Artichoke Hearts (13 page)

Doris pulls the curtain around Nana’s bed so she can help her into her clothes.

‘That’s right, Josie, nice and slow, no hurry now.’

I can see Nana’s bony ankles, like a sparrow’s legs, below the lime-green curtain. Then suddenly I hear her breathing change.

‘I can’t do this any more . . . I can’t . . . I can’t breathe . . .’ Nana gasps.

I see the little birds from my dream, battering their wings against the glass.

I would like to rip open the curtain and hug Nana, but that soft material might as well be a sealed brick wall. She’s in a private world with a strange new family now.

A man nurse approaches silently. His body is twisted as if something is weighing him down. And he has these eyes that look like he can understand exactly how you feel. I read the name on his
label, ‘Mark’. That’s exactly what he looks like, a question mark. He’s small with sandy brown hair and watery blue eyes, too big for the size of his face, but what you
really notice about him is his way of looking. Most people look out of their eyes to see things, but Question Mark’s eyes seem to drink in feelings. He glances down at me and smiles, holds
the curtains back for Dr Clem and quietly they walk in together.

‘He’s special, that one,’ Clara tells me, nodding in the direction of Question Mark. Looking under the curtain I can understand how Question Mark is so light-footed. He’s
wearing sheepskin slippers. Nana’s feet have disappeared from the floor. I can hear her voice mingling with Doris’s and Dr Clem’s . . . liquid voices flowing into each other.

Doris opens the curtains and there she is, my Nana Josie, sitting up in bed, with a weak smile on her face.

Even though I’m not wearing my watch something strange is definitely happening to time. It’s as if we’ve stepped out of it.

Nana has an oxygen mask over her mouth and she’s leaning back on her pillow. Dr Clem and Question Mark pull chairs up to Nana’s bed and ask everyone to sit down. Dr
Clem sits next to Nana Josie, leaning into the bed but resting one foot, to steady himself, on the floor. That’s how he sits with patients, as if to say, ‘I’m on your
side.’

‘Josie has asked me to speak to you.’ Dr Clem’s warm smile spreads over us again.

Nana Josie lifts her head up and nods encouragingly to Dr Clem, as if she has given him her blessing.

‘As you have probably gathered, we tried to move Josie just now, and she became very anxious. She’s in a state of exhaustion, but she has managed to tell us what she wants, or
rather, what she doesn’t want.’

Dr Clem takes a deep breath, as if he’s gathering the courage to speak.

‘The purpose of the procedure we were planning was to ease Josie’s breathing. It would certainly give her more time, but after a short while the fluid on her lungs would only build
up again.’

Like drowning.

Dr Clem speaks very slowly, as if he’s rehearsing what he’s saying in his head, before he actually speaks.

‘Josie has decided that, now that she’s here, she doesn’t want to be moved out of the hospice.’

Dr Clem pauses, looking around at each member of the family, in case we want to ask him anything, but no one says a word. Nana Josie lifts her arm and pats him on the shoulder. Something has
changed. Now Nana doesn’t look worried any more. Even so, for the whole meeting, my dad sits with his head practically on his knees as everyone else listens to Dr Clem. Krish even puts his
hand up as if he’s in class and asks Nana straight out, ‘Do you actually want to die now, Nana?’

She just looks at him, in a kind way, and turns to Dr Clem.

‘She doesn’t want any more pain, and that’s what we can do for her here in the hospice, make sure she has no more pain,’ explains Dr Clem, taking hold of Krish’s
hand.

Nana nods. She looks like she’s about to cry and so does Dr Clem, but instead he takes a deep breath and carries on. He tells us that the pain relief will make Nana sleep more and that she
might have very strong dreams. He says we can come to the hospice whenever we want. All the time he’s talking, Dr Clem is trying to get my dad to look at him and after the meeting he takes
Dad by the shoulder and leads him out of the ward. They sit in a room at the end of the corridor, talking. By the time Dad comes out he looks better, more settled.

