Reasons She Goes to the Woods (2 page)

Her parents are very firm about the stairs. How Pearl should hold the banister, place each foot just so, and absolutely no running. Pearl always listens to her parents. They’re grown-ups, after all. She likes to sit on the sixth step and look up and down. She thinks about the stairs a lot; how they are not a room, but inside a house. And the stairwell shoots away, almost to the roof. Pearl plays with her brother on the landing. He isn’t crawling yet. She’s pulled him, tangled in a wisp of blanket, out of his cot and laid him on the edge of the top step. She uncovers his head and tells him that from now on, secretly, he will be called The Blob. Then she wraps him up again. Her mother is in the garden hanging out washing. From the sixth stair Pearl waits to see what will happen next. The Blob is cocooned in his shawl. He wobbles above her, then flops down onto the first step and bounces on its edge. Down he comes, one, two, three. By the time he hits four he’s turned over. On the fifth step he falls onto his face and screams. The sound punches Pearl’s ears and streaks jaggedly all around the stairwell. She lunges at the jerking bundle, clutches him tightly, stomps up to the room they share, then heaves him over the rail of his pale blue cot. He stops crying and begins to make an annoying, hiccupy sound. Pearl can see blood in his nostril, and the lashes of his screwed-up eyes are like fragments of black lace. She strokes his hot head for a second, then quietly shuts the bedroom door, creeps out of the house and goes to the woods.

Pearl has been busy with her tea set under the tall privet hedge that borders the back garden. Cream tapers of crumbly blossom poke out from the leaves, filling the air with a smell of wee and warm fudge. Under the hedge the shade flickers and buzzes. Pearl kneads some cakes out of damp mud, decorating them with insects she has caught. Some of the insects wriggle, so she presses them into the cakes until they lie quietly. From the kitchen Pearl can hear women’s voices, and a radio playing. There is the sharp sound of laughter occasionally. She crouches, perfectly still, and watches as a girl steps out into the sunlight, crosses the lawn and walks close to the hedge. Just as she’s about to go past, Pearl shoots out her hand, grabs the girl’s bare ankle and yanks her down. Ouch, the girl says, on her knees, and acts as if she’s about to cry. She’s pale, with a sparse, floppy fringe and teeth you notice. Pearl pulls her into the den she’s made. You’re new, Pearl states. They look at the mud cakes. What are those? the girl asks. Yum, Pearl says. Eat one. She encloses the girl’s pliant wrist with both hands and administers a Chinese burn. Eat one, she says, then I’ll stop. Are those insects? the girl asks. Pearl goes on twisting. The girl bites into a cake. Her eyes run and snot seeps onto her upper lip. Pearl can hear crunching. The girl swallows, her big teeth muddy. Now you can get lost, Pearl says. But I want to stay, the girl whispers. Pearl expected this. Name? she asks. I’m Fee, the girl answers, settling comfortably, her limp wrist still lying in Pearl’s brown hands. Now will you have me as your friend?

Strands of sun slant in through the kitchen window, drying the wooden draining board again. Already the hours feel old and exhausted. It’s been cleaning day, and the house is filled with that lonely atmosphere of bleach and polish throughout. There is nowhere in the entire place she can go and be safe. Even the garden is unappealing; too open and bright, too raw and flat for her to play in. Pearl has sunburnt shoulders, the skin lifting off in airy petals she likes to eat. She drops her head as she stands in the doorway, feeling her cool cheek as it rests on the ragged skin, watching as their mother lowers her brother onto his potty. From the kitchen comes a beige-and-green cooking smell Pearl doesn’t like, something she will be expected to eat later. The smell makes her feel as if she’d like to crumple today up and chuck it out, somewhere no one will ever think of looking. This feeling weakens her legs so they fold, and she plonks down on the cool tiles. The Blob is only wearing a skimpy vest. His fat bottom over-spills the potty rim. Both pink circles are distorted in the shining tiles. He is happily munching, fists holding a chocolate biscuit, his face smeared with melted brown goo. He has knobbly wet bits slicked in his hair and crusting his eyebrows. Even though Pearl knows it is only chocolate, her mouth fills with salty saliva and she begins to heave. She moves onto her hands and knees. Looking at her brother’s toes, she sees the brown stuff is also on his feet and elbows. Pearl vomits all over her mother’s slippery vermilion tiles.

Pearl does a certain thing with her soft, pink toy rabbit. He’s bald in places and has yellow buttons for eyes, and the insides of his floppy ears are made from a shiny fabric she likes to rub between her thumb and fingers. When Pearl was very little she discovered that if she pushed her rabbit up in the nook between her legs and squeezed him tight, then a lovely, lonely, secret feeling flooded from him into her, taking her breath away. Most people think how cute it is, the way Pearl will not be parted from her toy. No one knows about his special powers. Her father reads a story every night, mostly about good girls with straight fringes and striped dresses who help their mothers and are kind to pets, but at the moment they are reading
The Jungle Book
. Pearl thinks she could be the brother of Mowgli. That way, he would never pine to go back to the boring man-village; he’d have a person with him in the jungle whenever one was needed. The radiator clicks warmly and the curtains hang in even folds as she lies on the pillow, watching her father’s mouth telling her about the wolf clan and the lonely hill they use as their home. His hands are holding the book in a way Pearl loves, and she is holding her pink bunny so he can follow things easily; his ears point upwards and his yellow buttons look over the top of the blanket. Then Pearl has an idea. She pulls her rabbit out and gives him to her father, who absent-mindedly holds him in his open palm as he reads. Pearl looks into the yellow buttons of her rabbit sitting there on her father’s hand and soon she feels the familiar, luscious quiver her bunny always gives
her.

