One Foot Wrong Page 8

  She opened her eyes and said, ‘I never stopped him, he was my husband; I didn’t stop him.’ She reached up and touched my hair. ‘My little one, so perfect.’ She called for Sack: ‘Kathy!’ Sack came close and my grandmother said, ‘I should have stopped him, all those years. Why didn’t I stop him?’ Then she tried to suck a ball of air into the deepest parts of herself. I heard the ball of air fighting with my grandmother. It didn’t want to go in, it wanted to stay on the outside where there were no walls of grandmother-skin telling the air when to stop. The ball hit the insides of my grandmother as she tried to drag it in. It bounced around the walls inside her as they fought. But it was my grandmother who needed the air, the air didn’t need my grandmother. Only I did. Sack kept saying, ‘Mummy, don’t don’t,’ as the pink spider wriggled and spun. Tears ran down his spider cheeks. I saw the ball of air fly out of my grandmother and she went still. She was empty like the skin of a sausage with no sausage inside. She went flat. Sack fell over her and coughed and coughed and held on. As I watched Sack grew smaller until she was so little she fit under my grandmother’s flat empty arm. She went under it and she cried. Soon she turned around to me, eyes red at the edges, pink spider covering its small hairy face and said, ‘Leave me here for a while. You go out and fold up your grandmother’s things. I won’t be long.’ But she was long. She was as long as a day. I folded Mog’s blanket then I unfolded it. I folded it again then I sat in my grandmother’s chair, spread the blanket over my knees and slept.

  When I woke up the room was in darkness. Mog’s blanket had fallen from my knees and I was cold. I sat up. Mog swam in water around my head. She had no body, only an invisible heart. She was leaving the room. I followed her down the hall then she opened the front door. She said, ‘Everything will be alright,’ then she flew up into the sky and her invisible heart joined with the stars so there was one extra. God’s peace was in me, it made me soft. I walked back into the house, sat in Mog’s chair and fell asleep.

  When Sack came out and woke me up she was her old size again. It was dark when we walked back to One Cott Road. This time our feet were very quiet. Silent eternity was above me as Sack pulled me along with her head down.

  The next day, after porridge, I said, ‘Where has my grandmother gone?’

  Boot touched Sack on her shoulder. ‘Quiet, Hester,’ he said.

  The question in me pushed up along the wet walls of my throat. It wouldn’t be stopped. ‘Where did she go?’

  Sack sniffed, her hands in the sink washing porridge pot.

  ‘Quiet, Hester,’ said Boot.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Gone to God.’ Sack turned around to me. He hands dripped with sink water. The pink spider nodded at me.

  My question bumped and pushed. ‘But – but where?’

  ‘To the cemetery,’ said Sack with tears running through.

  ‘Where is the cemetery?’

  ‘My mother …’ said Sack with her head in her hands. Boot took her upstairs, shaking his head at me as they went.

  I sat with Cat under the kitchen table when Sack was in the church. I told Cat about Mog and the cemetery. I tickled under her black and grey chin. ‘A grandmother is the mother of your mother. You are conceived. She said she never stopped him and he was her husband. There was a picture of a man and he was Sack’s father, he flew planes in the early days and she said no no no please don’t please. My grandmother was on her way to the cemetery. Does she have her blanket there? Catty Catty Catty.’ Cat purred but she didn’t answer. Nobody did.

  As the hands of the clock turned circles I waited for pictures from my grandmother. They came to me at night. She touched my bruises and she wrapped her blanket around me and said at last at last.

  One day I woke up with sticky slow dripping from between my legs. I put in a finger and it came out red on the end. I pulled back the blankets and a blood flower grew on the white sheet. There were two blood flowers on my white nightdress too. I traced the petals with a finger. They were like the flowers in the Garden of Eden before Adam listened to what Eve said. Two tight fists wrung out a damp red cloth in my tum. I rolled over with my hands to warm me up. The fists wrung the cloth again. I heard Sack downstairs singing Jesus Jesus, while she stirred the pot. If she found the flowers there’d be trouble. Jesus beat the drums from the feasts in my chest beat beat beat. I pulled off the sheets and the nightdress with hot in my face and the two fists wringing in my hungry place. I should be downstairs setting the table.

