Replacement Girl

by Ann Beaglehole

  Only the diary knows how I feel when Zsuzsi, asked to leave her old school for smoking in the toilets and because she was caught with a man in the bushes, arrives at my school for the standard six year.

  7 February

  It’s so unfair that I’m made to wear thick skirts and jumpers even on boiling hot days because my mother does not trust what she calls the uncivilised weather. Again Zsuzsi came to school dressed in a light summer dress and cardigan. Again she beat everyone at knucklebones and has been chosen to be goal attack for basketball. I am emergency.

  8 February

  I can’t stand the way she tries to impress Mr Donald by volunteering to stay behind after school to do jobs like cutting up paper and tidying bookshelves.

  9 February

  I can’t stand the Kiwi accent she puts on. It’s not fair that because she’s useless at schoolwork she doesn’t get called bookworm as I do.

  On sunny days, up pops Zsuzsi’s hand in class. ‘Please, Mr Donald, I can’t go swimming today or tomorrow.’

  ‘Why not, Zsuzsi?’

  ‘Please, sir, I’ve got my period.’

  On a cold grey day, the same thing.’ Please Mr Donald, I can’t do PE today. Can I go and lie down in the sick bay?’

  ‘Are you unwell, Zsuzsi?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Donald. It’s my period.’

  Mary puts her hand up. ‘Please, Mr Donald, can I go with Zsuzsi to the sick bay to look after her?’

  ‘Yes, Mary. But don’t be too long.’

  Later, when I see them leave the sick bay arm in arm, laughing over something in Mary’s diary, I write in mine:

  She’s too stingy to spend her pocket money on sweets from the dairy for the other girls but they want to be her friend anyway. I can’t stand the way she uses her period to win them over and gets away with it because neither Mary nor I have our periods yet.

  I want Zsuzsi to leave my school. I hate having her here. I wish she would go away back to the school she came from.

  ‘What are you doing Eva?’ asks the minister, handing me a picture of Joseph and Mary in the stable to colour in for homework.

  ‘Writing in my diary. About Easter.’

  ‘I would have thought that you, my child,’ he says, ‘had more reason than anyone else to work hard in this class.’ He holds out his hand for my diary and puts it on Mr Donald’s desk by the blackboard.

  Red in the face, I go outside with the others for playtime. No one is allowed inside again until the bell rings. Zsuzsi, as blackboard monitor, is the first to go into the classroom to clean the board and do some other jobs. Watching her through the window, I see her pick up my diary from the desk.

  At lunchtime, in the playground, she finds me. She is holding it out to me, her face showing signs of recent tears.

  ‘Eva, Eva, why did you write those things about me? I thought we were friends. Please be my friend again. Please, Eva.’

  I woke up very early this morning and felt sticky wetness in my bed. When I turned on the light, I saw what it was. At last. As soon as it was light, my mother found some pads and I phoned Mary and Zsuzsi to tell them the news.

  ‘Look, there he is, that’s him, that’s Michael Cohen.’ Zsuzsi points to a thin boy standing at the lectern, chanting.

  It is crowded in the synagogue as is usual for the second day of Chanukah. Zsuzsi, who has a crush on Michael Cohen, hopes that if he sees her often enough in shul, he will eventually ask her out on a date. Not on the first date, but around the third or fourth, she will make mad, passionate love to Michael and will let him touch her above the waist and maybe even below. I’m at shul just to keep Zsuzsi company – not being in the least interested in dating boring Jewish boys. My mother is pleased that Zsuzsi and I are happily occupied and that ‘thank goodness’ Zsuzsi is being a good influence on me for a change.

  From the gallery, where we sit with the other women and girls, Zsuzsi’s eyes are glued on Michael, who is still reading from a scroll open on the lectern. His voice is clear and pleasant.

  ‘Aren’t his ears cute,’ she says in a loud whisper. ‘And I adore the way his curly black hair comes down the back of his neck.’

  ‘Yes, nice,’ I whisper back, but my eyes are fixed on the ugly pimples scattered on his face.

  ‘Sh, sh.’ The woman in the row in front turns and glares at us.

