The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean (25 page)

“O you shudnt hav gon ther,” she gasps. “But O look what you found.”

She washes Jesus with sope and rinses him with water and drys him with towls. They get the claggedtogether body of Jesus and carefully put on the head. They put flower-and-water paste between the body and the neck. They wynd wyr around to tie the head to the showlders to make sure it wont farl off. Jesus wers a short skirt thing & his arms are held owt like he is carryin sumthin. Mam says it was a little lamb he had becos he had been like a shephad boy. And so they create a lamb out of an old jumper for him and put it in his arms.

Then paint all of him with old paynts. And strate away they see that this mite be a mistayk. For they ar not artists and the infant Jesus looks ded stranj. He is messy and lumpy and crumbly and his feet stick out at weard angls. His eyes apear bewilderd by what is happening to him. His halo is jagged and crackd and bent.

But mam says that he dos look sumthin like he used to. She says yes of cors he is all funy shapes and no he is not as byutiful as wons he was, but he is stil byutiful isnt he? And despite evrything he is stil Jesus, isnt he?

“Aye Mam,” Billy ansers. “Yes he is.”

They stand him up strate. They hamma a nale in the tabl and tie him to it so he wont fall down. Billy stands at his side & sees that Jesus is about the same size as him.

Mam neels down and crosses herself and puts her hands together.

“Its wunderful to see you agen Infint Jesus,” she says.

She closes her eyes and dips her head and starts to pray.

“Jentl Jesus meke & milde, Look on me a little childe . . .”

Then she stops and wispers to her son, “Do you think he hears me?”

“Dunno Mam,” says Billy Dean.

Then she siys so deep.

“Whats up Mam?” asks Billy.

“Probably he carnt,” she says. “For they took all the holyness out of him, Billy.”

“They took the what?”

“They tuk the holyness away. After the boms and the ruwinayshun and the scatterin of the statues and the altars and befor they knocked down what was left, they said sum prares and tuk the holyness out of it all. It was yor Dad himself that said the prares in fact. Then they bulldozed it all back to nowt.”

“And where did the holyness go?”

“Who nos? But away it went.”

“Then we must put the holyness bak in.”

She laffd at that.

“Who are we to do a thing like that?”

“Billy Dean & Veronica Dean. If the priest Wilfred can take it out then we can put it bak. What should we do?”

“I suppos we pray to God,” she says. “We pray to God and ask him to put the holyness bak into Infint Jesus.”

And so they neel down ther in the dilapidated kitchen. Billy says the words along with her.

“Lord,” they say. “Please return holiness to Jesus. We found him in the Blinkbonny dust & in the river mud and we put him back together agen. Pleese acsept our prayer and return his holiness to him and to the world.”

The mothers words ar spoken to a God but the words of her son are spoken to the yoonivers of beests & birds & water & stars & not to God at arl. As he speaks, Billy imajins birds flyin & singin in the shockd head and crooked body of Jesus. He imajins beests roaming throu him & water flowing throu him. He looks close as he speaks and he smiles to see the littl flees & beetls that crarl across Jesus and he imajins the wons that crarl insyd him too.

In the days that follow Billy brings many things to Jesus. He brings dust and stones & fethers that he finds lying in the dust & stones. He brings a fragment of birds egg and a bit of bone that miyt hav cum from a dead dog. He brings mud from the river & a leaf from a tree. He brings a bluw flower. He brings a tiny bit of cow from the butchers. He rites words on littl bits of paper. His own name & the names of the pepl he nos. And he rites words like star & sky & sun & sea.

He makes many tiny openings in Jesus body with his nife and sqeezes these littl gifts into him.

He cuts his thum with the nife & makes an opening in Jesus neck & lets his blood drip into him.

He breeths on Jesus fase. He wispers in his ere.

“Live Jesus. Acsept yor holyness agen.”

Mam goes on praying.

Then 1 nite Billy is in the kitchen with her drinking tea & eating jam & bred. The moon shines in throu the crackd windo. And all of a suden he feels Jesus breething & mooving inside himself. It is like he is being possesd by Jesus & Jesus is being possesd by him. He stops eating and drinking and closes his eyes.

“Is it you?” he wispers.

“Aye” ansers Jesus from the silens and the darknes deep inside. “Its me, Billy.”

Billy smiles. He tells his mother that the holyness is bak.

She drops to her nees.

“Is it true?” she says.

“Aye Mam its true.”

“O Billy,” she says all intens. “Its like being inside Hevan.”

And yes it is a bit like Hevan for them both to be together in that kitchen with Jesus & with all the reassembld sayntes & aynjels & with the wildernes of Blinkbonny all around.

Now I recall the feel of fingers in my hair. Fingers & thums & parms moov across my hed & sqwosh my hair into choobs & horns. And Mam giggls at my back & I feel her breth on me as she works the sirup into me.

This all begins with a lady that has a tiny bedsit in Blinkbonny Court. Her hair is tough as the hair of a hors & oranj as an oranj & she loves it stickin out, rite out.

She looks dead savaj but in truth she is as sweet as hony & she givs the swetest of all biscuits. Her name is May cos she was borne in May — a hundred yeres ago she says, thinkin a simplton like me will take that in. She giggls & says that her hair is her messige to the world & to anybody that wud try to shift her from Blinkbonny.

DANGER! WILD OWLD BINT! KEEP OFF!

Lacker & sprays do nothin for it & the way to get it done is to put sugar & water on it. I wotch Mam mixing warm water & sugar to a thick paste. She starts claggin it onto Mays hed using her fingers & thumbs & palms to make wayvs & corkscrews & curls. She strokes it & smooths it as it drys & hardens till it glitters as if scatterd with preshus jewls.

