I Am Not Esther (8 page)

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’?

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?

I plaited her hair, a lighter gold than the twins’ — and Miriam’s. Then I got into my uniform. It was actually fun putting it on. When I realised that I seriously feared for my sanity. But to have my arms exposed and nothing swishing round my ankles was heaven.

Aunt Naomi was staying in bed for the day but she called me in. ‘Let me braid your hair, Esther. You must keep to the Rule while you are at school. It is very important. Do you understand?’

‘Yes Aunt Naomi.’ Ouch! She attacked my hair as
if the devil himself had to be got out of it. ‘Who is taking Magdalene to school, Aunt?’

She patted my head. ‘There! That is as seemly as I can make your hair. Do not forget your scarf. Daniel will take Magdalene to school, but I would like you to collect her and the boys afterwards.’

‘Yes, Aunt.’ Damaris and Charity came for me and the three of us walked to the bus stop together. As soon as we got there, they flipped their waistbands over to shorten their skirts. They helped me. ‘I’ve never worn a skirt before I came here,’ I grumbled.

‘But what did you wear to school last year?’ Damaris asked.

‘Shorts or track pants. We could wear them or a skirt. I’m allergic to skirts,’ I said gloomily. They laughed and tucked their head scarves into their bags. I shook my hair out of the plait, but they left theirs alone.

‘We do just enough to stop us getting teased,’ said Charity.

‘Don’t you mind breaking the Rule?’ I asked.

Damaris said, ‘We prayed about it and it came to us that the Lord was not offended.’

Good of Him. I just managed not to say the words aloud. The first thing I did when I got to school was rush to the toilets. ‘Did you not go before you left home?’ Damaris asked.

I grinned at her. ‘There’s mirrors in toilets! I want to see if I’m still here.’

‘We will wait for you,’ Charity said, and she smiled at me.

It was strange, looking at myself again. I couldn’t get over how I still looked the same. If I could see a reflection of my mind, it’d be so different I wouldn’t recognise it, but there was the outside me — same wild hair, same big brown eyes, same everything. I sighed and went back to the others.

Charity, Damaris and I were all in the same class.

‘Now, who are you?’ asked my form teacher, who told us her name was Ms Chandler.

‘Kirby Greenland,’ I answered automatically.

She frowned. ‘Your name isn’t on my list.’

‘Oh.’ I frowned. ‘Esther Pilgrim. Is that there?’

She found it. ‘Yes, that’s here. Now, what is your name, young woman? Are you Esther, or are you Kirby?’

A good question. Who was I? I wasn’t sure I knew any more.

Charity came up and took my arm. ‘She is Esther Pilgrim, Ms Chandler.’

The teacher gave us both a hard stare, but she didn’t say anything. I got another piercing stare when I asked her if I could see the guidance counsellor, but she told me where Mrs Fletcher’s office was.

I found it after getting lost twice. ‘Come in,’ she said as I knocked. I opened the door and went in. She reminded me of Louisa — not thin, but not fat either. A cheerful face with lots of lines and smooth grey hair.

‘Hello there!’ She gave me a swift once-over with sharp eyes. ‘New uniform. You’re a Year Nine. What’s your name, ducky?’

Ducky! For chrissakes! ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’m a new Year Ten, and my name is Kirby Greenland. Or Esther Pilgrim. Take your pick.’

Suddenly I had every atom of her attention focused on me. ‘You take your pick,’ she said, her voice friendly. ‘What shall I call you?’

‘Kirby,’ I said slowly. ‘I’m not Esther, I’m Kirby.’

‘Well, that’s a start. Sit down, Kirby who isn’t Esther, and tell me all about it.’

‘It’s not about that,’ I said, hesitating and stumbling and tripping over my words the way my feet did over my dumb skirt. ‘At least, it’s not really. It’s about …’ and to my absolute, total horror, I burst into tears.

She handed me a box of tissues and sat there perfectly calmly while I blubbered my heart out. ‘Sorry!’ I hiccupped. ‘I didn’t know this was going to happen. I’m sorry.’

A bell rang and I jumped. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said. ‘We’d better get you sorted before you face the masses. Now, what’s it all about?’

‘It’s my mother!’ More tears. ‘I looked after her. Always. She couldn’t even pay a bill or decide what to have for tea. I did all that. I told her when we needed to do the washing, when we needed to go shopping. I wrote the lists. And we were happy. She was always laughing. She used to hug me. We’d do
crazy stuff, like walk on the beach in a storm, drive to Thames from Auckland just for a feed of fish and chips.’ I stopped and the words burst out of me. ‘She loved me. I know she did!’

