One Foot Wrong

by Laguna, Sofie

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what I am asking you. The devil hasn’t been back since you came. What can I do for you?’ I didn’t know what she wanted me to say so I didn’t say anything. ‘Hester, what?’ I wished there to be an answer. I didn’t know what she wanted. There was no answer in me. ‘There must be something I can do for you. You saved me, what can I do for you?’

  I started to cry. I didn’t know what Norma wanted. The crying was loud. I don’t know why it was there. I waited for Norma to hit me with her hand. Norma leaned over and put her arms around my neck. She put her head on mine. Our two hard heads pressed together, it was warm in between. I heard the sound of hair rubbing hair. My crying kept coming. ‘I’m sorry, Hester,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  When my crying stopped and we looked up, two men in the television were patting the dogs that had jumped through the hoop of fire. One of the dogs had a burnt tail. They gave that one a gold coin on a ribbon and a biscuit.

  Norma told me about going on a boat. She said she did the cooking and every night she looked in a book for what to make and every night it was different. Sometimes it was pie with onion and bacon, sometimes it was roast pork with crackling, sometimes it was apple pie with cream. She said she could see the ocean through the window as the boat sailed along and she used to stir in time to the rocking of the boat. Everything was salty and she saw a whale, which is the biggest of the fish, too big to belong to any person. It belonged instead to the ocean. I asked, ‘How many animals fit on the boat?’

  ‘Just my brother and a crew of six. That was enough.’

  I lay in my bed the boat. We sailed over the seas to my grandmother in the water cemetery. Headstones floated on the surface of the sea. When my grandmother saw Norma and me she said, ‘At last.’ She climbed on my bed and we sailed away while Norma stirred the custard in time to the waves that rocked us.

  When I woke in the night, tree was standing by my bed. Her branches touched the ceiling and her dry leaves crackled softly in the small breeze that blew. ‘Hester – pretty, beautiful, Hester,’ she whispered.

  I got out of bed and put my arms around her. She was cool and rough; the lines in her body told me stories through my skin. If tree kept growing she would knock down the walls and push off the roof as she reached for the land of the sun. If tree kept growing Renton would fall. ‘Hello, tree.’

  ‘Hester,’ tree said. Her voice had a lonely tear falling because back at One Cott Road she only had Boot’s empty wet shirts to talk to.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Hester, come home to us,’ she said.

  ‘But I am here, in Renton.’

  ‘Ask Norma. Come home – just for one night.’

  ‘But we are in Renton.’

  I lay back down and closed my eyes. Tree’s leaves crackled as they sang a sleep song just for me. ‘Ask Norma,’ she said one more time before it was morning and she was gone.

  I sat beside Norma at the breakfast table and listened to the sound of bacon being chewed. One lady was asleep with bacon in her hand. Norma took the bacon from the lady’s fingers, put it in her mouth and winked at me as she chewed.

  I put down my bread and I said, ‘Norma, can you take me home?’ A black bird hopped onto the table and pecked at Rita’s crumbs. She didn’t stop him, she was talking to a friend you couldn’t see. ‘What a man you are, what a great, great man you are!’

  Norma turned to me. ‘What?’ she asked. I could see the bacon turning somersaults in her mouth.

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘I can’t take you home.’

  Nurse Clegg poured the pink water into our cups. ‘Take me home, Norma.’ I said when Nurse Clegg was past my cup.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘They don’t want you at home.’ Norma licked bacon oil from her fingers. ‘Home’s over.’

  ‘Take me home.’

  ‘If they wanted you at home, you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Home for one night,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One night.’

  Norma shook her head. ‘You don’t make any sense.’

  ‘One night,’ I said again.

  ‘I heard you,’ she said, so I stayed quiet. Norma had heard me.

  I was in the games-without-the-games room, making pictures with closed eyes, when Pebblinghaus came to me. Her metal hair shone like a fork after a polish. ‘Hester, you are to be moved into the dormitory. There is no need for you to be isolated at nights any longer. Nurse Clegg will take you to your new bed tonight. I am sure the transition won’t cause you any problems.’

