Goldsmiths - University of London

'Toile, ' I say. My lips have never moved in this way. 'Toile, ' I repeat. What a strange sound to make.

'Let,' Dad says sharply, his dark eyes peering through his square glasses. 'Toi-let.' He is losing his patience.

'Toi-let. Toi-let,' I say.

We walk hand in hand. I try to fit each stride into the squares on the pavement. My hand slips away as I leap from one square to another like a frog. The pavements are so neat here. There's no dog poo to avoid, no holes to jump over, just perfect squares to jump from. I am a frog. I hop and jump calculating each leap as I bounce up with my legs bent.

'Rrrbit!' I cry as I leap forward, but I've leapt further than I thought, my legs are far behind me as the rest of me propels forward. My hands skid on the pavement in front of me as I come to a stop.

'Daaad,' I call him.

I watch him stop, turn on his heel and rush towards me.

'I asked you to be good,' he says as he picks me off the floor.

'I'm sorry.'

I remember what he said earlier – the English are never late.

'I was just playing and then–' I'm pointing at the pavement but there is no hole. I don't understand. Didn't I fall over something? But I did fall and I want him to tell it off the way Grandma would. I liked watching her tell objects off for tripping me up, bumping me or making me fall.

But Dad is busy brushing my knees clean.

'Mira. Don't play. Just walk,' he says sternly. 'Walk.'

I take my gloves off and find that there are little red scratches – it stings as I wipe the dirt and stones off.

'Sorry Dad.'

He looks at me assessing the mess. I feel my knee through my grey tights.

'I think it's bleeding,' I say as I feel it soft and moist against the tips of my fingers. I imagine a huge red wound, it's going to be sticky when I take my tights off and it's going to really hurt.

'Well there's nothing we can do now. We'll take care of it when you get home,' he says kneeling down.

'Sorry Dad, I won't be a frog anymore.' I see how cross he is, 'I'll never be a frog.'

'Mira – never mind. Come on. If we hurry we'll arrive on time.'

Dad grabs more of my wrist than my hand and I fall into my normal run and walk as I try hard to keep up with his big steps.

'Put your gloves on.' We stop as I try to fit my hands into it, I don't tell Dad it stings as he presses the Alpaca wool into the scratches on my palms. He's become so serious, the wrinkle between his eyebrows has been appearing every time he says something to me, it's normally something about the English.

Dad says it's important to always walk with a purpose. We mustn't be seen to be confused or lost even if we are, because that's when we look like good prey to robbers. I look over my shoulder at the people we have been passing but no one is looking back.

'Mira, watch where you're going. What's wrong with you today?'

I bite down on my bottom lip and blink hard, if Grandma were here she would tell me not to worry and to be strong. But thoughts of Grandma make me bite down harder on my lips. If we were in Peru, Grandma would be taking me to school. We would go to the swimming pool, cinema or zoo and I would be the one pulling her hand not the other way round. We're racing everyday, Dad's constantly jumping at the sight of the time on his watch muttering 'the English are never late' and then looking at me. I would travel everywhere on the bus with her and she would give me a toffee if I was feeling sad, retrieving it from her sleeve like magic. But here we spend a lot of time in offices. Places where I have to sit still and wait. Here we walk. We walk a lot.

When we reach the school we stop just outside the blue gates and I look up at my Dad wondering why we're not going in. We step aside for some cars and watch them go through the gates. I smile – we're on time.

Inside, children are running into school, shaking off their parent's hand to play. Others jump out of cars while their parents chase them to place a kiss on their cheek. Some children run around the tree in the corner of the playground and a group of girls sing as they jump rope. There are ruler-straight yellow lines on a perfectly flat black surface. It's soft looking, not like the rough concrete floor and walls in my old school. I watch more children come in. Their hats and scarves covering most of their faces but every now and then I get flashes of pink cheeks and white faces – they are all gringos.

With every breath, puffs of warm air appear and then disappear as if I had dreamt them.

'Will there be other Peruvians?' I ask, as I look for another girl with hair as black as mine.

