I open it and see one of the black chess pieces. I realize I’m squeezing something in the hand that Gran is not holding. Or maybe they don’t say weird in Australia.
“Did you used to have one that was … weird?” I don’t exactly know how to ask the next question. “Are these the same chickens?” I ask Gran Nicholas. I look them over but they all look regular. Gran grabs my hand and runs me out to the yard, where some chickens are pecking in the dirt. “Yes!” She gets excited, and Mom looks happy. Does Gran have the white ones? I open my mouth to ask, but instead I hear myself say: The baby is too young to stay with Gran Nicholas, so she’s going with Mom. Now Mom’s going to leave me here again while she goes to visit all her friends from growing up. Drive the car for two hours in Australia. Wait in three different lines while official people look at your bags and your papers.ĩ. Take another plane for nineteen hours to Melbourne, Australia.ħ. Take a plane for seven hours to California.ĥ. Park the car and wait for a bus to the airport.ģ. Drive from Massachusetts to New York City for four hours.Ģ. If you want to get from our house to Gran Nicholas’s house, this is what you have to do:ġ. On the other hand, Australia is very far away from Massachusetts. She doesn’t say what I know she wants to say, which is that we should have come back sooner. But standing here in the kitchen with everyone looking at me, I don’t know how to ask Gran about that. One chicken was not like the other chickens, is what I remember.
I remember chickens, and one chicken that was different. But I don’t remember one thing about her house. She came to visit us once, for two weeks.
Gran tells me the news of Australia and I tell her the news of Massachusetts. Of course, I do remember Gran herself, because we talk on the phone every week, and we write each other postcards. But it’s her fault I don’t-she brought me here for a month when I was five and didn’t bring me back again until now, when I am practically eleven. It could have been anyone’s green stuffed elephant, and I would not have minded.
You wouldn’t let anyone get near it!”īut it’s like I’ve never laid eyes on that green stuffed elephant in my life. “When you were here before, you wouldn’t let go of it. “Not this?” she says, holding up the green stuffed elephant. If I squint I can make out some pigs behind a fence. “Not the pigs?” Gran Nicholas says, pointing out the back door. “Not the horses?” Gran Nicholas says, pointing out the window to a dusty yard. “You loved these things when you were here before,” Gran Nicholas tells me. On the table in her kitchen Gran has lined up three things I do not remember: I feel bad that I can’t remember anything about Gran Nicholas’s house.
0 kommentar(er)