It looks just wonderful.

That nite at home I make sum sirup for myself & start putting it on my hair.

“What you doin Billy?” laffs my mam.

“Turning to a shugahed!” I say.

I mix & clag & pull & sqosh till my hair is all pointy & sticking up like it is a bluddy crown or like I am a starhead. Mam shakes with lafter & says I am as daft as May but qwikly she is at my back & at my side & her own hands are upon me sqeezin claggin shiftin shaypin.

She giggls. She says I hav a hed of lollypops & that the birds will be dropping down to pick at it if I dont watch out & I just love the sound of that.

And the shuga drys and stiffens on my head & I put my hands up to it & feel the lovlyness of it. I stand befor a darkend crackd & blemishd mirro & I see a wild fase & a wild head & wild hair with lite sparkling within it.

I take my clothes off and stand back from the mirro & try to see the hole of me standing there. & I see the curv of my lims & the shapely mussels & the fuzz of hair arownd my cok & barls & the littl spots & scratches & scrapes on my skin. & I stand for a long long time & gaze carmly bak towards myself. & I see how I am growing from a boy into a man from Billy Dean into another kynd of Billy Dean. And I see how the shape of me is lyk the shapes of Jesus & the aynjels & the sayntes & how lyk all things growing in this world I am a thing of wunder & of byuty.

Next morning I wake as dawn is beginnin to brake. My pillo is scatterd with shinin shuga dust & shuga crystals like I am lyin on a pillo of fallen stars. My hair is crackd & crushd. So I tiptow from my bed into the kitchin & I do it all agen the water & the shuga & the shaypin and the dryin. I look into the crackd mirro & I tees it into lovely shaypes. When it drys I tiptow from the house & stand out in our tatty garden ded still with my fase lowerd & I offer myself up to the birds of the sky that are now singing dawn chorus arl arownd.

I am ded quiet inside & owtside & yes the birds do seem to start cuming closer & I can hear them sqweeking & twittering in the weeds & grass & in the thorny bushes & on the little brick walls close by.

“Plees,” I say inside myself. “Plees fly rite here. Plees let me feel a sparrow or a tit or a robin or a finch perching on my head & picking at my hair.”

And nothing gos further but I just stand ther & stand ther. I must hav been ther for an hour or mor 2 hours or mor.

I close my eyes for I no that the birds are shy.

I hum to myself the song about the brite & byutiful things of the world that Mam & Missus Malone both sing.

All things brite and byutiful,

All creechers grate an small,

All things wize an wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

I try to sing it truly sweet and brite so that my voys is nerly like a birds. I try to feel that my arms are the wings of a bird & that my throte is the throte of a bird. I try to feel that I can sing & fly as if I am a bird inside meself.

And after a time I hear a fluttering in the air so close I nerly gasp but I keep on singin & I keep my eyes closed & O I feel tiny feet restin on my sirup stars & tiny feet scratchin on my skul & O O O I feel a birds beak nibbling at my hair & getting the shuga for its sweetness & strenth and sustenans.

And as I stand there mor & more birds desend to me. They flutter back & forwards & they pluck & pick and scratch & I am so happy & the birds so bold and brave.

And I open my eyes and strate away the birds are gone — all the littl birds that hav been standin on me & warkin on me and feedin on me — little sparros finches starlings skylarks tits and robins. I hold my arms owt wide and watch them flee back up into the emptiness and the bluwness and the sunlyt as if they have been flung out from the body and the arms and hair of Billy Dean. I laff at the loveliness of it. And another laff comes from beyond the gate. And I turn to see Elizabeth standing there with a book and a pensil in her hand and a grate grin on her fase. She steps forward leans across the gate and says this is for me. She puts the picture in my hand — the picture of Billy Dean with wild hair and the arms stretchd out and bak archd & fase turnd upward to the lite and all the birds in ther weard airy dancing all around.

She puts her finger to her lips and backs away.

I close my eyes agen. The birds return. This time I no thers no need to stay still. I trembl with the joy of it. I move. I danse. The birds fall and rise and danse as well.

And then Mams voice.

Shes standing at the door.

She giggls and giggls.

“O Billy! Just look at you and the birds!”

The pepl begin to apear on the rubbl befor the house of Missus Malone. It seems they cum from other plases away acros the hills or out from the sity or from sitys furtha afeeld. Just 1s & 2s at first.

And they do not come becos they are the bereaved.

They come in serch of life not death.

In the very erliest days of this a dorter brings a mother. Shes standin ther at the dore as I cum owt from Missus Malones. Ther are grate swellins of arthrytis on the mothers nees and elbows. Her fingers are twisted & frale & ther is grate pane within her.

“Just tuch her plees,” the dorter says.

“Tuch her?”

“Yes tuch her. Heal her.”

At that tym I still dont hav a cluw what I can realy do.

I tell her ther is nothin I can do.

“We have been told that we can beleev in you,” says the dorter. “And we beleev that you can help. Just tuch her, Aynjel, plees.”

I am so tyrd of that name.

“Thers no such things as aynjels,” I say. “Ther is only us. I am me & my name is Billy Dean!”

“Plees tuch her, Billy Dean.”

So I siy & tuch the mother & expect nothing. But then I feel the heat that is in my fingers. It is as if my fingas and her joints becum 1 singl thing for a few short seconds. It is like ther is sumthing seeping out from me and into her and like sumthing is seeping bak to me. She groans.

“O blessed boy” she wispers. “Now tuch me ther. Now ther. Yes ther.”

When I look into her eyes the pane is draind from them and joy has took its place.