Tall Story - Candy Gourlay [29]
Right now, they were probably giving Bernardo an enema or draining his blood or tapping him for spinal fluid or shaving his head or sucking out his brain.
That’s what they do at A&E.
The phone woke me at two in the morning. It rang and rang but Dad wasn’t picking up. I could hear him snoring across the hall. I went downstairs and answered it. It was Mum, of course.
‘I just wanted you to know that everything is fine: they’re giving Nardo an MRI right now.’
‘What’s that?’
‘MRI? Magnetic Resonance Imaging. They’re scanning his brain.’
I knew it! They always went for the brain. ‘For what?’
‘Can I speak to Dad?’
‘He’s asleep.’ After all that fuss about Dad needing his sleep – it was just like Mum to want to wake him up now because she felt like sharing. ‘Mum, why does Bernardo need a brain scan?’
She ignored me. ‘Get Dad.’
The other day I spotted a piece in a magazine about Neutralizing Flashpoints. I only read it because I thought it was a new film at the cinema.
But it turned out that Flashpoints referred to good old-fashioned family rows. And Neutralizing was just fancy jargon for telling everyone to stay cool. The secret? Information. Apparently parents could Neutralize Flashpoints by simply keeping their teenagers informed about what was going on.
Mum would get an F in Neutralizing Flashpoints.
I ran up the stairs and shook Dad awake. He shambled down to the telephone without even opening his eyes. He didn’t have to say much. He just grunted while Mum talked and talked. Then he put the phone down and was on his way up before I managed to say, ‘Dad, what did Mum say?’
But he had already disappeared into the bedroom.
Neutralizing Flashpoints – haven’t you heard of it, Dad?
10
Bernardo
The earphones were meant to block out the MRI’s noise but I could still hear everything. The banging and crashing and the electronic whining.
And Gabriela.
Nardo, she whispered. The voice was not Gabriela’s. It was Mad Nena’s. You left.
‘Leave me alone,’ I said through clenched teeth.
You left, she laughed. And now it’s going to be all your fault.
Then I remembered the button. Sunita said if I pressed the button, she would stop the machine and get me out. But what would I tell her? How could I tell her about Gabriela?
I closed my eyes and tried not to listen to the machine’s screaming.
When I first met Gabriela, I was only thirteen.
It was the same year Ma’s famous letter arrived, just a week after my thirteenth birthday:
They told me your visa should be ready in a few days so you must start getting ready. You will be on a plane to London in just two weeks!
After we read the letter, Uncle, Auntie and I were so happy we jumped up and down for a long time.
I remember thinking it was the best birthday present ever! At long last, I was going to London!
My head was full of plans. I would bring the catapult Uncle had made me out of mango wood. I would ask Jabby to lend me the woolly jumper that a relative had sent him from America. It was too hot to wear in San Andres anyway.
And presents. I couldn’t go to London without presents for Ma and Uncle Will and Amandolina.
I had been saving my centavos in a piggy bank shaped like a London bus that Ma had sent long ago. I emptied the coins on the floor and counted them. I would use half of the money to buy a box of sweet pili nut turrones for Mama and Uncle William. And the other half? I was going to buy puka shells from Sister Len-Len, to string into a necklace for dear little Amandolina.
Amandolina would have been ten. I liked to imagine that she would be like Jabby’s younger sister, Pet, who was about the same age.
Pet was always needing Jabby to walk her to school or braid her hair or tell her a story. Pet the Pain, he called her. When she rushed to hug him after school, he always wrinkled his nose and muttered, ‘Pet? She’s more like a pest.’ But I could tell he liked it. I would.
That morning on my way to school, I stopped at Sister Len-Len’s roadside stall, where she