One Foot Wrong Page 4

  I said, ‘I won’t tell one lie,’ and the smile my teacher made turned her face into a bridge for walking. She said, ‘That’s a good start then.’ I let go of Boot’s hand.

  ‘Goodbye, Hester, I will be here to collect you at the end of the day,’ he said. I walked up the path with my teacher and when I turned back to see Boot, him and his chariot had been blown away by the whistling wind.

  My teacher opened a door and took me into a room. There were coloured drawings on the wall; some had feathers, some had wool, and one had sticks. The windows around the room did not have curtains. You could see the forbidden outside through every window. The room was the same colour as the sun shining through.

  There were lots of tables and chairs and children who I was not the same as. They looked at me from the rows of tables and chairs with eyes like insects. My teacher said, ‘You can sit beside Mary.’ Mary had a lip twisted up with a nose. She moved over and I sat down.

  One boy whispered, ‘Hey, fatty.’

  Another boy whispered, ‘Fatty boomsticks,’ and somebody laughed the devil’s language.

  My teacher stood at the front. Her voice was from my song; it had a soft bell and questions. Everybody listened. Sometimes the other children put their hand up high, my teacher pointed and then they said, ‘Africa,’ and ‘continent’ and ‘eskimos’. She took a book from her desk. ‘Time to go on with our story,’ she said. ‘Who remembers where we were up to?’

  ‘David was building his own balloon to fly in,’ one boy called out.

  ‘He had to bring food for a year because he was going to fly across the world,’ a girl said.

  ‘He’d see polar bears, lions and eagles!’

  ‘The balloon was pink and yellow silk with stripes!’

  ‘Flames came out and that’s what made it fly!’ Everyone was calling out over the top of each other.

  ‘David was going in search of his—’

  ‘Father!’

  ‘Who made magic buttons.’

  ‘Sugar buttons!’

  ‘Magic sugar buttons! That’s why they kidnapped him. He had the power!’

  ‘Alright, alright, I see you do remember. Quiet now.’ Mrs Dane smiled and opened the book. She began to read. ‘David checked the ropes. It was the first time he had seen the balloon in the light of day. How it glowed, beckoning him …’ Every ear in the room grew wide to take in the one voice of Mrs Dane. ‘The balloon’s great panels of pink and yellow silk billowed. The moment had finally arrived. The journey could at last begin.’ I turned my head. Outside the window David rose up in his balloon, beckoning me.

  My teacher read and read. The world spread beneath David and me, a living map.

  ‘It is now time for your playlunch,’ said my teacher. ‘You can hear more of the story tomorrow.’ The other children moaned; nobody wanted the story to end. Then there was the sound of all the chairs and tables scraping back and I followed everybody out of the room.

  The others knew where to go. They ran out into the flat black under the forbidden sky and they kept running in all directions around me. I saw a tree with a long flat bench under it and so I walked there and sat down. I watched the other children hang upside down from coloured bars, swinging and screaming. One ran like the horse that pulled the chariot. Two girls climbed a table and sang and laughed. The devil’s language filled the school. Mary stood alone and looked at me from across the flat black. I could see into her eyes all the way from where I stood there was so much room for me inside them.

  A loud bell rang and everybody went back into the room. A boy said, ‘What did you eat for playlunch, fatso, your brother?’ Children laughed the devil’s language, then my teacher came in and the room went quiet. Who was my brother? Where did he live? What did he eat?

  ‘Spelling books out, please.’ My teacher walked to where I sat beside Mary. ‘I know you don’t have any books here yet. And that you haven’t been taught any reading and writing, so we’ll do the best we can.’ Then she said to the others, ‘Go to page three and do the next spelling list.’ Then she showed me an A and asked me to draw one. I drew one line up, one line down and one line across. It was the beak of God the Bird. ‘A is for apple,’ said my teacher, and drew an apple.

  When she had gone back to the front of the room Mary looked at my A. ‘A is for arse,’ she said.

  It was lunchtime. I went to the bench again. I ate Sack’s cheese and I ate Sack’s bread and the boards on the bench sang a song from Illustrated Hymns up through my backside. ‘He gives His gifts, He gives them in plenty.’

