I Am Not Esther

by Fleur Beale

  ‘Her grandfather is our leader,’ Charity said. ‘And when he is called to the Lord then her father will take his place.’

  ‘How do you stand it?’ I asked, staring at Damaris.

  ‘I like it,’ she said. ‘I like to keep the Rule. I feel safe in the love of the Lord. My faith means a lot to me.’

  I was shocked. Really shocked. How could a kid my age want to live like they did? I turned to Charity. She laughed at me. ‘Yes, me too!’ she said. ‘There is so much hate and unhappiness in the world. But not in our families.’

  ‘Try mine,’ I muttered.

  Their faces grew serious. ‘I think Miriam was wicked,’ Damaris said at last. ‘She has brought great unhappiness to her family and to the whole community.’

  ‘She’s unhappy too!’ I burst out. ‘You didn’t see her! She’s aching to come home.’

  ‘It is easy, then,’ said Charity. ‘She can just come back. We think Uncle Caleb is amazingly kind to her.’

  ‘For crying down the sink!’ I yelled. ‘Is it kind to stop somebody using their God-given talent?’

  ‘She must find some other way of channelling that talent so that it is in tune with God’s law,’ Damaris said.

  ‘Like what?’ I snapped.

  ‘Needlework, gardening. Creating a beautiful garden is glorifying the Lord. Producing children and nurturing them in God’s love.’

  Shit.

  Damaris slid a look at me. ‘Which brings us back to the original question: are you going to take Miriam’s place?’

  ‘I guess I do already.’ I lay on my back and pulled my stupid skirt up to sun my legs. ‘I get to do heaps of housework and baby-sitting.’

  ‘No,’ said Charity, ‘we do not mean like that.’

  ‘Well, what do you mean, then?’

  ‘Miriam’s chosen partner was Gideon,’ said Damaris and then she shut up. There was an electric silence.

  ‘What d’you mean, her chosen partner?’

  Damaris was staring at me. ‘The man she was to marry.’

  ‘On her sixteenth birthday,’ Charity added.

  They had my attention. I sat up in a hurry. ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘We had the betrothal celebration on her fourteenth birthday,’ said Damaris. ‘It was fun.’

  I couldn’t take it in. Sixteen? Married? I stared from one to the other of them, sitting there in the sun in an ordinary New Zealand back garden, so near the twenty-first century you could practically smell it.

  ‘Did she like him?’ I managed to ask at last.

  ‘Oh yes. He is nice. We all like Gideon. He is fun — not intense, like Daniel.’ Damaris pulled a face.

  Charity giggled, ‘Damaris is to be betrothed to Daniel, but she is not very happy about it. That is why she hopes you will not take Miriam’s place.’

  Damaris smiled dreamily. ‘I would much rather have Gideon. He is so cool — and he will be twenty when I am sixteen.’

  I couldn’t say anything, my jaw wouldn’t work. I just stared at them and felt very pale and very shaky. ‘Do you think,’ I asked slowly, struggling to form each word, ‘do you really think that Uncle Caleb will try to marry me off? At sixteen?’

  ‘Why would you not want to be married?’ Charity asked. ‘It is what all girls of our faith want.’

  May the good Lord save me! I shut my eyes. ‘How many are there in your faith?’ I asked. How many men did they have who wanted wives and was that why they were so all-fired keen to get Mum back? A marriageable woman with a marriageable daughter.

  ‘There are twenty-three families in Wanganui,’ Damaris said. ‘But we might all move to Nelson and join a community there. They were talking of it before Miriam died’

  ‘She isn’t dead!’ I gritted my teeth, but they just smiled at me and carried on as if I hadn’t spoken.

  ‘My father says it will be easier to keep the Rule if the children are not exposed to evil influences while they are growing up,’ Charity said.

  Didn’t their mothers have any opinions? ‘When d’you think they’ll go?’ I’d be out of it by then, for sure.

  Damaris flipped over on her stomach. ‘Soon, my father thinks. We will have our own school too. It will be so much better.’

  I shivered in the hot sun and looked into a future where there would be nobody who thought the same way I did. A future that was going to be increasingly difficult to escape from.

  Damaris was watching me. ‘If you do not like it, why do you not just walk out? That is what Miriam did.’

