I stood up. I tried to speak calmly. “I know it’s hard to believe,” I said. “But it wasn’t just once—”
He held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“Why?”
Father stopped washing the dishes. “Because! Because it’s dangerous, that’s why!”
“Dangerous to who?”
“Dangerous to whom.”
“Dangerous to whom?”
“It’s dangerous to think you have that sort of power. It’s … presumptuous—it’s blasphemous.” He stared at me. “Just who do you think you are? It was a coincidence, Judith.”
I heard what he said, but my head was getting too hot to think about what the words meant. I looked down and said quietly: “You’re wrong.”
“I beg your pardon?”
I looked at him. “It wasn’t a coincidence.”
Father reached up and banged the cupboard door hard. Then he leaned on the sink and said: “You spend far too much time in that room!”
“I have a gift!” I said. “I made a miracle happen!”
Then Father came up to me and said: “I want you to drop this right now, d’you understand? You do not have a gift. You can not make miracles happen. Is that clear?”
I could hear our breath and the drip of the tap. There was a pain in my chest.
Father said: “Is that clear?” For a minute the pain in my chest was too great to breathe.
And then it was as if a switch had been turned off and I didn’t feel hot anymore. The pain went away and I was cool and separate from things.
“Yes,” I said. I went to the door.
“Where are you off to?”
“To my room.”
“Oh no, you’re not; the less time you spend in that room the better. You can dry the dishes, and after that there’s some other things you can do.”
* * *
SO I DRIED and then sorted out Bible magazines. I put the oldest ones on the top of the pile and the latest at the bottom. I brought in four bucketfuls of sticks and two of coal and stacked them by the Rayburn.
Father said how well I had stacked the sticks, but that was just because he felt guilty he had shouted, like he always does. I didn’t say anything back, because I wasn’t going to let him off that easily.
I waited till nine o’clock, then I said good night and went upstairs and got out my journal and wrote all of this down, everything that had happened since Sunday. Because it was too important not to, and if I couldn’t talk about it I would have to write it somewhere instead.
A Secret
I HAVE A secret. The secret is this: Father doesn’t love me.
I don’t know when I first guessed, but I have been sure for a while now. He’ll say: “That’s a good answer,” or “I liked the way you used that scripture,” or he’ll come to my room and stand in the doorway and say: “Everything all right?” But he sounds as though he is reading the words from a sheet, and afterward he tells me how I could have done the presentation better, and though I tell him he can come into my room he doesn’t.
These are the reasons I know Father doesn’t love me.
1) He doesn’t like looking at me.
2) He doesn’t like touching me.
3) He doesn’t like talking to me.
4) He is often angry with me.
5) He is sad because of me.
1) Father doesn’t look at me if he can help it, and when he does his eyes are black. They are actually green, but they look black because he is angry. There is a verse in the Bible where it says God’s spirit is sharper than a two-edged sword and divides even the soul from the spirit, and joints from their marrow, and knows thoughts and secrets of the heart. That’s how it feels when Father looks at me. It looks like he doesn’t like what he sees there.
2) Father doesn’t touch me. We don’t kiss good night or hug or hold hands, and if we are sitting too close he will suddenly notice and clear his throat or move away or get up. Sometimes when we are together, something in the air changes and it is as if we are the only people in the universe, but instead of there being lots of space, as there would be if we really were, we are locked in a very small room and there is nothing to talk about.
3) Father doesn’t like talking to me. This may be because I ask a lot of questions, such as: “What will it be like in the new world?” and “Does God know everything that will happen in the future?” To which Father said: “God can decide what to know and what not to know.” To which I said: “Then He must know what’s going to happen in order not to want to know about it,” and Father said: “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
So I said: “Does God let bad things happen because He can’t see them or because He doesn’t want to stop them?”
“God lets bad things happen in order to prove that humans can’t rule themselves. If God stopped everything bad happening, then people wouldn’t be free. They would be little puppets.”
I said: “I suppose so. But if everything we do is already written out somewhere, are we free to do what we want or do we just think we are?”
Father said: “We can’t understand God, Judith. His ways are unsearchable.”
“Then why ponder them?” I said.
Father raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes.
I said: “Perhaps you can ponder too much.”
And Father said he thought you probably could.
But most of the time I don’t say much to Father and he doesn’t say much to me, and this is the biggest problem we have, because all the time we are not saying things, the air is filled with the things we could. I am always trying to hook one of these things down, but they are usually out of reach.
4) Father is often angry with me. This is because there is a list of things he approves of, which must be done a certain way, such as:
a) speaking (not mumbling)
b) sitting (not slouching)
c) walking (not running)
d) thinking (not daydreaming)
e) saving (not spending)
and an even longer list that must not be done at all, such as:
a) crying
b) playing with food
c) leaving food
d) running around (including hopscotch in the hall, which breaks another rule too; see f)
e) scuffing shoes
f) noise in general
g) leaving doors open
h) not paying attention
And sooner or later I am bound to do one and forget to do the other.
