The Heaven I Swallowed (5 page)

I smiled.

Mary continued to watch me.

†

The next time at church, less attention was paid to us. I could not say there was a real acceptance of one black face amongst the congregation, only that the disapproval had become stale, a faint buzz under newer waves of gossip. Tongues wagged about more pressing news: Father Benjamin had some kind of tumour in an unspeakable place on his body and the Mavis boy had been missing for a week, leaving his mother to wring her hands in agitation while her husband stood by, looking faintly relieved.

It seemed no one told me of these events and yet I knew. If I had been asked to testify as to how the knowledge came my way, I would not have been able to say definitively, to point out the person who had first spoken of Father Benjamin's ‘delicate problem'. I wondered if everyone else was thinking how his illness might have been caused by lack of use, though no one would talk out loud of celibacy as a cause for disease.

After the church service I let Mary again join the group of children who collected at the saint's grotto. I kept an eye on her and could only guess at what they talked about. I saw the strawberry-haired Gibson twins place their arms up against Mary's, their red freckles like angry flashes compared to the uniform darkness of Mary. It made me feel slightly sick, this comparison. The three girls seemed to find it funny. Their giggles made heads turn.

I tried to pretend this did not affect me. Yet after so many years of having to take responsibility for only myself, I found my chest constricting over these possible transgressions. What were the rules? How close was she allowed to get? I suspected there were mothers who had forbidden their sons or daughters from speaking to Mary. I saw these children sulking under the church eaves and heard their resentful whispers against the ‘abo', ‘nigger', or ‘darky'. It was strange to think Mary had created such exclusion.

†

One of the hardest things about Mary's arrival was adjusting to the sounds of someone else in the house. On the first night, the thud of the back door pulling open and the creak of the screen door startled me from sleep and I jumped up to investigate. As I reached for the handle of my bedroom door I stopped, suddenly not sure if I had heard the noises or if I had dreamt them, as I used to do when I still believed Fred was coming home. The confusion of it made my head fuzzy and the shapes around me—the wardrobe, the dressing table—became larger than they were.

In the darkness, for just a moment, it seemed possible I could turn around and find Fred lying in our bed, his massive body in the middle of the mattress, leaving me only a sliver. In my thick cotton nightgown I stood, like Lot's wife, trying hard not to turn around, to see the reality of a flat, featureless rectangle, trying hard not to crumble into the harsh space of abandonment. Even without turning, I knew. Caught by the smell again or, rather, the lack of smell, the absence of anything male; the strong odour that would come out of his body when he wanted me, as if desire itself had seeped through his skin. It was different from the hard saltiness of his spent desire. Even that was lost to me after the washing of our sheets. If I'd known, I would not have been so hasty to clean them, to find myself left only with the residues of my cheap perfumes.

Then I heard Mary cough, returning from the lavatory, and felt all the sadness, and relief, of knowing I was well past the time of Fred. It did not matter which way I faced, he was not in my bed, he was not out there, making his way up the side fence. How many times had I got out of bed to check in the past? Imagining the wind, a cat, an overturned garbage can, were his returning footsteps. I slipped back into bed and, despite the disturbance, was overwhelmingly grateful Mary was in the house, that the noises were, at the very least, real.

For the rest of that first week, I listened for the squeaks and opening of the screen and back door. The glory was that Mary, unlike Fred, did not want to leave. Her mother was dead and she had no alternative except the Home, a place without appeal. Father Benjamin had told me some of them disappeared with dubious relatives into the north, returning to their bush ways, but I was confident Mary would not be one of those. When Mary returned from the outhouse, I could always make out the sound of the mattress springs adjusting under her weight again.

She did not ask for a light for these night-time trips. I would not have admitted to her that I never went to the outhouse after dark. I made sure all my toiletries were done well before the sun went down. Hardly worth dwelling on why a girl should not be afraid when a grown woman was. Mary did not have my memories, after all. Or perhaps her blood led her to communion with the night? Either way, though it made me shiver to think of her outside in the darkness, tasting the natural world, I could not follow her. It was beyond me, to enter the echoing stillness again.

