She opened her hand delicately, like a flower. There was nothing inside. 

‘Do you know how to hide an idea?’ she asked. 

I looked into her empty hand. 

She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘By making it so small that no one notices it.’ 

I continued to look into her hand and then up at her. I wondered if she knew that there was nothing there.  

‘Do you understand?’ 

I just looked in her eyes. A tear had started to fall down her cheek. 

‘One day, you will.’  

She closed her hand again and looked up at the tall buildings that towered over her small half garden. 

* 

Mama Blue was the old lady who lived next door to my family when I was a child. She had the smallest house on our block, on the corner. It was almost as if the builders had decided at the last minute to fill the shard of land left by the bigger houses and built her little one. My Dad said he knew her when he was growing up there. As a child, that always seemed impossible to me. Surely, she couldn’t be that old. 

She reminded me of a little bird. Her hunched walk and small body. The way she bounced in double steps in and out of her house and to the road. From my window, I would watch her sweeping the street each afternoon, waving at neighbours and cars driving past. It seemed such a pointless job. She should sweep her house, I thought, not the street which was always going to be dirty. There was no way to clean up all that dust. 

‘Why is she called Mama Blue?’ I asked Dad once. 

‘I don’t know’, Dad said, rubbing his earlobe slowly. ‘Maybe it’s the blue apron she always wears.’ 

That was true. ‘Hasn’t she worn any other apron?’ 

‘Not that I can remember. She hasn’t changed at all, son.’ 

‘It’s not a good name for her. Blue. She’s always happy.’ 

Dad thought about it. ‘She’ll probably still be here when you’re my age. Sweeping the street.’ He laughed. 

I think I was ten when I first spoke to her. I was walking home from school, jumping between cracks in the pavement. I saw her shadow before I realised I was so close to her.  

‘Good morning!’  

I was shorter than her then and looked up to her smiling face. ‘I think it’s the afternoon’, I remember saying, which was a little rude of me, when I think about it now.  

‘I suppose it is. When you’re my age, these things don’t matter so much. It’s all daytime. Are you the little boy who lives next door to me?’  

I nodded up to her. 

‘Why do you sweep the road?’ I asked. 

‘Well, to make it clean.’ 

‘But you can’t make a road clean.’ 

‘We can all try to make our little corners of the world a bit better.’ She turned away from me and continued to sweep the gutter, knocking an old bottle towards the pile of leaves that she had already gathered. That’s when I realised she wasn’t sweeping for herself, she was sweeping for all of us. 

We smiled at each other, and I waved as I walked on to our gate. From that day, I would stop and say hello to her as I walked home from school. Often it was just a ‘How are you?’ or ‘Nice day, today’, mentioning the weather or my walk from school. I have no pictures of Mama Blue, just a memory of her. But as I think about her now and I look at a picture of my family from that time, for some reason, it reminds me of her. Like she was there without being there. Perhaps it is more that it reminds me of myself at that time, before everything changed.  

Our house next door to Mama Blue had been built by my grandfather when he first moved to the city. Grabby, as we called my grandfather, worked at the dynamite factory that used to be near there. He called the house ‘Summer’ and even painted a sign saying so, which he hung on the gate. But my siblings – two younger twin brothers – and I refer to it simply as ‘The Third House’ because we remember living in two other houses, before my grandfather died and we moved into the family home. I think my father imagined that one of us would continue to live there too, one day. 

There is something about the houses of our childhoods, don’t you think? Something so safe about them. As if we can only remember the good times. Living in The Third House was always hot in my memory. As if it baked in extreme weather year-round. I don’t know architecture or the style of the house, but it was built in the shape of a square, with a brick courtyard in the middle. The kitchen, living rooms and my father’s study were all on the ground floor, with always-open doors leading off the shady veranda passage, while the bedrooms were upstairs. Granadilla vines climbed the walls of the courtyard; the fruit would hang around our windows and dangle into the passageways, which always seemed cool and dusty.  

