I Am Not Esther

by Fleur Beale

  ‘You will never know, Kirby, how much you helped me. I thank you.’

  After breakfast, Mrs Fletcher hustled us into her car. ‘Come on. I’m always late. Looks like today is no exception.’ It clearly didn’t worry her.

  I walked into my form room and sat waiting for Ms Chandler to call the roll. Damaris and Charity weren’t there. I wondered if they’d come. They were usually here by now. I watched the door and words beat in my head. Damned and cursed. We expel you both from the Fellowship. Henceforth you are dead to us. Dead and gone.

  Minutes later, the two girls walked in. I stared at them. I wanted to talk to them. I needed to talk to them. They must’ve worked out beforehand what they’d do, because they didn’t hesitate, but walked to the other side of the room from where I sat.

  I knew they’d do that. So why did it hurt so much?

  Ms Chandler called the roll. ‘Selina Amon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hone Atutahi.’

  ‘Kia ora.’

  ‘Avery Cardew.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Charity Goodman.’

  ‘Present, Miss Chandler.’

  Damaris was the only other kid to answer Present, Miss Chandler.

  ‘Esther Pilgrim.’

  ‘Kirby. Call me Kirby Greenland. Please.’ I had to clear my throat and blink my eyes hard. Damaris and Charity didn’t look at me once.

  Ms Chandler asked me to wait behind. ‘Are you all right, Esther, sorry — Kirby?’ She looked at me sharply.

  I nodded. ‘I will be.’ I rubbed my forehead. ‘It’s all a bit weird right now. It’s kind of hard to adjust.’

  ‘Mrs Fletcher told me what happened,’ she said briskly. ‘In my opinion, you are exceedingly lucky.’

  ‘I know,’ I mumbled, ‘it’s just that …’ My voice trailed off. How could she understand?

  That day was so unreal. I kept swinging between Esther and Kirby. It was almost as if now that I didn’t have to be Esther any more, I wanted to be. It made me angry.

  Daniel and I bought our lunch from the canteen with money Mrs Fletcher had given us. It was the first time in his seventeen years that he had ever bought food.

  I told him about Damaris and Charity. He scrunched his paper bag into a ball and lobbed it into a bin. ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘I know! But it hurts. We were friends.’ I tried to explain. ‘Friends are always there for each other.’

  ‘The Rule comes before friendship,’ Daniel said. He stretched his arms out. ‘You have no idea how free I feel! I thought I would be frightened without the Rule, but it is wonderful.’ He turned to me. ‘Do you understand, Kirby?’

  I nodded. Oh yes, I understood all right. What I didn’t understand was why I kept feeling I should be speaking like Esther and dressing like Esther and, God help me, thinking like Esther. Thoughts skidded across the surface of my mind that appalled me. They are right. You are evil. The Rule is good.

  I swallowed down the panic and tried not to think about it.

  The man came back just before school finished. The man who’d come to the house asking for Kirby Greenland.

  Nine

  RORY ASHTON HAD COARSE BROWN hair cut ruthlessly short to stop it springing out from his head. He had big dark eyes, and he was solidly built.

  He was my brother.

  ‘Born when your mother was sixteen,’ explained Mrs Fletcher as I sat in her office, stunned. ‘He wrote to your mother. Just before Christmas.’

  I stared at him. My brother? I was the second child my mother had abandoned? Then things started falling into place. I could almost hear them clanging. He must’ve written the letter that made her run away.

  He was speaking to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s hard to concentrate.’

  I got a sharp look, like he was thinking you’re a few planks short of a bridge.

  ‘He wants to know,’ said Mrs Fletcher patiently, ‘about your mother — his mother.’

  ‘Anything you can tell me,’ he said.

  Of course he’d want to know. I just didn’t feel up to telling him. Where could I start? The bell went as I was dithering around and making a right idiot of myself, then Daniel came in. ‘Daniel,’ said Mrs Fletcher. ‘Meet your cousin.’

  The man — what was his name? He had a name, he’d told me what it was and it slid right out of my head the moment he’d said it. Anyway, he stared from Daniel with his bruised face, back to me, and I was probably looking like an escapee from a straitjacket.

  ‘Take them away, buy them burgers for tea then deliver them back to my house,’ Mrs Fletcher ordered. She held out some money.

  The man shook his head. ‘I’ll pay. It’s no problem.’

