Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

“Have you all been behaving yourselves?” said Mr. Davies. He opened the drawer of his desk and closed it again. His voice was stronger now. He said: “Let’s check these answers.”

But I couldn’t think about answers. Something was creeping down my arms and into my fingers, rising up my neck into my hair. My head felt hot and full again, like it did the day of the snow, and the room was vibrating slightly. Specks appeared in front of my eyes.

I wasn’t sure whether I was frightened or angry; if I was angry it had never happened before.

WHEN I GOT home that evening, I made a sandwich and watered my mustard seeds. I thought perhaps they needed more light, so I moved them to the other windowsill and prodded the soil a bit. Then I went upstairs and sat on the floor in front of the Land of Decoration.

I thought of making a model of Neil and sticking pins in him, but in the end I made a banana boat with lots of paddles and six little men with bones through their noses. I intended them to look happy, but they all looked quite fierce.

ON TUESDAY NEIL opened his mouth and rolled his eyes at me. He pushed his tongue in and out of his cheek and lapped. He flicked paper balls and they bounced off the top of my head.

I thought of hailstones and balls of fire rolling down streets. I thought about earthquakes and lightning. I thought about people screaming and buildings falling and rivers of molten lava. Then I heard someone saying: “Hello! Earth calling Judith!

“Well,” said Mr. Davies, when I looked up, “now that we’re all here…”

Neil’s lip curled and his eyes smiled.

At eleven o’clock, I went up to the desk for my work to be marked. I watched the army of black hairs move back and forth in Mr. Davies’s nose and smelled the sharp tobacco smell coming down it and waited for him. He handed my book back to me and said to the class: “Listen everyone, we have someone here who has already finished.” When I went back to my seat, Neil’s eyes followed me.

One by one everyone else came up to the desk with their books to be marked. At half past eleven Mr. Davies said: “You three at the back—the rest of the class is waiting for you.” Then Neil, Lee, and Gareth came shuffling to the front with their exercise books and slouched in a line.

Neil stood right behind our table. I could hear the rustle of his Puffa jacket and the silky sound of his warm-up pants and smell the sickly smell of his skin. Gemma was smiling, but I couldn’t see why. A minute later I heard a noise like a little trumpet and something landed on my hand. I looked down and saw a perfectly round plug of snot, pale green and circled with red. It must have fitted the inside of Neil’s nose exactly.

Gemma said: “What’s that?”

Keri said: “Gross!”

Rhian said: “Oh my God.”

My head began to get hot. I looked for something to get rid of it but I couldn’t find anything, so I wiped my hand against the underside of the chair, bent my head over my book, and began writing very fast but I couldn’t remember what.

Mr. Davies finished marking Gareth’s book and began to mark Lee’s. The line moved forward. Neil stayed where he was. I heard him shuttle a slug of snot to the back of his nose. Then I felt something in my hair.

“Oh my God,” Gemma said. “Judith, what’s in your hair ?”

I put up my hand and my fingers came away covered with green paste.

I felt dizzy. I tried to tear a page from my exercise book, but my hands were shaking and it tore wide.

Neil said: “Judith tore her exercise book, sir.”

Mr. Davies looked up. “Judith, did you tear your book?”

Neil made a chopping motion with his hand.

“I didn’t mean to,” I said.

“She’s lying, sir,” said Neil. “She did it on purpose.”

“Be quiet, Neil,” said Mr. Davies.

“It’s true, sir,” said Gemma. “I saw her.”

Mr. Davies frowned. “Judith, I’m surprised at you. We don’t deface school property here.” He turned back to marking Lee’s book.

My head was very hot now. After a minute I tried to wipe away the snot, but the paper only spread it. Gemma said: “Sir, I don’t want to sit next to Judith.”

Mr. Davies said: “What is going on at that table?”

Rhian said: “Judith needs a tissue, sir.”

Mr. Davies said: “Judith, if you need a tissue, then go to the toilets and get one. I wouldn’t have thought I would have to tell you that.”

When I didn’t move he said: “Well, go on.”

As I got up, Neil smiled.

“And wash your hands!” Mr. Davies called after me.

I SAT IN front of the Land of Decoration for over an hour that evening. The little people looked at me with their painted-on smiles. I knew every one of them. The two little people I had made to begin with, years ago—a pipe-cleaner doll with a green sweater and a kite, and a fabric doll with brown hair, dungarees, and flowers—stared at me hardest of all. They seemed to be asking something, but I didn’t know what.

“God,” I said, “I’m finding it really difficult having this power and not using it to punish people.” But God didn’t answer.

AT TWENTY TO six I heard the front door slam. Father called up to me, then he went into the kitchen. I heard Mike with him. Mike is not a believer, so we shouldn’t associate with him, but Father says he is a good man so it’s all right.

Mike and Father work in the factory together. Most of the people in town do. Inside the factory they make steel for things that fly. Mike says as factories go it’s not such a bad place. In the next valley is a factory where they kill chickens, and someone got so tired of killing chickens he put his hand in the machinery. And not long ago in the paper, there was a factory where people began getting ill because their gloves weren’t protecting them from the chemicals they were using, though the factory said it was nonsense. But Father has never liked our factory much and is always in a bad mood when he comes home, unless Mike is with him.

I got up and went along the landing. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I stopped to tie up my shoe. And that was when I heard Mike say: “Doug’s a bad lot. I’d keep out of his way if you can help it. I know it’s easier said than done.”

Someone moved a chair and Father said something I didn’t catch, then Mike said: “Aye, I heard about that.”

Father put something on the Rayburn. “Jim and Doug go to the Social together. They’re like that.”

“Aye. Well,” Mike said, “I’d say something.”

“It’s cutting the hours that’s done it,” said Father. “It’s getting to some of them.”

“Extra meetings for the union.”

Father said: “The union’s a joke.”

Then Mike said: “It might be a joke, but if they do strike I’m not looking forward to it.” He sighed. “If it wasn’t this it would be something else. They’ll get this sorted and something else’ll pop up; it’s like molehills.”

Father said: “I didn’t read my contract properly,” and I could tell he was smiling.

Then they were quiet, and I went to the door and opened it and Mike said: “Top of the morning to you!” which is what he always says even when it’s evening. And I said: “How’re the hens laying?” which is what I always say back.

He said: “What have you been up to, Fred?”

I thought for a minute and then said: “Making things.”

Mike said: “Good for you. Why did the chicken cross the road four hundred and seventy-eight times?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because his suspenders were stuck to the lamppost.”