I Am Not Esther

by Fleur Beale

  She shook her head, waving it backwards and forwards until I wanted to grab it and make her keep it still. ‘I don’t want you to end up feeling empty. I don’t want you to end up having to run and run because you’re too scared to keep still. Caleb said they’ll care for you. He’s promised they’ll love you and pray for you and …’

  ‘You’ve seen him? You’ve talked to him? Already?’ How could she do this? And not tell me? Then I remembered. ‘He was one of those creepy guys who came to the flat! Wasn’t he?’ She didn’t need to answer.

  It was a nightmare. How could my whole life have spun out of control in three short days? I shouted at Mum, I begged her and I cried. She just sat there on a hard stool with her head bent and wouldn’t look at me. The meal I’d eaten churned in my stomach and I could taste the fat in my mouth. If only she’d talk to me, explain things. But she just shook her head and rocked on the stool. The room I was in had no meaning, there was nothing familiar to hold on to. I went outside and put my hand on the heap, leaned my arms on the roof and lay my cheek against the cool metal. Night had come and I hadn’t noticed. Traffic sped past on the road. There were people everywhere, but there was nobody I could talk to. Not even my mother. I went back inside. ‘Mum?’ Her shoulders trembled but she didn’t answer. I shouted at her, argued, yelled and screamed for hours. Every word made her wince and shudder but she wouldn’t talk.

  There was a clock with red digits and I noticed it click over. 2.43am. ‘You don’t love me,’ I whispered.

  This time she did answer and I had to hold my breath to hear what she said. ‘I don’t think you can love anyone when you don’t love yourself.’

  I gave up then. Terror clawed at my throat and chest. She’d already gone away and left me and no matter what I tried, I wasn’t going to be able to bring her back. I was alone and it was no use crying for Louisa, who was too far away and too poor to help me.

  ‘When do you go?’ My voice sounded dead in my ears.

  ‘Tomorrow.’ She glanced at the red eyes of the clock. ‘Today.’ The word sank like lead through the stuffy air.

  I curled up on a bed and I was cold, shivering in the hot night. My mother was abandoning me and there was nothing I could do about it. She’d been clever. If Louisa had known about her plans, she’d have taken me in and just made the money stretch. So Mum had made up the moving to Wellington bit. She knew I couldn’t go rushing back to Louisa without money.

  ‘How long are you going for?’ I asked, my voice muffled in the bedspread. Six weeks? I could maybe survive six weeks.

  A silence and I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but at last she said, ‘Two years.’

  I believe that my heart stopped beating and I fiercely wished it hadn’t started again. ‘You can’t do this.’ My voice came out in a whimper.

  ‘They’ll be good to you.’ She sounded like somebody reciting a lesson. ‘Your Uncle Caleb will be a father to you. You’ll be able to help your aunt. Learn things I’ve never been able to teach you. You’ve missed out on so much, living with me.’

  ‘I haven’t missed anything!’ I yelled. ‘They’re religious! They’ll turn me into a freak!’

  ‘They will love you.’

  I stared at her, searching for words, searching for the key that would bring her back to me. But there were no words.

  There was nothing. She had gone from me as surely as if she’d already boarded the plane for Africa.

  My uncle, Caleb Pilgrim, came at eight o’clock in the morning. I must have slept because it was his knock on the door that woke me. He walked into the motel unit and glanced around. I’d never seen such a grey man. His hair was grey, his clothes were grey, his shoes were grey. I couldn’t see his eyes — they were lost under a frown and wrinkles. Mum and I must’ve got our wild dark hair and our big brown eyes from a different strand of the gene pool.

  He went up to Mum and kissed her forehead. ‘This is a Godly thing you are doing, Martha.’

  ‘Her name’s Ellen,’ I said, sitting up. I pushed at my hair and held it back out of my eyes so I could look at him.

  He stared down at me. I was watching for disapproval, the tell-tale tightening of the mouth, a frown. Anything. His expression didn’t change not even by one muscle twitch. ‘She was baptised Martha.’ He stopped looking at me and gave Mum the benefit of his grey stare. ‘My prayers have been answered. Martha is back among the Chosen Ones doing the work of the Lord, and she has commended the care of her child into my hands.’