  Daniel turned to Mrs Fletcher. ‘Before we go, can you tell us what will be happening to us?’

  She gave him a quick smile. ‘I’ve phoned your uncle — where Miriam is staying. He says you’re both to go to him. If you want to.’ She looked at me. ‘Kirby, you may prefer to go to your friend Louisa. There’ll be no problem with a benefit now.’

  I couldn’t think about that yet. I walked with the man — Rory, his name was Rory Ashton. I walked to his car. My cousin who felt like my brother was on one side of me and my brother who was a total stranger was on the other.

  ‘Would you mind driving to the hospital first?’ Daniel asked him.

  ‘Sure, no problem,’ he said. If he was busting to know why, what with Daniel’s spectacular bruises and all, he didn’t ask. He didn’t chatter either and I was grateful. If I’d been him, I’d be pestering me with questions, but he drove, Daniel gave directions and other than that, we didn’t talk.

  ‘Would you like to come in?’ Daniel asked him when we got there. ‘I am going to say goodbye to my baby sister. She is your cousin.’

  ‘Aunt Naomi too?’ I whispered.

  Daniel’s mouth twisted but he said calmly enough, ‘She would not see me. I will not make it difficult for her.’

  Rory Ashton snapped a look from one to the other of us, but he still didn’t nag me with questions. I liked that. I hauled myself out of the car, feeling a hundred years old. ‘It’s the religion,’ I said, rubbing my head and holding onto the door. ‘It’s breaking us all up. Tearing us apart.’ I gestured at Daniel. ‘They did that yesterday, then they threw us out. Now he can’t see any of his family ever again. And my mother, my mother … I think when she was sixteen, I think ’I got all choked up. Again. It was becoming a habit.

  Rory put a hand on my arm. ‘It’s all right, Kirby. There’s plenty of time. Take it easy.’ A sudden smile that warmed both Daniel and me. ‘At least I’ve found you. That was the hard part, believe me.’

  So we walked into the hospital together, the three of us. We went to the nursery and looked at Zillah. I couldn’t say anything and my eyes were hot and I blinked to keep the tears from clogging my vision. Then we left.

  Rory took us back to his motel. All he knew about his birth mother was that she was sixteen when he was born. He’d had a good childhood, he said. A good and happy life. ‘But now that I’m going to get married myself, I want to find out about her.’

  ‘What’s so important about finding her just because you’re getting hitched?’ I demanded. ‘If you’d left things alone, none of this would’ve happened.’

  ‘And my mother and Zillah would be dead,’ Daniel said softly. ‘It would have been much harder for me too. Perhaps too hard.’

  What did he mean by that? I glared at him. ‘Okay! So I’m God’s original little miracle, but I still wish …’ I chucked a cushion at a wall. ‘Oh for God’s sake, I don’t know what I wish!’ Or what I knew. Except that I was back in a motel, throwing things and my life was upside-down.

  ‘When you get married,’ Rory said calmly, ‘it’s a good idea to know your family history. See if there is a history of illness. That sort of stuff.’

  ‘Like extreme allergic reactions to letters out of the blue,’ I drawled.

  ‘Do not be so antagonistic,
Kirby!’ Daniel said sharply. ‘You have the chance to learn the truth. Take it.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered.

  Rory patted my hand. ‘It’s okay. I don’t mind if you yell at me. I guess things have been pretty rough for both of you.’

  And that made me cry. Bloody hell!

  Rory went and got the roll of toilet paper and while I tried to stop bawling, he told us how he’d written to Mum and when there hadn’t been any reply, he’d flown up from Christchurch and gone to our flat. The new people had sent him next door to Louisa. She had my letter so she gave him the address so here we all were.

  I mopped some more at my face. ‘At least I know now why she ran away, I guess. But why didn’t she just tell me? I wouldn’t have minded.’ I looked at Rory. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘You do not understand, Kirby,’ Daniel said quietly. ‘Think about Damaris and Charity. How would they feel if they had a child before they were married? I believe your mother must have felt deeply ashamed.’ He looked at Rory and smiled slightly. ‘I am sorry, Rory, but you need to know how it is in our …’ he stopped, then went on in the same quiet voice, ‘… their faith.’

  ‘I’m glad I escaped.’ Rory looked thoughtfully at the pair of us.

  So I told him all about Mum and it made me cry again because I hadn’t been able to really talk about her since she’d disappeared.