Because of the layout of the house, we spent most of our time as a family outside. Unlike most of my friends, we never watched television. In the evening, the family gathered on the old wire furniture that seemed broken and cracked even when I was small. Occasionally, one of us got a little pinch or cut from the rusty wire and would complain about it. But it never changed, and I don’t think any of us wanted it to. When I think of my father, I think of him lighting the fire pit that stood in the middle of the bricks and around which we sat. He never loaded it with too much wood, only with enough to light the end of day – when it went out, it was out for the night, leaving our final words together in the dark. And we just talked all the time. About everything. Now, looking back, I think it’s sad that families grow apart, that secrets spring between even the strongest bonds. I suppose it is the way of life: my children, who sit on my lap now, will one day forget to call me in the same way that I forgot to call my parents when I left. But that childhood, that courtyard, the heat from the day simmering around us as light faded from the sky above. The way we hung our heads back over the chairs, waiting for the stars to shine through our own private piece of the sky, framed by the walls of our family. Now, that was a childhood.  

I still remember going home for the holidays from university and how my father passed a letter to me one evening while we sat in the courtyard. He was quiet as I read it. An official notification from the city. They wanted to buy the house – at market value, with a pinch more for good measure – because an office development was planned for our block. I looked up at my father. He was looking at the ground and then tilted his eyes up to look back at me from behind his bushy eyebrows.  

‘What are you going to do?’ I asked. I wished the twins were there, but they were teenagers at that time and were out with their friends.  

‘We’re going to sell’, he said, looking back to the ground. 

‘But…why?’  

‘You know, son, I love this house. You know I do. I grew up here too. But the truth is that it’s getting too big for your mother and me. Soon the twins will be leaving, and then the two of us will rattle around this courtyard—’ 

I interrupted him. ‘But we’ll be back! And what about when we want to buy—’ 

He held up his hand for me to stop. I drew my breath in and waited.  

‘I just don’t think it’s worth fighting this.’ 

‘But you don’t have to sell the house, it’s—’ 

‘It’s going to happen sometime. This is just the beginning. What are we going to do, stay here and be the only house left on the block, with huge offices around us? Your mother and I just need a small place somewhere, so we can visit you boys when you have your own homes.’ 

I was quiet. I hung my head back to look for the stars, but it was just dark above us. The fire had started going out, and father repeated what he had said: ‘It’s going to happen sometime, and we can’t stand in the way.’ His voice was soft and set; he had obviously thought about it. Now, I wish I had fought more – had told him we could do something: stay; rally the neighbours. But when you’re young, the voice of your father is like stone, immovable and the only law that cannot be broken. I let it settle in me, like he had done.  

That night, after my parents had gone to bed, I stood in the courtyard and looked up into the night sky. I couldn’t see the stars. I wonder now if that was the start of the city stealing the lights from the night as it expanded and shone back at the sky, blotting out my stars. I walked through the kitchen and out into the street. I stood and looked back at The Third House and thought for the first time how old it looked. It was cool in the evening, and I sat quietly on the garden wall, like I had once done with my siblings, later with girlfriends, and listened to the neighbourhood’s quiet, with the distant sound of traffic humming in the background. I heard the squeak of a door, which I knew immediately to come from Mama Blue, and I turned to look at her tiny house. I could see her silhouette against the glass frame of her front door and heard the click of the key as she locked it. I wondered where she would go when the development started. Her little corner. It really was a small house, and she wouldn’t need much more than that. Instinctively, I looked at the street and gutter – spotless, as ever. 

But my life was moving then. I was studying, meeting people. I left the next day, and it was only a telephone call that reminded me to come home for the weekend to pack up my room: my parents had sold, found a flat on the other side of the ridge and were moving the next month. I packed hurriedly. I threw away parts of my childhood that I never should have – toys and books and memories that I regret not keeping. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to. I guess only the most important parts of you survive the fickleness of youth. 

About a year later, I was taking a sip of coffee, listening to my then-girlfriend, Tune, complain about politics. It’s all she ever talked about as you did as students. We were in a coffee shop; it was a Sunday morning, and she was flicking through the newspaper, talking through the injustices of the world. I was graduating the next day, and, to tell the truth, I was trying to find a way to end it with her now that we were both moving on to other things – I had a job in the city, and she had about ten plans that I knew would never work. I wanted to tell her now. 

‘…I thought he was a nice guy; then he got into politics. It’s like a rule, if you become a politician, you have to start lying. They think the people are stupid; that’s their problem…’ 

I nodded along, looking down at the packet of sugar I was fumbling with in my hand. It was one of those with famous quotes on the back, and this one said, Be brave and great forces will come to your aid – Goethe. I took this as a sign. I was wondering how to start the conversation.  

