Hello God (2 page)

Sorry I don’t talk to you every night like I said I would, but you being so busy, I’m sure you understand. Sometimes when I go to bed I just flop like a rag doll I had years and years ago and fall fast asleep. Hey, do you ever sleep?

My nan has come to stay for a week. She’s sleeping in my bedroom in my bed. I’m sleeping on an uncomfortable blow-up mattress on the floor as far away from Nan as I can get. She snores and makes little whistling sounds. She also puts her false teeth in a glass before she goes to sleep.
When the moonlight shines on them they look like a mouth grinning up at me.

Nan’s not very well inside her head. She forgets things. She lost her false teeth yesterday and we found them in the freezer. We have no idea how they got there. ‘They walked,’ Nan said. When I laughed, Dad was annoyed at me. I don’t know why.

Once, on another visit, I put one of those fake glasses, the ones with a nose and moustache attached, on top of her teeth and that was the first thing she saw when she woke up. While Nan was having a conversation with the handsome man with a moustache and toothy smile, my mum came in and told me off. A kid’s got to have a bit of fun, don’t you think?

I had a real good time after dinner. Dad showed me a map of the sun and planets, and he showed me photos of the planets up close. Mars is amazing. It’s like part of the outback. The surface is red and there are rocks lying around. Nobody has ever moved them since you made the planet.

A spaceship with robots was sent from Earth just to take photographs of the rocks. I bet you saw that spaceship whirling through space on its way to Mars.

There were photos, too, of the moons of
Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. Wow, God, you have a great imagination. And there were pictures of stars, thousands of them. Dad says that new stars are still being born. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to get a sign from you. You could still be exhausted from all that hard work.

Nan and I went to the shops today and she bought me a new dress. It was wonderful. I felt like a princess. It’s soft pink and when I swirled in it, I felt so special. ‘You must take care of it,’ she said. ‘You’re very lucky. A lot of children around the world don’t get enough to eat, let alone a special dress.’

Then she forgot how to get home from the shops, but I knew, so it turned out okay.

I have to say, God, that I don’t think it’s fair
that I have to worry about poor children overseas when I get a new dress. Firstly, what can I do? Secondly, isn’t that your job?

Something awful has happened. I’d been noticing for weeks that I couldn’t see the writing on the whiteboard at school clearly, but when I squinted I could, so I just kept squinting, squeezing my eyes together. My teacher, Mrs Kettlesmith, noticed my squinting and said to me, ‘Kate, why are you squinting at the board?’

I really wish she hadn’t asked that.

My friends all looked at me and so did dorky Stephanie.

‘It helps me see better,’ I said.

Mrs Kettlesmith nodded and I thought that was that, but she sent a note home to my parents.

Mum took me to the eye specialist and he put me in a dark room facing an eye chart. There were letters on a board—a big one on the first line, smaller ones on the next, all the way down to little pinpoints.

I don’t know how anyone could read those small letters. You’d need Dad’s telescope.

The eye doctor put some weird-looking equipment on and around my eyes. Then he slid little bits of glass through slots in the machine, and it was amazing, God, because suddenly I could read those pinpoints—
G, Y, P, R, S.

Then he said those dreaded words, ‘You need glasses, Kate. You’re short-sighted.’

‘But I can squint,’ I told him. ‘I can see clearly when I squint.’ No way was I going to wear glasses. I’d be like
four-eyes
Stephanie.

Now, God, I’ve been wondering why you’ve arranged things so kids have to take orders from
their parents. I’d be quite happy to squeeze my eyes together forever, rather than wear glasses, but I don’t have a choice.

The doctor didn’t think squinting for the rest of my life was a very good idea. He said to Mum: ‘Her eyes may change a lot in the next few years and her short-sightedness may get worse. Bring her in for a check-up every six months.’

That was a complete insult.

I’ve been thinking that you could fix me up. I mean, you could do it if you really wanted to.

Couldn’t you?

I am totally miserable. I don’t think you truly listened to me. I had to wear my new glasses to school for the first time today. Danielle and Stacey looked closely at me and Stacey said I didn’t look too bad. She was being kind. I told my friends if they called me
four-eyes
I’d punch them, but don’t worry, God, I only said that. I’m not really a violent person.

At recess Stephanie came over to me and said, ‘I like your glasses. They’re a really nice shape. They make your eyes seem bigger.’

I felt a bit hot, though it wasn’t a hot day. I knew, God, that I couldn’t call her
four-eyes
again. Not ever. I said thanks and watched as she went to the library. Then, though I didn’t want to, I found myself looking at Adam. He was born with this big dark birthmark that covers half his face. We call him
mudface.
It’s only teasing. It doesn’t make us mean. Not really. But suddenly I realised I couldn’t, just couldn’t, call him
mudface
again. Not now that I wear glasses. I’d be setting myself up to be called
four-eyes
, wouldn’t I?