  The woman behind taps me on the shoulder and passes me a prayer book. One half of the writing is in English, the other in Hebrew. I can’t read the Hebrew but glance at one of the English sections. It seems very boring.

  ‘Give it to me,’ says Zsuzsi. ‘I want to look devout when Michael glances this way.’

  I gaze around at the people in the gallery – women and children in their best clothes, their heads covered by hats or scarves. Downstairs sit the men. They wear fringed shawls over dark suits, yarmulkas or bowler hats on their heads.

  Abruptly everyone stands. The red velvet curtains along the front wall downstairs are parted. Another scroll is taken out of the cupboard in the wall and paraded around the aisles of the downstairs area. Several of the men put the fringes of their shawls on to the scroll as it passes by their row. Other men chant and sway. I close my eyes and pray too, though I doubt that God exists. I pray for my father, my mother, my grandmother and for those of my friends who seem to need praying for, Zsuzsi particularly. At the last minute, I remember to pray for the State of Israel to triumph over its enemies, as Rabbi Rosenblum has urged us to do.

  When the velvet curtains are drawn, we sit again.

  ‘Look, look,’ says Zsuzsi. ‘There’s Michael.’

  He is sitting down next to Tomi, who is beside his father in the middle of the centre aisle. Tomi looks up and sees us staring at Michael and thinks we are talking about him. He gives us inquiring glances. Michael sways and bends as he reads from his prayer book.

  ‘Look at me, Michael, look up here Michael,’ Zsuzsi pleads.

  ‘Sh, sh,’ again from the woman behind us.

  Not once does Michael look up at the women’s gallery.

  Everyone stands again, in silence. Many of them chant and sway, eyes shut. They are reciting the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead.

  Afterwards on the footpath outside the synagogue, throngs of people are wishing each other ‘good yontev’.

  ‘Hello, Michael,’ Zsuzsi says.

  ‘Good yontev.’ He shakes her hand, then mine, and moves quickly on to the next person.

  ‘Do you think he recognised me?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Praying gives me a headache,’ says Zsuzsi after a few more weeks of fruitless synagogue attendance. ‘Let’s tell our parents we are off to shul but go somewhere else instead.’

  ‘Yes, but where?’

  As the weather is bad for the beach and there are no good pictures on so early in the day, we decide on the museum, a grim, grey-brown building on the outside but light and spacious inside. Mid-morning we have the place almost to ourselves. When we are bored with meandering round the stuffed bears and tigers, Zsuzsi addresses the moa in a loud voice, pretending he is Michael Cohen whom she is asking to go out on a date. Collapsing in giggles, we sit down for a rest on the floor of the Maori meeting house.

  ‘I will simply ring him up and ask him to come with me to the school dance,’ says Zsuzsi.

  ‘This is no place to chat, girls,’ says a deep voice behind us. It’s the custodian.

  ‘We’re just admiring the carvings,’ says Zsuzsi.

  ‘My name is Harry,’ he says. ‘Would you two girls like a tour of the museum?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Zsuzsi says.

  ‘Come and look at the giant weta a member of the public has just brought in for classification.’

  When we have seen enough of the weta and he has also shown us a huhu bug, a giant stick insect and several types of moths and butterflies, he says, ‘Now, are you ready for something special?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ says Zsuzsi.

  ‘Come this way.’


  Harry ushers us down a dimly lit and musty smelling corridor to the storeroom and unlocks the door. I’m reluctant to go into the room, which stinks of chemicals, but Zsuzsi is already by the shelves laden with stuffed birds and dead insects in bottles. Harry shuts the door behind us, locking it from the inside. After we have looked for several minutes at the specimens, Harry sits down on the only chair in the room.

  ‘Come,’ he says to Zsuzsi, patting his lap. ‘You too,’ he says, looking at me.

  When we are seated, each on one of Harry’s legs, he kisses first Zsuzsi, then me, on the lips. He sticks his tongue inside my mouth. As I wipe my face with the back of my hand, his hand moves inside my jumper.

  ‘Your friend has a bit more to hold on to,’ he says, fondling Zsuzsi’s breasts inside her shirt with his other hand.