  After lunch my teacher put paper sheets on the middle table, then she gave me a brush. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘for painting.’ She filled up white plates with all the colours of the world. The colours shone like wet stars on a plate sky. The brush was made of wood, like spoon and tree. I never held anything as tight before. The brush tickled the tips of my fingers when it spoke. ‘I am your friend, Hester.’

  ‘Will you give me pictures?’

  ‘I will give you everything.’ Everyone put their brushes in the paint and then I put my brush in the blue paint. I put the brush, wet with the blue paint, to the paper and Sack’s blue eye blinked at me from the white page; a tear came slowly from its corner. As I painted, dipping in all the colours, brush spoke louder making my fingers tickle all the way to the bone. ‘I am your friend, paint, paint!’ The words made me laugh. My teacher said, ‘What’s funny, Missy?’ I stopped my laugh because it came from the devil somewhere inside that I couldn’t put a finger on, but I kept painting.

  I painted one blessing, one bird, one prayer, one obedience, one cat, one throne, one shoe, one creeping creature, one holiness, one lie, one cross, one window, and one sink. Last I painted God the Bird flying through a cloud of grass. My teacher was there, feeding him apples.

  My teacher touched my hand, I stopped painting and brush went quiet. My teacher kept her hand on mine and she said, ‘Good work, Hester.’ The neck of me grew long, my body stretched and filled with air, my legs grew tall, my ears pulled wide apart from each other as the word good bounced around and around in the new space inside of me.

  When school was finished for the day, Boot was there waiting in his chariot on the street. When he saw me coming he got out and opened the door in the back. ‘I can’t pick you up every day like this,’ he said. ‘I can’t leave work early again. You are going to have to catch the bus with the others. Kathy won’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do.’ I lay across the back seat and the friends that gave me pictures were there when I closed my eyes and I wondered if David found his father the button maker yet.

  Sack was in bed when I got home. Boot told me to be quiet in case she was sleeping. He went up to her room with tea. When he came back down he said, ‘You are to cut up the vegetables for the dinner. When you have done that you are to go up and see your mother and tell her what happened at school today.’

  I cut up the carrot and the cabbage – the corn I couldn’t cut because it was in small circles with flat bottoms. All the time I was cutting I looked around for where the A was. There was one in carrot, two in cabbage and none in corn. When I finished cutting I went upstairs to see Sack. She was sitting up in her bed with the back pillow behind her. She looked at me. ‘Traitor,’ she said. I didn’t know what she wanted me to do next so I stood there, waiting. ‘Come here,’ she said. I went there. Her hair was still covering one eye and there was wet on her face. Her white hands went around me like rope. ‘Let me look at you.’ Did she see the paintings I made? Did she see Mary across the flat black? Did she see the colour of the schoolroom?

  ‘What did you do, what did they tell you?’ she asked. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say so I didn’t say anything. ‘What?’ I still didn’t know what she wanted me to tell her. If you don’t know how can you say? The rope of her arm tightened. ‘Who will you become?’ She pulled her hair back from the eye. ‘Go to your room’. That’s what I did because I knew that’s what she wanted. I sat on the fl
oor and looked for A’s in The Abridged Picture Bible. I found one in the lamb and some in Abraham and one in the head of John the Baptist. Sack didn’t come downstairs for dinner. Boot and me ate it together. The only sound was our forks and our knives talking to each other as they scraped across the plates.

  ‘Holding down the meat is a hard job,’ scraped my fork.

  ‘Not as hard as cutting it,’ scraped back Boot’s knife.

  After dinner I washed the dishes and did the sweeping. ‘Broom?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ answered broom, sweep sweep.

  ‘I made a new friend today.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, sweep sweep.

  ‘And I painted.’

  ‘What did you paint?’ sweep sweep.

  ‘My teacher.’

  ‘You like her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ Sweep sweep.

  After dinner Boot held a bottle up so the light was behind it. ‘It’s a trick, Hester. How did the boat get in there, is that what you are asking yourself?’

