My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (21 page)

There’s a high-rise at the address, but also a hamburger restaurant across the street. Elsa tells the wurse and The Monster to wait, and she goes across even though she has firm moral objections to hamburger chains, as every almost-eight-year-old should. But even almost-eight-year-olds can’t eat their principles, so she grudgingly buys ice cream for the wurse, a hamburger for The Monster, and a veggie burger for herself. And as she leaves she sneaks out her red felt-tip pen and crosses out the dash between “Lunch” and “menu” on the sign outside.

Despite the below-freezing temperature clawing at their faces, they sit on a bench opposite the high-rise building. Or rather, Elsa and the wurse sit, because The Monster looks at the bench as if it’s also about to lick him. He refuses to even touch the greaseproof paper around his hamburger, so the wurse eats that as well. At one point the wurse drops a bit of ice cream on the bench and licks it up without concern, and The Monster looks close to asphyxiation. After the wurse takes a bite of Elsa’s burger and she carries on eating it regardless, she has to help him breathe from a paper bag.

When they’re finally done, Elsa leans her head back and looks up the façade of the building. It must be fifteen floors high. She takes the envelope from her pocket, slides off the bench, and marches inside. The Monster and the wurse follow her in silence, surrounded by a strong smell of alcogel. Elsa quickly scans the board of residents on the wall and finds the name as written on the envelope, though preceded by the words “Reg. Psychotherapist.” Elsa doesn’t know what that means, but she’s heard a good deal about terropists setting off bombs and causing all sorts of trouble, so a psychoterropist must be even worse.

She heads over to the lift at the other end of the corridor. The wurse stops when they get there, and refuses to take another step. Elsa shrugs and goes in. The Monster follows her, after a certain amount of hesitation, though he is careful not to touch any of the walls.

Elsa evaluates The Monster as they’re going up. His beard sticks out of the hood like a large, curious squirrel, which makes him seem less and less dangerous the longer she knows him. The Monster clearly takes note of her examination of him, and he twists his hands uncomfortably. To her own surprise, Elsa realizes that his attitude hurts her feelings.

“If it bothers you so much you could just stay on guard downstairs with the wurse, you know. It’s not like something’s going to happen to me while I’m handing over a letter to the terropist.”

She talks in normal language, because she refuses to speak in the secret language with him. Her jealousy about Granny’s language not even being Granny’s from the very beginning hasn’t gone away.

“Anyway, you don’t have to be right beside me the whole time to be able to guard me,” she says, sounding more resentful than she means to. She’d started thinking of The Monster as a friend, but remembers now that he’s only here because Granny told him. The Monster just stands there in silence.

When the elevator doors glide open Elsa marches out ahead of him. They pass rows of doors until they find the terropist’s door. Elsa knocks so hard she actually hurts her knuckles. The Monster backs off towards the wall on the other side of the narrow corridor, as if he realizes that the person on the other side of the door may peer through the spyhole. He seems to be trying to make himself as small and unfrightening as possible. It’s hard not to find this endearing, thinks Elsa—even if “unfrightening” is not a proper word.

Elsa knocks on the door again. Puts her ear against the lock. Another knock. Another silence.

“Empty,” says The Monster slowly.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

She really doesn’t mean to be angry with him, because it’s Granny she’s angry with. She’s just tired. So very, very tired. She looks around and catches sight of two wooden chairs.

“They must be out for lunch, we’ll have to wait,” she says glumly, and drops despondently into one of the chairs.

As far as Elsa is concerned, the silence goes from pleasant to hard work to unbearable in about one and a half eternities. And when she has occupied herself with everything she has been able to come up with—drumming her fingers against the tabletop, poking out all the stuffing from the chair cushion through a little hole in the fabric, and carving her name into the soft wood of the armrest with the nail of her index finger—she shatters the silence with one of those questions that sound much more accusing than she means it to be.

“Why do you wear soldier’s trousers if you’re not a soldier?”

The Monster breathes slowly under his hood.

“Old trousers.”

“Have you been a soldier?”

The hood moves up and down.

“War is wrong and soldiers are wrong. Soldiers kill people!”

“Not that sort of soldier,” The Monster intones.

“There’s only one sort of soldier!”

The Monster doesn’t answer. Elsa carves a swearword into the wood of the armrest, using her nail. In actual fact she doesn’t want to ask the question that’s burning inside of her, because she doesn’t want The Monster to know how wounded she is. But she can’t stop herself. It’s one of Elsa’s big problems, they say at school. That she can never control herself.

“Was it you who showed my granny Miamas, or was it Granny who showed you?”

She spits out the words. The hood doesn’t move, but she can see him breathing. She’s just about to repeat the question when she hears, from the inside of it:

“Your granny. Showed. As a child.”

He says it the way he says everything in the normal language. As if the words come bickering out of his mouth.

“You were about my age,” Elsa says, thinking of the photos of the Werewolf Boy.

The hood moves up and down.

“Did she tell you fairy tales?” she asks quietly, and wishes he’d say no, even though she knows better.

The hood moves up and down.

“Did you meet during a war? Is that why she called you Wolfheart?” She really doesn’t want to ask anymore, because she can feel her jealousy growing. But the hood continues to nod.

“Camp. Camp for the one who flees.”

“A refugee camp. Did Granny bring you here with her? Was she the one who arranged it so you could live in the flat?”

There’s a long exhalation from the hood.

“Lived in many places. Many homes.”

“Foster homes?” He nods. “Why didn’t you stay there?”

The hood moves from side to side, very slowly.

“Bad homes. Dangerous. Your granny came to get me.”

“Why did you become a soldier when you grew up? Was it so you could go to the same places as Granny?” He nods. “Did you also want to help people? Like she does?” Slowly, the hood moves up and down. “Why didn’t you become a doctor like Granny, then?” The Monster rubs his hands together.

