by Flynn
This activity of collecting seeds was one that I saw thousands of times; never once was she violent with any seed pod, and on each and every occasion came the moment of decision: "Have I taken too many?" "Are there enough left?" Sometimes the decision could only be made after a careful inspection of the seed pods. If she decided she had taken too many she would then proceed to portion out those seeds she had collected, sprinkling very carefully some portion back on the land again. Mister God went up about ten points in her estimation with regard to these seeds as she said, "Ain't Mister God wonderful!"
Anna was not only deeply in love with Mister God; she was proud of him. Anna's pride in Mister God grew and grew to such dimensions that in some idiot moment I wondered if Mister God ever went pink with pleasure. Whatever feelings people have had about Mister God over the many centuries, I'm very sure of one thing—nobody has ever liked Mister God more than Anna.
These excursions into the realm of seeds meant that a large supply of envelopes was carried with us and a large pouch was fixed around Anna's waist. The pouch was fixed onto a rather splendid beaded belt made for her by Millie. Millie was one of the dozen or so pros who had a house at the top of the street. Millie and Jackie were, according to Anna, the two most beautiful young ladies in the whole world. Between this young prostitute and Anna, there developed a mutual admiration society. Just in passing, Millie had the rich name of the Venus de Mile End.
Anna's other major discovery of that summer grew into a very complex activity, for our house suddenly blossomed with little blue notebooks and slips of paper. When confronted with something new, Anna would accost the nearest passerby, and hold out notebook and pencil, with a "Please write that down big, please."
* * *
three
This request to "write it down big" often produced a somewhat startled reaction. Anna's presentation on these occasions was like a stick of dynamite with a very, very short fuse, and it frightened some people. To be confronted by a redheaded, five-year-old kid, to have a notebook and pencil thrust into your hand, and to be requested to write it down big was for a lot of people unnerving, to say the least. People shied away with that kind of look; they replied with "Buzz off, kid," "Don't bother me, kid," but Anna expected this sort of thing and pressed on regardless. Anna's ship of discovery was now fully under way. True, it might leak a bit here and there, and the seas of knowledge could become a little rough at times, but there was no turning back. There were things to be discovered and Anna meant to discover them.
Many and many an evening I would be sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette and watching her asking people to write it down big, enjoying her search for knowledge. One particular evening, after a row of refusals on the part of passersby, Anna began to sag. I reckoned it was about time to dish out a few words of comfort. I levered myself off the steps and crossed the road to her.
She pointed to a broken-off stump of an iron railing. "I want somebody to write about that, but they don't see it."
"Perhaps they are too busy," I suggested.
"No it ain't. They don't see it. They don't know what I mean."
This last reply was uttered with a kind of deep and inward sadness; it was a sentence that I was to hear more and more. "They don't see it. They don't see it."
I had read the disappointment on her face and knew what to do—or thought I knew. This was the kind of situation that I figured I could handle. I picked her up and held her close to me.
"Don't be too disappointed, Tich."
"Not disappointed. Sad."
"Never mind," I said, "I'll write it down big for you."
She wriggled herself out of my arms and stood on the pavement, her hands fiddling with the notebook and pencil, head bowed and with tears on her cheeks. My mind raced around in circles. A number of methods of approach jostled each other. Just as I was about to "put it all right again" that passing angel fetched me a crack on the skull again. So I remained silent and waited. She stood there in utter dejection. I knew for certain, I told myself, knew for certain that she wanted to run to my arms, knew that she wanted comforting, but she just stood there wrestling inwardly. Trams clanked on their way, people shopped, barrow boys shouted their wares, and there we stood, me fighting against picking her up and she staring at some new picture painted on her mind.
At last she looked up and her eyes met mine. It suddenly got cold, and I wanted to hit somebody. I knew this look, I had seen it before in other people and it had happened to me more than once. Like some monstrous iceberg appearing out of the fog, the word formed, welling up from deep inside me, haloed with tears but nonetheless clear to see. Anna was mourning. All the doors of her eyes and heart stood wide open and that lonely cell of her inmost being stood plain to see.
"I don't want you to write nuffink." She tried out a smile but it didn't work too well, and with a sniff she continued, "I know what I see and I know what you see, but some people don't see nuffink and—and—." She threw herself into my arms and sobbed.
On that evening in a street in East London I stood with a child in my arms and looked into that lonely cell of humanity. No book learning, no lecture has shown me more than those few moments. Lonely the cell may be, but dark, never. It wasn't dark behind those tear-filled eyes, but a blaze of light. And God made man in his own image, not in shape, not in intelligence, not in eyes or ears, not in hands or feet, but in this total inwardness. In here was the image of God. It isn't the devil in humanity that makes man a lonely creature, it's his God-likeness. It's the fullness of the Good that can't get out or can't find its proper "other place" that makes for loneliness.
