by Louise Voss
“See you tomorrow, then,” he said, leaning forward and kissing me very tenderly on the lips. I was ashamed at his proximity to my mangled features, but the sweetness of the kiss was too tempting, and like a reflex, I put my hand up behind his head, pulling him closer to me. Everything about him was so inviting, as he roped me in first with the coil of his curls, and then with the warmth of his tongue gently touching mine, coaxing my poor traumatized nerve endings out of retirement. I felt like the stillborn puppy in 101 Dalmatians being rubbed back to life, poking his tiny nose out of a towel, blinking sleepily at the world.
The kiss went on for a very long time, our bodies being pressed closer and closer together, until Toby affectionately and absently rubbed his nose against my broken one.
“YEEOUCH!” I screeched, leaping away from him, clutching my nose in both hands. My wig got knocked over one ear, and my glasses went flying, exposing the dressing on my left eye socket.
Toby jumped with fright and backed up against the lift doors, palms flat, as if I had pulled a knife on him. Then he recovered himself and rushed over to me, picking up my shades and straightening the wig.
“Helena, God, I’m so sorry! I got so carried away I totally forgot about your poor nose—are you okay? ”
I nodded mutely, doubled over, my remaining eye watering with pain. It was true to say that the moment was lost.
The lift eventually rattled up to the top floor, the doors wheezed open, and I staggered in, reeling. Toby followed, white with remorse, incapable of doing anything except pat my shoulder manfully, as if we were business colleagues at a golfing lunch.
We descended in silence to the second floor, where I got out. “Off you go to see your wife, then,” was my mumbled parting shot.
But once my nose had stopped hurting, I relived that kiss over and over again, so much so that I clean forgot to do any writing that day.
Jimmy Cliff
SITTING IN LIMBO
WE MOVED INTO OUR NEW AMERICAN HOUSE. IT WAS MADE OF wooden planks, with screen doors, a huge veranda with a swinging love seat, and a mind-boggling selection of numbers in its address. We had a free-standing mailbox instead of a slot in the front door. We had a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, a barbecue, a coffee machine, and a video recorder with a remote control on the end of a long cable. I had never seen any of these things before, not even at the Grants’, but I still preferred our old brick-terraced house in Salisbury with its yellow front door.
Mum got her huge “yard,” complete with an even bigger set of rosebushes. She quickly introduced herself to everybody on our block, and before long was hosting canasta parties and doing charitable works. Dad—well, I wasn’t exactly sure what he did, but he seemed quite happy doing it every weekday and then coming home for a large Gordon’s and tonic.
I went to school, and instead of being in the third year at grammar school, I became a grown-up tenth-grader, actually going in a year ahead of my age because of when my birthday fell, and my good reports from the U.K. I did well at school—I had no other distractions, and anyway, everything was so different that I had to give it my full attention. I had never heard of trick-or-treating or show-and-tell, and I had no idea why you shouldn’t wear white trousers after Labor Day, who ninety-eight percent of the American presidents had been, what a soda fountain was, or where the Adirondacks were. In my adolescent weltschmerz I decided that I didn’t really get the point of America.
Sept. 17, 1980
Dear Mas Tnarg (Pig Dealer and Donkey Buyer),
Going to school here is still very weird. Everyone has lockers and there are no pegs. We don’t play lacrosse or netball; it’s all stuff like “track” (running) and tennis and basketball (which is sort of like netball except you can run with the ball).
I don’t understand what the girls in my class are talking about most of the time—they are always huddled in corners whispering about boys I don’t know, bands I haven’t heard of, and TV stars I don’t recognize. So mostly I just keep my head down and concentrate on the lessons, which are easy. I’m getting more A’s here than I ever did at South Wilts!
So no, I haven’t really made any friends yet. It’s too hard. I don’t have anything in common with any of them, and I think they think I’m a snob because I don’t talk to them. They think I’m weird, too, because of my accent and clothes, and because I didn’t know what Reeses Pieces are (turns out they’re revolting little chocolate things with peanut butter inside—puke).
