Being Magdalene

by Fleur Beale

  She led me to a table. ‘Take a seat, Magdalene.’ She put a lump of muddy dirt in front of me. ‘This is clay. Have you used it before?’

  ‘No.’

  Her eyes smiled. ‘It’ll be a treat, in that case. Get your hands in there. Mush it up. Squash it. Do what you like with it. When you’ve had enough, we’ll bash it into a lump again and put it back.’ She pointed at a big tin.

  After that, she didn’t talk to me. There were no questions, no preaching, nothing. She didn’t watch me either, but I watched her move around the room, work at a computer, stand behind an easel.

  Time passed. She came out from behind the easel. ‘Don’t know about you, Magdalene, but I’m in need of coffee and cake. Wash your hands over there.’

  I looked at my hands. They were covered in clay. I stared at them. They were dirty, just like when I had hurt them at the beach. I was frightened. ‘Are they bleeding?’

  Octavia sat beside me, taking my grubby hands in hers. ‘Look at them. They’re fine, good hands. Don’t worry about getting them dirty. It’s not time to think about that yet.’ She helped me up and led me to the sink.

  She drank coffee and made hot chocolate for me. We ate pastries filled with apricot and custard. ‘Too much of this and it’ll no doubt kill me,’ she said. ‘What a way to go!’

  ‘But you might go to hell.’ The words came out before I could stop them.

  That made her laugh. ‘I’d rather be there than in heaven if that’s where your old Elder Stephen ends up. I don’t want to be anywhere near him. He sounds like a nasty piece of work.’

  It wasn’t right to say such things even though they were true. We didn’t speak again until I was back at the table with the lump of clay in front of me. This time, I was scared to touch it.

  Octavia said, ‘Pick it up, sweetheart. Good girl.’ She went back to her own work, but after a bit she said, ‘You’ve felt squeezed and crushed, Magdalene?’

  I was doing it again — mushing the clay in my hands, squelching it between my fingers. I nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Looks like that feels bad,’ she said. ‘Who does it to you?’

  I watched my hands moving and moving, and I couldn’t stop them. ‘Elder Stephen. Elder Hosea. They’re mean and they pretend to be holy.’

  ‘Anyone else?’ Her voice came to me from far away and I didn’t answer. I felt her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Magdalene. You’re safe here. Look around you. Tell me what you see.’

  It was an effort to concentrate. ‘Windows. Colours. This table. Drawings on the wall. Lots of books. A piece of driftwood. Three sunflowers.’

  ‘Well done.’ She sat down opposite me, reached out and covered my hands with hers. They were bony. She had silver rings on each finger of her left hand. Her hands felt strong and warm. She asked her terrible question again. ‘Who else crushes the life out of you?’

  My hands twitched, wanting to crush and squeeze, but they couldn’t. At last I said, ‘Father does. And Mother. I have to obey the Rule. They have to crush me. It is the Rule.’

  She released me. My hands were dirty again. I was crying and so tired.

  Octavia wiped my face gently with a pink tissue. ‘There now, everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see.’ She prodded the clay. ‘Pretend that’s the Rule. How about you bash the hell out of it?’

  She said such shocking things. I couldn’t do it.

  She didn’t get angry. She leaned towards me. ‘Tell me about this old Rule thing. What does it say you have to do?’

  I recited the words my parents had so often spoken to Zillah and me. ‘Girls must be seemly and modest. They must dress modestly, they must never run, they must always cover their hair in public.’ There was so much more.

  ‘I’d hate that.’ She gave a dramatic shudder. ‘How did it make you feel?’

  With both hands I picked up the clay, holding it tight until it oozed between my fingers. ‘Like that.’

  ‘Crushed? Squashed? Not allowed to be the real Magdalene?’

  She said such puzzling things, frightening things. ‘I am Magdalene. I’m real.’

  She came round the table to hug me. ‘You surely are. Don’t worry. That’s enough for today. Wash your hands and you can watch me work, or curl up on the window seat and have a snooze till lunchtime.’

