David Almond - My Name Is Mina

Mooched about. Had chocolate milk and two biscuits.

I know that some people do not like fig rolls – Sophie Smith, for instance. She was a girl at school that I sat next to for a while. She was almost as small as me. She had curly blond hair and blue eyes and she walked with a limp. I offered her a fig roll one breaktime.

“No thank you,” she said. “I find them rather sickly.”

“Sickly?” I said. “Rather sickly?”

I couldn’t believe it.

“You must be joking!” I said.

“No,” answered Sophie. “I prefer Jammy Dodgers.”

I had to admit I’d never tasted a Jammy Dodger.

“What?” she said. “Never tasted a Jammy Dodger? Where on earth have you been all your life?”

Next day she brought some Jammy Dodgers into school. She gave me one at break.

“Well?” she said.

“Delicious!” I said, so she gave me another.

We were friends for a while, I suppose. We used to walk around the yard at breaktimes. One day I took a deep breath and said,

“I know it’s nothing to do with me, but why do you limp?”

“I had a disease when I was little,” she said. “It left a problem with my leg.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Does it worry you?” she said.

“No,” I answered. “Of course it doesn’t.”

We walked on.

“I’ll have an operation to sort it out when I’m a bit older,” she said.

“That’s good.”

“It’ll mean some pain, but I think it’ll be worth it.”

Then she looked at me and said,

“Can I ask you something?”

“I suppose so.”

“Why are you so …?”

She stopped.

“So what?” I said.

She shrugged.

“So strange, I suppose,” she said.

“Am I?”

“Kind of. A bit kind of complicated.”

I looked at the kids in the yard, running round together, hanging out together.

“I don’t mean to be,” I said. I laughed. “Maybe I should have an operation to fix it.”

She laughed as well.

“Maybe you should. But what kind of operation would fix strangeness?” she said.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“A destrangification operation!” she said.

We laughed together at the word.

“Does it worry you?” I said.

“No,” she said.

She reached into her pocket and brought out a package wrapped in silver foil.

“Have a Jammy Dodger,” she said.

I grinned.

“Delicious!”

Sophie Smith. I wonder where she is now. In the same school? Has she moved away? Does she like fig rolls at last? Has she had her operation? Probably I’ll never find out. I did think I saw her passing by the end of the street one day, while I was sitting in my tree, but I wasn’t certain. I almost called out to her, but I didn’t. Would I like to see her again? Yes, I suppose I would.

I would only ever whisper it, but I do sometimes think I will have to go back to school one day, and make some new friends. Sometimes I would quite like to go back. And I should also whisper that all of the teachers weren’t Mrs. Scullerys. Some were nice, and interesting, and creative. Like Mr. Henderson, who told us about the tunnels under Heston Park. And like some other teachers I had in the past. And there were nice kids like Sophie. Sometimes I find myself thinking that a school could be (could be!) a wonderful place. Sometimes I even find myself thinking that there already are schools that are wonderful places. But that makes no real difference. Schools are still CAGES and PLACES TO BE AVOIDED!

FIG ROLLS! WOW! I like to nibble the top of the biscuit off first, then chew away the lovely figgy stuff (it’s lovely slooched around inside the mouth with chocolate milk), then eat the bottom bit.

Went up to the loo. Listened to the lovely tinkling sound of my pee splashing down into the water. Thought about water running through me, water and my pee being flushed away into the drains, how it’ll end up in rivers and seas and how it’ll evaporate into the air and come back down again as rain. Lovely to think of water that’s been my pee coming down as rain! Maybe that’s why people say it’s pissing down!

Water’s moving all the time, running, flowing, swirling, splashing, gurgling, evaporating, condensing. Some of the water molecules that are in me now were once in the Red Sea, or in the Mississippi, or in Ernie Myers, or in a blackbird, or in an orange, or a sprout, or inside a dinosaur, or in a caveman, or a saber-toothed tiger, or a three-toed sloth or …

I spat down into the water and flushed again and off went my spit into the world. It’ll change from being spit. Some of it will turn up in somebody else and then in somebody else’s spit and pee. It’ll become a bit of the Pacific Ocean or the Nile. It’ll turn up in whatever kind of beings we become in the future. And on and on and on and onto the very end of time.

EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY

Go to the loo. Flush your pee away.

Consider where it will go to and what it will become.

Swigged some water from the tap to replace the water I have lost through spit and pee and sweat. The human body is 65 percent water. Two-thirds of me is constantly disappearing, and constantly being replaced. So most of me is not me at all!

Gulp!

Caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. Stepped back and had a good look. I am indeed very skinny. This must be an organic thing, given my fondness for fig rolls and Jammy Dodgers and chocolate. And I’m rather small. When I was young Mum used to call me her little bird, which I loved. But however small and light I might be, I can’t be as light as a bird is. They have air cavities within their bones. The correct word for this fact is pneumatization. Pneumatization. What a word! NEW-MA-TIZE-ATION.

I, along with all other human beings, am not pneumatized. Therefore I am earthbound. Or am I? Maybe not. After all —

MY PEE AND MY SWEAT AND MY SPIT RISE INTO THE AIR

AS VAPOR AND FALL TO THE EARTH AS RAIN.

MY SKIN DANCES IN THE AIR AS DUST.

MY BREATH MERGES WITH THE AIR AND WITH THE SKY.

SO I AM EARTHBOUND BUT ALSO AIRBOUND!

I keep on looking. I know that the girl I see in the bathroom mirror will evolve and grow. Mum says I am poised on the threshold of a time of wonder. I look at the little creature in the mirror and it seems impossible. But yes, I do feel poised. And I’m also happy to wait, and to be a baby in those times I need to be a baby, like when Mum wraps her arms around me on the sofa and whispers that she loves me, and sings her songs to me, and whispers that I’m her lovely little chick.

Mooched about some more. Went to my bedroom and mooched through my bookshelves. Pulled out three books, three of the extraordinariest books in the world: Where the Wild Things Are , We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Dogger! Lay on my bed and read them and looked at them just like I did when I was a little girl. And danced the dance of the Wild Things with Max, and tiptoed into the bear’s cave with the family, and felt really sad with Dave about his lost toy, Dogger, and really happy with him when he found it again.