dilapidated garage at the back.
“Don’t be discouraged,” I said inside myself. “We need things to be born around here!”
Then they came out again at last.
The two men shook hands. The man in the suit drove off. The other man grinned, and opened his arms wide as if he wanted to wrap the house in them. The woman brushed herself with her hands, trying to get rid of dust and dirt. The man whispered to her. He stroked her belly. They both held her belly. She laughed. The boy stared down at the earth. He kicked it hard. He scowled. He probably swore. He kicked the earth again. And again.
They went away. It was turning to dusk. There was much birdsong in the street.
I went downstairs.
“More visitors to Mr. Myers’s house,” I say.
“That’s good,” says Mum. “Boring visitors or interesting visitors?”
I shrugged.
“Don’t know. They went in with the estate agent.”
“Must be quite interested, then.”
“The woman didn’t look interested at all. Nor the boy.”
“The boy?”
“Yes, Mum. The boy.”
“Now that’d be nice.”
“Would it? And the woman’s going to have a baby.”
“Now that definitely would be nice!”
She smiled and reached out and tousled my hair.
“Anyway, what have you been up to?”
“Talking to an old lady with bad bones, dancing for Persephone, being in somebody else’s dream, thinking about pee and sweat and spit, reading
She laughed again.
“Sounds like a fine day’s work to me.”
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
(JOYOUS VERSION)
Write a page of words for joy.
EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
(SAD VERSION)
Write a page of words for sadness.
Grandpa, Missing Monkeys & Owls
Now it’s night. No stars. Mist is hanging in the street. Frost is glittering. “IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE SPRING!” I want to yell. “SO GET LOST, FROST!”
An owl hoots, from the direction of Mr. Myers’s house. It hoots again, and something hoots in answer.
Owls. I feel so close to them. I share a home with them.
“Good night, owls,” I whisper. “I’ll write your story tomorrow.”
Hoot. Hoot hoot hoot.
Mina’s mother’s father was a seaman. Ever since he was a young man, he had sailed the world. He had been everywhere, to so many exotic-sounding places with such exotic-sounding names: Santiago, San Francisco, Cairo, Casablanca, Java, Buenos Aires, Fiji, Honduras, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Manila, Singapore, Bangkok, Abu Dhabi, Hanoi … The list could go on forever – or for as long as a list of exotic places could last.
Mina remembered getting postcards from those places when she was a tiny girl. Her grandpa traveled so much that Mina only met him a few times. She remembered a busy and funny man with a big laugh and skin the color of hazelnuts. She remembered his stories about the lions and tigers and crocodiles he’s fought in distant jungles, the whales he’d swum with, the whirlpools he’d escaped from, the treasure he’d discovered in sunken galleons. He said he’d bring back a treasure chest for her one day. He said he’d bring her a monkey. Even then, she knew the tales and promises were made up. She knew, for instance, that lions don’t live in jungles. But she did kind of hope that the tale about the monkey might come true!
He always said he’d stop traveling, that he’d retire and return to the house he had on Crow Road, but Mina’s mum knew that he never would. He went on sailing long beyond the time he could have stopped. He ended up doing trips in little sailing boats for tourists in the Indian Ocean. In his last postcard, he said he would be back very soon. He also said that he was looking for the right kind of monkey. He also said that he was in Paradise.
When he died he was buried at sea, in the Indian Ocean at dusk.
In his will, he left everything to Mina’s mum, but said the house on Crow Road should go to Mina when she became twenty-one. He said she was “the little girl that I have carried in my heart across the seven seas.” Mina liked that thought, that while she was at home in Falconer Road, she was also traveling around the exotic places of the world.
Inside the will, there was a folded note with her name written on it. It said:
P.S. Remember: It’s just a house. Don’t get stuck in it. Be free. Travel the world.
P.P.S. Sorry about the monkey!
P.P.P.S. Sorry we didn’t get to see each other much.
P.P.P.P.S. Live your life.
P.P.P.P.P.S. The World is Paradise.
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Sorry I died (which I must have done as you’re reading this!).
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Bye-bye. Lots of love, Grandpa.
Mina had hardly been in the house until then. It was a big three-story place on Crow Road near the park. Mum had been born in it, but had no memories of living in it. When she was three, her dad started his traveling, and she moved with her mum to a smaller house, and grew up there.
The big house was never sold. Mum said it was always there as a reminder that her dad might come back again and settle down, even though she and her mum knew in their hearts that he never would.
“Did Grandma keep on loving him?” Mina asked one day.
Mum shrugged and sighed. “She said she did. But it’s hard to go on loving somebody that’s always on the seven seas.” She smiled. “Grandma was quite a force herself, of course.” She winked. “She was liked by lots of men.”
For a few years while Mina was growing up, the house was rented out to students. Mina remembered seeing them sometimes, going in and out of the house, rolling bicycles into the hallway, sitting in the front garden eating sandwiches, throwing Frisbees, playing guitars. She remembered wondering what it would be like, to live in a big house like that with lots of friends, and to throw Frisbees in the garden, though she found it hard to think of herself with lots of friends. Then she thought, Maybe I’ll find friends who are rather like me, and we’ll be able to put up with each other.
The students didn’t last forever. The house was getting run-down. It needed decorating, some of the window frames were starting to rot, the electrics needed to be fixed up. Mina’s mum wrote to Grandpa about it. He said he’d sort it out soon. They knew, of course, that he never would. So Mina’s mum locked the house, put boards across the windows and put a sign on the door that simply said:
And for a long time, the house was almost forgotten about.
