“Go into the kitchen, Johnny. I need to talk with the reverend.”
That’s how I ended up alone with Belinda in our kitchen. And when she kissed me the second time and put her tongue back in my mouth I left it there because it felt good and she pushed it round my teeth like she was looking for some food. It’s called a French kiss and that’s because the French do it all the time even with complete strangers. I will French kiss with Belinda until I am at least forty. I wish I’d cleaned my teeth today.
And then the reverend made us jump by coming into the kitchen with a big cardboard box. Mum and Emily were right behind him.
“Do you say your prayers, John?” the reverend asked.
“Yes, every night.”
“Good. And do you pray for your mother, John?”
“I do.”
“And do you pray for your sisters?”
“I do.”
“Do you feel the hunger in your belly, John?”
“Sometimes.”
“It will bring you closer to God. The hunger opens your mind. It is the feasting that brings us closer to the Devil. The gluttony, dressed up as feasting while others starve. It makes us weak and then the Devil can work his wicked ways. Be glad you are not feasting, John. Is it any surprise that gluttony is one of the deadly sins?”
“No.”
“Feel the hunger. Feel that hunger! God will provide, John. Do you know that?”
“I do.”
“And while we hunger, we feel the pain of others, the pain of those less fortunate than ourselves who starve on the African plain or in the vile slums of Calcutta. And as we feel that pain, we feel the Holy Spirit entering into us, His children.”
“Yes.”
“Let us hold hands together and give thanks to our Lord, the Father.”
So we said the Lord’s Prayer together, me, Mum, Emily, the reverend, and Belinda. Margueretta does not believe in God anymore because she is almost twelve and she hears voices and I’m sure one of them is the Devil. I held Belinda’s hand and even though we should have had our eyes closed so we could concentrate on God the Father, I opened mine and so did Belinda, and she stuck her tongue out at me.
We didn’t open the box until they left. Mum said it would be rude, like looking a gift horse in the mouth. But she was very happy when she saw the Ritz Crackers in the box and I was really happy when I saw the tin of Jolly Green Giant corn. Emily clapped her hands and asked if we could have some for supper but Mum said that would be gluttonous because we have already eaten our beans on toast for tea. There was no tin of Fray Bentos braised beef but there was a banana and a cabbage.
“I tell you something,” Mum said, “This is quite a feast. We will share the banana.”
And she sliced up the banana and we had three slices each, sprinkled with sugar.
“Things are going to get better now, John. This is a sign. And do you know something?”
“What?”
“You are a good boy, Johnny. God knows you are a good boy. You deserve more. Tomorrow you will go with me.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see. The reverend helped me with a plan. God will always provide, Johnny. God will always provide.”
36
I hope Belinda did not notice that I hadn’t cleaned my teeth. Anyway, it’s too late now and she was the one who put her tongue in my mouth and wiggled it around, not me. Still, she smiled at me when she left so I think she didn’t notice.
I brushed my teeth this morning. Mum said I had to look my best as the man of the house because we were going to see a woman called Mollie who would explain the reverend’s plan and all would become clear.
It wasn’t far to walk from our house to Mollie’s house. But I do think Mum should have explained that Mollie is a midget and she’s smaller than me.
We had to go into Mollie’s kitchen when we got there because the doctor was in the living room syringing her husband’s ears.
“Eech! Don’t mind the birds,” Mollie said. “They’re chaffinches. Robert breeds them. That’s why he’s having his ears syringed. He can’t hear them anymore.”
There was a huge wooden birdcage against a whole wall of the kitchen and the bird chatter meant I couldn’t hear a word Mollie was saying to Mum. But I could hear that she started every sentence with a loud screech, like someone had stepped on her foot. I thought she was doing it for the chaffinches but Mum thinks it is a nervous habit.
And the other thing Mum never explained was that we were going to meet a little black girl called Folami who is three years old and doesn’t talk. Mum said she wasn’t even sure herself because the reverend arranged it all and there wasn’t much detail.
“I haven’t seen you in church,” Mum said.
“Eech! No. I don’t like to go out much. Neither does Robert.”
“How does the reverend know you?”
“Eech! He always gets involved with the fostering of children. There are always needy cases and he knows who has a good home in the parish.”
Mum says that fostering means looking after a child like they are your own even though they are not yours. Mollie is fostering the little black girl and she is obviously not her own because she is a different color. Folami’s real mother lives in London and she’s having another baby soon and it will need to be fostered too.
“You know something, John?”
“What?”
“I’m very proud of you. You were very well behaved at Mollie’s. You didn’t say anything about her being so short or her nervous problem.”
“Mum?”
“Yes, Johnny.”
“What is the plan? Exactly?”
“We are going to foster troubled children. I am going to create a refuge for troubled children and people will pay for us to take care of them. It was all the reverend’s idea. He’s always looking for a good home for children in need.”
“What are troubled children?”
“Well. Children from broken homes and children with problems, I would think.”
