I Am Not Esther (11 page)

ZILLAH HUNG ONTO LIFE.

‘May I take the children to see her?’ Daniel asked the next evening.

‘It is not necessary,’ said Uncle Caleb. How he could say that when they were all staring at him with eyes that begged, I didn’t know.

‘With respect, Father,’ Daniel said, ‘do you not feel it would help them all if they could see how very small she is?’

Not one of those kids said a word. But not even Uncle Caleb could pretend they weren’t interested in seeing their sister. ‘I will pray about it,’ he said at last, and bowed his head.

It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut. I wasn’t too impressed by his last effort at asking for guidance. However, this time apparently the Lord said it was okay.

‘Thank you, Father!’ from each kid.

‘Can I take her a flower?’ asked Abraham. ‘Just a
little one, because she is little.’

Before his father could answer, Daniel smiled at Abraham and said, ‘I do not think flowers would be allowed in the nursery where she is. But take one and we will give it to our mother to keep for Zillah.’

‘May we see Mother too?’ Rebecca asked, her face alight.

Again, they turned to their father for permission. ‘If the hospital allows it,’ he said — without praying about it.

We climbed into the car — a red Honda this time. Abraham carried a small pink rose bud and two white daisies. Uncle Caleb didn’t come so the children chattered like kids are supposed to. ‘Why did she need an operation?’ Rachel asked.

‘What is an operation?’ Luke asked.

‘Does it hurt?’ Maggie’s eyes were wide and scared.

‘How do babies get born without an operation?’ The real curly one. From Rebecca.

Daniel was suddenly very busy driving carefully round a corner.

‘They come out a special hole between the mother’s legs,’ I answered for him.

‘But that would hurt!’ Rachel cried.

‘So everybody says.’

We got to the hospital before anyone asked how the baby got in there in the first place. Now that would really have been interesting. And I reckon Daniel could have fielded that one. Then
I wondered if he knew himself.

I asked him as the kids raced up to the hospital from the car park. He actually laughed, then smiled again at my astonished face. ‘Yes, I do. But I had to spend three whole days in the discipline room because of it.’

‘Huh? How come?’

‘We are supposed to be excused from any class to do with reproduction. I stayed, but Beulah found out and she told my father. But it was too late by then, because I had the knowledge.’

I looked at him with admiration. ‘What a little rebel you are!’

The children quietened the moment we walked inside the hospital. No one said anything as we tip-toed into the neonatal ward. A nurse led us to Zillah’s incubator. ‘Here she is, your little sister.’ She smiled at our anxious faces. ‘She’s doing well. The operation was a success. We’re very pleased with her.’

Luke reached out towards the incubator. ‘But she has got no clothes on! Is she cold?’

‘Is she the smallest baby in the world?’ Rebecca whispered.

The nurse was kind. She answered all our questions and she let us stay there far longer than Uncle Caleb would have thought seemly. Then she took us in to Aunt Naomi. ‘Only a little visit,’ she warned. ‘Your mother is not very strong yet.’

She was looking a heap better than when I’d seen her last. She smiled at the kids and stretched out a
hand. ‘It is good to see you. Very good.’ One at a time, they went up to her and kissed her cheek.

‘Mother,’ the words burst from Maggie, ‘did the doctor sew you up with herringbone stitch?’

Aunt Naomi actually smiled. ‘I do not think so, Magdalene.’ She reached for Maggie’s hand. ‘Now tell me about school. Do you like it?’

We stayed for about five minutes before Daniel said, ‘Mother is getting tired. We will say goodbye now.’

So they kissed her again. ‘Thank you, Daniel,’ she murmured. ‘You are a good son.’

‘Ouch,’ I whispered to him when we were outside.

‘I love them,’ he said fiercely. ‘I love them so much. I do not want to leave.’ Our shoes squeaked on the floor and I heard the swishing of my dumb skirt. ‘But I cannot stay.’

It was Friday the next day and Charity and Damaris were full of The Meet. ‘How come you’re not getting betrothed too?’ I asked Charity.

‘I have asked for an extra year before I am married,’ she said. ‘We are permitted to do that.’

Damaris giggled. ‘That is because she thought she might have to marry Eli.’

Charity shook her head. ‘No it is not. Do not be unkind, Damaris.’

‘So why, then?’ I asked. The rest of them seemed all-fired keen on getting hitched as soon as they could.

‘Jonas and I have discussed it, and we both prefer to marry when we are older.’

