My Name Is Mina

Eggs, Chicks, a Belly, Babies & Poems

I am in the tree and the birds have had their eggs! Three of them. They are bluey-green with brownish spots and they are absolutely beautiful! I knew something was up. The birds were silent. The air was still. I climbed higher in the tree, to where I could look down into the nest, and there they were, three of them, lying so prettily in the pretty nest. Bluey-green with brownish spots and they are beautiful. Bluey-green and speckled brown and beautiful. I almost cheered, but I stopped myself. I wanted to hold the birds in my hands and praise them, but of course why should they take notice of me? Why should they care what I might think? But I say it now anyway, deep inside myself: “WELL DONE BLACKBIRDS! YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARY! YOU HAVE CREATED THE MOST AMAZING THINGS IN THE WORLD! YOU HAVE CREATED NEW UNIVERSES!”

Maybe they did hear me somehow, and they certainly saw me, because they squawked their warning calls, so I slithered to my lower branch, where they are used to seeing me and where I can safely be ignored. I sigh with joy. The chicks are on their way.

And then I see the family outside Mr. Myers’s house. The poor boy is as fed up as ever. He’s kicking the ground again like he wants to do it harm. Poor lad. Looks like he’d be a perfect candidate for the pills they wanted to give me, or for the Corinthian Avenue Pupil Referral Unit. Cheer up, I want to yell! You’ve got a mum and dad beside you! You’ve got a brother or a sister on the way!

The mum and dad are smiling. She holds her belly and I see with that it is egg-shaped. I have to stop myself from jumping out of the tree and running along the street to her and telling her that she is extraordinary.

“YES!” I yell inside myself. “IT’S TIME FOR THINGS TO BE BORN AROUND HERE! BUY THE HOUSE, AND A BABY AND A CLUTCH OF CHICKS WILL BE BORN IN FALCONER ROAD THIS SPRING!”

Maybe she hears me somehow. She turns her head but I’m sure she can’t see me because of the foliage around me. O she looks very nice. They all look very nice. They have a key. They open the door, they go inside. I imagine them moving through the dust. I imagine their skin mingling with the skin of Mr. Myers, their breath mingling with his breath, their lives mingling with his life, with his death. I lean back against the tree. I close my eyes. I think about the woman with the egg-shaped belly. And I wonder – if Dad hadn’t died, might Mum have had an egg-shaped belly, too?

Then I draw: birds and leaves and trees, and I am lost in this, too. Then a goldfinch appears, flickering through the upper branches. Then another, its partner. And I think of last autumn. There were days when a small flock flew through here. They will again when their time comes. I told my mum about them and she then told me that a flock of goldfinches is known as a charm. A charm of goldfinches! How beautiful is that?

I look at today’s goldfinch. There it is: black, gold, red, brown, white flickering quickly among the green leaves. There it goes, flying freely away into the blue. Does the goldfinch know how gorgeous it is? Does any bird? Does it know how beautiful its song is? If it did know, then maybe it would try to stop being so gorgeous. It would try not to charm. Once upon a time, goldfinches were the favorites of bird trappers. If the goldfinches knew this, they would have bathed in mud until they were mucky brown. They would have squawked or screeched or they would have stayed silent instead of singing out loud. They would have hidden themselves away in dark and isolated places. They wouldn’t have flickered and flashed through people’s gardens. They wouldn’t have sung their beautiful songs. But goldfinches don’t know anything about wickedness or stupidity And so they flew and sang, and they were trapped in nets, and put into cages, and sold for cash, and they were hung from ceilings or put on sideboards or bookshelves or on windowsills and they sang. And their songs must have been filled with yearning and pain. And their songs lifted over the stupid boring conversations of their stupid boring prison guards. Imagine them! Imagine the stupid boring people who trap birds, who put them into cages! How boring they must be! How stupid they must be! We don’t put the goldfinches into cages now. But there are still lots of bird trappers in the world – people who trap the spirit, people who cage the soul. What’s a gang of bird trappers called?

They flew away, the charm of goldfinches. Fly, goldfinches! Sing and fly!

Now I sit in the tree and wait. I sit in the blue-green dappled light. I rest my notebook on my knees. I watch Mr. Myers’s house. No movement there. I move my pen across the page.

I play about with my name and my pen and I come up with a concrete poem that shows that Mrs. Scullery was right. Mina McKee truly is hard as iron!

I keep on playing with words and my pen. I look at an empty page and it’s like an empty sky waiting for a bird to fly across it. I imagine a charm of goldfinches flying freely across it. I imagine them disappearing from sight and the sky, and the page is empty again. Then I think of another bird, a skylark. I imagine it flying upwards on the page. I recall the extraordinary fact that the skylark, unlike any other bird, sings as it rises from the earth, sings as it hovers high in the sky and sings as it drops to ground again. The skylark really does seem to be carried on its song!

As I write the skylark high above I see Whisper down below. There he is, prowling in the shadows. The cat is on the hunt. For mice, perhaps. For victims.

I write for what seems like hours in the blue-green dappled light. And my mind and my hand move smoothly together and I am lost in my thoughts and lost in my words and the minutes pass and the minutes pass, and at the secret hidden center of the blue-green eggs the secret hidden creatures grow.

And then I blink and look up and the family is in the street again. I am hidden from them, and my songs are silent so they don’t know that I’m here. I look out through the leaves.

The boy is sullen as always.

The parents are pleased.

They leave in the little blue car.

I watch them leave the street and leave my page.

I think of the mysterious connections between words and the world, and my pen soon moves again, as if I can’t stop writing, perched up here beside the blue-green eggs in the blue-green afternoon.

I SIT IN MY TREE WITH A BOOK AND A PEN AND I WRITE. FOR INSTANCE:

“THERE IS A BOY AND A WOMAN AND A MAN IN THE STREET AND THEY ENTER A HOUSE WHICH ONCE WAS THE HOUSE OF A MAN CALLED ERNIE MYERS.”

FOR INSTANCE:

“THERE IS A CAT NAMED WHISPER WHICH SLINKS PAST THE HOUSE TO THE OVERGROWN GARDEN AT THE BACK OF THE HOUSE.”

FOR INSTANCE:

“THE BLACKBIRDS HAVE MADE THEIR NEST AND THERE ARE THREE BLUE-GREEN BROWN-SPECKLED EGGS IN IT.”

AND SO THEY ALL APPEAR IN MY BOOK:

THE BOY, THE WOMAN, THE MAN, THE CAT,

THE HOUSE, THE GARDEN,

THE BLACKBIRDS, THE TREE, THE EGGS, THE NEST.

AND SOMETIMES I HESITATE.

AND SOMETIMES I WONDER,

IS THERE SOMEONE WHO WRITES,

“THERE IS A GIRL CALLED MINA SITTING IN A TREE.”

IS THERE SOMEONE WHO WRITES,

“SOMETIMES SHE HESITATES AND SOMETIMES SHE WONDERS.”

AND IF THERE IS, WHO IS IT?

WHO WRITES MINA?

WHO WRITES ME?