‘Loved?’ said Mrs Fletcher. ‘Why do you say loved?’

‘She went away. She went to Africa to work with refugees. And she didn’t talk to me about it. She didn’t even tell me till the day she went. And she left me with the mad relations and they have turned me into Esther Pilgrim. And I don’t even know Mum’s address and my uncle won’t tell me.’ I heard in my voice all the agony and all the pain that I’d heard in Daniel’s voice, that I’d seen in Miriam. That I feared for Maggie. I clamped my jaw shut and dug my fingernails into my palms. I wouldn’t cry any more.

‘Let the tears come,’ Mrs Fletcher said, smiling at me. ‘It’s a way of your body releasing all that
built-up
stress.’

I put down my head and howled. Eventually, I managed to tell her about the torn-up letter, about the experiment, and about Maggie and Miriam and Daniel.

‘Miriam will be fine,’ she said. I looked astonished and she grinned. ‘You’re not the first Pilgrim girl to weep her heart out in this office! Miriam is strong. She misses her family, but she will be fine. She’s doing well.’

‘Where is she?’ I asked.

‘In Wellington now. She’s gone to live with an
uncle and his family. He broke away from the church years ago. It took us a while to discover if she had any relatives, but we got there. They love her and she’s settling well.’

‘But on Thursday … I saw her. She was so unhappy!’

‘Yes, she told me about that. She had to come, she said. It was sort of saying goodbye. She also wanted Magdalene to know she wasn’t dead.’ Her eyes were bright and very kind as she looked at me. ‘She came to see me afterwards and have a little weep. She told me about you although she didn’t know who you were. She’s kind, she said. She loves my little sister.’

‘But what’ll I do about Maggie?’ I wailed. ‘I can’t stay there much longer! And it’ll destroy her if I “die” too!’

She sighed. ‘There is no easy answer to that one, Kirby. You can’t sacrifice yourself for Magdalene. You’d crack. She will certainly be hurt when you do go. Perhaps you can start preparing her now. Telling her you will leave when your mother comes back. Start training the twins to take your place.’

I didn’t want to do that! I’d miss Maggie always running first to me. I’d miss being the special one for her. I knew it was selfish but it felt like she was all I had.

‘Why did Mum go away like that?’

‘Tell me what you know about her history,’ Mrs Fletcher said.

‘She never left me! Never! Even when she had
to go on courses and stuff, she’d ring me up every night. That’s why I can’t understand! It doesn’t make sense.’

Mrs Fletcher gave me another tissue. ‘I mean her history before you were born. What do you know about that?’

I rubbed my eyes and sniffed. ‘Only that she left home on her sixteenth birthday. She said she couldn’t live there any longer.’

‘She was brought up in the faith, wasn’t she?’

I nodded. ‘She wouldn’t talk about it. That’s all I know. And that her father used to belt her.’

Mrs Fletcher sat quiet, frowning, then she said, ‘There isn’t very much to go on, I’m afraid.’

I thumped the table. ‘I just need to know! I hate not knowing!’ Me and Daniel. We both needed to know things.

‘I think the best thing is for me to try to find out where she is.’

‘Don’t talk to my uncle!’

‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘I understand what would happen if I did. I worked with Miriam, remember.’

‘Do I have to go on living there? Can’t I run away like Miriam did?’

Mrs Fletcher sighed. ‘It’s not straightforward. You aren’t being abused physically and it would be difficult to say you were being mentally abused. If your uncle wanted you back, then the law would be on his side. Your mother has placed you in his guardianship. With Miriam it was different. She’d
got to the point where she couldn’t take any more. And her family refused to have her back unless she agreed to unreasonable conditions.’ She frowned and stared off into space, tapping the pencil on her teeth again. ‘I feel the easiest way around it all is for me to try to contact your mother.’ She snapped her gaze back to me. ‘Can you hang on in there for a while? It could take a day or two to find out which organisation she’s with, and after that it could take a while to get hold of her.’

I slumped back in my chair, relief washing over me in giddy waves. ‘Yes, I can wait. It was not being able to do anything, or find out anything that made it so hard.’

‘I know.’ She patted my hand. ‘And in the meantime, you start working on Magdalene.’

