by Pam Smy
I think something has shifted.
I packed a bag. Two apples, this diary, the tiny clothes I have been stitching for the puppet family I am making, and some pens. I locked my door behind me as quietly as possible, crept downstairs, and headed for the main door. And there she was.
We were face-to-face.
Her eyes were red. Her face was blotchy.
I stepped to one side.
She stepped in front of me.
I stepped aside again.
She stepped in front of me again. She was crying.
“You can’t go, Mary. Stay.”
She made to grab hold of the strap of my bag and I swung it away from her, not wanting to be touched by her, not after everything she had done. She lunged at my bag again. I spun it away from her. The contents scattered, skittering across the floor.
I scrabbled around at her feet, picking up the odd pen and my diary. She stood back, completely still, and watched me on my hands and knees. She said, “God, Mary, you’re pathetic.”
And then it happened. I had a flash of … I am not sure … Anger? Frustration? Whatever it was bubbled up inside me. The unfairness of it all. How horrid she was. How unkind Jane had been. I was there on my knees at her feet but I knew she was wrong.
“No!” I said. “No, I am not. I am Mary Baines and I work hard and make puppets and I love books and I do no harm to anyone. I have put up with this house and you without having to be unkind and spiteful and mean. But you … you have not! It has made you a monster. It is you who is pathetic.”
My voice shook, trembled, and sounded odd, loud, in the space of the entrance hall. I hadn’t picked up everything, but I had my diary—so I ran past her shocked, blotchy face, out of the main door, and around to the back of the house. I hid by the kitchen door, huddled under the porch, catching my breath. Sitting there under all the girls’ names scratched into the brickwork, where I had previously felt so alone, I realized I felt something completely different. It was a feeling of … power, of triumph.
And it felt good!
Okay—the fumbling around on my hands and knees hadn’t been great but I had achieved something. I had spoken. Out loud. And for a fraction of a moment I think she was shocked.
And she had let me go.
It had worked.
Maybe this is the start of something new.
Maybe I can face her.
Maybe I can tell.
Maybe I can speak out.
I sat there under the back porch for most of the morning and into the afternoon. I ate my bruised and dented apples and absent-mindedly read through the pairs of names on the wall.
When I heard Jane and Pete come back in the front of the house, I waited a while and crept back in, just as I have so many times before.
But some of the fear has gone.
I know tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow I will speak out.
July 29, 1982
I knew this was going to be my big chance and that I had to get it right.
I made a list of all the things I wanted to say. I wrote down the things that she had done to me, here at Thornhill and at school. I wrote down about Jane, about Sunny Rise. I wanted to make sure that, if words failed me, I would have something I could show them to make them understand.
Dr. Creane’s office was full. I had to line up behind harassed mothers with wailing babies and old men with hacking coughs. It was hot and everyone was irritable. I wanted to turn back. But I had gotten this far, this close to getting help.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I thought that having Dr. Creane’s note meant I could see him whenever I wanted.
I rehearsed in my head the words I was going to say and how I was going to say them. I was going to say how miserable I was. That I was lonely. That I was being bullied and that I needed help. I was going to say that I couldn’t go to Sunny Rise with her and to ask Dr. Creane to speak on my behalf to get me rehomed somewhere else.
We shuffled forward in the line.
I rehearsed it again …
I am miserable.
I am being bullied.
I need help.
Don’t send me to Sunny Rise with her.
I had to get it right. I was almost excited about the idea that I was going to do this. That I can speak out and change my life.
The line was so slow. I shuffled forward a few steps more and ran through it all again.
Then it was my turn.
“How can I help you?” asked the receptionist.
I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t. So I fumbled in my bag for Dr. Creane’s details.
“Dr. Creane? Do you want an appointment? He is fully booked today. What’s it about? Can you see someone else?”
I went red. I shook my head and pointed at the paper. Someone behind me in the line tutted loudly. But I was determined. I had to see him. I had to speak while I felt strong enough.
The receptionist was saying something like, “You can’t just walk in off the street and expect to see someone without …” when there was a click of a door and Dr. Creane stepped out into the waiting room.
But then I saw her.
Her cheeks were red and her eyes were too, as if she had been crying again. Dr. Creane walked her across the waiting room toward the door of the office. As he passed us I could hear him say, “You’re a very brave young lady …” She looked up at him and nodded forlornly as a lone tear rolled down one of her beautiful flushed cheeks. Then she looked past him and straight at me.
A slight smile played at her lips. Then she was gone.
How can she be here too?
Dr. Creane is my friend.
He was going to help me.
The receptionist was talking at me. People behind me in the line were grumbling. I left.
