Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

I slip my bare shepherd feet into shoes and skip out on the buckling action. I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date. I push the door open and clamber down the stairs with my toes curled tight to keep my shoes from flying off. It strikes me I might as well head straight for the wire and wait there for Mum and Dad and not bother with the Adoration seeing as I’ve spoken my nine words and done the abiding and the fear not part, and anyway, there will be two other shepherds in a whole gang of adorers, that’s enough, plus I cannot sing and Music Nun will show me her cross face and Mean Nun is waiting for me and there isn’t a king or a shepherd in sight out here. Fuck-hell.

Come on, Jem.

Go to cloakroom doors. Knock softly. Sister Teresa will let you in. These are my orders. I dash like a commando for the double doors and lose an indoor shoe on the way. The grass is wet and I have bad visions of slugs and worms and spiders in the dark wet grass so I run back for my shoe. OK. Now, knock softly. No answer. Knock louder. Nothing. Here come prickly tears, a rush of them, and I don’t care any more about orders, I pound the doors like a maniac until I hear Mean Nun calling for me. Where is she? She is poking her head out of some doors further along and waving her arms in a frantic manner. What is she doing over there? Oh no. Wrong doors, Jem. You have been pounding on the assembly-hall doors with audience on the other side wondering what all the racket is and who is causing this big-noise crime. It’s me. Jem Weiss.

Mean Nun is speechless, she hates me beyond words. I kick off my shoes and let her grapple me in the shoulders and propel me out of the cloakroom into the assembly hall and I get whiplash in the process so that my shepherd hat slips over my eyes and I have to fix it quick sticks. It’s not really a hat, it’s a dishcloth with an elastic strip around the forehead to hold it snug and I hate it, it makes my ears hot and the elastic gives me a headache. I would quite like to ditch my shepherd hat but I am already in trouble and going in bareheaded would freak out Directing Nun for whom a dishcloth on the head is the main distinguishing mark for a shepherd who might otherwise get mistaken for a fourth king, some character NOT in the Bible, and thereby her great fame in the Nativity department will be in ruins, ruins.

The worst thing is having to catch up the other shepherds in the procession headed by Drummer Boy and kings. Kings are posh and the boy is symbolic so they are most important, they go first and I note they have just about hit the stage steps, with the lowly shepherds following on, and last of all, the innkeepers who made a bad mistake shutting out Mary and Joseph due to snobbery and prejudice. I need to scoot past Mr and Mrs Innkeeper and join the shepherds, then slow my pace right down to seemly Adoration speed, but both shepherds turn round to gaze at me in pity and accusation, making it plain obvious it was me doing the horrible noise at the doors, and now I can hear my dad’s laugh out there in the audience, I picture him in my head, his hair flopping around and his shoulders shaking and then there are chuckles from other people, strangers, so I try to think about Mum and how she might say, Never mind, darling, and stroke some hair from my eyes so that, before too long, the horror scene is over and I feel it is OK to carry on being Jem, to carry on being alive. I work real hard to see her face.

It’s always the same. I tell myself, don’t blush and a blush stains me hot and fierce, red as a traffic light, an alarm. I tell myself, don’t cry and my eyes fill and the world is a haze of sharp sound and coloured light and impending doom, worse than stepping out of the bright sun into the spider shed. My face is wet, I want dry land, somewhere safe to sling my hook and that’s when I look up and spot Harriet flouncing around with the rest of the angels. It’s her first go as an angel and she is a natural, no directions required, only Mrs McCabe to pin on a halo and a pair of spangly wings and launch her mangerwards. Go on, Harriet. Be an angel. I must say, though, regulation kit for angels is definitely helpful for identification purposes, much more so than in the case of shepherds, because, frankly, the sight of all those babies flapping about the manger with dreamy expressions on their faces brings to mind runaway loonies, and this is Sister Clothilda’s fault, she has simply not come up with reasonable guidelines for the behaviour of angels, such as the possibility of even temper and serenity. There is not one single angel out here in command of her senses and my sister is Chief Angel, waltzing about the manger with great swoops of her wings, batting her eyelashes in Adoration whenever she does a flyby, and halfway into one of her circuits of the manger, she looks straight at me and smiles a spooky smile, lips apart and teeth snapped tight and then she does it, she goes cross-eyed. It happens in a flash and in that flash of time I know she is trying to tell me something, my sister who is a whole three years younger than I am, and new to Nativity, but not one bit nervous tonight, knowing what is important and what is not so important, and how this is not worth crying about, being late for the Adoration, it’s only a play, Jem, and we’ll be home soon, having a snack at the white oak table and gearing up for holidays, with Christmas stockings in mind, and hopes of snow. Thanks, Harriet.

