I Am Not Esther

by Fleur Beale

  I shut my eyes. I was going to die of embarrassment turning up at school like this. Only geeky dorks wore their skirts down round their shins. Rebecca came with me into the changing room. ‘Do not worry,’ she whispered. ‘You just roll it over at the waist on the way to school. See?’ She flicked her own waistband so neatly she must’ve done it hundreds of times.

  ‘Thanks!’ I whispered back. I’d not paid much attention to the twins before today. They were always there and always being good. Today had surprised me more than just a bit. Rebecca just grinned, took the uniform and left me to get back into my ‘seemly’ clothes.

  Daniel didn’t get any clothes. ‘Your uniform still fit you?’ I asked.

  Sadness crossed his face but he said calmly, ‘My father feels I have had sufficient schooling. I am to work with him now.’

  Poor Daniel. Why did he stay? I wouldn’t, if I were him. Except that I was staying. Should I just walk out? And if I did, where would I go? How would I find Mum again? The old questions kept revolving in my head.

  We went to the lake for lunch. ‘We do it every year,’ Rachel said. ‘We buy school shoes and any uniforms, then we go and have lunch at the lake.’

  ‘Always on the Thursday before school starts,’ Rebecca added.

  We got into the van and trundled off to the lake. It’d be nice to have some cafe food again. I’d get a hamburger and chips.

  Dreamer! We got to the lake and it was pretty, with trees and ducks and swans and a statue of a little boy. Aunt Naomi lifted a big picnic basket out of the mini-bus and the twins grabbed rugs and cushions. I took Maggie’s hand and we all marched solemnly to a wooden picnic table.

  I waited for Luke and Abraham to race around like they did when I took them to the park, but they stood quietly while their mother put the basket down. ‘May we have the bread for the ducks please?’ Abraham asked.

  She gave them a paper bag and they walked down to the edge of the water.

  No wonder they liked me taking them to the park.

  We ate our lunch and people walked past and stared at us. Luke, Abraham and Maggie kept glancing longingly at the play area. The twins’ eyes followed a dog chasing a frisbee. Daniel kept his eyes on Maggie and Luke, quietly helping them so they wouldn’t get prayed over. My uncle sat at the end of the table and waited while Aunt Naomi made him a sandwich.

  Then he said grace, a short one today, thank goodness, but I knew we’d have an extra long one at dinner to make up for it.

  We ate in silence. I’d end up with an ulcer at this rate. Isn’t it bad for you to eat while you’re raging mad?

  We finished eating and packed up the picnic. Uncle Caleb led the way back to the van. I saw the girl first, I think, although it’s hard to be sure. She was a bit older than me, and she was standing a little above us on the slope, staring intently. Her arms were out from her sides as if she were reaching out towards us. She had long hair, the golden blond colour of the twins’.

  I stopped. She looked exactly like an older version of the twins.

  Maggie tugged at my hand, then followed my glance. She stood dead still and her face went as white as the swans on the lake. ‘Miriam!’ she screamed and her voice sent shivers right through me. ‘It is Miriam! It is Miriam’s ghost!’ She buried her head in my skirt, terrified.

  My own heart was doing a tap dance. But that girl was no ghost. She was flesh and blood and her clothes were real. A skirt, longer than the one I wore, but light and patterned and a rib top. ‘Are you Miriam?’ I whispered.

  She nodded, staring at Maggie, desperate to comfort her. But Uncle Caleb said sharply, ‘Hurry along, Esther. Put Magdalene in the vehicle, if you please.’

  He looked at the girl. At Miriam. His daughter. His eyes swept right over her as if she didn’t exist. She cringed and bit her bottom lip but she didn’t say anything. Years of training. Years of the discipline room. Daniel hustled the boys into the van. His face was strained.

  Aunt Naomi didn’t even glance at her daughter. She tapped Rebecca on the shoulder. ‘Eyes ahead of you, please miss.’

  Rachel dropped the rug she was carrying. She picked it up, managing to look at her sister as she did. Uncle Caleb said, ‘We will pray for you when we reach home, Rachel.’ My head was whirling. I knelt and put my arms tight round Maggie. She nearly strangled me, all the time howling hysterically. The girl — Miriam — took a step towards us. So did Uncle Caleb. She whirled around and ran back up the slope. ‘Tell her I’m not dead. Tell her I love her!’ She was gone by the time Uncle Caleb reached us. I heard her crying, and Uncle bloody Caleb would have heard her too.