  I slept until she woke me. We ate bread rolls filled with lettuce, cheese, chicken, tomato and something spicy I didn’t recognise. She sat beside me in the sun. She didn’t say grace. Down below us, the traffic surged and ebbed as the lights turned from green, to amber, to red.

  Twenty-nine

  WHEN ELLEN CAME TO collect me, she took one look at Octavia and me, and said, ‘We’re so lucky to have found you!’

  Octavia patted her shoulder. ‘I’m glad to do what I can.’ She turned to me. ‘We’ll do some different things tomorrow, Magdalene. You can tell me if you don’t like it and we’ll change to something else.’

  I got to my feet. ‘Thank you.’ It was all I could say.

  I followed Ellen down the stairs to her car. As she drove home, she said, ‘Nobody can know what it’s really like, not if they haven’t been where you and I have been.’

  ‘What … how …?’

  She pulled her mouth down. ‘The short version is that my father — your grandfather — beat me up and threw me out of the house on my sixteenth birthday. He broke my jaw.’

  I stared at her, jolted out of my numbness for a moment. ‘Had you transgressed?’

  She shook her head. ‘A man had transgressed against me, but I was the one who got punished. I’ll tell you the whole story, but not until you’re well again.’

  I let the miles tick past before I said, ‘Octavia said I wasn’t the real Magdalene. But I am real, I am.’

  She said, ‘That’s not what she meant, sweetheart. She was talking about how when you’re in the Faith you can never say what you feel. If you’re a woman, you can’t ever have an opinion or idea of your own.’

  I closed my eyes. All my ideas and opinions had been about Zillah. I didn’t need to have them about me.

  She stopped the car at Nina and Jim’s house. ‘I found my real self and so will you. I promise you.’

  We hadn’t been home long before Zillah came racing in the door. ‘Are you better, Magdalene? Did Octavia make you better?’

  Ellen grabbed her up in a hug. ‘It’s going to take more than just one day, kiddo. Your sister’s had thirteen years of the Rule and the Elders. You don’t recover from that in an instant.’

  I couldn’t bear the disappointment on Zillah’s face. ‘I want to come to school with you. I want to learn things. I’m getting better — I really am.’ If I said it often enough, it might come true.

  Daniel rang in the evening. He didn’t get a chance to say much while Zillah spilled out her excitement about school, but at last she said, ‘Here’s Magdalene, Daniel. She’s getting better but it’s slow and I think it’s slow like when a plant grows.’

  I took the phone and heard his voice in my ear. ‘You okay there, sis?’

  I breathed in. ‘Yes. Octavia’s nice.’

  It was good to talk to him. I missed Luke and Abraham.

  The next day Octavia put a pile of magazines on the table. She set scissors, glue and a book with blank pages beside them. Magazines were dangerous. They were full of evil, worldly images. To read them was to stray from the path to salvation.

  She sat opposite me, picked up the top magazine and flicked through it. ‘Flowers. Colours. Pretty things, Magdalene. Don’t worry, there are only good things in these. Have a look through and, when you find a picture you like, cut it out and stick it in here.’ She tapped the book. ‘I want you to make a scrapbook of things and colours that make you happy. You can look at it whenever you don’t feel so good, and it’ll help.’

  She got up and left me alone with worldliness and temptation.

  It took me until we’d had our morning break of coffee and hot chocolate before I began cutting out the pict
ures. She was right about them. They were pretty.

  Octavia didn’t talk. She was gentle company and I felt peaceful. When we stopped to eat our lunch, she looked at the page I’d finished. ‘You’ve got a good colour instinct,’ she said. ‘This is a pleasure to look at.’

  She didn’t say anything strange today. All I had to do was cut out the pictures and stick them in the book. When Rebecca came to collect me, I was surprised. The time had gone fast.

  Octavia handed me the pile of magazines. ‘Take them home. Work on your book when you feel like it.’

  In the car, I asked my sister, ‘Are you sorry you left? Do you ever wish you’d stayed and married Elder Stephen?’

  She sighed. ‘I was sorry about leaving Rachel, about not being able to see her baby or even know if she was okay. I missed you and Zillah. The boys too. For ages I couldn’t even think about the pain Mother and Father would be feeling.’ She stopped the car. ‘Come on, we need ice cream.’

