Mira in the Present Tense (4 page)

“Nonsense! I don't believe in all that. I collect them because I figure, if they've got a hole in them, they've already had a long and interesting life. I often wonder how many human lifetimes it takes to make a hole in a stone,” Nana babbles on.

You can always tell when Nana's nervous because usually she chooses her words quite carefully.

Dad raises his eyes to the sky and smiles at Mum, but I agree with Moses: it is a real coincidence about the holey stones, because they are one of the things that Nana's obsessed with. We've got our collection in Suffolk, and she always carries one in her pocket, and she's given me one of her favorites, which I never take off, even at school. (Well, it's not strictly speaking “jewelry,” is it?) Nana says a holey stone can tell a better story than a whole one. She talks like that, my nana. I'm never quite sure I've understood exactly what she means.

Moses is still grinning from ear to ear. He casts his eyes around the flat at all Nana's objects and paintings. He especially likes the half-finished painting on Nana's easel, the one with the baby Indian elephant standing on a giant pink lotus leaf.

“These are your paintings?” Moses asks, walking over to take a closer look.

“A spattering of them,” Nana says, following Moses's eyes around the room.

He smiles and bows to her admiringly. Then he turns to Dad.

“I'll need some help carrying it in from the car.”

“Of course,” mutters Dad, looking as if he'd rather not.

Dad and Moses walk out into the garden together.

“This garden is beautiful,” Moses declares.

I hear Dad telling him that we used to live here but that, since we left, Nana has transformed the garden. It's true—when we lived here, it was a real mess.

This is the flat we were born in, me and Krish. You walk in through a wooden gate in a tall brick wall, which in summer is covered in roses, like you're in a secret picture-book garden. Once you're inside, you step onto the sloping brick path, the “herringbone path,” Mum calls it. When we lived here, the garden was all overgrown with trees, and the grass was mud because we used to wheel our bikes all over it, but Nana has made the garden grow. These days, as soon as you walk in you get blasted by the smell of cherry blossom, hyacinths, and the sweet scent of straggly honeysuckle, which Nana says just goes to prove that beauty is more than skin deep. I wish we still lived here.

Nana follows Dad and Moses up the path. Mum whisks Laila off the floor and we parade up the herringbone path together, through the tall wooden gate in the wall, and out onto the street. Moses has double-parked his car, although he doesn't seem to be in a particular hurry. He has one of those long blue Volvos that can fit everything in the back—children, dogs, and luggage—except this car doesn't have any of those things in it.

A queue of traffic is building up behind the car.

A woman in a brand-new, shiny black Jeep throws her hands up in the air, beeps her horn, and starts shouting at Moses, who walks slowly round to her window.

“I am so sorry to make you wait. I won't be so very much longer,” he says in a polite and patient voice.

Now she looks even more annoyed, and the other cars start beeping too as if to echo how angry she is.

“Take your time!” she yells back at Moses. He ignores her.

“Why don't you just bog off!” Dad spits at her under his breath.

“Sam!” Mum always tells Dad off for swearing, even though, like Nana, he's got a whole repertoire of made-up not quite swear words.

Then Charlotte, Lizzie's mum from across the road, appears on the front steps of her house.

“This is turning into a bit of a spectacle,” Nana laughs.

“Everything all right?” Charlotte asks Mum, looking worried.

“Well, we're trying to get
this
”—Mum points into Moses's car—“into the flat. Ideally we could do with a parking place.”

Charlotte peers into the car. I watch the blood slowly drain from her face as it finally dawns on her what's inside.

“I see,” she nods, staring back at Nana, her eyes filling up with tears before she pulls herself together and springs into action. “Of course. I'll move my car. They'll all just have to back up.”

Charlotte is redirecting the traffic, running into her house for car keys, reversing, forcing all the other drivers to back up so that Moses can park his car right where she was parked outside Nana's flat. It's like one of those puzzles where you have to move the pieces around in the right order to make the pattern work.

By this time Jeep Woman's face has turned purple, there are car horns blasting off all down the street, and Nana Josie, Krish, and me have got the giggles.

“I'm glad you find this so funny! Some of us are in a hurry,” Jeep Woman screams out of her window.

Nana is suddenly seriously not amused. She can do that, Nana…just suddenly turn from sunny to steely in a few seconds. Now she's walking over to Jeep Woman and sounding out every word as if she might not quite understand English.

“That is my coffin in the car in front. And if you don't calm down you'll be getting straight out of your big fat Jeep and into one of those yourself. Now concentrate on your breathing and calm yourself down. We breathe the same air, you know…if only you weren't set on poisoning us all.”

Then Nana turns on her heels with her nose in the air and walks as slowly as I've ever seen her back to the pavement. Normally Nana's a bit of a strider.

Dad, who is laughing now, puts his arm round Nana's shoulders and kisses her on the cheek.

“Ooooooh! Go, girl, go, girl,” chants Krish. Moses's head is bobbing backward and forward, rocking with laughter. Jeep Woman looks at Nana like she's the devil and quickly clicks the button to close her window as if Nana's about to attack her.

