A Song for Issy Bradley

by Carys Bray

  His underpants and knees were wet and cold, and a damp, sticky smell was wafting out of the hole in the ground. It reminded him of the bag of modeling clay that Mrs. Slade kept on the side, next to the sink, in the school classroom. He looked at the soil speckles on the coffin’s little silver plaque. It read, Isabel Rachael Bradley. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to throw dirt on Issy.

  Sister Anderson crouched down next to him. “It’s very sad, isn’t it?” she said.

  “It was meningitis,” he told her.

  Mum had made him say the word again and again.

  “People will ask, so you must learn how to say it,” she said.

  He practiced until it stopped sounding like a sticky-eye infection—“mengy-eye-tus”—and started to sound more like “men-ingiantis,” a band of giants who had magicked Issy into the Celestial Kingdom.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Sister Anderson asked.

  He wanted to say he was fine, he wanted to tell her to go away, but his bottom lip began to wobble and it wouldn’t stop, even when he bit it quite hard. Sister Anderson helped him to his feet. She folded her arms around him and pulled him into her squashy tummy. Her dress was dark and velvety. His tears soaked into its softness as she patted his head gently and said, “It’s such a shame.”

  When he had finished crying he stepped away from her and a rope of snot stretched from his nose to the front of her dress, like a bridge.

  JACOB UNEARTHS A feather and knows that he is in the right spot. The feather is matted and patchy, which is disappointing, but he keeps digging. As he digs he thinks about the apples, hiding in old shoeboxes in the cupboard under the stairs. He knows that like the apples, the bird will look different when it is uncovered and he hopes the transformation will be a good one.

  There are more feathers, though most of them are not feathery anymore. He digs especially carefully now. He has seen an enormous book on Egypt in the school library. There is a section about digging stuff up. There are pictures of the tiny brushes people use so as not to damage anything. The corner of his spade grazes something hard. Jacob puts it down and begins to move the soil away with his fingers. Here is the bird’s back—he follows its knobbles, brushing the dirt away. The bird is mostly bones. This is not the transformation he has been hoping for. The bird’s insides, and most of its outsides, have melted into the soil. Its skeleton is a browny-gray color. It’s hard, but brittle, like crisps. He wipes soil from the bird’s wing-twigs, which, stripped of feathers, look like dirty icicles. Lastly, he moves the soil away from the bird’s skull. The eye has gone. In its place is a hole that seems far too big. His finger may even fit inside. It does.

  BEFORE ISSY DIED, Mum used to read a fairy tale each night from the old, fat book that she had been given as a present when she was a little girl. Afterward she would get the Bible and the Book of Mormon picture books out and read a story from one of them too. Jacob’s favorite fairy tale used to be “The Wolf and the Seven Goats.” The best bit was the part where the mother goat opened up the wolf, and her kids tumbled out of his big furry belly. “The Wolf and the Seven Goats” is just made up. But the story of Jonah and the Whale is a real-life miracle. Jonah got stuck in a whale and survived. In the Bible and the Book of Mormon there are even better stories than Jonah’s, stories about people who died and came back to life, like the story of Lazarus. Jacob remembers it because there’s a bit where Lazarus is so dead Martha says, “He stinketh,” and after they read it, Mum occasionally said, “Who stinketh?” when someone farted. There’s the story of Jairus’s daughter too. Everyone thought she was dead and people were crying but Jesus told Jairus to believe; and when they reached the house there’d been a miracle and the girl wasn’t dead anymore, she was just sleeping. “With God all things are possible”—that’s what it says on Mum’s painting of a bird with its wings spread wide in flight on the kitchen wall. Miracles are like birds, they zip through the gap between heaven and earth on hollow-boned wings. You can’t catch them with traps or nets or special glue, you have to use words.

  Before the funeral, the men brought Issy home in their special car. They put her in the living room and Mum sat with her for hours and hours. When Mum went to the bathroom, Jacob snuck in all by himself and stood on the arm of the sofa to have a proper look. Issy didn’t look as much like herself as he had expected; she seemed smaller and a different color. He kissed her, whispered, “Wake up,” and waited, but nothing happened.