Sometimes, though, I don’t know why Father is angry with me. Once I asked him what I had done wrong.
He said: “You?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You always seem cross.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not cross.”
“Oh.”
“You’d know if I was cross!”
“That’s all right, then.”
He said: “Cross indeed!” And he was angrier than he had been to start with.
5) But worse, much worse than Father being cross, much worse than Father not talking to me or not wanting to look at me or not wanting to touch me, is when he is sad.
Sometimes when I was younger, I used to come downstairs at night to get a drink and the light would be on under the kitchen door. I would see Father through the glass panel, sitting at the table, not doing anything, just sitting there. I stood by the door waiting for him to move, and if he did it was like stepping into warm water. If he didn’t I would go back to bed with a pain in my chest and promise to be better and wait for the light to come.
That was when I thought I could make Father love me, but I don’t anymore. Because the reason he doesn’t happened a long time ago and I can’t do anything about it now, even though without me it wouldn’t have happened at all.
A Voice in the Dark
WHEN I HAD finished writing in my journal, I put it under the loose floorboard beneath my be
d. I would have to hide it for now. Until Father came to his senses and saw what was staring him in the face.
I suddenly wondered what Brother Michaels would say if he knew what had happened, and I wished I could tell him how right he had been, that I could make things happen just like he said.
I got into bed. My head still felt hot and I was feeling even stronger than before. I could see myself in bed as if I wasn’t in my body. I’d fainted once and it felt similar. I was thinking about Father and the argument, thinking how surprised he would be when he finally did realize I could perform miracles, but it was as if it had all happened to someone else now, as if the little body lying in the bed and the house and our street and the town and the whole universe was pouring into my head and my head was big enough for it all, but it went on getting hotter and hotter, and it was all so strange I just lay back and let it happen. Then I heard something.
“So, you can make it snow,” said a voice. “What else can you do, I wonder?” Something shot up my spine and into my hair, and it felt like something inside me had melted.
“Hello?” I said, but no one answered. I waited.
Then someone sighed. I was sure of it.
I sat up in bed. I was breathing very hard. I pulled the blankets around me and took a deep breath. “Who’s there?” I whispered.
Everything was silent again. Then the voice said: “I said: ‘What else can you do?’”
I gasped. “Who are you?” I said.
“Now, there’s a question.”
I opened my mouth. I shut it again. “Where did you come from?”
“There’s another.”
I said: “I want to know—”
“You already do,” said the voice. It sounded quite close.
I shook my head. “Where are you?” I said.
“I’m all around,” the voice said. “Inside things and outside them too. I was, and am, and will be.”
Then my heart beat once, very hard, and I said: “You’re God, aren’t You?”
“Shh,” said the voice.
I swallowed. “Can You see me?”
“Of course,” said God. “I’ve been watching you for some time. You could be very useful to Me.”
I sat up. “What do You mean?”
“Well,” said God, “you’ve got a great imagination. I need someone like you to be My Instrument.”
“Your Instrument?” I said.
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“Miracles, that sort of thing.”
I put my hands over my face and then I took them away. I said: “I knew I was meant to do something important!”
“Shh!” said God. “Not so loud. We don’t want to wake your father.” He paused. “But there’s one condition: You have to have complete faith; you have to be prepared to do whatever I ask, no doubting, no grumbling, no asking why.”
“OK,” I said. “I won’t.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes!”
“All right,” said God. “We’ll talk later. Right now I have to get on with some other things.”
“What other things?”
“Well, this is a busy time in heaven right now. Four horsemen are straining at the bit, there’re some winds that are very restless, and there are a lot of locusts that are getting under everyone’s feet. Oh, and some seals that have to be opened. In the meantime, no blabbing, all right?”
“Can I carry on using my powers?”
“Yes,” said God. “I’ll let you get used to them for a bit.”
“Do you think I could make things happen to people and animals as well?”
God said: “Judith, it’s all a matter of faith.”
“The mustard seed!”
“Precisely.”
“I won’t say any more to Father.”
“Very wise.”
“But he’ll believe me in the end?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’ll do more and more things and he’ll have to see. He will have to see I am doing something special.”
“No doubt about it,” said God.
Then God went wherever it is that He goes and I lay down and thought two things. The first was that I had been silly to expect Father to understand about the miracles but I didn’t have to worry because it would all come right in the end.
The second thought was strange. It was that this had been waiting to happen to me, and thinking that made me happier than anything I had thought before in my whole life. The miracles had been waiting all this time, and so had I. And now the waiting was over, and things could begin.
The Long-Distance Call
FATHER SAYS THAT God is the voice in every Christian’s head helping him to do the right thing. He says that the Devil tells the Christian to do the exact opposite. This means we must be careful which of them we listen to. Up until yesterday, I hadn’t heard God’s voice but I had been talking to Him. I think I must have been saving up things to say, because for a long time I didn’t talk at all.
