One Foot Wrong Read online

  I flicked through the pages of the book, dust fell off the paper, the pages were brown at the corners. The book needed a friend. I hid it in my pants with the pencil then I walked up the stairs to the bedroom. Sack was out on a visit. Boot was in his study listening to the radio. I was locked inside with my wish. It was hard walking up the stairs with a book and a pencil hidden in my pants but I could do it. I was the Lord’s mistake but I could do it.

  I went into the bedroom and crawled under the bed with my head out the side for light. I took the book and the pencil from my pants. I opened the book and found a page without so many squashed ant marks. I put the pencil to the paper the way Sack did when she wrote a list. A list was a line of things that Sack wanted Boot to bring home from the shop. We will need flour, and tea. And don’t forget soap. I wrote my own list in secret writing. On my list I put outside, I put a skirt, I put a crown of stones. I tried to make my writing look like the words in the book but soon the pencil didn’t want to write a list. It wanted to do other things. I watched my hand move across the paper. The pencil made the shape of the tree; the marks that were already there on the page became leaves and a nest. Then it made the shape of God the Bird flying through the branches of the tree. He had a sheep with him; the sheep had a wing. If my pencil was green the sheep would be too. My pencil made the home of the sun. It had circle doors but it didn’t have walls or a floor. Through the circle doors you could see gardens full with orange and purple flowers. The gardens floated in the sky. Then my pencil made the pink spider under Sack’s eye, then it drew her eye and then it drew the soup caught in the hairs under Boot’s mouth, then the hairs turned into water, then it made Lot’s wife but this time she was moving, she was flying from the cliff out over the grey seas, her coat spread like the wings of a bird, and then it made the seas parting, fish flew out, and then it ran out of pencil. The pencil was flat. I pushed the flat pencil harder into the page of the book and it made a small hole.

  There is no need to cry. You are not a baby anymore. I crawled further back under the bed and I put the pencil where the carpet meets the wall. The flat pencil was my secret. I put the book back in my pants and I crawled out from under the bed. I walked downstairs – Sack was not back from her visit – and I went to the shelf. I put the book back onto the very end of the row behind the row.

  I was stirring the stew when someone spoke to me. Sack was in the living room tapping her foot to Alleluia coming from the radio box. Boot was outside chopping wood. It was the wooden spoon in my hand who had spoken to me. It was only a whisper and hard to hear. I had to bend close to the stew to hear spoon better. I smelled warm meat and onion. ‘Ask Boot for pencils and paper,’ spoon whispered.

  ‘Alleluia,’ sang the radio box, ‘praise Him!’

  ‘Chop!’ went axe into the block. I didn’t ask Boot or Sack for anything. I knew better. You should know better, Hester. You are a big girl now.

  ‘I should know better,’ I whispered back to spoon.

  ‘Praise Him! Praise Him!’ sang the radio box.

  ‘Chop chop!’ went axe into the block.

  Spoon lifted meat and potato from the pot as she stirred. ‘Ask Boot.’

  ‘But I am a big girl now,’ I whispered back.

  ‘Ask him.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Ask him.’

  After we’d eaten the stew Sack said that her back was giving her trouble and she was going to bed. Boot sat at the table making a matchstick boat in a bottle. Spoon lay clean and drying across the rack. I could see her from where I was sitting on the floor with Cat. ‘Ask now,’ said spoon.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Could I have a pencil and paper?’ I asked Boot.

  He looked up from his boatbuilding, a matchstick shook between his fingers. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Could I have a pencil and paper?’

  He waited. ‘Why don’t you call me daddy, or papa? What is wrong with you? Every daughter calls their father daddy or papa. Why not mine?’

  I looked at Boot, at his trousers and his white fingers holding the matchstick. There were some small dark hairs on the knuckles. I looked at his neck coming out of the top of his shirt. His neck had grey hairs, faint red lines and some brown spots that looked soft like sponge. Why had they grown up out of his skin, those spots? What was inside them? Boot scratched at his shoulder. ‘Father, could I have a pencil and paper?’ The circles of Boot’s eyes filled with water that came from a deep well beneath his feet. He put down the matchstick – matchstick quick-whispered thank you – and came to me across the floor. He held my face in his hands, they smelled of stew and boat glue, and he kissed the top of my head. Then he went into the locked study. He came back with a pencil and some paper. The paper had blue lines running across. I had to hold back my hungry hands from grabbing.

