Rock Me Gently

by Judith Kelly

  I swung rhythmically back and forth. Of course Miriam hadn’t really asked for me; Teliela obviously felt sorry for me and had pressured her into it. She was possibly dreading this visit as much as I was. So I’d just go in and tell her thanks but no thanks, and that would be the end of it - then I could go back to the business of disappearing.

  Determinedly, I pulled open the screen door and knocked on the inner door. Nothing. I turned the knob, but it didn’t give. I pushed harder, and it opened. The screen door clattered shut behind me as I stepped inside.

  I was in a small living-room with a table strewn with books, a floor lamp, a large, comfortable sofa and a shiny little sideboard with a crumpled lace cover on it. There was a small desk, the top open, stuffed with papers and a general dotting of china ornaments and knick-knacks. A pedestal fan rattled softly, moving the thick air around the room. From inside another room, mysterious shuffling sounds were issuing. I peered in, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light.

  A scene from my local library confronted me. The walls were creaking with shelves bursting with books. In the midst of it, an elderly woman stood, bent over, her back to the doorway. She was intent upon her labour and had not heard me enter.

  ‘Em, hello?’

  She turned around slowly. She was wearing an open-necked summer frock with pale washed-out flowers upon it. Her freckled face was handsome, with deep concentrations of lines around her eyes. Her life had clearly been uphill, painful. A worked and working face. Her reddish hair was parted in the middle, wrapped round her ears and held in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her features expressed energy and goodwill.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘you must be Judith.’

  Her eyes, a compelling blue verging to violet, looked directly at me. A powerful blue spotlight.

  I shrugged. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Bring that chair over here and tell me about yourself while I sort out these books,’ she directed me. She had a German accent. ‘I run the kibbutz library from here and several books have gone missing recently. I need to sort out which ones.’

  ‘They’ve been stolen?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  She moved around the room, lifting books, setting them aside. I should have offered to help, but couldn’t be bothered. I leaned against the table and practised what I was about to say to her: I’m sorry, but there’s been some sort of misunderstanding and ...

  Miriam moved to a small sink, half-hidden in the corner behind a huge pile of books. ‘Would you like some tea? How am I going to sort out which ones are missing? Did you say yes or no?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Or coffee? - I think there’s some. Would you please sit down?’ she said pointing to a tubby mound of worn velvet with leather arms. ‘You’re staying more than five minutes, I hope.’

  ‘I need to get back soon. I have some studying to do.’

  She peered at me with a disturbing blue gaze as if it could pin me to the wall. ‘You don’t look like a Jewish girl.’

  I didn’t reply. People here were always telling me that, and I hated it. It made me feel like an intruder. I yearned to snuggle into the comforting folds of acceptance ... and at the same time, all I wanted was to be left alone.

  Hopeless. I didn’t know what I wanted. I looked away.

  Miriam didn’t seem to notice my discomfort. ‘How are you getting on with the people on your course?’

  I shrugged grouchily. ‘Oh, it’s all right. The Americans always grumble about the minimalist living arrangements and austerity of life in general, but I don’t mind it.’ My voice had become terribly, terribly British again, clipped and formal.

  She slid a book into place on a high shelf, stretching on her tiptoes. ‘I’ve noticed that you’re on your own a great deal. Haven’t you made any friends yet?’

  I bristled under the attack of questions, but somehow didn’t have the courage to tell her to back off. ‘My room-mate, Cydney, is all right. But I’m a bit of a loner, I suppose.’

  Miriam smiled. ‘You look sensible enough to me. Maybe you’re an introvert.’

  I found it difficult to settle, wriggling in my chair and looking steadily at the bookcase in front of me, floor-to-ceiling, jammed with books. It was suddenly impossible to tell her that a mistake had been made, not given the way she was bustling about, so efficient and matter-of-fact. I waited, breathing, thinking nothing but breathing, reminding myself that release was inevitable soon.

  ‘Do you enjoy the kibbutz way of life?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s great. But a bit ...’ I fell silent.

