One Foot Wrong Read online

  ‘We love our daughter very much,’ said Boot. ‘It’s an effort but we want her at home with us.’

  ‘How frequent are these violent outbursts when she is at home with you?’

  ‘When Hester stays home we can keep her life very regular. We find that if things stay the same, without too much change, then Hester is manageable.’ Boot’s egg hung on the side as he talked. He was trying hard to stop himself from scratching.

  ‘The thing you must understand is that we cannot predict Hester’s behaviour in the future.’

  ‘We have always understood that,’ said Sack. Her skirt glowed bright as a candle for the dead.

  ‘I think you’re both very brave people,’ Doctor Reed said. ‘I believe that the best place for Hester is home with you, but that may change. There may come a time when Hester will have to go to a special care hospital. You need to know that is always an option. Hester may become more difficult as she grows into an adult.’

  The blackbird swooped down onto Doctor Reed’s head. It took a nibble on her ear. I took Sack’s bone and held on tight. ‘We’ll be home soon, Het,’ she said, with the new smile.

  Doctor Reed stood up. ‘I’ve taken enough of your time. Take your daughter home, and please consider options for the future if it gets too much for you both.’

  ‘Don’t go!’ the doctor’s feet called to me, this time they were crying.

  Boot shook hands with Doctor Reed again. ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I only wish that Hester had never had to go through any of this.’ The black bird put his beak in Doctor Reed’s ear and pulled out a small worm. I tugged on Sack’s bone. It was time to go.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor Reed, we should get Hester home.’ Sack stood up from her chair.

  ‘Of course. Good luck to you both.’ The bird swallowed the worm and gave me a wink.

  In my bed of dark that night I closed my eyes and a picture of me and Mary came down the rope. It was a picture of the water in Mary’s eye. The water grew into a tear and fell slowly from her eye, moving down her cheek until it joined where her nose mixed in with her mouth. I heard myself say, ‘I do not know you.’ I saw a picture of the hole that the doctor made in Mary for the air to come through. I saw a picture of six feet under. It was dark as the cave where Jesus hid. I saw Mary’s kiss on my knee and the snake of water. I saw oranges, apples and grapes. Juice jumped from our mouths.

  A tear in my closed eye tickled my cheek as it ran down my face.

  Every day I did my duties. Boot went to his work and at nights he shut himself in his study and Sack sat in her bed and sewed up holes. Sometimes Sack came downstairs but Boot and me never knew when. Whenever she did Boot made her tea and looked at her with wide eyes, hoping she might pat his head the way she patted the head of Cat.

  I didn’t draw pictures anymore, they drew me instead. I was the pencil, but whose hand was holding me? At nights I was drawn into trees, leaves and water. The water could not be held; it dripped, leaked and dribbled. I was drawn into a lion. I looked for Jesus so I could sit at his royal feet and purr but I couldn’t find him. He was visiting his mother in a town I had never been to.

  I asked the wooden things, my old friends, I said, ‘What is happening?’ But they kept quiet. They knew the answer but they didn’t know when they would give it to me. The little hand went around and around, I couldn’t count how many times. I was waiting, but for what? What did I think was coming? Day passed then night passed then day passed. What path did the days follow? Why were there so many? What were they for?

  Sack told me I was going with her to grandmother’s. She told me she needed help, with the cleaning and the looking after. ‘Your grandmother is very sick, you mustn’t upset her.’

  ‘What is a grandmother?’ I asked Boot, later.

  ‘The mother of your own mother,’ he answered. Grandmother was the mother of Sack. Everybody had a mother; they conceived you unless you were Jesus. He was not conceived. He was a miracle. Sack was my mother though I was a curse, not a blessing. Was Sack a curse to her mother, or a blessing?