‘…Who would have thought that the water would suddenly stop working when she became the councillor – strange don’t you think…’ 

What could I tell her? Maybe it was me and the end of an era. It’s not like she even believed in marriage – but she knew that didn’t matter to me. I had opened my mouth when she said something that clicked in my head.  

‘…and this poor old lady. Being forced to move off the land she’s had for a million years. She won’t leave her house. She looks like a little bird…’ 

I grabbed at the paper, spilling my coffee, and Tune pulled it away from me. 

‘Hey! What are you doing?’ 

‘Hold on, show me that article – the old lady…’ 

She handed me the paper, and I pushed it flat onto the table. I remember some of the spilt coffee seeping through the page. I read the headline: ‘City Council to Oust 96-Year-Old Lady to Build New Tech Centre’. I looked at the picture. There she was. Mama Blue. She was standing at her door, looking out, as I had seen her do so many times. I read the article which spoke about Mama Blue being the only resident who hadn’t sold her house to the city, which was currently going through the courts to take it forcibly. It looked like it would happen in the next few days. 

‘I know her’, I said. 

‘You know the old lady?’ 

I nodded. ‘She was my neighbour growing up. We called her Mama Blue.’ 

‘Hero.’ 

I looked up at Tune. She smiled at me. Suddenly I didn’t want it to end with her. 

‘Do you want to go and see Mama Blue?’ I asked, knowing the answer already. 

I couldn’t believe this was where I had grown up. Gone was The Third House. In fact, gone were the trees, the pavements, and gone were all the houses in the suburb. All that was left was a flat, dusty wasteland, filled with construction machinery and workers and huge containers. They hadn’t started building yet, but there were a lot of people. What surprised me was that across the road from my old block, on all sides, buildings had sprung up or were in the process of being sprung. This used to be a residential suburb. The shiny glass of the buildings seemed to surround the empty block, in a vast number of colours, like multi-hued mirrors that made the wasteland continue forever in various parallel universes. 

At the end of the road, we could see a crowd of people standing on the corner where I knew Mama Blue’s house to be. I looked to where The Third House had once stood. I parked outside the spot where its gate used to stand. I remember the scrawl of Grabby’s ‘Summer’. People were milling around everywhere, some holding placards and others sitting on the ground in circles, talking and passing pieces of paper while workers seemed to surround them, putting small flags and markers into the ground. It was chaos. And at the centre of it all, Mama Blue’s tiny house rose, and far above the house towered the multicoloured buildings. I wondered where she was. 

I stepped out of the car, not really knowing what I was doing there. Tune walked around to my side of the car. She took my hand. 

‘So, this is where you used to live?’ 

I nodded and looked at the dusty, flattened ground and walked out into it, among the workers and protestors. Tune stood watching me, leaning back against the side of the car. She had never seen me like this. I stood where the courtyard used to be and squatted down. I dug my hand into the ground and pulled up a mound of earth. I thought of the hot bricks and the starry fire evenings. Right here. This was where I began. I looked up into the hazy sky. A thought shot through me, from my stomach, into my heart and then my head. We should have fought back. I remembered those photographs I mentioned earlier. Of the family. Maybe it was my youth at that time, the change I was feeling in my own life, or maybe I was just being sentimental, but I knew I had to help Mama Blue because I hadn’t helped defend my family home, of which she was the last part.  

I found her on the small patch of lawn that was her back garden. She was sitting quietly in an old garden chair. No one spoke to her. It was like she was sitting in the eye of a hurricane.  

I knelt down next to her and smiled. 

She recognised me immediately and put her arms around my neck, holding me tightly. 

‘How have you been?’ she asked. ‘I miss your family.’ 

We both looked at the empty ground where The Third House used to be. 

‘Mama Blue’, I said. ‘What can I do to help? What is happening?’ 

She leaned in close to me as if telling me a secret. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. All these people arrived and keep giving me food. Just because I don’t want to sell my home!’ She held her thumb out over her shoulder at the house behind her. ‘Chucky bought it when we got married; why would I sell it?’ 

‘Who knew your little house would become such a big problem!’ I raised my eyebrows at her, and she put her hand on my shoulder. 

‘It’s not the house.’ 

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. 

‘They’re not angry at my house. I’m sure they could knock it down with one tractor.’ 

She looked over her shoulder at the house and then back at me. 