So here we are, my dad and me, holding Nana’s hands and watching her sleep. Now it’s my turn to cry. Dad strokes my hair as Nana sleeps.

‘I’m not sure I agree with all this,’ Crystal pipes up, pointing vaguely in my direction. ‘Is it really necessary to drag the children through it?’

I don’t know who Crystal’s talking to. Some adults do that, talk about you as if you aren’t in the room. She doesn’t really talk to Clara. I don’t think they like
each other much, so I suppose she must be talking to Dad, but he’s miles away, lost in his own thoughts. To answer, Clara shoots Crystal a stony look and reaches out to me. Something about
her thin veiny arms reminds me of the oak outside the window, stretching its gnarly branches towards us.

No sign of Notsurewho Notsurewhat.

No call from Jidé Jackson.

Crystal is still ‘beautifying’ herself, applying her bright blue eyeshadow and pink dolly cheeks.

‘You’ve caught me putting on my mask!’ she jokes.

‘When do you
ever
take it off?’ snaps Clara.

Crystal ignores her, as usual, patting the covers on the bed for me to sit down next to her. I think it might be rude not to, so I do. She whispers to me so that Clara can’t hear.

‘I’ve been looking after myself like this since I was about your age. You’ve got good skin too,’ she says, touching my cheek.

It’s a good job my spot has disappeared, as mysteriously as it arrived.

‘I used to have smooth skin like yours . . . Plenty of young men will want to kiss you.’ She squeezes my cheek. I feel myself turning bright red. I hate it when

i

people do that, as if you’re a pet.

‘Still, my time passed long ago – there’s nothing for it but to make the best of it,’ she sighs, puffing white powder on top of her pink blusher.

I can’t think of what to say to Crystal so I smile politely and say nothing, remembering what Mum always says: ‘If you can’t think of anything kind to say to someone,
don’t say anything at all.’ I think Crystal wants me to say that she still looks good, but there is no way I could bring myself to say anything like that without blushing bright red and
revealing to the whole world that I was lying.

I think Clara and Nana must have been chatting in the night, because when they sit up in bed they smile at each other like old friends, even though it might look from the outside as if they
wouldn’t have much in common. For a start, it’s Clara’s clothes – she wears this long flowery nightie that stops just above her knee. These are the sort of old ladies’
clothes they sell in Blustons in Kentish Town. Whenever we used to pass that shop, Nana would say how much she loved the name, because it conjures up the image of ‘blouses on bustling old
ladies, squeezing on to buses’. When we walk past Blustons, Krish stares through the shop window at the models with enormous bosoms advertising their bras. Clara is definitely wearing a
Blustons nightie, but it’s about three sizes too big for her. I wonder whether she was once actually quite, what Nana calls, ‘Blustony’. Whatever Clara used to look like, now she
is thin, like Nana. Clara mutters to herself from time to time, saying things like, ‘Bloody awful business this . . . Can you get me out of here?’

She asks me that when I’m passing her bed, and she makes me feel sorry I can’t help her, but, as Doris keeps trying to explain: ‘Nobody’s keeping you here, Clara, my
dear, it’s just we want to make sure you’re looked after.’

Clara doesn’t have any visitors.

‘I don’t want to bother them – my boy’s got his own life to get on with,’ Clara tells us, then she goes back to chanting, ‘Bloody awful business this . . . Can you
get me out of here?’

Sometimes, when we’re all crowded around Nana Josie’s bed, I see this look cross Clara’s face, like she wishes someone would go over and talk to her. She loves Piper, and he
loves her. From time to time he jumps on to her bed and she makes ‘a right old fuss of him’. You can hear her muttering. ‘Piper, good sort, isn’t he, Josie?’

Crystal takes this personally, as Clara doesn’t seem to pay any attention at all to Lad. Sometimes Clara adds, under her breath (just to annoy Crystal, I think), ‘Never been fond of
big dogs.’