Anna's misery was for others. They just could not see the beauty of that broken iron stump, the colors, the crystalline shapes; they could not see the possibilities there. Anna wanted them to join with her in this exciting new world, but they could not imagine themselves to be so small that this jagged fracture could become a world of iron mountains, of iron plains with crystal trees. It was a new world to explore, a world of the imagination, a world where few people would or could follow her. In this broken-off stump was a whole new realm of possibilities to be explored and to be enjoyed.
Mister God most certainly enjoyed it, but then Mister God didn't at all mind making himself small. People thought that Mister God was very big, and that's where they made a big mistake. Obviously Mister God could be any size he wanted to be. "If he couldn't be little, how could he know what it's like to be a ladybird?" Indeed, how could he? So, like Alice in Wonderland, Anna ate of the cake of imagination and altered her size to fit the occasion. After all, Mister God did not have only one point of view but an infinity of viewing points, and the whole purpose of living was to be like Mister God. So far as Anna was concerned, being good, being generous, being kind, praying, and all that kind of stuff had very little to do with Mister God. They were, in the jargon of today, merely "spinoffs." This sort of thing was just "playing it safe," and Anna was going to have none of it. No! Religion was all about being like Mister God and it was here that things could get a little tough. The instructions weren't to be good and kind and loving, etc., and it therefore followed that you would be more like Mister God. No! The whole point of being alive was to be like Mister God and then you couldn't help but be good and kind and loving, could you?
"If you get like Mister God, you don't know you are, do you?"
"Are what?" I questioned.
"Good and kind and loving."
This last comment was delivered in her throw-away tone of voice as if it were insignificant and irrelevant. I knew this one of old. Either you had to pretend it hadn't happened, or start asking questions. A moment or two of hesitation on my part as I watched the grin spread from her toes and explode in one short sharp hoot of mirth, and I realized that she had sprung the trap. She had something to say and had forced me into asking the question. If I hadn't done it then I would have had to sooner or later, so ...
"OK, Tich. What's all this goodness and kindness and loving lark t
hen?"
"Well," and the tone of her voice slid down the roller coaster of excitement, shot up the other side, and took off. "Well, if you think you are, you ain't."
From my position at the bottom of this particular class I asked, "How come?"
I thought I had got the drift of this conversation and reckoned I was waiting for her about two steps ahead. She had signalled a right turn and I was waiting for her, but suddenly she took a left-handed U-turn and sped back against the oncoming arguments. Thrown off balance by this sudden switch, I could do no more than walk back to where she was waiting.
"Right. Give!" I said.
"You don't expect Mister God knows he is good and kind and loving, do you?"
I don't suppose I had ever given this a moment's thought, but put like that there was only one answer to give, even though I wasn't convinced of the truth of it.
"I guess not," I replied, with some hesitation.
The question Why? got stuck somewhere between my brainbox and my vocal chords. I should have known that the whole of this conversation was leading to some conclusion, some idea, some statement that satisfied her completely. She gathered herself, holding her excitement in check.
Suddenly, with an explosive gasp, she said, "Mister God don't know he is good and kind and loving. Mister God is—is—empty."
Now I'll accept that the stone that bruises my toe isn't really there. I don't mind entertaining the idea that everything is an illusion, but that Mister God is empty simply goes against the grain. It stands to reason that Mister God is full! Full of knowing, full of love, full of compassion—you name it, and he is full of it. Why God is like some—some gigantic Christmas stocking full of good presents, inexhaustible, showering untold and unnumbered presents upon his children. Damnation, of course he's full! That's what I was taught and that's how it was—or was it?
I got no more from Anna that day or for several days after. I stewed in my own juice. The idea that Mister God was empty milled around in my brain. Of course it was ridiculous, but it just stuck there. As a picture formed in my mind, I got more and more embarrassed and more and more ashamed. I hadn't seen this picture with such clarity before, but there he was, Mister God all dressed up in a dress suit, top hat, and a wand, producing rabbits out of a hat. You put up your hand and asked for a motorcar, a thousand pounds, or what you will, and Mister God waved his magic wand and out it all came. In the end I saw my picture of Mister God—a kindly, benevolent, and be-whiskered magician.
A few days later, after a lot of wondering how came this idea that Mister God was quite empty, I asked the question that had puzzled me for days.
"Tich! What's with this Mister God being empty stuff?"
She turned to me eagerly. I distinctly got the impression that she had waited for this question for days but could do nothing until I had seen my picture of Mister God, the great magician.
"When the world went all red through the bit a glass, and the color from the flower."
I remembered that, all right. We had talked about transmitted light and reflected light: that light took on the color of the glass through which it was transmitted, that the color of the yellow flower was due to reflected light. We had seen the colors of the spectrum with the aid of a prism, we had looked at Newton's colored spinning disc and had mixed all the colors of the spectrum back to white again. I had explained that the yellow flower absorbed all the colors of the spectrum, with the exception of yellow, which was reflected back to the viewer. Anna had digested this bit of information for a while and then had come back with: "Oh! Yellow is the bit it don't want!" and after a little pause, "So its real color is all the bits it do want."
I couldn't argue with this since I couldn't be sure what the heck a flower would want anyway.