  ‘Hester?’ Sack’s voice came up the stairs.

  The drum beat faster beat beat beat. Sheets in my hands, I looked around the room but I already knew all the corners and there were none for hiding. I was very hot in my face and the fists wrung the red cloth again, tighter this time; I needed the toilet.

  ‘Hester!’ I heard her feet on the stairs – Sack hated the stairs, her back needed lie-downs and day-sleeps, not stairs. The hot in my face turned cold and the fists pulled the cloth so tight I had to sit down. I needed the toilet more, more. Sack was halfway up the stairs. I wanted to say, ‘Stop! Sack, stop!’ I wanted to run down the stairs, push past her to the toilet and let my bottom end have a rest. ‘Hester what are you doing?’ She was at the top now and then she opened the door, walked into my room and looked at me with eyes like street lamps – I was the street. The two fists squeezed the cloth tighter and tighter, red water dripped out, my bottom end opened up and it was too late for the toilet. ‘Hester! How could you?’ She grabbed me around the back of my neck with her thin hand and pushed me to the stairs. ‘Go outside and wash yourself. Filthy!’

  I was filthy and my filthy swine sounds filled the room. I ran hard at Sack and her back hit the wall with her breath jumping out like a punch. She fell to the floor with the sound of a dropped cup and then I sat on her with the blood flower sheets over her mouth and my filthy swine smells all around us. Sack hit the air with her hands and she pushed me off. The pink spider shook his angry leg at me. Sack backed out the door.

  It was night time. I lay awake with the fists wringing out the cloth when Boot stepped softly into my room. ‘It’s me,’ he said. Me climbed in and God the Bird swooped down from a cloud and stretched out his wing for Hester to climb on. I was halfway up when Boot fast-jumped out of the bed. He was leaving the room, his breathing fast and frightened. God the Bird flapped his wings and flew away. Sticky trickled between my legs. I got up out of bed and switched on the Christ light by the door; there were more blood flowers on the sheet.

  Boot never made another night visit. In the kitchen his eyes looked at the plates and the pots, the spoon stirring round, and never at me. I was not his good girl anymore. Sack found every flower and we prayed together. She ripped up sheets and tied them in pieces around me.

  The hands went round and round the face on the kitchen wall; I counted up to seven then I started at the front again. There were too many circles to fit in a single day. There were too many days. One started; light behind the curtains, birdsong, the light grew brighter, it stretched and rose and shone, birdsong quietened, then light sank slowly into bed. I watched the day pass, I counted it passing, as it darkened and became night. I watched that pass too, on my back looking up. Darkness spread out over the world, grew thick, lit only by the moon, then it slowly thinned, turning to grey, until the darkness passed, and another day began. I never knew where the day had gone. I didn’t know how I could get any of them back. Where do you look for a lost day? As the hands went round the face of the kitchen clock, my body grew pieces like the hills Christ walked over with his basket of bread and cheese. Sack saw me looking. ‘No!’ she said. I didn’t look after that, but I touched. The hills felt soft and they tickled. Hair came out of me like spider legs. ‘Where are the spiders?’ I asked Sack. ‘Under your skin,’ she told me. ‘It is what happens to women.’

  I was cleaning the toilet on my knees on the hard floor. It was my duty. When I went to put my brush in the bucket of water I saw a face. When I dipped the brush in the b
ucket the face spread and broke into pieces – the pieces swimming away from each other as if they were enemies.

  I looked in the mirror that hung in Sack’s room. She caught me doing it. ‘What are you looking for?’ I looked in the mirror to see a new person in the house – a young woman of eighteen, Boot told me.

  ‘What is eighteen?’ I asked him.

  ‘Eighteen years since the day you were born,’ he said.

  ‘Is that a long time ago?’

  Boot stopped his reading and looked up at me. ‘No, it’s not long, no.’ I looked in the mirror to see what was not long ago. I looked to see what Cat liked to scratch and sit on, what Sack liked to pray beside, what Boot liked to lie on before the flowers of blood. I looked in the mirror to see an aberration.

