Bravo, Grace!

Grace Goes Through the Gate

 

“How can a room as small as mine have so much stuff in it?” demanded Grace.

It was the busiest New Year that she had ever known. Normally, just starting a new school term without her best friend Aimee would have been huge enough, but now..

“I thought we had plenty of changes last year,” she told Nana, as they went through Grace’s things, “but this is the biggest change of all.”

“Don’t worry about it, honey,” said Nana. “You’ll soon settle down to vour new routine when we’ve got evervthing sorted out at the house.”

But Grace wasn’t really worried; it was all pretty exciting. They were getting organized to move. At least, Grace and Ma were. Nana was staying put. If anyone had told Grace a year ago that she and Ma would move out of their garden apartment, leaving Nana behind, she would never have believed them.

For as long as Grace could remember, they had all lived together in that apartment.

“It wasn’t always this way,” Ma tried to explain. “When we lived here with your papa, Nana wasn’t with us. She moved in after Grandpa died and your papa went away.”

Grace couldn’t remember any of that and she couldn’t remember Grandpa either. She couldn’t remember the Papa of those days, who was married to Ma but moved out when Grace was still little. But she knew the Papa of now, because she had visited him in Gambia with his new family: his wife, Jatou, and their children, Nene and Bakary. Now, they wrote to each other every month and spoke on the phone once a week. It wasn’t as good as having him around all the time, but it was better than knowing him just from old photos.

Grace’s ma was getting married again and her new husband, Vincent, would be moving in with them. The little apartment would have been bursting at the seams if Nana hadn’t come up with a solution. The house that Ma and Grace and Vince were moving into was really Nana’s and it was just over the garden fence from the apartment. It used to belong to Grace’s old friend, Mrs. Myerson, who had died that winter and left it to Nana.

“It was a surprise to me when Gerda’s lawyer told me about the house,” Nana said. “I never dreamed I’d own a house of my own-let alone at my age.”

“But you were very kind to Mrs. Myerson,” said Grace. Secretly, she wondered what it would be like moving in there. The house was dark and had bars on all the windows. When Grace and her friends first visited it, they thought it must be haunted. But both Ma and Nana told her it would be all right.

“Mrs. Myerson had no family left,” said Ma, coming in with a pile of ironing.

She sat down on Grace’s bed. “I think Nana and you and your friends were like a family to her those last few months.”

Since Christmas, when Vince had asked Ma to marry him and Nana had told them about Mrs. Myerson’s house, they had talked about it a lot.

“Just think, Grace,” Nana often said. “You can have two bedrooms, one here and one there. And whenever you want, you can come and spend the night here, just like before.”

Grace liked that idea. She had a very tiny bedroom in the apartment and now she could have a much bigger one and choose exactly how to decorate it.

“We will only be just across the garden from Nana,” said Ma, smoothing

Grace’s newlv ironed bedsheets. “You’ll still see her ever dav.”

Grace heard the sound of a key in the door and knew that meant Vince had arrived. Ma smiled and jumped up, leaving the ironing in an untidy heap. Grace and Nana exchanged looks; they couldn’t remember seeing Ma so happy.

When they went downstairs, they found Vince sitting on the sofa drinking coffee with Ma. He was dressed in jeans and a checkered shirt and had brought a toolbox with him. Propped up against the sofa was a large wooden gate.

Grace’s eves widened. “What’s that for?” she asked.

“It’s your magic gateway,” said Vince, winking. “It will let you slip between your old and new lives in seconds.”

Grace liked the sound of that. She went out into the garden with the grownups to watch Vince work. “You can help, if you like, Grace,” he said. “I’ll need someone to hand me screws and things.”

By the time Grace’s friends arrived, the gate was finished and where there had been a high fence to scramble over, there was now just a latch and a push between the two gardens.

“Wow!” said Maria. “You’ll be able to get from one home to another so easily.

I have to cross town on two buses to see my dad.”

“But that’s because your parents are divorced,” said Crishell. “Like mine. They don’t want to live close together, like Grace’s family.”