  Spoon whispered, ‘Good.’

  Norma asked, ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘Take me home – one night.’

  ‘Not that again.’ Norma walked to the other side and leaned on the wall with one foot up. I watched her, and waited. I sent pictures to her down the rope; me and Norma in the sea, me and Norma in the forest, me and Norma going home for one night.

  Nurse Clegg took me to my new bed. It was in a row of other beds with the long bump of a lady sleeping in every one. The bumps rose and fell like waves on a sea of sleep. ‘In you get,’ said Nurse Clegg. ‘Quietly now.’ I climbed into the bed and lay on my back with the blanket tight around my chest. The music of sleep was all around me. It was pipes, trumpets and whistles. Sleep pulled me into the dark sea; a fish face swam close to mine and then Norma started to talk, pulling me back up to the surface. ‘Go away,’ she said, ‘please go away!’ I could smell bacon left alone too long, and floor-water. It was the devil coming. ‘No, no, please go away!’ said Norma. I pulled back my blanket and quiet as Cat mouse-hunting I crept to her bed before he got there. ‘It’s Hester,’ I whispered.

  ‘Hester, Hester.’ Norma held on to me. I turned to the devil; he had black hands like in The Abridged Picture Bible when Jesus faced the tower. His ears were hard sticks. He was hungry for Norma. ‘No,’ I told him. He showed me his teeth. ‘No.’ He shook his head, his eyes flashed white at me. ‘No,’ I said again. He scratched at the air in front of my face and made a low growl. ‘No,’ I said. He looked at me with his head on the side. ‘Go away,’ I whispered. The devil blinked two times then he turned and left the room.

  ‘Only you can save me.’ Norma wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Please, take me home for one night,’ I said, then I crept, quiet as Cat mouse-hunting, back to bed.

  When I woke again there were dry leaves across my pillow, one on my cheek. I rubbed my eyes. Tree was making a visit. My friends hung from her branches by ropes knotted round their necks. There was spoon and broom; there was axe, handle and pencil. They turned very slowly in the breeze that blew. ‘Come back,’ they called. ‘Come home.’

  Norma and me looked out the window from our two chairs. Cloud moved, showing sun then hiding sun. Our two paths of smoke curled up from our mouths and twisted around each other. Norma’s butterfly opened and closed its wings in time to the sun’s coming and going. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please take me home.’

  ‘They don’t want you, they’ll send you straight back.’

  ‘Please take me home.’

  ‘How can I take you home?’

  ‘Take me home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One night.’

  ‘What do you mean, one night?’

  ‘Home for one night.’

  ‘How can I take you home?’

  ‘You can take me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You can do it.’

  ‘What do you want to do in one night?’

  ‘Go home.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘For one night.’

  ‘What do you want to do in one night, Hester? What do you think you’re going to find?’

  ‘My wish.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘But�
�’

  ‘I will find it.’

  ‘Find what?’

  ‘My wish.’

  ‘Will anyone know you’ve come home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How will you get inside to find your wish?’

  ‘The hidden key.’

  ‘Oh God, Hester.’

  ‘Quiet as a mouse.’

  ‘What will you be looking for?’

  A black bird flew in a circle over Norma’s head. He gave a hungry squawk. ‘Home.’ It was my last word.

  It was night and Norma came to my bed. ‘Let me in,’ she whispered. I lifted the blanket and Norma climbed in. ‘I don’t care if they catch me,’ she said. ‘You stop the devil in his tracks.’ She lay close and it got warmer in the bed as our breath mixed. Norma rolled onto her back and told me what a waterfall is. She said you stand under it on a smooth grey rock and the water splashes down on your head and it never empties, it pours and pours. It pours over your hair and pulls it back off your face. It splashes onto your eyes and when you open them you see everything for the first time and it glows with the newness. The water pours over your front and arms and back and legs and all your old skin is washed away over rocks and a new skin comes from underneath. It is pink and clean because nobody has touched it or lied to it or used it. The old skin is washed down to a pool where it drops to the bottom and become pebbles that make a round floor to hold the water from the waterfall. She said she went to a waterfall when she was a girl. Harrison was there, she said. ‘All my best memories my brother is there.’