  Her eyes were fixed upon me thoughtfully. They held me still. ‘Don’t like too many people around?’ she suggested.

  ‘Mmm.’ She was a mind-reader. I stared at her blankly. That was indeed one aspect of the kibbutz that I couldn’t get used to. Everyone was so sociable, so bouncing and friendly. If I left the door to my room ajar, everyone going past would look in, yell, ‘Hey, Jude!’ and come in to talk, gossiping about everything and everyone. An endless fund of stories to be told. In order to get any privacy, I had to shut the door and pretend not to be there. I had begun to wonder if I was there myself.

  ‘You like privacy. Something we have in common,’ said Miriam.

  I looked about me, taking in the narrow window to the left of the bookcase. Sunlight streamed in, cutting a bright path across the tiled floor while the rickety fan hummed. I was conscious of my awkwardly outstretched legs, my flushed face, the stuffiness of the room, to which the open window seemed to make no difference, and the fact that I felt small in the low chair.

  ‘People always want me to be something I’m not, and I find myself going along with their false ideas of me,’ I blurted. I felt my cheeks scorch. What made me say that?

  Miriam continued to stack books, unfazed. ‘Why are you here if you don’t feel you belong? You look like a person who daydreams.’

  ‘I’m not a dreamer. I hate dreams,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘Is there anything you care for or want?’ She watched me as though I was a new and curious animal.

  ‘To be null and void,’ I said without hesitation.

  ‘Dead?’

  The sound of the word seemed to draw my eyes to the window, which looked out over the distant hills.

  ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘not that.’ I gave a small shiver.

  An oppressive silence settled over the room. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them. Another endless grilling process, like when I first arrived on the kibbutz. It tightened me up. How I hated this type of conversation. I felt sick with embarrassment and shame and a desire to get away and assess what all this was doing to me.

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘I just meant ... that I find it difficult to connect with people here, to make friendships.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘maybe you should forget about yourself and take more of an interest in others.’

  ‘Yes, you may be right.’ Helpful. She was trying to be friendly, only I was too strange, too alien.

  More silence. Staring at the teetering bookcases, I tried to make out the titles of the books she was stacking. They were too far away. I fixed my eyes on the burnt spot on her lampshade instead.

  ‘What kind of music do you like?’ she said. ‘I have a good many records here.’

  Oh, leave me alone, why can’t you?

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Folk rock. Joni Mitchell. Whatever’s around, I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t like classical?’

  ‘I’m not too familiar with it.’

  ‘Do you like Mozart? Haydn?’

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. I tightened my grip on the arms of the chair. The leather was sticky and wet under my hands. I licked my lips nervously.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Going so soon?’ Again I found myself enveloped in her piercing gaze. I could not meet it directly and focused my eyes to the left of her face. I put my head in my hands and rubbed them over my face, over and over ag
ain, to feel something beyond that terrible trapped feeling.

  ‘What a fantastic view you have,’ I said, sensing that I should make some sort of effort before I went.

  ‘Fantastic?’ Miriam enunciated the word with a tone of distaste. ‘You can’t live on a view,’ she said, ‘however “fantastic” it may be.’

  Even when I made the effort I couldn’t say the right thing. I stared at her hopelessly, feeling tongue-tied.

  ‘Look, I don’t mean to be rude,’ I said flatly. ‘I just don’t like being bombarded with questions.’

  Miriam shook her head. ‘Then what are you doing here?’

  ‘What I’m doing here,’ I said, ‘is that I was told to come. It wasn’t my idea.’

  She nodded. ‘I see. Orders, eh? So suppose you didn’t have to come. What would you be here for?’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  I unwound my legs and stood up. A couple of sparrows sat squabbling and pecking restlessly at the window and then flew off. I fumbled for an excuse to leave. ‘I’m afraid I have to go to the dining hall now,’ I said to her. ‘I have to make an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m going there too. Let me walk with you,’ she offered.

  ‘It’s all right. Really. Thank you anyway. I must be off now.’

