Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

MY MOTHER AND father prepared a room for me before I was born. Mother decorated it and made curtains and a hot-air-balloon light shade, and Father made me a bed and a trunk. They wanted a baby more than anything and when they found out Mother was pregnant everything seemed perfect. But things went wrong.

When Mother was giving birth, she began to bleed. The doctors said she must have a blood transfusion or she would die, but she knew God didn’t approve of them. She knew that it was written that we must not take blood into our body, because blood gives life and belongs to God. The doctors didn’t understand and they wouldn’t help her. Some got very angry. “Save the baby,” she said. One doctor agreed to; the others walked out.

The greatest test of faith is to give your life for it. Mother gave her life for her faith. She saw me and was happy. She told Father she would see him in the new world. Then she died. She wasn’t afraid, because God had promised to resurrect her. Father wasn’t afraid, because he also knew God had promised. But I think he was angry, and I know he was sad.

He kept the house and garden as she had left it. He watered the Christmas roses, he pruned the cherry tree and golden cane. He dusted and polished her things and kept them safe. But he stopped smiling, he stopped laughing, and he stopped making plans.

I asked God if it was my fault Mother died, and He said that it was. I knew that already though. I knew it every time Father was angry with me. “What can I do?” I said to God.

“Nothing. I told you. You can do things, but undoing them—that’s something else altogether.”

IT WAS THE last day of the term. We took down our work from the walls, ripped the spare pages out of our exercise books, and put them in a pile to be used as scrap paper. When everyone went into the hall in the afternoon to sing carols, I crossed my arms, put my head down, and closed my eyes. For the first time in my life I felt better at school than at home.

A sound made me look up. Mrs. Pierce was closing the door. She said: “Nobody will miss me for five minutes.” She sat down beside me.

“Judith, I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to have a word with you before the end of the day and I probably won’t get a chance if I don’t do it now. You don’t say much, but I’ve been very worried about you lately and wanted to check up on you. What did your father say when you asked him to come and see me?”

I swallowed. “He said he would come up,” I said, “but not for a while—because he’s busy.”

Mrs. Pierce said: “That’s unfortunate. I’d hoped he would—” She sighed and said: “Judith, here is a letter. I’d like you to give it to your father. Tell him it’s very important he reads this.” She looked at me. “All right?”

I bit my lips and nodded.

Then she took a piece of paper out of her pocket and pushed it toward me. She said: “Judith, this is my phone number. I don’t usually do this, but if you need to talk to anyone over Christmas, please call me.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“In fact,” she said, “in the new year, regardless of whether I manage to speak to your father or not, I’m going to get you some help. I think there are a lot of things going on in that head of yours, a lot we could do to help you if we knew what we were dealing with.”

“What do you mean?” I said, and I was frightened.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about,” she said, “just help from some professional people.”

I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t want to know.

She got up from the table and said: “They’ll be finishing in a minute. I’d better go back.”

I looked at the paper, and suddenly my eyes were full and my heart was beating so fast. “Mrs. Pierce,” I said.

“Yes, Judith?”

“There’s something I do have to say, but I don’t know if I can.”

“Stop!” said God. But I had started.

Mrs. Pierce came back to the table. “Yes, Judith? I’m listening.”

I felt dizzy. “If I told you I had done something bad…” I said.

“Yes?”

“If I told you I’d done something very bad … something unforgivable—”

“Judith—”

“No!” I said. “If this thing was very bad—”

Mrs. Pierce put her hand on my arm. She said softly: “Judith, I don’t mean to make light of what you’re telling me, but I’m sure you’re not capable of doing anything very bad.”

“I am!” I said. “It’s worse than you can imagine!” and I began to cry.

She waited and handed me a tissue and then said: “And you can’t tell me?”

I shook my head.

“Have you talked to your father about this?”

I shook my head. “He warned me about it—he told me it would lead to trouble, but I didn’t believe him.”

Mrs. Pierce was flushed. She shook her head and said: “Judith, I’m going to phone your father; the sooner I talk to him about this, the better.”

When she said that, I began to breathe very fast, and she put her hand on my arm and said: “Judith, please try not to worry. I’m sure that whatever you did, you did it with the best intentions and your father will understand that; I really do think I should try to talk to him.”

THAT AFTERNOON MRS. Pierce read the last chapter of Charlotte’s Web to us, where Charlotte dies but is happy because she has done everything she could to save Wilbur and people think what she has done is a miracle. Of course the real miracle is that it was such a difficult thing for Charlotte to do because she was dying and yet she did it anyway. Mrs. Pierce stood by her desk as we trooped out and said: “Have a lovely holiday! Don’t eat too many mince pies. I want you all in peak condition for next term.” As I passed, she said: “Remember what we talked about, Judith.” I nodded.

When I got home I burned Mrs. Pierce’s letter in the Rayburn, and I was glad I had done it before I read it, because it made me more frightened than I could imagine thinking of Father reading it. But I stuck Mrs. Pierce’s number in the back cover of my journal. Then I went upstairs to lie on my bed and ticked off the days till I could go back to school; I thought how strange it was to do that, to want to go back. Then I felt colder and got under the covers into bed.

A little later a car pulled up. I heard a door slam and then the gate swing open and a man’s voice say: “Steady.”

I got up and peered through the window, but whoever it was was now opening the front door, and I jumped because it banged against the wall. Someone said: “I’ll get it,” and it sounded like Mike.

I ran along the landing and down the stairs. And then I stopped halfway down, and so did my heart, because it was Mike. He had his arm around someone who looked like Father but I couldn’t be sure: The person who looked like Father had his arm across Mike’s shoulders, and his face looked like it had been pushed sideways, and there was blood on it, and his eye was puffed up and closed like a fetus.

Mike said: “Whoa!” when he saw me. Then he said: “It’s all right, pet. Your dad’s just fallen down some steps. He’s going to be fine. Run and get some cold cloths, will you?”

I must have still been standing there, because Mike said: “Go on, there’s a good girl.” But I still couldn’t move until the person who looked a bit like Father picked up his head and said: “I’m fine, Judith,” and the voice sounded a bit like Father’s too, except that the person’s mouth sounded full of something.

I went back upstairs to the bathroom and began soaking a flannel under the tap. Halfway through soaking it my legs sat down on the side of the bath, because I knew Father hadn’t fallen down steps and I knew it was something to do with what had happened to Neil, and I was pretty sure that a person had done this to Father and that person was Doug Lewis.