Lucy White is the Virgin Mary this year and, so far in life, she is my best friend in the outside world. I like her brother also, even though he locked me in their attic once and left me there for a while, I have no idea why. Never mind. Lucy’s mother comes from India and she is a very gentle lady who serves me biscuits on a blue-and-white stripy plate and tea in a blue-and-white stripy cup and saucer in their dark and polished dining room whenever I come round to play, and she is such a gentle lady, I just cannot tell her tea makes me gag a little and is very low on my list of favourite drinks. One weekend, Mr and Mrs White invite me out for my first Indian meal and I am quite excited in the back of the Whites’ car, up until when Lucy’s mum asks me whether I like ladies’ fingers, a question that throws me into despair and perplexity, especially with Lucy and Paul behaving in a raucous manner, going ha ha ha and poking me in the ribs with pointy fingers while Mrs White explains in a gentle voice, ladies’ fingers are a SIDE DISH, information I accept with a wise nod and a slight frown, not understanding at all. Do they have special plates in India? Or is it a biscuit? Mrs White likes to give me biscuits. I have never been to a restaurant without my family and am already quite worried about where to sit and who will order for me and will I say yes to something expensive by mistake, and now all I see are long delicate fingers on a blue-and-white stripy plate, fingers on a side dish with bloody stumps where they once joined happily at the knuckles to form a lady’s hand, fingers that danced across piano keys and the fluffy heads of small children. Stop it. I try to think about comestibles with finger in the title and no death. Shortbread fingers, chocolate fingers, fish fingers. Lady fingers. Two pointing fingers, human and divine.

Lucy is pretty good at the Virgin Mary, doing a fine job of pretending she is NOT seven years old going on eight, no, she is the mother of an immaculate conception type baby and she is doing a fine job of pretending that baby is Jesus and NOT a plastic girl doll with a stark-eyed expression and real eyelids that shake loose at irregular intervals, flying open and slamming shut in an alarming manner, suggesting shock and outrage and giving me palpitations and a strange guilty feeling. Lucy is doing a fine job but I avoid looking her way or at the terrible doll, I gaze at the floor of the manger instead, trying to keep my cool and my face hidden, because I am thinking about Harriet’s angel act and an unseemly roar of hilarity is rising within. I wonder what would happen if one shepherd suddenly fell apart and had a fit of hysteria bang in front of the Little Lord Jesus, would he get carted off to a place where there are other mad shepherds dressed in white jackets tied up at the back, wandering a field, going in for wild bursts of laughter and maybe muttering in a demented fashion about angels and lost sheep? Or would it seem realistic, and forgivable therefore, this shepherd simply overcome by awe and ceremony, the hard work of bearing witness and so on, the sheer weight of it all, which is kind of how I am on special occasions, my birthday, anyone’s birthday in my family, an outing with Mum, a game with Jude, Christmas night, how I am kind of crazed and slap-happy due to festivity, lying awake to linger over the marvels of the day until I have this desire to leap out of bed in a flap of blankets and check on every Weiss, and sit up in their beds and review the day in all its marvels, as if by staying up and talking the day over, I can stop this thing a while, a feeling close to pain and sickness I do not understand.