“I’m all around,” the voice said. “Inside things and outside them too. I was, and am, and will be.”
Then my heart beat once, very hard, and I said: “You’re God, aren’t You?”
“Shh,” said the voice.
I swallowed. “Can You see me?”
“Of course,” said God. “I’ve been watching you for some time. You could be very useful to Me.”
I sat up. “What do You mean?”
“Well,” said God, “you’ve got a great imagination. I need someone like you to be My Instrument.”
“Your Instrument?” I said.
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“Miracles, that sort of thing.”
I put my hands over my face and then I took them away. I said: “I
“Shh!” said God. “Not so loud. We don’t want to wake your father.” He paused. “But there’s one condition: You have to have complete faith; you have to be prepared to do whatever I ask, no doubting, no grumbling, no asking why.”
“OK,” I said. “I won’t.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes!”
“All right,” said God. “We’ll talk later. Right now I have to get on with some other things.”
“What other things?”
“Well, this is a busy time in heaven right now. Four horsemen are straining at the bit, there’re some winds that are very restless, and there are a lot of locusts that are getting under everyone’s feet. Oh, and some seals that have to be opened. In the meantime, no blabbing, all right?”
“Can I carry on using my powers?”
“Yes,” said God. “I’ll let you get used to them for a bit.”
“Do you think I could make things happen to people and animals as well?”
God said: “Judith, it’s all a matter of faith.”
“The mustard seed!”
“Precisely.”
“I won’t say any more to Father.”
“Very wise.”
“But he’ll believe me in the end?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’ll do more and more things and he’ll have to see. He will have to see I am doing something special.”
“No doubt about it,” said God.
Then God went wherever it is that He goes and I lay down and thought two things. The first was that I had been silly to expect Father to understand about the miracles but I didn’t have to worry because it would all come right in the end.
The second thought was strange. It was that this had been waiting to happen to me, and thinking that made me happier than anything I had thought before in my whole life. The miracles had been waiting all this time, and so had I. And now the waiting was over, and things could begin.
The Long-Distance Call
FATHER SAYS THAT God is the voice in every Christian’s head helping him to do the right thing. He says that the Devil tells the Christian to do the exact opposite. This means we must be careful which of them we listen to. Up until yesterday, I hadn’t heard God’s voice but I had been talking to Him. I think I must have been saving up things to say, because for a long time I didn’t talk at all.
WHEN I WAS small, Father took me to see a doctor because I didn’t do anything but stare straight in front of me. There is a photograph of me taken by Father at that time. It’s a warm day and I am sitting beneath the cherry tree he planted for Mother in the front garden. The grass is littered with blossoms. I am wearing a blue T-shirt and shorts that come down to my knees. There is a scab on the right one. My legs stick straight out in front of me. My hands are in my lap.
I can’t imagine Father thinking it was a good idea to take me to the doctor, because he never goes to them himself, but he did. I remember that the doctor’s room smelled funny. I remember there was a chair with a leather seat and in the corner a box of plastic blocks and a big red bus. I played with the bus and Father talked to the doctor.
The doctor did tests and made a plan and came to a conclusion. The conclusion was that we were both missing Mother, and the plan was that Father should read to me. So he did, and I learned all about the Nephilim, and the Ark of the Covenant, and why circumcision must be performed on the eighth day, how to clean an infected house of leprosy, what not to say to a Pharisee, and how to remove the sting of a gadfly. And as I began to read I began talking, and in a while I was talking as much as anyone—though perhaps not about the same things.
There weren’t many people to talk to except Father, so I began talking to God. I always supposed it was just a matter of time before He answered me. I used to think of it as a long-distance telephone call. The line was bad, there were birds sitting on it, there was heavy weather, so I couldn’t make out what the other person was saying, but I never doubted I would hear them eventually. Then one day the birds flew off, the rain cleared up, and I did.
The Third and Fourth Miracles
I DECIDED TO use my power to help people, and first on my list was Mrs. Pew. I had been thinking about her since I saw her crying. I didn’t think she could be the type of person to kidnap children if she was so upset about Oscar; it was quite disappointing to think that Kenny Evans probably did go to live with his father after all.
Oscar is a large ginger cat who sits in Mrs. Pew’s front-room window between a bowl of hyacinths and a yellow china dog. I didn’t know why he had decided to disappear. Perhaps he was tired of the dog, who didn’t do anything but grin in an empty way, or perhaps he was tired of the view. Anyway, all that mattered was that I bring him back. So on Thursday when the snow came down in flurries, I made a cat with marmalade wool. Father called: “What are you doing?” and I called back: “Reading!” The lie was justified: I was now God’s Instrument and had work to do.
I gave the cat a blue collar and one white paw and took a chip out of his ear, just like Oscar, though I couldn’t remember which ear and hoped it didn’t matter. I made an old woman in a black dress and gave her a high lace collar and little black boots and pushed very small beads in the sides of the clay for buttons. I gave the lady black curly hair, glued pieces of cut-up staple in her hair for clips, painted her face white and her lips red. I made a trail of cat prints leading through the snow to the old lady and put the cat on her lap and made sure he was curled up and didn’t look like he was going to get up again. I sewed his eyes closed and tucked his paws in. Then I said: “Come home Oscar.”
When I had finished, I wondered what might actually happen if the miracle worked. Would Oscar’s whiskers be singed after being flown back from wherever he was at the speed of light, or would his fur stand on end after being brought back to life with a bolt of lightning? Anyway I went round to Mrs. Pew’s and knocked on the door. I saw her wobbling head and smelled the secondhand-shop smell and felt a bit queasy, but I stayed where I was and when she opened the door I said: “Don’t worry about Oscar, Mrs. Pew. I have a feeling he’ll be home very
