David Almond - My Name Is Mina

I read them all again, a second time, and got all dreamy, and remembered Dad, the way he was when he used to read these books to me just before I went to sleep. I never really have a strong picture of him in my mind. I sort of half-hear him and half-see him, like he’s somebody in a dream that gets harder to remember the more you try to think of him. When I read the words to myself I can kind of half-hear the sound of his voice as he read them to me.

I half-remembered the smell of his breath and the stubble on his cheek as he kissed me good night, the slight roughness of his skin as he stroked my cheek, his voice as he whispered his Good Night. And I lay with the books around me and the strange half-vague, half-intense memories [8] A strange thought. Maybe trying to remember when you are young is very like trying to remember when you are old. When he looked out into the street, Ernie Myers probably felt like I did when I was trying to look back into the past. So the young and the old are in some ways very alike. inside me, and felt very small indeed.

This activity has made me rather sad. I will cheer myself up by writing all the words for joy and loveliness, two whole pages filled with nothing else!

skylark Mum blackbird owl moon tree park

Icarus wing weird cat black shining silver

smooth joy yes egg tree nest light toast

marmalade raspberry yogurt park Mina

Dad bat Orpheus angel night whisper

journal Sendak book abundant story sing

dance Grace starling Mina mess clutter sing

beak God fly typical William joy pollen

nonsense sloth wild painter poet Blake

savage coal fig tender wander Rosen

wonder banana transmigration Hughes

flush unimaginable Dave paint clay dangle

alarm witch Buddhism saint skin weirdo

pebble crow pissing grandpa Oxenbury

Ernie heaven universe Max star Dogger

imagine tinkling alive glisten bud beat

beautiful inside soul tatty hatch chick wet

creature book lullaby Maurice sloosh light

water pizza love paradox alive hoot giggle

Hinduism darling purr lass zimmer

Persephone pee poo soul fig bloke strange

bee imagine Shirley chocolate goggly word

Grace metempsybeautifulchosis bony wallop

Himalaya cloud body hatch universe stupid

bloody archaeopteryx poem word yawn

nothingness mystery click tongue

mysterious sprout thump carrot philosophy

see pomegranate sweat Helen dead concrete

Corinthian stop play index finger biscuit

space saber madness spring Michael cheese

strange world winter frost extraordinary

earth this dream dust silver sleep o sun

When that was done, I looked out into the street. The blue car was back. The pregnant woman and the man got out. There was a boy with them. The woman looked at Mr. Myers’s house with distaste, but the man guided her to the front window. They peered in. The boy stood with his hands in his pockets and stared glumly at the earth. He stared glumly along the street. The man grinned at him and called him forward. The boy didn’t move. Then another car came, and a man in a suit, carrying a plastic folder, got out. He shook the hands of the woman and the man. The boy just looked away. The man in the suit laughed. He seemed to say something, probably something about “kids.” He rubbed his hands and took some keys out of his pocket and opened the front door. They went inside.

I sat at the table. I doodled. Wrote some nonsense. Kept looking from the window. Saw Whisper slinking along by the low garden walls.

The family were inside the house for an age. I imagined them moving from room to room, moving through the molecules of Ernie Myers. I imagined them inspecting the collapsing ceilings, the toilet in the dining room, the 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 Where the Wild Things Are and writing a thousand words for joy.”

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.

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!