  ‘The vehicle, Esther. At once.’

  I got to my feet, treading on my skirt, stumbling along carrying Maggie, thoughts jolting about in my head. If Miriam wasn’t dead, then what had happened? Why had they told Maggie she was? Why wouldn’t they even look at her? Did the little boys think she was dead? When she was looking at them all, her face … It hurt to remember. How could they do that to their own daughter? How could they see her looking like that and not make a move to go to her? To comfort her?

  I stepped up into the van, put Maggie on a seat and turned to shut the door. Miriam watched us. Watched me. I was crying, my tears making her blurry, so I couldn’t see the lost look in her eyes any more. It hurt too much. It reminded me of Mum leaving me. Walking away and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

  Nobody said anything all the way home. The only sound was Maggie’s high, keening wail. I held her tight and inside I ached for me and for her and for Miriam.

  Uncle Caleb drew up in the driveway. ‘Help your mother unpack, then you will come to the study for prayer.’ He got out and strode off into the house.

  I slid to the edge of the seat, trying to get down without falling over my stupid skirt and dropping Maggie. Daniel took my hand to help me. I wouldn’t look at him because he’d see I’d been crying, but also because I hated him. He’d let them do this to his sister. Sisters.

  ‘I will ask my father if you can put Magdalene to bed instead of taking her to prayers,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ I muttered. It wasn’t fair to blame him. He had no more power than I did. I don’t know what he said to his father, but Uncle Caleb actually came out of the study and came over to where I was sitting in the family room, holding Maggie.

  ‘Magdalene, listen to me if you please.’

  Normally, she would have shut up for a week when he used that voice on her. All she did now was rock against me and cry in that high, eerie voice, ‘Miriam is dead and I saw her. She is a ghost.’

  He stood in front of her and addressed her as if she was an assembly. ‘Your sister has not died. She is dead to us because she refuses to live according to the true principles of Godly life. She refuses to keep the Rule. She has damned herself forever, and her behaviour would have contaminated you and her brothers and sisters.’

  As if Maggie would understand all that even if she could listen. But the message was probably for me rather than her.

  ‘What did she do?’ I whispered.

  His grey stare shifted briefly to me before it hit the wall somewhere over my shoulder. ‘She insisted on remaking God’s universe in her own image.’

  I hugged Maggie tight. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Another dose of the grey glance. ‘You will notice, Esther, that in our house we do not have photographs or paintings. We do not create objects that might become idols to be worshipped in place of the Lord. Miriam insisted on painting. She drew and painted and when we discovered that she was defying us we commanded her to stop. We prayed that she would return to the path of righteousness, but she refused.’ So that was why Maggie had had fifty fits when I said I’d draw her a picture. Uncle Caleb looked briefly in my direction and added, ‘She left us, Esther. We did not cast her out. But now she is dead to us unless she repents.’

  ‘How do you know she hasn’t repented?’ Miriam’s anguished face would stay, a picture in my head, forever.

  �
�She was dressed like a whore,’ he said calmly.

  ‘But her skirt was right down to her ankles!’ I gasped.

  ‘Her hair was uncovered, unbraided and she had cut it.’

  ‘It was still long!’

  He explained patiently and inflexibly, ‘The women of our faith never cut their hair. They wear it long and in a single braid. That way it does not tempt the eyes of their men to stray.’

  Men. Always it was the men who controlled what the women could do. But he hadn’t finished. ‘She wore no head covering, the flesh on her arms was exposed and her skirt was bright and gaudily patterned.’

  All at once, I was sick to the stomach. How could he look at his daughter and only see her clothes? How hadn’t he seen the hurt and the longing? I got up. ‘May I put Magdalene to bed, please?’

  He looked her over, as if she were a prize exhibit in a show, before he nodded. ‘Very well. You are both excused.’

  Great. Let me remember to thank you one day.

  I carried Maggie into the bedroom. I kicked the pile of cushions and plopped down on them. I talked to Maggie, tried to make her listen. Clowned around and tried to make her laugh. But all she did was cry that Miriam was a dead ghost and the devil had got her.

