Tall Story (2 page)

The International Airport building was fancy enough, though slums girdled it like a tattered skirt. We were herded into a fenced-off area with other meeters and greeters just opposite the smart Arrivals terminal. Security guards kept the crowds at bay.

The holding pen seethed with waving hands and lips blowing kisses and hard elbows and crumpled
Welcome Home!
banners.

I didn’t have to fight my way to the front. That was another advantage of being tall. I could see clearly enough over the crowd.

‘Is she there yet?’ Auntie called up to me, cupping her mouth as if she was shouting up a mountain.

‘Wait … let me see.’

And there she was.

She was so tiny her wheelie bag seemed almost double her size. Ma bundled a coat under one arm and gazed into the crowd, shielding her eyes from the sun.

‘Ma! Ma!’

I waved my arms and her face brightened. She waved excitedly and began to drag her bag across to the holding pen, her eyes fixed on mine.

‘Pardon.’ I pushed a path through the crowd, with Auntie and Uncle following in my wake like a conga line. ‘Excuse us.’

I straightened my back. Ma would be so proud when she got a good look at me. Two years ago on her last visit, I came up to her shoulders, I was that small. She was going to be so surprised. She was going to say,
Well done, Bernardo. You are on your way to becoming a man.

As she drew nearer her eyes grew wider, but the
look on her face was not that of amazement. Instead, Ma bit her lip and stared at me like I had grown a third eye on my forehead. I bent down and put my arms around her and she stood on her toes and reached up to my shoulders. ‘Oh, Nardo, you … you’re so tall!’

‘It must be his diet,’ declared Auntie as she scurried around to embrace her sister. ‘You know I’ve been giving him a glass of evaporated milk every morning since he was a baby!’

But later that evening after we’d opened all the presents and they thought I’d gone to bed, I heard them arguing.

‘I think he should see a doctor, Sofia.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with him, Mary Ann. He’s a happy, normal boy.’

‘His father was barely five foot eight! How can he have grown to six?’

‘His friends have grown taller too. You should see them.’

‘But there’s something wrong. He should see an endocrinologist!’

‘Endo-what? Sister, you’re full of medical mumbo jumbo.’

‘Mumbo jumbo? I’m a nurse!’

Later that week, Ma took me to see a doctor in the city. He set about measuring me, from the circumference of my head to the size of my feet.

When he’d finished, he sat down and folded his hands over his stomach. ‘There is nothing wrong with this boy,’ he said, his nose twisted as if she had made a bad smell. ‘The youth of today are bound to exceed their parents in height.’

‘But he’s only fourteen.’ Suddenly Ma sounded uncertain. ‘I’m a nurse, sir. I just think it’s highly unusual—’

‘A nurse? What sort of nurse?’

‘I work in an emergency room.’

‘Well, I can tell you there’s no emergency here.’ The doctor waved dismissively. ‘You are too anxious. Relax.’

Ma pressed her lips together. Guilt prickled the back of my neck as she paid a hundred and fifty pesos to the secretary outside the doctor’s office. She didn’t say another word during the two-hour bus ride back to San Andres.

Before she got on the plane to London, Ma turned to Auntie. ‘Sofia, if Nardo grows any taller, I want you to let me know.’

‘He’ll be fine, Mary Ann,’ Auntie said. ‘Don’t worry
your pretty little head. We’ll look after Bernardo. We always do. Now shoo! You’ll be late for your flight.’

‘Promise me!’

Auntie promised.

And I’m sure she really intended to keep that promise.

But then people began to make the connection between me and Bernardo Carpio.

‘The spirit of Bernardo Carpio has returned in you, Nardo,’ Old Tibo, the barber, told me. ‘San Andres has always prayed for Bernardo Carpio to return, and now he has.’

And it was Tibo who pointed out the absence of earthquakes. ‘Since the boy began to grow, the earthquakes have stopped. This boy has saved the barrio.’

And the people came.

And they brought gifts.

And they made me their hero.

And Auntie put off taking me to the doctor and I didn’t tell Mum what was going on, and Auntie and Uncle didn’t say anything either and we made sure we never sent photographs that made my height too obvious because what would Ma say if she knew that I was now eight foot?

