"She's exactly like a heathen," says Aunt Mildred. Because she's been a missionary in China, she's an authority. "Nothing you've done has made a scrap of difference."
"She's learning her Bible, Grace tells me," Mrs. Smeath says, and then I know it's me they're discussing. I stop on the top step, where I can see into the kitchen: the kitchen table where the dirty dishes are piled, the back edges of Mrs. Smeath and Aunt Mildred.
"They'll learn all that," says Aunt Mildred. "Till you're blue in the face. But it's all rote learning, it doesn't sink in. The minute your back is turned they'll go right back the way they were."
The unfairness of this hits me like a kick. How can they say that, when I've won a special mention for my essay on Temperance, about drunken men having car accidents and freezing to death in snowstorms because the alcohol dilates their capillaries? I even know what capillaries are, I even spelled it right. I can recite whole psalms, whole chapters, I can sing all the colored-slide white-knight Sunday school songs without looking.
"What can you expect, with that family?" says Mrs. Smeath. She doesn't go on to say what's wrong with my family. "The other children sense it. They know."
"You don't think they're being too hard on her?" says Aunt Mildred. Her voice is relishing. She wants to know how hard.
"It's God's punishment," says Mrs. Smeath. "It serves her right."
A hot wave moves through my body. This wave is shame, which I have felt before, but it is also hatred, which I have not, not in this pure form. It's hatred with a particular shape, the shape of Mrs. Smeath's one breast and no waist. It's like a fleshy weed in my chest, white-stemmed and fat; like the stalk of a burdock, with its rank leaves and little green burrs, growing in the cat piss earth beside the path down to the bridge. A heavy, thick hatred.
I stand there on the top step, frozen with hate. What I hate is not Grace or even Cordelia. I can't go as far as that. I hate Mrs. Smeath, because what I thought was a secret, something going on among girls, among children, is not one. It has been discussed before, and tolerated. Mrs. Smeath has known and approved. She has done nothing to stop it. She thinks it serves me right.
She moves away from the sink and walks to the kitchen table for another stack of dirty plates, into my line of vision. I have a brief, intense image of Mrs. Smeath going through the flesh-colored wringer of my mother's washing machine, legs first, bones cracking and flattening, skin and flesh squeezing up toward her head, which will pop in a minute like a huge balloon of blood. If my eyes could shoot out fatal rays like the ones in comic books I would incinerate her on the spot. She is right, I am a heathen. I cannot forgive.
As if she can feel my stare she turns and sees me. Our eyes meet: she knows I've heard. But she doesn't flinch, she isn't embarrassed or apologetic. She gives me that smug smile, with the lips closed over the teeth. What she says is not to me but to Aunt Mildred. "Little pitchers have big ears."
Her bad heart floats in her body like an eye, an evil eye, it sees me.
We sit on the wooden bench in the church basement, in the dark, watching the wall. Light glints from Grace's glassy eyes as she watches me sideways.
God sees the little sparrow fall,
It meets His tender view;
If God so loves the little bird,
I know He loves me too.
The picture is of a dead bird in an enormous hand, with a shaft of light coming down onto it.
I am moving my lips, but I'm not singing. I am losing confidence in God. Mrs. Smeath has God all sewed up, she knows what things are his punishments. He's on her side, and it's a side from which I'm excluded.
I consider Jesus, who is supposed to love me. But he isn't showing any sign of it, and I don't think he can be of much help. Against Mrs. Smeath and God he can do nothing, because God is bigger. God is not Our Father at all. My image of him now is of something huge, hard, inexorable, faceless and moving forward as if on tracks. God is a sort of engine.
I decide not to pray to God any more. When it's time for the Lord's Prayer I stand in silence, moving my lips only.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
I refuse to say this. If it means I will have to forgive Mrs. Smeath or else go to Hell when I die, I'm ready to go. Jesus must have known how hard it is to forgive, that was why he put this in. He was always putting in things that were impossible to do really, such as giving away all your money.
"You weren't praying," Grace says to me in a whisper.