  I sat with my head leaning on my hunched up knees. ‘I don’t think I could. My mother … How would my mother find me again? I don’t even have her address. And Maggie. Maggie’s a mess right now. And where would I go? Where did Miriam go?’

  Charity shrugged. ‘My father says she wandered around until the police picked her up. They took her home and Uncle Caleb refused to have her back unless she repented, so they took her away again.’

  ‘There is a guidance counsellor at our school. Go and see her on Monday,’ Damaris suggested. ‘She could tell you how to get away.’

  She sure was keen to get rid of me. ‘You don’t need to worry about your precious Gideon. Nobody, but nobody is going to tell me who to marry. Especially not when I’m only sixteen.’ Especially not to somebody who believes the dumb stuff you guys believe.

  Just then, Dorcas called us in to help prepare afternoon tea. It was pretty sumptuous, she must’ve been cooking all day. We called the children in. Abraham was the oldest male there so he got to say grace. It bugged the hell out of me the way the women put themselves in the background.

  The kids all waited politely while the women handed the plates around. They only took one cake or sausage roll at a time. They didn’t talk with a full mouth. They didn’t fight or push or spill their drinks. It made me sick.

  ‘Did you have a nice chat with Damaris and Charity?’ Aunt Naomi asked on the way home.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was most enlightening.’

  ‘They are lovely girls,’ said my aunt sadly. Thinking of Miriam, I guess — more important in her absence than she ever was when she was with them, I’ll bet my knickers.

  On Sunday we went to church as usual but what was different for me was I started looking at people instead of keeping my head down, swearing to myself and wishing I was back home. As we were having the fellowship meal afterwards, Charity and Damaris grabbed me. ‘Aunt Naomi, may Esther help us pour the tea?’

  Aunt Naomi smiled, ‘Of course. I am happy to see her fitting in.’

  Maggie hadn’t let go of my skirt all morning so we took her with us. Charity pulled up a chair. ‘You pour the milk, Magdalene.’

  It was a great job for finding out who people were. All the adults were called aunt and uncle. ‘Are you all related?’ I asked.

  Damaris giggled. ‘Heavens no! Only by faith.’

  I poured tea for Aunt Adah — not a name I’d keep in my head in case I ever did have children — and one for Uncle Theophilus. Holy hell! Not that he came and got it himself. His daughter, who was called Kezia, trotted over and got it for him. ‘Gideon was asking where you were,’ she hissed at Damaris.

  ‘Really?’ Damaris’s face glowed.

  Kezia was busting with news. ‘And Daniel heard him!’

  So what? That was significant? It seemed that it was.

  ‘What did he say?’ Charity gasped.

  Kezia glanced at Maggie, but she was carefully wiping up three drops of spilled milk. ‘Nothing! Absolutely nothing. I swear to you!’

  Charity and Damaris absorbed this stunning piece of news. It seemed to me that it swelled inside them until they were about to burst with the impact of it.

  ‘So what?’ I cried at last. ‘What’s so g … , er — really important about him saying nothing?’

  They looked at me, pity in their eyes. ‘He is intended for Damaris. If he wants to keep her …’ and Charity’s tone suggested who wouldn’t want to keep her, ‘then he should be making it clear tha
t she is his.’

  I poured tea for the very young, very pregnant woman who had been at the Circle of Fellowship. Aunt Thomasina. She took it and one for her husband who sat on his chuff and let that poor girl run after him. His hands were too big for his wrists, his hair was spiky and stuck out from his head and she smiled at him like he was God on earth.

  I turned back to the other three girls. ‘So how does he make it clear Damaris is his?’ In my world, he’d put his arm round her and kiss her and stare into her eyes, but I couldn’t see that happening here.

  Kezia was scornful. ‘You don’t know much, do you? He should have said to Gideon, “She is over there, would you like me to pass on your good wishes?”’

  ‘Or he could have said,’ Charity added, ‘something like, “she is doing what she does every Sunday and do you not think the light of the Lord is in her face this day?”’

  ‘Is that instead of saying she’s looking particularly gorgeous today?’ I asked.

  They giggled. ‘Oh, we would never say that! That is vanity!’