“What sort of problems?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I expect we will know when they arrive. So the first one will be Folami’s brother or sister. We don’t know if it is a boy or a girl because the baby isn’t born yet. So what do you think of the plan?”
“It’s good. Where will they sleep?”
“That’s just a detail. Boys in one room, girls in another. Are you excited?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, God helps those who help themselves. Mind you, I will need a lot more help from you now that I’m starting the refuge-for-troubled-children. You know what?”
“What?”
“I think you are old enough now to take the dirty washing to the launderette on your own every Saturday.”
“Oh.”
“And you know what else? I think we should open the tin of Jolly Green Giant corn to celebrate!”
Emily said we should open the Ritz Crackers too but Mum still wants to keep them for a special celebration. Especially now that we’ve got them back so unexpectedly.
37
Something terrible has happened but I’m glad. I wasn’t the first one to wake. No one would be able to sleep through that terrible sound. It was a howling scream that wouldn’t stop. But this time it wasn’t coming from the attic. This time the scream was coming from out on the landing. Out by the toilet.
Mum was there with Emily when I ran out of my room. And Emily had her hand over her mouth like she wanted to scream and Margueretta was standing by the toilet door in her gray nightshirt, barefoot on the wooden boards. Her face was covered with snot and she was the one doing the all the screaming.
“It’s in there! It’s in there!” Margueretta shouted.
“What’s in there?” Mum shouted.
“It’s in there! Don’t go in there! It’s evil!”
“What?”
“It wants to kill me!”
“What wants to kill you?”
“It’s going to
kill me!”
“What’s going to kill you?”
“There’s something in my room!”
I waited by the toilet when Mum walked slowly up to Margueretta’s bedroom door and pushed it open. Light from the landing bulb shone into the room. I could see the bed, dresser, and blankets on the floor. Mum stepped into the room and looked around.
“There’s nothing here.”
Mum doesn’t believe in ghosts but she’s wrong. She’ll know soon enough.
“I can’t go in there,” Margueretta pleaded and pulled at her nightshirt.
“Get back to your beds,” Mum said softly.
I looked at Margueretta’s face and the snot was running down her lip. She wrung her hands in front of her while she pressed them against her stomach. For a moment I wanted to feel sorry for her, but I hate her. Anyone would hate someone who beats him every day. God will punish her.
“What did she see?” Emily asked.
“Nothing. She had a bad dream. It’s just growing pains. She’s twelve years old. The same thing will happen to you.”
Emily glanced at me. The same thing will happen to her. That’s because girls are very sensitive. It’s their own fault. I would never stand on the landing screaming. I would chase that thing out of my room with my robot if it had new batteries. And if I hadn’t taken it apart.
“Now go to bed, all of you. We need some sleep.”
“I can’t go in there,” Margueretta shouted.
“There’s nothing in there!”
“That thing wants to kill me! It spoke to me! It wants to kill me tonight! It said so!”
“Well. You can sleep downstairs on the sofa. I’m sure it won’t follow you down there, young lady. Now let’s get some sleep. I’ll leave the landing light on, just this once.”
It’s obvious that this would happen. Margueretta doesn’t believe in God, which makes her one of Satan’s children, and she didn’t hold hands with the reverend and say the Lord’s Prayer with us. She just stayed in her room like she always does. So if there is something evil in our house, and I’m sure there is because I have heard it, it would know that she couldn’t pray to God for help. She is now lost to the Devil. She is lost to the Devil for all Eternity and I’m glad.
Now I know for sure. I will get the stepladders from the scullery and go up into the attic just as soon as possible. I’m going to find what it is that is screaming up there. We don’t have a torch but I will use a candle. And I will take my robot with me just as soon as I have put it back together.
38
Mollie came around with a cat. It’s a stray but she can’t keep it because it might attack the chaffinches. We’ve called her Misty and she will eat scraps of food because strays don’t care what they eat since they are starving. She’s also a bit lopsided because she’s been savaged by a dog. But cats don’t really have nine lives. That’s just a myth. If a cat had nine lives then Boots would not have died when she was run over by a bus outside the public library.
Misty has already arched her back and hissed at the scullery and she won’t go upstairs. That’s because she can sense what is going on in our house. Even though cats don’t have nine lives, they do have a sixth sense. And Misty knows there is something evil living in this house and I will be keeping a close eye on her to see if she arches her back again.
It is also really lucky that Mum went to the Co-op to buy some Kit-e-Kat and found that they were having a Fish Week. She said it’s not a fresh-fish week because they don’t have a cold counter so it is a tinned-fish week, which is just as well as we don’t have a fridge.
“They had all kinds of exotic fish in tins and jars,” Mum said.
“Fish week? I don’t like fish. What kind of fish?” Margueretta replied.
“Well, they had jars of jellied eels. Oh, I love jellied eels. Reminds me of the seaside when I was a girl.”
“Yuk.”
“And pickled whelks.”