  Her voice whispering in the dark made pictures of the waterfall shine above our heads. We didn’t speak for a long time as the water fell down over us. Just as I was going to sleep I asked her, ‘What is a brother?’

  ‘A brother is from the same blood.’

  ‘Am I your brother?’ I asked her.

  ‘No, silly.’ She put her arm across me, ‘You are my sister.’

  ‘Will you take me home?’ I said. Norma didn’t answer that question.

  We slept and in the morning a blue shoes woke us and said, ‘Bloody hell, you two.’

  My friends called to me all the time and every voice was mixed with tears. Broom told me he couldn’t sweep; the dust flew out from under him and wouldn’t stay in a pile. Spoon said she had no strength to push the meat around. Axe told me that when he went to chop the wood fell off the block and wouldn’t stay still. Handle was stiff and wouldn’t turn, and back door wouldn’t open. Table said her knees were weak. Tree cried. She said, ‘Come home, ask Norma, ask Norma.’

  ‘But Norma said no,’ I told her.

  ‘Ask again,’ she said, then kept up her crying.

  I went to Norma’s bed, ‘Norma?’ I whispered.

  She woke up. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Norma, will you help me?’ Help is what Jesus gave to the hungry. He said Mary, I forgive you and Mary and Jesus stood under a waterfall together. He set her free, he led the people out, he helped everyone nailed to the cross to climb down. He gave them an orange to eat in the desert. In The Abridged Picture Bible the desert was yellow with a camel and nothing else. The sun burned down and Jesus changed the desert into paradise with a green leaf.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Help me.’ Tree was using my mouth as her crying hole.

  ‘Ssshhh. Hester, stop crying, what is the matter?’

  ‘Help me.’ Tree kept crying through the hole.

  ‘I want to help you. Please stop crying.’

  ‘Help me.’

  ‘I want to help you. Stop crying or a blue shoes will take you to isolation.’

  ‘Please, please, help me.’ Tree’s long moan came out my mouth.

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Take me home.’

  ‘Hester …’

  ‘You can do it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Do it. Help me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘Alright, alright. I will try and get you home. Now be quiet.’ Tree stopped crying and went back to sleeping in the garden. Grey air that had been stuck down in the deepest part since I left One Cott Road came out of my nose and mouth.

  I told my friends I was coming home. They said, ‘But are you? Are you? When are you? If you are, then when when when?’

  ‘I don’t know when.’

  Axe spun on his head. ‘I don’t know is not good enough!’

  ‘I don’t know is nothing,’ said spoon, jumping from the shelf. Pumpkin hit the walls.

  ‘We need to know exactly when. When you will come. When?’

  ‘But I don’t know.’

  ‘Ask Norma,’ said tree softly. My friends filled all the spaces. Food wouldn’t go in. I couldn’t close my eyes; they were stretched as wide as I could get them to make room for my friends.

  ‘Norma, when?’ I asked her in the Airing Court.

  ‘This is stupid,’ she said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘This is dumb.’

  ‘But you said yes.’

  ‘I had to get you to shut up. I had to say yes, but it’s stupid. How can you go home?’

  I vomited onto her feet. I held my hands to my ears as handle shouted, ‘I was your first friend, before Mary, before Mog, before Norma with a K, and you aren’t coming! Traitor!’ Handle started to cry. I sat in the games-without-the-games room. A lady in the corner was hitting her head against the wall. She wore a helmet. I saw but I couldn’t hear the sound of her head hitting because my friends from One Cott Road were too loud. Nurse Clegg and blue shoes moved their mouths; they looked at me and waved their arms in the air. I couldn’t hear them and I didn’t know what they wanted. One blue shoes gave me a push in the back. The river of blood broke its banks, spraying out my fingers wrapped around the neck of a blue shoes. A needle went deep in my bone and I woke up in isolation. There was no face on the wall with hands to count as they turned. I lay in the bed and counted nothing at all. Was it one day that I lay there? Was it a single tick? Was it eighteen years? Blue shoes came into the room. They strapped me to the bed with brown belts and then one blue shoes rubbed oil onto both sides of my head and put a needle in my bone. Cloud came out of the sky through a small window and started to fill the room from the floor up. Another blue shoes put wires to both sides of my head, where the oil was. A man stood near a box. He said, ‘Set for operation.’ The world lit up and sent me stiff. Then it went black. Everything finished.