And now I write this back at Thornhill in the gardens under the begging girl statue. The sky is clear and white with heat, the air is hot and sticky. It is no day to stay outside, but I don’t want to go in. I can’t bear the idea of being anywhere near her. She contaminates everything.
Yesterday I thought I could do it. I could speak out. Tell. I could take control.
I knew I couldn’t go to my teachers; like Mrs. Davies, they don’t want to see what is under their noses. Kathleen would help me, but she is not here. Jane thinks I am weird and is only interested in Pete. Dr. Creane was the only person I could go to, that I could trust, but how can Dr. Creane believe me if he also believes her? How could anyone take me seriously when she is so radiant, so shining? How could he believe that she is a monster?
Maybe there is someone else I could go to, but I really can’t think who. And the more I think about it, the more my confidence seeps away.
July 30, 1982
She has done it.
She has taken the one thing that is precious to me and destroyed it.
At first I thought that I had lost my key. But then Jane couldn’t find a spare. She saw my panic and she got Pete to call the locksmith. I stood with Jane on the landing as he worked at the lock. He was a round man who was sweating in the heat and puffed as he worked, but seemed jolly. He had a huge grin on his face as he heard the click of the lock and stood back and opened the door with a flourish.
His smile vanished when he saw my room.
Jane gasped.
I heard a loud wailing noise. And then I realized it was me.
My room was trashed.
My books were strewn across the floor, pages torn out. My pens, pencils, schoolbooks had been scattered. My clothes turned out of drawers. It was as though a tornado had ripped through the space.
And my puppets …
Each one was missing its head. Their bodies had been flung about the room, torn down from their wall mountings and ceiling hangings and tossed carelessly about the place. Their faces peered up at me from the floor or rested facedown on the carpet. It looked like a bloodless massacre.
She had broken everything I care about, invaded my sanctuary and stolen my safety.
&nb
sp; The locksmith left quite swiftly. Jane and Pete came up and made sounds of amazement and concern, but I stood rock still until they left me alone.
Now I am sitting here in my room, on the floor, surrounded by chaos and destruction.
And I am shaking. Quaking.
But not with fear.
With anger.
I am burning with it. Hot with rage. I can feel a surge of it within me as if I am swollen with it.
I hate her.
I hate her.
I hate her.
I hate her.
August 7, 1982
Thornhill is very quiet.
The whole house is holding its breath.
I am staying locked in here. The new key is on my side. No one can get in.
I don’t trust myself to see her.
I have such a fury. My anger is like a hot pulse, throbbing, biting, raging.
I am playing through the events of last week. Racing through the scenes. Turning it over and over in my mind.
She must have gotten the key when I swung my bag away from her in the hall.
Is this my punishment for speaking out? For saying what I think?
Jane and Pete have been up, taking it in turns to knock at the door and ask me to let them in, to “chat” about what has happened, to “talk” it through.
I don’t want to hear. I put my headphones on and listen to music turned up high. I am certainly not letting them in. I am not letting anyone else in. I don’t want anyone to set foot in here ever again.
I can’t touch the food they leave for me outside the door. My throat is too tight to swallow anything other than water.
I have started sorting out my room. I am piling up my papers and taping together my torn schoolbooks. My novels are back on the shelves. My pens and paintbrushes in their pots. I am trying to tidy—to fix it—to put it back in order.
But with my puppets I have another purpose. One by one I am stitching or gluing them back together, mending their clothes and putting them back in their right places. Not all of them can be repaired—some have bits of clay broken or missing—but I am doing my best to put them back together. Except that from each one, I am taking some small part. From each of my beautiful little friends I am taking a hand or a limb or some stuffing or some hair. I have made a pile of heads I will not replace, unhinged arms and legs. A mound of glassy eyes sits on my desk alongside tangled threads of hair. With every snip I make, with each cut, I am thinking of her.
When all the dolls have given me a contribution I replace them carefully, sitting or hanging them gently back where they were, where they can watch the room. Each and every one of them a little bit flawed—except Mistress Mary, that is.
She survived. Mistress Mary is the one that she missed. I found her under the bed, intact. Seems she is stronger than all the rest—just like in the story.
Only in The Secret Garden there is a happy ending. They become a family, they make one from sad and broken people.
But that isn’t going to happen here.
August 9, 1982
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Each time I close my eyes I can see her smile: that smirk.
I see the heads of my puppets staring up at me from the floor. Their limbs twisted the wrong way. Their clothes torn.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I am hungry. But I can’t eat.
I can’t sleep.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I know that I will show her what she is. What she has done. I am working on my revenge. I snip and cut.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
They want to come in, but I won’t let them.
They bang on the door.
They thump, thump, thump.
And my heartbeat pounds in my ears.
I am throbbing with anger.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I’ve got it!
I know what I have to do.
I have worked out a plan.
