Authors: Judith Kelly
‘Shut it, Norton, you imbecile,’ came a voice from one of the curtained cubicles.
* He fills the hungry with good things: and the rich He sends away empty.
* Holy Lord, we pray to thee, throughout the night our guardian be.
‘Are you Judith Kelly?’
I took the hand of the broad-set woman dressed in a shapeless cotton hat and loose-fitting bib overalls smelling faintly of cow dung. Her name was Lorna, she said. She spoke in English, good English.
‘Yes. I’m sorry to have arrived so late. How did you know my name?’
‘I was told that the only person not to have arrived yet was English, so you aren’t hard to identify.’ She gave me a smile but I wasn’t sure if the remark was complimentary. I felt both reprimanded and looked after. I followed her to the administration office of the kibbutz, smiling and hoping I was making a good impression. She ticked my name off her list and turned to me.
‘Fill in this form with your details.’
Name, date of birth, level of education. My pen stopped when it came to religion/race. I bit my lip, gazing down at the form. My initial thought was to ignore the question. But my eyes kept returning to it.
You should put down Jewish,
ran my thoughts.
Why do you resist it? Your place in the world
?
You keep saying you
want a real identity; well, here’s your chance to declare yourself.
I couldn’t do it. I left the space blank, and shoved the form back at Lorna. ‘Here.’
She stared at me for a moment, and then shoved her hands in her overall pockets. ‘Follow me,’ she said with a sigh.
I trailed after her to a supply room where I was fitted with two changes of work uniform, bed sheets, work boots, a kibbutz hat, two T-shirts and coupons for the kibbutz shop.
‘You can buy all the supplies and toiletries you need there,’ she said, ‘also wine, beer ...’
‘I don’t drink,’ I said abruptly.
She looked down. ‘Good,’ she said with a grin.
As she led me to my room, she explained where I would be working. I was on the Ulpan programme, a six-month introduction to Israel and the kibbutz way of life. ‘This week you will be working in the mornings in the orchards or citrus groves, and in the afternoons you will be taught Hebrew along with the others on the programme. Next week you will do the reverse - mornings for class and afternoons for manual work,
und so weiter.’
We climbed the steps of the accommodation block, which looked like an enormous cricket pavilion. She led me into a small and narrow room with three beds crowded into it. Mine took up most of the wall beside the door. There was a faint smell of cigarette smoke. The curtains were rather roughly pulled back so that the room was a little dark. Several T-shirts and a towel were scrunched up on the floor. A red backpack lolled on one of the two other beds, and clothes hung from nails on the wall.
‘Your room-mate is an American girl,’ said Lorna. ‘The communal shower and toilet is outside, at the end of the corridor.’ She nodded in the direction of a lime-coloured door with a porthole window.
‘That’s about everything, I think. Don’t forget that the evening meal is at six in the dining hall.’
‘Do I have to pay for it?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Don’t worry, you eat as much as you like for free here.’
I took her extended hand, which felt roughly hewn.
‘I hope you enjoy your stay,’ she said dryly, and descended the steps. When she reached the last step, she turned, gave me one brief quizzical sidelong glance, and disappeared.
I awoke from my old nightmare, familiar as my own skin. I am standing on the rocks, looking down into swirling waters. There is a chain of screams behind me, and I am being pulled in both directions.
Frances’s eyes, beseeching me. Don’t let go. The waves thumping against the rocks.
The dream lingered, vivid and heavy, pulling me down, making my mouth dry. For a few terror-filled seconds I didn’t know if it was happening all over again. Or worse, if time had tipped backwards and it was happening still. The pounding of my dream continued: the heavy tread of boots on the tiled floor. My room-mate, apparently. And even though she had awakened me from the nightmare that had driven me to Israel, instant irritation flared at her thoughtlessness.
Listen, I know you’ve got good reasons for waltzing in here in
your hobnails, but shut up, OK? Can’t you see I’m trying to
sleep?
I groaned and pulled the pillow tight around my head. Whoever it was didn’t take the hint. The cupboard door banged open, and the boots stomped across the room again.
My fingers tightened on the pillow as I seethed.
