Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

by Ruth Gilligan

  ‘Of course, it’s a Christian thing, lad… So I don’t know if you…’

  But Lally’s warning didn’t matter to me now, his hesitations or his explanations, because already my mind was reaching for other things instead; things much closer to home.

  To be honest, I was only surprised I hadn’t thought of them before.

  Because hadn’t Rabbi Hart told us how Lashon Ha-ra used to cause people to contract leprosy? Rashes and sores from speaking ill; puss that oozed and dripped? But didn’t he also say that the only cure was to immerse these people in the River Jordan; wash them off and make them clean again?

  As I remembered it now, I felt my smile begin to flare – a rash of its own going hot across my skin. Because fucking hell, I realised – this could actually be it! The thing I had been looking for these past few days! Or really, for these past few years, ever since my botched Bar Mitzvah – another Jewish ritual to start me off again.

  Lally must have sensed my excitement, greedy now for the sparkle as he rambled on, flinging as much information as he could. ‘…and Sister Monica will be sending the permission forms out this week, so you’ll be needing to get your parents to sign…’

  At this, however, I had to stop; to rearrange myself on the stool. The risk of the whole thing toppling flat on its face.

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture my father opening the letter from the nuns, a knife to slit the glob of glue apart. But it was no good; the truth too blunt. Because as soon as he read it I knew he would get angry – wouldn’t see any connections, any continuities at all, only a shameless imposition. How dare they? Trying to bombard us with their Christian ‘mumbo jumbo’! While my mother would just stand there in the background trying to calm him; to suppress the gorgeous ghost of a smile.

  But the flicker of that ghost was enough – the gorgeousness I was so close to losing forever.

  No, I knew now that this was the only way.

  So that night after my session with Alf I sneaked away to Sister Monica’s office, right at the front of the House. The place stank of fags. A pack sat open on the desk, poised for the morning guzzle; a kiss like a lover, tongue and all, giving it the Marilyn pout. Next to them on the desk sat the envelopes, arranged in a little mound, all written and ready to be posted – a pile of miracles stacked high and not even a weight to hold them down.

  I shuffled through ’til I found the one with my parents’ address, the lines that meant home. I opened it.

  31st July. The Gleann na nGealt Outing.

  I HEREBY GIVE MY CONSENT:

  ____________________________

  I took the pen from my pocket and forged my father’s signature.

  Joseph Sweeney

  I curled the ‘y’ at the end for a flourish and blew on the ink to stop it from sweating, or worse, from crying off. I looked at it, marvelling at my handiwork; the sheer accuracy of the lie – still good for something yet!

  And the following morning I cornered Sister Frances and slipped her the envelope, the gob of it sealed slick. She looked confused at first, then panicked as she realised – she had helped Alf before, but never me, at least not directly. But it only took one proper look to see just how much I meant it – unholy, really, to even try and turn me down – so she just nodded and folded the letter away, her lipstick-bright lips not uttering a word.

  For the rest of July, I was a very different kind of lad.

  By night, I slept like a babe. By day, I walked with my head up and my shoulders unscrunched, the full six and a half foot and nothing less. There were bones in me that hadn’t been straight in years. And I think I walked a little quicker too, the momentum now of everything that had been set in motion.

  Every time I passed Frances in the corridor I had to stifle a kiss.

  But even with the plans afoot, still the gangle of me couldn’t help but feel a bit pathetic – not quite equipped for the massive leap I was about to take. So one afternoon out in the yard I decided to try something else.

  It was hard to believe the nuns were still insisting on our daily hour out of doors. By now the weather was merciless, not a scrap of shade in sight, the sun scalding the bare skulls a jaunty spectrum of scarlet. I looked around. Some even had little blisters that popped.

  Usually I would spend my Yard Hour loitering by the weed beds, observing the scene from the side. Or I would hover near Alf’s table while he got cocky with checkers, his mind still firmly on the ball there. Today, though, I thought of him somewhere else.

  I pictured him over in England at those training camps, preparing for the War; knackering himself out to be sure he was ready for when he finally made it across to Europe. So I found myself a patch of earth away from the others, lowered myself slowly, face first, and pressed. Up. And then down. Up down up down up. Working my shoulders and the muscles along the length of my spine, the pathetic scatter of them that barely existed only twinged something vicious at the contortion.

  I could manage no more than five minutes at a time, the cramp kicking in after that. Sister Monica watched on wry-eyed, refusing me a drink. Sister Frances didn’t dare object. But I didn’t let the dehydration matter, or the stiffness that gripped my bones the following morning, only pressed on the next afternoon too. I dug my oversized toes into the dirt to anchor me in place; dusted off two patches of ground for the pads of my hands, savouring the feel of the earth on my skin, my regulation shirt mottling up with the black of it while cakes of yellow hardened underneath my arms.

  Every night I left a stain in my sheets that looked like a silhouette, the shape of my body filled in at last.

  And I didn’t stop. Five minutes became ten. Every day counting down, becoming more and more certain of my plan – so simple and so mad it had to work. I flexed my arm to see. A bulge was beginning to form. At this rate, I would be doing laps of that lake – swim for hours and hours until every trace of my mother’s shame had been flushed far away.

