Grace McCleen - The Land of Decoration

I STARED AT the snow and wondered if I was still dreaming. But the houses weren’t made out of cardboard and the people weren’t made out of clay: Mr. Neasdon was trying to start his car, Mrs. Andrews was peeping through her curtains, little kids were building a snowman, and the dog from number 29 was lifting his leg against a heap of snow and trotting off to the next. I blinked and it was all still there. I pinched myself and it hurt. I sat on the bed and looked at my knees. Then I got up and looked out the window again. Then I pulled on my clothes and ran downstairs and opened the front door.

The snow wasn’t cotton wool or pipe cleaners or felt. It was real. I turned my face to the sky. Whiteness sealed my eyes and my lips. The cold was like silence around me. I went back inside.

The back door crashed as Father came into the kitchen. His cheeks were red and his mustache bristled. He put down a bucket of coal and poured himself tea. “Put plenty on,” he said. “It’ll be cold until the house heats up.”

“Aren’t you going to work?”

“There isn’t any,” he said. “The power’s down at the factory. There’ll be no school for you either. The road’s closed; even the gritter can’t get through.”

Then I sat down at the table and kept very still, because something was fizzing inside me. Father was saying: “I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in October,” and it was as if he was a long way away, and everything was now new and strange: the clank of the Rayburn stove lid, the shunt of the scuttle, the wheeze and pop of the porridge. I was standing in a high place but I didn’t want to get down. I wanted to go higher. I said: “Perhaps the snow is a sign of the end! That would be exciting.”

Father said: “The only exciting thing around here is that our breakfast is getting cold.” He put two bowls of porridge on the table, sat down, and bowed his head. He said: “Thank you for this food, which gives us strength, and thank you for this new day of life, which we intend to use wisely.”

“And thank you for the snow,” I said under my breath, and I reached out and put my hand on his.

Father said: “Through Jesus’s name, amen.” He moved his hand away and said: “The prayer is for concentrating.”

“I was concentrating,” I said. I tucked my hand into my sleeve.

“Eat up,” Father said. “I want to get down to the shops before they sell out of bread.”

WE PUT ON wellies and coats. We walked in the road, in the pink trail left by the gritter. It wasn’t snowing anymore; the sky was fiery and sun flashed in each of the windows. And all the things we usually saw—the dog mess and cigarette butts and chewing gum and gob—had been washed away. Cars were tucked up beneath snowy eiderdowns. There was nothing except people carrying bags or shoveling snow or blowing on their hands.

At the top of the hill, the town spread out before us. I knew it was all there, but today you had to look hard to be sure. We passed the multistory car park and the bus station and the main street, and they, too, were deep under snow. I said: “I like this. I hope we have more.”

Father said: “There won’t be any more.”

“How do you know?”

“The forecast is clear.”

“They didn’t forecast this, did they?”

But he wasn’t listening.

THE CO-OP WAS busy. Hot air was blowing and people were pushing. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” they said. “No mention on the forecast,” and “In October too.” There were no newspapers by the tills and not many loaves of bread left. We paid for the groceries, Father took four bags and I took one, and we began walking home.

Halfway up the hill I said: “Father, how would you know that a miracle had happened?”

“ What? ” He was puffing, his face red.

“How would we know if a miracle happened?”

“A miracle?”

“Yes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think the snow might be a miracle.”

“It’s just snow, Judith!”

“But how do you know?”

Father said: “Now, look, we don’t want a long discussion, OK?”

“But how do you know that lots of things aren’t really miracles?” I said.

I ran to keep up. “I don’t think people would believe a miracle happened even if it was right in front of them, even if someone told them. They would always think it was caused by something ordinary.”

Father said: “Judith, where is this going?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “I can’t tell you yet,” I said. “I need more evidence first.”

“Evidence?”

“Yes.”

Father stopped walking. “What did I just say?”

“But—”

Then Father frowned. He said: “Drop it, Judith. Just drop it, OK?”

BETWEEN THE KITCHEN and the front room is the middle room. The middle room is Father’s room. It’s dark and smells of leather and sheepskin. There is a moth-eaten tapestry of creepers and snakes, a clock with no pendulum, and a chaise longue with no springs. There’s a threadbare fur rug and a picture of angels and a coat stand made from a tree. There’s a large black fireplace with birds-of-paradise tiles. And on either side of the fireplace is a cupboard.

In one cupboard there are photographs of Father and Mother before I was born, cards and piles of letters and lots of photos of people I don’t know—Mother and Father’s families before they came into the religion. Now the family doesn’t speak to us, all except Auntie Jo, Father’s sister, who sends us a Christmas card she has made every year inviting us to visit her in Australia. It annoys Father a lot because she knows we don’t celebrate Christmas, but he can’t bring himself to throw them out.

In the other cupboard there are a lot of books. There are books about the planet and the universe that have pictures of superclusters and black holes and cells and things. Father gets these out sometimes. But most of the books are written by the Brothers and these have titles like: Then They Will Know, The Lord’s Day and You, and You Know Not the Hour . I knew I would find out about miracles in one of those books.

The problem was, the cupboards were Father’s and I should ask before going in there.

I waited for him to go out all afternoon, but he didn’t. He stoked the fire and made an omelet. He read the paper. He made dinner. He washed up. Then he got the look he gets when he’s about to make something and went into the garage. In a while I heard sawing, and I went into the middle room and closed the door.

My heart was banging as I opened the glass doors. This was a sin, but a sin in service to a greater good, so in the grand scheme of things it could be overlooked.

The first book I took down was called The Gentile Times Have Ended . It was full of charts and numbers, and I put it to the side. The next book was called Gog of Magog: The Arch Deceiver . That didn’t talk about miracles either. I took down another. A pile began to form beside me on the carpet. I could still hear Father sawing. Every so often there was the sound of the blocks toppling to the floor. My heart was beating so loudly that the room was vibrating.

I was beginning to think I would never find anything about miracles, when I came to a book with a dark-green jacket and a bush, pale green and burning, pressed into the cover. It was called Gifts in Men .

Inside, there were pictures of people walking on water and the dead coming to life. A man was praying in the belly of a fish. Another in a fiery furnace. Another in a lion’s den. The book spoke of gifts and signs, of messengers and callings . Miracles, it said, were God’s calling card, His credentials, seals of divine mission. It said: For where miracles are, there certainly God is. I sat cross-legged on the floor.