†

Dear Grace,

I have entered the region of Death and I don't think I will ever come out of it. We've been marching for days and I write this without any expectation that it will find its way to you. All of the unit are desperately scrawling, as if we know this could be the only part of us left behind. The mud, the flies, the heat, these are beyond my description, but I accept them gratefully, knowing you are in the land of Life. You and my child are safe. I feel Death on my shoulder at every moment and I keep Him close, content in the knowledge that He cannot hurt you, so close is He to me. I hear Him breathing, wanting me. The other men, so many from the country, they seem to understand this landscape better than me. Their eyes are quicker, their hearing clearer, they smell the enemy, alert to the movements of birds and animals, they are able to talk to the natives. I blunder along with them and can only suppose my escape from Death is blind luck. A city man is useless here, no training could have prepared me for this. I have no belief that heaven is watching. Take all that you know of me, Gracie, and keep it close. If I stood on the threshold of Life, knowing what I now know, I think I would decline the offer to enter.

Out of the depths, I hear a cry,

Choked in a dry throat, as it begins to die.

My mind is struck blind, I do not want to hear,

I cannot conceive that God is near.

Fred

3

Toward the end of the third week after Mary's arrival we visited the local school. It was a short walk from my house although I had never had reason to pass through the sandstone pillars of its gateway before. Father Benjamin had arranged the appointment for late morning, well after the children had been called inside, so Mary and I entered a silent playground, the main building directly in front an old convict's cottage with narrow windows. Stamped into the sandstone were the words ‘Established in 1883'.

I held Mary's hand again, aware of its lightness and maybe the trace of a tremble. She wore her new dress, yellow with white flowers, found for her by the eager women at St Vincent de Paul. I had taken her to the local charity shop, a more appropriate place for her to buy clothes after the exhaustion of the shoe expedition. The old ladies there, half of them half-blind, made it easy to buy several, less-than-perfect frocks. It did not matter if they were a little torn or frayed or splotched with dark, unidentifiable marks. Her new shoes, in contrast, were scuff-free and polished to an almost indecent shine.

‘Which way, Auntie Grace?' Mary asked, not without a hint of impatience.

‘I'm not sure,' I admitted and, at that moment, a small woman in a fawn dress appeared at the top of the steps of a building to our left. A sign above her declared it the Teacher's Hut.

‘Mrs Smith?' the woman enquired.

‘Yes,' I answered.

‘And Mary?'

‘Yes.'

Her eyes, which matched her washed-out dress, raked over Mary, her mouth staying closed after our initial exchange. I could not read any change in her expression: she was better educated than the woman in the shoe department and, thus, better able to disguise either her approval or revulsion.

‘Come in,' she said finally and I was grateful that, at the very least, we were not to be turned away at the doorstep.

She turned and I followed, Mary next to me, down a carpeted hall to a closed frosted-glass door with another sign ‘School Principal' nailed to the cross beam. The fawn lady, to my surprise, knocked and I realised we had only passed the preliminary barrier. She did not wait for a response from within, opening the door and striding in with the confidence of a trusted employee.

Behind the desk sat a bald man in a dark suit. He did not stand on our entrance, only moving his head to stare at me with watery blue eyes.

‘Forgive me for not standing, Mrs Smith,' he said and his gaze invited me to follow his to a walking stick sitting under the window. ‘I am having a particularly bad day.'

I sat in the chair opposite the desk and Mary stood behind me while the fawn woman stood behind the principal. We were uneven bookends, propping up the desk.

‘I'm Mr Robertson,' he announced.

His office smelt of cod liver oil and as I took in this rheumatic man, all joints and bones, I felt not the slightest tinge of empathy between us. You can tell with certain strangers that there will never be a time when you will come to mean more to one another.

‘Father Benjamin has told me about the unfortunate girl,' Mr Robertson continued. ‘And though I am inclined toward good deeds, I have to constantly watch out for the repu­tation …'

‘… of the school,' the fawn lady finished for him.

‘I understand that, Mr Robertson,' I said, although I did not really understand this aching man. How much pain was he in right now? How quickly did he want us gone so he could groan in private? ‘Mary is, I believe, a good girl. She could benefit from a good education.'

I felt Mary shift behind me, perhaps, I hoped, standing a little straighter.

‘Would you have her stand over there please?' It was the fawn lady who was asking and I was yet to know who this woman was. The secretary? The head teacher? She seemed to have more self-assurance than I had encountered from my fellow female teachers. The brash young ones were soon beaten down by the stupefying effect of the classroom, the gradual realisation of how little difference you could make to most of your students. Unconsciously, I found myself listening for the school bell, as if I was back in the days of my own teaching when I would sit at the head of the room willing the minutes to pass more quickly.