  ‘What are you going to do with them, Hester?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to write me a letter?’ His mouth curled up at the sides as he passed me the pencil and the paper. I lay across the floor and started to draw. I couldn’t wait. Boot watched for a minute, then he went back to the boat. ‘Don’t make a mess,’ he said.

  The pencil had me sailing on a spoon-boat, the way Noah did in the storm. I wore a skirt and a flower hat and I stood at the front of the spoon-boat. It was me who knew the way. We sailed through the hole in the bottle.

  ‘I hope you’ve drawn a picture of me,’ said Boot, his mouth curling up again. ‘Show me.’ He bent down to where I lay on the floor and he looked at my picture. ‘What is all of this?’ He shook his head. ‘I can let you have the pencils and paper for drawing as long as we clean up after ourselves.’ Then Boot took my spoon-boat and he turned it into a small ball. He put it in the kitchen bin with the bones and the dust. ‘You can have more later. It will be our secret.’ He put his finger to his mouth. ‘Shhhhhhh.’

  There are one-person secrets and there are two-person secrets. This was a two-person secret. Boot gave me pencils and paper for drawing when Sack’s back gave her trouble and she had to take an early lie-down. The pencil spoke softly to me while I drew. She said, ‘I am your friend for eternity.’ I said, ‘What is eternity?’ Pencil answered, ‘Where there are no walls or floors. Where it is light and you can hear the music of the wind.’ I drew eternity. It had stones and water and the wind blew. There was a house with pencil walls and there were spaces between every pencil so you could always visit the forbidden outside. ‘What do you do in eternity?’ I asked pencil as I drew. ‘You become the eye of the world, you see it all, it goes into you, and when it goes into you it doesn’t hurt. It shivers. You have wings.’ ‘Can you dance there?’ ‘Yes, of course.’ I drew wings dancing with wings, lifting me up and spinning me into the eye of the world. ‘What do you eat in eternity?’ I asked. Pencil said, ‘Apples.’ I filled the sky with apples.

  Whenever I drew Boot was there. He sat at the table and put boats in bottles. After a while he looked at my drawings, shook his head, curled his mouth up at the sides and said, ‘What a funny mess.’ Then he took my picture, made it a tiny ball of paper and put it in the kitchen bin. I counted the little hand going around the face of the clock and I waited for the next time Sack had her back trouble, and I could draw again.

  It was raining and Sack said it was too wet for washing. Cat and me couldn’t look at the outside through the window from the couch arm. ‘Tomorrow will have to do,’ said Sack, and sneezed. I climbed up onto the couch arm anyway, and looked at the brown curtains. Sack said, ‘Get down off there.’ Boot came in. Sack blew her nose into a handkerchief. ‘I’d better check on Mother. Last time there was a downpour like this her chimney leaked.’

  ‘I can go,’ said Boot, touching her arm.

  ‘No,’ said Sack, and pushed past him. ‘My mother doesn’t recognise you.’

  ‘But you aren’t well, Katherine.’

  ‘I’m well enough.’ She took her coat from the hook and w
rapped her scarf round her cold neck. She sneezed again then walked out the front door. I had never been out the front door because I was a source of shame and the thief of my mother’s strength.

  Now the house only had Boot in it. And me. ‘Who is “my mother”?’ I asked Boot.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who is my mother?’

  ‘Who is your mother, what do you mean?’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘You know who your mother is, Hester.’ Boot shook his head because I was an aberration then he went into his study and locked himself inside. The doorway of Boot’s study opened into the neck of a bottle and if you stepped through you stepped straight into the bottle and got stuck like the boats. Only Boot could come and go.

  Water fell down onto the house. The sky rumbled. ‘Hester.’ Somebody called me. I went into the kitchen. ‘Hester, turn me.’ It was handle. Jesus beat the drum the way he did at the feasts. ‘Hester, I am your true friend. Turn me.’