  We sat on a seat by the sea. My ice cream was apricot ripple. Hers was rum and raisin. ‘I was going to marry him. I knew it was the wrong thing to do, but I felt I had to. Elder Hosea must have suspected I’d run, though, because he grabbed hold of me when we left the house. I pushed him backwards into the rosemary bush by the front door. I bet he didn’t tell you that!’

  ‘Rebecca! You didn’t! Oh, I wish I’d seen him.’

  She grinned. ‘Quite a big transgression, eh? Have they made a rule about it yet? It is a sin to push an Elder into a rosemary bush.’

  We were quiet while we finished our treats. ‘Do you still feel like a Faith girl?’ I asked.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘I’m me now, not something the Rule says a girl should be.’

  I still didn’t understand. I changed the subject. ‘Do you like learning? Was it hard to go to a worldly school?’

  ‘I love it. And yes, it was hard. The other kids knew heaps of stuff I’d never heard of.’ She put her arm around me. ‘It won’t be easy for you either, but you’re smart. You’ll get there, and don’t forget we’ll all be able to help you.’

  Some evenings later, Daniel rang to say he would be home for the weekend. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ He sounded happy.

  Zillah said, ‘What’s he going to tell us? Is it a secret? Why doesn’t he tell us now?’

  Nina said, ‘He wants it to be a surprise, but I think it’s about him and Xanthe.’

  Zillah frowned. ‘What’s a Xanthe? Is it a car? That’s not exciting.’

  Nina laughed. ‘Xanthe’s his girlfriend. She’s a doctor too. She’s lovely. You’ll see.’

  So many changes. ‘Does that mean he’s betrothed to her?’

  Jim said, ‘I think that’s what he’s going to tell us. Worldly customs are different from Faith ones. It’s called being engaged to be married, not being betrothed. They didn’t have to ask anybody’s permission. It’s something people decide for themselves.’

  Zillah was quiet for the rest of the evening. When I went to bed, she put down the book she was reading. ‘Magdalene, I don’t like Xanthe. I don’t want Daniel to marry her.’

  I sat on her bed. ‘Daniel wouldn’t choose a horrible wife. You can’t say you don’t like her when we’ve never even seen her.’

  She thumped the book with both fists. ‘Can so say it! You have to go to school for ages to learn to be a doctor. And now she’ll just cook and have babies. I think it’s a proper sin. They shouldn’t have let her learn to be a doctor. It’s a waste.’

  I didn’t know what to tell her. We sat in silence as she sniffed back tears, and again I felt the weight of her pain until my brain started to function. ‘Zillah, we can ask Nina and Jim about this. They’ll talk to us, they really will.’

  She stuck her lip out. ‘All right. But it won’t make any difference.’

  I stood up. ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about being put in the discipline room if we ask.’

  I went to find my aunt and uncle. When I’d explained Zillah’s worry, Jim looked at my aunt. ‘You can field that one, sweetheart!’

  Nina cuffed him over the head, went to the bookcase and took out a slim book. In the bedroom she pulled up a chair. ‘Zillah honey, things are different for worldly people. Xanthe will probably want to keep working after they’re married. If they decide to have children, they’ll both look after them. Or else the children will go to day care — that’s sort of like school for little kids.’

  Zillah’s lip stayed stuck out. ‘But if they’re getting married they will have babies.’

  So that evening we learned how babies were made, how they were born and how not to have them if you didn’t want them. Nina kissed us and left the book for us to study. ‘Ask me anything you don’t understand,’ she told us.

  We stayed in stunned silence for ages until Zillah said, ‘The Elders would have a fit.’ She bounced in her bed. ‘It’s great, isn’t it, Magdalene? Don’t you just love people telling you stuff?’

  Yes, I did, although I felt winded. Girls weren’t meant to know such things. The secret of the marriage bed. Your husband will tell you. I thought of Rebecca. I was glad she’d run away from Elder Stephen.

  It was a long time before I slept, even though my heart felt lighter. I didn’t understand why until I heard Zillah move in her sleep. She still needed me. I was still useful.