  We went back to Mrs Fletcher’s via the McDonald’s drive-through. That made me laugh. For a start, it was the first time Daniel had met takeaways. Rory raised his eyebrows but only said, ‘So what do you want?’ as he pulled up at the speaker.

  I rattled off my favourite meal. Daniel looked around, puzzled. ‘Why are you asking? Should we not park the car and go inside?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is magic. You talk to that box and it runs off and gets your food.’

  ‘May I take your order, please.’

  Daniel jumped. Rory gave his order and mine, and he looked at Daniel. ‘What’ll you have, mate?’

  Poor Daniel, he was still shell-shocked from the speaker and how would he know what he wanted? ‘Give him the same as me,’ I said.

  We collected the orders and took them down to the lake to eat them. Memories. Maggie wailing. Miriam reaching out her arms … Concentrate on here and now. On hamburgers and chips.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ I asked Daniel through a mouthful of Big Mac.

  ‘It is different,’ he said, polite as ever. ‘I do not think I would like it every day.’

  Back at Mrs Fletcher’s, she asked me where I wanted to stay until we found Mum. Part of me wanted to go back to Auckland and stay with Louisa. But only a part. I just couldn’t imagine trying to explain everything to Gemma. I couldn’t bear the thought of her saying how dumb it all was and weren’t the kids wimps to stick with it. She’d never understand. Just like I wouldn’t have.

  ‘I’d like to go with Daniel.’

  ‘I am glad,’ he said and smiled at me. Yes, it would be good to be with Daniel a while longer. We could help each other into the world.

  ‘But what about Mum?’ I asked. ‘I have to find her, Mrs Fletcher. I have to find out what’s happened to her.’

  She flicked my hair. ‘I know, duckie. I’ll …’

  ‘I’ll still be looking,’ Rory broke in. ‘I’ll keep in touch. Tell you everything I find out.’ He gave me a crooked grin. ‘I really want to meet her now. Before, all I wanted was the medical stuff. But now — well, she’s more like a real person.’

  I smiled at him, suddenly pleased he was there and would help me.

  After he’d gone, Mrs Fletcher looked thoughtfully at my uniform. ‘You can hardly turn up in Wellington wearing that and with nothing else to your name,’ she said. ‘Where are your own clothes?’

  ‘At my father’s house,’ Daniel said. ‘In the garage along with her mother’s clothes.’

  ‘I’ll phone him at work tomorrow and arrange to collect everything,’ she said. ‘What about your gear, Daniel?’

  ‘He doesn’t want it,’ I broke in. ‘It’s the pits.’

  So the next day we went to school until it was time to catch the bus to Wellington. I wanted to go and say goodbye to Maggie.

  ‘You cannot,’ Daniel said flatly. ‘Do not upset her further. It might help you, but it will not help her.’

  ‘But I only want to —’

  ‘She has to live by the Rule. You do not. Do not split her loyalties, Kirby. It is not fair.’

  Nothing was fair. I kept my mouth shut until I could be sure I wouldn’t bawl.

  We collected my clothes on the way to the bus station with Mrs Fletcher. The bags — mine and Mum’s — were stacked at the gate. If my uncle had written all over them KEEP OUT: CONTAMINATOR the message couldn’t have got much clearer.

  I don’t care. I don’t. So why does my throat ache?

  ‘I asked your uncle if he knew your mother hadn’t gone to Africa,’ she said when Daniel and I got back in the car.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “I have airmail letters from my sister. She says she is in Africa. I believe her.”’

  She mimicked my uncle’s grey voice to perfection but I couldn’t smile. ‘So she didn’t tell him either.’

  She took a hand off the wheel and patted my arm. ‘Try not to worry, Kirby. Rory’s working on it, and Jim — your uncle — is on to it as well.’

  Try not to worry! How?

  At the bus depot, I rummaged in my bags until I found some shorts and a shirt that I tied at the waist. Kirby. This was definitely Kirby. Daniel blinked a bit, but he smiled when he saw me. I handed the uniform back to Mrs Fletcher and hugged her. ‘Thank you!’ I wanted to say more, but I got all choked up. She laughed and pushed me in the direction of the bus.

  The bus pulled out and we said nothing. Daniel’s face was calm. I wondered what he was thinking but I didn’t ask him. Later, we talked about Mum and about Rory. ‘Were you shocked?’ I asked. ‘About Mum having a baby before she was married, I mean.’

