My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(35)
After a couple of years, words like “possibly” and “if” and “wait and see” had also been made illegal. In the end no one dared say anything at all. And then the queen felt that she might as well make all talking illegal, because almost every conflict tended to start with someone saying something. And after that there was silence in the kingdom for several years.
Until one day a little girl came riding in, singing as she went. And everyone stared at her, because singing was an extremely serious crime in Miaudacas, because there was a risk of one person liking the song and another disliking it. The Yea-Sayers sprang into action to stop the girl, but they couldn’t catch her because she was very good at running. So the Yea-Sayers rang all the bells and called for reinforcements. Upon which the queen’s very own elite force, known as the Paragraph Riders—because they rode a very special kind of animal that was a cross between a giraffe and a rule book—came out to stop the girl. But not even the Paragraph Riders could lay their hands on her, and in the end the queen in person came rushing out of her castle and roared at the girl to stop singing.
But then the girl turned to the queen, stared her right in the eye, and said “No.” And as soon as she had said it, a piece of masonry fell off the wall around the prison. And when the girl said “No” one more time, another piece of masonry fell. And before long, not only the girl but all the other people in the kingdom, even the Yea-Sayers and the Paragraph Riders, were shouting “No! No! No!” and then the prison crumbled. And that was how the people of Miaudacas learned that a queen only stays in power for as long as her subjects are afraid of conflict.
Or at least Elsa thinks that was the moral of the story. She knows this partly because she checked out “moral” on Wikipedia and partly because the very first word Elsa learned to say was “no.” Which led to a lot of arguing between Mum and Granny.
They fought about a lot of other things as well, of course. Once Granny said to Elsa’s mum that she only became a manager as a way of expressing teenage rebellion—because the very worst rebellion Elsa’s mum could dream up was to “become an economist.” Elsa never really understood what was meant by that. But later that night, when they thought Elsa was sleeping, Elsa heard Mum rebuff Granny by saying, “What do you know about my teenage years? You were never here!” That was the only time Elsa ever heard Mum saying anything to Granny while holding back tears. And then Granny went very quiet and never repeated the comment about teenage rebellion to Elsa.
Mum finishes her call and stands in the middle of the kitchen floor with the tea towel in her hand, looking as if she’s forgotten something. She looks at Elsa. Elsa looks back dubiously. Mum smiles sadly.
“Do you want to help me pack some of your granny’s things into boxes?”
Elsa nods. Even though she doesn’t want to. Mum insists on packing boxes every night despite being told by both the doctor and George that she should be taking it easy. Mum isn’t very good at either—taking it easy or being told.
“Your dad is coming to pick you up from school tomorrow afternoon,” says Mum in passing as she ticks things off on her Excel packing spreadsheet.
“Because you’re working late?” asks Elsa, as if she means nothing in particular by the question.
“I’ll be . . . staying on for a while at the hospital,” says Mum, because she doesn’t like lying to Elsa.
“Can’t George pick me up, then?”
“George is coming with me to the hospital.”
Elsa packs things haphazardly into the box, deliberately ignoring the spreadsheet.
“Is Halfie sick?”
Mum tries to smile again. It doesn’t go so very well.
“Don’t worry, darling.”
“That’s the quickest way for me to know that I should be mega-worrying,” answers Elsa.
“It’s complicated,” Mum sighs.
“Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.”
“It’s just a routine checkup.
“No it isn’t, no one has so many routine checkups in a pregnancy. I’m not that stupid.”
Mum massages her temples and looks away.
“Please, Elsa, don’t you start making trouble about this as well.”
“What do you mean, ‘as well?’ What ELSE have I been making trouble with you about?” Elsa hisses, as one does when one is almost eight and feels slightly put upon.
“Don’t shout,” says Mum in a composed voice.
“I’M NOT SHOUTING!” shouts Elsa.
And then they both look down at the floor for a long time. Looking for their own ways of saying sorry. Neither of them knows where to begin. Elsa thumps down the lid of the packing crate, stomps off into Granny’s bedroom, and slams the door.
You could hear a pin drop in the flat for about thirty minutes after that. Because that is how angry Elsa is, so angry that she has to start measuring time in minutes rather than eternities. She lies on Granny’s bed and stares at the black-and-white photos on the ceiling. The Werewolf Boy seems to be waving at her and laughing. Deep inside, she wonders how anyone who laughs like that can grow up into something as incredibly doleful as The Monster.
She hears the doorbell go and then a second ring following incredibly fast, much faster than would be feasible for a normal person when ringing a doorbell. So it can only be Britt-Marie.