  Thirty

  WHEN I NEXT SAW Octavia, she said, ‘This good weather’s not going to last so we’re not going to spend such a fabulous day inside. Have you ever been to a zoo, Magdalene?’

  I shook my head. ‘The only places we went were playgrounds and sometimes the beach.’

  She rubbed her hands together. ‘Would those stuffy old men shake their fingers at you if they knew we were off to have fun at the zoo?’

  ‘They’d preach. They’d make us feel wicked and small.’

  ‘Well, sucks to them!’ she said. ‘Let’s you and me have the best day ever.’

  She was so disrespectful — and life wasn’t about having fun. But I would have to obey her. Children had to obey adults. It was the Rule.

  She gave me a hat. ‘You’ll need this. We can’t send you home with a burnt face.’ The hat was blue with a pink ribbon.

  The zoo was close enough to walk to. I expected Octavia to talk and ask questions on the way, but she seemed content to be silent.

  Once we entered the zoo, I forgot about questions, the Rule and the Elders. I wished Zillah was with me to see the wonder of bright birds, scuttling monkeys, giraffes, zebras, lions. Here in front of me were creatures I’d only ever read about in some of our more interesting lessons. Many of them I’d never even heard of. The meerkats made me laugh.

  Octavia still didn’t ask questions. While I gazed at the creatures, she drew pictures of them in her sketchbook.

  When we got back to her house for the afternoon, she showed me her sketches. I thought she’d been drawing the animals and birds, and she sort of had, but the focus of each picture was a person — sometimes a group of them. Laughing faces, awed children — excitement, happiness.

  Then she turned to a section at the back of her book. ‘Look at these, my dear.’

  She’d drawn me. In the first one I saw that my face was intent. I turned the page to see that there I was laughing. In the next one I looked happy.

  My sister had drawn me when I was little, and for that she’d been expelled and declared dead to us.

  Octavia’s hand gripped my shoulder. ‘Tell me what you see in these pictures.’ She turned back to the first one, slowly turning the pages to give me time to study each drawing.

  I felt shaky — pulled between being almost five years old and believing I’d killed my sister, to being here in a world where Miriam was alive and glad she was worldly. ‘I remember,’ I said slowly, ‘when I hurt my hands, the doctor asked what was one thing I’d like to do that I couldn’t.’

  She let silence drift between us for a moment, then asked, ‘What did you tell him?’

  I
scrunched my eyes up and rubbed them. I was here, not back in Wanganui and not in a doctor’s room in Nelson. I was here with Octavia, who didn’t think it was a sin to be happy. ‘I told him I’d like to worship the Lord with a joyful heart.’

  Her face twisted. ‘Ouch. Do you see a girl with a joyful heart when you look at your pictures?’

  ‘Yes. But I can’t feel it now.’ I wanted to weep.

  She pulled the pages out of the book. ‘Take these home with you. They’re to remind you that one day soon you’ll become that girl with the joyful heart.’

  My family were delighted to see the drawings. ‘You look so happy,’ Nina said.

  ‘Can you go to the zoo every day?’ Zillah asked. ‘I like you to be happy, Magdalene.’

  ‘I like it too.’ I wished I could remember feeling happy.

  After dinner, Zillah sat at the table doing the first homework she’d ever had. I didn’t want to spoil her joy with worry about me, so I joined her and worked on my scrapbook.

  The doorbell rang. Nina glanced at the clock. ‘It’s late to be calling on people.’

  Jim got up. ‘If it’s somebody else trying to sign us up to some deal, I swear I’ll kick them into next week.’

  Zillah giggled.

  We heard voices but couldn’t make out the words, then footsteps returning. Our uncle said, ‘Girls …’

  We looked up. The scissors I was holding fell from my fingers. I heard Zillah’s pencil drop to the table. ‘Father?’

  Our father came into the room. His face was marked with deep lines. He looked gaunt and grey and old. For a wild moment I feared he’d come to tell us he was dying — to tell us we’d killed him with our wickedness.

  Jim looked at Nina. ‘My brother Caleb.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Please, sit down, Caleb.’

  Father didn’t appear to hear her. He set his hat down on a chair but didn’t take his coat off.