Uncle Mac, her father, is now a sadhu. His hair is long, he wears saffron robes. He told me he once had a vision on the beach, a vision of St. Rita. Uncle Mac had led an adventurous life. He had been an underwater diver and he needed to go deep down into the bottom of the oceans to search for ship wrecks and to bring up coins and pewter. He always smoked, marijuana, heroin. He had three children. He and beautiful Aunty Elizabeth drifted apart. Now he’s in saffron robes, living in an ashram where he has gone in search of peace. He doesn’t go diving any more. And his daughter Debbie, what’s her life? Living in this house with her young son, nine years old. He doesn’t go to school. His father was Japanese. He left Debbie because she was impossible to live with. She never cooks, just eats rice packets, and her son makes Maggi noodles soup for himself. He does everything for his mother, sweeps and arranges the house, tidies the beds, sweeps the garden. Oh, I’ll miss him, playing with him. I know. I know in my heart of hearts that I’ll never live here in this school.

I can’t do without Raphael, Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci. They are there in my little room which I share with Nanna. My Ninjas will protect me even when sometimes we have to starve. Nanna gives a little tuition in English. She’s had a hard life too. Look how thin she is. Her body caves in, seems hollow, bent like a slender wand. How long will she last? I know what her life was like. I heard her telling Aunty Lorraine. She lived in a convent for sixteen years with her two daughters, one of them my mother, to escape from my granddaddy who was an alcoholic and beat her up …

They tell me I can learn, I can pass exams, and there’s an American lady who they say will take the promising ones to the States.

I liked the American lady when I met her at the school. I had been there a few days when she took me to her home and gave me biscuits and tea. While I sat in her drawing room I began to imagine all kinds of things …. The room became a forest. There were no walls any more. I felt trapped like a rodent. I felt myself surrounded by owls. Stuffed owls, pictures of owls. Clocks, ornaments, everything became owls. I thought I saw an owl flying about the room. I knew then I had to escape. I could not live in this forest where these predators roamed. I had to run away from the owls. The American lady, the missionary, and her husband stood before me, no longer human. They were owls. They would swoop down on me and … I felt so small, so helpless.