Piazza Piuta (standard:romance, 4459 words)
Author: emdee	Added: Sep 26 2003	Views/Reads: 3105/2167	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A story about the breakdown of mother daughter realationship. A story about connecting with you past.

Piazza Piuta 

West Green road was dotted with Parkview High Academy and St. David and
St. Katharine uniforms.  There was a small boy dodging the traffic, the 
bus stop outside the factory outlet shop was brimming with school 
children and the 41 bus sitting at it was bursting with them.  There 
were boys and girls shouting at each other in English, Turkish and 
Somali, they were all probably saying the same thing. 

Keisha was glad she did not have to weave her way down West Green road
that morning.  She was heading towards Chestnuts Park, it was only the 
few stragglers of children walking up her road now.  Their rucksacks 
almost dragging on the floor and blazers askew.  The sky was a clear 
blue and it was cold, she tried to walk fast to warm herself but the 
cold made her feel as if she was dragging her feet.  She had lost her 
gloves so she had tight fists rammed into her pocket.  She turned left 
on to Black Boy Lane and breathed in deeply, she reached the park 
faster than she thought she would because she was ten minutes early the 
café was open and she was going to wait inside but then decided to walk 
around the park for a while.  She slowly started to walk along the path 
towards the tennis courts; she walked until she got to the white wall 
that was the back of a clothes factory.  It used to be covered in 
graffiti huge three dimensional letters sprayed gold and silver and 
black.  She turned and looked at the old brown wooden building that 
used to be the Chestnuts Playscheme, every summer she would go 
reluctantly and meet temporary new mates who she would never see again 
once the summer was finished. 

She was remembering running along the path with Mary Jo who said,”Let's
pretend to be fugitives!” “What's a fugitive?” Keisha asked. “It's when 
you're running from the police.” “Oh, yeah let's pretend to be 
fugitives!”  An immense feeling of warmth and excitement washed over 
Keisha she felt as if she was floating in the air.  All of a sudden it 
was midnight and the night breeze bit into her stiff cold face.  It was 
raining and the police helicopter was hanging in the sky and the beams 
from the police flashlights were wandering around the park and the dogs 
barks were getting louder and louder.  Keisha was trying to climb a 
steep hill but was slipping all over the place.  Her face was drenched 
with rain and her heart was thundering in her ears.  She could hear 
someone laughing it was getting nearer and nearer but she was too 
scared to look round.  After a while the laughter sounded so familiar 
that she felt she had to turn around.  It was Mary Jo almost bent over 
in hysterics.  It jolted Keisha out of her fantasy. “What is it?” 
Keisha asked out of breath now. “We're not really fugitives Keisha.”  
Mary could hardly speak or see because of the tears coming down her 
eyes.  “Y- you take things so seriously.”  Mary looked around to check 
nobody was watching them. 

“Yeah, I know but you said let's pretend.”  Keisha could feel her eyes
warming with tears.  She did not want Mary Jo to see her cry, she 
quickly turned her back to her and wiped her eyes. “Yeah but you really 
pretend, you're so funny.” 

Keisha checked her watch and only a couple of minutes had gone by, she
headed towards the children's play area and sat on the bench.  She 
looked at the slide, it was silver and shiny.  At one summer playscheme 
her friend Lisa told her that one of the other girls did not have any 
knickers on. “Yeah right” Keisha said in disbelief. “It's true, when 
she was going down the slide there was a breeze and I saw.”  For about 
fifteen minutes Keisha was trying to look for confirmation of this, but 
it was no use she could not see. Lisa decided to name the girl breeze, 
they giggled and nudged each other for the rest of the afternoon.  Lisa 
eventually asked the about her knickers, she sheepishly said, “I forgot 
to put them on.” 

Keisha laughed to herself as she imbedded her hands deeper into her
pockets, the 341 bus trundled down Black Boy Lane and sighed at the bus 
stop outside Woodlands Park Junior School.  Jade, who was Keisha's best 
friend in junior school used to take the 341 bus home from school.  It 
used to be the171a and changed colour countless of times since then, 
now it was run by Capital buses Jade had lived everywhere; Holland, 
Paris, New York and Jamaica.  Jade would be in school and then all of a 
sudden she would have to leave and go and live somewhere else.  Piuta 
was best friend less for months at a time. 



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