  Sack wrapped a scarf around my neck, put on her coat and said, ‘Time to go.’ When I stepped outside, the night hid what was close and showed me what was far away. I turned in a slow circle, my face turned up to the moon and the stars. I was made of a body but the inside of me spilled out past the body the way water spills out of a sponge when the sponge is too full. The inside of me reached up into the night sky and then it went beyond the night sky into eternity. ‘Hester, stop that. Walk with me.’ Sack stepped on to the street and I followed. Dogs barked as we passed. The air was cold on my face. Sack said, ‘Hurry.’ Sack was fast; her fingers with the needle, her arms in the bucket, her legs on the street; her stirring, sewing, spreading of the sheets over the bed. I was slow as worms on the grass looking for a hole. My feet made a walking song with Sack’s. Tap tap tap (Sack). Boom boom boom (Hester). Tap tap boom tap tap boom tap tap boom. It was a long way; I got a hot neck under my scarf, and a hot wet face.

  We came to a house at the end of a thin street. ‘We’re here,’ said Sack, taking out her key. She unlocked the door and we went inside. We walked down a hall past a painting of a horse eating hay with his long head down. I followed Sack into a room. My grandmother sat in front of a fire that burned in a metal box. She was the colour grey with a blanket on her knees. A white web of hair grew over her head. When my grandmother saw me she held out her arms. The blanket fell from her knees onto the floor and she said, ‘At last! At last!’ Her eyes were like Sack’s, but faded, as if they’d been hanging on the line in the sun too long.

  ‘Don’t make a fuss, it hasn’t been possible before now,’ Sack said.

  My grandmother took me in her arms and held me tight. ‘Call me Mog – it’s what your mother called me when she was little. She called me Moggy before she called me Ma. My name will be our secret.’ Mog’s whisper was a warm tickle on my skin. I had a new secret whose name was Mog. ‘Your mother isn’t well … I’ll teach you how to play chequers. Come sit on my knee, little Hester – not so little anymore.’ Very slow, very soft, she touched the blue circles on my arms and legs. ‘That father of yours.’ She shook her head. ‘Hopeless.’

  Sack stood with her hands on her hips in front of my grandmother’s chair. ‘We have work to do.’

  Mog held me by the shoulders in front of her. ‘You made me wait so long. Why did you?’

  ‘You haven’t been well enough.’

  ‘Am I better now?’

  ‘Now I need help to take care of you. That’s why she is here.’

  Mog turned to me. ‘At last.’

  Sack was in the outside laundry soaking sheets. I was wiping the bench of Mog’s kitchen with the cloth. She called me over. ‘Tell me everything Hester, everything. I want to know, I don’t have long.’ I looked around my grandmother’s room for black birds. ‘Speak to me, Hester.’ I couldn’t see any black birds. ‘Hester?’ Somebody had drawn tiny pictures over my grandmother’s face. I saw the flowers from the garden, the branches of the tree reaching up and leaves on the vine around her eyes. I touched a leaf with my finger. My grandmother put a kiss on the end. ‘Talk to me. Tell me things.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anything. I want to know.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you have friends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘A friend gives you pictures.’

  ‘You are right. That is what a friend does. Will you give me a picture?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would like that. I will put it on the wall above my bed. It will be a way of having you when you are not here.’

  ‘Where will I be?’

  ‘At home where you live.’

  ‘Why can’t I live here?’

  Mog smiled and touched my cheek. ‘I wish you could. Who are your friends, Hester?’

  Who were my friends? Handle, table, chair, broom, axe and Mary. ‘Mary,’ I said.


  ‘Who is Mary?’

  ‘My friend.’

  ‘Where did you meet her?’

  ‘School.’

  ‘And what pictures did Mary give you?’

  The rope that tied me to Mary tightened around my throat. ‘She ate the world record in grapes.’

  ‘Do you like school?’

  ‘I don’t go there now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I am not the same as other children.’

  ‘You don’t need to be.’

  ‘What is need?’

  ‘I need you.’ Her hands were two cups on my cheeks.

  I wanted to let my secrets out. I was overflowing with them, they had grown too big, been left alone too long. My secrets wanted to pour into the cups of her hands until her hands were full and she could drink from them like warm tea. ‘I hung upside down because I was a fruit bat. I held up the fence and it cut a line of blood, my name danced. It was a leaf. You can find a whole tree in every leaf. A donkey made a wish. That was before. After there were black birds in all the corners, on the heads and faces.’

