Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

“Judith!” Someone was shaking me. The roaring was stopping, the light was coming back, the room was full of people again.

Mrs. Pierce’s hands were on my shoulders and her face was white. Anna and Matthew and Luke were staring at me. Everyone was. I looked around. Neil, too. He looked normal. Nothing had happened to him.

My body was wet. I thought I was going to be sick. Mrs. Pierce opened my hands and took the scissors. My fingers were cut and the snowflake was in tatters.

“WHAT HAPPENED IN there?” said Mrs. Pierce. I was sitting on the seats beneath the coat rail.

“I don’t know. My head got hot.”

“Has this ever happened before?”

Her face was more serious than I had ever seen it. She said: “We have to talk about this. With your father. I’d like you to ask him to come and see me as soon as possible. Right now I have to get back to class. Would you like to go home?”

I nodded.

“All right,” said Mrs. Pierce. “I’ll get someone to walk with you.”

“No,” I said, “I’ll be all right. It’s not far.”

“No,” said Mrs. Pierce. “Wait here and I’ll go and get Anna to walk with you.”

When she had left, I got up and went out.

I don’t remember walking home, but I must have. I don’t remember if it was raining or sleeting or blowing a gale, but it must have been doing something or other. I don’t remember Sue not being there and having to cross the road myself, but I suppose I must have done that too. I don’t remember turning in to our street or coming through the gate or unlocking the door or coming upstairs or sitting beside the Land of Decoration, but I must have done all those things, because then I remember staring at the figure I had made of Neil Lewis, standing up, and bringing my foot down hard on it. I remember the feel of the figure beneath my shoe and the roaring in my head and hearing myself say things I had never heard before, like “I will drain the very gorge from his veins”—though I didn’t know what “gorge” was and whether it came from veins or another place altogether. I didn’t know if I was speaking, because it didn’t feel like my mouth or my voice, and when I caught sight of myself in the sea I didn’t recognize my face either. Then the roaring grew less and I don’t remember anything after that. I lay down and went to sleep.

When I opened my eyes, my head felt as if I had hit it and my tongue felt too big for my mouth. Light from the streetlamp was falling on the fields and the hills and the towns of the Land of Decoration. A voice was saying: “What have you done?”

It said: “I think you really have done something this time.”

“No I haven’t,” I said.

“Look,” said the voice.

I picked up the figure of Neil Lewis and looked at it. The head dangled, one leg was longer than the other, an arm was missing. The face was in pieces.

I pushed the arm into the body, but it wouldn’t stay. I pushed the head on again, but it fell off. There was nothing I could do about the face. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said.

“Like the fire didn’t mean anything?”

“I’ll remake it.”

“What have I said about remaking things?”

“I don’t care!” I said. “I’ll do it. I’ll make it right.”

I got out wire and wool and modeling clay. I remeasured the wire and remodeled the head, but my hands were shaking. I remade the hands and the feet and re-dressed him and re-wigged him and repainted his face, but the eyes were smaller and the nose was straighter and the checks fuller than they should have been. I didn’t have any more Wite-Out left to do the white stripe down the trousers, and the new figure was a good half inch shorter.

I pushed the figure away. “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. But I knew of all the things I had made, this meant the most.

UNTIL NEIL WALKED into the classroom on Tuesday, I felt sick. “There!” I said to God as Neil slouched to his seat. “Nothing! I told you so.”

“Don’t count your chickens,” God said.

That night I wrote in my journal: Nothing has happened to Neil.

On Wednesday we finished our snowflakes and hung them around the room, got to the bit in Charlotte’s Web where they are about to go to the fair, and wrote some more poetry. But this time my poem wasn’t any good at all. I couldn’t seem to do anything else either. I multiplied when I should have divided, confused nouns and verbs, pasted the wrong side of my graph to my math book, and colored my mercury red instead of silver.

Mrs. Pierce called me to her desk. She said: “Are you all right, Judith?”

“Yes, Mrs. Pierce.”

“How’s your hand?” she said. But my hands were fine, because the cuts had only been little.

Mrs. Pierce said: “Have you asked your father to come and see me?”

I flushed. “Yes,” I said.

But it was important Father never did that, because Mrs. Pierce would let him know I was still talking about God and the miracles.

My book was open in front of her. Only two sums had ticks by them. She said: “It doesn’t matter about the sums, Judith. You can do these standing on your head. I just wondered if you wanted to tell me what was worrying you.”

I shrugged.

“Is everything all right at home?”

I nodded.

“How is your father coping with the strike?”

I thought about it. When he came in from work, Father’s face was pale but his voice was calm. We ate dinner and studied the Bible. Then he went into the middle room to look at the bills on the metal spike and I went upstairs. He inspected the fence, came in, balanced an ax above the back door, and turned the electricity off. “I think he’s OK,” I said.

Mrs. Pierce said: “Remember, Judith: I’m here if you do need to talk to anyone. OK?”

“OK,” I said.

ON THURSDAY WE got a letter from the civil court, asking Father to ring them as soon as possible. He said: “They didn’t waste any time.”

“Who?” I said, but he didn’t answer. I had to look at the envelope. “What do they want you to do?”

“Take the fence down.”

“Why?”

“It’s an antisocial gesture ”—he held the paper up—“ a safety hazard , and aesthetically incongruous .”

“Are you going to take it down?”

“In their dreams,” he said, and dropped the letter into the grate. I took that as a “no.”

That night I dreamed of the field in the Land of Decoration and the two little dolls I made first of all. The field wouldn’t stay still, as if someone was shaking it, and the dolls clung to each other. The sun was bigger than before and seared their hands and faces. The grass was long and silken, but it was writhing as if it were alive and grasped at their ankles.

Something was coming, lolloping through the grass. It looked like a person, except there wasn’t a head, only something bobbing like a balloon on a string. The fabric doll screamed and pulled at the pipe-cleaner doll’s sleeve. It came off in her hands and she backed away.

The pipe-cleaner doll stared at his arm, then at the fabric doll. His face was blank. Suddenly his legs crumpled and he dropped to his knees. He continued to stare at her. She opened her mouth. Then the pipe-cleaner doll’s eyes turned up, his head toppled backward, and his body fell at her feet.

ON SUNDAY IT was good to see everyone. It seemed ages since we had. They were shocked to hear about the fire. “Well, are the police doing something?” said Elsie.