  I looked at Mum — tried to catch her eye. If she just lifted an eyebrow and turned her mouth down and shrugged, then I’d know I wasn’t going mad. I’d know all this was a crazy movie we’d walked into and could walk out of again. But Mum didn’t know the script. She was looking as if he’d beaten her. She stood beside the stove rubbing it with a tea towel.

  ‘Mum?’ I went over to her. ‘You’ve got to tell me what’s wrong! You’ve got to tell me why!’

  The grey man spoke. ‘There is nothing wrong, child. Your mother has repented and is making atonement for her years of sin.’

  His words skidded across the top of my consciousness. I concentrated on trying to reach Mum, break her out of her hideous shell.

  ‘Mum?’

  She put her arms round me then and held me, but not tightly. ‘I have to do this,’ she said. ‘I have to go.’ She looked at me out of big brown eyes and she touched my hair. ‘It is for the best, Kirby. For both of us.’

  I wrenched myself out of her arms. My uncle was in the way. I remember banging into him, then I was standing up against the wall. It was made of concrete blocks and painted white. It felt rough and cold against my T-shirt. ‘I’ll never forgive you! Never! How can you do this to me? How can you abandon your own child? You always said you loved me. You always said I meant more to you than anything, but it’s a lie, isn’t it? A goddamned filthy lie! I hate you! Get out of my life!’

  She looked as if I’d punched her — shocked and white and broken. My uncle said something but I didn’t hear it. I was waiting for Mum to come to me and tell me everything was all right. To tell me that she did love me and we’d go back home where I’d look after her again and Louisa would look after me.

  She didn’t. She just took a huge, ragged breath, lifted up her hands and plaited her hair into a single tight braid. She twisted a band onto the end of it — a band she’d brought without me having to remind her. She never tied her hair back. ‘I am ready, Caleb,’ she whispered. ‘Will you take me to the airport now, please?’

  ‘Your plane does not leave until this evening, Martha,’ he said.

  ‘It is better this way.’ She came over to me, touched my hair again and then she just picked up two bags and walked out the door.

  I listened for a long time, listened until the noise of Uncle Caleb’s car got mixed up with the cars on the road outside the motel. Cars have a grey sound. I never knew that before.

  I didn’t know I was crying until I rubbed my chest and discovered that my T-shirt was wet. How could I be crying when I wasn’t making any noise? My throat hurt as if somebody was pulling a draw-string around it. The stippled roughness of the concrete wall was still against my back.

  I heard the door open and turned my head. ‘Mum?’ But it was only a strange boy. I did hear myself then. I shrieked and wailed and carried on like a hurricane. He sat in a chair and I suppose he watched me. He certainly didn’t say anything.

  ‘Get out,’ I managed to say when there didn’t seem to be any tears left.

  He was using the wrong script too. ‘I am Daniel. Your cousin.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’re the devil himself! Get the hell out of here!’ That should shock him and make him run for Daddy, and then Uncle Caleb would beat me and I could kick him and swear and pull his hair and do all the things I wanted to do to my mother.

  I don’t remember a lot about what happened after that. There are bits that stick in my head like clear pictures as if somebody paused the video. Daniel handed me
a drink and I threw it across the room. I see the glass travelling through the air and milk spilling out of it in an arc. I see him sitting quite still in the orange chair, his hand ready to turn another page in the Bible he was reading. I see him holding out a folded white handkerchief to me.

  Uncle Caleb came back at some point. The pair of them got down on their knees and prayed. They were praying for Mum and for me — Martha’s child, they called me. ‘Goddamn leave me out of your goddamn prayers!’ I yelled and then I was crying again.

  I’m pretty ashamed of how I behaved when I look back on it all now. I guess it was the suddenness of it that got to me.

  Actually, Uncle Caleb was quite kind in his own way. He just let me rant and rave and he or Daniel cleaned up the mess when I screamed at them and threw my food at the wall. He let me yell and chuck things all that day and then when I started again the next day, he put his hand on my head and said, ‘That is enough, child. It is time to get on with life. Go and have a shower.’ And I did, just like that.

  We had to be out of the motel by ten o’clock. Daniel put my bags in the back of a station wagon. ‘Do you want to ride in the front?’