  She nodded slowly, watching me. ‘Well ... come here whenever you wish. Spend as much time as you like reading, playing my records or helping with the library. The door is always unlocked, even if I’m not here.’

  I thanked her and left. What I did share with her but didn’t want to acknowledge was a sense of waiting in loneliness, though for what I couldn’t say - perhaps to learn who I was?

  Relieved to escape, I decided I would never go back. In a moment I was out of her house, careless now and tossing my hair. I walked along briskly, smiling to myself, but I didn’t know why. I began to run and when I reached the path leading to the centre of the kibbutz, I stopped. I felt an uncomfortable sensation, which amid all the wild emotions that were rushing about inside me, I could only recognise as the feeling of being observed. I turned around, but realised people on the kibbutz were strolling by, intent upon their business. No one even glanced my way. Some rode on clumsy old bikes, wearing cloth hats and pedalling slowly. The dusty path I followed wound through the settlement. Beside the plain houses stood potted poinsettias. The air was sweet, and the sun, like mild alcohol, made me yearn for good things. Suddenly this temperate Mediterranean evening, the orchards and the workers steering their bikes fluttered like tissue paper. What was there to keep them from all blowing away?

  Chapter 8

  26 December

  I went to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I got up at six o’clock the next morning. Sister Mary woke us banging on a chamberpot. She thought it was funny. I didn’t. After Mass I got my sock from the playroom. It was hung on a string. I got an apple and orange and two old comics. Nana gave me a pillowcase full of toys when I lived with her and Pop.

  30 December

  I had to go and see Sister A. She said I should have to write my letter to Mum again because I said: I hope you had a happy Christmas, more than I did.

  23 January I952

  Frieda fainted in Mass today. It’s not fair that we have to go to church so early.

  6 February

  I was scrubbing the floor when a nun made me pick up a pile of tea leaves covered with ants from a drain. It was horrible. She said I was lazy. She just stood and watched me do it. I prayed, Lord, I take this for my sins.

  Frances loved my stories of London life with my grandparents. Before she had met me, she had pictured London as some underground city with dark, foggy streets, pickpockets and thieves fleeing across the rooftops with sacks of swag. Now she couldn’t get enough of its glories as seen through my eyes.

  I told her of the excitement of shops like Selfridges, and about the Christmas pantomimes I had seen at the London Palladium, cocooned within its cosy plush and gilt, watching the faces of actors and actresses I had seen previously only on the cinema screen. I told her about restaurants such as Lyons’ Corner House with its sea of tables covered with crisp white tablecloths. I told her of the orchestra playing amid the glittering chandeliers and cool palm trees, of white-capped waitresses silently serving Knickerbocker Glories in tall glasses.

  She listened agog, her dark eyes wide. ‘Have you ever been to the zoo?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t like it.’ We were standing in the playground, watching Ruth and the others play hopscotch with a piece of broken glass.

  Frances stared at me as though I were a gibbering idiot. ‘You didn’t like it? Why not?’

  I shrugged. ‘The horrible stink.’

  But it wasn’t just the stink. I remembered the expression in one monkey’s eyes as they quietly, wearily, turned in their sockets to follow the visitors’ movements. The little sad creature with its paws clinging to the wire meshing filled me with an irrational horror. I’d liked Pets’ Corner - the rabbits - the shop; I’d loads of money then, I could buy loads of sweets - but all I could remember was the smell of the zoo and that monkey’s eyes.

  I tried to explain to Frances what I meant, but I couldn’t.

  Sister Mary covered the blackboard with chalk strokes, making great sweeping arm motions like the conductor of an orchestra. On either side of her nose the skin hung down, like the jowls of a bulldog. She wrote up a simple sentence with such cold rage that I felt my heart-rate jump. I looked around and saw the heads of my classmates bent as they scraped feverishly in their notebooks. Ruth, tongue writhing, was stabbing away furiously with her pen, trying to keep up. A raging concerto was in progress: we, the orchestra, playing our half-witted instruments. I sat there like someone who had somehow stumbled into the pit during a recital and been waved into a chair. I should imitate the other girls and pretend to play, I decided. I thought about becoming invisible. Slowly I opened my exercise book and with my mouth puckered, I began to write.