  After the funeral, Jacob asked Dad why he hadn’t tried to resurrect Issy. Dad said that priesthood holders can’t just go around resurrecting everyone. He said Heavenly Father decides if people live or die. Jacob replied that it wasn’t always like that—sometimes people believed and then miracles happened. Dad said it was true, but not in Issy’s case. He said, “Ours is not to question why.” He said, “Sometimes believing things will turn out all right in the end is a better kind of faith than the faith that raises people from the dead.”

  Jacob felt cross. “So it’s all right in the end for Issy to be dead?” he asked. “Didn’t you even try to make a miracle happen? What’s the point of being in charge at church if you can’t do miracles?”

  Dad said he would understand it better when he was older. But Jacob understood something right then. If he wanted Issy back, he was going to have to make it happen himself.

  THE BIRD’S EYE socket rings the tip of Jacob’s finger. He has been praying for the bird to come back to life for a whole week. It seemed sensible to start with something little, with a small miracle, for practice.

  Sister Anderson once said that faith can be as small as a seed. She brought some mustard seeds to Primary for everyone to see. They were tiny. Jacob knows that his faith is bigger than a mustard seed; it’s at least as big as a toffee bonbon, maybe bigger.

  He lifts his finger away from the bird’s eye socket and picks up the spade to rebury it. Then he thinks. He needs to check on the bird again, maybe more than once. Each time he will have to dig it up and, if nothing has changed, bury it. As the autumn sets into winter there will be days when it is raining and days when the ground is stiff with frost. It will be much easier if he can find a safe place to put the bird.

  He pushes his fingers into the soil on each side of the bird’s chest and lifts gently. The head is the first thing to fall off, followed by the wing that the cat didn’t damage. He is left holding a little cage of ribs and as he lifts a finger to support the spindly, dangling legs, they break off too. He thinks he might cry as a rush of salty prickles gather at the top of his nose, but he doesn’t. He puts the ribs down and pulls the bottom of his T-shirt out with one hand. Then he picks the little pieces of bird up, one at a time, and drops them into his makeshift pocket. He bends to sniff the soily bones. They smell of earth. They definitely don’t stinketh.

  He doesn’t kick any apples on his way back up the garden. If he is lucky, he will get up to his room without being noticed. Dad, Zippy, and Alma have gone to Liverpool to get the chapel ready for General Conference. It’s Mum he needs to watch out for. On Saturdays she usually cleans. According to the song they sing in Primary, “Saturday is the day we get ready for Sunday,” and Mum always says that Sundays are easier to face with a clean house. But today she might just be sitting at the table in the kitchen, wet-cheeked and dribbly-nosed, staring at nothing.

  Jacob approaches stealthily, ready to duck if necessary, but he can see through the window that the kitchen is empty. He opens the door, then sneaks past the kitchen table and past all the vases and jam jars stuffed with smelly flowers. He tiptoes down the hall and turns to climb the stairs. He is halfway up when he hears the toilet flush. He has to pass the bathroom door to reach his bedroom. He starts to run. The bird pieces jiggle in his T-shirt. He hears the rush of the taps and the clink of the towel ring as Mum dries her hands. He is quick. His door closes as the bathroom door opens, and he listens to Mum pad slowly down the stairs as he kneels on the carpet, behind the door, his heart jumping.


  He isn’t sure where to put the bird. Mum will be certain to find it if he puts it in the wardrobe. He could hide it in the bottom of Issy’s toy box, but touching her stuff makes him sad. He shuffles across the carpet on his knees until he reaches the bed. He places the bird pieces on the floor and then lies down on his tummy and commando-crawls under the bottom bunk. Under the bed he discovers a couple of plastic soldiers who have deserted and one of Issy’s books that must have slipped down the side of her bunk. He moves the book and the soldiers out from under the bed, and then he carefully deposits the bird bits in the far corner.

  After he crawls out from under the bed, he kneels again. He folds his arms, bows his head, and says a prayer.

  “Dear Heavenly Father. I have faith that you can resurrect the bird. This is a real prayer. It’s not like asking for a bike or something, it’s important. When you resurrect the bird, I will have even more faith. And then there can be even better miracles. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”

  As he gets to his feet, there’s a knock at the door. Mum’s head appears, followed by her body and the vacuum cleaner.

