My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry Read Free Page A

the Land-of-Almost-Awake are busy doing other things: Mirevas is the kingdom where they stand guard over dreams, Miploris is the kingdom where they store all sorrow, Mimovas is where music comes from, Miaudacas is where courage comes from, and Mibatalos is the kingdom where the bravest warriors, who fought against the fearsome shadows in the War-Without-End, were raised.
    But Miamas is Granny and Elsa’s favorite kingdom, because there storytelling is considered the noblest profession of all. The currency there is imagination; instead of buying something with coins, you buy it with a good story. Libraries aren’t known as libraries but as “banks,” and every fairy tale is worth a fortune. Granny spends millions every night: tales full of dragons and trolls and kings and queens and witches. And shadows. Because all imaginary worlds have to have terrible enemies, and in the Land-of-Almost-Awake the enemies are the shadows, because the shadows want to kill the imagination. And if we’re going to talk about shadows, we must mention Wolfheart. He was the one who defeated the shadows in the War-Without-End. He was the first and greatest superhero Elsa ever heard about.
    Elsa was knighted in Miamas; she gets to ride cloud animals and have her own sword. She hasn’t once been afraid to fall asleep since Granny started taking her there each night. Because in Miamas no one says girls can’t be knights, and the mountains reach up to the sky, and the campfires never go out, and no one tries to shred your Gryffindor scarf.
    Of course, Granny also says that no one in Miamas closes the door when they go to the bathroom. An open-door policy is more or less legally enforceable in every situation across the Land-of-Almost-Awake. But Elsa is pretty sure she is describing another version of the truth there. That’s what Granny calls lies: “other versions of the truth.” So when Elsa wakes up in a chair in Granny’s room at the hospital the next morning, Granny is on the toilet with the door open, while Elsa’s mum is in the hall, and Granny is in the midst of telling another version of the truth. It’s not going all that well. The real truth, after all, is that Granny escaped from the hospital last night and Elsa sneaked out of the flat while Mum and George were sleeping, and they went to the zoo together in Renault, and Granny climbed the fence. Elsa quietly admits to herself that it now seems a little irresponsible to have done all this with a seven-year-old in the middle of the night.
    Granny, whose clothes are lying in a pile on the floor and still very literally smelling a bit monkey-ish, is claiming that when she was climbing the fence by the monkey cage and the guard shouted at her, she thought he could have been a “lethal rapist,” and this was why she started throwing muck at him and the police. Mum shakes her head in a very controlled way and says Granny is making all this up. Granny doesn’t like it when people say that things are made-up, and reminds Mum she prefers the less derogatory term “reality-challenged.” Mum clearly disagrees but controls herself. Because she is everything that Granny isn’t.
    “This is one of the worst things you’ve done,” Mum calls out grimly towards the bathroom.
    “I find that very, very unlikely, my dear daughter,” Granny answers from within, unconcerned.
    Mum responds by methodically running through all the trouble Granny has caused. Granny says the only reason she’s getting so worked up is that she doesn’t have a sense of humor. And then Mum says Granny should stop behaving like an irresponsible child. And then Granny says: “Do you know where pirates park their cars?” And when Mum doesn’t answer, Granny yells from the toilet, “In a gAAARRRage!” Mum just sighs, massages her temples, and closes the bathroom door. This makes Granny really, really, really angry because she doesn’t like feeling enclosed when she’s on the toilet.
    She’s been in the hospital