One Foot Wrong Read online

  It was dinner. ‘You’re not eating enough. That school is ruining you. Tonight I cooked fish and I want you to eat,’ said Sack. The fish lay on his plate-bed with potato and cauli for his blanket. He came all the way from the sea where everything is salt and dark water. In The Abridged Picture Bible Jesus filled the sea with red fish. He taught everybody how to catch them and eat them but he forgot to tell the red fish how to get away. Jesus doesn’t have the time to think of everything.

  ‘Eat the eye,’ said Sack.

  ‘No,’ squeaked Hester Mouse who knew an eye was to see with.

  ‘Eat the eye!’ Sack said louder.

  ‘No!’ squeaked Mouse from the corner.

  ‘You eat the eye! You eat the eye! You eat the eye! Eat eat eat!’ Sack stuck her fork into the eye of the fish and out it came and behind it there was nothing but darkness. There, in the empty head of the fish, was the darkness of the world.

  Sack held the eye close to mine – closer and closer until I was looking into the eye of the fish, my eye into fish eye, fish eye into my eye until it was me and my eye on the end of the fork.

  ‘No!’ I screamed with my mouth wide open, more like a loud girl in a school than a mouse in a hidey hole. My mouth wide open, Sack stuck the eye inside and put her hand tight over my mouth so no spitting. Down dropped the eye – down, down, down into the deep of Hester and I could see, I could see with the new eye. I could see the inside of Hester and all of the inside was the same salt and dark water as where the fish came from and all of it was tears from the eye of the fish.

  It was lunch at school the next day. We were eating Mary’s grapes. Grapes are green and almost round. You can put sixteen in your mouth at the same time; Mary counted. After she swallowed the sixteen grapes she asked me, ‘Hey! What did you think of last night?’

  ‘You spoke to the frog.’

  ‘Wrong. Well, I didn’t think of you. Last night that bastard hit me and mum.’ That bastard was her father. ‘He was drunk as a skunk. But I don’t care because of you,’ said Mary. My knee was up and bent and Mary leaned over and kissed it, then she drew a circle in the dust with her finger. ‘Why don’t you know the things everybody knows?’

  ‘Things like what?’ I asked.

  ‘Things like what a grape is.’

  ‘Thine O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory—’

  ‘Let’s try for seventeen grapes, the world record!’ Mary said, and laughed as she stuffed in the fruits. Her lip twisted up with her nose and jumped and wiggled, and it made me laugh too.

  I came to school with stinging under my skirt and splinters under my skin. ‘It’s our secret,’ Boot told me. A secret can belong to one person or it can belong to two people. Mary and me had the creek and the frog. Boot and me had night visits, pencil and paper, and the drawings in the kitchen bin. I had my own one-person secrets: hidden paintings and my friends at One Cott Road. The stinging was a two-person secret that burned. It burned while me and Mary chased each other across the black flat, it burned while my teacher said, ‘Repeat the numbers,’ and it burned while she read us a story. The story was about a donkey who turned into stone because he made the wrong magic wish. The donkey was like Lot’s wife – she made the wrong magic wish too, and so did I. That’s why Boot took his night visit that left me with a sting.

  ‘It is a story about the importance of family,’ said my teacher. ‘Everything the donkey needed was right there, at home.’ She closed the book. ‘Time for singing.’ My teacher pressed a box button like on the radio at One Cott Road, and the music played. It was not the same as Sack’s music. There were bells. My teacher said, ‘Come on, Hester, join in with the rest of us, you know the words!’ Mary sang loud beside me. I looked at her singing and watched my teacher. I could see her pink tongue and her teeth with some bits silver when she sang. ‘I danced in the morning when the world was begun, And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun, And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth, At Bethlehem I had my birth. Come on, Hester, sing!’ said my teacher. Everyone was singing. I looked around at all the open mouths, at the sound flying out, full with bells. I opened my mouth. ‘Come on!’

  ‘Dance then wherever you may be,’ I joined in. The whole room was one open mouth singing. I was part of it. ‘I am the Lord of the Dance, said he. And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, And I’ll lead you all in the dance said he.’ My teacher’s smile was a bridge. The singing in the room trickled over my stinging places like cool milk.