  ‘But I should know better.’

  ‘Turn me,’ he said again.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Turn me! Turn me! Turn me!’ I turned him. The back door opened to the forbidden outside. It was dark and wet, water poured from the home of the sun. Jesus beat the drum faster. I walked down through the wet grass. The hungry sky rumbled again. Tree was there, still reaching, but for what? There was no sun. I ran to her, to ask her. She was rough against my cheeks, her kisses rough on my lips. She said, ‘pretty … beautiful.’

  ‘Tree, what do you reach for?’ I asked, my mouth pressed close. I put my ear to her for an answer. There was nothing. ‘What are you reaching for, tree?’ Still no answer. ‘Tree, talk to me, tell me what you reach for.’

  Her voice was a cooing pigeon. ‘I am reaching as high as I can.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For all of the highest things.’

  ‘For eternity?’

  ‘Yes, for eternity. Eternity is the highest of all.’

  Water fell down on my head. The world was a bath. I pulled off my clothes and my shoes and ran around the garden. A bright light turned on in the sky, then there was a crashing sound and I shouted back as loud as I could. ‘Aaaaaahhhhh!’ The grass was sharp under my feet; my feet prickled because they had insects running in circles inside them. Running and rubbing their wings together, calling and singing as I ran and laughed the devil’s laugh. A dark shape moved down from the house towards me. It was Sack. Tree called, ‘Come here, climb me!’ I jumped up to her lowest branches and tried to pull myself higher. My legs hung down. My feet of insects made them too heavy to lift. Sack had me by the back. She smacked my legs. ‘You’ll be the death of me!’ My feet broke open and the black insects came charging out from my toes. They ran up my legs, along my back, across my tum, and down onto Sack, who screamed. The insects covered us until there was no skin left. Rain fell. The sky lit up over our heads, I could see the flame fingers of the tree with the sky white and angry behind them. Tree shouted, ‘You will be the death of her!’ and Sack pulled me back inside by my hair and arm, insects streaming from her body.

  After that the back door was always locked. Handle stayed quiet when I passed. Sometimes I looked at him and there was a question in his wooden eye but I couldn’t hear it, even with my ear pressed close I couldn’t.

  When I grew bigger my jobs were sweeping floors, mopping floors, cleaning between cracks, washing walls and clothes, dusting our Saviour, cleaning toilet with toilet brush, wood-stacking, washing dishes, setting table with washed dishes, polishing forks and spoons. Prayer. Prayer was God washing me, stacking me, dusting me, sweeping me, mopping me and hanging me out to dry. Prayer made pink cracks across my knees that hurt but I didn’t stop. Once I did. Sack’s voice was loud beside me, ‘And God said take unto me my child, my heart, he that weepeth, knoweth not why he does but that God does move and when,’ and I stopped. I don’t know why. I knew the words of the prayer but I stopped anyway. Sack kept going on her own and then she stopped too. She looked at me and I looked back. The pink spider under her eye waved his legs at me. Something special was going to happen.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Get up,’ Sack said.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, and then I said it again: ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Too late for sorries.’ Sack took my hand and she pulled me up. I tried to pull my arm back to the part where Jesus beat the drum beat beat beat, but Sack wouldn’t have it. ‘I won’t have it, Hester, I won’t have it!’ She pulled harder again – ‘The more you pull, the worse it will be!’ – so up I got and followed. She took me down the stairs, into the kitchen, through to the pantry, and she opened a door in the floor I never knew was there, down some more stairs, and then we were in a dark room. She called up through the door in the floor, ‘John! John! Get down here and help me!’

  Boot came down the stairs, ‘Yes, Katherine, what is it?’

  ‘She needs to learn.’

  ‘Katherine, do you think, do you really think?’

  ‘Would I be taking her arm? Would I be calling you like this?’

  ‘No – no.’

  ‘Help me lift her to the table.’

  ‘I’m – I’m not sure.’ Boot’s voice was stopping and starting.

