The Fall Girl

by Denise Sewell

  ‘I know. And I’m sorry if I offended you.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she says, looking at me with a playful grin. ‘I suppose I’ll forgive you.’

  We stop at the orchard gate for a smoke.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ she says, looking into my eyes with an intensity I’ve never seen in her before. She tilts her head and starts playing with her hair.

  ‘I … eh … I don’t know,’ I blurt.

  Backing up against the orchard wall, she pulls off her scarf and opens the top two buttons of her blouse. ‘Go on,’ she says, closing her eyes, ‘feel me.’

  I reach over and skim my fingers across her glossed lips, down her chin and elongated neck, and into the softness of her bosom, hesitating when I get as far as her bra. My hand is trembling.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks, opening her eyes.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She leans towards me, almost touching my lips with hers. Her hair is tickling my cheeks. ‘You want to kiss me, don’t you?’

  I nod and press my mouth against her parted lips.

  ‘Sick bitch,’ she screams, pulling back and slapping me hard across both cheeks.

  ‘What … why …?’ I gulp, trying to steady myself and at the same time catch my breath, but she has already turned on her heels and is walking away. ‘What did I do wrong?’

  She ignores me, marching on indignantly with her nose in the air. I sit down on the grassy bank that surrounds the orchard wall, nursing my face in my hands.

  ‘Come back,’ I cry out helplessly, as she disappears round the corner. ‘I’m sorry.’

  With the end of my scarf, I mop up the tears that are streaming down my cheeks. It’s not the pain that’s making me cry, or even the humiliation I’m feeling – they will pass in time; it’s the realization that Lesley and I are history. It’s over. I’m sure of it. Hanging my head, I blubber my way through a string of Hail Marys, beseeching Her to soften Lesley’s heart. For reinforcement, I pray to Aunty Lily, asking her to have a word in Mary’s ear. They’re the first prayers I’ve said in over a year. Then, with a heavy heart, I pick myself up and walk back down the path through a confetti of snowflakes.

  I sit alone in the classroom until the bell rings. Dreading what Lesley might say to me in front of the others, I keep my head down as the other girls start drifting into the room in twos and threes. Someone passing behind me kicks the leg of my chair. I don’t bother to react until she does it again, harder this time. When I look up, Jackie is leering down at me.

  ‘Dirty lezzer,’ she jeers. ‘I always said you were a fucking weirdo.’

  I have to swallow hard to stop the tears from flowing again. Our Religion teacher, Sister Helena, saves the moment by breezing in and telling everyone to sit down and be quiet.

  ‘Where’s Lesley?’ she asks.

  ‘At the principal’s office,’ Jackie says.

  What’s she doing there, I wonder.

  Half-way through the class, someone knocks on the door. When the girl sitting nearest to it opens it, PMT breezes in past her and whispers something to Sister Helena.

  ‘Jackie Doherty and Orla Corcoran,’ PMT says, looking down at the girls. ‘Could you both come to my office, please?’

  They must have been caught smoking with Lesley is all I can think of.

  A few minutes later, Jackie and Orla arrive back. Jackie walks straight to her desk. Orla goes up to Sister Helena and says something to her.

  ‘Frances Fall,’ Sister Helena says, ‘Sister Marie-Therese would like to see you in her office.’

  Orla smirks at me as I pass her on my way to the door. They must have squealed on me and said I was smoking too. My mother will have a fit when she hears about this. Outside PMT’s office, Lesley is sitting on a chair with red, swollen eyes. My heart goes out to her.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Stay away from me,’ she screeches.

  PMT opens the door of the office and summons me in.

  ‘Sit down.’ Her tone is horribly grave.

  I sit on my hands to hide the nicotine stains on my fingers.

  ‘I’ve had a complaint from Lesley that you made inappropriate advances towards her today during the lunch break.’

  For a few seconds, I’m not able to speak.

  ‘Have you anything to say?’

  ‘No, Sister. I mean yes, Sister. I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Where did you go at lunchtime?’

  ‘For a walk, Sister, and then I came back to the classroom.’

  ‘Where did you go for the walk?’

  ‘Down towards the orchard.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘Lesley, Sister.’

  ‘And what happened during this walk?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘We just talked.’

  ‘Did you walk back together?’

  ‘No, Sister.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. She just ran off on me.’

  ‘So you were walking down the path and all of a sudden she ran away from you?’

  ‘We went as far as the orchard and we were talking and then she ran off. I don’t know why, honest.’

  ‘How would you describe your relationship with Lesley, Frances?’

  ‘We’re friends.’

  ‘Best friends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why would your best friend suddenly run away from you for no good reason?’

  ‘I told you, Sister, I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know! I must say, I find that rather hard to believe.’ Clearing her throat, she leans across the desk, psyching me out with an impatient stare. ‘Did you at any stage instigate any physical contact with Lesley during this walk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You never touched?’ Her eyes broaden.

  ‘No. Yes. We held hands, but that’s all.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘How would you describe your feelings for Lesley?’

  ‘As I said, she’s my best friend. I care about her.’

  ‘Do you have a crush on her?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I’ll ask you again, Frances. Do you have a crush on her?’

  ‘No, Sister.’

  She sits back, opens the top drawer of her desk, takes out a piece of paper and puts it down in front of me.

  ‘Is that your handwriting?’

  I want to see you naked. I want to kiss your lips. XXX.

  My God!

  ‘I said, is that your handwriting?’

  ‘I-eh-I …’

  ‘I’ll ask you one more time,’ she says, hammering the note with an accusatory finger: ‘Is that your handwriting?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ I start to weep.

  ‘Did you try to kiss Lesley while ye were out walking at lunchtime?’

  ‘No, Sister.’ I look up at her, willing her to believe me.

  ‘Frances, stop lying, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘You were seen. Jackie and Orla were walking a short distance behind you. They saw you.’

  ‘But she went to kiss me first.’

  ‘That’s not what they saw, Frances.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Stop it, will you?’ she snaps.

  Someone starts talking outside in the corridor and then there’s a knock on the door. She walks out from behind her desk to answer it.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Missus Kelly,’ she says, going out to talk to Lesley’s mother.

  All I manage to pick up from their conversation is that Lesley is taking the rest of the day off. When she comes back into the office, PMT tells me that I must learn to control these urges I’m having.

  ‘They’re not natural,’ she says; ‘they’re sinful.’

  She’s going to transfer me from all the classes I share with Lesley. I must keep my distance from her and never engage her in conversation again. If I try to
communicate with her by any means, I’ll be suspended.

  ‘Do I make myself crystal clear, Frances?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  25 November 1999 (morning)

  I’ve just posted the letter to my father. I swing from feeling angry with him one day to feeling sorry for him the next. Today I just miss him.

  27 November 1999 (afternoon)

  My father will have received his post by now. Whatever he decides to do, he won’t make a spur of the moment decision. He likes to weigh things up, consider the consequences. My mother will be his biggest deterrent. He won’t want to let her down; the way I let her down.

  In the family way

  The truth about what happened between myself and Lesley doesn’t stand a chance. Everyone wants to hear her version of events. The morning after, I watch them flock around her at the school gates, in the cloakroom, in the mall. Even girls she wouldn’t normally bid the time of day to are hovering around her with timid faces, twiddling their earrings and waiting for her to acknowledge their presence, which she does because she wants to turn everyone against me. They pay for her attention with their loyalty. Afterwards, I hear two of them talking in the toilets as if they’re her long-lost friends.

  ‘Did you hear about poor Lesley?’

  ‘Yeah, I was chatting to her this morning. She told me the whole story.’

  ‘I’ve just been talking to her myself. She’s in bits over it.’

  ‘Would you blame her? Imagine finding out that your best friend was trying to get into your knickers. Jaysus, I’d run a mile.’

  ‘She says she still can’t believe it, that she never suspected a thing, but that now, looking back on it, she should have seen it coming.’

  ‘Sure, it’s not her fault. She shouldn’t be blaming herself, poor thing.’

  ‘I know; that’s what I said to her.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She thanked me; told me I made her feel a whole lot better.’

  ‘Ah, she’s really nice, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s dead on.’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing: I’ll be keeping my distance from Frances Fall. Even the thought of her gives me the creeps.’

  I swallow the truth and the sadness.

  During class I avoid eye contact with my classmates in case any of them gets the wrong idea. I don’t want to be caught looking at their legs or boobs so, as far as I can, I keep my nose in my books.

  On the Wednesday afternoon, I find a mousetrap in my schoolbag. Later, on the school bus, I put my hand in my gabardine pocket and pull out a page torn from a porn magazine of two naked women kissing. During Maths class, the next day, I come across a note between the pages of my textbook. It’s done out in letters cut from a newspaper, reading Watch your back. As I’m walking down the avenue on Friday, a girl from second year, whom I know to be a neighbour of Lesley’s, catches up with me and asks me if I realize that the short for Frances is Fanny. When I tell her to get stuffed, she skips away laughing. Even though I manage not to cry, inside I’m crumbling.

  It’s not enough for my mother that I’m staying in over the weekend, and apparently studying; she wants to know why. Or, more to the point, why now.

  ‘You’ve taken a fierce sudden interest in your schoolbooks this past couple of weeks,’ she says, putting my dinner on the table. ‘Though it’s a bit late in the day, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Aye, well, better late than never,’ my father says, winking at me. ‘It’s good to see you knuckling down.’

  ‘Thanks, Daddy.’

  ‘So, why the sudden change of heart?’ my mother asks, managing to pour her gravy without taking her eye off me.

  ‘I don’t want to fail, do I?’

  ‘Mmm.’ She swallows a mouthful of food and pats both sides of her mouth with her napkin. ‘So, it’s nothing to do with the fact that the phone hasn’t rung once for you in nearly two weeks?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘There’s no need to snap.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Yes you did, didn’t she, Joe?’

  ‘Ah, I’m sure she didn’t mean –’

  ‘It’s OK, Daddy, I know she’s only trying to rise me.’

  ‘By asking you a simple question,’ my mother sneers. ‘It doesn’t take much so, unless of course I’ve hit a nerve.’

  ‘Just leave me alone, will you?’

  As I push away my plate, my knife and fork slip off the table, clattering on the tiled floor. When I bend down to pick them up, I’m tempted to dig the fork into my mother’s leg. Straightening up, I bang my head on the table.

  ‘Fuck it,’ I shout, flinging the cutlery into the sink.

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely language,’ my mother says as I storm out the door.

  In the privacy of my bedroom, I call her every crude name I can think of, before kneeling down and praying for her death.

  As soon as I wake up on the Monday morning, I need to dash to the loo. I’ve been having bouts of diarrhoea for several days now and my body feels drained. I don’t know how I’m going to face another day at school.

  On the school bus, I end up sitting beside the wildest of the lads from the village. When he asks me if the rumour is true about me being a lesbian, I tell him it’s not.

  ‘Prove it,’ he says, grabbing my hand and putting it on his crotch.

  ‘Would you ever fuck off,’ I shout, pulling back my hand.

  ‘If you don’t like that,’ he says, ‘you are a lezzie.’

  ‘Shag off, you bollocks.’

  ‘Jaysus, I’d give anything to see two girls snogging. I’m getting a fucking horn just thinking about it.’

  Everyone starts laughing. Don’t cry, I think, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. I tell myself that they’re laughing at him, and not me. He’s the joke, he’s the fool. Go away, tears. I start to count the oncoming cars: one, two, three, four – they’re still laughing – five, six – how could you do this to me, Lesley? – seven, eight – stop thinking about her – nine, ten, eleven – they’ve stopped.

  When I don’t see Lesley, Jackie or Orla hanging around the school gates, I assume that the town bus is running late and I hurry up the avenue alone, hoping to be away from the cloakroom before they get there.

  ‘Lock up your cheese sandwiches, girls,’ Jackie shouts as I walk in the door. ‘There’s a mangy mouse on the loose.’

  ‘Ah Jaysus,’ some girl yelps, climbing up on to a bench.

  ‘You mean, lock up your fannies,’ Lesley roars.

  Even the first years are sniggering into their hands.

  ‘Don’t cry, Frances,’ Jackie says, slapping my back, ‘we’re only slagging you.’

  Everyone I meet as I walk down the corridor and up the stairs to my new classroom is looking at me and giggling. I can’t take much more. On my way to the science lab after the eleven o’clock break, someone touches my sleeve. When I look round, the third-year girl whom Lesley had teased a few weeks earlier about her prominent teeth hands me a piece of paper.

  ‘This was stuck to your back,’ she says. ‘That’s what they’re all laughing at.’

  It reads: FANNY FALL FANCIES YOU ALL (Told you to watch your back)

  I look at the girl through glazed eyes. ‘It’s not true what they’re saying about me, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She smiles and walks away.

  On the Friday afternoon, the word spreads like wildfire: Lesley has been expelled. She was standing at the lectern in the convent chapel giving a sacrilegious sermon to a handful of naive first years who were trying to fit in the Stations of the Cross during their break, a chalice full of wine in one hand, a lit fag in the other. Jackie and Orla were trying to coax her away when PMT came flapping up the centre aisle in a rage.

  I should be relieved, but I’m not. I’m heartbroken.

  Living without Lesley is like living without a cause. Everything seems pointless. I f
all asleep crying and wake up in a black hole. I skip breakfast, feed my lunch to the birds and struggle over a bowl of soup at dinnertime. Nancy says I look like the divil and that maybe a good tonic would help. She knows a pharmacist who makes up his own special concoction. Anyone who’s taken it swears by it. She brings it round the following day. Before I get the spoon to my mouth, I start gagging, spilling the medicine all over the floor.

  ‘This time, just hold your nose and knock it back,’ Nancy says, pouring another spoonful. ‘It’ll do you a power of good.’

  It feels like warm blood trickling down my throat. I gag again, but manage to keep it down.

  A few weeks later, my mother arrives home after attending evening Mass with Nancy in Castleowen cathedral. My father and I are watching The Good Life.

  ‘I was talking to Kitty Devine after Mass,’ she says, pulling off her gloves and warming her hands at the fire. ‘Nancy gave her a lift home.’

  Kitty is the wife of Seamie Devine, a retired postman. They live in the same estate as Lesley.

  ‘How’s Seamie keeping?’ my father says.

  ‘No complaints, she says. He’s doing a bit of taxiing at the weekends.’

  ‘Ah, good man, Seamie. And how’s Kitty herself ?’

  ‘Full of news, as it happens.’

  ‘Aye, typical. As Seamie used to say when he’d spin a yarn in the office: that’s the gossip according to Kitty.’

  ‘Turn that down, Frances,’ my mother says, nodding at the TV.

  I know rightly what’s coming next.

  ‘You never told us your friend Lesley got expelled.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I keep my eye on the screen.

  ‘My God,’ my father says. ‘She didn’t, did she?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say flatly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For smoking in the chapel and drinking altar wine, the brazen so and so,’ my mother tells him. ‘I always said that one was a rare piece of work.’

  ‘Is that right, Frances?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘God, that’s a terra. Such a thing to do! Has she no respect at all at all?’

  ‘Respect!’ my mother says, throwing her eyes to heaven. ‘Obviously not, because she’s expecting as well.’

  The following Wednesday, I hang around the courtyard waiting for Johnny. I need to know what’s going on: if he’s been talking to her, if it’s his, if he knows, whether or not they’re still together, if she’s OK. I need something, any little scrap of news. I feel cut off. I want to be her friend again. She needs me.