  ‘This is nice,’ he says after he has been fingering Zsuzsi’s breasts for a while, ‘very nice.’ His hands, now on his knees, are trembling. He tilts my head towards him and kisses me again, once more putting his tongue right inside my mouth.

  When I stand up on shaky legs, I see that there is a bulge inside his trousers between his legs that is moving and getting bigger.

  Harry stands too. Making jovial sounds, he pinches my bottom and squeezes Zsuzsi’s breasts.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone, will you’, he says, winking. ‘Be good girls. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ More winks. ‘See you next time,’ he says, unlocking the door.

  ‘I don’t want to come here again,’ I say to Zsuzsi who is giggling outside the building.

  ‘I do,’ says Zsuzsi. ‘I want to see what happens next time.’

  The bulge inside Harry’s trousers is warm and hard. He guides my hand as I stroke it up and down, up and down, and round and round in a circle. Then it’s Zsuzsi’s turn. We are in a picnic place Harry knows. It is surrounded by bush and is in the town belt, not far from the museum.

  Harry spreads a blanket on the ground and opens a bottle of lemonade. There are no cups. We take it in turns to drink from the bottle. Harry passes round a paper bag. Inside are pink lamingtons from the Sunshine Milkbar. I shake my head, but Zsuzsi says, ‘Yes please,’ and takes one. Harry does too.

  We’re sitting on the rug drinking and eating when I see that Harry’s fly is unzipped. His thing is sticking right out. I’ve never seen a man’s thing properly before. Harry takes hold of Zsuzsi’s hand and places it on his thing.

  ‘Wait till I’ve finished eating,’ says Zsuzsi, pulling her hand away. As he waits, first a crumb of the lamington, then a fly, lands on it – on his thing. He doesn’t seem to notice but looks pleased with himself. Zsuzsi looks at me, making chortling sounds, quickly muffled.

  ‘There’s a fly on your penis,’ says Zsuzsi in the same voice that she would have used to say ‘there is sugar in your tea’. Her saying the word aloud makes us both giggle. Soon we are laughing so much we cannot stop. Harry looks first taken aback, then cross. The more annoyed he looks, the more we laugh.

  ‘Come on, we’re off,’ Zsuzsi says, getting to her feet. She grabs my hand and we run and run, until we collapse breathless against a wall out on the street, some distance away from the museum.

  ‘His thing was so huge.’

  ‘Penis, penis, penis,’ sings Zsuzsi. ‘Say it.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see the foreskin?’ she says.

  ‘Disgusting.’

  ‘Revolting.’

  ‘Gross.’

  ‘What shall we do next week?’

  ‘Synagogue?’ says Zsuzsi.

  ‘Jewish boys are boring.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ says Zsuzsi.

  Even before Mrs Webb comes over with a plate of scones for us to have now and a pie for later on, I’m watching the Webb children with their bikes, balls and hoops out in their yard. The yard is opposite our house, on the other side of a tree-lined lane. Our new house is in Kilbirnie, a better suburb than Newtown, my mother says. From my bedroom window I have a good view of the children. I count four – an older boy, a girl my age and two younger girls.

  ‘Hullo to you from Stan and I,’ Mrs Webb says. ‘Welcome to the neighbourhood. I’m Sally. William and Josephine are my two older ones. Are you in the third form, Eva? Josephine is too. What a lot of books! How do you get time to read them all? That needs a good going over, doesn’t it?’ She points at the garden.

  ‘Not bad. What are they called? Scones?’ my father says when Mrs Webb leaves. Some have dates in them; others are crisp with cheese. Very quickly we eat them all.

  ‘Unfortunately, it smells like mutton.’ My mother is sniffing at the pie. ‘What am I going to do with it?’

  The next morning Stan Webb appears with a spade and several bottles of beer. He digs over the garden and advises my father to plant some vegetables. Then he suggests it is high time they relaxed with a few drinks. My father, who has watched with amazement the speed with which Stan has completed the digging, manages to coax down half a glass, while Stan gets through the rest.

  ‘So how do you like this great little country?’ Mr Webb shouts at my father as they sit on the porch.

  ‘It is a good country with friendly people. We are very grateful for the chance to make a fresh start,’ comes my father’s rehearsed reply. Mr Webb looks pleased.

