Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

‘Harriet Weiss!’ my sister adds. ‘Where are your shoes, put on your shoes! BARKIS is willin’.’

‘Did you say that to nuns today? Barkis is willin’?’

‘Tired of shoes.’

‘Harriet. Don’t say the Barkis thing to them, they won’t understand. They’ll think you’re being rude. Save it for home, OK? And try to keep your shoes on at school. Please.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s rules, Harriet. They have to have rules.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they need to keep control of things. Like in wartime, in the army. You know.’

‘Is this the army?’

‘No. Forget that. I mean – they don’t want us to run wild, that’s all.’

‘Like golliwogs,’ Harriet says, her lower lip all trembly.

Oh-oh. It’s a Golliwog Day. I look at my sister who is only 3ft 4 2/ 8in high since last measured, with her fluffy fair hair mashed down flat, that is, for top accuracy, my little sister with big blue eyes and, I happen to know, one or two tiny soft woollen chicks with plastic feet and beads for eyes in her pocket, I look at her and I wonder how it is nuns can foretell trouble, and suppose she will run wild, as if chaos begins with Harriet taking off her shoes in a classroom, like the first step on the way to the Fall of the Roman Empire and barbarian invasions and so on. Nuns are not very hopeful regarding Humanity.

‘Harriet. Remember what Mum said on that subject?’

‘Golliwogs are made up.’

‘Yup. And what else?’

‘Rude. It’s a rude word. It starts wars.’

‘Yes. No. That’s prejudice. Prejudice starts wars. Got that?’

‘Think so.’ Harriet is not happy, I can tell, because she does a little soft-shoe shuffle and then grins at me, meaning she is trying to forget something bad.

My sister is going through a golliwog phase and it will soon be over, I hope, but I do see her problem. We are five kids in the Weiss family with me bang in the middle and Ben the eldest, and very tallest, and the only one with a taste for jam and other stuff from jars, of the sweet kind, i.e. not peanut butter, aside from Mum who eats honey, though not on toast like a regular person, but mixed into plain yogurt. She has special ways, but that is another matter. OK. When Harriet first saw it, the golliwog leaping around on the label of a strawberry jam jar, she was downright spooked and refused henceforth to sit at the same table with golliwog jam upon it. Preparations had to be made. Everyone needs protection from something.

After my dad finished up laughing and teasing and leaping around with mussed hair, there was a discussion, beginning with Mum explaining about prejudice and African slavery and made-up words, and even my dad getting serious and telling us about yellow turbans on Jews in ancient times leading to yellow badges in later times and cartoons of pigs, until I had a sudden confused and stupid feeling going back to the golliwog, because I had no idea a golliwog was meant to be a person at all. I thought it was a grizzly bear. What an eejit, as Jude would say. The golliwog is deepest black with shaggy spiky hair and wild eyes and I always thought the artist drew stripy colourful clothing on it so it would be less scary for people like Harriet, the way stuffed bears in shops have little bow ties and other accoutrements so that a kid will think it is not an animal, it is a person, and therefore very friendly. No one is thinking straight. A plastic baby doll is a person, and just about the most gruesome thing a kid will ever clap eyes on, and no amount of stripy clothing can take away the spook element from a golliwog. Harriet’s fear of golliwogs has made me see the light on a few subjects of pressing importance, and I am now quite interested in prejudice, whereas Harriet has taken to slavery, and is now very inquisitive regarding slaves and slavery BC and AD, which is fine with me, as it means she is likely to find rescue in her big thing for slaves any time she is rattled by golliwogs, on a day when a golliwog is a monster chasing her straight off a label of a jam jar.

We do not buy this jam any more, but there was worse horror to come for Harriet the time she crossed paths with Mary Reade in the playground, Mary and her golliwog doll tucked under one arm, a sight so bad, my sister was a jibbering wreck and I was called for to restore sanity and peace. Harriet held my hand and would not let go, like she was right inside a nightmare and needed my company until she could remember that a made-up thing is a made-up thing and ought not to have lasting spook power, it does not exist. On that day, I tried to distract her courtesy of intellectual matters, raising fond issues of war and prejudice and slavery and so on, and today, I am wondering whether she has had another brush with Mary’s golliwog.

‘Anything else you want to tell me, Harriet?’

‘We are all God’s creatures.’

‘What? Was that Mean Nun? Did she give you the creatures speech?’

‘Yes. Mean Nun.’

Mean Nun is the only bad nun around the place and I am beginning to think she is a little bit crazy. Any time there is some kind of slip-up committed by a girl, spillage in the mess, lateness, shoddy penmanship, missing items of kit, scuffy shoes, or anything, Mean Nun lifts her gaze skyward and does the creatures speech. We are all God’s creatures, she says, not sounding too happy about it, and then she runs through a list of beasts of the field, usually selecting the less fetching type of animal such as aardvark and hippo, and then she numbers up the categories, colours, religions and countries, rich and poor, one-armed, blind, and those various nations of the wider world in need of missionary work. It’s a sorry list, if you ask me, and quite depressing, so one time, I just had to correct her, the urge came upon me to remind her that Jewish is not like Indian and African, it is not really a country-type situation, not really, and Mean Nun was not at all pleased with this news, probably because I did not ask special permission to pipe up, which is definitely against the rules and a very bad move on my part. Mean Nun hates me now and I am anxious she will declare war on Harriet also, although I doubt it, as my sister has a fine temperament and is very pleasant company compared to me, so everyone likes her even if they do not understand her all the time. If you have an unusual personality and a fine temperament to go with it, you will be OK in the world, I can see that.

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘Mary had her – I said, it’s a slave! It’s rude, it starts wars! We are ALL God’s creatures.’

‘I see. Look, Harriet. You are right about the golliwog thing but you can’t just do the headlines, like in a telegram, you have to fill in the gaps a bit, or people will get it all wrong. Do what Mum does, right? Slavery is a sad thing, golliwog is a stupid word, prejudice … rah-rah, etc. At home, no worries, we get you, but outside, you have to explain more. OK?’

‘Tired.’

‘I know it. Come on, let’s go.’

‘Creatures,’ my sister says in a mournful voice.

‘Creature sounds like monster, but it doesn’t mean monster. Got that? It’s just a word for all things, you know, everything breathing.’

‘Is Daddy one?’

‘Yup. Definitely. Feeling better now?’

‘Yes, my dear. I am going to sing.’

Great. If Harriet is plain happy, or has had a fright and is on the road to recovery, she sings. She skips ahead of me now, and sings that song Gus listens to over and over on his kid-sized private record player he got for his birthday, a small red player with a crank and a tiny speaker he sits huddled up against, hearing out this song with an expression of concentration and dreaminess, because it is a tune regarding flowers, and Gus is keen on flowers and is likely reminiscing, I believe, about trips around the garden in Mum’s arms, with Mum dipping him into flower beds, saying, Breathe, Gus, breathe in! which goes to show how even a three-year-old can look back on life, and even a three-year-old can have specialist subjects and a specialist vocabulary. Gus knows the names of flowers and he speaks them. Peony, clematis, lavender. Rose.