H
eight isn’t everything, Dad says. And don’t I know it!

‘I’m taking a risk, Andi,’ Coach said. ‘Seeing as you’re the shortest and the youngest on the team.’

True. I was the shortest and the youngest.

But he still picked me.

I was
point guard
!

Point guard. Point guard.
POINT GUARD!

Dream come true, hallelujah!

I was so excited I ran all the way home from the school courts, ignoring the usual London drizzle-that-wasn’t. I ran up all the six flights of stairs to our flat. And I did a pirouette right there, on the landing outside our door. Had any of the neighbours peeked down the stairwell, they would have seen me, one toe of my Air Jordans pointing up and my basketball shorts swirling around my knees.

Point guard!

And me only in Year Eight!

HISTORIC!

The door opened. Mum was home from the night shift. I threw myself into her arms.

‘You won’t believe what just happened.’

Jinx! We said exactly the same thing at the same time! We both laughed so hard someone in the flat next door thumped on the wall to shut us up.

‘What happened, Mum?’ I said at last.

‘You first,’ she said.

‘No,
you
first!’

There was a sharp whistling noise. The kettle was boiling in the kitchen.

‘Wait … let me get that.’ Mum hurried into the kitchen, which was also the hallway cupboard with all the coats and bags draped on a forest of hooks. What did that oily estate agent say? ‘Compact but so spacious you would be surprised.’ That was probably because HE was surprised. The flat was a shoebox.

Point guard!

All that hard work had finally paid off. All those training sessions. Showering in Coach’s spit as he yelled at us. Breathing in the aroma of sweaty armpits, dirty rubber balls, unchanged socks and old trainers.

‘Do you fancy some tea, Andi?’ Mum called.

‘Yes, thanks, Mum. Two sugars.’

Mum bustled around the dining-room table, taking out two mugs and clearing aside a pile of ironing and a postcard just arrived from the Philippines. The postcard had a photograph of a concrete dome surrounded by banana trees.

Amandolina
, it said.
This is the new basketball arena that is being built in San Andres. Wish you were here. Your loving brother, Bernardo
.

Mum laid a steaming mug of tea in front of me and sat down.

‘So what’s so awesome, Mum? Is it about Bernardo?’

Highly unlikely, of course. Mum’s been trying to get Bernardo cleared by the Home Office since I was born. It would take a massive miracle to sort
that
problem out.

‘No, of course not. But it’s still great news.’ Mum’s eyes shone.

‘Oh?’ I held my breath and crossed the fingers on both my hands. Dared I hope? Could it be …

‘
We got the house!
’

‘YES!’ I leaped to my feet so suddenly that some of the ironing slipped onto the floor. Mum and I were too busy hopping up and down to care. ‘Yes, yes, YES!’

‘No more queuing for the loo!’

‘No more eating with the ironing on the table!’

‘Our own front door!’

‘MY OWN ROOM!’

We collapsed, breathless, into our chairs.

The oily estate agent had taken us to see the house only last week. It was a
palace
compared to this dump!

I couldn’t believe it when Mum and Dad said they’d put in an offer. The estate agent raised an eyebrow like he’d found a black spot on a banana. There were so many other interested buyers, he warned, we shouldn’t get our hopes up.

‘It all came together today.’ Mum flicked a tear from her cheek. ‘The estate agent called this morning. He said we could have the house at the lower price if we could move quickly.’

‘That’s awesome, Mum!’

‘They wanted to exchange contracts by next week.’

‘Great!’

‘So we’re moving in two weeks!’

Two weeks?

Suddenly it was as if all the air had pumped out of my lungs. I tried to take a deep breath but I couldn’t.

‘What do you mean, we’re moving in two weeks?’

‘There was another buyer, but in the end the house
owner went with us because we agreed to all the conditions …’

‘What conditions?’

‘Well, he wanted us to …’ Mum launched into a list that made my eyes glaze over almost immediately. The words ‘cash payment’ and ‘speedy’ jumped out. I shook myself.

‘But what about school? I can’t leave in the middle of term, can I?’

‘No worries! I made some phone calls. You start at Saint Simeon’s the day after we move.’