Are there people on other planets, God? Are they like us? I wonder how we’d get on if we met. That’s hard to think about because we all do a lot of arguing on Earth. Maybe you’re busy sorting out problems on other planets because, even though I keep talking to you, you don’t give me a sign that you’re listening.

Today it rained. Little puddles lay in the driveway. I bent down to look closely at the puddles and I saw dead ants there. They must have drowned. Why can’t ants swim? This is just a suggestion, but maybe you could think about it for new ants that are being born. They’re only small and making them able to swim wouldn’t take up much of your time.

Later, just before the sun came out, there was a wonderful rainbow. Mum and I stood on the balcony watching and you know what, a second
arch appeared. A double wonderful rainbow, like a huge bridge crossing the sky.

I haven’t had any sign from you, but I’ve heard that people believe that the rainbow is a sign that you’ll never get very cross with us and produce a huge flood that will cover the whole planet. That happened a long time ago. There are even fossils high in the mountains that show shells and sea creatures, so we know it really did happen. Dad told me that.

So, I’m wondering, God. The first rainbow Mum and I saw was you letting everyone know that you weren’t about to send a huge flood. But maybe, just maybe, the second rainbow was for me. A sign. One I’ve been waiting for. To let me know that you’ve been listening.

I went down to the beach today with Mum and Dad. Guess who I saw? Well, of course, you know, don’t you. Stephanie was at the beach with her parents and her baby cousin. We sat quite close to them and I sort of waved at her. It’s not a good idea, God, to become friends with the class dork. It can lead to all kinds of problems. I don’t expect you to understand this, God, you being alone and powerful, but here on Earth being teased is one of the awful things about being a kid. And I know that you know that I’m not really a bully myself. Since I
started wearing glasses I don’t call anyone names. Not much, anyway. Besides, two other kids in my class wear glasses. And look at Harry Potter.

Stephanie’s cousin, who’s about two and screams a lot, ran over to me when I sort of waved. There I was rolling out my beach towel and he threw sand at me. His aunt, Stephanie’s mum, rushed over and collected him. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and before you could say ‘Boo’, Stephanie’s parents and mine, plus Stephanie and her pesky cousin were all sitting together.

Stephanie was stretched out on her towel next to me. I felt a little awkward. She wanted to know if I had special swimming goggles, like her, so I could see when I swim in the surf.

‘No, I just squint,’ I told her. Swimming at the beach was a problem, but squinting helped a bit.

I asked to see her goggles. They were extremely ugly. She looked like a frog with them on, but she could go swimming without squinting or worrying about finding her way back to her parents, unlike me. She obviously wanted to go swimming more than she cared about the way she looked. I’d have been worried.

I felt weird after talking to Stephanie. Mainly because she wasn’t that dorky. She talked about
her favourite books and she’s read a lot of the same books as me, including books about the stars. Can you believe that, God? Then she said she wanted a telescope for her birthday, and Dad, well, he heard her and before I could say anything, he was talking about space and invited her to our place to look through his telescope. I wanted to jump on his foot. If Danielle and Stacey ever find out, there’s no saying what would happen.

Mum knew Stephanie already. She was talking about the wonderful stories Stephanie writes and then reads to the children at her library on Saturday mornings.

Stephanie’s parents nodded and looked proudly at her.

This came as a huge surprise, God. I realised then that I didn’t know much about Stephanie at all. I knew she was smart at school, but making up stories for the little kids who visit the library?

It turns out Stephanie is writing a story about a bear and a pussycat. The pussycat is left out in the wilderness in Canada and is adopted by a big brown bear who has bear cubs, and thinks the little cat is a special kind of bear cub. Each week Stephanie goes to Mum’s library and tells adventure stories about the bear family and the pussycat.

I asked Stephanie where she gets her ideas from. She smiled at me. I couldn’t remember her smiling before. ‘I make it up. It just comes to me.’

‘Why Canada?’

‘My parents went to Canada after they got married. I’ve seen their photos of trees that look like flames in autumn and shots of huge snowy mountains in winter that are like big pointed teeth. In summer the valleys are green and scattered with flowers. In the far north it’s freezing cold,
and you see brown bears lumbering along with their cubs following them. I was born just after they came back from Canada, so you see…’

‘You’re a little bit Canadian.’

I never get ideas for stories, God. Mum said that Stephanie is gifted. I wouldn’t mind being gifted. But you need to be very good at something to be gifted, and I’m still trying to find out what that is.