Authors: Judith Kelly
‘People always want me to be something I’m not, and I find myself going along with their false ideas of me,’ I blurted. I felt my cheeks scorch. What made me say
that?
Miriam continued to stack books, unfazed. ‘Why are you here if you don’t feel you belong? You look like a person who daydreams.’
‘I’m not a dreamer. I hate dreams,’ I said bitterly.
‘Is there anything you care for or want?’ She watched me as though I was a new and curious animal.
‘To be null and void,’ I said without hesitation.
‘Dead?’
The sound of the word seemed to draw my eyes to the window, which looked out over the distant hills.
‘No, no,’ I said, ‘not that.’ I gave a small shiver.
An oppressive silence settled over the room. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them. Another endless grilling process, like when I first arrived on the kibbutz. It tightened me up. How I hated this type of conversation. I felt sick with embarrassment and shame and a desire to get away and assess what all this was doing to me.
I cleared my throat.
‘I just meant ... that I find it difficult to connect with people here, to make friendships.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘maybe you should forget about yourself and take more of an interest in others.’
‘Yes, you may be right.’ Helpful. She was trying to be friendly, only I was too strange, too alien.
More silence. Staring at the teetering bookcases, I tried to make out the titles of the books she was stacking. They were too far away. I fixed my eyes on the burnt spot on her lampshade instead.
‘What kind of music do you like?’ she said. ‘I have a good many records here.’
Oh, leave me
alone,
why can’t you?
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Folk rock. Joni Mitchell. Whatever’s around, I suppose.’
‘You don’t like classical?’
‘I’m not too familiar with it.’
‘Do you like Mozart? Haydn?’
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I tightened my grip on the arms of the chair. The leather was sticky and wet under my hands. I licked my lips nervously.
‘What time is it?’
‘Going so soon?’ Again I found myself enveloped in her piercing gaze. I could not meet it directly and focused my eyes to the left of her face. I put my head in my hands and rubbed them over my face, over and over again, to feel something beyond that terrible trapped feeling.
‘What a fantastic view you have,’ I said, sensing that I should make some sort of effort before I went.
‘Fantastic?’ Miriam enunciated the word with a tone of distaste. ‘You can’t live on a view,’ she said, ‘however “fantastic” it may be.’
Even when I made the effort I couldn’t say the right thing. I stared at her hopelessly, feeling tongue-tied.
‘Look, I don’t mean to be rude,’ I said flatly. ‘I just don’t like being bombarded with questions.’
Miriam shook her head. ‘Then what are you doing here?’
‘What I’m doing here,’ I said, ‘is that I was told to come. It wasn’t my idea.’
She nodded. ‘I see. Orders, eh? So suppose you didn’t have to come. What would you be here for?’
‘I wouldn’t.’
I unwound my legs and stood up. A couple of sparrows sat squabbling and pecking restlessly at the window and then flew off. I fumbled for an excuse to leave. ‘I’m afraid I have to go to the dining hall now,’ I said to her. ‘I have to make an early start tomorrow.’
‘I’m going there too. Let me walk with you,’ she offered.
‘It’s all right. Really. Thank you anyway. I must be off now.’
She nodded slowly, watching me. ‘Well ... come here whenever you wish. Spend as much time as you like reading, playing my records or helping with the library. The door is always unlocked, even if I’m not here.’
I thanked her and left. What I did share with her but didn’t want to acknowledge was a sense of waiting in loneliness, though for what I couldn’t say - perhaps to learn who I was?
Relieved to escape, I decided I would never go back. In a moment I was out of her house, careless now and tossing my hair. I walked along briskly, smiling to myself, but I didn’t know why. I began to run and when I reached the path leading to the centre of the kibbutz, I stopped. I felt an uncomfortable sensation, which amid all the wild emotions that were rushing about inside me, I could only recognise as the feeling of being observed. I turned around, but realised people on the kibbutz were strolling by, intent upon their business. No one even glanced my way. Some rode on clumsy old bikes, wearing cloth hats and pedalling slowly. The dusty path I followed wound through the settlement. Beside the plain houses stood potted poinsettias. The air was sweet, and the sun, like mild alcohol, made me yearn for good things. Suddenly this temperate Mediterranean evening, the orchards and the workers steering their bikes fluttered like tissue paper. What was there to keep them from all blowing away?