  So that was why they had no mirrors.

  Damaris pushed the cups at Kezia. ‘You had better go. Aunt Adah is frowning.’

  Kezia took the cups and went. Damaris stared after her, then she gave a little skip. ‘Oh, I hope …’ Her face fell. ‘It is uncharitable to have such thoughts when it has all come about from such unhappiness.’ She gently touched Maggie’s cheek.

  I poured more tea, my head in a whirl. They were good, these girls. Good and kind and they liked their narrow, weird lives. Why did I feel bad? Why did I feel as if it was all choking me — the clothes, the ideas, the people? I’d been so sure I was right and they were wrong. Now it was starting to feel as if it was just me who was wrong.

  Tomorrow there was school and ordinary people and guidance counsellors. And mirrors. I couldn’t wait.

  We drove home from church in a car called a Chariot. It was green and had a dent in the front door. Daniel drove, saying nothing. The twins chattered away and Abraham and Luke threw a ball of paper backwards and forwards, carefully so their parents wouldn’t notice. Maggie leaned against me and sucked her thumb.

  ‘My mother looks tired,’ Daniel spoke directly to his father. ‘Would you like me to take the children to the beach this afternoon?’

  There was a gasp and five sets of eyes swung round and riveted themselves on Uncle Caleb. He looked at Aunt Naomi and Daniel was right, she looked exhausted for once. After an age, Uncle Caleb nodded, ‘Very well. You are responsible for upholding the Rule, Daniel.’

  We raced into the house to collect towels. ‘Are we allowed to swim?’ I asked Rachel.

  She shook her head. ‘But we can paddle. And somebody always falls in!’ She giggled.

  Daniel got the garden spades and a couple of buckets and we were off. The journey was very different from the one home from church. The kids bounced and sang and laughed. Daniel made no attempt to ‘discipline’ them. We got to the beach and they tumbled out. He did set some limits then. ‘Do not go where you cannot look back and see me. Stay on the beach. Try not to get your clothes wet.’

  The kids were off, running barefooted over the sand, splashing into the waves.

  ‘Will it be the discipline room for you if they all come back soaked?’ I asked.

  He smiled suddenly — if Damaris could see him now, she’d change her mind about not wanting to marry him. ‘I do not know, but I will surely find out!’

  ‘Damaris thinks you don’t want to marry her.’

  He sighed and stretched himself out in the sun, pulling up his trouser legs and taking off his shirt, but he left his singlet on. I sat down too, hoping he’d talk about it because I was bursting with curiosity. ‘She is right,’ he said softly, as if to himself.

  ‘She’s very pretty and very nice,’ I offered, hoping he’d keep going.

  ‘And she keeps the faith and lives by the Rule. She will make an excellent wife.’ He sounded about as enthusiastic as a dead fish.

  ‘So why don’t you want to marry her?’ A thought struck me — he could be gay.

  Silence, then he whispered, ‘I do not want to marry Damaris or anybody.’ He was gay? ‘I want to go to university. I want to be a doctor.’

  I was staring at him. ‘What are you going to do?’

  His hands were busy shredding a piece of dry seaweed. ‘I cannot do anything. I go every day to work with my father. My life is planned for me.’

  ‘But you aren’t going to marry Damaris,’ I said. ‘So does that mean …?’ I couldn’t finish.

  He hunched up his shoulders. ‘I do not know what it means. Not yet. I just do not know.’

  We said nothing more, but watched the twins swing Maggie up over a wave — and all three of them ended up with their skirts wet even though they were tucked into their gross knickers. Daniel straightened and threw his shirt round his pale shoulders. ‘I really wanted to come here because I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘It is difficult to talk to you at home.’

  ‘Have you got another letter from Mum?’ I asked, my heart accelerating.

  He shook his head. ‘My father had one on Tuesday.’ I gasped, furious, but Daniel went on, ‘I asked him if I could read it and he gave it to me. It was not really any different from the one you had. She said thank you for caring for my daughter and that was all there was about you.’

  I dug my feet into the hot sand, scrunched up handfuls and screwed them so tight the sand was forced out of my fists. ‘Why? Why did she do it?’