‘It’s the idea that an old lady should hold up their construction. That’s what they’re angry about’, she said. ‘And more than that, it’s all these people making a fuss. If it was just me and nobody had noticed, I wouldn’t be here. They would have put some money in my account, got the police to take me away and knocked it down.’ 

‘But people did notice; you’re still here.’ 

She nodded. ‘It’s all very complicated. They keep giving me letters I don’t understand.’ 

‘Can I do anything?’ 

‘Well, can I make you a cup of tea? It’s lovely to see a face I recognise. Please stay a while.’ 

‘Of course!’ 

I called Tune over, and while Mama Blue made a pot of tea, we found some more garden chairs. That afternoon, we sat in the warm sun and drank cup after cup while Mama Blue and I told stories of my childhood and all that happened in those days. As the sun began to set, she continued to tell us about the times of my father’s childhood in the house and the first time she met my grandfather and when The Third House was being built. The beginnings of all that were ending around me. 

All the workers eventually left, but the protestors didn’t. They set up small tents and stuck their placards into the ground like the flags of the workers. They barely looked at the three of us, and I could see that they didn’t know Mama Blue at all. It was a warm night, and, despite an offer from Mama Blue, Tune and I lay together on the grass and slept between telling each other more stories while we tried to spy out the brighter stars that made it through the city’s glare. Deep in the night, I turned my head to Tune when she had been quiet for a while. She was asleep. I remember thinking that I was glad I hadn’t ended it that morning in the coffee shop. 

I knew I wouldn’t attend my graduation when I woke up the next morning. There was a shift in the air, and protestors were all standing and shouting when I opened my eyes to the brightness of the white sky. I must have slept through something, and I found that Tune wasn’t next to me. All the people were moving to the front of the house, and I pushed myself up feeling numb on the arm on which I’d been sleeping. I followed the people and spotted Mama Blue sweeping the road as she had always done. The people continued to ignore her. They had gathered to one side, a bustling mob of protestors and journalists, and I saw Tune standing outside of the group.  

‘Someone from the city is here’, she said, yawning.  

‘What have they said?’ 

As if in answer, the crowd around us started to shout, and I strained my head to see that a man was emerging from a large car. The protestors seemed to be caught in an invisible net because they pushed forward eagerly but held back from getting too close to him in a strange tug of war between their passions and fears. Someone threw a clod of dirt which hit the man’s chest, leaving a puff of dust on his suit. He brushed it away as if he hadn’t felt anything. He stood before us and cleared his throat.  

‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I will now read a statement from the City Council.’ 

As if the wind had blown away their voices, the people fell silent. 

‘We, the City, understand the frustrations initiated by the proposed destruction of this property. We are prepared, under the circumstances, to grant the owner of this land the right to live there. The enormity of this development, however, has progressed too far to halt proceedings, as one can see. Therefore, we have a non-negotiable proposal for the owner of this land. She may keep the land. But the land, and the premises existing on it, shall be relocated later today to accommodate her wishes as well as those of the city.’ 

A stunned hush followed. No one knew how to respond. I turned to look at Mama Blue, who had rested her head on the end of her broom and was staring at the man. He turned and stepped back into the large car and was a cloud of dust before anyone had a chance to move. Then chaos erupted, and the people started to chant and rave and jump around the road. Tune and I walked over to Mama Blue, who smiled up at us. 

‘How about some tea and a piece of toast?’ she said. 

‘Do you understand what’s going on?’ I asked, exasperated for her. 

‘I’ve learnt that I will understand if I just wait.’ 

And so, the three of us returned to our garden chairs, and I watched the time tick past my graduation ceremony and knew that my parents would be angry that I had not told them where I was. As we sat in the garden, the reporters set up cameras facing all directions in case they missed something, and the people sat in circles with their placards. From across the wasteland, I watched a large front loader slowly approach us, thinking it would turn away, but it didn’t. It had the most enormous scoop at the front. Its presence was soon felt by everyone. 

‘Here we go’, said Mama Blue. ‘Now we’ll see. Come along.’ She slowly got up, folded her garden chair and headed for the house. All the people were moving too, and they stood in a circle around the house, holding hands so that we had to duck underneath to get through with our chairs. Mama Blue went into the house, and Tune and I sat on the kitchen steps to watch.  