'No,' he says.

'Not one?' I ask, wondering how I'll make friends.

'No.' I watch him take a deep breath, hold it in his chest before letting it go. It rises like a small cloud, becomes lighter and lighter, then leaves an outline before completely disappearing. 'Peru is very far away.'

This is the answer to everything. It's the answer to why I can't eat mangoes for breakfast, to why it's cold and why I can't see Grandma.

'You're sure?' I ask looking out at the children again. I look at the faces of the toddlers and babies in the prams. I even look at their parents. No one looks like us.

Before I came here I didn't think of my hair as black. I never thought of myself as brown until I saw how pink people here are. They're not really white, they are a very very light pink. I think they say 'white' because 'very very light pink' would take far too long to say. My Dad is browner than me and the women here like this. When they shake his hand some of them stroke it as if they can't quite believe he is so brown. I wonder if I will have a gringa for a mum.

'We'll be fine.' Clouds of mist gather as he says each word. Sometimes I want to jump up just so that he can see me and tell me what it is he is thinking. I know he's sad that Mum left us. I should tell him I wouldn't mind a gringa being my Mum. And it's as if he has heard me and he suddenly looks down and fixes his eyes on me.

'Just remember those three words.'

And as I search for the words I've just learned, thoughts of a new Mum disappear. 'Yes. No. Toilet,' I list again.

'You will be the first, and perhaps the only Peruvian these people meet so remember when you do something they will not only be judging you but how all Peruvians are.' Dad ruffles my hair as I try to make sense of what he's just said. 'Just be good.' I understand that.

My hair has become so knotty since leaving Peru. Grandma used to plait her hair first, wetting a comb so her thick hair would lie slick against her scalp before quickly weaving two long braids that would fall flat over her chest, then she would use the same black comb, wet it and twist two tight bunches on the sides of my head. She promised to do mine like hers when it was long enough to braid. But here, my hair falls loosely and swirls around my head, slapping against my face as the wind changes direction.

'Ok?' he asks.

I clutch his hand thinking of how it's safe on this side of the gate. I take a deep breath and nod.

'Ok,' I reply. It's my favourite English word: Ok. Not good not bad but ok.

He comes down and hugs me and as I rise to my tiptoes I smell Grandma's mothballs on his coat and soap on his skin. For an instant, as I close my eyes, I'm in Peru. I'm in Grandma's house and Dad is picking me up. I open my eyes to the sight of him in a thick navy coat, puffs of cloud forming around him as he breathes. He hands me my lunchbox and I take it with my white-gloved hand. Grandma knitted my gloves from Alpaca wool for me, 'This will keep you soo warm,' she had cooed as she placed them in the suitcase.

I swing my lunchbox. Dad got it from a place called Iceland, which isn't a country but a shop. It has rows and rows of huge freezers. In one corner of the shop where they sell unfrozen things, above the thermos shelf and below the plastic cutlery there was a shelf dedicated to lunchboxes. Dad picked one for me from among the other pink and orange and yellow ones. It's blue with a red handle and a picture of Optimus Prime and Galvatron fighting. It wasn't even my birthday – as he knelt down to hand it to me he said, 'This is for school – no more plastic bags for you.' I wish Grandma could see me now wearing her gloves, in my thick coat and carrying my lunchbox.

A girl points at me and tugs at the corner of her mum's coat as she sees me walk through the blue gates. I stand there not knowing what to do. I look at the girl hoping that she'll walk up to me but she doesn't. No one notices that I'm wearing my special gloves, carrying my lunchbox – and that's when I notice it, all the gringitos who are skipping, laughing and running are carrying lunchboxes. There is no language and now I have nothing interesting to show them.

'Dad? Dad!' I shout ignoring the adults who turn at the sound of Spanish. 'What do I do now?' I ask him through the blue bars.

He gives me a thumbs up.

