Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

Doug looked at Father. He looked at me. He looked at the girl, and she rushed out of the room. I heard the baby begin to cry as Doug’s eyes slid back to Father.

Father said: “Hello, Doug. I didn’t know you lived here. We were just talking to your daughter about…”

Doug seemed to be as surprised as we were. Then he said, in a voice that was more like a growl: “She’s not my daughter.”

Father took my hand. “Well, I’m sorry if we’ve inconvenienced you. We didn’t know you lived here. We’ll be going now.”

We went through the kitchen door and my heart was beating so slowly it was hard to breathe. We walked through the hall and it was like being underwater.

Then Doug shouted: “Damn right you’ll go!” He seemed to have suddenly woken up. “Get out! Get out of my house! Don’t ever come back! Don’t ever step through the gate! Don’t set foot on the fucking pavement!” He kept shouting as we went through the front door and down the path. It was difficult to think and walk at the same time, though it was what I wanted to do more than anything, because my head felt like it was being battered from side to side and I was afraid I might faint.

“We don’t want any of your satanic mumbo jumbo, McPherson! You come here spouting about goodwill and scab off and leave the rest of us to take the fucking flak!” There were people staring from windows now and from the other side of the road and from the next-door garden. “Oh, and McPherson! Keep that little witch away from my son! Getting him into trouble all the time! Tell her to put the finger on someone else, d’you hear me? STAY AWAY FROM MY SON!”

We kept walking but I was in a dream, I had fallen through ice and I was sinking. The spot of light above my head was getting fainter and fainter. As long as I keep walking, I thought. As long as my legs keep moving. And then my legs felt like bits of string, because suddenly I saw Neil ahead of us, standing astride his bike with Gareth and some other boys. He must have come home with Doug in the truck.

Doug was still shouting as the boys began riding. They rode closer and closer. They stood up on the bikes and leaned from side to side. As they passed us, showers of stones spewed up from the wheels and the wheels made a tearing sound. The boys rode, in circles; the stones flew faster.

Father kept walking. He didn’t stop and he didn’t turn round and he didn’t let go of my hand. He walked right down the middle of the road. I didn’t see how the bikes kept missing us but they did. It seemed to me we were walking through the Red Sea and there were currents of electricity passing back and forth between Father and me and crackling in the air all around us.

We turned out of Moorland Road. The boys shouted. They threw a stone or two. Then they dropped back and it was just Father and me, the wind whipping around us and banks of cloud moving over the valley below.

Father held my hand for a few more moments and then he dropped it.

FATHER DIDN’T SAY anything all the way home. I ran alongside him. Every so often I glanced up at his face, but it was set in a mask and I couldn’t read it. When we got home he went straight into the kitchen. He put his bag on the table, then turned round. He said: “What’s this about you and Neil Lewis?”

“I haven’t done anything,” I said.

Then he shouted: “Don’t lie to me, Judith!” and it was like being winded.

“All right!” I said. “I wanted to punish him! I wanted to punish him for what he does to me every day. I hate him! ”

Father’s face was dark. “What do you mean, ‘punish’ him?”

I tried to breathe slowly. “I made things,” I said. “In the Land of Decoration. I wanted bad things to happen to him. And they did.”

Father said: “I have told you, Judith, about this NONSENSE ! I warned you no good would come of it!”

“It’s not nonsense!” I said. “I did make things happen!”

Father came close to me. “Do you have any idea what I’m dealing with?”

I tried to keep looking at him but couldn’t, so I looked at the floor.

“Doug Lewis and I have never got on, but now things are a hundred times worse. Here I am trying to keep things together, trying to keep food on the table, trying to keep a roof over our heads—and you go around stirring things up with his son!”

“I haven’t stirred anything up.”

“You told him you could perform miracles!”

“I didn’t!” I said.

“Then what was Doug talking about?”

I looked at my shoes. “I wrote about the miracles in my news book; Neil read it out in class.”

Father banged the table hard with his hand. “But damn it , Judith—you can’t perform miracles!”

My body was full of shaking blood. “I CAN!” I shouted. “I’ve got special powers! Everything I’ve wanted has happened. Every single thing. But I didn’t mean to tell anyone—I wanted to tell you, but you didn’t believe me! ”

Then Father shouted: “YOU DO NOT HAVE, NOR HAVE YOU EVER HAD, SPECIAL POWERS!” and I stumbled backward and covered my face.

When I looked again, Father’s hands had dropped to his sides and his face was white. He said: “What do I have to say to get through to you? What do I have to do to make you grow up ?” He shook his head. “For the last time, Judith, have you threatened Neil Lewis or aggravated him in any way? Look at me! ”

I looked at him, and I said: “No.”

I SAT IN my room and I looked at my knees. “You told a lie,” God said.

“Father would have been more upset if I hadn’t.”

“Another lie,” said God.

“Oh, be quiet!” I said. “I should never have listened to You in the first place! I wish I had never found out about the miracles. If I’d listened to Father, none of this would have happened.

“Well?” I said after a moment. “Haven’t You got anything to say?”

I stood up. “You know what I hate about You? The way You just disappear when You feel like it. I wish I could disappear!” I sat down and put my head in my hands. “It’s like talking to myself.”

“God,” I said after a while, “I don’t want to be Your Instrument anymore.”

He couldn’t let that go. “What do you mean?” He said.

“I don’t want the power,” I said. “I’m giving it back.”

IT GOT DARK in the room. Shadows spilled over the floor and slipped down the walls. They skimmed the ceiling and the hot-air balloon light shade and traveled like clouds over the Land of Decoration. They appeared and reappeared and went elsewhere.

I watched the streetlights go on and the moon come up. The moon was so bright that it had a halo. It looked like chalk dust and the moon like chalk and the sky looked like a blackboard and all over the blackboard there were pinpricks of stars. I remembered it was written that the sun would be darkened and the moon wouldn’t give its light, and I wondered if when the end of the world came it would be like a giant eraser had wiped the moon and stars out and rolled up the sky like a blackboard, with a snap. I thought how nice that would be.

I heard the hall clock strike eight. I heard it strike nine. I heard it strike ten. Then I must have closed my eyes, because when I looked out the window again, I had slipped down on the pillow and there was a wet patch where my mouth had been.

It was very still and very cold. I had the feeling it was quite late and I felt uncomfortable, as if I had dreamed something bad and it was still dragging behind me. I felt confused too, as you do when you wake and aren’t sure if it’s morning or evening or can’t remember where you are, which was strange, because I was in my own bedroom. I suddenly thought that I might not be real, or I was real and everything else was make-believe: Either way it was a pretty lonely feeling.