I got up. ‘All right.’ I didn’t want to. I still didn’t want to. Maggie was the only person who loved me.

‘You must!’ said Mrs Fletcher sharply.

‘I will! I said I will, and I will.’
But not just yet
.

‘Starting from today.’ Mrs Fletcher put a steely hand on my arm.

‘But then nobody will love me!’ I wailed, the tears running again.

‘You might be able to love yourself, though,’ she replied. ‘Which is a reasonably important concept. Now, do you promise?’

You can’t love anyone when you don’t love yourself
. Mum had said that. In the motel that awful night.

I sat down again, my butt on the very edge of
the seat. I had to. I couldn’t stay in that family, not for much longer. Even the thought of going back there after the freedom of being at school for one day filled me with dread. ‘I promise,’ I muttered. Then I lifted my head. ‘I promise. I love Maggie. I don’t want her to be hurt.’ I should have felt good. Uplifted and noble. All I felt was hollow and angry.

‘Very well,’ said Mrs Fletcher. ‘I’ll begin immediately on the hunt for your mother. Give me both her names, will you? We don’t know which one she’s using right now.’

‘Ellen Greenland. Martha Pilgrim.’ Even Mum didn’t seem real any more.

Mrs Fletcher stood up when I did. She held out her arms. ‘Come here, Kirby!’ She wrapped her arms round me and hugged me tight. ‘Now you hang in there! Things are moving! Do you understand?’

It was immensely comforting. I nodded against her shoulder and felt terribly, terribly tired. ‘Yes. I do. Thank you.’

She let me go. ‘I’ll let you know the second I find anything out — even if it isn’t very important. Okay?’

I managed a wobbly smile. ‘Thanks. That’d be great.’

I found my way back to my form room. Charity and Damaris had saved me a seat beside them. ‘You look awful!’ Damaris whispered.

‘I’ve got the world’s worst headache,’ I muttered.

They dragged me up to Ms Chandler. ‘Can we
take Esther to the nurse? She has a bad headache.’

I had the feeling Ms Chandler was a bit sorry I’d landed in her class. The look she gave me was less than friendly, but she let us go. Charity and Damaris demanded to know the whole story, but all I told them was that Mrs Fletcher was going to try to contact Mum for me. I couldn’t tell them how I’d made a right idiot of myself and bawled my eyes out. I could tell Daniel, but not them. I began to see why Daniel didn’t want to marry Damaris, even though she was beautiful and kind and good.

I plaited my hair on the bus on the way home. Damaris and Charity walked with me to Maggie’s school. They had to collect brothers and sisters as well. I had to look for Maggie. She was playing in the sandpit with two other little girls and when she saw me she came racing over. ‘I love school, Esther! It’s so much fun!’

‘Say: It is, not it’s,’ Charity said gently.

‘It is so much fun!’ Maggie repeated.

‘I’m glad,’ I said, shooting a look at Charity to see if she’d correct me as well, but she didn’t.

‘Where are Abraham and Luke?’ I asked.

‘They are playing on the tower,’ Maggie said, pointing.

We went to get them and walked home together. I chatted to all three of them. Said I hoped the boys were looking out for Maggie at school. And my heart hurt. Maggie skipped and hopped and chattered.

At home, Aunt Naomi was sitting in the kitchen. She looked a bit better, but not much. The twins were home already and had made afternoon tea. We all sat round and talked about the day. Maggie plonked herself down on my knee. I gave her a hug, then picked her up and slid her in between the twins who were sitting on the window seat. ‘Keep them in order, Maggie. I’ll start dinner. My aunt looks tired.’

Like I felt. The twins got up and cleared the table. ‘Here, Magdalene, you put the biscuits away in the tin,’ said Rebecca. It was easy. The twins loved her too. She was their sister, not mine.

‘I will help you,’ Maggie danced up to me after she’d finished the biscuits.

I grinned at her. ‘Thanks. Could you drag the twins out to the garden and get some veges … vegetables … for dinner?’

The three of them went off happily. Aunt Naomi told the boys to clean all the shoes for tomorrow and then to work in the garden for an hour. I cut up meat for a casserole. ‘Are you all right, Aunt?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I will be, thank you Esther. I just have to rest.’ Mum would have told me all the gory details about why she had to rest and what had gone wrong. Not my aunt.

‘Have you thought of a name for the baby?’ I asked. Anything to keep the black emptiness out of my head.