I miss you so much. I miss your mum and dad, and the pub, and Melanie and Bridge and Jo. I even miss Dylan sometimes … but not very often! I bet I’ll never get a boyfriend. The boys here all seem to like girls who are cheerleaders. I’m not sure what cheerleaders do, except that there’s a lot of rah-rah-rah-ing and shaking big pom-poms and wearing very short skirts.
I want to come home for Christmas, but I don’t think Mum and Dad will let me. Mum’s gone full-on Fattypuff and hasn’t been out for ages. She keeps on at me to “join a club” or “do some sports” (me!?!), but there’s no way. I spend enough time at that stupid school every day, why would I want to spend more?
Dad bought a new car. It’s called a Lincoln Town Car, but I keep calling it a Lincoln Townhouse, and it gets on his nerves.
Here’s another quote for you. Send more back! (Although I don’t understand what “Don’t say mattress to Mr. Lambert” means—is it from Monty Python?) This is my new favorite: “She came home and sewed on the veranda.” I did try to draw you a picture of it, you know, but when I’d finished it looked more like a picture of a woman with a horse trough stuck to her leg, so I decided not to send it.
Anyway, I’m writing this in a “math” class, so I’d better go. Please say thanks to Melanie for her postcard, I’ll write back soon. (Don’t tell her I was taking the mickey, but this is what her card said: ‘Hiya, Helena. How be you these days. Okay yah I hope. Well, life is extremely boring, isn’t it—nein? Anyway, I can’t even think of anything to say—so until another day—Bye for now, Melanie’!!)
Lots of love,
Helena xxx
P.S. The best thing about living here is yard sales. They’re like jumble sales but in people’s front gardens (yes, you were right, they are called yards). I bought a brilliant record last month—it’s reggae, and it’s called The Harder They Come, by lots of different bands. I didn’t know what it was when I bought it, I just liked the cover, but it’s fab. I’ll tape it for you. The best track is called “Sitting in Limbo.” xx
I knew I should have made more of an effort to fit in at school, but I felt so resentful. I’d had a social life in Salisbury. Sam and I had other friends; we were just beginning to get invited to the right parties and be noticed by the right people—but now, for me, that was all gone. It gave me a depressing, guilty satisfaction to see my mother’s face as I slouched in after school every day, grabbed a drink, and headed straight up to my bedroom to write to Sam and listen to records.
Life seemed gray, endless, boring. Most of the time I felt like a supermarket trolley lying in a ditch, one wheel spinning uselessly round and round. The movie soundtrack The Harder They Come was beginning to become an obsession, though. I felt it kept me sane. I played it over and over again, endlessly, particularly the mellow Jimmy Cliff track “Sitting in Limbo,” which was the least reggae-ish of the tracks, but the loveliest. It had this gorgeous trickling keyboard sound, which was like water running over stones, I thought perhaps in the River of Babylon.
After listening to that Jimmy Cliff track about four hundred times, the words had imprinted themselves onto my soul, and they bothered me.
“And I know that my faith will lead me on.” I, too, was sitting in limbo, but I didn’t have anything to lead me on. I began to spend more and more time wondering what it was to have faith. Until one day something happened, and I found out.
Sam and I continued to send each other long, heartrending letters about how we hated our lives apart, and how we were saving up to move to London to
gether and become famous actresses. One school lunch hour, as I was composing one of these missives in the library, a tubby eleventh-grader with frizzy brown hair and hippie sandals came up to me.
“You’re Helena, aren’t you?” she said.
I nodded, taking in both her cool batik shoulder bag and her rather horrible nylon flared skirt.
“I’m Margie. I live on the next block from you. Your mom talked to mine at the grocery store the other day and told her how lonely you are here.”
I blushed and looked at the floor, making a mental note to kill my mother.
“Well, listen, if you’d like to meet some cool kids, some friends and I have a kind of study group every Wednesday. We hang out at my place and listen to Carole King and chat. Why don’t you come along next time? Six o’clock at 1114 Connecticut Street. It would be, like, totally rad if you could make it!”
It took me so long to get around the “totally rad” bit that I didn’t properly take in the fact that I’d been invited somewhere. Then I was delighted and terrified in equal measures.