  When I came out there were blankets of cloud around me. I could reach out through the cloud but nobody could reach in to touch me. A blue shoes sat me on a chair. Ladies moved around me. Norma came over; she took my hand but I couldn’t feel it because of the cloud blanket – I could only see it.

  ‘Hester, I am sorry. Can you forgive me?’ I looked out through the window. The sun had roads coming out from his face like the hands came out from the face of the clock. I watched the roads turn as they came through the window and passed over my leg. ‘Hester, speak to me. I broke a promise to you and I am sorry. Say something.’ In Norma’s eyes there was water. Behind the water, behind the eye, Mary waited.

  ‘What happened to you? Where are you?’ The light was moving up from my foot to my knee. It was a hand from the clock of the sun as it measured time passing from eternity. ‘Hester. It is terrible without you. I am sorry. I will get you home. I will do everything I can to get you home, if that is what you want.’ The sun hit me full in my face.

  Spoon lifted her toes and danced around the bowl, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ Axe jumped and spun on his sharp shiny head, ‘Chop! Chop! Chop!’ Broom laughed his way across the dusty floor. ‘Sweep! Sweep! Sweep!’

  I turned to Norma. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Harrison is coming again,’ she said. ‘I’m going to ask him to help.’ She took my hand; it felt warm and joined me to the living Norma. ‘Which blue shoes am I going to have to fuck for this?’ She smiled at me, and wi
nked. Her tooth gaps showed.

  It was a Monday and Harrison was making his visit soon. Norma and me walked in time around the Airing Court. ‘I’m going to ask Harrison to leave a car waiting for us. Sunday nights it’s only blue shoes – Nurse Clegg is off duty, that’s when we’ll do it, next Sunday. Mill Park, right? I’m going to try to get us out the back, through the kitchen down to where the garbage goes.’ I watched another chariot disappear down the road outside the wire. ‘I don’t want this to get us into trouble. I want to stay at Renton. This is the only place I’m safe – nowhere else – so nothing can go wrong.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If it fucks up, if they make me leave, I’ll kill myself. And if they make you leave I’ll kill myself too.’

  ‘Nothing will go wrong.’

  Norma held my hand tight. ‘I’m glad I’m helping you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  She let go of my hand. ‘I have to fuck a blue shoes to get the key for the kitchen. I’m going to steal it from him.’ Norma scratched at the small streets cut into her arms, knocking down five houses and a school. She looked across the Airing Court where a tall blue shoes with a snake on his arm stopped a fight between Mrs D and Annie. Norma knew a tree lived in his trousers with keys dangling from its branches. ‘I don’t know why you want this so much. Those blue shoes stink.’ She snorted and I heard Mary laughing.

  Suddenly my friends spoke so loud that I couldn’t hear Norma when she talked. I saw her mouth moving but all I could hear was table, axe, Cat, tree, spoon, and handle calling me, ‘Hester! Hester!’

  ‘I’m coming,’ I tried to tell them. ‘I’m coming.’ But I could only whisper because I didn’t want the blue shoes to put a needle in the bone and I didn’t want Pebblinghaus to put me back in isolation where I couldn’t hear Norma breathing at night.

  ‘It’s alright, Hester. It’s alright. We’re going. I’m taking you. Just forget it for now. Look.’ She opened her hand and showed me a red beetle with black spots. ‘She came from the outside. This lady beetle came a long way just to meet us.’ Norma turned her hand, and we watched the lady beetle walking around Norma’s hand, up her arm and across the streets of the towns on her wrists. Then the lady beetle spread her wings and flew out of the towns and through the wire in the fence. Norma lifted her arms. ‘Fly,’ she said, ‘fly.’ I lifted my arms and flew after Norma, three times around the wire.