The Photo She Didn't Want Up

Kiya was the Sun.

She had four lines. She had a costume made of a cardboard circle with orange paper points glued all the way round it. It went over her head and sat on her shoulders. Ma had made it over two evenings on the kitchen floor. It was, everybody agreed, a very good sun.

Her big line came at the end. She had to say it loudly, to the back of the hall, over everybody.

“Then I will shine on all of you, and nobody will be cold!”

She said it loudly. She said it so loudly that a boy in the front row put his hands over his ears. Kiya still thinks about that boy.

And that is the exact moment Ma took the photo.

It caught her with her mouth completely open, wider than a mouth normally goes. Her eyes were shut. The cardboard sun had slipped sideways over one ear. Half of it was in front of her face. One of the orange points was going up her nose.

Ma thought it was the best photograph she had ever taken.

It was a real photograph of a real thing happening.

She put it up that night, for everybody to see, with three of the marks that mean shouting, and a little yellow sun.

Forty-one people said something nice. Kiya’s Nani said it four times. An uncle in Dubai who Kiya has met twice said star. Ma read them all out at breakfast, with her chin up and her tea going cold. Kiya sat there and ate her toast and felt two things at once, and had no word for either of them.

On Wednesday, two boys from the other section did the face at her in the corridor.

That was all they did. Mouth open, eyes shut, head back. One of them did the nose thing with a finger. They laughed and went off to the water cooler and forgot about it in about nine seconds. It was not a big thing. Kiya could not stop thinking about it for four days.

She practised what to say for those four days.

She practised it on the way to school, past the gate and the shops and the dog outside the bakery. She practised it in the bath, to the taps. Every way she tried it came out sounding like Ma had done something wrong. And Ma had not done anything wrong. Ma had been proud of her, and Kiya knew exactly what that face had looked like across the toast.

On Sunday morning Ma was cutting onions at the counter, with the radio on and a pan already going on the stove.

“Ma.”

“Mm.”

“The photo of the play.”

“The best one,” said Ma.

“Can you take it down?”

Ma stopped cutting.

Kiya’s heart went very fast for about three seconds. Then Ma put the knife down and turned round and said, “Why?”

So Kiya told her about the corridor. All of it, including the nose.

Ma listened all the way to the end and did not say anything in the middle of it. Then she said, “Okay.”

She wiped her hands. She got her phone off the counter. It took her about four seconds. Then it was gone, and forty-one nice things were gone with it. Ma did not make a face about that at all.

“It was still a good photo,” said Ma.

“It was a terrible photo,” said Kiya.

“It was a wonderful photo,” said Ma, “and you sounded like a lion,” and she went back to the onions.

On Monday there was a printed copy of it on the fridge, held on with the big yellow mango magnet.

Kiya looked at it while she was drinking her milk.

The nose thing was, she had to admit, quite funny.

She left it up.