My voice sounded far away, like it was coming from outside, on the landing. ‘But what about the basketball team …?’

‘I know it’s a bit sudden,’ Mum beamed. ‘But, Andi, the timing is perfect. The sooner we move, the better. Someday we’ll need an extra bedroom for Bernardo. And you’ll
love
Saint Simeon’s.’

I sat very, very still.

‘What was
your
good news, darling?’ Mum said.

I
t was while we young boys sat waiting our turn on the long bench at the barbershop that Old Tibo told stories about Bernardo Carpio the giant.

To start with, everybody
hated
Bernardo Carpio, Old Tibo said. He would unfold his fingers and count off the reasons why the giant had been so reviled.

‘How many times did the townspeople try to drive Bernardo Carpio out of San Andres?’ Old Tibo would say, stabbing his razor in the air. ‘They poisoned his well. They stoned his fruit so that it fell to the ground and rotted before it was ripe. They even stole his dog.’

Which was so appalling that all the boys on the waiting bench looked at each other in horror.

But Bernardo Carpio refused to be driven out.

His late mother was born in San Andres and so was he. To live in the village was his right.

‘But what could he do? How could he win the people to his side?’ Old Tibo would stop snipping and turn to his audience. ‘Instead of fighting back with anger, he decided to fight back with kindness. He was going to make the villagers love him. He was going to become their hero.’

One morning the farmers of San Andres woke to find that their fields had been ploughed. In the night, Bernardo had run his comb through the soil and turned the earth into furrows.

A river ran on the other side of the hill but not close enough to irrigate the fields. Bernardo pushed his finger into the side of the mountain and carved a stream from the river down to the fields, bringing irrigation and fresh water to the village. ‘If you look closely at the hillside,’ Old Tibo said, ‘you can just see giant footprints where he trod.’

The fields lay in the deep shadow of a valley, and as a result, the crops of San Andres grew stunted and pale from lack of sun. So Bernardo planted his huge hands on the two mountains that shaded the valley and pushed them apart, just enough to let in
the sun. To this day, hand-shaped indentations remain on the mountain slopes.

‘Bernardo was a blessing,’ Old Tibo said. ‘And he was right: not only did the villagers come to love him, they came to realize that they
needed
him.’

One terrible monsoon, when rain lashed the village like a vicious whip and many coconut trees lost their crowns in the storms, the Earth began to shake. A few quakes here and there at first. And then, every day, a great shuddering.

One day the village shook so violently that houses crumbled as if they were made of sugar. Across the main road, a huge crack appeared, steam hissing out in clouds. Peering down into the fissure, the villagers saw two moving walls of rock about to collide with each other, like a pair of monumental hands poised to clap. It would have been a collision so powerful as to destroy San Andres completely.

The earth began to shake again, and everyone closed their eyes tight, said their prayers and waited for the end.

But nothing happened.

When they opened their eyes they saw, deep down in the fissure, Bernardo Carpio, arms braced against the two walls of stone, his face twisted with determination.

And then the granite lip of the fissure crumbled, and rock and earth caved into the crack. And they never saw Bernardo again.

But the village was saved.

C
oach came round to talk to Mum and Dad.

I sat outside on the landing, listening hard, but they never raised their voices loud enough for me to hear, and when Coach reappeared he was all smiles and Good Luck With Your Move and Congratulations On Your New Home and shaking hands, so I knew that he had totally lost the battle before even beginning the war. Mum and Dad stood in the doorway grinning their best grins.

‘And thanks for dropping by!’ Mum said brightly as Coach and Dad shook hands.

‘Thanks, Coach,’ I muttered as he went past. Thanks for nothing.

He avoided my eyes and raised his shoulders. ‘Sorry, Andi.’ And then he edged past me and down the stairs like a guilty man.

‘Oh, Andi, Andi,
Andi
,’ Mum said. ‘Come and have a hug.’

I hated it when she treated me like a toddler. But I went and had a hug anyway.

‘Well done for getting point guard,’ Dad said, ruffling my hair the way he would a dog’s. ‘But we can’t pass up this chance to move. This flat is a cupboard, we have no choice. You know that.’