26
December
I went to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I got up at six
o’clock the next morning. Sister Mary woke us banging on
a chamberpot. She thought it was funny. I didn’t. After
Mass I got my sock from the playroom. It was hung on a
string. I got an apple and orange and two old comics. Nana
gave me a pillowcase full of toys when I lived with her and
Pop.
30
December
I had to go and see Sister A. She said I should have to write
my letter to Mum again because I said: I hope you had a
happy Christmas, more than I did.
23
January
I952
Frieda fainted in Mass today. It’s not fair that we have to go
to church so early.
6 February
I was scrubbing the floor when a nun made me pick up a
pile of tea leaves covered with ants from a drain.
It
was
horrible. She said I was lazy. She just stood and watched me
do it. I prayed, Lord, I take this for my sins.
Frances loved my stories of London life with my grandparents. Before she had met me, she had pictured London as some underground city with dark, foggy streets, pickpockets and thieves fleeing across the rooftops with sacks of swag. Now she couldn’t get enough of its glories as seen through my eyes.
I told her of the excitement of shops like Selfridges, and about the Christmas pantomimes I had seen at the London Palladium, cocooned within its cosy plush and gilt, watching the faces of actors and actresses I had seen previously only on the cinema screen. I told her about restaurants such as Lyons’ Corner House with its sea of tables covered with crisp white tablecloths. I told her of the orchestra playing amid the glittering chandeliers and cool palm trees, of white-capped waitresses silently serving Knickerbocker Glories in tall glasses.
She listened agog, her dark eyes wide. ‘Have you ever been to the zoo?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t like it.’ We were standing in the playground, watching Ruth and the others play hopscotch with a piece of broken glass.
Frances stared at me as though I were a gibbering idiot. ‘You didn’t
like
it? Why not?’
I shrugged. ‘The horrible stink.’
But it wasn’t just the stink. I remembered the expression in one monkey’s eyes as they quietly, wearily, turned in their sockets to follow the visitors’ movements. The little sad creature with its paws clinging to the wire meshing filled me with an irrational horror. I’d liked Pets’ Corner - the rabbits - the shop; I’d loads of money then, I could buy loads of sweets - but all I could remember was the smell of the zoo and that monkey’s eyes.
I tried to explain to Frances what I meant, but I couldn’t.
Sister Mary covered the blackboard with chalk strokes, making great sweeping arm motions like the conductor of an orchestra. On either side of her nose the skin hung down, like the jowls of a bulldog. She wrote up a simple sentence with such cold rage that I felt my heart-rate jump. I looked around and saw the heads of my classmates bent as they scraped feverishly in their notebooks. Ruth, tongue writhing, was stabbing away furiously with her pen, trying to keep up. A raging concerto was in progress: we, the orchestra, playing our half-witted instruments. I sat there like someone who had somehow stumbled into the pit during a recital and been waved into a chair. I should imitate the other girls and pretend to play, I decided. I thought about becoming invisible. Slowly I opened my exercise book and with my mouth puckered, I began to write.
My pen scratched half-heartedly across the paper and came to a stop.
‘What’s happened to your work, Kelly?’ said Sister Mary looking over my shoulder. She was more snappish than usual. At that moment, a blob of ink ran from my pen nib creating a pretty blue puddle on the page. ‘There’s no excuse for this scrappy scribble. You must make more of an effort.’ I felt the creep of eyes on my back. The breath across my neck. I could hear the creak of her heavily starched wimple. I began chewing my nails from fear, then quickly slid my hand under my desk away from Sister Mary’s disapproving scrutiny. Nailbiting was a misdemeanour that could earn me a black mark.
If only I had a magic carpet that could fly backwards in time. I could go back to Mum, stop her from ever leaving Nana and Pop. Make things the way they used to be.
I’d now been at the convent for over nine months, and had not received a single word from her. I bit my tongue and blinked. It was my birthday, and I mustn’t cry. I gulped in disappointment, and quickly started to write again, though the words blurred on the page.
