The Land of Decoration

by Grace McCleen

  “Dynamite,” said Alf.

  “You couldn’t,” said Uncle Stan.

  “A pretty big digger,” said Gordon, and everyone laughed.

  Brother Michaels held something up between his finger and thumb. “Do you know what this is?”

  “It isn’t anything,” I whispered, but Father smiled.

  “Which of you believes I’m holding anything at all?” said Brother Michaels.

  Some people put up their hands; lots didn’t. Father was still smiling and he put up his hand, so I did too. Brother Michaels held a piece of paper out just below the microphone. Then he opened his finger and thumb and we heard something fall. “Those of you who guessed I was holding something, give yourself a pat on the back,” he said. “You were seeing with Eyes of Faith.”

  “What is it?” I said, but Father only put his finger to his lips.

  “That, Brothers, is a mustard seed,” said Brother Michaels. He held up a picture of a mustard seed blown up. It was like a tiny yellow ball. “It’s the smallest of seeds but grows into a tree that the birds of heaven sit in.” Then he began to talk about the world.

  He said that many difficulties would befall God’s people before the system ended. He said the Devil was roaming the earth, seeking to devour someone. We read about how the Israelites stopped believing they would get to the Land of Decoration, how they scorned God’s miracles and the miracle workers. “Never let us be like that,” he said. “Faith is not a possession of all people. The world laughs at faith. They wouldn’t think of telling that mountain to move. But turn with me in your Bibles, Brothers, and see what Jesus says.”

  Then he began to read, and as he did my heart beat hard and it was as if I was catching light.

  “For I say to you truthfully, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to a mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.”

  “Of course,” he said, “Jesus was speaking metaphorically. We can’t really move mountains. But we can do things we think are impossible if we have faith. Faith sees the mountain as already moved, Brothers. It isn’t enough to think what the new world will be like, we have to see ourselves there; all the while we’re thinking what it will be like, we’re still here. But faith has wings. It can carry us wherever we need to go.”

  Then he began to talk, and it was like listening to a great story unraveling, and I knew the story but didn’t remember having heard it before, or not told this way.

  In the beginning, Brother Michaels said, all of life was miraculous. Humans lived forever and never got sick. Every fruit, every animal, every part of the earth, was a perfect reflection of God’s glory, and the relation between the humans was also perfect. But Adam and Eve lost something. They lost faith in God. So they began to die, the cells in their bodies began to deteriorate, and they were expelled from the garden.

  “After that there were only glimpses of how things used to be: a sunset, a hurricane, a bush struck by lightning. And faith became something you prayed for in a room at midnight or on a battlefield or in a whale’s stomach or in a fiery furnace. Faith became a leap, because there was a gap between how things were and how they used to be. It was the space where miracles happened.

  “Everything is possible, at all times and in all places and for all sorts of people. If you think it’s not, it’s only because you can’t see how close you are, how you only need to do a small thing and everything will come to you; miracles don’t have to be big things, and they can happen in the unlikeliest places. Miracles work best with ordinary things. Paul says: ‘Faith is the assured expectation of things long hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld,’ and if we have just a little, other things will follow, Brothers. Sometimes more than we dreamed.”

  The talk was finished, but for a second there was no clapping; then there was a storm of it. I felt I had woken up. But I had been sleeping longer than the talk; I felt I had been sleeping all my life.

  I couldn’t wait for the song and prayer to be over. I thought Brother Michaels would be just the person to talk to about Neil Lewis.

  * * *

  AFTERWARD, I STOOD by Brother Michaels and waited for Uncle Stan to finish talking to him. But when Stan went away, Elsie and May came up. Then Alf. Brother Michaels shook hands with them, he listened, he nodded; he smiled and smiled. None of them wanted to go.

  I was beginning to think I would never talk to him, but at last there was a gap and he turned round to put his papers in his briefcase and saw me.

  “Hello,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Judith,” I said.

  “Are you the one who gave the lovely answer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you were.” Brother Michaels held out his hand. “Good to meet you.”

  I said: “I liked your talk,” but my voice didn’t seem to be working properly. “I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a talk so much.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I was wondering if I could see the mustard seed?”

  Brother Michaels laughed. “You can,” he said. “But I’m not sure it will be the same one.” He took a small jar from his bag and it was full of seeds.

  I said: “I’ve never seen mustard like that before!”

  “This is what it’s like before they grind it up.”

  I said: “I wish I had some.”

  Brother Michaels shook a little pile of seeds into my hand. “Now you do.”

  I stared at the seeds. I was so pleased I almost forgot what I was going to ask him. “Brother Michaels,” I said at last, “I came to talk to you because I have a problem.”

  “I knew it,” he said.

  “You did?”

  He nodded. “What sort of problem?”

  “Someone—I’m afraid that—” I sighed. Then I knew I must tell him exactly how it was. “I think that soon I may be no more.”

  Brother Michaels raised his eyebrows.

  “I mean: not exist.”

  Brother Michaels lowered them. “Are you ill?” he said.

  “No.”

  He frowned. “Has someone told you this or is it just a feeling?”

  I thought about this. “No one has told me,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure.”

  “And have you told anyone?”