That Wednesday after school I spent ages putting on black eyeliner and back-combing my hair into a fashionable bird’s nest. I carefully put on my smart black pinstriped jacket (half of a man’s suit I’d found in a thrift shop) and black tube skirt, with a turquoise shirt and a long string of white plastic beads knotted around my neck to complete the ensemble. As I dressed, constantly and critically looking at my reflection in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door, I worried nervously about whether there would be either alcohol or boys present at this soiree.
At 6:10—fashionably late—I rang the door chimes of 1114, wishing Sam were with me. I could already hear strains of “It’s Too Late” wafting out into the hallway and under the front door, and I took this to be a good sign.
Margie let me in. She took a brief startled look at my panda-eyes. “Oh, wow, you look … great! Come on in and meet the gang.”
I followed her through to the living room, where seven or eight older kids from school were sitting on the shiny three-piece suite or the violent orange hairball-swirled carpet. Although I had never spoken to any of them before, I knew immediately and with a sinking heart that most of them were very definitely what Sam and I would call prats.
“Hey, everybody, this is Helena. She just moved here from Great Britain! Helena, this is Simon, Randy, Bethany, Mary Ellen, Rich, Sue, and Susie.”
“Hello,” I said unhappily. I observed them all looking nonplused at my party clothes.
“Have a seat, Helena. We won’t bug you with questions about who Prince Charles is dating until later—we’re about to start.”
I sat down on the edge of a small flip-up chair, with a feeling of dread. My fears were confirmed when suddenly lots of pale green hardback books appeared and Carole King was turned down to an inaudible hum.
“Bethany, why don’t you start today?” said Margie.
Bethany flipped open her Bible, for of course that was what it was, and announced dramatically, “Psalm 121!”
I was frozen to my chair with horror and embarrassment, feeling as if the black kohl circles around my eyes were spreading across my face until I was sure I looked like a coal miner in drag. Resentful thoughts spun around in my head as Bethany’s strong voice rang on for what seemed like hours. I had changed my mind—Jimmy Cliff could keep his faith, although I bet he’d never had to sit around with nerds like this lot. It seemed to me that a much nicer way to find God would be by hanging out with Jimmy, Toots and the Maytals, and Desmond Dekker. Was Jah the same as Jesus, anyway?
Then Mary Ellen took over. The lilt and cadences of her voice were softer than Bethany’s, and her emotive intonation of the ancient verses somehow made it easier for me to listen. After a while I began to feel drawn in by it. The words were soothing, justly measured, and poured as though from a jug of something thick and comforting. I had a sudden image of my mother stroking the damp hair back from my flushed forehead when I’d once had flu.
The other kids still seemed dweeby to me, but by the end of that oddly peaceful evening, I felt as if I “got it,” and that particular “it” was something I might need. After some earnest discussion of the Psalms’ meanings and merits, in which I declined to participate, a glass of lemonade and side B of “Tapestry,” I left, agreeing to come to their church that Sunday. And feeling I would rather die than admit to anyone what I’d just done.
I certainly couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents. On Sunday morning I just slipped out of the house, knowing that they probably wouldn’t even realize I’d gone. I had passed the church many times before without really noticing it—it was one of those modern and bland-looking redbrick buildings with an abstract swirl of stained glass above the front doors, and a handkerchief of grass on either side of the path from the sidewalk.
I skulked around outside for a few minutes, my qualms getting worse. Two chirpy ladies in loud hats clutching, respectively, a sheaf of service sheets and a stack of hymnbooks spotted me and pounced enthusiastically.
“Come in, come in! Welcome to our church. We haven’t seen you before, have we? Well, I’m sure you’ll enjoy our lovely service. My name is Thelma and this is Veronica. What’s your name? Please don’t forget to fill out a visitor’s slip you’ll find at the end of your pew, and here, let me pin this nice pink ribbon on your lapel so we all know you’re a newcomer!”
I thought I might throw up. There may as well have been a large neon arrow pointing at my head, flashing the words HEATHEN FOREIGN STRANGER. I wanted to go home, but the ribbon on my jacket bound me to the place like a prisoner’s ID number tattooed on his arm. It would have seemed churlish to undo the pin, throw down the ribbon, and just leave. I stood in the entry porch and dithered, arms full of a churchgoer’s paraphernalia, unable to either walk out or go inside.
