Girl

by Edna O'Brien

  She would take me for short walks, to nurse me back to health, but everything, the people, the trees, the pump, were all shadows and I recoiled from my reflection in the puddles of water.

  It was not too long afterwards and as a last resort, Mama decided to send for the witch woman.

  THE WOMAN CAME IN the dead of night. Her clothes were very colourful and she was carrying a bundle with all her medicines and plants and powders. She pulled out stalks, the earth still clinging to them, and told us she had gone to the most sacred part of the forest to find these remedies. Her feet were tired. She needed a drink of some kind. While Mama was gone, she kept sniffing and looked at me and said, ‘Rapture … you are still enraptured.’ I was too afraid to ask what she meant. Mama was then told to bring rags, a bowl of clean water and a fresh egg. For the second time, she was ordered out of the room.

  I had to stand on the raw egg, first one foot, then the other, in order to be cleansed. Then she made me drink from a little beaker. The drink was the blood of a certain cow. She said the cow had not died, as the blood was taken from the vein with a special spear. They were men skilled at doing it. She was brusque, said she and her cohorts knew more than the psychiatrists and doctors in the land. Then she began chanting. I was supposed to follow her. She recited all the vowels and syllables of her clan to rout him out, to be rid of him.

  We were walking in circles, clockwise, anticlockwise, until finally I felt dizzy and swooned onto the bed. I began to cry. She took that to mean repentance. She was ready to heed spirit. Then she turned me on my back and I felt the sharp incisions, as with a razor she made slits to pack powders into the openings and press them down. I had to hold a wooden charm in my hand and earnestly ask to be let free of him, to let him go. I had no idea what she meant.

  ‘The mother’s milk is the child’s curse,’ she said and mine was no exception. While the child is connected to the father through blood, it is connected to the mother through milk and it was my cursed milk that caused my child to be taken from me in the first place. I had chosen him over her. It was why I also chose to end up in a darkened room with a black window, so that he could pass through whenever he wanted and dally with me in whatever way we wished. She was getting angry. She could see I was not responding, she could see that I was disobeying her, without the words. Her next implement was the needle. It was like a crochet needle, with a hook at its tip. She heated it on a tiny burner, testing until it sizzled, and then she thrust it down my throat, where she tore and tugged and shouted at him to be gone. Then weirdly triumphant, she brought up a bubble, the size of a small bead and almost luminous. She said we would see no more of him, the bubble was his seed and it was dissolving. He was gone. She had routed him. She called to my mother loudly. She needed sustenance, she needed milk.

  ‘Will she be alright?’ Mama asked, because she saw how intimidated I was.

  ‘We have many gods who do as they decide,’ was the perplexing answer.

  There was the matter of payment. I knew we had no money.

  They both went out and I guessed Mama paid her with a hen. I could hear the commotion in the yard, the hen squalling as its legs were being tied or maybe strangling her and the cockerel’s wrath was mighty.

  MAMA MARCHED IN like a warrior and strode across the room. Her face was gleaming wet and drops of rain perched on her hair. She had been to see Pastor Reuben. First thing, she tore the tarp off the window and it fell in soft clods onto the floor. Light at last. She was exhilarated. She kept murmuring as though to someone. She could not contain herself much longer. Finally, she bellowed it in my ear, first one ear and then the other – That Baby is not dead, That Baby is not dead. She had said it twice. It seemed impossible and yet it felt true. Why is this dust an infinity of rising glitter. Why is the moss on the tree outside no longer mouldy but a luminous green. Why is Mama not atoning. What does she know. How does she know. I got out of bed and for the first time walked without her help.

  ‘How do you know,’ I ask.

  How does she know all this? She knows because Pastor Reuben has just told her. That is why he sent for her so early. He learnt it from a nun called Sister Angelina, who was visiting a sick relative nearby. Pia knew the nun and went to her in a great consternation, saying she would go straight to hell, as she had colluded in a crime. Although Auntie had promised to dispose of Babby and had been prepared to snuff her out, when the moment came, she did not have the stomach for it. Instead she hired a hoodlum who did all sorts of dirty work, putting down wild dogs, trapping rats, gathering firewood, priding himself on his skills as an entrepreneur. His name was Lucky. He even bragged that for the right money, he could bring the ex-President’s head on a plate. Auntie met with him in secret. A few nights later Babby was taken in her sleep, bundled in her favourite wrapper that she had grown to love and was inseparable from.

  Sister Angelina and Pastor Reuben were scheming to get her back. They knew Lucky would thwart them every second of the way. Sister was collecting money to buy him a cycle, even a second-hand cycle, as he was forever grumbling at having to traipse that forest daily. Even as Mama told me, floating on these billows of happiness, a shadow had come down. Over me. Over everything. We were wasting time. It was too late. Lucky would have sold her back to the Sect who would revel in it. Maybe they were already boasting of it on social media. I am back in that yard with all the men and machinery and Lucky carries Babby in and plonks her down. Little Norah runs towards her to try and pick her up in her arms, blood running down their thighs. Two bleeding sisters together, calling to their lost herds.

  ‘Why are you shivering,’ Mama asks.

