in all colors, and paper in all sizes and colors. She has cards and letter-writing paper that is scented with perfume and a little booklet of stamps — all neatly arranged on her desk.

But best of all is her diary. I love sitting on her bed and opening its heavy cover — very carefully so as not to mark the pages — and then I read her most private thoughts before I put it away exactly as I found it. She would kill me if she ever found out that I have read it.

I know I should not read Sally’s diary, but I can’t help myself. She hardly ever talks to me now since Mammy died, and it seems as if she doesn’t care about anything or anybody anymore except her horrible friends with their black clothes and black lipstick and black mascara and black earrings and black moods.

But I know she does care, because she tells her diary everything. Well, almost everything. She tells her diary about how much her tummy aches when she thinks of Mammy and how she misses her hugs and even her scolding. She tells her diary that she misses our daddy now that he is so sad and tired all the time. She tells her diary that she loves her little sister, Mimi, even if she drives her crazy half the time, and how she wishes Conor wouldn’t spend every minute playing the drums in his bedroom. She tells her diary how much she hates pizza now.

She tells her diary that she cries herself to sleep every night — just like I do. She tells her diary that sometimes she gets really cross with Mammy for getting herself killed on her bike and she hates feeling like that but she can’t help it, and I know just what she means. You see I can’t help it, either — so I have to read Sally’s diary whenever I get the chance.