Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Yes.”

“Later!”

BUT AFTER CLEARING the roof he was busy shoveling snow, and after that he was busy chopping wood, and after that he was busy reading the paper, listening to the forecast, and getting dinner. I played in the garden. I made a snow cat and a snow man and a snow dog, and by then the day was almost over. At dinnertime he was only busy eating, so I laid down my knife and fork and said: “Father, I’ve got to tell you something.” I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t, so I said: “On Sunday I made snow for the Land of Decoration.” I said: “I wanted it to snow.”

He went on chewing. I could see the muscles in his jaw move. He must be playing it cool.

I said: “Father, I made snow for the Land of Decoration and then it happened. It was a miracle! It happened twice, just as I wanted it to. But you mustn’t tell anyone yet, because it might scare them and I’ve only just found out myself.”

Father looked at me for probably the longest he has ever looked at me. Then he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed. When he had finished laughing he said: “You’re a star turn. So this is what all the miracle business has been about?”

“Yes,” I said. I hoped the laughter was due to shock. “I’ve been wanting to tell you. And I did it a second time, just to make sure—and it happened again! Even though you said that it wouldn’t. Because I had faith!”

Father said: “It’s because you spend too much time in that room.” Then he sighed.

“Judith, whatever you made for your model world has nothing to do with the real one—you’re always making this or that. It’s a coincidence .”

“It’s not!” I said, and I felt strange, as if I was getting a temperature. “It wouldn’t have happened without me.”

Father said: “Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?”

“Yes,” I said. But my head began to feel full again like it did on the day I made the snow, as if there were too many things in it.

Father said: “Judith, ten-year-old girls do not perform miracles.”

I said: “How do you know if you’re not a ten-year-old girl?”

Father pinched his eyes shut with his finger and thumb. When he opened them, he said he’d had enough of this ridiculous conversation. He took my plate, though I hadn’t finished, and put it on top of his own and went to the sink, ran the tap, and began to wash the dishes.

I stood up. I tried to speak calmly. “I know it’s hard to believe,” I said. “But it wasn’t just once—”

He held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Why?”

Father stopped washing the dishes. “ Because! Because it’s dangerous, that’s why!”

“Dangerous to who?”

“Dangerous to whom .”

“Dangerous to whom?”

“It’s dangerous to think you have that sort of power. It’s … presumptuous—it’s blasphemous .” He stared at me. “Just who do you think you are? It was a coincidence, Judith.”

I heard what he said, but my head was getting too hot to think about what the words meant. I looked down and said quietly: “You’re wrong.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I looked at him. “It wasn’t a coincidence.”

Father reached up and banged the cupboard door hard. Then he leaned on the sink and said: “You spend far too much time in that room!”

“I have a gift!” I said. “I made a miracle happen!”

Then Father came up to me and said: “I want you to drop this right now, d’you understand? You do not have a gift. You can not make miracles happen. Is that clear?”

I could hear our breath and the drip of the tap. There was a pain in my chest.

Father said: “Is that clear?” For a minute the pain in my chest was too great to breathe.

And then it was as if a switch had been turned off and I didn’t feel hot anymore. The pain went away and I was cool and separate from things.

“Yes,” I said. I went to the door.

“Where are you off to?”

“To my room.”

“Oh no, you’re not; the less time you spend in that room the better. You can dry the dishes, and after that there’s some other things you can do.”

SO I DRIED and then sorted out Bible magazines. I put the oldest ones on the top of the pile and the latest at the bottom. I brought in four bucketfuls of sticks and two of coal and stacked them by the Rayburn.

Father said how well I had stacked the sticks, but that was just because he felt guilty he had shouted, like he always does. I didn’t say anything back, because I wasn’t going to let him off that easily.

I waited till nine o’clock, then I said good night and went upstairs and got out my journal and wrote all of this down, everything that had happened since Sunday. Because it was too important not to, and if I couldn’t talk about it I would have to write it somewhere instead.

I HAVE A secret. The secret is this: Father doesn’t love me.

I don’t know when I first guessed, but I have been sure for a while now. He’ll say: “That’s a good answer,” or “I liked the way you used that scripture,” or he’ll come to my room and stand in the doorway and say: “Everything all right?” But he sounds as though he is reading the words from a sheet, and afterward he tells me how I could have done the presentation better, and though I tell him he can come into my room he doesn’t.

These are the reasons I know Father doesn’t love me.

1) He doesn’t like looking at me.

2) He doesn’t like touching me.

3) He doesn’t like talking to me.

4) He is often angry with me.

5) He is sad because of me.

1) Father doesn’t look at me if he can help it, and when he does his eyes are black. They are actually green, but they look black because he is angry. There is a verse in the Bible where it says God’s spirit is sharper than a two-edged sword and divides even the soul from the spirit, and joints from their marrow, and knows thoughts and secrets of the heart . That’s how it feels when Father looks at me. It looks like he doesn’t like what he sees there.

2) Father doesn’t touch me. We don’t kiss good night or hug or hold hands, and if we are sitting too close he will suddenly notice and clear his throat or move away or get up. Sometimes when we are together, something in the air changes and it is as if we are the only people in the universe, but instead of there being lots of space, as there would be if we really were, we are locked in a very small room and there is nothing to talk about.

3) Father doesn’t like talking to me. This may be because I ask a lot of questions, such as: “What will it be like in the new world?” and “Does God know everything that will happen in the future?” To which Father said: “God can decide what to know and what not to know.” To which I said: “Then He must know what’s going to happen in order not to want to know about it,” and Father said: “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

So I said: “Does God let bad things happen because He can’t see them or because He doesn’t want to stop them?”

“God lets bad things happen in order to prove that humans can’t rule themselves. If God stopped everything bad happening, then people wouldn’t be free. They would be little puppets.”

I said: “I suppose so. But if everything we do is already written out somewhere, are we free to do what we want or do we just think we are?”

Father said: “We can’t understand God, Judith. His ways are unsearchable.”

“Then why ponder them?” I said.