“You'd think we were the ones in the armored vehicle,” Nana yells after her. “Big fat Jeep! Is it really necessary, in the middle of London? Does nobody care about global warming? Her children will fry.”

Nana's on a roll.

Now that Charlotte has sorted the parking situation, she's offering to take us “kids” off Mum's hands. I watch Moses and Dad ease the casket, which is basically a freshly painted white box, out of the car and carry it through the gate in the wall. Nana goes to follow them in, but stops short. Mum seems like she doesn't quite know what to do for the best. She looks at us as if she's asking
us
to decide. Then suddenly Nana takes Krish and me by the shoulders and turns to Charlotte.

“The thing is it's Mira's birthday today, so we're having a bit of a party, but thanks for the offer.”

Charlotte casts me a “poor you” look but wishes me a happy birthday anyway.

“Thank you,” I mumble.

Dad and Moses are carrying the casket into the front room. It's quite hard for them to balance it, because Moses is much taller than my dad. Moses is walking forward and Dad backward, so it seems to dip downhill, forcing its way into my dad's body.

“Just plonk it in the middle,” orders Nana, steering them through the room like a traffic controller. It's not something you can really plonk though, is it…a coffin? Nana stands and looks at it for a few minutes as if she's inspecting a newly delivered piece of furniture.

“Good,” she nods. “Just what I wanted…a blank canvas.”

Moses asks if we can send him a photo when it's painted, so he can use it in his Eco-Endings catalog, but by the looks on their faces, I don't think Dad or Aunty Abi are very keen on that idea.

“I'm sure it could be arranged,” smiles Nana helpfully.

Moses folds his legs in half, bending his body as low as he can, which is not very low at all. Suddenly his arms are round Nana's shoulders and he's hugging her! Nana looks a bit surprised, but she lets him hold her.

Then he looks her straight in the eye and says in a very serious voice, “So, Josie, I wish you a happy ending.”

Nana laughs. “That reminds me of something”—she's scanning her brain for the exact words—“Frida Kahlo said something like that on her deathbed…”

Nana loves Frida Kahlo. She's one of her favorite artists. She goes on and on about her. She wants to take me to her exhibition in June.

“Now how did Frida put it?” Nana asks, as if “Frida” is one of Nana's very best friends, rather than a dead artist. “I think it was something like: ‘I wish for a joyful exit and never to return.' I share her sentiments exactly.”

Moses laughs nervously, like he doesn't know exactly what to say. So he just says good-bye, very slowly moving backward, bowing himself out of the room.

After Moses has left, we all sit around, looking at the coffin.

“So that's what the grim reaper looks like!” Dad mumbles.

“Who's the grim reaper?” Krish asks.

“Moses,” moans Dad.

“Don't talk such nonsense, Sam!” says Nana. “I liked him despite the fact that he talks too quietly.”

“You would! Danish hippy dude. Just your type!” teases Dad.

“A bit too young and intense for me.” Nana giggles like a little girl.

Nana's coffin sits right in the middle of her front room and stops the conversation.

Nana always used to say “casket,” when she was talking about it, but now that it's here, she calls it a “coffin.” Somehow a casket seems quite light and friendly, like you could put a picnic in it or dressing-up clothes…but a coffin is just plain grim. I ask Nana why she's suddenly started calling it a coffin.

“May as well call a spade a spade, Mira.” She shrugs.

For a few minutes nobody goes near it; nobody touches it.

Then suddenly Krish has lifted the lid and is jumping up and down inside. He moves like that, my brother, like a gecko—now you see him, now you don't. You can never quite know where he's going to pop up next.

“Krish, what do you think you're doing? Get out of there!” Mum spits out the words as if Krish has really done something terrible.

“I'd rather this, Uma, than the silence,” Nana sighs, touching Mum on the arm to calm her.

Krish bobs up and down, in and out of the coffin, making jack-in-the-box faces at Laila. She giggles. Each time he peeps over the edge, Laila giggles a bit louder. Usually when Laila laughs it sets everyone off, but not today.

“You're a good boy for entertaining your sister. Our little jack-in-the-box,” Nana says, tousling his long sandy hair. “Don't let anyone cut this hair—it's your crowning glory,” Nana tells Krish, kissing him on the forehead. Krish grins at Mum. She doesn't say anything, but I can tell she's annoyed. She's spent the whole week trying to persuade Krish to get a haircut!

I was here the day Aunty Abi had to do the research to find the coffin company. It's called Eco-Endings because they do “ecologically friendly” funerals. That means they don't use hardwoods that destroy the rainforests. Some people have wicker baskets or grow a tree where they're buried, that sort of thing. I remember when Aunty Abi called them they asked her lots of questions on the phone and she told them that Nana was very ill and that she's an artist and wanted to paint her own coffin. Aunty Abi said the man on the phone, who was Moses, thought that was fantastic. He said he would quickly knock together a hardboard casket, paint it white, and drive it to London himself. Aunty Abi went quiet on the phone after that and told him that she'd call back later. Nana was so excited. She wanted to know how long it would take to get here.