  “No. There’s nothing they can do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do,” I said. Grown-ups seemed to think that you could tell a teacher everything. They didn’t see it only made things worse.

  Brother Michaels didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said: “Have you tried praying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes prayers take time to be answered.”

  “I only have until tomorrow.”

  Brother Michaels inhaled. Then he said: “Judith, I think I can safely say nothing is going to happen to you before tomorrow.”

  “How do you know?”

  “What you’re facing is simply fear,” he said. “Not that there’s anything simple about fear; fear is the most insidious enemy of all. But good things come from facing it.”

  I said: “I don’t see how anything good will come from this.”

  “Start looking at things differently, then. When we look at things from another vantage point, it’s amazing how problems we thought were insoluble disappear altogether.”

  My heart beat hard. “That would be nice,” I said.

  Brother Michaels smiled. “I’ve got to go, Judith.”

  “Oh,” I said. I suddenly felt afraid again. “Do you think you’ll be coming back?”

  “I’m sure I will sometime.”

  Then he did a strange thing. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes, and warmth traveled all the way down my arms to my fingers and right across my shoulders and back. “Have faith, Judith,” he said. Then he looked up. Father was calling me.

  “In a minute,” I said, but Father tapped his watch. �
��OK!” I said. I turned back and the row was empty.

  I ran up the aisle. “Where did Brother Michaels go?” I said. Alf shrugged. I ran into the foyer. “Uncle Stan,” I said, “have you seen Brother Michaels?”

  “No,” said Stan. “I was just looking for him myself. Margaret and I wanted to invite him back for lunch.”

  I ran into the car park. Gordon was showing the other boys his new spoiler. “Where did Brother Michaels go?” I said, and I felt my eyes prick.

  It was colder now but there still wasn’t a breath of wind. The mist had lifted, but the sky was thick with cloud.

  A hand on my elbow made me turn. Father handed me my coat and bag. He said: “The roast’ll be burned to a crisp.” Then he said: “What have you got there?”

  I had forgotten.

  “Seeds,” I said. I opened my hand and showed him.

  Why Faith Is Like Imagination

  I KNOW ABOUT faith. The world in my room is made out of it. Out of faith I stitched the clouds. Out of faith I cut the moon and the stars. With faith I glued everything together and set it humming. This is because faith is like imagination. It sees something where there is nothing, it takes a leap, and suddenly you’re flying.

  Circles of paper from a hole punch become saucers for tea parties when you press the end of a pen into them. Glue that has hardened into bubbles becomes a bowl of soapsuds for a pair of aching feet. An acorn cap becomes a bowl, toothpaste caps funnels for ocean liners, twigs knees for an ostrich, an eyelet a small pair of scissors. Matches become logs, drops from the griddle tiny Scottish pancakes, cloves oranges, orange peel a slide, orange tops rows of plants in a garden, the net bag fencing for tennis courts, the bar code a zebra crossing.

  Everything is pointing to something, and if we look hard enough for long enough we can see what those other things are. The real Land of Decoration pointed to the way the world would be again one day, after Armageddon. This is called Prefiguration. Father says Prefiguration is showing on a small scale what will happen on a grand scale, it’s like soaring above things and seeing it all. But we can only see the possibilities with Eyes of Faith. Some of the Israelites stopped seeing with Eyes of Faith and they died in the wilderness. Losing faith is the worst sin of all.

  Once a girl came to my room and said: “What’s all this rubbish?” Because to her that was what it looked like. But faith sees other things peeping through the cracks just itching to be noticed. Every day the cracks in this world get bigger. Every day new ones appear.

  Snow

  THAT AFTERNOON I planted the mustard seeds in a pot on the kitchen windowsill. I asked Father if they would grow, and he said he didn’t know. Then he turned off the electricity to save money and went into the middle room to have Peace and Quiet. Peace and Quiet is another Necessary Thing. I went upstairs and sat on the floor. The clock said 2:33. Less than nineteen hours to go till Neil drowned me.

  I imagined them finding my body on the school bathroom floor, my hair spread out like a mermaid’s, my eyes staring, my lips as blue as if I’d been drinking a blueberry Jubbly. Neil would be looking on too; he’d have raised the alarm; no one would know. I saw the funeral. Elsie and May would be crying. Stan would be praying. Alf would be saying that at least I had been spared the Tribulation. Gordon’s neck would be sunk in his suit collar deeper than usual. I couldn’t imagine what Father would be doing.

  I knew that Brother Michaels said I should have faith that God would help me, that things we thought were impossible were possible with God. But I didn’t see how, short of magicking the school or Neil Lewis away. If I was God, I would bring a hurricane or a plague or a tidal wave that would wipe out the town and the school. I would bring Armageddon, or an asteroid to make a hole in the earth where the school used to be or, if it was a very small asteroid and fell in just the right place, flatten Neil Lewis. But I knew none of those things would happen.

  I began to feel like I did the other evening when the cloud swallowed me up. I went to the window and leaned my head against the glass, and my breath kept clouding it and I kept wiping it away. Outside was a row of houses. Above those was another row and above those another. Above the houses was the mountain. Above the mountain was the sky. The houses were brown. The mountain was black. The sky was white.

