Tiny Worlds
Two children, both with black hair, crouched seriously over a collection of glinting, restless stars. The boy had crouched too close, nose down, so that his spiky tufts tickled the girls nose and made her laugh. She fell on her bottom, her iron straight tresses caught underneath her sweaty palm.
That’s not how you play it.
She laughed harder, struggling to stand up in her fit of giggles.
I know.
He had done it on purpose. He liked making her laugh.
You said we’d play, but now we’re just looking at them.
She was standing above him now, gazing down hunched body with the skinny body made of elbows and knees, topped with a tuft of hair.
I like looking at them better.
Me too.
She immediately fell back into a crouch, the same closeness as before.
We got school soon.
We can’t take them there. Someone will take them and Mama will be mad at me. I’ll keep them in my room, then when you come over we take them to the roof.
OK.
*
Before that day, he did not know it was possible to scoop rice so violently. Armed with a wooden scoop, his mother had stabbed and stirred (if that was the correct word) the contents of the cooker with a fierce eye, lecturing him as she scraped the scoop clean on the edge of the cooker.
I called you so many times. You won’t even listen to your own mother, the dishes are already cold!
But of course this was not true. The dishes were still hot and delicious, hot and far more delicious than the words falling off her tongue anyway.
What were you doing?
Playing with my friends.
He made sure it was friends.
With that girl from next door?
She already knew the answer.
Don’t play too much. Take these out. Tell your Baba we’re eating.
It ended with a definite slam of the cooker lid and the clatter of chopsticks and bowls.
*
It was not really the roof. He lived in the attic and in order to get to the flat roof above garage he had to manoeuvre his way out of his roof window that opened to the heavens. He would move carefully on the slant, trying hard to stay silent as he landed on the brick wall that marked his house from his neighbours. He would squat low, resting from the descent before walking carefully in a wobbly straight line and heaving himself up to the garage roof.
She would always be waiting, cross legged in a cotton dress and thick tights, no matter the weather.
Have you got them?
The netted bag would always make a fantastic clatter as it swung, catching the light and illuminating the tiny spherical worlds within. She would grin, and he liked making her grin.
The games would be simple. Sometimes it would be lining them all up in a row to make one snaking chain of glass, other times they would lie on their backs and hold them up to the sun, one by one, making up stories.
This one, it has a leaf shape inside, because the planet is shaped like a leaf. All the of the people there are wear green and everything is green and they live in houses made of wood and they make things from forests.
This blue one looks like a crystal, and it belongs to a king or someone somewhere, it belongs to their crown and when they come to get it we’ll have to run and hide.
We can shrink ourselves down and visit the leaf planet.
Yeah, or this one, this red fire one can protect us, we can throw it at the king and he’ll be on fire.
But it’s magic fire, so it doesn’t hurt him.
Yeah, it just stops him and then we can tell him that we bought these from the shop so it’s ours now and if he doesn’t stop then we’ll keep him their forever.
But if he says yes we throw this one that looks like an ocean and it’ll put the fire out.
Yeah. And then -
On a good day, it would be hours before they would be done.
*
But today was not a good day. It would start a good day but very quickly turn into a bad day with snatching and squabbling and the little galaxies and planets would betray them, gravity and biology would do its work and they would not be able to play games for a while
He is lying on the ground, his arm bent in a strange angle and screaming. The girl in the cotton dress is mute with terror, hands over mouth. The marbles are rolling off the roof in a lazy trickle, some falling into the gutter, some bouncing off the boy and shining like tears.
It will be a few minutes before the boy’s mother will charge out, shouting at the boy and then the girl. It will be a few more minutes before the ambulance arrives, and it will be louder, redder, bluer and brighter than any of the galaxies combined.
*
In two similar houses, united and divided by a single brick wall, a mirrored scene is playing out in different rooms with different actors.
What are these?!
The netted bag is waved in front of a silent face, then snatched away, slammed into a drawer.
So dangerous, are you crazy?! On the roof, do you want to die?!
One slap for the girl in the cotton dress, sobbing in her room.
You idiot, I’m never letting you buy things on your own again!
The boy in the cast is dragged and banished to his room.
*
Rooms with poor insulation can become unbearably hot during summer, even if outside temperatures seem otherwise. The heat has no where to go, so it keeps the room company and steams anything with a heartbeat alive.
The boys knows this very well, because he has been cooking nicely for a week. He is like Rapunzel, except his hair is short and dark and he is not German and he does not live in a tower and he is not a beautiful maiden. And he doesn’t dare to open his window, because the witch knows and she can hear everything over her cauldron. So he is stuck.
But.
He does have a rescuer.
A quiet tap gets his attention, he sits up from bed, sluggish and hot. He sees something from the window.
The windows is delicately pushed open and the boy clambers out to heaven, laughing, all awkward elbows and knees pulled by a strong arm.
Small hands clutch a freed bag of dirty stars, crystals, galaxies and toys. Colours are furiously fighting the dirt, waiting to get out.
