Tall Story (3 page)

‘I know.’ I rubbed my eyes.

‘Come on in,’ Mum said. ‘I’ll get supper on the table.’

I followed them back into the flat. ‘It’s just … I’ve been working
hard
to get Coach to pick me. I’ve been
slaving
away …’

‘I know, darling.’ Dad began to lay the table for dinner.

Mum lit the stove and measured some rice into a pot, sighing. ‘Ah well. It was inevitable really, wasn’t it?’

I stiffened. ‘What do you mean,
inevitable
?’

‘Oh, you know, you’re not exactly basketball-player material.’

I stared at her.

‘Mum, I made point guard. It’s not about height, it’s about skill.’

‘Mary Ann,’ Dad said urgently, but Mum ignored him.

‘I know, I know. Skill. But you’ve also got to be tall. Basketball players have to be TALL.’

‘
Mary Ann!
’ Dad groaned.

‘What?’ Mum looked up from the stove. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘MUM, they made me POINT GUARD!’ I banged my fists on the table, making all the plates jangle.

‘ANDI!’

Mum glared at me like
I
was the annoying one.

‘Andi, sweetheart, we’re so sorry you had to leave the team,’ Dad said hurriedly. ‘Mum’s just—’

‘I’m just telling the truth!’ she whirled furiously at him.

Dad ignored her outburst. ‘Mum’s just
brainstorming
.’

‘Yeah. Right.’ I scowled at them. ‘It’s not about height, Mum. I’m
good
at basketball … which you would know if you ever came to see me play.’

Mum didn’t reply, but she glowered at Dad like it was all
his
fault.

I walked out. Which is hard in a flat as small as ours. It was only one small step into the sitting room. At least there was a door, which I tried to slam, but it wouldn’t even close properly because Dad’s bedroom slippers were in the way. I kicked them into
the kitchen and the door thudded shut. As if on cue, Mum and Dad’s voices rose in sharp argument.

They had no idea how important basketball was to me. Mum never came to any of my games. Dad came once or twice but neither of them was ever
around
enough to see if I was any good or totally rank. And now I had to give it up. Saint Simeon’s website mentioned football, hockey, netball … but not basketball.

The new house was just round the corner from the Northern Royal Hospital, where both Mum and Dad worked as casualty nurses. They were always working. Night shifts and twelve-hour shifts and this shift and that shift.

We weren’t just moving so we could have more room. We were moving so they could do even MORE shifts.

I felt a twinge. I couldn’t even resent that fact without a pinch of guilt. I mean, they were working all hours
saving lives
! I was like Lois Lane wanting a snog when Superman had to go off and save the world. It was so unfair. Why was it
me
who had to feel guilty all the time?

Well.

To be honest, I knew that I was the lucky one.

I
was the one who got to live with them … instead of being on the other side of the world like poor Bernardo, waiting for ever and ever for the Home Office to let him come to England.

I mean,
sixteen years
he’s been waiting!

I feel guilty about
that
too.

There were photos of Bernardo on the mantelpiece.

Bernardo as a baby with spiky black hair.

Bernardo on Mum’s lap.

Bernardo with toddler me, that one year Mum took me to the Philippines.

And Bernardo at fourteen, all bad teeth, bad skin and big head, sitting in a restaurant with Mum.

He looked like any regular kid on a day out with his mother. Except of course he only got to see Mum every two years.

Which has always made me feel extra,
extra
guilty.

And next to the Bernardo pictures was a picture of the
other
Bernardo.

He was a solemn-looking man with a short haircut and Chinese eyes. Ever since I can remember, his picture has been on the mantelpiece. Which is kind of creepy, because of course Mum isn’t married to
him
any more.

The other Bernardo belonged to Mum’s other life, a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Well, in the Philippines anyway. He was Bernardo’s dad.

Mum and Dad’s wedding picture stood off to the right and a little to the back behind a ceramic vase.

Dad didn’t seem to mind having the picture up there. He acted like it was the most natural thing in the world for his wife’s ex-husband to take centre stage on the mantelpiece.

Yeugh.