The only reason that Crystal, Clara and Nana Josie are together in this room is because of cancer. I sometimes dream that cancer is like a monster’s shadow and I try to
fight it, but it’s not even solid enough to kick or punch. I walk all around it, trying to find a way to scream at it to get out of my nana, but it doesn’t have a face or eyes. I
don’t really know how to kill it, so I just shout at it really loudly until I wake myself up. I have this dream quite a lot since Nana got ill.

There is a Therapist Lady downstairs in the hospice where you can go to draw pictures of how you feel. She asked me and Krish if we wanted to see her room. Krish didn’t want to. Her room
has children’s pictures all over the walls, bean bags on the floor and paints and crayons everywhere. I drew her my dream of the monster’s shadow in dark smudgy charcoaly shadows. She
said that my dream is my way of facing my fears. I just think that cancer is very, very frightening if you’re asleep or awake, but Nana says that one day, probably in my lifetime, they will
find a way to kill it off.

When I tell Nana about the therapist, she explains to me that the hospice looks after people in all kinds of pain. She says that some people are in pain because their hearts are breaking and
they are about to lose the people they love.

‘Like us,’ I whisper.

Nana nods.

‘Can your heart actually break, Nana?’

That’s what we call it, Mira, but it doesn’t exactly

“break”. It’s something more complicated than that -it’s more like a sore than a break. When the wound is raw, it feels like it will never heal. I think that’s why
they call it a break.’

‘Has that ever happened to you?’ I ask Nana.

‘Oh yes.’

‘Can you fix it then, a broken heart?’

‘No, that’s what I mean. It’s not as simple as that. It sort of heals over in time, but it always leaves a scar. Each time you get hurt, you put a little protective layer round
the wound, like a bandage, so that the next time you can’t be damaged quite so easily. Remember the artichoke leaves?’

I nod. ‘What does it feel like, Nana?’

‘Hard to say. There are so many different kinds of heartbreak.’

‘How many?’

‘Let me think . . . Ah yes! If you draw the most beautiful picture for someone and you put all your energy and love and imagination into it, and then you give it to the person and later
you find it in a bin. It’s called rejection, as if they’ve thrown a little bit of you away.’

Nana always does that – if she’s describing something complicated, she gives you examples of things she knows you’ll understand, but even since my birthday Nana doesn’t know
how much I’ve changed. How can she even start to guess at how much more I know now? She’s thinking about the time when a teacher told me that the poem I wrote about India was all wrong
and I had to start again because it wasn’t what she’d asked for. I had researched it in the library the night before, and asked Grandad Bimal to describe the place where he was born. So
when Miss Fallow threw it in the bin it was a bit like she was throwing a part of me away too.

Nana could see how upset I was so she got her famous poet friend to read it, and he wrote me a note to tell me how much he liked it, and a note for Miss Fallow too. Then Nana marched into school
with Piper by her side and stood outside the classroom till Miss Fallow came out.

‘A poet friend of mine has made a dedication to you. Would you like to read it? It’s very short,’ Nana announced, without waiting for an answer.

Then she thrust the poem in front of Miss Fallow, who blushed bright red and did not look very happy. The poem said:

‘Neither are bullies,’ Nana shot back, stomping off down the corridor with her nose in the air. My nana doesn’t do rules.

She says it’s the parents’ and grandparents’ job to protect children’s hearts.

‘What if their parents are dead?’ The question is out before I can think about what I’m asking.

‘Your parents aren’t going to die, Mira . . . not for a long time.’

Nana thinks I’m worrying about myself. Since I decided to keep my period a secret, it’s easier not to tell other things too. I always used to tell Nana exactly what I was thinking
about and she would always have an opinion. But Nana doesn’t know everything about me any more, and something about the way she’s looking at me, right at this very moment, makes me
think she knows that I’m holding a little part of me back from her.