Seventeen was older? What if she still didn’t want to get married when she was seventeen?

Mrs Fletcher asked to see me, and Beulah caught me as I was on my way to her office. ‘You should be in class,’ she said, giving me the evils.

‘So should you.’

‘I have been to the dentist,’ she said. ‘What is your excuse?’

‘I’m going to the doctor. For an abortion.’ That shut her up. She went an ugly pink and flounced off with her drippy uniform dragging round her ankles. If she told Uncle Caleb, then I’d deny it and he just might believe me and then she would get prayed over. Cow. Unholy cow.

Mrs Fletcher gave me a hug and then held onto my shoulders and looked hard at me. ‘How’s it all going?’

So I told her everything from Zillah to Daniel to Damaris and Beulah. It made me realise how much I missed being able to rabbit on to my friends and to Mum. Especially Mum.

‘Have you found anything out about Mum?’ I asked.

She didn’t answer straight away and I sat up, staring at her. ‘What’s wrong? Mrs Fletcher, you have to tell me, what’s wrong?’

She patted my arm. ‘Nothing’s wrong, Kirby. Calm down. It’s just that things aren’t quite right
either.’ She sat back in her chair, her eyes on my face. ‘I haven’t been able to find any trace of your mother, my dear. One of the organisations said she’d been on their list of nurses who had applied to go and work in refugee camps but that she hadn’t actually gone.’

I stared at her. ‘But she wrote to me! I had a letter. An airmail letter with a Z in the postmark. Look, I’ll show you!’ I carried it with me everywhere. I scrabbled in my bag and held it out.

Mrs Fletcher read the letter, turned it over and examined the postmark. ‘Kirby — I think that Z is the Z in New Zealand.’

‘But she’s in Africa!’

Mrs Fletcher took hold of both my hands firmly. ‘Listen, Kirby. I think she meant to go to Africa, but as far as I can tell, she isn’t there.’ She gave my hands a little shake. ‘She must be somewhere, and we’ll find her. Don’t worry.’

I couldn’t take in what she was saying. I felt weak and dizzy and sick. If she wasn’t in Africa, where was she? And why?

‘But the letter,’ I whispered again. ‘She says the people are dedicated and the conditions are appalling. She is there. She is!’ But even as I said it, I felt hollow with doubt.

‘Anybody could have written those things,’ Mrs Fletcher said gently.

‘But why?’ I felt like the words were torn out of my heart. ‘She loves me! Why would she try to hide from me?’

‘We’ll find her. It’s not so easy to disappear.’

‘Unless she’s dead.’ I had to say it.

‘I think you’d have heard if she’d died,’ Mrs Fletcher said. She looked as if she was going to say something else, but when she didn’t I just shook my head. No energy left to argue and plead. I was made of cotton wool, an unreal child to be endured.

Somebody knocked urgently on Mrs Fletcher’s door. Somewhere, a million miles from me I could hear her talking to a boy whose words tripped over themselves. Then she was shaking my shoulder. ‘I have to go. Another crisis. I’ll keep working on it, Kirby. Stay here as long as you need.’

But I didn’t want to sit there by myself with questions I couldn’t answer whizzing round in my head.

I went back to class. It was cooking even though it said Food Technology on my timetable. I tried to think about other things. Like Uncle Caleb choosing my options for me — as if I didn’t get enough cooking experience already. Would he know if I swapped to Graphics? Dumb question. Ira was doing graphics and Ira was more poisonous than Beulah. The Elders loved him. I walked into the cooking room and I must’ve looked bad because Mrs East didn’t even ask me for a late note. She just gave me a sharp glance, then sent me off to help Charity, Damaris and another girl make something that involved melting butter and sugar together.

‘Esther!’

I jumped. Oh my God! I’d set the ring on fire! Mrs East grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused it. I leaned on the sink and laughed, turned around so my back was against it and slid down the cupboards until I was sitting on the floor, my arms wrapped round my knees and I laughed and laughed. Great gasps of laughter that hurt my chest and my throat.

Mrs East threw a glass of cold water in my face. I heard her telling somebody to go for Mrs Fletcher. Then Charity and Damaris were beside me, hauling me to my feet. I remember Mrs Fletcher coming but I was so tired. She took me to the sick bay and I slept through most of the day. She came and sat on my bed in the afternoon.

‘I think it’s time to get you out of there,’ she said.