August 11, 1982
I have been awake all night and it is nearly done.
I am dizzy with excitement, hot with anger, sick with hate for her. Sick of her. I am sick of it all.
I have made her. I have taken the remains of my puppets and I have stitched and glued them together to make her—not as they see her: not the confident, rosy-cheeked beauty with golden ringlets and blue eyes; but as I know her to be: cold, heartless, ugly in thought and mind. She is snot and bile. She is pus and spit and piss. She is a horror and I want her to see what she is.
I have snip, snip, snipped pieces of arms and legs from the bodies of my puppets, and stitched them together to form my life-size monster’s face. Her eye sockets made from crushed papier-mâché. arms and tiny hands. The cheeks stitched from tatters of fabric she ripped from my puppets’ bodies. I have stuck glassy, beady eyes as warts on her face, and collaged them together as a necklace for my monster. I have stitched tufts of hair into her body, and glued shards of clay and plastic into scales for her skin. I have stuffed her with foam and torn costumes and papier-mâché.
And I have cried. I have cried as I used parts of my old, damaged friends. Cried as I recognized bits of characters I planned and crafted and loved. I had given my time and my care to each of them. They were beautiful. Now these broken pieces are ugly and are building something uglier and I can’t stop the tears falling onto my hands as I cut and stitch and glue and scrape.
But now I have made her.
And now I can destroy her.
August 15, 1982
I am ready. Last night I slid my monster puppet down the stairs and along into the kitchen. It was late and quiet. From Pete and Jane’s room I could hear muffled conversation. From hers, sobbing.
This time it was my turn to carry chairs down into the pantry, only I braced them together, back-to-back, between the narrow shelf-lined walls so that I could climb on their backs to reach up high. It took me a few attempts to throw the rope over the pipes that run across the ceiling, but I did it, and then twisted the rope to make a noose. I slipped the noose around my puppet’s neck and winched it into place so that it hung down, suspended from its neck. I put away the chairs and stood back to admire my handiwork. She looked magnificent, spinning slowly in the light from the high window, her scales and tufts of hair glinting in the moonlight, her face made from arms and legs and faces of other puppets more terrifying in the half light. I left her there and closed the door behind me.
Then I placed the two letters I had prepared on the main front doormat, one for Pete and one for Jane, so that it would look as if they had dropped there after the postman had delivered them. I took the keys I needed from the office, then I slipped the note I had written to her under her bedroom door. This time she didn’t open the door to watch me go back upstairs with those red eyes.
Now I am back up here. Waiting.
And as I wait I am excited. Excited about the plan I have made. I feel in control. I feel powerful.
August 16, 1982
I need to collect my thoughts. To work out what to do.
I want to remember as much of it as I can.
I was up before everyone else. I waited outside the fire door at the bottom of my stairs and watched it all unfold.
Jane emerged from Pete’s room and crossed the floor to the doormat where my letters had been joined by a few others from the real postman. They soon did the trick. Jane and Pete were scurrying back and forth, looking for their good shoes, and calling to each other to hurry. They rushed out to Pete’s car and were off to an imaginary meeting with Dr. Creane and social workers in the next town. I knew it would be hours before they realized their mistake and were able to get back. By which time it would all be over.
I stood back as I watched her open her bedroom door, my note in her hand. She looked up, but didn’t s
ee me. She went back in.
I crept down to the kitchen and hid behind the cabinet unit next to the pantry door.
I waited and watched, remembering her promise of being a friend in front of everyone in the dining hall.
I watched and waited, thinking of salt in my water, spilled meat down my skirt.
I watched and waited, thinking of all the times I had eaten in that dining hall alone while girls laughed and chatted at other tables around me.
I waited and waited, thinking of the heads of my puppets, smashed and dented, staring up at me from my bedroom floor.
And then I heard the kitchen door click. “Mary?”
It was her.
I heard her walk into the kitchen, stepping around the workers’ tools, to get to the pantry door. She was almost beside me. She clicked open the pantry and called down the steps, “Mary? Are you there? I got your note.” And then she took a step down, and another …
I took my chance, leaping from where I was hiding, and gave her the hugest shove.
The sound of her tumbling down was horrid, but I banged the door shut behind her all the same, jamming the door handle with a chair.
I could hear her shouting, screaming, but I had to follow the plan. I went to each door—the main front door, the back door, the side entrance—and locked them all. It was perfect. She was trapped. She was afraid and now I had control.
I sat there with my back against the pantry door. At first I enjoyed her anger as she banged and thumped on the door.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Only this time she was on the inside. I felt completely calm as I poured out the kerosene I had taken from the shed onto the floor and began to sweep it under the gap in the door. I poured it little by little, sweeping it under the door, imagining it running around her feet and down the steps.