  ‘What faces? Where?’

  ‘Everywhere. They were in the corners but they wanted to come down, it was me they wanted, they were hungry for my words and my secrets that lived down deep where everything was salt from the tears of the fish. The black birds flew in circles—’

  ‘What circles? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Mary had one on her head; it wanted the apple. Mary said the apple was for me, she held it out, and the black bird watched. He was angry, he wanted the apple.’

  ‘What are you talking about? What apple?’

  ‘I ran to the hanging room, the teacher came.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Her face was a beak.’

  ‘I’m sorry that—’

  ‘He wanted my eyes—’

  ‘I’m sorry that it has to be—’

  ‘The black birds wanted to eat my eyes. They wanted to peck me peck peck peck!’

  ‘Get my blanket. Where’s my blanket?’

  ‘Peck peck peck!’

  ‘Where’s my blanket?’

  ‘Peck peck peck!’

  ‘My blanket! I need my blanket!’

  ‘It’s on your knee.’

  ‘Where’s my blanket? Get my blanket!’ Mog shouted.

  ‘On your knee. It’s on your knee.’

  ‘Where is my blanket? I want my blanket! Get me my blanket!’

  Sack came running. ‘I told you not to make trouble!’ She took the blanket from off Mog’s lap and wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘There it is, Mummy, there it is, can you feel it now?’

  Mog stroked the silk edge of the blanket with her fingertips. ‘My blanket, I need my blanket, don’t ever take it from me again.’

  ‘Nobody is taking your blanket, Mummy. Can you feel it there?’

  ‘I can feel it, yes yes.’

  ‘Hester, you must leave your grandmother alone. She is very sick. Don’t upset her, it doesn’t matter what she says to you, leave her be and help me.’ I walked backwards, away from my grandmother.

  I helped Sack clean. We changed the sheets on Mog’s bed. Beside the bed was a small cupboard with a light on top and a cross and a picture of a man standing beside a metal bird. I picked up the picture of the man. There were badges on his coat and big glasses on his head. He had Sack’s eyes without the spider. I dusted the picture with the dusting cloth. ‘Be careful with that, Hester.’ Sack took the glass picture from my hands and looked at it. After a while she said, ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, would it?’ She shook her head and kept staring at the picture. ‘Hero that he was.’

  ‘What did he do?’ I asked Sack.

  Sack stared at the picture as if I wasn’t there and she was with the man beside the metal bird with badges on his coat instead. ‘He was my father.’

  ‘When was he?’

  ‘A long, long time ago.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He flew planes in the early days.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘He brought home the bacon.’

  ‘What more?’

  ‘He wore a uniform.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘He was head of the house.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He took care of my mother.’

  ‘What else did he do?’ Sack looked away from the picture and stared at the wall in front of her. The room was quiet. Every sound gone, there was only space and emptiness. ‘What else?’ Sack waited. I waited. ‘What?’

  ‘It was my twelfth birthday. Susannah from next door gave me a sunhat with a red ribbon. On the ribbon were five white baby ducklings following the mother duck. I wore the hat to bed that night.’ Her words filled the room the way water fills a bottle – slowly, from the bottom up. ‘My father said, “You can take that off now”. I didn’t want to take it off. He said “take it off”. I said no, don’t make me, please don’t make me, please don’t, don’t make me, I don’t want to, please don’t make me! No no no! “Take it off”, he said. I didn’t have a choice. If you don’t have a choice it means there is only one thing that you can do, even if it is as bad as jumping in front of a moving train, or cutting yourself, or falling from somewhere very high – you still have to do it. Somebody else makes you. I took off the hat. I lay it on the floor by the bed. If I’d been lying under the bed beside it, my father’s weight on the mattress would have pushed the mattress down so that it would have touched the tip of my nose. He was a big man. But I wasn’t lying under the bed beside the hat; I was lying on the bed beside my father. There was nobody under the bed, only a dark space. There was nobody. No, please don’t, no, I don’t want to, don’t make me. I said it but it made no difference.’ Sack had never told me such a long story; longer than a story from the Bible, and without pictures. I had to make the pictures for myself. When Sack looked up she seemed surprised that I was there. ‘I never counted another birthday after that. It was my last one. I didn’t want any more.’ Her eyes were wide. She looked like she didn’t know why there were clouds and streets, or why to pray, or why to live in a house with Boot or why she was a mother or why to eat and sleep and why to wash the curtains and why to wait at the bus stop or go to sleep at night. ‘He’s dead, anyway,’ she said, after a full turn of the hands around the clock face. ‘You don’t need to dust that one, you can just leave it.’ I put the man down but he kept watching me with Sack’s eyes from behind the glass.

