The Land of Decoration

felt like we might just do it. All we needed was one more conversation.

We came to a house with a car engine and a child’s pram in the garden. The front door was boarded up at the bottom, and the glass was taped across at the top. When Father knocked, a girl came to the door, holding a baby. She looked about fifteen. She also looked half asleep. She had black hairs growing on her arms and black hairs growing above her lip and black hairs growing between her eyebrows. I could see her nipples through her T-shirt. She had bare feet. The baby was fussing and chewing his fist and had no nappy on.

Father said: “Good morning. We’ve been asking your neighbors a very important question: Do you believe God will do anything about the world?”

The girl’s eyelids seemed too heavy to lift. She said: “What?”

Father repeated the question.

She swayed a little. “Are you the Mormons?”

“No,” said Father. “We’re sharing with your neighbors a hope from the Bible.” He handed the girl a leaflet.

She screwed up her eyes. “D’you want money?”

“No.” Father smiled. “It’s yours to read if you want to. But I’d really like to tell you about the hope for the future, which—”

The girl opened the door. She said: “I can’t stand here with ’im, I’s too cold.”

Father said: “Oh. Well. That’s kind of you,” and we followed her into the house.

The house smelled of frying and gerbils’ cages and damp and something else, a sickly smell that made my stomach curl, that reminded me of someone. The girl led the way into a room at the back of the house.

I had never seen anything like that room. The floor and walls halfway up were covered in lino. There was no furniture except kitchen cabinets with no doors and a plastic table and molded benches that were fixed to the floor. A washing machine was going and had a broom jammed between it and the table.

We sat at the table. I put my hand on it and it was slippery and sticky. I took my hand off again and put it on my lap and hoped the girl hadn’t noticed. She raised her T-shirt and began to breast-feed the baby. Around the girl’s nipple there were little black hairs. I felt hot and looked at her feet. Between the girl’s toes there were little red marks. They looked like they had been bleeding.

Father read part of Matthew, Chapter 24, about the signs of the end. He said: “It’s not hard to see Jesus is talking about our day, is it?” He pointed to the verses but the girl seemed to be having trouble focusing. Father said: “Have you got a Bible? If you have, look up the scriptures in this magazine. I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

Then we heard what sounded like a truck pull up in front of the house and a door swing to. A rush of cold air came in from the hall as the front door slammed. Father stood up and smiled. He said: “Perhaps next time we call, we can discuss any questions you might have.”

We went to the kitchen door and Father put his hand out to open it, but as he did, it opened inward and standing there was Doug Lewis.

Doug looked at Father. He looked at me. He looked at the girl, and she rushed out of the room. I heard the baby begin to cry as Doug’s eyes slid back to Father.

Father said: “Hello, Doug. I didn’t know you lived here. We were just talking to your daughter about…”

Doug seemed to be as surprised as we were. Then he said, in a voice that was more like a growl: “She’s not my daughter.”

Father took my hand. “Well, I’m sorry if we’ve inconvenienced you. We didn’t know you lived here. We’ll be going now.”

We went through the kitchen door and my heart was beating so slowly it was hard to breathe. We walked through the hall and it was like being underwater.

Then Doug shouted: “Damn right you’ll go!” He seemed to have suddenly woken up. “Get out! Get out of my house! Don’t ever come back! Don’t ever step through the gate! Don’t set foot on the fucking pavement!” He kept shouting as we went through the front door and down the path. It was difficult to think and walk at the same time, though it was what I wanted to do more than anything, because my head felt like it was being battered from side to side and I was afraid I might faint.

“We don’t want any of your satanic mumbo jumbo, McPherson! You come here spouting about goodwill and scab off and leave the rest of us to take the fucking flak!” There were people staring from windows now and from the other side of the road and from the next-door garden. “Oh, and McPherson! Keep that little witch away from my son! Getting him into trouble all the time! Tell her to put the finger on someone else, d’you hear me? STAY AWAY FROM MY SON!”

We kept walking but I was in a dream, I had fallen through ice and I was sinking. The spot of light above my head was getting fainter and fainter. As long as I keep walking, I thought. As long as my legs keep moving. And then my legs felt like bits of string, because suddenly I saw Neil ahead of us, standing astride his bike with Gareth and some other boys. He must have come home with Doug in the truck.

Doug was still shouting as the boys began riding. They rode closer and closer. They stood up on the bikes and leaned from side to side. As they passed us, showers of stones spewed up from the wheels and the wheels made a tearing sound. The boys rode, in circles; the stones flew faster.

Father kept walking. He didn’t stop and he didn’t turn round and he didn’t let go of my hand. He walked right down the middle of the road. I didn’t see how the bikes kept missing us but they did. It seemed to me we were walking through the Red Sea and there were currents of electricity passing back and forth between Father and me and crackling in the air all around us.

We turned out of Moorland Road. The boys shouted. They threw a stone or two. Then they dropped back and it was just Father and me, the wind whipping around us and banks of cloud moving over the valley below.

Father held my hand for a few more moments and then he dropped it.

A Lie

FATHER DIDN’T SAY anything all the way home. I ran alongside him. Every so often I glanced up at his face, but it was set in a mask and I couldn’t read it. When we got home he went straight into the kitchen. He put his bag on the table, then turned round. He said: “What’s this about you and Neil Lewis?”

“I haven’t done anything,” I said.

Then he shouted: “Don’t lie to me, Judith!” and it was like being winded.

“All right!” I said. “I wanted to punish him! I wanted to punish him for what he does to me every day. I hate him!”

Father’s face was dark. “What do you mean, ‘punish’ him?”

I tried to breathe slowly. “I made things,” I said. “In the Land of Decoration. I wanted bad things to happen to him. And they did.”

Father said: “I have told you, Judith, about this NONSENSE! I warned you no good would come of it!”

“It’s not nonsense!” I said. “I did make things happen!”

Father came close to me. “Do you have any idea what I’m dealing with?”

I tried to keep looking at him but couldn’t, so I looked at the floor.

“Doug Lewis and I have never got on, but now things are a hundred times worse. Here I am trying to keep things together, trying to keep food on the table, trying to keep a roof over our heads—and you go around stirring things up with his son!”

“I haven’t stirred anything up.”

“You told him you could perform miracles!”

“I didn’t!” I said.

“Then what was Doug talking about?”

I looked at my shoes. “I wrote about the miracles in my news book; Neil read it out in class.”

Father banged the table hard with his hand. “But damn it, Judith—you can’t perform miracles!”