JUE POST 7

In America with Dave, 1979

A Silver Jubilee, a Royal wedding, a bigger house in a better part of town; street parties and bonfires and sticklebacks and dens and rollerskates and rabbits (called, Flopsy, Mopsy and Thumper) and knock up ginger and daddy long legs, and Lisa; our counterpoint, hanging between us tough and brown, bridging the gap of two years and three weeks.

I wrote my very first book about war evacuees in a lined notepad – filling fifteen pages. I tumbled down the stairs to bask in the praise of Dave and Vickie, American and loud, childless and besotted by Andrea’s white blond tresses.

Across the Atlantic, she and I and shiny new passports, black and hard, and air-hostesses with red lips, and a Captain who made my heart tumble, and wings on a golden badge, pinned to my t-shirt. Andrea held me tight in a Pennsylvanian thunderstorm, in darkness so black I swallowed it, whispered soothing sounds into my sweaty head. I smelt our mother on her skin. 

In America, with Dave and Vickie, 1979

Lakes and water snakes and wooden rollercoasters as high as the clouds, dirty feet and go-karts and sloppy joes and silver dollar pancakes with maple syrup dribbles on my sun-top of yellow skies, which lay flat against my chest; breast buds pushed out her t-shirt.

On the plane home, she stabbed me in the thigh with the Statue of Liberty. I cradled it in my lap all the way across the Atlantic, where at 32,000 feet, I became nine. The Captain took off his shiny peaked hat and kissed my cheek and I got dizzy.

Our Stateside mom and dad, spoilt by her dimples, named their adoptive daughter after her.

I was always two years and three weeks too late, but not anymore. In just less than a month, we will be the same age.