  He drew in the sand. ‘I do not know. But I looked through her luggage for you.’ My head flicked round, all hint of tears vanishing. ‘Daniel! Oh, thank you! Did you find anything?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not really. Only this.’ He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and tipped it up into his hand. Tiny pieces of paper fell out.

  I stared at them. ‘What …?’

  ‘This was wrapped in a T-shirt.’

  ‘Which one?’ I asked sharply. It seemed to me, sitting there on the beach, that the T-shirt was important. Which just shows how desperate and crazy I was getting.

  ‘It was pink and it had stains on one shoulder.’

  ‘Oh!’ A sob choked out of me. Her slob-around-home T-shirt. A picture flashed into my head. ‘She was wearing it the day the letter came that told her she could go to Africa.’ I stirred the tiny balls of paper.

  Daniel picked up one of the pieces. ‘I tried to read it, but the pieces are too small. It cannot have been about Africa. Why would she tear up a letter like that? Why would she keep the pieces? I do not think this was an ordinary letter.’ He threw a piece of seaweed so that it went skittering over the sand.

  I screwed up my eyes, trying to remember. ‘She went really pale,’ I said, ‘and she screwed the letter up and shoved it in her pocket.’ I swallowed a lump in my throat. ‘After that, I couldn’t talk to her. She was just …’ I couldn’t go on.

  Daniel touched my hand. ‘I wish I knew more. I wish I could help you. Who would write to your mother? What could they write about that might upset her so badly she had to run away? And are they still trying to get in touch with her? It must be tied up with the experiment. That is what I do not like about the Rule. I hate not understanding things. I hate not knowing things that are there to know.’ The words burst out of him, a dam where the spillway had suddenly opened.

  ‘Daniel … I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ I held onto his hand, feeling as if I was out swimming in the waves and they were way over my head.

  He turned and gave me a funny, twisted smile. ‘If I had told this to Damaris, she would have been shocked and upset. She would have prayed for me.’ He looked at our two hands. ‘I cannot marry Damaris, Kirby.’

  It felt strange to hear my own name again. ‘What else can’t you do, Daniel?’ I asked quietly in case somehow the breeze picked the words up and carried them to Uncle Caleb.

  ‘I do not know yet. I just do not know.’ He took a deep breath and let go my hand. ‘
That is my problem. Shall we talk about yours?’ He smiled again. ‘Yours is much easier.’

  I screwed up my face. ‘I’m glad you think so.’

  ‘I think you had better go and talk to Mrs Fletcher at school. She is the guidance counsellor. I think you had better tell her everything you know about your mother. She might be able to suggest a reason why she ran away.’

  Excitement ran through me. Fast following it came another thought. ‘Uncle Caleb would kill me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Daniel agreed. ‘We are not permitted to speak to teachers except to answer questions in class.’

  ‘And you are telling me to do this? You are telling me to break the Rule?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I am.’

  Oh, Daniel! It will be worse for you than for me.

  All five of the children were soaked to the skin by the time we had to go home. ‘We will do the washing,’ the twins said, glancing anxiously at Daniel. ‘Mother will not have to do it.’

  ‘That is kind.’ He smiled at them. ‘Did you enjoy yourselves?’

  ‘Yes!’ from every kid. Funny — an afternoon at the beach and they weren’t allowed to swim or take off their heavy clothes and they’d had a ball. If you don’t have much, little things are really special. There must be a moral in that somewhere.

  Uncle Caleb didn’t go ballistic when we turned up with our dripping cargo. He was concerned about Aunt Naomi. Adah was there and my aunt was in bed. The kids tip-toed round.

  Obviously this didn’t happen often either. ‘Is the baby coming?’ I asked Daniel.

  He shook his head. ‘I hope not. It should not come until March.’

  ‘Will they get a doctor?’

  ‘Yes, if she needs one. They believe in modern medicine.’

  Did he realise he’d said ‘they believe’, and not ‘we believe’?

  Six

  MAGGIE WOKE ME THE NEXT morning. ‘I am going to school today, Esther!’ I hugged her and wished she had something special to wear — a bright T-shirt and shorts, or a pretty dress. Your first day of school is special. Not Maggie’s. It was on with the heavy skirt and the long-sleeved blouse. Did she know the other kids would stare at her and think she was weird?