A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [21]
“Been seeing the boss, Rachel?”
She pushes the tea cup towards me, across the table. She used to put the sugar and cream in my tea, for me, but she does not do that now. Another thing – she does not say child any more. Only Rachel. As though formality or great care had been forced upon her. I’ve wanted her to stop saying child or kid for a long time, yet now I feel unreasonably bereft.
No, I don’t. That’s senseless.
“What?” What did she ask me? “Oh – yes. I don’t see why he’s making such an issue of James. Remember – I told you? You’d think the reputation of the whole school was at stake.”
“He likes playing games with people, that’s all. If you once said to him, ‘Now listen here, Willard, quit making a mountain out of a molehill –’”
“You could do it. But not me.”
“Why not?”
“I –” I have to search for an adequate reason. “I can’t bear scenes. They make me ill.”
But this is too serious, and I want to change to something undangerous.
“Did you see Sapphire Travis’s shoes, Calla?”
“Sure. You could see them a block away. She painted them herself.”
“Really?”
“Yeh,” Calla says. “Some gloop she bought, a do-it-yourself shoe-painting kit. But why that screeching pink, I ask myself.”
“It’s a little bright, I agree.”
“It’s explosive. All her kids were staring like mad. With admiration, she thought. Well, this is uncharitable and lousy-minded of me. What harm does it do, after all? Brighten the corner where you are, and so on. Maybe I’ll get around to doing my old brogues a pale lilac.”
“Polka-dotted with silver.”
“Sure. Just the job.” And she chuckles throatily. She would probably do it, too, and find it more amusing than anyone. I envy this quality, but it appals me as well. She is gathering up the tea cups, whistling She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.
“Did I tell you I got a canary?” she says.
“No. Did you?”
“Yeh. Moronic little thing, actually. Not even a cheep out of it. I don’t think it’s scared of me. My guess is it is just simply anti-social and unmusical. I’ve tried singing all kinds of things. But no response. It’s not fond of hymns, and pop music makes it jittery, so what can I do?”
“What a shame. Maybe it’ll change, though.”
“The other possibility,” Calla says, “is that it isn’t a canary at all. It is a bleached sparrow which has been fobbed off on me.”
She’s trying so valiantly, as she has done whenever she thought I was depressed, and so I do laugh, not to disappoint her. Then it occurs to me that she never speaks of the Tabernacle any more. I want to ask her how it is there, these days, just to show I can speak of it. I want to ask her in a perfectly ordinary voice, if she’s yet received the gift of tongues. I ought at least to enquire politely.
But as soon as I think of that place at all, I’m back there in that indefensible moment, trapped in my own alien voice, and the eyes all around have swollen to giants’ eyes. How will I ever be able to forget?
“I must go now.”
Before I’ve even quite realized it, I’ve snatched my cardigan off the hook and I’m halfway down the wide grey cement stairs outside. Calla will think it’s peculiar, that I should rush off like this. But I can’t go back. The knowledge of having to go back tomorrow morning is difficult enough.
Grace Doherty is plump and neat. She wears a white straw hat with veiling, and