If you’re so
determined to wake me up, why don’t you just set off a firecracker,
for God’s sake? That would do the trick.
Nothing outraged me more than a senseless breach of basic consideration for others. I felt ill-used, annoyed and lacerated by the other person’s selfishness. Deep down, I didn’t believe in their innocence. They’re doing it deliberately, my head told me, but I must control my resentment. Don’t get angry. It’s a luxury you can’t allow yourself. It wastes too much energy.
A drawer slammed shut. That did it. I shot up and ran both hands through my wild mop of hair. In a voice ten decibels too low to be audible, I said, ‘Don’t you see me sleeping here?’
She was a handsome young woman, with a dark plait of hair snaking down her back. She wore a ratty army jacket and stone-scrubbed blue jeans. She jumped slightly at my reaction and then turned to look at me. A T-shirt in her hands, just lifted from a crumpled pile on the floor, was being stretched into shape and folded. Her dark brown eyes squinted at me through round gold rimmed spectacles with a kind of amused amazement. Then she half smiled at me. She had a good smile, that direct beam of one human being at another.
‘Hi! I’m Cydney.’
‘Cydney? That’s a boy’s name, isn’t it?’
The teeth went away, her lips filled out, and her manner grew stubbornly hostile. ‘OK, so the goddamn boots are noisy, but I’ve gotta break them in before we start work tomorrow.’
She took a wrinkled pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket and lit up. I watched disapprovingly as she inhaled and blew smoke out of her nose.
‘Have you ever read what scientists say about the relationship between smoking and cancer?’ I asked.
She stared at me. ‘Do you ever read what scientists say about atomic pollution?’
I sighed. ‘OK,’ I said resignedly, ‘I guess you know what you’re doing to your own body.’
‘Can the crap!’ she said.
I slumped down on the bed and stared at her in wonder. Here I was in Israel upsetting one of the first people I’d met. Not a good start. Next time something annoys you, I told myself, laugh.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked.
‘San Francisco,’ she sang proudly.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, trying to forget the annoyance I felt; I found myself warming to her.
‘My parents have just emigrated here. I’m on the kibbutz to learn Hebrew and then I’m gonna go to Jerusalem University.’ She reeled off the information in a casual singsong voice as if she’d said it a dozen times before. ‘But what I’m really here for is the free love,’ she added with a playful laugh.
‘I see. How nice.’
‘You’re English, right?’
‘How did you guess?’ I said. ‘My name is Judith.’
‘And what are
you
doing here?’
A strained silence. Cydney stopped folding a T-shirt, looked at me and waited. I racked my brains for the answer. Let’s see ... I recalled some ambitious plans about putting my life in order, but somehow the details had been lost. If there ever were any in the first place. I looked away.
‘OK, no problem.’ Cydney took a last drag of her cigarette and dropped it on to the floor, grinding it out with her heel. ‘Where in England are you from?’
Phew. That was easier. ‘London.’
Her eyes widened behind her gold glasses.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Yessss! Oh,
yessss!’
she hissed ecstatically. She picked up another T-shirt from the pile. I watched her quick rhythmical movements as she folded. ‘It’s the capital of the world right now! In the States, every other song on the radio is British: The Beatles, David Bowie, Elton John, and the Rolling Stones. Hey, do you live anywhere near Buckingham Palace?’
‘Quite near,’ I lied. ‘And Ringo Starr lives just around the corner to me.’
‘Cool!’ she said with genuine admiration. ‘Listen, Jude, you’ll like it here. This is a real neat kibbutz, you’ll see.’ She looked up at me smiling, the final T-shirt pinned beneath her chin. She placed it on to the neat pile, patted it and repeated: ‘You’ll see!’
29
August
I cried in bed last night. I must have fallen asleep because
when I woke up it was morning. I felt so sad inside and felt
the sadness would never go away. It’s so big and empty
here.
30
August
The other girls don’t talk to me much. I get up at five
o’clock in the morning to go to church every day.
It
hurts
my knees kneeling for so long.
