Page 65 of The Black Flamingo

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helps us get settled.

Mum continues to be short-tempered

and dismissive with Grandma,

the way I am sometimes short-tempered

and dismissive with Mum.

I can’t work out what Mum

and Grandma are saying for the most part,

because they speak in Greek.

Hearing Mum speak another language

and be so stroppy like this,

she is like a different person.

Like she has become her teenage

self again. The girl she was before me.

The girl from the last millennium.

On the beach the next day,

Daisy has taken Anna

to get ice cream.

Strangers

shout, “Bob Marley!”

The first few times I laugh and wave

but after a while I just roll my eyes.

A girl in a pink bikini

comes up to me and touches my hair:

“Xereis na milas ellinika?”

“Excuse me?” I say, in shock

as I back away from her.

She repeats, in English,

“Do you speak Greek?”

“No, I can’t speak Greek.”

She says, “You’re from Jamaica.”

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