  ‘John, you lift her onto the table. Lift her. Lift her!’ Sack’s voice was loud. I kept quiet while Boot did as he was told. I saw a white shape in the faraway coming closer. Boot put his hands under my arms and lifted me hup! onto a table that was waiting. The wood of the table was warm under my feet. A bar hung down over the table like a swing, attached to the ceiling with ropes. More ropes dangled loose from each end of the bar. The dangling ropes were waiting for something to tie up. They wanted to bind a small animal.

  The white shape was very close now – it was a big white bird. He stopped in front of me. ‘I am God the Bird,’ he said. God the Bird’s wings were the same shape as the cracks in the ceiling, his beak was long and gold, he had a crown of stones and his eyes were black lights. God the Bird flapped his wings, his gold beak close to my face. Table spoke up through my feet. ‘I am here, Hester, and I am your friend.’

  ‘What is a friend?’

  ‘A friend gives you pictures.’

  Sack climbed up onto the table and tied my arms onto the bar. My arms were open wide like Christ on the cross. The bar ran across my back. If buckets hung from the bar I could have carried water. ‘Look at the walls, Hester, look at the company you keep!’ she said close to my ear as she tied. There were pictures pasted to the walls of people hanging from their necks with rope. Other people in the pictures stood and looked. They were like the people who stoned Mary. Some of the people hanging had black bags over their faces so their eyes were hidden. There were pictures of ladies lying on pins, and pictures of ladies being stretched on wheels. In one picture a lady’s head lay in a fruit basket. The eyes looked up to the sky where the Lord would not forgive. Sack climbed down and said, ‘Move the table now, John.’ Boot looked at me and I looked back. He scratched at his back as if a mouse was caught in his shirt. It was the eczema. It crawled across his back in search of water. ‘Move the table,’ said Sack. Boot moved the table and all of my body hung down by my arms like the company I kept. I could not feel my friend beneath my feet; my friend was gone. I was hanging.

  God the Bird said, ‘Quiet now, Hester.’

  As Sack walked up the stairs table called to me from across the room. ‘Wait, little Hester, your time will come.’

  I hung there and God the Bird stayed with me. When he flapped his wings a breeze blew the hair from my eyes and dried my eyes and face. It cooled my hot wet body. God the Bird’s beak was a smile. He made his wing do a wave, I couldn’t wave back because my arm was tied to the bar, I hoped God the Bird knew. I told him sorry and then he flew up into the air over my head and the hanging room filled with blue sky and I didn’t know where I went.

  From the far away blue I heard Boot say, ‘Do you think that’s enough?’

  ‘Take her
down,’ said Sack. Boot untied me and I fell down onto the table but my arms tried to fly up there back to God the Bird. It made me smile. ‘Go upstairs,’ Sack said. I couldn’t walk. I told my feet to make the steps but they wouldn’t do the job. Boot picked me up in his arms and God the Bird flew in circles around me, his black eyes shining.

  I woke up in my bed with hurting arms.

  The next time Boot gave me pencil and paper I drew God the Bird carrying me on his wing to the land of the sun. I drew tree lifting from the ground. Dirt fell from her root onto the roof of One Cott Road as she lifted, covering it. I drew tree flying beside us with her flame hands flapping. She was coming too. Then I drew the company I kept standing in a circle around the house way below us. The black bags were off their heads so I could see their faces, but they didn’t have eyes, only eyeholes. God the Bird had their eyes in his beak. He was carrying them to Jesus to eat at his feast.

  I was washing a plate in the sink when Sack came and stood behind me. ‘Hester, stop what you are doing, I have something to show you.’ I kept washing the plate. There was sticky egg on the side. ‘Hester, did you hear me? I asked you to stop what you are doing.’ I washed over and over the egg. One bit of yellow sticky was left. It didn’t want to leave. ‘Hester?’ The plate was egg’s friend. If the plate let go then egg would have nobody. ‘Hester.’ Sack put her arm on mine. I stopped cleaning the plate. Water dripped from the wet cloth onto the toe of my shoe. It left watermarks the shape of suns on the leather. Sack took my wet hand in her dry one. ‘Leave that in the sink,’ she said. I put the plate back. Egg and onion skin floated on top of the grey water. Sack led me out of the kitchen and I followed her up the stairs. ‘Come on.’ She pulled my hand to go faster.