  My pen scratched half-heartedly across the paper and came to a stop.

  ‘What’s happened to your work, Kelly?’ said Sister Mary looking over my shoulder. She was more snappish than usual. At that moment, a blob of ink ran from my pen nib creating a pretty blue puddle on the page. ‘There’s no excuse for this scrappy scribble. You must make more of an effort.’ I felt the creep of eyes on my back. The breath across my neck. I could hear the creak of her heavily starched wimple. I began chewing my nails from fear, then quickly slid my hand under my desk away from Sister Mary’s disapproving scrutiny. Nailbiting was a misdemeanour that could earn me a black mark.

  If only I had a magic carpet that could fly backwards in time. I could go back to Mum, stop her from ever leaving Nana and Pop. Make things the way they used to be.

  I’d now been at the convent for over nine months, and had not received a single word from her. I bit my tongue and blinked. It was my birthday, and I mustn’t cry. I gulped in disappointment, and quickly started to write again, though the words blurred on the page.

  Frances’s desk was almost touching mine. She lowered her head, watching Sister Mary carefully. When she was sure the nun was looking the other way, she put her hand in front of her mouth and whispered, ‘Judith ... have you received anything from your mother for your birthday?’

  I felt on edge, like fingernails on a blackboard, but managed to shake my head. Tears filled my eyes. I tried to blink them back but they would not stop, and I hurriedly wiped them away as they spilled down my cheeks. Frances sat there helpless, watching. But just before she shot her hand in the air, she gave me a wink and did something with her finger against the side of her nose that might or might not have been scratching it.

  Sister Mary frowned slightly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please, Sister, I need to go to the what’s-it.’

  ‘You can go when class is finished,’ Sister Mary said, lowering her eyes.

  ‘But Sister ... please, Sister, I need to go big really big.’ ... Frances said with a martyred sigh.
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br />   Sister Mary looked up and in her eyes I saw affection turn to disgust and disgust to anger. ‘Whose fault was that?’

  Several furtive heads turned to look at Frances along the row of desks. Frances was the only one who would dare to make such a request of Sister Mary. The rule was that no one ever left the classroom. Only my pen scratched on uninterrupted, my hot cheek resting on my fist, my brow furrowed with false concentration, a model picture of effort. I didn’t dare look up. I had learnt that it was best to keep perfectly still and anger no one. I put on my best behaviour, tiptoeing about in a world of eggshells, praying that things wouldn’t crack.

  Sister Mary’s palm slapped her desk. The class jumped. ‘All right! If you must, but you know perfectly well that it goes against the class rules. Go! But try and be quick.’

  When the door closed, faintly rattling the glass window in its insecure frame, the chalk resumed its attack on the blackboard. Every now and then Sister Mary cast a sideways look over us, like a blinkered horse, in a manner both suspicious and severe, as if she were thinking that all children were insects that would turn and bite her if she didn’t get them first and squash them hard.

  No one took any real notice when twenty minutes later a nun called Sister Columba entered the classroom, her habit whisking impatiently against the door. Opinion amongst the children was unanimous that poker-backed Sister Columba was the meanest nun that ever lived, but I had yet to experience anyone as bad as Sister Mary. The class clattered their pens thankfully into the grooves of their desks and stood up. Sister Columba strode briskly across the room, and I would certainly not have stared at her but for the expression on her sallow face, and the way it affected Sister Mary.

  Sister Mary put on a soft-soaping smile and then, in a voice of obvious alarm, said, ‘What is it?’

  Sister Columba leaned close to her and whispered something in her ear. Sister Mary’s fawning measly quarter-smile froze and I would not have thought that her fist-like face could have turned any redder, but it did. There was a sharp hiss as Sister Mary drew an outraged breath. She stamped her booted foot, bruising the wooden floor.