The Land of Decoration (23 page)

He went to bed earlier than usual and began sleeping on a mattress on the kitchen floor. Before bedtime he walked around the garden and checked that the back gate was locked. Then he came inside, turned the electricity off, and balanced an ax above the back door. I lay in bed looking out over the town and thought about those people in Jerusalem. I wondered who the Romans were this time, and if they came, would the mountains hide us?

O
N
F
RIDAY
, N
EIL
Lewis came back to school. I felt him come into the room before I saw him though he didn’t come in as he usually did. He sat down quietly. Then he did something strange. He glanced over his shoulder at me, as if to check I was there and in that moment I knew everything. I knew he had started the fire, he and his brother and his friends, and I began to feel sick. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was angry or because I was afraid, but I knew I mustn’t think about Neil Lewis anymore, not even for a second, because if I did I would do something bad.

On Monday I woke to a strange sound: a slap and a roar. The roar came a split second after the slap. I looked down to see Father standing on the pavement. He had a can of brown paint in one hand and a brush in the other. He was dunking the paintbrush into the can and splattering it against the fence. His face was screwed up as if he was crying.

I had never seen Father look like that, and it made me feel worse than I had ever felt in my life. I sat down on the bed for a minute. Then I went down. When I came through the gate, he shouted: “
Get back!
Your clothes’ll be ruined!” But I had seen what was on the fence, the words sprayed in big looping letters, and this time I understood them all.

I went back to my room and curled up and shut my eyes. I put my fingers in my ears and pressed hard and kept pressing. I ground my teeth. But I could still hear the roaring and I could still see Father’s face.

I began to think I would like to hurt Neil Lewis badly.

*   *   *

M
Y HEAD WAS
hot and full in class that morning, like it had been the afternoon I made the first miracle. We were making snowflakes at school, folding and cutting and opening circles of paper. I would normally have enjoyed making things, seeing how the patterns suddenly sprang into life when you opened out the snowflakes, but my eyes kept wandering to Neil.

He was sitting with Kevin and Luke, his cheek on his hand. He looked bored, half asleep: The sunshine was catching his hair and making his eyelashes whiter than ever. I thought that you would not know to look at him what he was like. You would never know what he wrote on people’s fences and did to their gardens. I began cutting my snowflake again, but my eyes were getting fuzzy and I couldn’t make the scissors go where I wanted. I looked up again. Neil was putting his thumb inside the corner of his nose. He saw me looking at him. And when he did he smiled so that his eyes became slits and his lip curled.

I looked down and bit into my lips and kept pressing down until I tasted iron. I thought of Father and what he had said about forgiveness. I thought of everything good and everything right and everything hopeful, but it was all I could do to keep cutting. Something was rising inside me, millions of small things, scurrying down my arms to my fingertips, crawling up my spine into my hair.

Specks appeared in front of my eyes. There was roaring. The room was getting darker.

I don’t know what made me look up, but when I did I saw that someone was standing behind Neil Lewis. I couldn’t see the person’s face because it was hazy. The rest of the classroom was empty. The person’s hands took Neil’s head, brought it back, then down onto the desk. I jumped. The head made a dull sound and the desk rocked.

The roaring was getting louder. The hands brought Neil’s head back again. His skin was stretched and his eyes were staring. His mouth was an “O.” The hands brought the head down on the desk and Neil yelled. When his head came up this time, there was blood coming from his nose.

He tried to get up but lost his balance. The hands brought his head down again. This time it hit the edge of the desk and I heard a softer sound, like a cabbage broken open.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I was being pressed into the seat. My eyes were closing, I was falling. The hands brought the head down again. The face didn’t look like Neil anymore. The hands brought the head down again. Neil had stopped yelling now. His mouth was a hole and his eyes were two bags of flesh and his nose had spread sideways.

Then someone was saying: “Judith! Can you hear me?” But the roaring went on and the hands went on bringing the head down on the desk.

“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.

“W
HAT 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.

The Lost Sheep

U
NTIL
N
EIL 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.

*   *   *

O
N
T
HURSDAY 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.

*   *   *

O
N
S
UNDAY 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.

“It’s outrageous!” said May. She put her hands over my ears and mouthed to Father: “You could have been killed!”

Uncle Stan said: “Do you need anything? Do you want to stay with us for a while?”

Father said: “No, we’re fine. It’s all right now.”

Then Uncle Stan said: “When did this happen,
John
?”

Father said: “Friday night.”

Uncle Stan said: “You must be exhausted!”

“Yes,” Father said. “Pretty much.”

“Do you want us to come and give you a hand getting things straight?” said Margaret.

“No, no,” said Father. “It’s all taken care of.”

I suddenly realized everyone thought the fire had happened two nights ago and that Father hadn’t corrected them. No one knew about the fence either. Why didn’t Father tell them? Perhaps he didn’t want to worry them, I thought. But it was rather strange.

May shook her head. “Well, I hope the police find whoever did it,” she said. “They should go to prison.”

Father said: “You can’t depend on the police.”

“That’s right,” said Gordon, and everyone looked at him. If anyone knew about the police it was Gordon.

“Anyway, I know who did it,” said Father. “But apparently there’s not enough evidence.” Then he laughed. “They want me to install a security camera.”

Uncle Stan shook his head. “What’s the world coming to?”

“The Tribulation!” Alf shook his head.

Elsie hugged me. She said: “At least you’re safe.”

May shook her head. “I can’t bear to think of what might have happened.”

“Do you think it’s anything to do with the strike?” Stan said.