* * *
WHEN I WAS small, Father took me to see a doctor because I didn’t do anything but stare straight in front of me. There is a photograph of me taken by Father at that time. It’s a warm day and I am sitting beneath the cherry tree he planted for Mother in the front garden. The grass is littered with blossoms. I am wearing a blue T-shirt and shorts that come down to my knees. There is a scab on the right one. My legs stick straight out in front of me. My hands are in my lap.
I can’t imagine Father thinking it was a good idea to take me to the doctor, because he never goes to them himself, but he did. I remember that the doctor’s room smelled funny. I remember there was a chair with a leather seat and in the corner a box of plastic blocks and a big red bus. I played with the bus and Father talked to the doctor.
The doctor did tests and made a plan and came to a conclusion. The conclusion was that we were both missing Mother, and the plan was that Father should read to me. So he did, and I learned all about the Nephilim, and the Ark of the Covenant, and why circumcision must be performed on the eighth day, how to clean an infected house of leprosy, what not to say to a Pharisee, and how to remove the sting of a gadfly. And as I began to read I began talking, and in a while I was talking as much as anyone—though perhaps not about the same things.
There weren’t many people to talk to except Father, so I began talking to God. I always supposed it was just a matter of time before He answered me. I used to think of it as a long-distance telephone call. The line was bad, there were birds sitting on it, there was heavy weather, so I couldn’t make out what the other person was saying, but I never doubted I would hear them eventually. Then one day the birds flew off, the rain cleared up, and I did.
The Third and Fourth Miracles
I DECIDED TO use my power to help people, and first on my list was Mrs. Pew. I had been thinking about her since I saw her crying. I didn’t think she could be the type of person to kidnap children if she was so upset about Oscar; it was quite disappointing to think that Kenny Evans probably did go to live with his father after all.
Oscar is a large ginger cat who sits in Mrs. Pew’s front-room window between a bowl of hyacinths and a yellow china dog. I didn’t know why he had decided to disappear. Perhaps he was tired of the dog, who didn’t do anything but grin in an empty way, or perhaps he was tired of the view. Anyway, all that mattered was that I bring him back. So on Thursday when the snow came down in flurries, I made a cat with marmalade wool. Father called: “What are you doing?” and I called back: “Reading!” The lie was justified: I was now God’s Instrument and had work to do.
I gave the cat a blue collar and one white paw and took a chip out of his ear, just like Oscar, though I couldn’t remember which ear and hoped it didn’t matter. I made an old woman in a black dress and gave her a high lace collar and little black boots and pushed very small beads in the sides of the clay for buttons. I gave the lady black curly hair, glued pieces of cut-up staple in her hair for clips, painted her
face white and her lips red. I made a trail of cat prints leading through the snow to the old lady and put the cat on her lap and made sure he was curled up and didn’t look like he was going to get up again. I sewed his eyes closed and tucked his paws in. Then I said: “Come home Oscar.”
When I had finished, I wondered what might actually happen if the miracle worked. Would Oscar’s whiskers be singed after being flown back from wherever he was at the speed of light, or would his fur stand on end after being brought back to life with a bolt of lightning? Anyway I went round to Mrs. Pew’s and knocked on the door. I saw her wobbling head and smelled the secondhand-shop smell and felt a bit queasy, but I stayed where I was and when she opened the door I said: “Don’t worry about Oscar, Mrs. Pew. I have a feeling he’ll be home very soon.”
She turned up her hearing aid and I said it all over again, and then she said: “Oh, I do hope so. I do hope so!”
I said: “Have faith, Mrs. Pew.”
Then she said: “Pardon?”
And I said: “HAVE FAITH!”
Her hand fluttered at the base of her throat and she said: “Oh. I certainly will.”
She watched me go down the garden path. When I was at the gate she said suddenly: “You’re Judith, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
She said: “Thank you, Judith. It was nice of you to come by.”
I said: “You’re welcome, Mrs. Pew.”
When I got back, I wrote up the miracle in my journal, then turned over three pages and wrote: Has Oscar come home yet? and then I wrote the same on the next.
* * *
I WAITED FOR Oscar all that day and the next day too but it just went on snowing. In the meantime I decided that even though I didn’t want to go back to school, because of Neil Lewis, the snow would have to go. Father kept talking about how much work he was missing and accidents were happening on roads and old people like Joe were getting sick. Father said Joe had gone into the hospital and Watson was being looked after by a neighbor. So that afternoon I undraped the gauze and peeled back the cotton wool and blew away the flour and broke the icicles off the houses. I rolled up the cotton and dismantled the blizzard and packed up the snowmen and wiped away the shaving foam and put the blue back in the sky and turned on the sun.
The Land of Decoration Page 6