“Double yuk. Tell me you didn’t buy any bloody whelks. Please say you didn’t buy any whelks. They’re just giant snails for God’s sake! Only primitive people would eat giant snails.”
“Of course I bought some whelks. But you don’t have to eat them because I have a surprise for tea.”
“What is it?”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
“I don’t care. I probably won’t like it.”
Mum lifted a tin onto the kitchen table and it was half the size of a beer barrel.
“Hand me the tin opener.”
“There’s no label on the tin,” Margueretta said.
“I know,” Mum replied.
“So how do you know what’s in it?”
“I don’t. That’s why it’s a surprise.”
It took Mum forever to open the tin with our rusty old tin opener. We all sat round waiting for the surprise. Mum told Emily to get the big bowl, the one we use for making bread pudding.
“One, two, three. Here goes!”
It almost filled the mixing bowl when I helped Mum to slither it out. I thought I saw those massive eyeballs swivel around the room, looking at each one of us in turn. And then at the cat.
“Oh, good God!” Mum said.
“That’s a…what in God’s name?” said Margueretta.
“We will all eat well tonight!” Mum exclaimed. “It’s so huge! Even the cat will have some!”
It had a wild look in its eyes that said, “Who the bloody hell put me in here?”
I think it had been canned in its own slime. Or that might have happened after they closed the lid on the thing. I’m sure it must have been alive when they put it in there.
“Holy Mother of Christ, would you look at it?” Mum shouted.
It was dead, of course. I mean, a giant gray octopus with suckers all over its tentacles could not survive in that tin, even in its own slime. My two sisters ran out of the kitchen. Mum turned to me.
“Well, your sisters are obviously not starving, eh? Fetch the bread knife, Johnny!”
“Are you going to eat it?” I asked.
“Of course! What do you think?”
“I’m not eating that.”
“Well you’re obviously not starving either!”
“So you are going to eat it?” I asked again.
“Maybe I will have some later,” Mum replied.
So she sat the whole creature in the cat’s bowl and it stared across the kitchen with glassy eyes while its huge tentacles hung over the side and onto the kitchen floor, like it was taking a rest before eating the cat.
“Well, at least the cat will have a feast tonight!” Mum announced.
We ate dry bread and a cup of beef stock for dinner. I’m sure the Co-op manager deliberately took the label off that tin.
39
We have not seen the cat for two days. Mum threw the octopus away this morning. She said she should have sliced it up and it was probably too tough for the cat to eat. Anyway, she had to throw the octopus away because we have visitors coming today and you can’t have visitors in your kitchen with a bloody great octopus staring at you from the cat’s bowl.
The visitors are not from England and they would never understand about tins with no labels.
“We are from Lagos. The Yoruba tribe. Which is the largest of over two hundred regional tribes in Nigeria!” the black man said.
The two black people standing in our front room were very, very tall like Zulus but in real clothes and shoes. The woman was holding a baby and they all smelled of olive oil and mothballs and they said Lagos was the capital of Nigeria, which is in Africa, and they come from the Yoruba tribe. I could not picture where it was on the map because Miss Jones only went as far as G for Greenland, which is actually full of ice and not very green.
It was when the black woman went to kiss me on the cheek that I noticed something horrifying, really horrifying. I don’t know how Mum could not have noticed. The black woman had white patches on her legs and that could only mean one thing.
She
had leprosy.
Miss Peabody said it is all explained in the Bible when Miriam caught it and they called her unclean and Aaron saw she was white as snow, which is what happens when you catch leprosy. And it’s incurable.
Then the black woman handed the baby to my mum.
“He’s only six weeks old. His name is Akanni. That’s Yoruba for our meeting brings gifts,” the black woman said.
Gifts? They have brought us the gift of leprosy. You lose all your feeling when you get leprosy and then rats come in the night and start eating you and you don’t even know that they’re biting pieces out of your face and then you get up in the morning and look in the mirror to comb your hair and see that your nose is completely missing. And you’re wondering what happened to your nose. The next night it’s your ears.
“What do you think?” Mum asked, nodding to the baby.
I looked for any white patches. So this is what Mum meant by troubled children. Children troubled with leprosy.
“It will be good for you to have a little brother!” the black man said.
I stared at the black man’s face for signs of the incurable disease. But all I could see were two scars on his cheeks.
“They’re tribal markings,” the man said. “They were made when I was a young man.”
“Take good care of our little boy, now,” Akanni’s mother said, and she burst into tears.
And that started Mum crying because it doesn’t take much to start my mum crying these days.
“I will treat him like my very own son! My very own son!” Mum said, looking at the baby and then at me and then back to the baby.
Then the black man started crying too and that made Emily cry because she is very sensitive.
“We can’t visit very often,” the black man said.
They had some tea and biscuits before they left. I whispered to Mum about the Ritz Crackers but Jesus returned them to us for a reason and we will know soon enough when we should open them. Now is not their time.
The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir Page 11