  I was frightened. She couldn’t hear me and I was sure she didn’t know who I was or even where she was. I lay her on the cushions and she just grabbed hold of a cushion and rocked backwards and forwards, crying.

  I ran. Knocked on the study door. Burst in. ‘Aunt Naomi … can you come? Please! I don’t know what to do.’

  Wonder of wonders, when she looked at Uncle Caleb for permission, he actually nodded. She stood up, a hand pressed into her back, and came with me to our bedroom. Maggie was exactly how I’d left her, face pressed into the cushion muffling the wailing.

  Aunt Naomi marched over to her, sat beside her. Grabbed her by the shoulders and wrenched her upright. Then she pulled back her arm and slapped Maggie hard on both cheeks.

  Maggie gasped but her eyes lost the blankness and she stopped crying. Her mouth open, she stared at her mother and her eyes swam back into focus. Aunt Naomi took a hanky from her apron pocket and wiped Maggie’s face. ‘That is better. Now let Esther help you get your clothes off and you can have a little rest. It has been a big day.’

  Maggie breathed in deeply, with only a few hiccups on the way. ‘Mother … I saw Miriam. She was a ghost.’

  Aunt Naomi reached for Maggie’s hands and held them firmly. ‘No, she was not a ghost. She does not want to live a Godly life any more and that is why she left. She is dead to us, Magdalene. Do you understand?’

  Maggie said nothing, her eyes huge in her blotchy face.

  Aunt Naomi got up. ‘We will not speak of her again. Go to sleep now.’

  I undressed Maggie. Usually she insisted on doing everything herself, even to untying the wretched tapes on her skirt. Today she sat like a limp rag doll. I picked her up and dumped her on her bed. ‘Miriam gave me a message for you,’ I whispered. She turned her head and looked at me. ‘She said: “Tell her I miss her. Tell her I love her.”’

  ‘Why did she go away then?’ Maggie demanded, her voice wavering. ‘I hate her! She is mean and horrible.’

  She curled up in a ball, facing away from me. I rubbed her back. ‘And you want her back. Just like I want my mother back.’

  She twitched her shoulders but didn’t say anything. I kept on rubbing her back and shoulders and between one second and the next she went to sleep.

  I sat there, waiting until I heard them leave the study. When I went back to the family room, Aunt Naomi asked, ‘Is she asleep?’

  I nearly yelled, ‘A fat lot you care!’ It was only the thought of the discipline room that kept me quiet. Instead I nodded my head.

  Nobody said anything. Not about the shopping, or the picnic and definitely not about Miriam. But she was there in all their thoughts.

  That evening, after prayers and stuff, the twins sewed their verses and their mouths were clamped shut. Usually they chattered away about nothing. Abraham didn’t ‘accidently’ kick a door or a chair when he was sent to bed the way he normally did. Luke stayed close to him, his eyes on the floor. Daniel had a Bible in his lap but didn’t turn a page all evening. Aunt Naomi went to bed an hour earlier than usual. My uncle stayed in the study.

  I put down the skirt I was hemming and went and sat on the verandah. Mum, Miriam. The experiment. So many mysteries, so much sadness.

  It was a long time before I slept that night.

  Five

  THE NEXT DAY AUNT NAOMI shook me awake, saying, ‘I want you to come to the Circle of Fellow ship today, Esther. You can meet Charity and Damaris. They will be starting school with you.’

  I’d been dreaming of Miriam. Just in time, I shut my mouth on telling my aunt. I yawned and rubbed my eyes, trying to stay in bed for a few extra seconds while looking like I was getting up.

  ‘Great,’ I muttered. ‘I’m really looking forward to that.’

  She didn’t say anything then, but I got an extra dose of chores, which was actually a lot better than being prayed over.

  At eight o’clock I was told to go and wake Maggie. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to let her sleep?’ I asked.

  ‘Do not question your elders. Please go immediately.’ I reckon if she hadn’t found me so useful, I’d have been dumped in the discipline room.

  I woke Maggie, scared in case she was off in another world where I couldn’t reach her like yesterday. But she smiled at me. ‘Hello, Esther.’