Mary moved to the spot the woman had indicated, near the window through which the morning light poured. She was not smiling and I was reminded of the sullen expression she had worn on the day of her arrival. Already I had grown used to not seeing it there, I had become used to a blander face. She had not transformed into ‘happy' but she had taken off the mantle of sulkiness, which did nothing for her dark features. To see it return, then, particularly in front of the people who could provide her with so much, was distressing. What could I say, however? ‘Brighten up'? I had already ­lectured her about the importance of education. It seemed she had not listened.

‘She really is quite …' Mr Robertson began. His sentence trailed off. I knew what it contained.

‘I thought they were supposed to be half-castes, or even quadroons,' the fawn woman said, and she walked over to stand beside Mary. She reached across to place her hand under the girl's chin and raised her head as if to give Mr Robertson a better view. She appeared to be a moment away from asking Mary to open her mouth so they could inspect her teeth. Mary did not flinch at the woman's touch but her eyes had gone dead. Mrs Thompson had said she was a ­beautiful child.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

There had been moments like these in my own childhood when prospective parents would come to inspect us, walking along rows of brightly scrubbed girls, scanning from top to bottom for flaws. Perhaps I wore the kind of expression that Mary now did, for I was almost entirely overlooked in the early years and the time came when I was too old to even be included in the rows. If it had not been for the kindly Auntie Iris I would never have had any trips outside the convent.

‘I really don't think …' Mr Robertson began and, again, trailed off. I wondered if he was capable of finishing a ­sentence.

‘I'm not sure she would be suitable.' The fawn lady spoke for them both. Her hand dropped and she moved away from Mary, returning to stand next to Mr Robertson's shoulder.

‘Although we don't want you to think …' said the ­principal.

‘She's a little too old, really. Can she read or write?' the woman asked, although this should have been her first question. It felt as if the entire room was coated in cod liver oil, as slippery as these two were. To find a different problem when it was clear what the problem was.

‘She knows her letters,' I answered. I had already quizzed Mary on this and discovered the patchy learning she had gained during her two years at the Home. I had worried at the wisdom of giving her more education. Words had always given me such comfort but would they give her expectations beyond her abilities? She had come to me to be domestic so was there any point in introducing the academic? According to Mr Robertson and his pale companion, the answer was no.

There was silence as, no doubt, Mr Robertson was arranging the carefully chosen words of his rejection: ‘Not quite proper,' or ‘We're looking for something different,' or ‘We'd like one much, much younger, with brighter eyes.'

I stood up. ‘I understand perfectly. Thank you for your time, Mr Robertson.' The unexpected movement seemed to throw them, both mouthed ‘Oh' like goldfish.

‘Come on, Mary.'

The girl moved out of the beam of sunlight she'd been forced to stand in and came to take my hand.

At the doorway, Mr Robertson called a soft ‘Good day, Mrs Smith' to me. I did not turn back.

I had said I understood and, in many ways, I did. The shape of a schoolgirl was fixed in their minds: her long brown—or blonde—plaits, her well-rounded hips, a broad straw boater protecting her ivory face. There was nothing to be done about such preconception.

‘I'll teach you to read, Mary,' I said, as we passed through the stone pillars once more. On the top of each pillar I saw a lion with his paw holding a shield. The shields were carved with a cross and I had a brief image of a miniature Jesus sacrificed under the lion's head.

Mary did not speak as we walked home.

†

With the sting of the school rejection still raw, I discovered the penny in the lining of Mary's blue dress, the same penny she had supposedly thrown into the fountain. It had found its way from a hole in the pocket of the dress to the hem and I knew it was the same penny because I hadn't given her any other money. I remembered her wet hands and wondered why I had not thought it odd at the time. Had she thrown the coin in the water and then retrieved it when I wasn't looking? This seemed the only explanation.

I called to her. She was in the yard, standing on a wooden box, hanging the washing on the line. I watched through the window as she clambered down and made her way to me in the kitchen. I placed the penny on the table in front of her and she looked down at it.

‘Another one, Auntie Grace?' she asked, as if I was going to magically produce a pond for her
not
to wish at, as if she didn't know exactly where I'd found this one.