My stomach goes cold. Which is worse, to contradict her or to admit? Either way there will be penalties.
"Yes I was," I say.
"You weren't. I heard you."
I say nothing.
"You lied," says Grace, pleased, forgetting to whisper.
I still say nothing.
"You should ask God to forgive you," Grace says. "That's what I do, every night."
I sit in the dark, attacking my fingers. I think about Grace asking God to forgive her. But for what? God only forgives you if you're sorry, and she never gives a sign of being sorry. She never thinks she's done anything wrong.
Grace and Cordelia and Carol are up ahead, I am a block behind. They aren't letting me walk with them today because I have been insolent, but they don't want me too far behind either. I am walking along, in time to the music, Keep happy with the Happy Gang, my head empty except for these words. I walk head down, scanning the sidewalk, the gutters, for silver cigarette papers, although I no longer collect them as I did long ago. I know that nothing I could make with them would be worthwhile.
I see a piece of paper with a colored picture on it. I pick it up. I know what the picture is: it's the Virgin Mary. The paper is from Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Perpetual Hell. The Virgin Mary is wearing a long blue robe, no feet at all visible below the hem, a white cloth over her head and a crown on top of that, and a yellow halo with light rays coming out of it like nails. She's smiling sadly in a disappointed way; her hands are outstretched as if in welcome, and her heart is on the outside of her chest, with seven swords stuck into it. Or they look like swords. The heart is large, red and tidy, like a satin heart pincushion, or a valentine. Under the picture is printed: The Seven Sorrows.
The Virgin Mary is in some of our Sunday school papers, but never with a crown, never with a pincushion heart, never all by herself. She is always more or less in the background. Not much fuss is made over her except at Christmas, and even then Baby Jesus is a lot more important. When Mrs. Smeath and Aunt Mildred speak of Catholics, as they have been known to do at the Sunday dinner table, it's always with contempt. Catholics pray to statues and drink real wine at Communion, instead of grape juice. "They worship the Pope," is what the Smeaths say; or else, "They worship the Virgin Mary," as if this is a scandalous thing to do.
I look at the picture up close. But I know it would be dangerous to keep it, so I throw it away. This is the right impulse, because now the three of them have stopped, they're waiting for me to catch up to them. Anything I do, other than standing, other than walking, attracts their attention.
"What was that thing we saw you pick up?" says Cordelia.
"A paper."
"What sort of a paper?"
"Just a paper. A Sunday school paper."
"Why did you pick it up?"
Once I would have thought about this question, tried to answer it truthfully. Now I say, "I don't know." This is the only answer I can give, to anything, that will not be ridiculed or questioned.
"What did you do with it?"
"I threw it away."
"Don't pick things up off the street," says Cordelia. "They have germs." She lets it go at that.
I decide to do something dangerous, rebellious, perhaps even blasphemous. I can no longer pray to God so I will pray to the Virgin Mary instead. This decision makes me nervous, as if I'm about to steal. My heart beats harder, my hands feel cold. I feel I'm about to get caught.
Kneeling seems called for. In th
e onion church we don't kneel, but the Catholics are known for it. I kneel down beside my bed and put my hands together, like the children in Christmas cards, except that I'm wearing blue-striped flannelette pajamas and they always have white nightgowns on. I close my eyes and try to think about the Virgin Mary. I want her to help me or at least show me that she can hear me, but I don't know what to say. I haven't learned the words for her.
I try to picture what she would look like, if I met her on the street for instance: would she be wearing clothes like my mother's, or that blue dress and crown, and if it was the blue dress would a crowd gather? Maybe they would think she was just someone out of a Christmas play; but not if she had her heart on the outside like that, stuck full of swords. I try to think what I would tell her. But she knows already: she knows how unhappy I am.
I pray harder and harder. My prayers are wordless, defiant, dry-eyed, desperate, without hope. Nothing happens. I squeeze my fists into my eyes until they hurt. For an instant I think I see a face, then a splash of blue, but now all I can see is the heart. There it is, bright red, rounded, with a dark light around it, a blackness like luminous velvet. Gold comes out from the center, then fades. It's the heart all right. It looks like my red plastic purse.