  The same river of blood that flowed through Christ and the townsfolk caught in the tower of Babel, flowed through me. It swelled big as the sea after the storm, the one that set Noah on the boat. The river pushed at its own banks as it flowed and itched the way Boot itched when he had his eczema. Sack said, ‘Stop scratching at it, John, you know it will only get worse.’ She painted pink medicine wings across his shoulders – but he still scratched when she wasn’t looking. The river of blood wanted to burst out of my open mouth. Sack stayed further back from me, as if she knew the river inside me was flowing so hard and fast she might drown in it.

  I lay in my bed and heard someone else in trouble – not me, not Cat, but Boot. ‘Everything you do is wrong!’ Sack couldn’t put Boot in the hanging room; he was too big to get up onto the table. She could only shout.

  ‘Katherine, please don’t say these things.’ A heavy pot hit the floor. The river of blood inside me flowed faster when I heard that pot hit the floor. I grew bigger than the bed. My arms and legs hung over. I filled up the room. The river of blood wanted to spray from the wide holes of my new big self. I got out of the bed; my door was locked. ‘Open! Open! Open!’ I called. Nobody came but One Cott Road went quiet. No more Sack shouting, no more pots hitting the floor.

  In the morning Sack took a long time to come and open my door. I had made a puddle in the corner. Sack said, ‘You’re not a little girl anymore. You’re a young woman. Surely you can hold on.’ She laughed the laugh of a little bird whose beak is too small to let out the sound. Jesus beat the drum from the feasts faster inside me and the river of blood flowed strong and wide. Whap! I hit Sack where the beak would be if she were a bird. She fell over and both her wings went snap! Her hair lay in my puddle and I came for her again. All the years of my eating landed on the back of Sack. ‘How long will ye vex my soul?’ I asked her.

  ‘John! John!’ she called, her words catching in my fingers over her mouth, the way mine caught in Boot’s. Boot came running up the stairs and into the room. ‘Hester, no!’ He tried to pull me off Sack but you can’t stop a river of blood flowing wild by saying no. I hit him where his tree grew, then I hit him again, in the nose. He threw me at the wall – the wall caught me and threw me back. I hit him again and again, in his eyes. Then he gave me one more big push and that wall knocked me on the head and said, ‘Sleep time.’ When I woke up the room was empty. I was lying in a pile by the wall with a sore leg and a sore elbow and a sore head.

  For days and days they left me alone. No punishments, no duties, no Bible lessons. I stayed in my room and drew pictures with my fingers over the walls. The pictures were all secret ones – you couldn’t see them. Cat could but Cat would never tell. I drew the river of blood; One Cott Road was in it bobbing up and down, more down then up. I drew me standing on the edge of the blood river with a long stick. I pushed One Cott Road under with the stick so you could only see the chimney and then I pushed that under too.

  Boot let me out to go to the toilet and bring me food. One day I listened at the door. It was Boot saying, ‘We can’t do it anymore. We don’t have the strength.’

  Sack said, ‘But she is my daughter.’

  ‘You aren’t well enough, Kathy. We don’t have a choice. Look what she did to you. What will happen next?’

  Boot came into my room. ‘Hester, you’re going to live in a new place.’

  I was drawing a lamb and a snake on the floor. The snake was swallowing the lamb in one bite. ‘What place?’ I asked him while I finished with the lamb; the last thing to go down was his wriggling tail.

  ‘Renton.’

  ‘What is Renton?’ I asked, looking up at Boot.

  ‘Renton will be your new home.’

  ‘Why will it be?’

  ‘We can’t take care of you anymore.’

  ‘What is taking care?’

  ‘You will be taken care of at Renton.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Where will I be?’

  ‘Renton.’

  ‘Will Cat be there?’

  ‘Cat will be staying here.’ Boot’s turn to sit on the bed. Would he take my hand, would he say my name again? Would it be full with the tears from the eye of the fish?

  ‘Hester – I am – I am …’

  ‘What are you?’ I asked.