“Blood. Don’t like . . . blood.”

“Smart idea to become a soldier. Are you an orphan?”

The hood is still. The Monster is silent. But she notices that the beard withdraws even deeper into the darkness. Suddenly Elsa nods exuberantly to herself.

“Like the X-Men!” she exclaims with more enthusiasm than she’s really willing to give away. Then she clears her throat, composes herself. “X-Men are . . . mutants. And many X-Men are sort of orphans. It’s quite cool.”

The hood doesn’t move. Elsa pulls out some more stuffing from the chair cushion and feels stupid. She was about to add that Harry Potter was also an orphan, and to be like Harry Potter in any way at all is actually the coolest thing there is, but she’s starting to realize that The Monster probably doesn’t read as much quality literature as one might hope.

“Is Miamas a word in the secret language?” she asks instead. “I mean, is it a word in your language? It doesn’t sound like other words in the secret language—I mean, your language.”

The hood doesn’t move. But the words come more softly now. Not like all the other words from The Monster, which all seem to be on their guard. These sound almost dreamy.

“Mama’s language. ‘Miamas.’ My . . . mama’s language.”

Elsa looks up and gazes intently into the darkness inside the hood.

“Did you not have the same language?”

The hood moves from side to side.

“Where did your mother come from?” asks Elsa.

“Other place. Other war.”

“What does Miamas mean, then?”

The words come out like a sigh.

“ ‘I love.’ ”

“So it was your kingdom. That was why it was called Miamas. It wasn’t at all because I called pajamas ‘mjamas.’ ”

Elsa pulls out the last bit of stuffing and rolls it into a ball to distract herself from her churning jealousy. Typical bloody Granny thing, making up Miamas for you so you’d know your mother loved you, she thinks, abruptly silencing herself when she realizes she is mumbling it aloud.

The Monster shifts his weight from foot to foot. Breathing more slowly. Rubbing his hands.

“Miamas. Not made up. Not pretend. Not for . . . a little one. Miamas. For real for . . . children.”

And then, while Elsa closes her eyes to avoid showing her agreement, he goes on tentatively:

“In letter. Grandmother’s apology. Was apology to mother,” he whispers from under his hood.

Elsa’s eyes open and she frowns.

“What?”

The Monster’s chest heaves up and down.

“You asked. About Granny’s letter. What Granny wrote. Wrote apology to mother. We never found . . . mother.”

Their eyes meet halfway, on different terms. A tiny but mutual respect is created between them, there and then, as Miamasians. Elsa realizes that he is telling her what was in the letter because he understands what it’s like when people have secrets from you just because you’re a child. So she sounds considerably less angry when she asks:

“Did you look for your mother?”

The hood moves up and down.

“For how long?”

“Always. Since . . . the camp.”

Elsa’s chin drops slightly.

“So that’s why Granny was always going off on all these trips? Because you were looking for your mother?”

The speed of The Monster’s hand-rubbing increases. His chest heaves. His hood moves down a fraction, then up again, infinitely slowly. And then everything is silent.

Elsa nods and looks down at her lap and, once again, her anger wells up unreasonably inside her.

“My granny was also someone’s mother! Did you ever think about that?”

The Monster doesn’t answer.

“You don’t have to guard me!” Elsa snaps and starts scratching more swearwords into the wooden armrest.

“Not guard,” The Monster finally growls. His black eyes emerge from under the hood. “Not guard. Friend.”

He disappears back in under the hood. Elsa burrows her gaze into the floor and scrapes her heels against the wall-to-wall carpet, stirring up more dust.

“Thanks,” she whispers grumpily. But she says it in the secret language now. The Monster doesn’t say anything, but when he rubs his hands together it’s no longer as hard and frenetic.

“You don’t like talking so much, do you?”

“No . . . but you do. All the time.”

And that’s the first time Elsa believes he’s smiling. Or almost, anyway.

“Touché.” Elsa grins.

Elsa doesn’t know how long they wait, but they keep waiting long after Elsa has really decided to give up. They wait until the lift door opens with a little “pling” and the woman in the black skirt walks into the corridor. She approaches the office with big strides but freezes midair as she sees the enormous, bearded man and the small girl who looks as if she’d fit into the palm of one of his hands. The girl stares at her. The woman in the black skirt is holding a small plastic box of salad. It’s trembling. She looks as if she’s considering turning and running away, or maybe, like a child, believes that if she closes her eyes she’ll no longer be visible. Instead, she stands frozen to the spot a few yards away from them, her hands grasping the edge of the box as if it were the edge of a cliff.

Elsa rises from her chair. Wolfheart backs away from them both. If Elsa had been looking at him, she would have noticed, as he moved away, an expression on his face that she had never seen in him before. A sort of fear that no one in the Land-of-Almost-Awake would have believed Wolfheart capable of. But Elsa doesn’t look at him as she rises from the chair; she is only looking at the woman in the black skirt.

“I think I have a letter for you,” Elsa eventually manages to say.

The woman stands still with her knuckles whitening around the plastic box. Elsa insistently reaches towards her with the envelope.

“It’s from my granny. I think she’s saying sorry about something.”

The woman takes it. Elsa puts her hands in her pockets, because she doesn’t quite know what to do with them. It’s unclear what the woman in the black skirt is doing here, but Elsa is certain that Granny had some reason for making her bring the letter. Because there’s no coincidence in Miamas, or in fairy tales. Everything that’s there is meant to be there.

“It’s not your name on the envelope, I know that, but it has to be for you.”

The woman smells of mint today, not wine. Carefully she opens the letter. Her lips tighten; the letter trembles in her hands.