All these bits of information had been taken in, mixed with various bits of colored glass, shaken well, and worked into her particular framework. It seemed that each and every individual was issued at birth with various bits of glass labeled, good, bad, nasty, etc., etc. People got into the habit of slipping these bits of glass over their inward eye and seeing things according to the color and label of the glass. This we did, I was given to understand, in order to justify our inner convictions.
Now, Mister God was a bit different from a flower. A flower that didn't want the yellow light was called yellow by us because that is what we saw. You couldn't say the same thing about Mister God. Mister God wanted everything, so he didn't reflect anything back! Now if Mister God didn't reflect anything back, we couldn't possibly see him, could we? So as far as we are concerned, so far as we were able to understand what Mister God was, we simply had to admit that Mister God was quite empty. Not empty because there was truly nothing there, but empty because he accepted everything, because he wanted everything and did not reflect anything back! Of course you could cheat if you wanted to; you could wear your bit of colored glass marked mister god is loving or the bit marked mister god is kind, but then, of course, you would miss the whole nature of Mister God. Just imagine what kind of an "object" Mister God must be if he accepts everything, if he reflects absolutely nothing back. This, said Anna, is being a real God. This is what we were being asked to do, throw away our pieces of colored glass and see clearly. The fact that Old Nick was busy turning them out by the million made things a bit difficult at times, but that was the way things were.
"Sometimes," said Anna, "growed-ups make kids have bits a glass."
"Why would they want to do that?" I asked.
"So they can make the kids do something they want them to."
"You mean frighten them?"
"Yes. To do something."
"Like God will punish you if you don't eat up your prunes?"
"Yes, like that. But Mister God don't care if you don't like prunes, do he?"
"I guess not."
"If he did punish you for that he would be a big bully, and he ain't."
Most people are lucky if they ever discover the world in which they live. Anna had discovered unnumbered worlds through her "bits a colored glass," optical filters, mirrors, and garden witch-balls. The only problems with these many worlds was that more often than not you soon ran out of words to describe what you saw. I can't ever remember Anna using the words noun or verb, and certainly she couldn't tell an adjective from a ham sandwich, but she very soon came to the conclusion that the most hazardous aspect of writing or talking was the use of descriptive words. She'd go along with the statement that a rose is a rose is a rose—well almost go along with it—but that red is red is red was something else again.
The problem with words got further complicated by Mrs. Sussums. Mrs. Sussums had met us in the street. Mrs. Sussums was, in fact, Aunt Dolly, an aunt by marriage, and Aunt Dolly had one great passion in her life. This was eating nut toffee. She ate it in enormous quantities, continuously; and consequently her face always looked somewhat deformed by the presence of a large lump of toffee. If one was critical of Aunt Dolly it was because she always insisted on kissing everybody, not once but many times. Taken separately, the toffee-eating and the kissing were manageable, but together—well, it could become a bit dangerous.
We didn't manage to dodge the kissing. We were instructed to "open our mouths," and something about the size of a slab of toffee was popped in. That is to say about half of it went inside; the rest had to stay outside and wait.
After years of toffee-eating, Aunt Dolly's face muscles had developed quite remarkable strength, which enabled her to talk in spite of the glue strength of the toffee. Holding Anna at arm's length, she said, "My, isn't she big!"
I shifted gear with the toffee and managed, "Ga gig, quite gig!"
Anna came out with something that sounded like, "Gok gum gockle," which I hoped was translatable.
Aunt Dolly bade us good-bye and went on her way. We sat on a wall and coaxed the toffee into a manageable size and position.
Before Aunt Dolly's arrival we had been walking along the street, or rather, we had been progressing along
the street in a somewhat crazy way. You see, we had invented a game which could make a couple of hundred yards' walk take about two hours. Somebody was the "caller" and the other person was the "doer." The idea was that the caller would name some object on the ground—say a matchstick—and the doer would stand upon it. The caller would then name some other object and the doer would have to reach this other object in one step or leap. Hence, the somewhat erratic progress; there was no guarantee what direction the doer would take. We restarted our game. We had gone a matter of twenty yards or so in as many minutes when Anna stopped.
"Fynn, we both be doers and I'll be caller too."
So off we set, Anna doing the calling and we both, the doing, only this time it was different. No giggling this time, no squeaks of "I've found one. I've found a tram ticket." This time it was altogether too earnest. Anna muttered to herself at every step, "little step-hop, little step-hop, big step-hop," and then stopped. Looking back over the last step, she turned her head to me and said, "Was that a big step?"
"Not very."
"It was for me."
"That's because you're just a tich," I grinned.
"Auntie Dolly said I was big."
"She probably meant you were big for your age," I replied.
As an explanation, this didn't satisfy her one bit. The game stopped dead. She turned towards me, hands on hips. I could see her thinking apparatus itching with the woolliness of words.
"It don't mean nuffink," she said, like a judge putting on the black cap.
"Well it does," I tried to explain. "It means compared to a lot of little girls of fiye-and-a-bit years of age, you are bigger than most."