  The next morning when we got to the school Boot told me that I had to catch a bus home. He said it was called Mill Park Bus. He showed me where to get on it. I said, ‘What is a bus?’

  Boot shook his head and pointed to a long box on wheels. ‘That. Your teacher will tell you when it goes. I’ve spoken to her.’

  My teacher drew numbers on the blackboard. I knew about counting. Boot showed me how the little hand goes round, past the three and the nine and up to the twelve. My teacher showed what you have left if you take some away. She asked me, ‘Hester, do you know the answer?’ I didn’t know what she wanted me to say so I said nothing. When she turned back to numbers on the board, one boy leaned close. ‘You’re dumber than my little sister, fatty. You don’t know anything.’ Mary leaned across me and the heat from Mary went around me like the cape that Jesus wore on the coldest night in the garden, the one before the judgement, when he slept in a cave. She whispered to the boy, ‘Your little sister eats shit.’

  My teacher put me in a reading pair with Judith. Judith had two white ribbons tied around two tails of yellow hair. We sat on the floor with the book open and Judith pointed at the ant marks across the page with her finger. Her fingernail had chipped pink paint. Judith told a slow story about the boy and the house and the ball and the dog and the mother. Each black ant word went past the chipped pink paint, into her finger, through her hand, up her arm and neck, and out her mouth to me. That was a story. When Judith told it I closed my eyes and she gave me pictures. I saw the dog jumping, the boy chasing and the house with the two windows and the mother saying, ‘Come inside.’ The dog had a patch on his eye. It was my wish to tell a story too. I put my finger on the ant marks but they stayed where they were. My teacher came over and said, ‘Judith, have another turn. Hester, we have a way to go yet.’ What is a way to go?

  My teacher said, ‘Tidy time, class.’ We had to pick things up from the floor. I sat on the carpet and picked up all the things that were not carpet. Dust, dirt, string and pencil shavings. The more I picked up the more I saw. My teacher came to me. ‘That’s enough now, Hester. The area is clean.’ But I could see more. I kept passing my hand over the carpet; more bits of dust came into my hand. ‘Hester, that’s enough, it’s free reading time. You can go and look at picture books in the library section.’ My hand burned from the prickling carpet but there was more dirt coming all the time. It was my chore to pick it up. My teacher came down close to me, she put her hand over mine and she said, ‘It is clean now, thank you.’ My teacher’s voice was a soft bell. It rang with a song in my ear as I walked into the library section.

  At playlunch Mary came to me with her hand stuck out. There was an orange in it. ‘Have some,’ she said. I didn’t take any. She held the orange up in the air over our heads. ‘It’s a juicy sun,’ she said. She peeled back the orange coat from the orange and the middle was wet with white spider web all around it.

  She took a piece of the little sun and put it in her mouth. Orange water dripped from one corner. ‘Want a piece of the sun?’ she asked me. In The Abridged Picture Bible Eve took the red apple and met the snake. Mary held the orange piece out to me. The snake hissed and bit Eve in the neck and it was the end of freedom. ‘Have some!’ said Mary. I took the orange piece from Mary’s hand. I put it in my mouth and waited for the end of freedom. Orange water jumped through the air as I chewed. The sun shone inside my mouth. Mary smiled and her lip that was twisted up with her nose smiled too. The bell rang and we walked back into the schoolroom swallowing orange.

  My teacher told me to paint when the other children not the same as me did spelling and numbers. She gave me the brush and the plate of paint and said, ‘You paint what you want to.’ I painted my brother and the boy’s little sister and David in the balloon. My teacher never put my paintings in the kitchen bin. She said, ‘Take them home. Mary will catch the bus with you.’ I waited with Mary. We stood under a small roof. Around us boys said ‘crazies’ and ‘freaks’. Mary pushed her face forward. ‘Get fucked, you stinking cunts,’ she said, and the boys turned away. Mary looked at me and snorted air through her nose that twisted up with her lip. Soon the bus came and I followed Mary on. It was hot with rows of children laughing the devil’s language. ‘Move over for the crazies,’ they said.