2
September
I learnt to scrub a floor in a passage by the kitchens. I have
to do it every day after Mass. I polish the refectory floor
after dinner. We slide on the floor with cloths under our
feet. And I clean shoes in the boot-room. Some of the girls
sing songs in there. Frances has got the best singing voice in
the world.
It was impossible not to like Frances. She had something special about her, something that drew people to her. Defining that special something wasn’t easy, but when you looked into her eyes, you could always find it. She was open and friendly to everyone, and plucky and attractive and clever without being too clever. Everything I wasn’t. The reason I had become a strange object among all the girls was still not at all clear to me - it was partly, perhaps, because the group had been together for years and intruders like me weren’t to be trusted, but it was also connected with my distracted manner, which gave me the appearance of being half-witted, or a bit slow. The concept of Latin prayers remained a mystery. Why were they in a dead language which we none of us understood, yet still had to recite parrot-fashion?
As the weeks slowly passed, I stared at the words in the prayer books with increasing desperation. All around me the other girls rolled the words out fluently. It was like learning to read all over again, endless hours of tedious incomprehension. Even in the playground the girls had their own rites and rules, and I was a joke that even the nuns found a bit amusing - dopey Judith. Vacant Judith. Then I became a nuisance, an irritation. I felt awkward, alien, excluded, the outsider.
A hard-eyed girl in my class came up with the remarkable assertion that I was strange in the head, probably mad and the other girls edged away from me whenever I approached. Before long the gossip had spread like wildfire in the playground; it was generally agreed that I was a hopeless dope and more fitted for a loony bin than the convent.
Soon everyone was in on the story. In the playground one day, a girl was explaining to a group what happened to people like the dopey new girl once they’d been sent to an asylum. The girls surged into a knot to listen. ‘Look at her!’ she said, pointing at me. ‘They put them in a straitjacket,’ she hissed. ‘You know, those jackets that they use for loonies where they tie their arms around their backs -’ She demonstrated. ‘Well, that’s what’s going to happen to
her.
And look at her legs. Have you ever seen anyone with legs more like a couple of mop handles?’
I stood apart, listening to the hail of insults, which beat upon my head until it felt bruised. Quite a little band of girls had gathered. ‘Dopey!’ they chanted. ‘Pea-brain!’ Some of them threw stones.
I noticed Frances watching them from the playground door. I could hardly miss her: at times she seemed to be in her own personal spotlight. The most striking thing about her was that she always seemed to be relaxed, no matter what she was doing. Now, however, she watched the group of girls resentfully and then walked slowly towards them and pushed through them to the centre.
‘Leave her alone,’ she ordered in her low, clear voice.
The knot of girls fell silent and pulled back to form a circle around Frances and the ringleader.
Frances leant forward. ‘Some people learn things at different speeds, that’s all. It’s doesn’t mean she’s mad or weird.’
When she saw that the girl wasn’t going to argue with her, Frances jabbed a finger at her and said, ‘So stop copying the nuns by calling her names and spreading nasty rumours about my friend.’
My
friend.
The words haloed in a gleaming glow around me. Every girl heard it. Frances turned and looked at the ring of girls that had gathered. The circle spread wider, as if her glare was pushing them back.
She walked away from them and put her arm around my shoulders.
‘Don’t you mind them, Judith,’ said Frances, who had obviously decided that I was by no means mad and even if I was, it didn’t matter. ‘You’ve got to fight for yourself here. You’ve got to have scars like the rest of us and once you get them, you’ll be left alone.’
‘I don’t want any scars,’ I said. ‘You’ll take care of me, won’t you? Won’t you?’
Frances nodded and for a week or more we were the centre of attention in the convent. For a while I was afraid of reprisals, but there were none and nobody picked on me again.
After that I just glued myself to Frances. I was like a stray dog, starved and kicked. She seemed to understand that stray-dog feeling and let me hang around with her.
8
September
A nun pulled a girl’s hair and she fell on the floor and
screamed. She kept on hitting her. The nun’s sleeves came
off and flew up in the air. I was scared and my tummy was
all turning over.
21
September
It’s Friday today and instead of fish we had some horrible
fried porridge for dinner.
25
September
Precisely nothing happened today.
