My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (9 page)

Elsa shrugs without answering. Mum turns to the headmaster. Her eyes are burning.

“What happened to her cheek?!”

The headmaster twists in his seat.

“Now, then. Let’s calm ourselves down, now. Think about . . . I mean, think about your child.”

He isn’t pointing at Elsa when he says that last bit, he’s pointing at Mum. Elsa stretches her leg and kicks the wastepaper bin again. Mum takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, then determinedly moves the wastebasket farther under the desk. Elsa looks at her, offended, sinks so deep into the chair that she has to hold on to the armrests to stop herself sliding out, and reaches out with her leg until her toe almost, almost, touches the rim of the wastebasket. Mum sighs. Elsa sighs even louder. The headmaster looks at them and then at the globe on his desk. He pulls it closer to him.

“So . . .” he begins at last, smiling halfheartedly at Mum.

“It’s been a difficult week for the whole family,” Mum interrupts him at once and sounds as if she’s trying to apologize.

Elsa hates it.

“We can all empathize with that,” says the headmaster in the manner of someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He looks nervously at the globe. “Unfortunately it’s not the first time Elsa has found herself in conflict at this school.”

“Not the last either,” Elsa mutters.

“Elsa!” snaps Mum.

“Mum!!!” Elsa roars with three exclamation marks.

Mum sighs. Elsa sighs even louder. The headmaster clears his throat and holds the globe with both hands as he says:

“We, and by that I mean the staff at this school, obviously in collaboration with the guidance counselor, feel that Elsa could be helped by a psychologist to channel her aggressions.”

“A psychologist?” says Mum hesitantly, “Surely that’s a bit dramatic?”

The headmaster raises his hands defensively as if apologizing, or possibly as if he’s about to start playing an air tambourine.

“It’s not that we think anything is
wrong
! Absolutely not! Lots of special-needs children benefit from therapy. It’s nothing to be ashamed of!”

Elsa reaches out with the tips of her toes and pushes over the wastepaper basket. “Why don’t you go to a psychologist yourself?”

The headmaster decides to make the globe safe by putting it on the floor next to his chair. Mum leans towards Elsa and exerts herself incredibly not to raise her voice.

“If you tell me and the headmaster which of the children are causing you trouble, we can help you solve the conflicts instead of things always ending up like this, darling.”

Elsa looks up, her lips pressed into a straight line.

The scratch marks on her cheek have stopped bleeding but they are still as bright as neon lights.

“Snitches get stitches,” she says succinctly.

“Elsa, please try to cooperate,” the headmaster says, attempting a grimace that Elsa assumes to be his way of smiling a little.

“You be cooperative,” Elsa replies without an attempt to smile even a little.

The headmaster looks at Mum.

“We, well, I mean the school staff and I, believe that if Elsa could just try to walk away sometimes when she feels there’s a conflict about to happ—”

Elsa doesn’t wait for Mum’s answer, because she knows Mum won’t defend her. So she snatches up her backpack from the floor and stands up.

“Can we go now, or what?”

And then the headmaster says she can go into the corridor. He sounds relieved. Elsa marches out, while Mum stays in there, apologizing. Elsa hates it. She just wants to go home so it won’t be Monday anymore.

During the last lesson before lunch, one of their smarmy teachers told them their assignment over the Christmas holiday would be to prepare a talk on the theme of A Literary Hero I Look Up To. And they were to dress up as their hero and talk about the hero in the first person singular. Everyone had to put up their hands and choose a hero. Elsa was going to go for Harry Potter, but someone else got him first. So when her turn came she said Spider-Man. And then one of the boys behind her got annoyed because he was going for that. And then there was an argument. “You can’t take Spider-Man!” shouted the boy. And Elsa said, “Pity, because I just did!” And then the boy said, “It’s a pity for YOU, yeah!” And then Elsa snorted in English. “Sure!” Because that is Elsa’s favorite word in English. And then the boy shouted that Elsa couldn’t be Spider-Man because “only boys can be Spider-Man!” And then Elsa told him he could be Spider-Man’s girlfriend. And then he pushed Elsa into a radiator. And then Elsa hit him with a book.