  At the end of every day Mary and me caught the bus. Every day I got off at the top of Cott Road where Sack waited in her gown with the grey roses and her arms folded. Mary waved at me from inside the bus until the bus turned a corner. Every time I looked back Mary was still waving. I didn’t wave because Sack was pulling me down the street but the rope of pictures between Mary and me held tight until the next day when I saw her again.

  Today I came into the kitchen and Sack was there with my paintings in her hands and her eyes on fire. The pink spider turned in quick circles, his three legs twisting and reaching. The kitchen was hotter than the day outside. ‘I went to your room and this is what I find! What else don’t you tell me?’ Sack looked at one picture and then another and then another. The pictures flew past my eyes and fell to the floor. The kitchen filled with voices. The spoons, the chairs, the table, the floor, the handle, the axe, the doors – all the wooden things spoke loudly at once. I couldn’t hear what they were saying as Sack turned my pictures over and over, faster and faster. ‘You have been hiding things from me! You have secrets!’ Sack opened the door of the red wood stove. All my friends were quiet. The only voice was mine. ‘No!’

  Sack got down on her hands and knees and crawled under the table faster than a cockroach under the shadow of Boot’s toe. She grabbed at the paintings that lay there, gathering them up and pushing them into the fire. That hungry fire ate my pictures until there was nothing left but burnt pieces floating upwards. As they rose up, the burnt pieces turned into black birds that flew hard into the window, as if the window was not there, as if the black birds could escape and fly straight into the sun and beyond, into eternity. But the window was there and the black birds hit so hard they knocked themselves out and lay dead on the floor, leaving blood behind on the glass.

  Mary shouted through the rope that tied us together, ‘Fuck you!’ Sack smacked me hard across my cheek and pushed me through the door in the floor, into the hanging room. I sat on the top step and table told me a story from there. She told me about the Ace of Spades and Whiskey and the day Mary rode the scooter so fast with the dogs pulling, that it lifted and flew to One Cott Road and when it got to One Cott Road it came down through the open window and I jumped on the back and we rode to eternity.

  When Boot came home I got a hanging that went on longer than all of the others. I never knew how I got to be in my bed with the lamb and the lion looking down.

  I did not go to school for three days. I stayed in bed and Sack brought me soup and chops with peas. My arms were very sore from the hanging, so she fed me with a spoon. She read me a story. Jesus had a friend but one day the friend said, ‘I don’t know you. I have never seen you.’ Sack read the same story over and over. She showed me the picture of the friend saying, ‘I don’t know you. I have never seen you.’ The friend looked sad. He wore a long dark hat that made a shadow. Jesus looked sad too. The company he kept nailed him to a wooden cross with a hammer. They gave him a crown but it was made of thorns that pricked him. The hammer and the cross were his only friends. The cross said to him, ‘It’s alright Jesus, God the Bird is on his way.’ Jesus didn’t look as sad after that.

  When I went back to school black birds watched me from all corners. They sat on the branches of the paper tree and pecked at my name on the leaf as it danced, they flew between the books on the shelves, one guarded the building blocks, another hopped across boxes of pencils and crayons. They kept their eyes on me. I stayed still as Lot’s wife. My teacher
put the wooden brush in my stiff hand. I sat and held it but it didn’t speak to me. My fingers went loose around the brush so that it fell to one side.

  ‘Come on, Hester, you like to paint,’ my teacher said. Black birds flew around the room. I watched them land on the heads of the other children, on the plates of shiny coloured paint, on the white paper. They left painted claw marks across the paper. They looked at me with black eyes and black beaks and I didn’t take the brush. My teacher said, ‘Suit yourself then.’ I listened to the class putting numbers together then taking them away. When the teacher asked for a number all the other children that I was not the same as answered at once, in one loud voice seven, twenty-one, eleven. They all knew which number, even Mary, they all knew when to answer eighty, fourteen, six. I didn’t know the numbers, or the words or the answers. I was an aberration and I only knew to sit. After lunch my teacher said, ‘Time for singing.’ Everybody took their songbooks from their desks. I heard the desks open and I heard them close. There was laughing around me. Everybody knew the time to laugh, the time to open a desk. My teacher pressed the button on the radio box and everybody sang. ‘Morning has broken, like the first morning … Come on Hester, please join in.’

