The doors slide open slowly, as if they're not quite sure if
they'd like to let me in. The room is wide and quiet. People are mostly keeping
themselves to themselves. Someone coughs, but it's hidden discreetly behind a
polite hand. I join the end of a queue of people staring at polystyrene ceiling
tiles, and I wait. Green lights flash up on a black television screen - the
only thing in this room that suggests we've moved into the twenty-first
century. And like a God watching over us all, the voice of a robotic woman
summons up the next waitee. In stark contrast, a nearby flip card clock clicks
into place. I like how retro it looks. The flashcards with bold black lettering
flick with a tick for each minute that passes. I wonder how long it has been
flicking cards on that grubby magnolia wall. The line shuffles forward.
Everybody resumes their positions and then pauses, as if part of a synchronous
mime act. The sounds in here are most unlike any other. Whirring pages of
official red, gold, orange and blue squares, being ripped along perforations.
The occasional ker-chunk as something
passes the stare of the woman behind the counter, then branded and inked
accordingly. Nice and methodical. A tired ceiling fan hums faintly over my
head, the blades spinning so slowly that I try to watch one whip around for a
while. It makes me feel dizzy, so I lower my eyes down to the present I'm
holding tightly in my hands. The paper crunches as I turn it over. I think of
the soft woolly scarf I had made, now all snug inside three sheets of wispy
black tissue paper, wrapped carefully within two layers of course brown paper
and sealed with a good few cuts of screeching sellotape. I think of how she'll
open each layer, how the birthday card might fall on her lap, the tissue paper
will be left torn on the side. I hope she'll like it. My eyes trace the
letters sprawled across the front of the package, spoken in my lovely familiar
handwriting and a deep blue ink; all bunched together to create the whereabouts
of my little sister. I stare at the letters long enough, until they no longer
make sense to me; become a code, just a formation of unusual wiggles. It's the
reverberating thud of a rubber stamp on a savings book that jumps me out
of my squiggly stupor, just in perfect time for the God of the Post Office to
call me forward.