35
It's the middle of March. In the schoolroom windows the Easter tulips are beginning to bloom. There's still snow on the ground, a dirty filigree, though the winter is losing its hardness and glitter. The sky thickens, sinks lower.
We walk home under the low thick sky that is gray and bulging with dampness. Moist soft flakes are falling out of it, piling up on roofs and branches, sliding off now and then to hit with a wet cottony thunk. There's no wind and the sound is muffled by the snow.
It isn't cold. I undo the ties on my blue knitted wool hat, let it flap loose on my head. Cordelia takes off her mittens and scoops up snowballs, throwing them at trees, at telephone poles, at random. It's one of her friendly days; she puts her arm through my arm, her other arm through Grace's, and we march along the street, singing We don't stop for anybody. I sing this too. Together we hop and slide.
Some of the euphoria I once felt in falling snow comes back to me; I want to open my mouth and let the snow fall into it. I allow myself to laugh, like the others, trying it out. My laughter is a performance, a grab at the ordinary.
Cordelia throws herself backward onto a blank front lawn, spreads her arms out in the snow, raises them above her head, draws them down to her sides, making a snow angel. The flakes fall onto her face, into her laughing mouth, melting, clinging to her eyebrows. She blinks, closing her eyes against the snow. For a moment she looks like someone I don't know, a stranger, shining with unknown, good possibilities. Or else a victim of a traffic accident, flung onto the snow.
She opens her eyes and reachs up her hands, which are damp and reddened, and we pull her upward so she won't disturb the image she's made. The snow angel has feathery wings and a tiny pin head. Where her hands stopped, down near her sides, are the imprints of her fingers, like little claws.
We've forgotten the time, it's getting dark. We run along the street that leads to the wooden footbridge. Even Grace runs, lumpily, calling, "Wait up!" For once she is the one left behind.
Cordelia reaches the hill first and runs down it. She tries to slide but the snow is too soft, not icy enough, and there are cinders and pieces of gravel in it. She falls down and rolls. We think she's done it on purpose, the way she made the snow angel. We rush down upon her, exhilarated, breathless, laughing, just as she's picking herself up.
We stop laughing, because now we can see that her fall was an accident, she didn't do it on purpose. She likes everything she does to be done on purpose.
Carol says, "Did you hurt yourself?" Her voice is quavery, she's frightened, already she can tell that this is serious. Cordelia doesn't answer. Her face is hard again, her eyes baleful.
Grace moves so that she's beside Cordelia, slightly behind her. From there she smiles at me, her tight smile.
Cordelia says, to me, "Were you laughing?" I think she means, was I laughing at her because she fell down.
"No," I say.
"She was," says Grace neutrally. Carol shifts to the side of the path, away from me.
"I'm going to give you one more chance," says Cordelia. "Were you laughing?"
"Yes," I say, "but ..."
"Just yes or no," says Cordelia.
I say nothing. Cordelia glances over at Grace, as if looking for approval. She sighs, an exaggerated sigh, like a grown-up's. "Lying again," she says. "What are we going to do with you?"
We seem to have been standing there for a long time. It's colder now. Cordelia reaches out and pulls off my knitted hat. She marchs the rest of the way down the hill and onto the bridge and hesitates for a moment. Then she walks over to the railing and throws my hat down into the ravine. Then the white oval of her face turns up toward me. "Come here," she says.
Nothing has changed, then. Time will go on, in the same way, endlessly. My laughter was unreal after all, merely a gasp for air.
I walk down to where Cordelia stands by the railing, the snow not crunching but giving way under my feet like cotton wool packing. It sounds like a cavity being filled, in a tooth, inside my head. Usually I'm afraid to go so near the edge of the bridge, but this time I'm not. I don't feel anything as positive as fear.
"There's your stupid hat," says Cordelia; and there it is, far down, still blue against the white snow, even in the dimming light. "Why don't you go down and get it?"
I look at her. She wants me to go down into the ravine where the bad men are, where we're never supposed to go. It occurs to me that I may not. What will she do then?