  He smiled, a sort of twisted smile. ‘To be honest, Kirby, I was. I know these things happen outside, but I have never heard of it happening to any of our women.’

  ‘You don’t want to be shocked, do you?’

  ‘No,’ he sighed, ‘I do not. I want to understand.’ He rubbed at a bruise on his face. ‘Was she tempted, or did a man wrong her?’

  ‘Oh, Daniel! You’ll have to learn to talk differently if you’re going to be a doctor!’

  He was surprised. ‘Why? What words would you use?’

  ‘I have been wondering,’ I said slowly, ‘if she had sex with a man to get back at her parents, or if …’ I couldn’t say it.

  ‘If what?’

  Didn’t he know? Couldn’t he guess?

  ‘Or if she was raped,’ I whispered.

  Miriam and the uncle whose name was Jim met us. Miriam was lit up like she’d swallowed her own private source of light. She threw her arms around Daniel. ‘It’s so good to have you here! It’s so good!’ Some of the stiffness drained out of Daniel’s shoulders. ‘You look well, little sister.’ I wondered if it was a strain for him not to comment on her clothes. She was wearing jeans and a cut off top that showed a good ten centimetres of skin.

  ‘Well, that’s more than I can say for you!’ The smile left her face and she leaned over and touched the bruises round his eye. ‘What did they do to you, Daniel?’

  Jim interrupted. ‘Leave it till we get home, Miriam. Then he won’t have to go over it twice.’

  They were great to us, the whole family — Jim, my Auntie Nina and the three kids, who’d all left home but popped in to welcome us. Harry was the oldest and was into computers and water-skiing, next was Miranda — twenty-one and leaving next week for Los Angeles. Jeff was the baby. ‘He’s twenty,’ said his mother, ‘and thank heavens he’s gone flatting.’

  Nina — she said to drop the aunt bit, it made her feel ancient — had a huge afternoon tea laid out to welcome us. We sat roun
d the table and talked until the sun went down.

  ‘Thank Christ you had the sense to get out when you did, Dad,’ shuddered Harry.

  Jim glanced at Daniel. ‘Go easy on the language for a day or two.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Daniel said, ‘but it does not worry me.’

  ‘And before long,’ Miriam grinned, ‘we’ll have you saying doesn’t instead of does not.’

  ‘You have found it easy to change?’ he asked her.

  She grabbed his hand and held onto it hard. ‘No, Daniel, don’t think that. It wasn’t like that. It was hell. I’m sorry if that shocks you, but it was. I cried for a month and when I wasn’t crying I was sleeping. I kept on wondering if I was right to run away.’ She smiled at Jim and Nina. ‘You two were so patient with me, I don’t know how you did it.’

  Jim chuckled, and glanced at his own three kids. ‘We’ve had plenty of practice.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch, Dad,’ said Miranda. She turned to me, her face bright. ‘Were you stunned to find you had a brother, Kirby?’

  Mrs Fletcher had told them about Mum and Rory. I nodded. ‘But it makes sense. I can kind of understand why she took off now.’ I looked at Jim. ‘Did you know about the baby? About Rory. Before Mrs Fletcher told you, I mean?’ He shook his head and his face was grim. ‘No.’

  He sighed. ‘I’d better tell you about the day they threw her out.’ His fingers were shredding a bread roll. Nina quietly put her hand over his.

  He shook his shoulders and his voice was flat and unemotional as he told the story of my mother’s eviction from her home. ‘It was her sixteenth birthday. A Wednesday, and she was supposed to be getting married the following Saturday. That morning my younger brother Isaac came bursting in when I was having breakfast, shouting to Mother that Martha was very sick and she was lying on the bathroom floor.’

  He stopped. Isaac. I didn’t remember anybody called Isaac. Where was he now?

  ‘Well?’ Harry said. ‘What happened next?’

  Jim pulled his mouth down in a grimace. ‘I went off to work. Illness was women’s stuff and of course, being unmarried, I’d never heard about morning sickness. Such things were never discussed where a young man might hear them.’ He leaned his arms on the table and looked directly at me. ‘Kirby, when I got home from work that night my sister had gone. At family prayers that night my father said he had cast her out because she was full of sin. “I will not have her under my roof,” he thundered. “She will contaminate you all.”’