I sat up. ‘No! I do not want to leave. Not yet. Daniel … and I want to tell Maggie … and the twins.’ I couldn’t leave. I’d be nobody. A nothing. Not Esther and not Kirby. And I’d have nobody. No Maggie, no family. No mother.

She looked at me, her face serious. ‘Take another week, if you want. But ask yourself this: who are you — Esther or Kirby?’

I flopped down away from her and put my arm over my face. Could she see into my mind? ‘I am Kirby. I am not Esther.’ Somebody else was saying that. Somebody who didn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. Mrs Fletcher didn’t believe them either. She stroked the hair away from my face just the way Mum would have done.

‘No?’ she asked. ‘Since when did Kirby speak like that? Kirby would’ve said,
I’m
and
I’m not
.’ She stood up. ‘Don’t leave it too long, Kirby. And remember, I’m here if you need me.’

Damaris and Charity came to collect me when the last bell went. ‘Are you well?’ Charity asked, anxious.

I nodded. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ They were both staring at me and their faces were worried. I took a deep breath. ‘Mrs Fletcher told me that …’ I stopped. Tried again. ‘She said she hasn’t been able to trace my mother. I’m worried about her. I don’t know where she is.’

Damaris hugged me — and that was against the Rule. ‘We will pray for her.’

‘Thanks,’ I muttered. I wished I could tell them everything. I wished I could talk about Mum and I wished I could tell them I was feeling torn in two, that Esther was sometimes more real than Kirby and how much that frightened me.

I collected Maggie and the boys from school and their chatter made me feel more like myself again — but which self, I wasn’t quite sure.

I longed to talk to Daniel about Mum, but he wasn’t home. ‘You look funny, Esther,’ said Rachel. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Are you going to die?’ asked Maggie.

I poured her a drink of lemon cordial from the jug the twins had put on the table. They all watched me, and not one of them touched the food in front
of them, not even Abraham. I sat down. ‘I am upset,’ I said carefully. ‘I found out today that my mother didn’t go to Africa like she said she was.’

‘She told a lie?’ Abraham’s eyes sparkled at the thought of an adult doing something that wicked.

Rebecca waved a hand at him to shush him. ‘Do you know where she is?’

I shook my head. Maggie threw herself into my lap and flung her arms round my neck. ‘Do not cry, Esther!’

‘But she wrote to Father,’ Rachel said, frowning.

‘You can’t ask him,’ said Abraham, reaching for a biscuit. ‘He’d go ape.’

Neither of the twins corrected his language. ‘What will you do?’ Rebecca asked.

‘I want to find her,’ I said.

‘Will you go away? Do not go away!’ Maggie and Luke spoke together.

I hugged Maggie gently. ‘I will have to.’ I looked at the twins and Abraham and Luke. ‘I can’t stay here. I’ve got to find my mother and …’ I stopped. How could I tell them I had to find myself before it was too late and I vanished, worn away under a welter of prayers, rules and restrictions.

‘Don’t go!’ Maggie sobbed. ‘Don’t die!’

I tightened my arms round her. ‘When I go,’ I told the twins, ‘you have to talk to her about it. Remind her I’m not dead. Tell her Miriam’s not dead.’ They didn’t say anything. ‘Promise!’ I shouted.

‘It is against the Rule,’ Rachel said at last.

I jumped up, Maggie still clinging to me and I stared down at them. ‘So break it! It’s wicked! She’s too little to understand. Your father doesn’t have to know.’

The twins turned from me and looked at each other. Finally Rebecca said, ‘We will think about it, Esther. That is all we can promise. It will grieve the Lord and it will grieve our parents if we break the Rule.’

With an effort I sat down again. It wasn’t their fault. ‘Thank you,’ I muttered, trying to smile.

The next day, the girls and I had to clean the house so well it’s a wonder it didn’t fall down. Windows, ceilings, door-frames, skirting boards, the whole darned lot. And why? Because the bloody men had decided that’s what had to be done before every Meet. The only good thing about it was it stopped my mind endlessly worrying about Mum.

While we cleaned, Uncle Caleb disappeared into his study and Daniel sat with Abraham and Luke and took them for Bible study.

‘Don’t let it strain your brain,’ I said, letting water drip on his head as I swiped the mop at the ceiling.

‘This is the Rule,’ he answered in a flat voice.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered, and got a quick half-smile in return.

Then something totally out of the ordinary happened. There was a knock on the door. Normally, when another member of the faith came to the house, they came straight in and called out, ‘Praise the Lord’.