  I looked at the sky. It was so white it might not be there at all. It was like paper, like feathers. Like snow. “It could snow,” I said aloud.

  There had been a lot of snow once before and school had closed. I looked at the sky. It could be full of snow this very minute, just waiting to fall. It could snow; it was even quite cold. Brother Michaels had said that if we had a little faith, other things would follow, sometimes more than we dreamed, and I thought I did have a little faith, and perhaps a little was enough.

  I began thinking about snow; I began thinking hard, about the crunchiness of it and the clean smell of it, the way it muffles everything and makes the world new. How the air comes alive when the earth is asleep and things listen and hold their breath. I saw the town laid out under a blanket of snow, the houses asleep and the factory covered and the Meeting Hall and mountain white, reaching into a sky that was white, and from the sky more whiteness falling. And the more I thought, the heavier the sky seemed and the colder the pane beneath my fingers.

  I turned back to the room. I had an idea, though I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t even know where it had come from, except it was as if a giant hand had written “Snow” on a blank piece of paper. I could see the way they had written the “S,” the tail coming back to the “n” so it looked more like an “8.” And the hand was writing other things, and I began hurrying to do as it said before the sheet was wiped clean.

  I went to the trunk in the corner of my room, which used to be Mother’s. Inside were materials and beads and threads she had and all then things I have found. I searched and I took out white cotton. I cut up the cotton and draped it over the fields and hills of the Land of Decoration.

  “Good,” said a voice. “More!”

  Something hot licked my spine. My scalp pricked. “Who’s that?” I said. No one answered.

  My hands were shaking. I felt my heart in my throat. I took sugar and flour and sprinkled them over sponge treetops and paper grass and heather hedges.

  “Faster!” said the voice. And although I didn’t know where the voice was coming from, I knew it was real this time and meant for me, and I didn’t care who or what was speaking.

  I ran to the bathroom. I ran back. I squirted shaving foam along windowsills and eaves and gutters. I let glue dry clear in small drops around eaves and on branches and on bandstands and streetlights.

  “More!” said the voice.

  There was a drum in my brain. The whole room was pulsing. I made a fire in a caramel keg with gold sweet papers on the side of the lake where tall firs stood. I made frankfurters and marshmallows on sticks with pieces of plasticine. I made a polystyrene-ball snowman, a line of white paper geese. I hung them on a string across the moon. I took some down from my leaky duvet and shook it above, and it fell over the towns and seas and hills and lakes.

  I snowed in houses and shops and post offices and schools. I iced roads and blocked bridges and strung white pipe cleaners along telegraph wires. I set cardboard skaters on a tinfoil lake and on the hill a woolly tobogganing party.

  I grazed my hand and didn’t feel it.

  My foot went to sleep.

  I stamped around and sat down again.

  * * *

  WHEN I OPENED my eyes the light was gone and the Land of Decoration was glowing whitely in the darkness, the line of geese tiny arrows in the sky. I was curled on my side, at the edge of the sea. My cheek hurt because it was pressing on the edge of the mirror. I sat up. Then I heard Father calling me. I held my breath. I heard him come to the foot of the stairs.

  My heart was beating so fast it hurt but I didn’t know why. He called again and I shut my eyes tight. At last Father went back into the kitchen and closed the door. He must
have thought I had gone to bed.

  I was shaking. I got up and went to the window. I couldn’t see the mountain now, and the sky was black. Behind me the room was still. I could feel the stillness all around me, like water. I took a deep breath, turned back to the room, and I said: “Snow.” I looked at the sky and I said: “Snow.”

  A car flashed by. It lit me up, then left me in darkness. The sound of that car pulled me after it. I thought it had gone but it came back again. I listened to the sound of that car, then I closed the curtains and got into bed.

  I heard the clock chime nine times in the hall. I heard Mrs. Pew call her cat, Oscar, for his supper. I heard Mr. Neasdon come home from the Labour Club and the dog from number 29 begin to bark. I heard the bell from the factory toll the night shift and Father come upstairs, his steps hollow on the boards of the landing.

  The Stone and the Book

  THAT NIGHT I had a wonderful dream. I dreamed I was walking in the Land of Decoration. I was passing Glacier Mint ice palaces and tinsel fountains and Rolo Giant causeways and calico trees where jeweled fruits clustered and birds with long tail feathers sang. I wished I had time to stop and look at it all, but a voice was calling me. The voice led me to a field.

  The air was warm and smelled of summer. I went walking, leaving a trail in the grass. Sometimes I went this way and sometimes I went that. Sometimes the sun was in my face and sometimes it was at my back. The hedges were filled with tissue cow parsley. Paper birds flew up under my nose. Paisley butterflies fluttered away. There were sweet-paper gnats and down dandelion clocks and glittering hat-pin dragonflies darting then stopping quite still in the air.

  In the middle of the field there was a tree. Beneath the tree was an old man with a beard. His skin was like caramel and his hair was very black. He was dressed in a white robe and held his hands behind his back. He said: “Welcome, child. This is a great day. You have been chosen to receive a gift of inestimable value.” And his voice was like dark chocolate.