  ‘Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,’ Mary pushed my side. ‘Sing, silly, sing!’ but there was no song in me. It was burning in the red wood stove with my paintings. My song was finished.

  ‘Like the first dewfall, on the first grass.’ Mary sang with her eyes on me. ‘Praise with elation, praise every morning.’ I put my hands over my ears so I couldn’t hear the morning break.

  At lunch time Mary said, ‘Come and see the frog, Hester. Today it will be there, I know it. Come and listen for the oldest song.’ There was a black bird on her head, its claws hidden in her hair. The black bird shook its beak at me. Mary said, ‘Say something.’ The black bird stood there watching. Mary held out a green apple. The bird blinked his eyes. He wanted the apple for himself. ‘Hester, have some apple.’ The bird’s beak was sharp as a knife, when he moved his head the beak shone along the edge. ‘Hester? Are you still my friend?’ Mary asked me. The shine of the bird’s beak was hungry. ‘Hester, come to the creek with me today, the frog will be there, I promise.’ The frog would be green – the colour of grass, the colour of Mary’s socks and skirt, the colour of leaves. ‘Please Hester, you’re my friend, Hester …’ The frog would jump higher than the roof of the school; he would say, come on Mary, come on Hester, come for a ride on my back. A tear came out of Mary’s eye and ran down to where her lip joined up with her nose. More black birds made circles high in the sky over our heads. Caw caw caw! The bird on Mary’s head bent down and the rope of pictures running from me to Mary, Mary to me, he took in his beak like a worm, and he cut it in half and all the pictures fell onto the ground around our feet; pictures of running water, songs, scooters, dogs, bottles and rainbows – and then the earth pulled those pictures under.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ I told Mary, then I turned away from her and ran to the toilet block. I sat on the cold floor of the toilet. The flushing chain hung down from a box above. I climbed onto the round white circle of the bowl. The chain wasn’t long enough for both arms so I tied it in a knot around my neck only. I heard my teacher calling, ‘Hester! Hester, where are you?’ The bell rang. Black birds joined in with the bell. They were calling me out. Caw caw caw! My teacher called, ‘Hester! Hester!’ and the birds called caw caw caw! until I didn’t know what was bird and what was teacher.

  I stepped off the white circle. The lid of the world lifted over my head and I saw eternity shining in colours I’d never seen before. Everybody was there; handle, spoon, pencil. The toilet door swung open. ‘Hester! Oh, no, Hester!’ My teacher’s face was a long black beak with white eyes on top. She lifted my kicking body and untied the chain. I screamed for Sack because Sack knew it was the devil and she knew the words of the prayer. I called for her waiting at home in bed with her bad back and her pain. If I called loud enough the sound would travel the roads that the bus took and it would reach her ears and it would go down from her ears and into her arms and legs and neck and then Sack would stand up and run to the school, faster than the bus, faster than Boot in his chariot, faster than the black birds flying in circles, she would run, she would be praying the strong words of God, the up of her shoes would be hard on the road tap tap tap, her eyes would be hot, the pink spider would shine in the street, and through it Sack would see where I was and she would come for me and the birds would fly up to the land of the sun, to where the tree was reaching, where they would burn until they were as dead as my paintings.

  I screamed and my teacher drove her beak into my eye. It sunk in deep to where the fish swam in the salt and then she pulled out her beak and put it in my ear, to where wood spoke to me, to where my song used to sing. She drove it deep in and out of my eyes and ears. More teachers came running into the toilet. Blood was on my face and the face of my teacher. The teachers pressed me down, one sat on my legs, one held my arms. Every one had a beak and I could see my own face in the shine.

  Sack never came. They locked me in the sick room. I lay on the bed and looked through the window. The sky was grey and filled with circling birds.

  When I woke up Boot was standing over me. My teacher was behind him. I looked at her face over his shoulder; it had no beak, the bridge for walking lay in pieces on the floor. You could see broken wood and the bent ends of nails. There were three line cuts down my teacher’s cheek.