Frances’s desk was almost touching mine. She lowered her head, watching Sister Mary carefully. When she was sure the nun was looking the other way, she put her hand in front of her mouth and whispered, ‘Judith ... have you received anything from your mother for your birthday?’
I felt on edge, like fingernails on a blackboard, but managed to shake my head. Tears filled my eyes. I tried to blink them back but they would not stop, and I hurriedly wiped them away as they spilled down my cheeks. Frances sat there helpless, watching. But just before she shot her hand in the air, she gave me a wink and did something with her finger against the side of her nose that might or might not have been scratching it.
Sister Mary frowned slightly. ‘Yes?’
‘Please, Sister, I need to go to the what’s-it.’
‘You can go when class is finished,’ Sister Mary said, lowering her eyes.
‘But Sister ... please, Sister, I need to go big really big.’ ... Frances said with a martyred sigh.
Sister Mary looked up and in her eyes I saw affection turn to disgust and disgust to anger. ‘Whose fault was that?’
Several furtive heads turned to look at Frances along the row of desks. Frances was the only one who would dare to make such a request of Sister Mary. The rule was that no one ever left the classroom. Only my pen scratched on uninterrupted, my hot cheek resting on my fist, my brow furrowed with false concentration, a model picture of effort. I didn’t dare look up. I had learnt that it was best to keep perfectly still and anger no one. I put on my best behaviour, tiptoeing about in a world of eggshells, praying that things wouldn’t crack.
Sister Mary’s palm slapped her desk. The class jumped. ‘All right! If you must, but you know perfectly well that it goes against the class rules. Go! But try and be quick.’
When the door closed, faintly rattling the glass window in its insecure frame, the chalk resumed its attack on the blackboard. Every now and then Sister Mary cast a sideways look over us, like a blinkered horse, in a manner both suspicious and severe, as if she were thinking that all children were insects that would turn and bite her if she didn’t get them first and squash them hard.
No one took any real notice when twenty minutes later a nun called Sister Columba entered the classroom, her habit whisking impatiently against the door. Opinion amongst the children was unanimous that poker-backed Sister Columba was the meanest nun that ever lived, but I had yet to experience anyone as bad as Sister Mary. The class clattered their pens thankfully into the grooves of their desks and stood up. Sister Columba strode briskly across the room, and I would certainly not have stared at her but for the expression on her sallow face, and the way it affected Sister Mary.
Sister Mary put on a soft-soaping smile and then, in a voice of obvious alarm, said, ‘What is it?’
Sister Columba leaned close to her and whispered something in her ear. Sister Mary’s fawning measly quarter-smile froze and I would not have thought that her fist-like face could have turned any redder, but it did. There was a sharp hiss as Sister Mary drew an outraged breath. She stamped her booted foot, bruising the wooden floor.
‘What?’
We flinched as her voice boomed like an organ into the classroom. It took ages to die.
She looked at us, and we stared fearfully back at her.
‘I’m going to leave you for a while without any supervision’, she rasped. ‘And I don’t want bedlam here. You are to continue doing your work in
complete silence.’
She paused here to survey our faces, as though to judge our worthiness to carry out such an extraordinary task, and apparently found us up to it.
The two nuns exchanged dark, conspiratorial looks and with great solemnity walked out of the room. What a din their habits seemed to make, crackling and rasping; how their heels pounded on the wooden floor. The door’s glass rattled again as it was closed.
‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ whispered Ruth across the classroom. Then there followed an instant of dead silence, ruffled by mouthed exchanges to each other behind hands, with eyes rolling. The whisperings subsided, only to bubble up a few seconds later, simmering and gradually increasing to boiling point.
‘What do you think happened?’
‘I haven’t the faintest.’
‘Did you see her face?’
A breathless discussion ensued. The consensus was that something huge, really huge, had happened. I became anxious because there was still no sign of Frances, but I said nothing.
Ruth slumped down, closed her eyes and rubbed her head animal-style on the wood of the back of her desk.
‘There’s big trouble brewing,’ she said in her husky voice. ‘I can feel it in me bones.’