  “It’s Saturday,” she says as she moves one of the toy boxes with her foot, in search of the wall plug. “The day we get ready for Sunday.” She sings part of the Primary song to him, trying to get him to join in.

  He doesn’t. He picks the soldiers and Issy’s book off the floor, climbs the ladder to his bunk, and waits for the scream of the vacuum cleaner. But Mum pauses for a moment.

  “Would you … do you think we should … are Issy’s things bothering you?”

  “Not really,” he fibs, his tummy clenching as he stares down at the orphaned jumble of Duplos, dolls, and ponies with bright nylon hair. If he tells the truth, Mum might throw them all away; and then Issy won’t have anything to play with when she comes back.

  Mum’s voice jellies around her words as she says, “We could sort them out, if you like.”

  “Don’t cry,” he says quickly.

  “I wasn’t …” She wipes a hand over her face, as if to make sure.

  “Good. Leave Issy’s things. It’s OK. She might want them back—”

  “Jacob, I’ve told you, we won’t see her again until—”

  “After she’s resurrected, she might want them back,” he explains cunningly. “Everyone gets resurrected at the end of the world. Dad said so.”

  Mum lets out a big puff of air. “That’s a long way off.”

  “You never know,” he says in a grown-up voice.

  She chuckles at his imitation of her and switches on the machine. He watches as she pushes it back and forth, mowing the carpet. She unclips the wiggler attachment and worms it into the gap between the toy boxes. It sucks along the baseboard, uncurling and stretching like an elephant’s trunk.

  Then she kneels down. And Jacob suddenly feels marooned on the top deck of the bunk, the captain of a vessel that is rapidly approaching Niagara Falls.

  “Haven’t you finished?” His question pierces the vacuum cleaner’s greedy moan like a rescue shout.

  “I’m just going to do under the bed,” she calls up to him. “Goodness knows when I last did it.”

  She kneels on the floor and thrusts the wiggler about as if she is trying to capsize him.

  “You don’t have to do it today,” he exclaims.

  There’s a sound like the clatter of homemade shakers filled with uncooked rice and pasta, and his stomach sways as the bird bones rattle up the wiggler. He wants to launch himself off the top bunk and body-slam the vacuum cleaner like a professional wrestler, but he sits still as it sucks up his hope.

  “Have you got some Legos under here?” Mum starts to lie down on the floor to get a proper look under the bed.

  “No,” he shouts down to her. “I think it must be some … rubbish.”

  She gets up and switches the machine off.

  “I’ll check for Legos when I empty it later, just to make sure.” She clips the wiggler down, unplugs the cord, and closes the door on her way out.

  Jacob stays on his bunk for a bit, looking down at the room. Mum will probably forget to check the bag, which means he’s not likely to get into trouble. That’s good; it’s something to feel happy about. He tries to feel happy. He pushes his cheeks up with his fingers and lifts his face into a smile but his mouth pops open and a small sob spills out. He is disappointed to find himself so far from happy. He pulls back the duvet, lies down on his tummy, and buries his head in the pillow. A series of sobs shake out of him and rattle into the pillow, grazing the back of his throat like tiny bones.

  Eventually he climbs down the ladder. With God all things are possible. God helps those who help themselves and He loves a tryer: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Remembering all this about God makes Jacob feel ever-so-slightly better. He drops the stray soldiers in his toy box but he keeps hold of the book that was under the bed. It’s the story of Jack and the beanstalk. He opens it to the middle page, which is a special fold-out picture of the beanstalk, its tip hidden by clouds. He knows that “Jack and the Beanstalk” is not a miracle. It’s just a fairy tale. No one could get some magic beans. It could never happen: absolutely-no-way. Fairy-tale nevers are not the kind of nevers that Jacob is looking for. He is in search of nevers that can be slipped under, scaled, or tiptoed around. But even though he knows that fairy-tale nevers are impossible to bend, he wishes he had a beanstalk. He wishes Sister Anderson would bring magic beans to Primary instead of mustard seeds. He wishes he could plant the magic beans at the bottom of the garden, behind the hedge, and watch an enormous stalk twist and stretch skyward. And even though Dad says heaven is not actually in the sky, he wishes he could climb the stalk right up into the clouds and find Issy. That would be ace.