Elsa still thinks he should thank her for it, because that’s probably the nearest that boy ever got to a book. But then the teacher came running and put a stop to it all and said that no one could be Spider-Man because Spider-Man only existed in films and so he wasn’t a “literary character.” And then Elsa got possibly a bit disproportionally worked up and asked the teacher if he’d heard of something called Marvel Comics, but the teacher hadn’t. “AND THEY LET YOU TEACH CHILDREN?!” Then Elsa had to sit for ages after the class “having a chat” with the teacher, which was just a lot of teacher-babbling.

The boy and a few others were waiting for her when she came out. So she tightened the straps of her backpack until they hugged her tight like a little koala hanging on to her back, and then she ran.

Like many children who are different, she’s good at running. She heard one of the boys roar, “Get her!” and the clattering of footsteps behind her across the icy asphalt. She heard their excited panting. She ran so fast that her knees were hitting her rib cage, and if it hadn’t been for her backpack she would have made it over the fence and into the street, and then they would never have caught up with her. But one of the boys got a grip on her backpack. And of course she could have wriggled out of it and got away.

But Granny’s letter to The Monster was inside. So she turned around and fought.

As usual she tried to shield her face so Mum wouldn’t get upset when she saw the damage. But it wasn’t possible to shield both her face and the backpack. So things took their course. “You should choose your battles if you can, but if the battle chooses you then kick the sod in his fuse box!” Granny used to tell Elsa, and that is what Elsa did. Even though she hates violence, she’s good at fighting because she’s had a lot of practice. That’s why there are so many of them now when they chase her.

Mum comes out of the headmaster’s office after at least ten eternities of fairy tales, and then they cross the deserted playground without saying anything. Elsa gets into the backseat of Kia with her arms around her backpack. Mum looks unhappy.

“Please, Elsa—”

“It wasn’t me that started it! He said girls can’t be Spider-Man!”

“Yes, but why do you fight?”

“Just because!”

“You’re not a little kid, Elsa. You always say I should treat you like a grown-up. So stop answering me like a little kid. Why do you fight?”

Elsa pokes at the rubber seal in the door.

“Because I’m tired of running.”

And then Mum tries to reach into the back and caress her gently across her scratch marks, but Elsa snatches her head away.

“I don’t know what to do,” Mum sighs, holding back her tears.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Elsa mumbles.

Mum backs Kia out of the parking area and drives off. They sit there in the sort of silent eternity that only mothers and daughters can build up between themselves.

“Maybe we should go to a psychologist after all,” she says at last.

Elsa shrugs.

“Whatever.” That’s her second-favorite word in English.

“I . . . Elsa . . . darling, I know what’s happened with Granny has hit you terribly hard. Death is hard for everyone—”

“You don’t know anything!” Elsa interrupts and pulls so hard at the rubber seal that, when she lets go, it snaps back against the window with a loud noise.

“I’m sad as well, Elsa,” says Mum, swallowing. “She was my mother, not just your grandmother.”

“You hated her. So don’t talk rubbish.”

“I did not hate her. She was my mother.”

“You were always fighting! You’re probably just GLAD she’s dead!!!”

Elsa wishes she’d never said that last bit. But it’s too late. There’s a silence lasting for all imaginable eternities, and she pokes at the rubber seal until its edge comes away from the door. Mum notices, but she doesn’t say anything. When they stop at a red light she puts her hands over her eyes and says resignedly, “I’m really trying here, Elsa. Really trying. I know I’m a bad mother and I’m not at home enough, but I’m really trying. . . .”

Elsa doesn’t answer. Mum massages her temples.

“Maybe we should talk to a psychologist anyway.”

“You talk to a psychologist,” says Elsa.

“Yeah. Maybe I should.”