  When we finished the cleaning Sack helped my grandmother to bed. She dressed her in a pale pink gown and said, ‘I will be back tomorrow.’ When Sack wasn’t looking I whispered in Mog’s ear, ‘That father of yours … hopeless.’ Then I kissed her. It was soft as paper.

  Sack took me to Mog on Sundays. It was always at night so I could help put her to bed. Mog asked questions and said my name, ‘Hester.’ She took my hand when Sack was in the kitchen making soup. She patted it the way I patted Cat. She said, ‘My little girl, I have had to wait so long. Why did I have to wait so long?’ Then she screamed, ‘Get my blanket! Where’s my blanket? Why do I have to be cold? You know how I hate the cold!’ I never knew when she would scream; it was always a surprise.

  Before I’d seen Mog, had she always been in her chair? What is at last? I made pictures of her dry hands tracing lines around the blue circles on my arms and legs. ‘Sit on my knee, your mother’s upstairs, she can’t see.’ She pulled me up and pressed my head against her chest. Sleep came, no God the Bird, only Mog, pat pat patting my head. I purred like Cat till Sack came and said, ‘Get off!’

  Sometimes Mog called out, ‘The pain, the pain!’

  ‘What is the pain?’ I asked her.

  ‘All over.’

  ‘Where is it from?’

  ‘The mistakes I made and never fixed. I left it too late.’

  ‘What is late?’

  ‘Help me.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘In my body.’

  ‘Who put i
t there?’

  ‘I don’t know who put it there! God put it there. Oh, the pain!’

  Sack came and prayed over her and put the holy water on her head and whispered in words I didn’t know. At night I lay in bed and whispered the pain the pain!

  Mog had the sicks – her heart is missing, Sack said. Beat beat beat then nothing. It misses. We did the walk in the day, first time. I had not been for a day walk since school finished. The sun in the sky was so bright that I had to cover my eyes with my hands. Orange lights jumped behind my fingers and spread into shapes of cats and worms and a puddle. I opened my fingers for a small look in between. Everything was lit up bright as the sun: gardens with coloured flowers, trees full of silver and green leaves, the sky shining white and blue – lovely like my paintings and my song. Morning had broken. I started to cry. ‘The street is watching,’ said Sack but I couldn’t stop. The street watched as creeks of water fell from my eyes and I made sounds like Cat caught on the high gate. I could see past the land of the sun, past all things touchable and hard, into eternity. I saw the shadow of the wing of God the Bird, where he waited. I cried louder. Sack pinched the back of my neck and that is a good way to stop me crying but I didn’t stop. I cried all the way to Mog’s with Sack pulling me by my arm. When we got inside Sack said, ‘That’s enough!’ She went to fill the bucket and I walked into Mog’s room, still sniffing.

  She lay in her bed with her heart missing. If there was a hole in her nightdress the same as the hole in Christ’s, there’d be no red heart with the green thorns wrapped around, only a dark space showing the parts you couldn’t put a finger on. Mog’s eyes were shut. I went very close and looked at the tiny drawings on her face. A boat sailed along the small sea of her forehead. She opened one eye, then closed it again. ‘Mog,’ I said. She didn’t say my name and she didn’t touch the blue circles on my arms. Sack made her soup with a carrot, ham and an onion floating, and I cleaned her floors and her wall. When Sack wasn’t looking I took her hand. It was like holding a shoe or a stick with no grandmother in it at all. ‘Mog,’ I whispered into her paper ear. ‘At last, at last.’