  Plus, I decided that as well as building me up, it was probably good practice to be baking myself black in this heat – sure, wasn’t it going to be even more beastly over in Israel? The Promised Land and the Promised Sunshine, just a boat ride away; me and Ima in our bathing suits, lying side by side, flailing arms and legs to make angels of the sand. I thought of that now as I pressed on, going so low into the dust it almost kissed my lips. I remembered how Alf once told me it was better to be buried face down, just to be sure.

  But the mention of his name was the only thing that didn’t quite work; the weakest point in my body’s plan. Because despite everything – despite the way I had started to grow and grow – I had noticed that actually, it seemed he might be doing the opposite.

  In the beginning, it had just been a couple of blips, the same sort of twitches as before.

  ‘Ah, what’s the name of…’

  ‘Jaysus, I know the word in Irish…’

  But as the month sodded on, the gaps in his mind had started to multiply. Whole phrases vanished and then whole chunks of them too, paragraphs of his memory that refused to come:

  ‘Where was it I grew up?’

  ‘What county was the bog in?’

  Like he had given so much to those jotter pages that suddenly, there was less and less of him left.

  ‘And Shmendrick, where… can you tell me where are me legs?’ He looked from his lap up to me, his eyes plumped wide with pure blankness. For the first time since I had known him, the shake in his hands had gone weirdly still.

  Mostly, I was able to ignore it. To find excuses. I told myself it was just the weather – sure, everyone was struggling to cope – he would be back to his old self as soon as the rain arrived. But then other possibilities started to niggle at me, little pricks on the back of my neck, so I pushed myself even harder in the muck. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Up down up down up. Saw stars at the corners of my face that burst in the air and leaked something
foul.

  One afternoon I went so far I thought I was going to be sick, a tidal wave of nausea that would either explode gobwards or shite out the other end. I weaved my way back to the bedroom for a lie-down, bouncing off the walls. I probably left a trail of stains as I went.

  When I reached the bedroom, Alf was already there. At the sound of me he looked up, squinting towards the light. His face was very wet around the edges.

  I stood in the doorway, giving his eyes a moment to find me. To click. When it arrived, I saw the recognition, the relief easing his features a bit. And then I saw the exhaustion take over, a frown that wilted right the way through his skin. ‘Doctor,’ he said eventually, a voice I could barely hear. ‘Doctor, I’m… I’m very tired.’

  And I remembered then the only story my father ever told me. It was a Jewish story, of course, about an angel of God who visits an unborn babby in the womb. Apparently he tells the child everything – all about the meaning of life and how the world works; about war and love and the sweetness of religion – and then just before he heads off again the angel touches the child, right below the snoz, and instantly it forgets everything it has learned; comes screaming into the world without a clue, only a dent on its face and a blind fucking panic.

  That night I didn’t wake Alf to take him out to the Virgin. Instead I went alone, all the way to Sister Monica’s office, where I rummaged ’til I found an unsent form; a spare one with the spaces left blank. I wrote his name at the top then jittered something illegible for the signature – I decided it only made sense that whoever was responsible for Alf would have a dose of the tremors too; a spastication that fizzed right through their genes.

  The following morning, Sister Frances glared bullets when I found her again, an anger that said I was really pushing my luck. But I didn’t care, because we had made it this far together now, my friend and me, so God knows we were going to make it out the other side.

  The bus jangled South like a cheap toy, a clank and rattle and every screw coming loose. It was five hours to Gleann na nGealt, a veiny trail of banjaxed roads that coursed through the countryside, ruts from other days.

  The driver had the radio on. Connie Francis. ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’

  We stopped three times along the way – twice for a communal piss in a ditch, hot steam off the brambles like they had been set alight, and then again for a flock of sheep, the manky fluff of them blocking the road like a cotton-wool stopper in a neck.

  Still the weather was killer, the heat even worse now that it was pinned down beneath the bus’s windows. And combined with the judder of the drive, it wasn’t long before the floor was puddled with sick, more like we were out at sea instead of down the backend of Ireland, headed dead to County Kerry.

  My own stomach pondered a chuck, though that was more nerves than anything else. I focused on the view for distraction, the déjà vu of hill and dale and bog.

  I thought of Alf and his lover, digging.

  He was sat in beside me, gripping the armrests like he might go flying at any moment. He had tried to tell the nuns that there must have been some mistake – that no one would have signed any form – but Sister Frances just smiled at him: ‘Don’t worry your head about it,’ and looked away out the window again, a sadness in her pretty face. Meanwhile, at the front of the bus Father Dwyer was trying to stand, the wobble of him struggling for balance. He barked at the driver to turn off the tunes, much to everyone’s dismay, and tried instead to give some kind of sermon, prayers and pontifications to prepare us all for the sacred day ahead.

  ‘We remember how John the Baptist said, “I baptise you with water…”’

  Down the back, I only half-heard, my mind already long gone. First it flickered to Rabbi Hart and his infamous spiel:

  Thou shalt never spread slander or tales amongst men. Keep your tongue from speaking guile.

  Then to Ima’s spiel:

  Shem, he wants us to go without you.