Apparently soon after little Bernardo was born, both Mum and Bernardo Senior fell ill with dengue fever. That’s one of the diseases you can get by being bitten by a mosquito, of which there are plenty in the Philippines, so Mum says.

Mum was so ill, her sister Sofia had to look after baby Bernardo while she was taken away to hospital.

She woke up many days later and her doctor told her, ‘The good news is you are now immune to the dengue mosquito that infected you. The bad news is there are four strains of dengue fever. One down and three to go.’

Which would have been a hilarious thing to say had it not been for the fact that, unlike Mum, the husband named Bernardo had not woken up from the fever.

He was dead.

Mum said it was the worst time in her life.

She was ill, bereaved, with a tiny baby to look after.

And she was broke.

She had to borrow gazillions to pay the hospital bills. Nurses in the Philippines don’t earn gazillions and she
owed
gazillions. It was dire.

One night she saw a comet flashing through the sky and she made a wish. She wished she could earn enough money to pay back the debt.

The very next day the job in England came up.

Her wish had come true.

She left baby Bernardo with Auntie, thinking that she could send for him when the time was right. But it never happened.

Then of course she married Dad and had me.

She’s been trying to bring Bernardo over to England for as long as I remember. But it’s been a mission. Years of paperwork and overseas phone calls (most of which seemed to consist of Mum going, ‘Hello? Hello? Can you hear me now, Sofia?’). Mum will bore anyone willing to listen with the saga of getting Bernardo’s immigration papers.

So though her wish came true, it took Bernardo away from her.

Maybe that’s the way wishes work.

I wished for point guard.

Mum wished for a house.

We both got our wishes. But one good thing deleted the other, like a finger falling on the wrong computer key.

Oops.

I
t was almost midnight.

The chirping of crickets and the buzz of snoring from upstairs combined into the usual night chorus.

I sat at the kitchen table, postcard and pen in hand, staring at Mum’s photograph on the wall. It had been hanging there for so long the red of the London bus had been bleached to pink. I was racking my brains for something more intelligent to write than just
wish you were here
, even though that’s all I ever wanted to write because it was true.

I wished she was here. And Uncle William. And Amandolina.

Actually, I wished
I
was
there
more than I wished
they
were
here
. When Ma sent photos from London, Auntie often sniffed and said London looked too grand, too cold, too hurried, too posh. But I didn’t care. And it wasn’t that San Andres was too rough, too hot, too slow or too tired either. Home is wherever Ma is, and home was where I wanted to be.

Tap tap.

Who was that tapping at the window? It was far too late, even for Jabby. But then Jabby was perfectly capable of sneaking out at night on some crazy impulse. I cast a sidewards glance at the window and started.

It was wide open; the mosquito screens that Auntie usually kept fastened gaped outwards into the black night.

‘
Psst
. Giant Boy!’ The whisper wafted in like a slight breeze.

The voice was unmistakable. Mad Nena! What was she up to? I bowed my head, fixing my eyes on the postcard as if I hadn’t heard, hoping she would go away.

‘Psst. I know you can hear me.’

The casement suddenly swung hard against a nearby table. Goose pimples pricked the back of my neck.

‘So. Can you hear me now?’

I stood up.

In the shadows beyond the windowsill, Mad Nena’s head was a dark lump; the peering eyes watched me greedily, the way they watched me every day from around street corners and behind trees, following my every move.

I hurried over, glancing up the stairs. Should I call for Uncle and Auntie? But then what would Mad Nena tell them? She stood in the yellow square of light cast by my window, her bony arms hugging herself tight.

I cleared my throat. ‘Sister Nena … ma’am … my auntie will not …’

‘You know as well as I do that she’s gone to bed.
Hero
.’

I swallowed. My hands were suddenly cold, like I’d plunged them into a bucket of ice.

‘Please don’t call me that.’

‘Hero? But that’s what you are. Bernardo, who’s going to save our town from calamity.’

‘Please don’t.’

‘Do you feel guilty, Giant Boy? Guilty about Gabriela? Guilty for what you did to me?’

‘Look, Sister, I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m sorry for everything.’ I wished now that Auntie would suddenly appear.
Nena, what are you doing?
she would say.
Shoo! Shoo!