  ‘We never should have, I never should have …’ His hands made a cover for his crying eyes.

  ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know where.’ His hands came down from his eyes. I looked into them; they were brown with red tears. There were lines down his face that went from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. Whose knife had made those lines? Whose hand held the handle?

  Sack’s body in my room made the room smaller, pressing me to the walls. Sack fast-opened cupboards, fast-pulled out clothes, fast-breathing as she prayed. Cat looked around the corner of the doorway. She walked slowly into the room with her tail up high. Cat knew she shouldn’t come in. Sack saw her, ‘hissssssssss,’ she said, and out went Cat.

  ‘We can’t keep you anymore, Hester.’ As she spoke Sack folded the clothes and put them into a brown case. ‘You are – you are – a thief is what you are!’ Then the talking stopped and she sat on the edge of the bed. Her white plaster arm looked hard as a door that wouldn’t open. ‘Come here.’ She patted the place beside her on the bed. I came over and she took my hand. ‘Look at me, Hester.’ I looked in the blue water of her eyes. The pink spider held out a leg for me to hold. Sack said, ‘Hester.’ Her voice was full of tears from the eye of the fish. She held my hand in one of hers, all the knuckles on her fingers turned white as she held on. ‘Hester, when you were born, you came from me. It was the only thing I ever did that was right. You came from some part I couldn’t see, or understand, I only knew that it was the best part.’ Sack touched the hair on the front of my head soft and slow. She moved my hair back from where it hung across my eye so I could see her whole.

  I knew she would let go of my hand soon. I waited for it. She threw my hand away like she threw Cat out the back door. ‘You have to go, that’s all there is to it.’ She stood up and left the room.

  Once she was gone I came back from the edges and looked at the brown suitcase and the pile of my clothes inside it. On top of the clothes was The Abridged Picture Bible and on top of that was a painting that I did a long time ago when I went to school. It was a painting of me holding Cat. I wore a pink skirt. Mary was there, waving, and she had a halo. I didn’t know Sack kept that painting.

  ‘It is time for us to leave.’ Boot stood in the hallway with the suitcase. Sack came past and opened the front door. She leaned more on one side than the other. She had a hand on her back and one in the white plaster and she was as thin as the stick that pushed One Cott Road under. Boot opened the back door of the chariot and I climbed in and lay down. I was much bigger now; I had to bend my legs to fit across the seat. Where was I going? Was it like school? Would Mary be there? Would my teacher be there? Would there be stories that travelled from the page and into my fingers?

  We drove a long time before we stopped and Boot said, ‘This is it.’ We got out of the car and walked up a pathway with flow
ers on the sides. The flowers were orange with black eyes. I wanted to put my eye close to the black eye of the flower and see down to what lay hidden under the ground, but Boot was pulling; I had to keep up. We walked inside the building. It was not a house, not a school and not the testing room. It was a new building. A lady came to us, with hair made of metal. Metal is what knives are, and forks. She held out her hand; it had three rings, one with sharp glass, and she said, ‘I am Dr Pebblinghaus. Welcome, Mr and Mrs Wakefield.’

  ‘This is Hester,’ said Boot. Sack was crying. It made her cry, that I was Hester.

  ‘I’m sure we can make the transition to Renton a smooth one for your daughter,’ said Pebblinghaus. She nodded at a lady wearing blue shoes. The lady took my arm. She was strong as Boot.

  Boot and Sack walked away. I called for them but they kept walking. Sack leaned on Boot. Boot leaned on Sack. Their bodies made an arch like the window on the cover of Illustrated Hymns. Through the window between them I saw the road leading away from me.

  The lady with the blue shoes said, ‘This way.’ I followed her the way Cat followed Sack when Sack carried the meat. A man and a lady walked behind me wearing white shirts and the same blue shoes. The blue shoes made them light as the sky and fast. We walked along on a shining floor past many doors. I put my feet down slowly so that I wouldn’t slip on the shining floor. Every door had a small square cut out and bars stuck in the square. We came to an open door. Inside was an empty room with a bed. The lady locked the door of the room with me inside and I made my smooth transition.