Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

I can’t imagine Father thinking it was a good idea to take me to the doctor, because he never goes to them himself, but he did. I remember that the doctor’s room smelled funny. I remember there was a chair with a leather seat and in the corner a box of plastic blocks and a big red bus. I played with the bus and Father talked to the doctor.

The doctor did tests and made a plan and came to a conclusion. The conclusion was that we were both missing Mother, and the plan was that Father should read to me. So he did, and I learned all about the Nephilim, and the Ark of the Covenant, and why circumcision must be performed on the eighth day, how to clean an infected house of leprosy, what not to say to a Pharisee, and how to remove the sting of a gadfly. And as I began to read I began talking, and in a while I was talking as much as anyone—though perhaps not about the same things.

There weren’t many people to talk to except Father, so I began talking to God. I always supposed it was just a matter of time before He answered me. I used to think of it as a long-distance telephone call. The line was bad, there were birds sitting on it, there was heavy weather, so I couldn’t make out what the other person was saying, but I never doubted I would hear them eventually. Then one day the birds flew off, the rain cleared up, and I did.

I DECIDED TO use my power to help people, and first on my list was Mrs. Pew. I had been thinking about her since I saw her crying. I didn’t think she could be the type of person to kidnap children if she was so upset about Oscar; it was quite disappointing to think that Kenny Evans probably did go to live with his father after all.

Oscar is a large ginger cat who sits in Mrs. Pew’s front-room window between a bowl of hyacinths and a yellow china dog. I didn’t know why he had decided to disappear. Perhaps he was tired of the dog, who didn’t do anything but grin in an empty way, or perhaps he was tired of the view. Anyway, all that mattered was that I bring him back. So on Thursday when the snow came down in flurries, I made a cat with marmalade wool. Father called: “What are you doing?” and I called back: “Reading!” The lie was justified: I was now God’s Instrument and had work to do.

I gave the cat a blue collar and one white paw and took a chip out of his ear, just like Oscar, though I couldn’t remember which ear and hoped it didn’t matter. I made an old woman in a black dress and gave her a high lace collar and little black boots and pushed very small beads in the sides of the clay for buttons. I gave the lady black curly hair, glued pieces of cut-up staple in her hair for clips, painted her face white and her lips red. I made a trail of cat prints leading through the snow to the old lady and put the cat on her lap and made sure he was curled up and didn’t look like he was going to get up again. I sewed his eyes closed and tucked his paws in. Then I said: “Come home Oscar.”

When I had finished, I wondered what might actually happen if the miracle worked. Would Oscar’s whiskers be singed after being flown back from wherever he was at the speed of light, or would his fur stand on end after being brought back to life with a bolt of lightning? Anyway I went round to Mrs. Pew’s and knocked on the door. I saw her wobbling head and smelled the secondhand-shop smell and felt a bit queasy, but I stayed where I was and when she opened the door I said: “Don’t worry about Oscar, Mrs. Pew. I have a feeling he’ll be home very soon.”

She turned up her hearing aid and I said it all over again, and then she said: “Oh, I do hope so. I do hope so!”

I said: “Have faith, Mrs. Pew.”

Then she said: “Pardon?”

And I said: “HAVE FAITH!”

Her hand fluttered at the base of her throat and she said: “Oh. I certainly will.”

She watched me go down the garden path. When I was at the gate she said suddenly: “You’re Judith, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

She said: “Thank you, Judith. It was nice of you to come by.”

I said: “You’re welcome, Mrs. Pew.”

When I got back, I wrote up the miracle in my journal, then turned over three pages and wrote: Has Oscar come home yet? and then I wrote the same on the next.

I WAITED FOR Oscar all that day and the next day too but it just went on snowing. In the meantime I decided that even though I didn’t want to go back to school, because of Neil Lewis, the snow would have to go. Father kept talking about how much work he was missing and accidents were happening on roads and old people like Joe were getting sick. Father said Joe had gone into the hospital and Watson was being looked after by a neighbor. So that afternoon I undraped the gauze and peeled back the cotton wool and blew away the flour and broke the icicles off the houses. I rolled up the cotton and dismantled the blizzard and packed up the snowmen and wiped away the shaving foam and put the blue back in the sky and turned on the sun.

On Saturday night the wind dropped. The next morning, blue sky appeared. By the afternoon the sun was quite warm. Icicles dripped outside my window like someone playing jars of water. The snow in the street became slushy and broke into platelets of ice. Father said: “I knew it couldn’t last.” I didn’t say anything but went and stood on the pavement and listened to water running into the drains at the side of the pavement and said: “Thank You, God. You have me again.”

But there was no Oscar. I waited all day and I waited all evening. I said: “Did I do it right, God?” But God must still have been busy with the four horsemen or something, because He didn’t answer.

I sat up in bed that night and watched clouds crossing the moon and veiling and unveiling the Land of Decoration. I watched the sun come over the mountain and blink a bleary red eye, striping the sky pink and yellow like a stick of rock. But there was still no sight of Oscar.

I WAS STANDING in the garden with Father after the meeting the next day when the fourth miracle happened.

Father was clearing the paths and I was helping him. Little birds had left prints here and there on the bird table and on the top of the walls. A trail of larger prints that belonged to some larger animal led from the garage doors. The buddleia bushes and golden cane bowed beneath a foam of snow, and the cherry-tree branches were black and dripping. There were open patches of ground here and there where the earth and a little sodden grass were beginning to show.

Father was drinking tea, looking around with his hand on his hip, his breath a pink cloud in the air. He said: “I think it’s going to be pretty next spring when your mother’s cherry tree is out. And a few more weeks and we’ll have the first Christmas roses.” That’s when we heard tapping and looked up to see Mrs. Pew standing at her kitchen window. She was beckoning me.

When I got to the wall, she opened the back door and pointed. By her feet, bent over a bowl of cat biscuits, cracking them with his teeth, turning his head this way and that, and making hungry noises, was Oscar. Mrs. Pew said: “I looked up and there he was on the windowsill!” Her head was wobbling twice as fast as usual. She said: “I thought he was dead, and here he is, right as rain, eating for England!”

I climbed over to Mrs. Pew’s and reached out to stroke Oscar’s head. I was pleased to see that not one bit of fur was singed and all his whiskers looked perfectly straight. “I told you he’d come home,” I said. Mrs. Pew was smiling and nodding. Her eyes looked watery. At that moment I didn’t feel afraid of her at all.

She said: “Judith, would you and your father like some jam tarts?”