‘I don't like liars, Mary.' The iron of my voice had terrified troublemakers of the past and I saw Mary's body go back into its shell. I had been too nice to her over these first few weeks and she had begun to relax, begun to believe
she
had the upper hand. Oh, what she would not do if she thought I actually cared about her. How much she would take advantage.
Do not trust anyone,
Auntie Iris had said,
especially those you love.

I grabbed her upper arm, my hand circling it with overlapping fingers. Pulling her towards her bedroom, I had no vision of what I would do, what punishment to administer. I did not have the school's boundaries, nor set procedures. I was free to do as I wished.

‘Auntie Grace,' she said quietly, but nothing else. The tone had no reverence, just the flatness of the unbeliever.

‘Look what I have done for you,' I said, still gripping the thin arm, shaking her a little.

The wardrobe door hung open and showed the crowd of outfits I had bought her, the two pairs of shoes: the ones from the Home she had stumbled in, scuffed, falling apart, and the shiny new ones, bright and full of promise. Where was her gratitude for this? Today she wore another pair of new sandals, the brown leather straps matching her blasted skin.

I let go of her arm and she stood at the end of the bed with her eyes down.

‘Don't lie to me again, Mary.'

‘Yes, Auntie Grace.'

‘Do you promise not to lie to me?'

‘Yes, Auntie Grace.'

The blandness of her tone pushed me, my hand rising up before I could think. I slapped her across the face, a blunt, quick hit.

She was not shocked. She stood there, holding her cheek, as if she had expected it.

‘You will stay in this room all day.' I kept my voice level and calm despite the anger I felt. ‘You will not sit down. I will know if you have.'

She did not protest. Had the Home handed out similar punishments? Not enough of them obviously. She had lied to me, pretended compliance, not even clever enough to conceal it properly. I never would have found the penny if she had hidden it under her bed or somewhere else in the house. Why go to the trouble of stealing and then not even carry the crime through?

I moved to the door, turning to look at her again before closing it. The remnant of my slap was there on her cheek, a slightly reddish tinge. I had used my right hand and there were no rings on those fingers, simply flesh on flesh, hardly enough to raise a bruise. With the mid-morning sun streaming in through the window, her black hair was lit, the acquired shine of my soapy ministrations. I would have to make her tie it back, with her hair loose and wild it was little wonder Mr Robertson had rejected her, she could be a Red Indian, a savage. I closed the door.

While Mary stood in her room, I sat shaking in the front room. My hand still stung from the slap. I had never hit the girls at my school in such a crude way. I used a cane, made for the purpose, across the palm of the hand mostly, only occasionally on the back of the thighs. It was always prepared and measured, the reason for the punishment calmly articulated before the strike. Most of the girls cried out on the first thump and would be weeping by the last, so much so that I rarely saw the same girl twice. I remember hearing one of the teachers muttering how I liked dishing out the cane too much, as if I enjoyed it. She was wrong. I had met even harsher conditions in my own schooling. The Sisters had a love of suffering, tore the skin of our hands and buttocks to shreds in emulation of the lashes laid on Jesus's back. In contrast to the Sisters, I never punished without due cause.

When I was ten I had eaten an entire teacake during a visit to Auntie Iris's and then lied about it, foolishly insisting it had not been me even though I was the only one in the house. Auntie Iris had made me stand in the front entrance for six hours, a cold hall with a spiral staircase leading to bedrooms I was never invited to stay in. Standing for those hours, my legs beginning to shake, I had ingested so much guilt I was sick with it.

In the front room, I took large, uneven breaths. I wanted a cup of tea and almost called out to Mary to make me one. No, she was not to be allowed out of her room, although it struck me this meant I would have to finish hanging out the washing and put the kettle on myself.

†

I entered Mary's room after two hours and knew she had not sat down. The bed cover remained un-crumpled and Fred's desk still had its pure layer of dust upon it. Not surprisingly, she stood with her legs crossed.

‘You can go to the bathroom,' I said and she rushed out without even a thank you. I could have punished her for that as well but I felt weary, as if it had been me standing in this claustrophobic little room. Fred had often come in here to his books. He had taken the job at the bank and I wanted to believe he was content tallying up numbers, keeping the country balanced. Deep down, I knew he wanted more, that one day he hoped to return to the land of words, to retreat to this study and not come out for hours. Despite what he wrote in his letters, I suspected he had always been writing his poetry.