If you didn’t believe me that the house was small, this part of the story will convince you. We watched the front loader approach. I saw the people start to sweat, their hands clasped in each other’s. The reporters started to shout into their microphones above the roar of the machine. I looked at Tune. She turned to me and kissed me on the cheek. 

‘I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else’, she said. 

‘Me too’, I said, and I kissed her, on the mouth. 

We held hands, and I knew that I would stay with her forever – she’s my wife now, despite all that talk about not believing in marriage. 

The front loader slowly moved towards us then stopped on the patch of grass where we had been drinking tea not long before and revved its engine. I can’t remember if I was scared if that’s what you’re wondering. All I remember is that I felt right. That’s the only way to describe it: I felt right. Like I needed to be there. Like I was standing in front of The Third House before it was razed. So, I guess I wasn’t scared at all. I was doing this for my childhood. The people started singing a song I didn’t know. Or maybe they were all singing different songs but didn’t notice or didn’t hear. There was an excitement in the air that I could feel run down my neck, and I turned to see Mama Blue standing behind us, watching. 

The revving continued for a few minutes, and then, instead of moving forward, the giant scoop of the front loader tilted down and pushed itself into the ground. Deeper and deeper it went, slowly disappearing into the dirt, making the earth tremble underneath us. I could almost feel it slide under the house and then pause. Suddenly, a loud beeping sound emerged from the machine, and with a squealing of something and a metallic chattering of something else, the ground shook under us, and then, in stilted motions, we started to rise. The front loader was lifting the entire house, with all the people, out of the ground. The protestors mostly had their eyes shut and hadn’t noticed, so the disorder of the singing grew louder, and the few that did notice just fell silent. I held onto the steps underneath me and felt the whole structure gently shuddering underneath us as we moved. The front loader reversed, turned, and then we were slowly, inch by inch, sailing across the flattened block. We headed for the middle of the wasteland. I could see to one side, ahead of us, that a hole had already been dug in preparation for our move. It was on a small patch of land without flags. Maybe it was originally going to be a patch of concrete between buildings. It was surrounded by workers, ready to aid in signalling the front loader into position. With a jolt and then another, causing the protestors to shout and stumble, the house was lowered into the middle of the block of dirt and dust. The workers all cheered, and the people opened their eyes and obviously felt disorientated and disillusioned because they started to wander around as the house settled into its new place. Some fell to their knees and clawed the ground as if they had been transported to another plane of existence.  

‘They’ve moved us to the centre of the block’, I said, not knowing what else to say. 

‘I don’t understand’, Tune said as if to herself. 

‘Who knows’, said Mama Blue. ‘It looks like I’ve been relocated.’ 

Then everything went quiet. The protestors didn’t know what to protest now, since Mama Blue had technically just been moved within the same block, and the journalists were bewildered but bored by the whole experience. No death had occurred, and the injustice seemed slight. We had another cup of tea and watched the crowds dissipate, like bees from a dying flower. Soon the sun was setting, and the workers also clocked off, waving to us as they passed.  

‘I still don’t understand’, Tune said to us. 

Mama Blue, who had been staring off into the distance for most of the afternoon, suddenly looked at us, shook her head and lifted her arm between us. She opened her hand delicately, like a flower. There was nothing inside. 

‘Do you know how to hide an idea?’ she asked. 

I looked into her empty hand. 

She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘By making it so small that no one notices it.’ 

I continued to look into her hand and then up at her. I wondered if she knew that there was nothing there.  

‘Do you understand?’ 

I just looked in her eyes. A tear had started to fall down her cheek. 

‘One day, you will.’ She closed her hand again and looked up at the tall buildings that towered over her small half garden. 

‘But…why not move you somewhere far away? Knock over the house.’ 

‘I told you, it’s not about the house. It’s about the idea. Soon the buildings will rise around me, and my little house will disappear behind glass. I suppose I’ll have an entrance through the office buildings. By keeping my house intact, there is little about which to complain. Nothing obvious has been taken from me. Soon, no one will see me, nor will they be reminded of the little old lady being kicked out of her house – because she hasn’t been kicked out. They have conveniently moved her. And the idea is forgotten.’ 

Tune spoke up: ‘Just because you can’t see an idea doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’ 

‘Unfortunately, in today’s world, I think it means exactly that.’  

Tune and I looked at each other. I took her hand. 

‘We won’t forget’, I said. 

Mama Blue smiled at me, sadly. 

2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist