The Heaven I Swallowed

by Rachel Hennessy

  I looked at the letter in my lap, trying to ignore the appalling language. A miracle she was able to write at all—more than likely a relative or friend had written it for her. This consoled me. Mary’s mother probably had a brood of children around her, a tribe of kids crawling over her. She could live with one less.

  ‘Shall I keep the letter?’ Father Benjamin asked. He was watching me intently. He did not make a move to take the paper. Settled deep in his armchair, he appeared to have no energy to make such a gesture. He hadn’t drunk his tea.

  ‘No,’ I replied, glancing towards the fireplace. ‘I’ll look after it.’

  ‘Whatever you feel is right,’ he said and closed his eyes like a benediction.

  †

  Relations. Fathers, mothers, aunties, appearing then disappearing. I decided that my original abandonment was preferable—no conscious rejection, only the swift hand of Death snatching away my parents, and the shelter of the Sisters until I was eighteen. Wasn’t it easier having no one left to blame? To accept you are a creature of your own devices, without a blood tie to tether you to a grubby line of ancestors who, in all likelihood, would not want you?

  How fortuitous it was for Jane Eyre when, after running away from Thornfield, she stumbled out of the rain into the shelter of a family who turn out to be her relatives. What an amazing chance! I can recall looking out the windows of the convent on wet days and wondering if I did the same, if I followed the wildness of my heart, would I also fall upon kindly strangers who would transform into my long-lost cousins? What I could never understand was Jane’s ability to forgive Mrs Reed on her deathbed, the woman who had sent her out into the world without a word of warmth.

  †

  I returned home. I had left Mary alone while visiting Father Benjamin, something I had not done since she ran away. It was a test and as I pulled the car into the drive I felt a turning in my stomach with the possibility she would not be there.

  I switched off the engine and sat staring at my father-in-law’s wool, ratty and thin, against the front window. My hands on the steering wheel were bare; I’d forgotten my driving gloves and decided staining white dress-gloves with leather was not worth the few people who might see my skin, still free of age spots. I dreaded the day they would appear and brand me as truly old. For now, I still had beautiful, smooth hands. For a brief time, they had stroked the hard skin of a man, and had run through my freshly washed hair, the hair of a woman worth watching in the bathtub. Fred had insisted on invading my baths at night and, eventually, I had stopped protesting. After all, we were married and trying for a child. Even still, I worried about whether God would have approved, if He knew how strongly my heart was in it, how hard I found to be without it.

  Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day. But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.

  A quote from the Bible read out at one of the widows’ lunches. All the women in black had nodded their heads in agreement as if they were more than willing to forgo every­thing, everything for these words of miserable consolation. How could this be enough? Supplication and prayers night and day? My hands gripped the steering wheel with the frustration of it. What I would give to be allowed to yell and shout my disappointment.

  It was the letter from Mary’s mother that had brought this all back. Worlds created and torn apart by the words of careless people; people who never thought of what they were destroying, the hopes they were erasing.

  I opened the front door, the letter inside my handbag. Mary would not look there and, even if she did, there was no reason for her to suspect the letter had anything to do with her. Despite this, I was strangely nervous to see her. The house was quiet and I knew immediately she was not there. I could not feel the presence which had become so familiar to me.

  Holding back my panic I went to the back door and, with a feeling like ecstasy, heard splashes coming from the laundry outside. She was doing the washing in the tub, as I had asked her to, humming to herself what sounded like a hymn.

  My shoes were loud on the cement path. By the time I stood in the laundry doorway, she had stopped singing and ceased scrubbing to face me.

  ‘I am almost finished, Auntie Grace,’ she said.

  ‘That’s good, Mary.’

  I could tell she was unsure whether to go on, which would mean having her back to me, or to wait for me to tell her to continue. I felt the power and the sorrow of this. I turned and left her to it.

  †

  That night, I lay awake. I had snuck into Mary’s room while she was finishing the washing and added her mother’s letter to the pile of Fred’s letters under the locked roll top of his desk. It felt strange to be doing something clandestine in my own home and when I closed the desk I saw that my hands had disturbed the dust so it would be clear to Mary I had been inside.

  I lay in bed trying to keep an image of Mary’s mother out of my head. When she did come, I tried to make her as ugly as possible, fat and yellow-eyed with missing teeth and sagging breasts. I did not really know what one of them would look like; I had only seen men in parks, and photos in the papers were of children or missionary girls, all in proper dress. It was hard to imagine how they would get along in normal life, how they would do their hair, what kind of house they would keep. This is what I had to keep in my mind: she could not be as good for Mary as I was. The clothes I could give her, the way of speaking, a chance to read and write, domestic knowledge, the reining in of her baser instincts.

  But this was also the problem. While I could not see Mary’s mother, what I could easily picture was Mary herself, breaking open Fred’s desk and riffling through those letters. Would her basic reading lessons let her understand them? No, even though I had given her a children’s Bible and a Girls’ Own Annual, she merely flicked through them, looking at the pictures. She did not yet have control over words.

  And what of the night on the back steps? Was all that forgotten? How long did the young hold onto things? Not as long as when you grew up, surely. I would hate for any child to have the recall I did: scenes, feelings, the colour of a dress, the exact criss-cross patterning of Fred’s newly grown moustache. In contrast, I had no image of the parents who raised me for two years, not even the barest flash, as if that dual beginning never existed. I had longed for stories of my family. Did Mary have such stories? What did she remember? What did she hold against me?

  I got out of bed and went to my wardrobe to find my ­collection of holy cards. It was not a large pile, about twenty or so, kept tied with a ribbon on the top shelf, given to me as a child by Sister Gabrielle.

  In contrast to the dreaded Sister Clare, I believe Sister Gabrielle liked me. I cannot say she loved me. An ancient woman with a growing hump from scoliosis, I have no memories of her caresses or physical affection. Her appearance—her deformity given more prominence by an ill-fitting habit—made many of the other girls afraid of her but I remember each month her handing me a holy card in the years after Auntie Iris moved north, taking away my only opportunity for excursions.

  There are higher powers that love and judge us, Sister Gabrielle had said, giving me the miniature renditions of the Holy Family, the thinness of the cardboard a miracle in itself.

  I riffled through to find my favourite: a triptych titled ‘How to Say the Rosary’. On the front panel, the sketched rosary beads had lines running off them at appropriate points with directives on the repetition of the Our Father and the Hail Mary and the Glory Be. They surrounded a white and blue robed Holy Mother incased in an oval of gold leaf, her head further encircled by a halo of stars. I unfolded the card. Each panel explained the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries, tying birth, death and resurrection to ten beads of polished rosewood. My Rosary beads sat on the dresser, next to the porcelain make-up set from Fred. They had not been a gift, I bought them myself as soon as I earned wages, replacing the flimsy set I had received at First Holy Communion. I did not p
ick them up. It had been a long time since I had said the Rosary and, as hard as I might try, I could not bring myself to say it now.

  I replaced the ribbon around the holy cards, tying it into a pretty bow, and put them back inside the wardrobe, tokens of a better time.

  †

  The next day I found an opportunity to check Fred’s desk while Mary was in the bathroom. It had not been tampered with and I was pleased I had begun to let the girl wash herself; it gave me these moments to inspect her room, as well as allowing her to take responsibility for her own appearance. She seemed to relish it, so much so that I had lain down a time limit, not only for the sake of the hot water but to ensure I was not encouraging vanity. A fine line was always to be walked: to take her away from the disadvantages of what she was, while never actually letting her forget exactly what she was.

  On the bedside table I noticed a pile of gum nuts and rust-coloured leaves. They did not seem to be laid out in any ­particular pattern and I could not tell what the attraction of the collection was. I would have swept them away as debris, mess that brought dirt into the house. Even the day before I may have done so.

  ‘I am finished, Auntie Grace.’ Mary stood at the door, her hair damp.

  ‘Good,’ I said, pulling myself tall to ensure she did not think I had to sneak around. I had every right to be in her room, every right to examine her possessions.

  ‘What are these, Mary?’ I asked, gesturing towards the table.

  ‘Just … bits I picked up,’ she replied, tentatively.

  ‘Well, clean them up. Put them in piles or rows or something. They look like rubbish.’

  She moved towards the table and pushed the nuts into a heap, laid the leaves next to each other, one after the other. Tokens.

  ‘Like this, Auntie Grace?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, gently.

  The morning sun had found its way into the room and, once again, I noticed the gloss of Mary’s hair. She stood in a block of light spreading over her bed and the ageing quilt, and the dust motes in the room seemed to rise up and prance around her.

  †

  Dear Grace,

  There is a matter I need to tell you about, though I don’t really want to. Once a coward, always a coward. My only excuse for what I have to tell you is that, after hearing your news, after hearing that all this time I have been loving an imaginary child, I had to find some way to console myself. Perhaps you will already have guessed. I will try to explain, the best I can.

  Japan is a country like no other I have ever been to. I expected to find a way to release all my anger here, to revenge all the dead on the weakest men of all, the survivors. But it is hard to hate the defeated. There is no arrogance here, only shame. Though I do not think it is shame for what they have been party to, but rather shame for not having succeeded, it still makes them pitiful. For some of our boys, hatred towards them still bubbles away, but the day-to-day life here, in burnt-out cities, the hardship they face with quiet dignity, for me, this makes it almost impossible to maintain animosity. And, despite all that has happened here, there is beauty. They say that some people are born in the wrong land and can spend their whole lives looking for their rightful birthplace. Until I arrived here, I did not know that was me. Japan has begun to feel like a home in a way that my own country no longer does.

  How can I explain, Grace, except to say that the reflection and quiet grace of the Japanese women stands in such contrast to the loud brashness of my countrymen? Despite our victory, I feel sorrier for our boys who cavort and carry on as if they have inherited the earth. This consoles me when I feel any guilt about my growing love. It often feels like a betrayal of all the boys who I saw killed (I think of Private L. who was sent home with severe wounds and died not long after, swearing to God that there was no glory). It is hard, though, to reconcile the madness of Jap soldiers with the elegance of Japanese civilians. I do not dream of the jungle days anymore, only months ago now but really a lifetime ago and I do not imagine being troubled by the past. The weeping trees here did not shoot my friends, the gardens and shrines that survived the bombings sing of peace, and the dark-eyed women reach out their gentle hands. Which brings me to the matter.

  I must confess, at first, that their yellow skin was quite repulsive to me, with its look of foreignness and sickness. They are so small compared to us and littleness has not been attractive to me in the past. I tell you this, Gracie, because I want you to know that I did not go in search of her, nor did I want to feel the way I do about her. Fraternisation is not encouraged, of course, but I am certainly not the only one to find my way to such sources of solace. I will not offend you with the details. How separate our lives have become, with so many un-told stories, so many sentences blacked out. You did not even write at what time the baby was lost, or if you knew if it was a boy or a girl.

  I can only apologise again and again for my inability to be the husband you deserve. How sorry I am cannot be conveyed in words. Still, I feel this is not only the best for me but, ultimately, the best for you. To return to you would be to engage in a falsehood I cannot countenance. Though your God would, no doubt, think it the right thing to do, I cannot see it as proper, or moral, or good.

  I will continue to support you financially and I know that a legal divorce will not be an option for you. Our separation is, however, now official. I can only hope that your anger towards me will, eventually, be tempered by forgiveness and compassion.

  Sincerely,

  Fred

  †

  On my last day at Our Lady of Perpetual Hope High School there was a small ceremony to mark my departure. I was given a bunch of violets and a Complete Works of Shakespeare that smelt musty when I received it and has since become almost untouchable. I wondered if they had dragged it out of the library basement because I was not deemed worthy of the effort of purchasing a gift. For so many years I had worked at instilling enthusiasm for words into girls who had no desire to read, girls who fell in love with Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights only because they dreamt of their own moody, silent man pledging life-time devotion (I had had to point out to them that the downfall of Heathcliff stemmed from his origins, or lack of them: the orphan forever tainted). I had worked hard, and thought I deserved more.

  Nothing, of course, was said of the reason I was leaving; it was all ‘valuable contribution’, ‘sadly missed’ and ‘good luck in the future’, the speeches addressed to ‘Mrs Grace Smith’. In the early days, my special girls had called me ‘Mrs Rosie’ because of the rosewater scent I used to wear. What the other ones called me—the not-so special girls—I never knew. Gradually, I had evoked enough fear for them to be careful not to let any unfavourable nicknames slip out, though I don’t doubt they existed. The Physical Education teacher was known as ‘The Oak Tree’ and the mousy Maths instructor was ‘Mrs Squeak’. Gradually, my special girls had reduced in number.

  The farewell was held in the teachers’ room with only the head girl there to represent the students. Mrs Gladwin, the librarian, had baked her traditional plate of lamingtons, presented on the same serving tray brought out when other teachers had left to get married or have children.

  When I married Fred, there was a similar expectation I too would leave and, in hindsight, it would have been a much better time to go. Fred had wanted me to stay at work, though, the war already bringing the threat of his departure. He did not want me to be stuck alone in the house without him. He brought no replacement family and, like me, he had not managed to accumulate friends outside those who worked with him. This made it easier, of course, when it ultimately came to my decision to change the words of my own story, to change desertion to death.

  You are dead to me, I wrote to him and tried desperately not to picture the slant-eyed woman who would receive the envelope. Always trying to keep the images out of my head. Always having to struggle with knowing the way he would look, the hurt inside him when he read of my plan to kill him off. That he agreed to it was a clear sign
of his guilt, that the black-haired vixen did not have him completely in her power. He had gone to see the land that has caused us so much misery, to find out what would breed such fierce hate, and somehow the blossoms had softened him, the curving bridges had lead him to places I would not have thought ­possible. No matter how much I tried not to imagine, I could feel them arm in arm, hear her soft, broken English, see her kneeling at his feet with tea flavoured by spices that would turn my stomach.

  Perhaps it was a kind of madness that overtook me then, determined to not look the fool, to be given some credit for my war effort. I had suffered through the possibility of death, hadn’t I? What difference would it make if the death was not a complete one? Once someone is gone from your life, they may as well have no body, nor soul, for nothing belongs to you anymore. They become dust, a swirl of memories and half-lost truths and imagined knowledge and dreamed futures. They are gone, taken by a wind you cannot name.

  I did not think of the real, glorious dead. I took my lie and swallowed it, entering the school one day in black, telling the tragic news that my husband, formerly alive and well somewhere in the Pacific, was actually Missing in Action, presumed dead. Those who had been struggling with my bout of ‘problems’—the long, unexplained absences from classes when I simply could not stand the looks of expectation from the girls, wanting me to have all the answers when, after Fred’s letter, I could not explain anything—became suddenly sympathetic and the whispers I was drinking stopped.