Clever Girl
“I was ten. I woke miraculously early, which was unusual for me. The blankets at Nana’s were meagre, ex-army, in prickly grey wool with an oily smell. They would only stay tucked in if you kept unnaturally still, which I never could – in my sleep I had shifted and burrowed, the blankets had come untucked, and a little slit of freezing air was probing my warm body like a knife. Then I rolled over on to the inflexible hand of my plastic doll. Sometimes if I woke up I turned the bedding around and ...put the pillow at the foot, and to Nana’s dismay went back to sleep upside down – which was a revelation of a different room, another world order. But the doll’s hand that morning seemed to poke me with a message: ‘Arise!’ (I was reading a lot of books set in the past, which was grander and better.) It was Saturday. It was spring – yellow squares of light transformed the unlined curtains at the window, their pattern of purple bars wound with a clinging vine. Usually by the time I came to consciousness Nana was already busy downstairs with her mouse-activity, sweeping and wiping and soaking, smoothing out brown paper bags and saving them, un-knotting scraps of string and winding them into balls.MoreLess
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