A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [9]
– Stairs rising from nowhere, and the wallpaper the loose-petalled unknown flowers. The stairs descending to the place where I am not allowed. The giant bottles and jars stand there, bubbled green glass. The silent people are there, lipsticked and rouged, powdered whitely like clowns. How funny they look, each lying dressed in best, and their open eyes are glass eyes, cat’s eye marbles, round glass beads, blue and milky, unwinking. He is behind the door I cannot open. And his voice – his voice – so I know he is lying there among them, lying in state, king over them. He can’t fool me. He says run away Rachel run away run away. I am running across thick grass and small purple violets – weeds – dandelions. The spruce trees bend, bend down, hemming in and protecting. My mother is singing in a falsetto voice, the stylish tremolo, the ladies’ choir voice.
Bless this house dear Lord we pray, keep it safe by night and day.
TWO
Brushing away the curtains with my hand and leaning a moment out my window, I can feel the fineness of the day. Even the spruces look light, the needled boughs having lost their darkness in the sun and now looking evergreen as they are meant to, and not everblack as they seem when the sky is overcast. The sky today is the colour of the turquoise in the bracelet my father gave me as a child.
I must hurry or I’ll be late. That’s one thing I can say for myself. I’ve never been late for school in all this time, never once. When I first began teaching, Mother used to call me every morning, but now I waken before she does.
My underwear is all getting that shabby too-much-washed look. I must get some more. I always think what does it matter – who sees but me? But that’s a wrong attitude. It’s not even the thought of being run over and taken to hospital and pried into, everything underneath seen and sized up. It’s self-respect, really. When Stacey was here the last time she came into my bedroom while I was dressing. She never knocked or said could she come in. Maybe in her house everyone is so casual they never bother. She saw me putting on the same things I’d worn the day before, the same everything. She said, “Don’t you change every day?” And then, as though she believed she intended it only to explain or pardon me, “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter quite so much if you’re not living with anyone.” But it was only because I hadn’t got my laundry done over the weekend, and I hadn’t got it done on account of her, for she’d just arrived then. Usually I changed. It hardly ever happened that I didn’t. I told her so. My voice was not upset in the slightest. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.
I didn’t, though. I didn’t say a word. I don’t know why I didn’t. Stupid. Stupid. How could I not have?
What is more stupid is to think of it now. As if it mattered. I’ve been very careful ever since then, though. A person could let themselves go, without noticing. It could happen.
Hurry, hurry, Rachel, or you’ll be late for school. All right. All right. I’m hurrying.
Mother has a letter in her hands and is unfolding it.
“One thing about Stacey,” she says, “she is always very good about writing. I don’t think she’s ever missed a week, has she? It can’t be easy, with the four children to look after, and that big house.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Considering that Stacey does nothing else for Mother, writing once a week doesn’t seem such an exorbitant effort. When Stacey was here that time, seven years ago, I asked her at the end of the one week if she wouldn’t consider staying a month. The children would be all right with Mac’s sister, and it would mean a lot to Mother. Stacey wouldn’t, though. “I guess it must sound crazy to you, Rachel, but another three weeks and I’d be up the walls – I don’t mean because of anything here and that – it’s just missing Mac – not only around and to talk to – I mean, in bed.” What made her so certain it would sound crazy to me?
Mother is reading Stacey’s letter aloud. She always does, as though not entrusting it to my hands and eyes. Sometimes I think she occasionally leaves parts out. Stacey