Bean and the Very Slow Sentence
Bean was five, and small for five, and she never went anywhere without a packed lunch. She took one to the bottom of the garden. She took one to the bath. When people asked her why, she said, “Just in case,” and as far as anyone could tell, the case had never once come.
Bean lived in a crooked little house with Mom, Dad and her big brother Oscar, and the crooked little house lived on the back of a tortoise. The tortoise was called Grandmother Slow, and she was as big as a hill. The chimney sat on the very top of her shell. The front porch stuck out over her head like the brim of a cap. And because a shell is round, the kitchen floor sloped, so anything you dropped rolled downhill to the front door. That was how the family knew which way they were heading.
Every spring, Grandmother Slow carried the whole house from the winter valley to the summer meadow, where the grass was long and the fair was held. It took two days. And every spring, everybody had a job.
Mom steered. She stood on the front porch and tapped a wooden spoon on the boards: once for left, twice for right, three times for mind the gate. Dad tied the chairs down and kept the kettle from sliding off the stove. Oscar had a trumpet, and he believed a trumpet solved most things, so his job was to play it at every bend in the road, in case anyone was coming the other way.
“What’s my job?” said Bean.
“Your job is to sit on the bottom stair and not get squashed,” said Dad.
“That isn’t a job,” said Bean. “That’s just sitting.”
“It’s very important sitting,” said Dad, and went off to catch the rocking chair, which was rocking itself towards the front door.
So Bean sat on the bottom stair, with her lunch on her knees and her red woolly hat on her head, and watched everybody else be useful.
On the second day, halfway to the summer meadow, at the top of a windy hill, Grandmother Slow stopped.
You might think it would be hard to tell when a hill has stopped. It is not. The teacups stopped rattling. The pictures stopped swinging. Then there was a long, slow, sliding sound from under the porch, like an enormous drawer being shut, and that was Grandmother Slow pulling her head into her shell.
“Oh no,” said Mom. “The fair is tomorrow.”
She tapped the spoon on the porch. She tapped once, and twice, and three times, and then she tapped a little tune, just to be friendly. Grandmother Slow did not come out.
Dad climbed down with the biggest cabbage in the vegetable box. He rolled it right up to the gap under the front of the shell, where her nose ought to be. Grandmother Slow loved cabbage more than anything in the world. She did not come out.
Then Oscar stood in front of the gap and played his trumpet at it, as loud as a trumpet goes, which is very. Three crows flew out of a hedge. The cabbage rolled off down the hill, and Dad had to run after it. Grandmother Slow did not come out.
“I think she’s tired,” said Dad, puffing back up with the cabbage.
“I think she doesn’t like my trumpet,” said Oscar. He looked at the trumpet as if it had let him down.
“I think we’ll be here all week,” said Mom, and sat on the porch step with the spoon in her lap.
Bean looked at the gap under the shell. It was far too small for Mom, and far too small for Dad, and even too small for Oscar. It was just about exactly the size of Bean.
“Has anybody asked her?” said Bean.
But Oscar had decided to try the trumpet again, a bit higher this time, and nobody heard.
So Bean picked up her lunch, and lit the little lantern that hung by the door, and climbed down off the porch.
Mom saw her go. She opened her mouth to say Bean was too little, and then she closed it again, because too little was exactly what was needed.
“Mind your head,” said Mom. Then she lay down on her front on the porch boards to watch the lantern go in.
Under the shell it was warm, and it smelled of hay and of sunshine that had been kept somewhere. The lantern made everything gold. Bean crawled along on her hands and knees, pushing her lunch in front of her, until the light fell on a face.
It was a very big face, grey and creased like a good old glove, and it was the kindest face Bean knew.
“Hello, Grandmother Slow,” said Bean. “What’s the matter?”
Grandmother Slow looked at her for a long time. Then she opened her mouth and said:
“My.”
Then she shut her mouth again.
Now, Grandmother Slow could talk perfectly well. Everybody knew that. It was only that she took a whole afternoon to say one sentence, and most people did not have a whole afternoon. They had chairs to tie down and spoons to tap and trumpets to play.
But Bean had a lunch.
And this, at last, was the case.
She unwrapped it. She had packed seven sandwiches, just in case. She ate the first one, which was cheese, and when she had finished it, Grandmother Slow said:
“Nose.”
Bean ate the second sandwich, which was jam.
“Is.”
Bean ate the third, which was egg. Outside, the trumpet stopped. She heard Dad say, “Where’s Bean?” and Mom say, “Shh.”
“Cold.”
The fourth sandwich was cheese again, because Bean liked cheese. By now the light at the gap had gone from white to yellow. Bean could see Mom and Dad and Oscar lying on their fronts at the edge of the porch, with their chins in their hands, listening. Oscar had put his trumpet down.
“And.”
The fifth sandwich was jam again. Bean was getting rather full. But a listener does not give up halfway.
“Nobody.”
Bean ate the sixth sandwich very slowly, so as not to hurry anybody. The light outside had turned the colour of marmalade.
“Asked.”
Bean put it all together. My nose is cold, and nobody asked.
She thought about the windy hill, and the two long days of carrying, and the spoon and the cabbage and the trumpet.
“Oh,” said Bean. “I see.”
She took off her red woolly hat. She stretched it as wide as it would go and pulled it down over the very end of Grandmother Slow’s nose. It fitted the end exactly, with the bobble on top. Then she gave Grandmother Slow the seventh sandwich, because it was only fair.
“There,” said Bean. “And thank you for carrying our house.”
Grandmother Slow looked at her for a long time. Then she opened her mouth and said:
“Thank.”
“You can tell me the rest on the way,” said Bean.
Grandmother Slow waited until Bean had climbed back up the porch steps. Out came the head, hat and all, with a long slow sliding sound like a drawer being opened. Mom tapped the spoon once, for left. The house began to move, and the cabbage Dad had left on the kitchen table rolled off it and all the way down to the front door. They were going the right way again.
They came over the hill and down into the summer meadow just as the lamps were being lit on the fair tents. People came out to watch. It is not every evening you see a tortoise as big as a hill come down the road with a five-year-old’s woolly hat on the end of her nose.
Somewhere on the way down, Grandmother Slow said, “You.” As she settled into the long grass under the first star, she said, “For.” Bean ate her supper on the porch and waited. Just before bedtime, from under the front of the house, came the last word.
“Asking.”
That night Oscar played Grandmother Slow a lullaby on his trumpet. He played it so softly that nobody had known a trumpet could go that quiet, including Oscar. Mom knitted Bean a new red hat, exactly the same as the old one, so that Bean and Grandmother Slow matched.
After that, Bean had a job on moving day, just like everyone else. Mom steered with the spoon. Dad tied down the chairs. Oscar played at the bends, though not quite so loud. And Bean crawled under the front of the shell with her lantern, said hello, asked Grandmother Slow how she was, and waited for the whole answer.
“That’s a very important job,” said Dad.
This time, Bean agreed with him.
She always packed seven sandwiches, just in case, and the seventh was always lettuce, for Grandmother Slow, who liked lettuce nearly as much as cabbage and liked being asked best of all.
Bean was still the smallest person in the house. But on moving day she had the biggest job of all, and she was very good at it, and Grandmother Slow’s nose was never cold again.