  ‘I am very sorry,’ Boot said. ‘We were worried about her coming here, but we were not given a choice. I think it has been a mistake. This incident …’ He shook his head. I sat up. ‘It’s time to go home, Hester. Everything is going to be alright, but we must go home now.’ He took my hand and we walked out of the school. When I turned around my teacher was waving, her mouth made the word ‘Goodbye’, then she turned and stepped over the scattered broken bridge to walk back into the classroom. I got into the back seat of the chariot and lay down so that I could see the sky as Boot drove. There was nothing there; no sun or cloud or rain or tree – the sky was empty.

  I walked into the kitchen and Sack was there, sewing up holes. She jumped up from her chair. I let go of Boot’s hand and Sack pulled me to her. Her bones went in me. She smelled like cat milk left in the bowl. ‘You don’t belong there.’ She pressed her nose to my head. ‘Go to bed and I’ll bring you soup and a bacon sandwich.’

  Boot and Sack took me for more tests. Sack wore a shirt with buttons the shape of Christ’s heart that went all the way up to her neck, and a yellow skirt. Sack never wore a yellow skirt in One Cott Road. She wore her sleeping dress with grey roses. Her hair was up high and above her eyes was blue powder. The two rows of hairs around her eyes were thick black. There was brown powder almost the same colour as her skin, over the top of the pink spider. He had to wave his legs to try and brush it away. Sack turned to me where I lay across the back seat. ‘You should never have gone there, you didn’t belong; I told them that.’

  Boot said, ‘Everything will be alright.’ I looked up and saw the egg of his head bob up and down as he drove. ‘This time they will see.’ He scratched his shoulder as if he was giving it a punishment.

  The tests were not with the man who gave me the pencil and told me to put the square into the circle; they were with a lady wearing a white coat. I looked at her shoes; they were squeezing her feet so tight that her feet were spilling over the edges.

  ‘I am Doctor Reed,’ the lady said. Doctor Reed shook the hand of Boot. ‘Perhaps you should be in the room while we examine Hester. Would that make you more comfortable?’ Sack shook her head for a yes and smiled for a thank you. Her yellow skirt was a candle. I had never seen Sack smile for a thank you before. In her eyes was the start of two fires. Those I had seen before.

  Boot, Sack and me followed Doctor Reed into the testing room. ‘We told the school that we didn’t think it would work and I’m sorry we put Hester through it,’ said Boot, s
itting down on a chair.

  ‘I think Dr Mellick was probably a little hasty in his decision, but he really wanted the best for Hester.’ Doctor Reed wrote notes. ‘He is well aware of how big a burden it is to have a child like Hester at home full time. You have obviously been doing a very good job.’

  Sack did the thank you smile again. ‘She is my daughter. A daughter is never a burden.’

  ‘Help us!’ called the feet of Doctor Reed. ‘We want to escape from Doctor Reed and go with you and Mary to the creek where the soap is made of dirt and where the frog is hiding.’ Doctor Reed’s toes were trapped inside her tight shoes. They were being held prisoner the way Jesus was kept a prisoner the night before the crucifixion. I pointed at them. Boot pushed my hand back down into my lap. I could not free the toes of Doctor Reed.

  She looked up from her note. ‘I am not a parent myself, so I cannot imagine. I can only admire your commitment.’

  ‘I think it helps that there are two of us,’ said Boot, from the other side.

  ‘Of course. Now let’s take a look at Hester.’ Doctor Reed looked into my ears and eyes with long glasses. She put me on a table and pressed my tum. She squeezed my arms and legs and made me bend them. Her hands were cool on me. In the corner of the room a single black bird watched.

  ‘Hester is physically well enough. She’s clearly been in some tussles at school. Perhaps some of the bruises were incurred during the incident on her last day. And we know what caused the marks on her neck. It says in my report that she had to be held down by three members of staff. But there’s nothing serious here for you to worry about physically. It is difficult when a child’s problems are mental rather than physical. We can’t see them; we can only experience the evidence of them. I think that can be far more challenging. Parents often go without the support that they need in raising a child like that. And these disorders are far harder to diagnose. Modern medicine has come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. I am going to prescribe something for Hester that will help her to be calm, so that she does not have the mood swings that you described in the report forms.’