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow with some seeds for the garden.’

  ‘How kind, how very kind he is,’ says my mother, stacking the empty bottles.

  A few days later, she decides it is time to show our appreciation. She makes puréed garlic spinach and asks me to take it over to Sally Webb.

  ‘Tell her it is good, healthy food for the children.’

  ‘Would you like to look at my film-star album, Eva?’ Josephine says when I arrive.

  ‘Gidday, Eva,’ smiles William. He is tall, blonde, blue-eyed, with suntanned face and arms.

  I skip home along the lane, thinking of Josephine and William. William looks like Ashley Wilkes in the book I’m reading, Gone with the Wind – a healthy kind of Ashley.

  A few weeks later, gales blow our wonky fence down. Stan Webb pops over the next weekend morning and asks if we need help.

  ‘No, thank you,’ my father says, putting down the catalogue he was looking at showing men doing manly things with garden tools and power drills and cars. He only needs to borrow a few tools.

  ‘Be careful,’ my mother calls out each time my father raises the hammer or touches the saw.

  ‘Please go inside, Kati, and let me be,’ he says eventually.

  After several hours’ effort, he comes in looking pale. Blood is pouring from one hand.

  ‘I told you,’ my mother says.

  My poor father, I’m thinking. He tries so hard but cannot mend fuses, mix concrete, bowl cricket balls, make bookshelves, stop the tap dripping in the bathroom, open the jammed window in my bedroom, or saw off the branch keeping the sun out of the living room.

  ‘Shall I get Mr Webb?’ I offer, eager to see William again.

  The drone of the concrete mixer gets louder as I walk up the path. Sally is weeding the garden crammed with cabbages and carrots.

  ‘Oh, that spinach was tasty,’ she says. ‘Interesting flavour.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ Mr Webb says, when I tell him about my father’s lack of success with the fence. ‘I’ll come right away.’

  As I leave, William smiles at me again.

  The next time I see William properly (not counting the hours I spend gazing over at their yard hoping for him to appear), is when my mother makes cottage cheese Strudel and invites the Webbs over to our place for afternoon tea. It is to be a ‘thank you’ for the constant stream of jobs Stan has been helping us with.

  ‘I’m so looking forward to trying continental baking,’ Sally Webb says, placing two Strudel on her plate.

  Stan is more cautious. ‘Just a wee one for me.’

  ‘Oh, delicious,’ Sally bites into the strude
l.

  ‘Yummy,’ says Josephine.

  ‘Custard pie, is it?’ Stan, looking doubtful, is prodding cautiously with his fork. He carefully finishes what is in his mouth, leaving the rest.

  ‘It is so sad that the war destroyed so many lives and left you people rootless,’ says Sally, frowning at Stan’s plate.

  ‘People are not plants,’ says my mother. ‘I am not a macrocarpa.’ Her eyes are also on Stan’s plate.

  ‘But to leave one’s country.’ Bravely Sally perseveres.

  ‘We must not cling to the past. It is finished. We are made to adapt.’

  ‘Quite,’ says Sally.

  ‘Yummy,’ again from Josephine.

  William eats every bit of three strudel.

  ‘I love foreign food, Mrs Faber,’ he says.

  Later, when there is no one in sight, behind the door of my bedroom, he puts his arms around me and kisses me on the lips.

  ‘Don’t let him go too far too soon. You gotta play hard to get to hook them in,’ Zsuzsi says. Before she has a chance to tell me how to do this, my grandmother pounces:

  ‘You always find very bad people and some very good people too. It was July and we no longer wore the yellow star. Kati roamed the streets looking for food and firewood. One day, the Arrow Cross boys searched the building where we were staying. We hid behind the toilet cistern but the janitor’s dog followed us. By a miracle, the dog did not bark. By another miracle, the janitor did not give us away.

  ‘The main occupation of the Arrow Cross was to stop people and ask for identity papers. There were posters stuck up in the streets: “Those harbouring Jews will be shot.” It was November, raining all the time. A friend’s friend, a young Christian woman, got us false papers and also brought us food, although it was a dangerous thing for her to do.