During my first month at the convent, I began to prepare for my First Communion. The preparations took up much of my time and nearly all of my thoughts. The First Communicants, it was alleged, were a privileged band, set apart from the other girls. I was pleased to be in the company of Frances, and not so pleased to be with Ruth. Although she was six years older than me, she still had not made her First Communion.
‘We’ve decided to give you a chance,’ Sister Cuthbert told her, ‘although I suspect that you’ll never succeed in mastering enough of the catechism to meet the criteria.’ Poor Ruth with her brown, fearful eyes and unkempt fringe behind which she hid.
As First Communicants, we spent extra time in the chapel and had daily interviews with the Mother Superior. We sat huddled at her feet in the sunlit hush of her little office as she told us about the different ceremonies of the Mass and the various vestments worn by the priest. She asked us whether such and such a sin was mortal or venial or only an imperfection. Sometimes she told us stories about saints and martyrs, of good children who had died on the day of their First Communion. We watched as her frail fingers with their thick horned nails twizzled her wooden rosary beads. They were as big as marbles, and clicked as she spoke.
‘Don’t think that just because you’re children, you can’t fall down dead at any moment,’ she told the ten attentive faces in her thick, woolly voice. Behind her jam-jar spectacles, her eyes looked like big fish in a goldfish bowl as they flickered in the light and darted over our faces.
‘God’s anger light upon me if I’m not telling the truth - you’ll just feel a pin prick and then you’ll be gone. I’m sorry to cause you disappointment. But there it is.’
In spite of my outward calm, this revelation spooked me, and I felt my heart fluttering. What if I died before making my First Communion? Would I join the holy souls in purgatory? I started abruptly as I felt a hot hand grasping mine imploringly, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. It was Frances who was sitting next to me. I was relieved to know that someone was just as anxious as I was.
We sat there, gripping hands, gawping around the room. Black velvet curtains on carved wooden rings hung at the tall windows. Somewhere a clock ticked. Incongruously, afternoon sunlight streamed in from the garden outside. I stared at a picture on the wall - a sombre-faced Jesus holding a lamb.
When the Mother Superior smiled she uncovered her big discoloured teeth and let her tongue lie upon her lower lip an effect that sometimes made me feel queasy. She would close her eyes, nodding gently to herself as she told us one of her special stories.
‘Once upon a time, there was a very devout child called Imelda,’ came her voice from beneath her black veil, ‘who at the age of nine was placed, at her own wish, in a convent to be trained there by nuns. Imelda took to convent life like a fish to water. She was like a ray of sunshine amid the adult sisters, but they were careful not to spoil her. Whenever people spoke of Jesus, her eyes brightened and when the Blessed Sacrament was mentioned, her face became almost transformed. To receive Our Lord in Holy Communion became the most important thing in her life, but in those days the practice was that the earliest age for first communion was twelve. It saddened Imelda to see the sisters receive the host and her soul yearned to join them.’
The Mother Superior stopped suddenly, opening her eyes and glaring at us.
‘Who
is making that infernal humming noise?’
At this, Ruth stared vacantly at the ceiling, we all looked at Ruth, and the room grew very silent. Janet, who took all the troubles of the world upon herself, coughed nervously. Her fingers wove together incessantly.
‘Well, come along! Who is it?’ said the Mother Superior.
There was an uncomfortable shuffling. Janet coughed again and sniffed. All eyes were on Ruth. She had developed a habit of taking off her shoes and rocking slightly, back and forth, her arms clenched around her knees, humming in a monotone. Whenever she felt the nun’s myopic stare on her, she remained still and silent. But the minute the nun’s eyes closed, she’d begin her rocking movement again, crooning softly to herself and occasionally blowing bored, glassy bubbles through her mouth.
The Mother Superior’s gaze rested on Ruth. Her eyes narrowed behind her glasses.
‘Do you need to go to the what’s-it, Norton?’
‘No, Reverend Mother,’ she said.
‘Well, what’s wrong with you then?’
‘Nothing, Reverend Mother.’
