Deborah Ellis - The Greats

Deborah Ellis

Groundwood Books

House of Anansi Press

Toronto / Berkeley

Copyright 2020 by Deborah Ellis

Published in Canada and the USA in 2020 by Groundwood Books

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

groundwoodbooks.com

We gratefully acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Canada.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The greats / Deborah Ellis.

Names: Ellis, Deborah, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190228091 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190228105 | ISBN 9781773063874 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781773063881 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781773063898 (Kindle)

Classification: LCC PS8559.L5494 G74 2020 | DDC jC813/.54dc23

Design by Michael Solomon

Illustration by Byron Eggenschwiler

All royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to Mental Health Without Borders. mhwb.ca

There is a leak in the wall of Guyanas national museum.

Rain drools down the plaster. The leak gets bigger with each downpour. It threatens to damage the museums most expensive exhibit.

In a large room on the ground floor is a giant prehistoric ground sloth, standing on her haunches, arms reaching up into an artificial cannonball tree.

Megatherium. Gather to her friends and to the people who come to see her.

The officials dont think the leak is a big problem, so they ignore it.

The leak gets bigger.

The officials decide to put a patch over it.

Covering up a problem only makes it worse. The heavy Guyana rainwater pools inside the wall, then spreads out to become many leaks.

Water snakes across the floor, putting the treasured exhibit in peril.

By the time the officials decide to do the work necessary to fix what is really wrong, the damaged wall has to be completely taken down, and a new, stronger wall needs to be built in its place.

It takes the workers a whole day to take down the wall. At the end of the day, they hang big sheets of plastic over the gap, secure the sheets with bricks and boards, then head home to their families.

The sky is dark. The museum is quiet.

The only movement is the night breeze, tickling the edges of the plastic, looking for a way inside.

Friday night, and Jomon is alone at the party.

He is sitting at a crowded table in a crowded banquet room at a Chinese restaurant in Georgetown, just down the street from the national museum. The lights are bright, the voices are loud, and the first-place medal is heavy around his neck.

Jomons body is in the chair, but his mind is far, far away.

Off in Jomonland, his mother used to call it when he got lost in his head. She named the place when he was eight years old and she was tired of fighting for his attention.

Youre just like your father, she said one of the few times she said it with a smile. If youre going to disappear like he does, lets at least make sure you have a good place to go.

Mum sat him down at the kitchen table and brought out the crayons. She sat beside him and said, Draw someplace beautiful.

He drew a clearing in the forest. Tree branches came together overhead like the roof of the cathedral. He drew green grass, cool and soft. He put a brook along one side, gurgling and bubbling. He didnt draw birds not that time but he knew they were there, singing to each other, enjoying the day, expecting nothing from him.

You need a place to sit, Mum said.

With a brown crayon, Jomon drew a straight-backed chair, the only chair he knew how to draw.

Mum gently took the crayon from him. She extended the lines of the chair and turned it into a bench.

You might sometimes want me in Jomonland with you, she said.

But tonight, drought has come to Jomonland. Everything is gray. The bench is broken, his mum is dead, and he is stuck all alone at this stupid party.

He should have gone straight home after the final competition, but he thought the dinner might salvage the night.

It hasnt.

Months of study, practices, regional competitions and frayed nerves all came to an end barely two hours ago with Jomon and the rest of Team Durban Park winning the Guyanese National High School Geography Competition. All four students received medals. If they were lucky enough to be accepted to the University of Guyana (which for Jomon, the teams youngest, was still over three years away), they would get scholarships to cover some of their tuition.

Jomon knows he should feel thrilled.

All he feels is empty.

Again.

What now?

Jomon shoves the remains of a spring roll into his mouth to chase the question away, but the question refuses to go.

What is there now?

The banquet room is full of students, teachers and community members. Geography teams from all over Guyana are eating, laughing and talking over every minute of the weeks-long competition, from school-wide to city-wide, from regionals to nationals. Teachers and politicians give speeches, congratulating the students and congratulating themselves.

Bits of conversation swirl around Jomon.

Remember when I said Tropic of Copernicus instead of Tropic of Capricorn?

After tonight, I never have to think about who controls the Nicobar Islands. Unless I want to go there and I might!

On and on it goes.

The bright lights bounce off the three other gold medals in the room. Jomons teammates. While the competition was going on, Jomon could pretend they were mates a team, all for one and one for all. But the competition is over. Jomon sees it for the lie that it is. The three other Team Durban Park members are scattered around the room, probably happy to be rid of him, enjoying the company of their friends and family.

Jomon has no family at the party.

As far as he is concerned, he has no family at all.

Other kids parents pat him on the back and say Congratulations! on their way to talk to who they really want to talk to. Youre a young man with a terrific future ahead of you!

Terrific future? Who were they kidding? He knew hed never get to Terrific.

He could pretend otherwise, for a time. The competition kept him busy with hours of studying at the library and at home, filling his head with the prime meridian, medieval cartographers, inland seas and Asian mountain ranges. Geography kept him going.

Now its done. The heaviness is back. The gray ghost that lives behind his eyes has room again to take over, blocking out colors, turning everything sour.

Jomon watches the other people in the room. They talk easy. They laugh easy. They pose for pictures.

I am a different species, he thinks. I dont belong here. I dont belong anywhere.

The party is torture and he cant stand it one more second. He gets to his feet.

Youre not leaving?

A man who is a candidate in the upcoming election and one of the sponsors of the competition, gently pushes Jomon back into his chair.