Winman, Sarah: When God Was a Rabbit

My father was into dressing up. He took it seriously. As seriously as his job as a lawyer. And every year he liked to surprise us with a new festive character, and one that would remain with us throughout the Christmas period. It was like having an unwanted guest forcibly placed amidst our lives.

‘Did you hear me?’ my father said. ‘Only another hour till lunch.’

‘We’re going outside,’ said my brother sullenly.

We were bored. Everyone else on our street had already opened their gifts and were parading the Useful and the Useless in front of our envious eyes. We sat dejectedly on the damp front wall. Mr Harris ran past, showing off his new tracksuit, a tracksuit that unfortunately showed off too many parts of him.

‘It’s from my sister Wendy,’ he said before unnecessarily sprinting down the road, arms splayed out wide towards an imaginary finishing post.

My brother looked at me. ‘He hates his sister Wendy.’

I thought she couldn’t much like him, as I watched the purple, orange and green flash disappear round the corner, narrowly missing Olive Binsbury and her crutch.

‘Lunch!’ shouted my father at three minutes to two.

‘Come on then,’ said my brother. ‘Once more unto the breach.’

‘Once more where?’ I said, as he led me towards the dining room and the scent of my parents’ selfless and enthusiastic offerings.

It was the box I saw first; an old cardboard television box that obscured my brother’s head and made his feet tap out their way like white sticks.

‘Am I nearly there yet?’ he said, heading towards the table.

‘Nearly,’ I said.

He placed the box down on the table. I could smell the fecund dampness of straw. The box moved jerkily, but I wasn’t scared. My brother opened the flaps and pulled out the biggest rabbit I’d ever seen.

‘I said I’d get you a proper friend.’

‘It’s a rabbit!’ I said with piercing delight.

‘A Belgian hare, actually,’ he said, rather brotherly.

‘A Belgian hare,’ I repeated quietly, as if I’d just said words that were the equivalent to love .

‘What do you want to call it?’ he asked.

‘Eleanor Maud,’ I said.

‘You can’t name it after you,’ my brother laughed.

‘Why not?’ I said, a little deflated.

‘Because it’s a boy,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ I said, and I looked at its chestnut-brown fur and its white tail and the two little droppings that had fallen from his arse, and thought that he did indeed look like a boy.

‘What do you think I should call him then?’ I asked.

‘ God ,’ said my brother grandly.

‘Smile!’ said my father, pointing his new Polaroid camera in front of my face. FLASH! The rabbit struggled in my arms as temporarily I went blind.

‘You OK?’ asked my father as he excitedly placed the film under his arm.

‘Think so,’ I said, walking into the table.

‘Come on, everyone! Come and watch this,’ he shouted, and we huddled around the developing image, saying, ‘Ooh’ and ‘Ahh’ and ‘Here she comes’, as I watched my blurred face sharpen into focus. I thought the new, short haircut that I’d pleaded for looked odd.

‘You look beautiful,’ said my mother.

‘Doesn’t she?’ said my father.

But all I could see was a boy, where once I would have been.

January 1975 was snowless and mild. A drab, uninspiring month that left sledges unused and resolutions unsaid. I tried most things to delay my imminent return to school, but eventually I passed through those heavy, grey doors with the sullen weight of Christmas Past pressed firmly on my chest. This would be a dull term, I concluded, as I dodged airless pools of malignant torpor. Colourless and dull . Until I turned the corner, that is, and there she was; standing outside my classroom.

It was her hair I noticed first, wild and dark and woolly, and breaking free from the ineffectual Alice band that had slipped down onto her shiny forehead. Her cardigan was too long – handmade and handwashed – stretched at the last wringing out, and it hung down by her knees and was only a little shorter than the grey school skirt we were all forced to wear. She didn’t notice me as I walked past her, even when I coughed. She was staring at her finger. I looked back; she’d drawn an eye on the skin at the tip. Practising hypnosis, she would later say.

I held up the final picture of my rabbit to the bewildered faces of my classmates.

‘. . . And so at Christmas, god finally came to live with me,’ I ended triumphantly.

I paused, big smile, waiting for my applause. None came and the room fell silent, unexpectedly went dark; the overhead lights useless and straining and yellow against the storm clouds gathering outside. All of a sudden, the new girl, Jenny Penny, started to clap and cheer.

‘Shut up!’ shouted my teacher, Miss Grogney, her lips disappearing into a line of non-secular hatred. Unknown to me, she was the product of missionaries who had spent a lifetime preaching the Lord’s work in an inhospitable part of Africa, only to have found that the Muslims had got there first.

I started to move towards my desk.

‘Stay there,’ said Miss Grogney firmly, and I did, and felt a warm pressure build in my bladder.

‘Do you think it’s right to call a hare—’ Miss Grogney started.

‘It’s a rabbit, actually,’ interrupted Jenny Penny. ‘It’s just called a Belgian—’

‘Do you think it’s right to call a rabbit god ?’ Miss Grogney went on with emphasis.

I felt this was a trick question.

‘Do you think it’s right to say, “I took god out on a lead to the shops ”?’

‘But I did,’ I said.

‘Do you know what the word “blasphemy” means?’ she asked.

I looked puzzled. It was that word again. Jenny Penny’s hand shot up.

‘Yes?’ said Miss Grogney.

‘Blasphemy means stupid,’ said Jenny Penny.

‘Blasphemy does not mean stupid .’

‘What about rude, then?’ she said.

‘It means ,’ said Miss Grogney loudly, ‘insulting God or something sacred . Did you hear that, Eleanor Maud? Something sacred . You could have been stoned if you’d said that in another country.’

And I shivered, knowing full well who’d have been there to cast the first one.

Jenny Penny was waiting at the school gates, hopping from one foot to another, playing in her own spectacular world. It was a strange world, one that had already provoked the cruelty of whispers by morning’s end, and yet it was a world that intrigued me and crushed my sense of normality with the decisiveness of a fatal blow. I watched her wrap a see-through plastic rain bonnet around the mass of frizzy curls that framed her face. I thought she was waiting for the rain to stop, but actually she was waiting for me.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.

I blushed.

‘Thanks for clapping,’ I said.

‘It was really good,’ she said, hardly able to open her mouth due to the tightness of her bow. ‘Better than everyone else’s.’

I unfolded my pink umbrella.

‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘My mum’s boyfriend’s going to buy me one of them. Or a ladybird one. If I’m good, that is.’

But I wasn’t that interested in umbrellas any more, not now that she’d mentioned a different word.

‘Why’s your mum got a boyfriend?’ I said.

‘Because I don’t have a dad. He ran away before I was born.’

‘Gosh,’ I said.

‘I call him “my uncle”, though. I call all my mum’s boyfriends my uncles.’