  I hugged her, ‘Hello, Maggie.’ Should I talk to her about Miriam? Damn it, why not? I wished they’d talk to me about Mum, let me read her letter, tell me why she left. Maggie might feel the same. Or she might have hysterics again.

  I pulled her out of bed, tumbling her on the floor and tickling her. She squealed with a hand over her mouth so her father wouldn’t hear. ‘Do you remember about yesterday?’ I asked, picking her up and sitting her at the dressing table so I could brush her hair.

  She sat very still. ‘Miriam,’ she whispered. ‘I saw Miriam’s ghost.’

  I hugged her tight. ‘You thought it was her ghost because you thought — and so did I — that she was dead. But she isn’t, Maggie. She just had to leave. And she loves you. Remember? She said to tell you.’

  She twisted in the chair and stared up at me, frowning. Finally she said, ‘I do not like God if He does not like Miriam painting.’

  Oh, sweetheart, I couldn’t agree more! ‘For chrissakes don’t let your mother or father hear you say that,’ I whispered.

  But she was okay for the rest of the day. Not brilliant, but okay. We trundled off after lunch to the Circle of Fellowship. It was in the next street so we could walk. Abraham stared at the low stone wall he always walked along when we went to the park, but today he kept to the footpath.

  The Circle of Fellowship was the pits. Aunt Naomi introduced me to the five women, starting with the one whose place we were at. ‘Sister Dorcas, this is Esther.’

  I muttered something and stared at her. She was older than Aunt Naomi and had a well-worn look about her. Dorcas. I was quite pleased they hadn’t called me Dorcas.

  Then there was Leah who turned out to be a bossy cow, Dinah who had the most gorgeous-looking kids including Damaris, who was the most gorgeous of all. Charity’s mother was called Hope and she had a baby, and then there was Thomasina who was very young and very pregnant. They called each other sister, and us kids called them aunt.

  First we prayed. Then the six women took it in turns to read the Bible and talk about it. A girl a bit older than me with buck teeth and pretty, dark hair said, ‘I would like to read the word of the Lord too, if you please, Aunt Dorcas.’

  Dorcas smiled and said, ‘Praise the Lord! Of course you may, Beulah.’

  Beulah! And buck teeth. And she was the bossy cow’s daughter.

  The kids sat still and the room got hotter and hotter. Each of those women, except Thomasina, must’ve had around four
or five kids with them.

  After a million years, Dorcas said, ‘You older girls can take the young ones outside.’

  We filed out, the girls automatically reaching for their head scarves. Beulah stayed where she was. There were trees in the back garden and the younger kids raced for them and scrambled up into the branches. That was when I had a most riveting conversation with Damaris and Charity, the two girls who’d be going to school with me.

  ‘I suppose you will take Miriam’s place now that she is dead,’ said Charity, flopping down in the shade of an apple tree and whipping her scarf off.

  ‘She’s not dead,’ I snapped. ‘I saw her yesterday.’

  ‘She has broken the Rule,’ Damaris said. Her scarf was off as well. ‘My father told us that Uncle Caleb said he would pardon her and receive her back into the bosom of the family if she repented.’ She flicked the scarf at a fly.

  That was news to me. ‘What good is that, if he isn’t going to let her paint?’ I demanded. It was so good to talk about this with people who’d talk back. But I bet they weren’t supposed to be talking about it.

  ‘She should not want to paint,’ Damaris said. ‘The word of the Lord and the Rule should be enough for her.’

  ‘Why? Why should it be enough? And where the hell does it say in the Bible that she can’t paint?’ I thought I’d shock them, but they both giggled.

  ‘How many psalms do you know off by heart?’ Charity asked, grinning.

  ‘Only three, plus Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians,’ I said, smiling back in spite of myself.

  Damaris sighed. ‘You would probably know the entire Bible by now if you lived in our house. My father said he thought Uncle Caleb was being too lenient and that if any of us transgressed like Miriam did, then he would cast us out before we had the chance to run away.’

  ‘Your old man’s stricter than Uncle Caleb?’ I asked. ‘Nobody could be!’ I stared at her, awed. How did she manage to stay sane? She was so pretty. Real model material with huge eyes and high cheekbones. I’d give a lot to look like that.