I could easily have called for Auntie over my shoulder.

But I didn’t.

It was after Gabriela died that Nena started
wandering the streets. She wore the same clothes until they melted into rags. At the oddest times, and for no obvious reason, she would yell and weep. Then she would begin to sing her strange, wordless songs. Her most treasured possession was a laminated card that someone had given her at Gabriela’s funeral. She wore it around her neck on a red ribbon. It had Saint Gertrude’s prayer on it, the one that released a thousand souls from Purgatory every time it was prayed.

Whenever I saw Nena on the street, I crossed to the other side. ‘She’s harmless, Nardo,’ Auntie chided. ‘She can’t do anything to you now.’

But tonight the eyes gazing at me through the matted hair were clear.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, reaching to shut the casement. ‘I think you should go.’

‘I forgive you,’ she whispered.

I stopped.

‘S-sorry?’

‘No hard feelings.’

‘What … what do you want from me?’

Behind the tangle of hair, the eyes glowed like embers of coal.

‘I want nothing from you. I bring you a gift, Hero. A gift.’

She reached up and pulled my hand from the sill, pushing something firmly into my palm.

It was the wishing stone.

For a moment I could see Gabriela again, dark eyes flashing, long hair black and silky as a stream … and the wishing stone, nestled in the cleft bared by her lavishly unbuttoned blouse.

It felt solid and heavy in my hand.

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t take this.’

‘This is yours. Gabriela wanted me to give it to you. That much she told me before she died.’

It looked like any stone one would find on a beach. A stone for skipping in the sea. A stone for loading in a slingshot to dislodge ripe fruit from the tops of the mango trees. But I knew its power. I knew what it could do.

‘It will grant you one wish.
One wish
. What is your heart’s desire?’

Longing swelled in my chest so suddenly, I almost winced. My heart’s desire? Wasn’t it obvious? Everyone knew what I wanted more than anything else.

‘I can’t accept this …’ I said faintly. But inside my head there was a clamour.
Take it! Take it!
…

‘She wanted
you
to have it. It was her dying wish.’

‘But …’

‘It’s yours, Hero.’

And then she quickly jumped down from her perch and ran to the yawning gate of our house.

‘Nardo?’

I stared at her dazedly.

‘Be careful what you wish for.’

She laughed a silent laugh, her shoulders shaking, her mouth open wide. She slapped her knee and waved, then stepped out into the muddy darkness.

‘Y
ou’ll love it at Saint Sim’s,’ Dad said. ‘They’ve got a new gym.’

We were driving across town in our Toyota, which would have been another good surprise for our oily estate agent because it was a teacup on wheels.

Lucky Dad. The most comfortable seat was the driver’s: Mum didn’t want to drive and of course I couldn’t.

Mum sat under a large wheelie bag in the front passenger seat. And I was in the back, buried under an avalanche of duvets. Which was probably the safest thing in case of an accident, as long as I didn’t suffocate first.

The moving lorry was to follow later in the afternoon. It was ten times the size of our flat but we didn’t have any trouble filling it up.

‘Yes!’ Mum said. ‘They offer so many sports! You can easily pick one where height is not an
advantage. Table tennis. Bowling. Ukulele.’

‘Ukulele is not a sport, Mum!’

‘But it’s small – it’s perfect for you.’

‘MUM!’

Maybe she was trying to be funny.

‘Here we are!’ Dad said.

We pulled over but it took ages for Mum to liberate herself from the suitcase and me from the bedding. Dad tried to help but ended up getting Mum’s heel on his big toe. When we were finally free, we all turned to stare at our new home.

It was even bigger than I remembered. Three floors of living space. Three bedrooms. With steps leading up to a front door which was double the width of our flat. The windows were so clean they winked in the sun.

Dad was like a little boy with a new toy. He grabbed Mum’s hand and pulled her up to the front steps. She shrieked as he swung her easily into his arms like a doll.

‘Dad!’ I blushed. They were so rank. Worse than teenagers. I glanced around surreptitiously to see if any of the neighbours’ curtains were twitching.