  I shook my head. I wanted to sleep. I crawled in and lay down on the back seat. Uncle Caleb made me sit up and put the seat belt on. The car moved off. Daniel was driving. He drove better than Mum did, or it might have been that this was a better car than the heap. What had happened to the heap? I stared at the back of Daniel’s head. He was out of the ark. Bad hair cut. White shirt. Long trousers and shoes and socks. In this weather. The sun burned in on me and I went to sleep. When I woke up, the car had stopped and Uncle Caleb was opening the door. ‘We are home, child. Come and meet your new family.’

  Child. I had a name, why couldn’t he use it? He’d never once called me by my name. Neither had Daniel. ‘Kirby,’ I muttered, ‘My name is Kirby.’ I struggled out, not feeling exactly in the mood for being paraded in front of all the cousins.

  They were standing in a group on the verandah. I didn’t want to look at them so I looked at the house instead. Wooden, painted white. Blue window sills, grey roof.

  Uncle Caleb said something. I turned my head and stared at him. Had he spoken in English? Nothing made sense. He took my arm and steered me inside. Again, I couldn’t look at the people when they followed me in. Big room. Kitchen at one end, fireplace at the other. Wooden polished floors. Rugs. A lot of religion on the walls.

  More words but I couldn’t shut them out this time. ‘This is your Aunt Naomi.’

  My Aunt Naomi put her hands on my shoulders, leaned forward and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘We welcome you to our family, niece.’ I swallowed and tried to say something. She was quite tall and she smelled of lavender and sweat. Her hair was a faded blond colour and pulled back into a long plait that hung down her back. She would’ve been quite pretty if she’d had a decent hair cut. The long skirt and apron she wore didn’t hide the fact that she was pregnant.

  Uncle Caleb went on with the introductions. ‘Daniel you have already met. He is the eldest. Rachel, Rebecca — welcome your new sister.’ Two girls came up and kissed me the same way my aunt had done. They were twins and about the same age as Gemma’s younger brother, around twelve, I guessed. ‘Welcome,’ they murmured. They were fine boned with long, fair hair and their eyes were huge and wary.

  The next in line was a boy. ‘Abraham,’ his father said. Bad hair cut, just like Daniel’s. He didn’t kiss me, but stood in front of me and gave a sort of bow. His eyes were big like his sisters’, but there was nothing wary about them. He screwed up his mouth and flicked his eyebrows. The others all looked sort of holy. Not Abraham.

  ‘Luke,’ said my uncle, putting his hand on the shoulder of the smallest boy. ‘Welcome,’ he said, shyly. Then words burst out as if he couldn’t stop them. ‘I’m seven, how old are you?’

  Before I could even think about trying to get my voice working, his father had quelled him with a glance. Luke hung his head and shuffled nearer Abraham. The children all seemed to hold their breaths. Abraham glanced swiftly at his father, but Caleb took the hand of his youngest daughter and said, ‘This is Magdalene, who was five the day before yesterday.’ The day they’d come for me. Magdalene sent one scared glance at me, then bent her head so that all I could see was her blond hair scraped back into the hideous plait all the girls wore. Caleb swept his grey glance round his family. ‘I want you to welcome Esther, your new sister.’

  I gasped. Esther? ‘I am not Esther,’ I said, keeping my teeth together so I wouldn’t yell. ‘My name is Kirby.’

  Aunt Naomi said, ‘The women of our faith all have Biblical names. As do the men.’ She smoothed back my wild hair and smiled at me. ‘We have given you the name Esther.’

  I stared at her. She was so different from Mum. Her face looked polished, no make-up and she didn’t pluck her eyebrows. Her clothes were unbelievable. A long skirt. Dark brown. A blouse, long-sleeved and white, done up to the neck and down to the wrists. Big white apron. Shoes and stockings. I turned my head to look at my cousins. Rachel and Rebecca wore stuff exactly like their mother, but their skirts were blue and they wore socks instead of stockings. They all had plaits. Something jolted in my head. When Mum left, she had pulled her hair into a plait.

  I looked at them, standing there watching me. I shook my head, twisting it from side to side. ‘I am not Esther,’ I repeated. ‘I’m Kirby.’

  Aunt Naomi took no notice. ‘Come with me, Esther. I will show you your room and help you change your clothes.’

  I hugged my arms round my T-shirt. It was my favourite one, black and shabby. ‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘Can I watch the news? Please?’ I needed to know if something terrible was happening where Mum was going.