  – 10 –

  Yer Ma

  Normal people are heading to Liverpool to watch the Derby but Al, Dad, and Zippy are on a cleaning mission, bombing down the dock road toward the chapel, which must be spick-and-span before General Conference. Al doesn’t see why they should clean the chapel. It’s not as though they even live in Liverpool—they go there only for special meetings and activities that involve the whole area. There aren’t any proper cleaners, which means everyone gets to share the blessings of service. It would be nice to have a break from the blessings of service, what with Issy and everything, but Dad says he can’t ask people to clean the chapel if he doesn’t also do it himself. Cleaning is a total waste of time—at four o’clock when the first of the General Conference broadcasts is relayed, the lights will be out. Everyone will watch the prophet on the giant screen and no one will know whether there’re crumbs on the carpet or fingerprints on the glass bits of the doors.

  It’s boring in the car. Dad prefers the Tabernacle Choir to Radio 5 and Zippy’s sitting in the front so there’s no one to talk to. Al’s got his iPod Shuffle with him but he’s saving it for later. He’s got only a few songs on it ’cause Dad does spot checks and deletes things that don’t meet Church standards. He even deleted a load of songs by The Killers; it didn’t make any difference when Al objected that Brandon Flowers is a member of the Church. In fact, according to Dad, it’s worse for a member of the Church to write songs about smoking and taking girls’ clothes off, as those who have received the greater light will receive greater condemnation for their sins.

  “Where’s your suit jacket, Alma?”

  Al locks eyes with Dad in the car mirror. It’s too late for them to turn back so he tells the truth. “I left it at home.”

  “Oh, Alma.”

  Dad shakes his head and pulls his disappointed face, the one with the tight dog’s-arse lips. Al looks away. Sometimes he likes to imagine he was adopted and a dead ordinary relative is searching for him: someone who likes football, someone who hasn’t thought about God since they were forced to say the Lord’s Prayer in assembly. He glances back at the mirror and can’t help picking at Dad’s disappointment.

  “We’re cleaning the chapel, Dad. I’m not wea
ring my jacket to clean the chapel.”

  “No one’s asking you to. You need it for later, for Conference. It’s disrespectful to listen to the prophet without your jacket.”

  Al shrugs. His hoodie is scrunched up in his lap. Perhaps he’ll wear it disrespectfully while the prophet speaks. He’ll also wear it if he gets cold and if he gets a chance to sneak off. He’ll use it to cover up his white shirt and tie so people don’t think he’s a weirdo wandering around Liverpool on Derby Day in his best clothes. Mum’s money is stashed in the hoodie’s zip-up pocket. It’s been there since he borrowed it two weeks ago. He’s definitely going to put it back, but he’s waiting for the right moment. He rests his hand on the pocket and grasps the roll of notes through the material. Having the money makes him feel better. He’s not got any plans to spend it, but just knowing that he could lifts his mood and counters the ache that’s cased his stomach since Issy died.

  THERE ARE ONLY half a dozen cars in the church parking lot. Al recognizes Brother and Sister Campbell’s old Saab and President Carmichael’s Jag; the others must belong to people from Liverpool. He watches as Zippy examines herself in the mirror—she’s nuts if she thinks Adam has come with his dad; he’s probably playing rugby for school. President Carmichael likes sports; he always takes the annual church Dads vs. Lads football match seriously, and he’s one of the few dads who doesn’t have to resort to leg-breaking tackles to keep up. In fact, last year President Carmichael scored a late equalizer for the Dads and when the ball hit the back of the net he removed his T-shirt and his garment top and swung them around his head while he ran the length of the sideline. Brother Stevens pumped the air and shouted, “Go, President!” in his loud American voice, but the spectating families went dead quiet. Mum was sitting on a picnic rug with Jacob and Issy; Al caught her smiling. Sister Campbell didn’t find it funny, though; she pulled her braid over her eyes, and Dad just stood in the goal at the other end of the pitch, totally bewildered, as President Carmichael sprinted toward him, half-naked and whooping wildly. People aren’t ever supposed to take their garments off unless they’re having a bath or something, but President Carmichael didn’t seem at all embarrassed at having broken the rules in front of everyone. He rolled his things back on and jogged to the center circle for the restart. He’s definitely not the kind of man who would make his son miss out on sports to clean the chapel.