  Mary said, ‘Fuck off,’ and then we sat on a seat together and Mary pointed at the streets where she rode her scooter with the dogs. ‘What’s a scooter?’ I asked. Mary held her two hands in fists and pretended to turn a corner. ‘One of those, you know?’

  Mary said she used to have a dog called Ace of Spades and a dog called Whiskey because her dad’s a cardie and a drinker but then the dogs ate the neighbours’ chickens and Sissy’s rabbit so her dad took the dogs to the tip and gave them the bullet. She said she didn’t have dogs anymore but there were frogs in the forgotten pond and one was her pet, his name was Green and maybe one day he would talk.

  I looked through the window and saw water from a long pipe spray through the air and behind it a hook of colours made of steam from the kettle. Mary said, ‘It’s a rainbow, make a wish!’

  ‘How do you make a wish?’ I asked.

  ‘You close your eyes and you wish it. You see it coming true. Hurry! Before the rainbow is gone.’ I closed my eyes and I wished it. I saw it coming true.

  ‘What did you wish for?’ Mary asked me when I opened my eyes. ‘You can tell me, it won’t break the power.’

  ‘I wished for the frog to talk.’

  ‘He will one day, we just have to wait.’ The bus turned the corner into Cott Road. ‘You have to get off here, Mrs Dane told me.’

  Through the window I saw Sack waiting. She was wearing her shoes with the up at the back but her gown with the grey roses was the same. Her arms were folded across her body and she was looking in all the bus windows for me. The Lord held her face in a tight pinch between his finger and thumb. I waved through the window and the Lord let go of Sack’s face as I stepped onto the street. I wanted to stay and wave goodbye to Mary but Sack turned me round and we walked fast down Cott Road. On both sides of the road were big squares of tall grass where houses might have been. One Cott Road was at the end with no more streets leading off. It was a house on its own. I was the friend of One Cott Road and so was handle, broom and axe. But nobody else.

  My paintings hid in the side of my school bag. They were pressed close to each other in the dark of the pocket. When I went into my room I took them out and hid some of them in the pages of The Abridged Picture Bible, some in the pages of Illustrated Hymns and some under my sheet so when I moved in the night my paintings spoke to me crackle crackle. My paintings were a secret and secrets grow big if you leave them. My paintings slid out of the pages of The Abridged Picture Bible and Illustrated Hymns in the middle of the night. White paper birds with painted wings flapped around my room. They hovered over me, cooing and roosting on the bedhead.

  ‘It is autumn,’ said my teacher, ‘the time when th
e leaves fall. Go out into the playground and collect one leaf each.’ We ran around the black flat in the autumn sun which was mixed with cold. My leaf lay on her back beside the school fence. She had a whole tree inside her. When we got back into the class my teacher gave us paper you could see through. ‘For tracing,’ she said. We put our leaves under the tracing paper and with a pencil we traced the leaf onto the paper. Then we cut out the leaf with little scissors that had an orange handle. ‘Write your name on the leaf,’ said my teacher. She came and wrote my name on my leaf for me. My teacher hung the leaves on a paper tree. I looked at everybody else’s leaves and each one held a whole tree inside it too. The wind came through the window and the names did a dance. Mine danced too, the same as everybody else’s.

  My teacher told a story about an elephant sitting on an egg. An elephant has a leg for a nose and is a friend of everybody. The egg cracked and an elephant with wings came out. It could fly and remember everything. If you remember everything then it stays and grows inside of you so you can tell it and have it back again. Elephants remember what got stolen and they remember the thief, but only some people do. ‘It is a story of great faith,’ said my teacher.

  At lunch Mary said, ‘Come with me to the puddle where the frog lives.’

  ‘What’s a frog?’ I asked.

  ‘Come and see.’ The puddle was deep like a sea, with a white bag and a floating shoe.

  ‘This is the puddle,’ said Mary.

  ‘What’s a frog?’ I asked.

  ‘A frog is a green thing that sticks and jumps and talks to you. Frogs have the oldest song – older than birdsong. That’s what nobody knows.’ We waited for the frog in the puddle. We put our feet in. Mary pointed at my legs with a stick. ‘What are the marks?’