  Both of them as lethal whichever way you looked.

  And then there was another voice too, somewhere close by my face:

  ‘Shmendrick… Shmendrick, you’ve got to tell them I can’t go in. Sure, without me legs… I don’t remember how to swim.’

  And for a moment I felt like a total eejit, maybe even the selfish kind.

  Eventually we arrived. The driver opened the door and let the gush hiss out, yellow onto the grass.

  The place itself was scabbily unremarkable. To be honest, you might have missed it altogether were it not for the tiny car park and the crooked arrow with ‘HOLY WELL’ written across it. Only, some genius had swapped out the ‘E’ for an ‘i’ and added a ‘y’ at the end, so now it looked as if the place were some kind of hub for sanctified schlongs.

  The air was a twitch of midges that made me dizzy just to look, the view that never quite settled into itself.

  Sister Frances had hefted Alf into his wheelchair and now pushed him along the path.

  ‘Franny, I’m thirsty,’ he said as he shuddered over the divots. ‘Jaysus, why is the yard looking so bloody… green?’

  We ducked left and right through a straggle of trees, briars and nettles warning us off, before the path spread its legs and a sort of clearing arrived.

  My heart was going full pelt with every step. I could feel the pitter patter in my neck.

  It wasn’t much of a lake – you could have walked the perimeter in twenty minutes; could have even crawled it if you wanted to. Here on the bank, a few clumps of rushes had gathered and a single white cross had been spiked into the dirt, a devout slug smeared halfway up.

  I wondered what it would do if it ever made it to the top.

  It was one of the lads from the upstairs wards to go first. He was a friendly looking yoke, nothing overtly nuts, like, but apparently he was prone to having fits. And since the nuns took these to being moments of the devil, he had been sectioned away for the rest of his days. I heard he’d spazzed so hard one time he shat his pants and they didn’t let him wash for a week.

  Father Dwyer took charge of the proceedings, seedy with grins as he led the boyo to the edge. He mumbled a prayer before he sent him under, verbally at first but then with a shove of his wrist, submerging him all the way. Every one of us leaned in, staring down at the patch of bubbles, the scuzz of craziness washing away and marbling in spools up to the surface.

  The midges went apoplectic on the unbreathed air.

  When the scrawn emerged his clothes were slick against his skin, two salmon-coloured full stops poking out from his chest; a ­shrivelly lump curled down between his legs.

  But apart from the obscenity, and the violence of his shivers, the lad didn’t seem any different to before. Still as likely to spaz at any given moment, and no real way to tell, only to chuck him a filthy rag of a towel and send him shamefaced to the back of the line, people moving out of the way as if his failure were somehow contagious.

  I tried to catch his eye, but already it was long long gone.

  So the turns continued, dunk unto dunk, the awkward cluster of us hoping and praying that at any moment some miraculous creature would rise up out of the lake profaning in tongues and spouting the secrets of the universe. Only, after a while, the novelty began to wear off. The faith. Because the epileptics, the hysterics, the schizo­phrenics (both of them), all emerged again a little cleaner, yes, but nothing more. Even Tony declared the priest a ‘DIRTY CUNTLOVER!’ before his feet had found dry land again.

  But despite the persistence of madness all around, I remained totally convinced. Because there was something deep in me now that knew this was going to work – the cure I’d been gagging for all this gagged-up time.

  Shem, he wants us to go without you.

  Well, Abba could go away and shite, just as long as I could go along too; just as soon as I had sunk under this water here and washed myself clean, purging the truth and
opening my mouth and finally speaking some words.

  I paused. I realised I hadn’t even decided what the first ones might be.

  Can… can Alf come too?

  I looked around to find him again. He was over at the side staring at the base of a tree, its complex higgle of roots.

  But I supposed it didn’t matter what I said – sure, that wasn’t really the point – only that my speech would mean I could check myself out of Montague House, take my Ima’s hand and natter my way to Israel, knowing I hadn’t let her down. I would tear up my old flashcards and fling them overboard, a Hansel and Gretel trail through the sea for the fishies to swallow:

  I am lonely.

  Ima, what’s a soulmate?

  I’d do anything for you except un-youing you.

  ‘Right, Kikes – are ye having a lash or what?’

  When I looked up, it was my turn to swallow. Sister Monica stared straight at me, the butter-yellow canines visible even from here. I checked for Alf. Still he sat away at the side, this time with his finger outstretched, shaking from left to right. I didn’t know if it was a ‘no’ or just his twitch.

  ‘Not that it’ll be any use of course,’ Sister Monica continued, going smoochy on her fag. ‘No amount of lake is going to cure that stench.’

  As the laughter came from all around I stood impaled into the mud.

  The midges were famished now, vultures for the shave of my skull. And the eyes were greedy too, the whole gang of gombeens watching, waiting for me to move. To fail.

  A Jewie jumping on our bandwagon? Well, now I’ve heard it all.

  What do you reckon, 10–1 he doesn’t make it?

  Yes, I knew what they were thinking all right, the doubting pricks – eejits who thought their lot were the first to come up with miracles from dunking. But I knew otherwise; knew I was about to prove each and every one of them wrong.