  I do not answer. Gone. Gone. The herd had fled to where the grass was sweeter, fled from bloodiness and scourge.

  THERE WAS NO TRACK, just bushes and saplings falling into one another and coarse grasses taller than me. I had to wade through, but I was certain I had come to the right place, because of a yellowish light that puttered through the darkness. Sister Angelina had shown me a photograph of Lucky’s ramshackle caravan, set down in a hollow. Even the slightest stir made me jump.

  Sister Angelina had also told me that after the day’s work in the forest, he came back to the caravan, smoked cannabis for relaxation and then had a short snooze. He grew the cannabis in pots at the side and claimed that it sharpened his wits.

  I had to come and I had to come alone if ever I was to give myself the name of Mother.

  Saying goodbye to my mother was unbearable. She knew I would not be returning. Her bony arms, her frail sinews, tightened around me and then she reached for Yusuf’s shirt, pulled it from the wall, smelt it for the last time and bundled it into my grasp. She understood that Sister Angelina was taking me into hiding.

  It was pitch dark suddenly and I kept tripping on mounds and tree stumps, but my eyes remained fixed on that yellowish puttering light.

  I knew from Sister Angelina that Lucky’s daughter took Babby during the day, brought her back in the evening and put her in an outside shed, where she was given a bottle, which had to suffice until morning. I had not reckoned on that shed being locked. I searched for the key under stones and along the narrow ledge that skirted the blind side of the caravan, but it was not there. Through the wide slits in the wooden door I saw her, in a basket on the floor, holding something that seemed to be animal pelt. It was woeful, seeing her abandoned in her sad wandering world. What visions of desolation haunted her, what did she remember of us.

  I went to look through the half-open shutter of the caravan, to make sure that Lucky was asleep. He was stretched out in his barber’s chair, the one Sister Angelina had shown me a picture of, with silver arm rests and a rack for his feet. He was wearing only his underpants, with his sunglasses on the floor beside him. His body was scored with scars and gashes, as if he had just returned from battle. In contrast, he wore a lot of gold chains and various gaudy rings. There was a gun with a long grey nozzle, hanging on a bit of twine nearby. A kitchen drawer that had been pulled out
was full of different kinds of knives and beside it, a wheel-shaped stone sharpener. There was something stewing on the top of a tiny little stove and new suits of clothing were on hangers, waiting to be resold. I had to be quick.

  It took me merely seconds to go up those steps, push the door quietly in and search for the key. There was a bunch of keys of all sizes and metals, but the small shiny one, for a brand new padlock, was not among them. I crept. It was not in the drawer of knives, it was not on the window ledge and then, under a tray full of dirty dishes, I saw the glint of small keys tucked under a packet of powdered milk.

  Out of habit, she clenched her little fists when I lifted her up, even though I had cuddled her and said her name repeatedly. She let out a cry that was both fiendish and frightened. Presently he was outside on the step and shouting the slaughter he would wreak on us. He knew my name. He knew where I lived.

  I scuttled away in a different direction, towards nowhere, a sort of underworld. Not a chink of light came between the tall trees that were massed together. I held her to my chest. There were shots from different directions as he ran in search of us and after each explosion she quaked as if she was about to fall asunder, like the shedding pieces of a jigsaw. She did not know words, but she knew terror.

  I held her tight, tighter, so as to scoop her up inside me, where she would be invisible to him. Him. Where was he now? The gun had gone silent. Perhaps he had run on ahead to apprehend us at some entrance. I had to keep reminding myself that I had come to rescue her and was driven on, clutching at whatever branch or bough I could find, to keep me upright. My feet had gone beyond pain and I walked, if there is such a thing as walking into eternity.

  Then suddenly we are sliding down a fallen bough that has wedged itself into a choked ravine. Where are we? What has happened? The sound of my own voice and the chatter of running water is uncanny. Babby starts to bawl, sensing calamity. In that acreage of death I thought of spirits and how they must wander about both sensible and insensible to the pleas of the living.

  ‘Buki,’ I called. I felt her presence and then her absence, immediately followed by the absence of everyone I had ever known. Except we had to move, or otherwise Lucky would find us. On all fours I set out, Babby’s face bobbing against mine, her hands thumping me with her hot temper. Perhaps she believed that I was bringing her back to the dungeon. But how would I ever know what she believed. I kept crawling and hushing her, until finally she lapsed into a jumpy sleep that can hardly have been a refuge, because every so often shudders of terror escaped her.

  Gradually, there was a little light, as the overhanging branches were fewer and by a gap between some trees I saw a waiting moon. There was the trundle of a vehicle and then another and I reckoned we could not be that far from some road or other. Then under some bushes a silhouette appeared, that seemed to be a woman’s. It was Sister Angelina running towards us, disbelieving and agitated.

  ‘Why did you do such a crazy thing?’

  ‘We have her,’ I said.

  ‘Crazy,’ she repeated and walked on muttering, and I followed her to where her car was hidden under a copse. The moment we got in she turned on the radio full blast. It was to stop quarrelling. The music was the loudest and most jangling I had ever heard. She drove recklessly and in defiance of all rules. Other cars hooted and one driver stuck his head out the window and told her to get back in the bush where she belonged.