  ‘We do not have a television,’ said my aunt.

  ‘The radio, then,’ I said desperately. ‘Let me listen to the news!’

  She smiled at me. ‘We do not have a radio or a newspaper. We keep our thoughts turned to the Lord.’

  I couldn’t take it in. She took my arm and led me down a passage to a bedroom with two sets of bunks. ‘This is where the girls sleep.’ She walked to the bunks nearest the door and put her hand on the top one. ‘This is your bed. And these are your clothes.’ She smiled at me. ‘I do hope they fit. We did not have a lot of warning of your coming, but the sisters have helped.’ I thought she meant Rachel and Rebecca, but then she added, ‘And the girls, of course.’

  She held up the white blouse and a long blue skirt. ‘I don’t wear clothes like that,’ I said. ‘Where are my bags? I want my own clothes.’

  She took no notice. ‘Please get changed now, Esther. And plait your hair into a braid like mine.’

  She walked out and left me.

  Two

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS DRAGGED past in a blur. I couldn’t seem to keep my mind on anything. Mum might as well be dead. It’d be easier if she was dead, then I wouldn’t feel so betrayed. She’d chosen to do this. That’s what I couldn’t get my head around. I spent those days curled up on my bunk and I wouldn’t take off my shorts and T-shirt.

  The twins whispered at their end of the room and underneath me in the bottom bunk, Magdalene cried herself to sleep each night. People came and went through the house, a lot of people one day. Rebecca murmured something about it being the Circle of Fellowship. Who cared?

  Then the next morning, Aunt Naomi came in bright and early and she didn’t bring me my breakfast. ‘Today you get up and join the family, Esther. Have a shower and leave those clothes in the bathroom. Put on the ones we made for you.’ She whipped the blankets off me and yanked me out of the bunk.

  I tumbled onto the floor. ‘I’m Kirby,’ I yelled. ‘I’m not Esther, for God’s sake.’

  Wow, did the world ever explode around my ears then! I was hauled to my feet and marched out of the room. I kicked and screamed and bellowed but she was strong. I’d never thought of a pregnant woman being strong. I’d never had anything to do with a pregnant woman before.

&
nbsp; She opened a door and shoved me inside a room and let me fall in a heap on the polished floor. Uncle Caleb was sitting at a desk writing a letter. I jumped up, ‘Get your hands off me!’

  Aunt Naomi didn’t look at me. ‘Husband,’ — yes, she really did call him that — ‘this child has taken the name of the Lord in vain. She has committed the sin of blasphemy.’

  ‘I don’t believe in God,’ I said.

  Bad mistake. Oh, very bad mistake.

  ‘Down on your knees,’ Uncle Caleb thundered. ‘Call the children,’ he ordered Aunt Naomi. They came at a rush, even little Magdalene, and they were all pulling on their dreary clothes.

  And they prayed for me. At least, Uncle Caleb prayed and the others all said ‘Praise the Lord’ after he’d been ranting and raving for a while, a bit like a chorus. My knees started to hurt. I sat down on my butt and glared at them. The kids and my aunt all had their eyes shut, but old loud mouth was watching me. I was expecting him to haul me up and then I’d have belted him back, but he only prayed louder and got more personal. ‘Bring this wayward child, our daughter, into the path of righteousness. Show her the errors of her defiance blah blah blah …’

  I got up and walked out.

  They stayed there. I went to the kitchen. There was a pot of something on the stove. Porridge? I ate some of the homemade bread with honey on it.

  They were still in there.

  I crept down the passage. Magdalene was crying again. I went back to the kitchen. The big clock on the wall — the only one in the house — said half-past seven. I gritted my teeth. They’d have to stop soon. Uncle Caleb would have to go to work.

  I had a shower, wrapped the towel round me and went to get clean clothes from my bag. It wasn’t in my room. My knees gave way and I sank down onto some big cushions on the floor.

  All I owned in the world now was what I held in my hands: a T-shirt, shorts, knickers and a bra. I sat for a long time, staring at them. My mother had turned me into a refugee. At last, I got up and put them on. I brushed my hair, and discovered there was no mirror in the bedroom. I glided back to the bathroom. No mirror there either. I tip-toed to the study door; they were still praying.