Ruth had recently run away and had been caught wandering through the town. She had been brought back to the convent in a police car, making her a scandal and a heroine for several weeks. That’s why she was in the classroom again. Normally she’d be scouring baths and washbasins, polishing and dusting, and even coping with clogged-up drains. But now the nuns had to keep a close eye on her. While the nuns whacked us all, they took particular delight in the cruelty they showed towards Ruth Norton. It was all meant to make Ruth beg them to stop, beg them to leave her alone, but through it all, she never lost her sense of humour. Yet there were times, when you could see the rage welling up inside her, held in only by a fragile barrier.
‘Them nuns are all habit with no fizz in their think tanks,’ she said boldly propping her feet up on her desk.
‘Where’s Janet?’ someone whispered.
Janet was so thin, she seemed like a piece of white tissue paper and it was difficult to notice when she was missing from class. Ruth’s eyes assumed an intent scowl. I knew it well. She looked like that when a nun barked ‘four nines?’ at her; her eyebrows knitted, awaiting inspiration.
‘I think she’s in the dormitory standing with her sheet over her head because she wet her bed last night,’ said Ruth.
Janet had a weak bladder and wet her bed quite often. As a punishment, the nuns made her stand for hours wearing the wet sheet over her head. I liked Janet because I had never heard her speak badly of anyone, other than to say a nun had not been nice to her. One day in the playground she gently reached into a cardboard box and her hands emerged holding a small brown frog. The frog wriggled a little and then settled into her supporting hands.
‘I love all animals, even the fierce ones,’ she said once, ‘Do you ever feel that every animal in the world needs to be protected?’
I know what she meant and it was a terrible feeling.
As we waited for Sister Mary’s return to the classroom I folded my arms and put my head in the hollow. All the desks were scarred and spotted with ink and smelt the same: spicy, like the ground under a tree. Sometimes the wood was discoloured, bleached from the sun. There was a groove for your pens and a hole for a tiny porcelain inkwell. Ruth occasionally drank the ink and poked out her blue tongue at us. Sometimes she even ate the paste issued to us as glue. She said she preferred it to our porridge. With my head on my arms I licked the desk, but it just tasted bitter.
An ominous sound then became audible far away in the convent. We all looked at each other, listening. There was a dull rumbling, which became the sound of running feet and raised voices. I felt a kick of fear as if it were the onset of some appalling rebellion. The running feet and voices came nearer. Then the classroom door burst open and Sister Columba came running in. She was dragging someone after her by the hand. It was Frances.
‘Here she is, here she is!’ cried Sister Columba. She thrust Frances forward.
The class leapt to its feet, the wooden seat-backs clattering as they snapped back. Sister Columba looked now as if she were completely mad, her pasty large-nostrilled face twisted and almost grinning. She produced a bamboo cane from the folds of her habit. My heart hammered at the walls of my ribs.
Sister Mary arrived at the doorway, studying her fingernails as though she had just discovered them, a crooked smile on her face. Behind her stood Janet Dover. She looked so chalky pale and stiff I thought her blood must have turned white. Tear tracks ran down her face. She was sent to stand beside Frances. What had they done?
Sister Columba tapped her cane against the palm of her hand. I had learnt by now that a cane could lacerate the skin. It caused severe black and scarlet bruising that took two weeks to disappear, and all the time during those two weeks, you could feel your heart beating along with the wounds.
Turning to Janet and Frances, Sister Columba said, ‘You girls are the lowest of the low. Guttersnipes. What do you have to say for yourselves?’
Frances said in a soft whining voice, ‘Me and Janet are sorry, Sister, we promise we’ll never do it again.’ Her hands twisted in elaborate shapes of pleading. ‘We only climbed through Sister Mary’s cell window to get our letters. We weren’t going to steal anything.’ It was like the plaint of an animal.
Sister Columba stared at her for a few seconds and said, ‘You have both behaved deceitfully and you know it!’ She moved towards Frances and dealt her a savage kick in the side which briefly tumbled her over on to the floor.
Then, turning to Janet, she tapped her lightly on the shoulder with the end of her cane, a broad smile on her face. Janet looked straight ahead, her hands twisting her handkerchief round and round unhappily. I saw a muscle jump in her jaw.