  It was only when we got to Pastor Reuben’s house that I saw how distraught she had been. She drew up her sleeves, raised her bare arms, eschewing all niceness, all piety, haranguing the saints to whom she ceaselessly prayed.

  ‘It was out of love … pure love,’ Pastor Reuben said quietly.

  ‘And pure madness,’ Sister Angelina countered, as she went into the little disused sacristy and we could hear her retching.

  The room had been stripped of furniture. There was a long bench and some wicker cribs, for mothers to lay their infants into, during their weekly sessions. Along the top of a small bookcase was a series of jagged waxen roses and inside, sheathed in cobweb, were papers and pamphlets. He was doing everything to be hospitable, coaxing Babby to sup from a mug that he held for her. Almost immediately after, she fell into a profound sleep.

  Sister came and sat near me on the bench, tears running down her cheeks and contrite now. We sat in silence knowing that the door might be burst open at any point.

  It was very early next morning when we left Pastor Reuben’s house, so as not to be sighted.

  He stood on the step, proud and erect, as happy as if it was his own life that had been spared.

  ‘Don’t forget us,’ he said. It seemed more like an exchange between living and dead, as though his ghosthood was already on him.

  AS THE DOUBLE DOORS of the convent were opened for Sister Angelina to drive in, I smelt blossom. Blossom everywhere, even draping the low building itself. Flowerbeds surrounded the low stools of box hedging. The sun is shining.

  Just inside the small reception hall nuns are waiting to welcome us and still others are running from different directions, their veils fluttering as they hurry. Each one shakes hands with me. They embrace Sister Angelina. They can’t stay. They have duties. They teach catechism. Catechists, they are called. They have badges on their blouses that say so. There is a smell of wax polish. From a stained-glass window high above sunlight is pouring in and on the floor a mosaic of marvelling blues. There is a wooden altar with a statue of St Francis, who is the patron saint of their order, and around it on the ledge there are several petitions.

  When I see Sister Angelina put on her brown knitted cap again, I know that she is leaving. She has to return to the little school where she and another nun share the teaching. The car that brought us there is waiting to take her to the bus station and the journey will be over five or six hours.

  ‘So many poor people … so many children,’ is all she says. She will write to me.

  Babby and I are alone with Sister Christiana, who leads us into the dining room, saying we must be tired and we must be thirsty. Everything so calm, so orderly. The walls are a pale yellow and there are small round tables covered in crimson patterned cloths, which are obviously the tables where the nuns eat, with little sprays of dried flowers in tiny bottles on each one. The muslin curtains along the bay windows obscure the big high wall beyond.

  Babby has fallen asleep. Sister brings a glass of water for me. It is ice cold. It is from one of their cold wells. They are lucky, she says, as they have three wells in all and moreover, clean brooks that run down from the plateau. The water from those brooks is so special it even removes the stains from their white blouses. It is where they bathe and where they also wash their blouses. She sees that I am forlorn and brings me a book as a gift. It is the first book I have ever owned. There is a picture of Christ on the cover, holding a staff and embracing a lamb which has a crescent of blood on the ridge of its back. It is a book of daily reflections. I open it at the prayer for that day and read:

  In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife Naomi and his two sons. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years; and both sons died, so that the woman was bereft of her two sons and her husband. Then she started with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law and went back, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, ‘See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.’ But Ruth said, ‘Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’ So Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabitess her daughter-in-law with her, who
returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.

  *

  The young nun who cooks has brought a white plastic chair for me into the garden. She wants me to eat more. At lunch she poured an extra amount of the meat gravy on the rice she had put down before me. As a special treat there were pancakes afterwards, pancakes with maple syrup.

  Babby wants to play. The little pathway to the entrance door is made up of pebbles and she is intrigued by them. She picks them up, staggers a few steps and then throws them down. She goes back to pick up more and flops in the rompers that they have got for her. She takes her time before deciding to cry or to get up. She gets up and gathers two more fistfuls of pebbles, which trickle through her fingers and make her laugh. It is an almost unnatural laugh, the first real laugh in her life.

  A man has come to do the garden. With a hoe he is taking all the weeds between the paving stones and throwing them onto a heap. There is a little boy with him. The boy is curious about us. The father has thrown down a long weed and Babby decides that it will be hers, so that she can thwack things. The boy wants it. She won’t give it back. They tussle. The weed breaks and the boy bites her with rage. It is more a nip than a bite. She is yelling, pointing to the spot where his teeth bit. It is not bleeding, but she is making the most of it. The little boy is sent back to his house, a tiny house, which is just beyond the rectangle of hedging. He looks back hating us. I say to the father that I am sorry. I should not have been so absent-minded. He tells me not to worry and asks if I have ventured out. He opens one half of the double doors. I see a world of men, so many men, on cycles, driving goats, carrying goods on their head, all of them busy with some chore or other and taking no notice of me. Yes, I am afraid of them. I am afraid of what they might do to me. I am afraid to go beyond the confines of that high wall.