What does that mean? I take some steps forward towards the red brick school and he gives me another thumbs up. So I keep walking like a doll following instructions. I am a doll, I have the perfect dolly shoes, they are so shiny they reflect the sky. If I am a doll I wonder who is in charge. Dad would say he was and Grandma would say God is in charge. Placing one foot steadily in front of the other I realize that on this side of the gate I am in charge. I walk steadily, as if I am on a tightrope, towards the red brick wall in front of me where I stop and look around. Dad is a pair of shoulders and head amongst the other parents. I wish he was on this side of the gates. How am I going to make friends? Are they going to ask me to read out loud? What songs do they sing?

A shrill bell rings.

It's so sharp and loud that it freezes me to the spot. I watch children around me fall into lines. They seem to be in height order. There's a woman with a whistle in her mouth and she is blowing sharp chirping sounds, taking deep breaths before using it to shriek at those who fall out of line. She comes over to me and says something. She's in charge.

I can tell that this is the scary teacher, she has half moon glasses that sit on the tip of her nose, she is looking over them at me and not smiling. In Peru I had teachers who I wanted as my Mum; they were the ones with long flowing black hair, big eyes like Bambi, they were the teachers that all the children would run to when they fell down. They were not the strict scary ones. The teacher who's looking down at me with the whistle in her mouth has tight grey curls and smells like Alpaca wool. She's saying something to me but I can't understand so I shrug my shoulders. Her skirt looks like it might be alpaca, a dark green alpaca. I wonder if there are green alpacas on the mountains? I've never seen green alpacas but as I look at her skirt I think that there must be green alpacas and that they must be rare. She bends down from her waist with her hands on her hips and blows her whistle inches away from my face.

My lip trembles. There are no words for this and I begin to shake my head and shrug my shoulders. All the words that Dad's taught me have disappeared. I look over my shoulder and try to spot him among the crowd of parents. I see him waving, he's waving at her and running over while all the children stand and look from him to me and from me to him.

I don't understand what's happening. But I blink away the tears because I see him making his way towards us. He takes my hand and I manage to bite my trembling lips still as he speaks to her. I watch for the moment where she will see that I don't understand, that I'm not being rude and I wait for her to smile.

Instead she coolly stares down at me, as if to check what my Dad is saying matches with what I look like.

She says something to me through thin lips that don't seem to move as she speaks. I shrug my shoulders.

'She says she's called Mrs. Gray,' Dad says and I nod at the both of them. She keeps talking and Dad continues to translate. 'She wants you to stop shrugging your shoulders.' I drop my shoulders. 'She's the headmistress. She says because you don't know English and you're only six, she will put you with reception, they're only a year below your age group but because ... no. No. That can't be right! Hang on–'

I watch my Dad and Mrs. Gray speak to each other. She makes my Dad seem so much shorter, she isn't even wearing heels, but bulky brown shoes with laces. They look like Dad's shoes but black. His voice is slowly getting louder and louder.

'Mira,' Dad places a hand on each shoulder and comes down, 'This teacher says that she will test you later. She doesn't think you know how to write, read or do maths ...' Dad's shaking his head. 'She probably thinks that because you come from a third world country you're not clever. You have to show her that you are. For now you will have to go into reception. But work hard. You have to show her that you're smart and the best way to do that is to learn English quickly.'

'No Spanish,' she says looking down at me putting her finger over her mouth.

'Ok,' I say in English and I see a corner of her lip twitch upwards. She almost smiled. Perhaps she isn't scary.

I don't know how to say goodbye in English so I stay quiet as Dad returns to the crowd of parents. Mums nearby speak to him, but he keeps his eyes on me. I swallow hard and look up at Mrs. Gray by my side. She grabs my hand firmly so I can feel the dry roughness of her palms. She tugs hard and I follow her as she whistles at each single file. I watch each line of children take their turn to go into the red brick building, occasionally telling a child to wipe their nose, pull up their socks or to stop being 'silly' to which they stop smiling and get very serious looking.

We follow behind the last line. It's a sharp immersion from daylight into darkness as we walk down the corridor lined with children's winter coats. The smell of glue and rubbers fills the air.