At that moment, Mary Ellen and Randy arrived and rescued me. “Helena! Hi! Glad you could make it. Come sit with us.”
I smiled, semi-gratefully, and allowed myself to be swept inside and up the aisle to a pew, worryingly close to the front of the church. It was nice not to be the lone outsider anymore, but I still would rather have lurked in a distant corner at the back by the doors, for easy escape.
I stared at my selection of hymnbooks, prayer books, and pamphlets. Mary Ellen and Randy were on their knees next to me, and as I couldn’t quite make myself join them, I acted busy by looking up in my hymnbook all the hymns advertised for the service. They were posted on the wall, magnetic numbers stuck onto a nasty white board. This did not take very long, so I watched a jolly girl guitarist strumming gently at the front of the congregation. She wasn’t playing “Kumbaya,” but she might as well have been.
After a few more minutes the choir—mostly women, large and red-cassocked—and minister wandered in and the service opened with a lusty rendition of “Amazing Grace.” So far so good, although it was strange to me that the choir just sat on chairs in front of the congregation instead of being tucked away in choir stalls out of sight. There was no organ, just a tinny upright piano and a couple of guitars. I didn’t like the modernity of the whole setup. It seemed to me that a church wasn’t a proper church unless it was ancient and had a high altar, a corrugation of stout organ pipes running up the wall, tombstones under the floor, and a lot of processing around with banners and so on. Where I came from the hymns were posted on an old wooden tablet, probably similar in shape to the one Moses had brought down the mountain, big wooden squares with numbers on them slotted into grooves in the tablet. None of this white plastic and Velcro, which, in combination with the pine pews and wooden floors, made for an ambience that seemed too lightweight for any serious spiritual conviction.
The service proceeded not too scarily, the usual prayers and announcements and exhortations. There seemed to be a constant stream of people trailing up the aisle to read biblical chunks from the podium at the front. As their heights were invariably different, they all had to readjust the microphone before they spoke, a
nd every time, the readings would be preceded by squawks of feedback and often a thud or two when the reader’s chin or forehead connected heavily with the unwieldy mike stand as they wrestled with it.
The minister himself was mild and unassuming, youngish, a stigmata of acne scars on his cheeks undermining his dubious authority. I thought he looked more like an accountant or a science teacher than a “man of the cloth.” He was skinny and appeared rather nervous as he guided his flock through the service.
I was getting slightly bored. We were half an hour in and I didn’t feel at all spiritual. I looked around some more, at the tall exposed-brick walls with their trendy woven wall hangings spaced evenly every fifteen feet or so. Actually, these were very pretty—imaginatively designed depictions of harvest festivals, loaves and fishes, Noah’s Ark, the Garden of Eden, or simply embroidered announcements like Jesus Saves! and The Light of the World. The colors were bold and unfaded, and the pictures abstract and artistic enough to be interesting as well as aesthetically appealing—I was sure I’d seen the same tapestries in other churches.
I wondered idly if there was a book of Church Wall-Hanging Patterns for Beginners in existence, over which the ladies of the Women’s Institute worldwide pored painstakingly. Or maybe you could just buy the finished product by mail order, perhaps by phone: “Hmm, I’ll take one St. Paul on the Road to Damascus in plum and gold, and”—flipping through the pages—“a Jesus Walking on the Water—the turquoise and aquamarine, not the silver. A hundred fifty plus postage and packing? Okay, here’s my American Express number.… ”
A ripple of excitement passed through the congregation and brought my wandering mind back to the service. The minister was introducing today’s guest preacher, who was striding up to the podium as he spoke. I didn’t catch his name, as I was too busy studying his wide and snappy suit, ruddy face, the oversized Bible he was holding like a shield in front of him, and his thick, plastered-down hair, the exact same pale gray-blond as Kim Novak’s eyebrows in Vertigo (which I’d seen on television the night before). He fitted much better the picture I had in my mind of an American preacher. He thanked the junior accountant and launched into his sermon in the big booming voice I would have expected, with no need for the troublesome microphone.