‘Stop wriggling about like a parched pea in a colander! I’ve been told all about you, Norton, so don’t think you’ll get away with anything. And put your shoes on. If you’re going to undress, I shall have to cover up the picture of Our Lord.’
Ruth put on her shoes and as Mother Superior stared at her through her black-rimmed magnifying spectacles, I noticed that one of the lenses was cracked clean across and had been glued together with yellow glue, beaded along the mend.
‘If brains were water, child, yours wouldn’t be enough to baptise a flea. Your behaviour is appalling. I’m reminded of Moses on Sinai discovering the excesses of the Children of Israel. Once again the literal truth of the Bible has been demonstrated!’
Ruth, at that moment, popped a large bubble of spit with puckered lips. She seemed quite oblivious of the bottled rage that bubbled so near her.
‘Tell me, do you even know what the Holy Trinity is, you buffle-headed child?’
I saw a quick flash in Ruth’s eyes. ‘Yes, Reverend Mother,’ she said smiling importantly. ‘It’s the old church at the bottom of Hastings Road, isn’t it?’ I wasn’t too sure if she was joking.
‘Oh, take care, child,’ hissed the nun. ‘One flick of Fortune’s wheel and you’ll be brought low. Wipe that smirk off your face or I’ll wring your ear for you a yard long. I know only too well what the punishment is for your kind of sin. It’s written over and over again in the Bible. If I have to speak to you again, you’ll not receive your luminous rosary on the day of your Communion. I shall give it to the missions instead. There’s enough wickedness in the universe without you adding to it. The Holy Trinity is three, three, three Gods in one. Now to return to my story without any further interruptions, if you would be so kind. The next girl who makes a noise like a wasp when I have asked for silence will get a sharp slap for naughtiness.’
She swept a stern look over us all and closed her long thin lips an instant, but eager to get on with her story, raised an out--spanned hand to her spectacles, and, with trembling thumb and ring-finger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus. We stared timidly back at her.
‘Where was I before I was rudely interrupted?’
‘Imelda felt sad watching the other nuns receive communion, Reverend Mother.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Fixing her glasses more firmly on her nose, she closed her eyes again.
‘Imelda had once said, “I don’t know how anyone can receive Our Lord and not die.” She prayed to heaven to let her receive communion somehow. The day, when the nuns were leaving the church, one of them turned to see Imelda still absorbed in prayer. The nun stood rooted to the floor for there, hovering over the girl’s head, was the Sacred Host. The startled nun quickly summoned the priest who approached Imelda in awe with the golden communion plate. As soon as he reached the kneeling girl, the Host settled on the communion plate.’
The Mother Superior paused for a moment, taking us in with accusatory eyes. I gulped and squeezed Frances’s hand.
‘Imelda still had her head bowed and eyes closed as if oblivious to everything. She slowly raised her radiant face and opened her mouth. Taking the host, the priest gave Imelda her First Holy Communion. Now she had received Our Lord it was too much for her heart to bear. She sank unconscious to the floor, and when the nuns’ loving hands tried to raise her, they realised she was dead. Will you two girls stop touching one another?’
Frances and I quickly unclasped each other’s hands.
The Mother Superior scanned us triumphantly, her finger wagging in admonishment. ‘So remember, children, that the day of your First Communion will be the happiest of your lives, and God could grant you
no greater grace
than to die at the moment when Our Lord is first placed on your tongue.’
There was a silence. The atmosphere seemed full of the sour smell from the nun’s black habit.
I felt greatly relieved when her clock clacked and she asked, ‘What time is it? Three? Goodness! All stand. Now, why don’t all of you make your way to see Father Holland,
quietly?
And I hope I don’t hear a noise like a wasp, Norton. As you may know, Father Holland is well liked by the local community for his patience in the confessional, but I can’t guarantee that he’ll have the time to listen to you lot bombarding him with your cheek and endless sins. So remember to help him in his task and examine your conscience daily by asking yourselves the following questions: Do I take the name of the Lord our God, in vain? Do I love my neighbour as myself? Do I covet my neighbour’s goods? We shall try to understand these questions fully during the next few weeks so that you may derive from the understanding of them a lasting benefit to your souls. Now off you go and don’t dawdle.’