“Yeah. Maybe you should!”

“Why are you so horrible?”

“Why are YOU so horrible?”

“Darling. I’m really sad about Granny dying but we have t—”

“No you’re not!” And then something happens that hardly ever, ever happens. Mum loses her composure and yells:

“YES I BLOODY AM! TRY TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO’S CAPABLE OF BEING UPSET AND STOP BEING SUCH A LITTLE BRAT!”

Mum and Elsa stare at each other. Mum covers her mouth with her hand.

“Elsa . . . I . . . darl—”

Elsa shakes her head and pulls off the entire rubber seal from the door in a single tug. She knows she’s won. When Mum loses control, Elsa wins every time.

“Cut it out. It’s not good shouting like that,” she mumbles. And then she adds without so much as glancing at her mother: “Think about the baby.”

7

LEATHER

I
t’s possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her.

It’s Tuesday when Elsa meets The Monster for the first time. School is better on Tuesdays. Elsa only has one bruise today, and bruises can be explained away by saying she’s been playing soccer.

She sits in Audi. Audi is Dad’s car. It’s the exact opposite of Renault. Normally Dad picks her up from school every other Friday, because that’s when she stays with Dad and Lisette and Lisette’s children. Granny used to pick her up on all the other days and now Mum will have to do it. But today Mum and George have gone to a doctor to look at Halfie, so today Dad is picking her up even though it’s a Tuesday.

Granny always came on time and stood at the gate. Dad is late and stays in Audi in the parking area.

“What did you do to your eye?” Dad asks nervously.

He came back from Spain this morning, because he went there with Lisette and Lisette’s children, but he hasn’t caught any sun because he doesn’t know how to.

“We played soccer,” says Elsa.

Granny would never have let her get away with the soccer story.

But Dad isn’t Granny, so he just nods tentatively and asks her to be good enough to put on her seat belt. He does that very often. Nods tentatively. Dad is a tentative person. Mum is a perfectionist and Dad is a pedant and that was partly why their marriage didn’t work so well, Elsa figures. Because a perfectionist and a pedant are two very different things. When Mum and Dad did the cleaning, Mum wrote a minute-by-minute breakdown of the cleaning schedule, but then Dad would sort of get caught up with descaling the coffee percolator for two and a half hours, and you really can’t plan a life with a person like that around you, said Mum. The teachers at school always tell Elsa that her problem is her inability to concentrate, which is very odd, Elsa thinks, because Dad’s big problem is that he can’t stop concentrating.

“So, what do you want to do?” asks Dad, indecisively putting his hands on the wheel.

He often does that. Asks what Elsa would like to do. Because he very rarely wants to do anything himself. And this Tuesday was very unexpected for him: Dad is not very good at dealing with unexpected Tuesdays. That’s why Elsa only stays every other weekend with him, because after he met Lisette and she and her children moved in, Dad said it was too “messy” for Elsa there. When Granny found out, she phoned him and called him a Nazi at least ten times in a minute. That was a Nazi record, even for Granny. And when she’d hung up she turned to Elsa and spluttered, “Lisette? What sort of name is that?” And Elsa knew she didn’t really mean it, of course, because everyone likes Lisette—she has the same superpower as George. But Granny was the sort of person you brought with you when you went to war, and that was what Elsa loved about her.

Dad’s always late picking Elsa up from school. Granny was never late. Elsa has tried to understand exactly what “irony” means and she’s fairly sure it’s that Dad is never late for anything other than picking up Elsa from school, and Granny was always late for everything except for that one thing.

Dad fiddles with the wheel again.

“So . . . where would you like to go today?”

Elsa looks surprised, because it sounds as if he really means they’re going somewhere. He twists in his seat.

“I was thinking maybe you’d like to do . . . something.”

Elsa knows he’s only saying it to be nice. Because Dad doesn’t like doing things, Dad is not a doing type of person. Elsa looks at him. He looks at the steering wheel.