David Almond - My Name Is Mina

Squawk!

Squawk!

Squawk!

We had a lunch of cheese, bananas, iced buns, and pomegranate juice. POMEGRANATE! YUM! WHAT A TASTE! AND WHAT A WORD!

As we ate, Mum talked about birds and souls. She said that some people believe the soul never dies, but it moves from one body to another, even to the bodies of animals. This is called the transmigration of souls. It’s a kind of rebirth, or reincarnation. She talked about Plato and Hinduism and Buddhism. She said that some people believe that if you have not lived well you will be reborn as an insect, or even as a vegetable.

“Or as a fruit?” I said, holding up my banana.

“Yes, some people believe you could be reborn as a banana. Or as a pea, or a Brussels sprout.”

I bit the banana.

“I wouldn’t like to be a sprout. But a banana! Imagine being such a color and having such a taste!”

I bit the banana again. If there was a soul inside it, would you taste it? Or was the soul’s taste the essence of banananess?

“Maybe good souls turn out bright and tasty,” I said. “And bad souls turn out being green and yuck!”

“Maybe. Then raspberries, for instance, must be very good souls. And if you became an insect, what would a good soul be?”

“A dragonfly,” I said. “Imagine being able to do what a dragonfly does and to look like a dragonfly looks.”

“Or a good soul could turn out to be a bee.”

“To be a bee,” I said. “To be a bee!”

“And a bad soul?”

“A cockroach.”

“A bluebottle.”

I pondered.

“I’d quite like to be a bird,” I said.

“I can imagine you as a bird.”

“A skylark, flying so high it can’t be seen. Or a cat, as black as the night.”

We were quiet for a time. We got on with our lunch. I tried to imagine what Dad might like to be, and I came up with a horse, a beast that’s strong and fast and beautiful and proud. I didn’t want to imagine him as another human being. The only human being I wanted him to be was my dad, even if he was just a memory of my dad.

“Another word for transmigration,” said Mum, “is metempsychosis. It’s a word from ancient Greece.”

“Say it again.”

“Met-em-sy-co-sis,” she said, more slowly.

“Me-tem-sy-co-sis!” I said. “What a fantastic word! Metempsychosis! Metempsychosis! Met-em-sy-beautiful-co-sis!”

It is a great word! Look at it! Listen to it!

Then we looked at books about India and Sri Lanka, and read about Hinduism and Buddhism. We looked at photographs of the Himalayas, and I painted a picture of snow-capped mountains while Mum read to me about Tibet, the country beyond India high up in the clouds. In Tibet, people believe that the soul breaks free of the body at night, and has journeys that are remembered as dreams. This is known as astral traveling. Astral traveling! Imagine flying through the night with the bats and the owls, looking down at the house, the street, the city, the world!

They also believe that the whole of the universe hatched from a single egg. This makes total sense to me. Why shouldn’t the universe have hatched from one of the most astonishing weird magical objects in the universe? An egg. A single egg! And if that is somehow true, then the whole universe is like a bird, flying through time. And each time it lays an egg itself, a whole new universe is created. And so there is universe after universe – a flock of universes flying through time.

IF MY SOUL, WHEN I DIE,

IS TAKEN BY THE BODY OF A BEAST,

I PRAY THAT THE BEAST WILL BE A BIRD,

AND THAT MY SOUL WILL BE UPLIFTED

BY THE BODY OF A LARK.

I love afternoons like that, like when we talk about things like metempsychosis, when we learn so much, and wonder so much, and explore so much, and ideas grow and take flight, like the idea about the universe and the egg. I love being homeschooled, when we don’t have to stick to subjects and timetables and rules. We’ve been doing it for nearly a year now, ever since the dreaded SATS Day. It seems much longer – maybe because it feels like we’ve got so much freedom and so much space and time. And we’re very happy with it. Mum says it can’t last forever, though. She says I’ll become too isolated, especially as I’m an only child. She even says that schools aren’t really prisons and cages. Yes, they bloody are! I tell her. She shakes her head and grins. Language! she says.

I love being on my own and with her (and with whisper the cat and with the blackbirds and the owls). She knows that, and she says I’m coping very well, but just the other day she sat me down beside her and said,

“There’ll come a time when you’ll need more than this.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will. You’ll need some friends, for instance.”

“Friends?” I whispered.

She stroked my hair. She cuddled me, like I was tiny again.

“Yes, Mina. Friends. You’ll have some lovely friends once you get started. And one day soon, of course, you’ll even start thinking about boys.”

“Thinking about what?”

“About boys.”

I sniffed and looked away, even though I knew it was true.

“No I bloody well won’t!” I said.

She laughed.

“Language! But don’t worry. We’ll take things slowly, step by step.”

Is it true? Will I need to go to school again? I can’t imagine it. Mum says I’m too extreme, but in my view schools are prisons and always have been and always will be. Here’s a poem. I wrote it a couple of years back. I’ll paste it into my journal now.

I love this poem! I love this poem!

I wrote the poem after stupid Mrs. Scullery (or Sculley or whatever her name was) was trying to teach us about tenses, and about the differences between the present and the past and the future.

“Now listen carefully, children,” she said, like we were slow and stupid or really young or something. “If I do something in the present I say I do it. If I say I did it in the past I say I did it. If I say I will do it in the future I say I will do it. Verbs are doing words [5] And incidentally VERBS ARE NOT “DOING WORDS.” “Stop” is a verb. And if I say “I stop,” I have stopped doing anything. I am doing absolutely nothing whatsoever at all! I would have told Mrs. Scullery that, but by this time she was getting totally fed up with me. She would have said, “That is just playing with words,” and I would have answered, “And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do!” Which she wouldn’t have understood at all and which would have made her even more and more fed up. , and they have tenses – past tense, present tense and future tense. I have prepared an exercise for you. You must change the tenses of the verbs as indicated. You understand? Of course you do. It is very plain.”