I can see this idea gathering in Cordelia as well. Maybe she's gone too far, hit, finally, some core of resistance in me. If I refuse to do what she says this time, who knows where my defiance will end? The two others have come down the hill and are watching, safely in the middle of the bridge.
"Go on then," she says, more gently, as if she's encouraging me, not ordering. "Then you'll be forgiven."
I don't want to go down there. It's forbidden and dangerous; also it's dark and the hillside will be slippery, I might have trouble climbing up again. But there is my hat. If I go home without it, I'll have to explain, I'll have to tell. And if I refuse to go, what will Cordelia do next? She might get angry, she might never speak to me again. She might push me off the bridge. She's never done anything like that before, never hit or pinched, but now that she's thrown my hat over there's no telling what she might do.
I walk along to the end of the bridge. "When you've got it, count to a hundred," says Cordelia. "Before coming up." She doesn't sound angry any more. She sounds like someone giving instructions for a game.
I start down the steep hillside, holding on to branches and tree trunks. The path isn't even a real path, it's just a place worn by whoever goes up and down here: boys, men. Not girls.
When I'm among the bare trees at the bottom I look up. The bridge railings are silhouetted against the sky. I can see the dark outlines of three heads, watching me.
My blue hat is out on the ice of the creek. I stand in the snow, looking at it. Cordelia is right, it's a stupid hat. I look at it and feel resentment, because this stupid-looking hat is mine, and deserving of ridicule. I don't want to wear it ever again.
I can hear water running somewhere, down under the ice. I step out onto the creek, reach for the hat, pick it up, go through. I'm up to my waist in the creek, slabs of broken ice upended around me.
Cold shoots through me. My overshoes are filling, and the shoes inside them; water drenches my snowpants. Probably I've screamed, or some noise has come out of me, but I can't remember hearing anything. I clutch the hat and look up at the bridge. Nobody is there. They must have walked away, run away. That's why the counting to a hundred: so they could run away.
I try to move my feet. They're very heavy, because of the water inside my boots. If I wanted to I could j
ust keep standing here. It's true dusk now and the snow on the ground is bluish-white. The old tires and pieces of rusted junk in the creek are covered over; all around me are blue arches, blue caves, pure and silent. The water of the creek is cold and peaceful, it comes straight from the cemetery, from the graves and their bones. It's water made from the dead people, dissolved and clear, and I am standing in it. If I don't move soon I will be frozen in the creek. I will be a dead person, peaceful and clear, like them.
I flounder through the water, the edges of the ice breaking off as I step. Walking with waterlogged overshoes is hard; I could slip, and fall all the way in. I grab a tree branch and haul myself up onto the bank and sit down in the blue snow and take off my overshoes and pour out the water. The arms of my jacket are wet to the elbows, my mittens are soaked. Now there are knives going through my legs and hands, and tears running down my face from the pain.
I can see lights along the edges of the ravine, from the houses there, impossibly high up. I don't know how I'm going to climb up the hill with my hands and feet hurting like this; I don't know how I'm going to get home.
My head is filling with black sawdust; little specks of the darkness are gtting in through my eyes. It's as if the snowflakes are black, the way white is black on a negative. The snow has changed to tiny pellets, more like sleet. It makes a rustling noise coming down through the branches, like the shifting and whispering of people in a crowded room who know they must be quiet. It's the dead people, coming up invisible out of the water, gathering around me. Hush, is what they say.
I'm lying on my back beside the creek, looking up at the sky. Nothing hurts any more. The sky has a reddish undercolor. The bridge is different-looking; it seems higher above me, more solid, as if the railings have disappeared or been filled in. And it's glowing, there are pools of light along it, greenish-yellow, not like any light I've ever seen before. I sit up to get a better look. My body feels weightless, as it does in water.
There's someone on the bridge, I can see the dark outline. At first I think it's Cordelia, come back for me. Then I see that it's not a child, it's too tall for a child. I can't see the face, there's just a shape. One of the yellowish-green lights is behind it, coming out in rays from around the head.