Pearl’s father promises snow. She has absolute faith, but still the snow is reluctant. In the shed they pull down the sleigh with its metal runners, Pearl passes the oil and a rag for him to rub each curved, rusting length. Then they go out into the blasted winter garden and hold hands as he sniffs the air. Well, he says, and sniffs again. Pearl doesn’t interrupt. Yes, he says, I think very soon, and he suddenly tightens his grip on her gloved hand. It feels like an electric shock leaping up Pearl’s arm, he is so strong. Which day, Daddy? she asks. This weekend definitely, he says, and shocks her one more time. On Saturday the sky is porridge-coloured. Pearl imagines the blobs of snow teeming against each other as they get ready. She doesn’t want to eat any lunch, even though her mother has made toast soldiers. The brown dotted egg smells funny. A banana has been waiting, curved around half her plate. She gags pointedly on it until her mother gives up and snatches it out of her slack fist. Then she goes to the park and settles herself on a swing. Pearl keeps her eyes shut. She wants to feel the snow first. She sits until her nose tip is wet and her feet are freezing. As the hours go by her hands in their woollen gloves meld to the swing chains. It begins to get dark. Pearl is pale, almost swooning with cold and hunger. The lamp lights come on but Pearl doesn’t see them. Then, softly, softly, snowflakes touch her lips and eyelids and she leaps off the swing. Pearl twirls in the shifting, snow-bedazzled park until her red hat flies away and she falls
down.

There’s nothing to do. Pearl’s friend Fee has gone on holiday. For weeks before she went, Pearl wouldn’t speak to her. They still met every day of course. At first, Fee tried to explain about the place they always went for their holidays; about the sea, and camping, but Pearl wouldn’t listen. On the evening before Fee left they were under the privet hedge in Pearl’s garden. But why? Fee kept on asking. Why won’t you speak, my love? Pearl sat cross-legged, picking a scab on her knee, her face set like a fierce, rosy mask. Fee tried to hold Pearl’s hand. I can’t help it, my parents are in charge, you know that, she told Pearl. They both watched blood ooze out from under the ripped scab. Pearl was silent. She pulled in her cheeks and made her lips like a cartoon fish. As Fee sobbed, Pearl put her own squished-up mouth on the wet, broken scab and sucked. Then she screamed at Fee with bloody lips and punched her in the stomach. Now Pearl looks out of her bedroom window at the children playing in the street, and rests her middle on the windowsill tiles. She can feel a chilly pulse in her belly that comes from her navel. The pulse seems to rise and sit in the tubes of her ears and the cave of her mouth. It’s a wrong, blush-making feeling, but Pearl stays pressed against the sill, thinking of Fee, the way she’d looked after the punch, struggling to close her lips over her sticky-out front teeth. Pearl has known about this pulsing feeling and the windowsill for a long time, but she hated it so much she only did it once, till now. She is going to do it every day, until her best friend Fee comes
back.

Pearl is making a costume for the doll she was given as a birthday gift. Already the doll’s got a blind eye, a missing hand and a severe haircut. Mostly it lies, splay-legged, under the bed. Pearl’s found her mother’s sharp scissors and is cutting an old jumper, but it won’t keep still. She’s thrown by how hopeless she is; even her mother snips through all sorts of things, all the time, without any trouble. Pearl begins to get more energetic. The Blob holds onto her armchair, watching her fight with the snarled-up wool. Bloody! she shouts, throwing the mess down and making him flinch. Do you see this stupid doll? she asks him as he loses his balance and sits down on the floor. I didn’t want it. She stands over him and tells him that no one ever asks her what she wants. In fact, no one asks me anything, she says. The Blob sucks his thumb and plays with a carpet tuft. Then he wants to get on the chair so Pearl bunks him up. Immediately he starts to scream. She grabs him. Blood is blooming on her dress, leaking from his leg. Pearl slaps her hand over his mouth so violently he stops, and realises that a point of the scissors has gouged a lump of flesh from his bare thigh. She snatches bits of jumper, pressing, and looks around for something better. When she turns back the jumper is wet and scarlet. Her brother gulps, sucking his thumb, his eyes fixed on hers. Make a sound and you’re dead, she says, and tucks him into the chair, covering him with a pile of material. Then she listens at the door. Now she is going to creep out and hide the scissors in the woods, then, maybe, later, come back
home.

As her mother screws a lock and bolt to Pearl’s bedroom door she explains that, except for school, Pearl will not be allowed out until she considers what she has done wrong and apologises. The Blob whispers under the door as often as he can. Pearl thinks it’s nice, lying with her ear to the gap, listening to his little baby-messages. If she squints she can see the bandage on his leg. She has curled her voice up in her throat, though, and sent it to sleep. In school she is so silent her teacher has even taken her into the Headmaster’s office, but no one can get Pearl to utter a word. After a while she decides to eat only flat food like slices of cucumber and tomato, maybe crisps; things she doesn’t have to open her mouth too wide for. After seven days her mother joins The Blob on the landing outside her bedroom. Pearl lies on her bed, arms behind her head, bare feet resting on the wall above the pillows. Her tummy feels scooped-out and her hip bones sharp. She hears her mother telling The Blob things he must repeat to her, but she no longer bothers to listen. Late one night she wakes to the sound of her mother unscrewing the lock and bolt. At the start of the second week Fee visits with a small plate of cheese slices and apple half-moons arranged like the petals of a flower. From your mother, my love, she says, placing them on the bedside table. Pearl closes her eyes and feels Fee lean over her. When’s your Dad coming home? Fee asks, her thin, reddish hair falling onto Pearl’s face as she kisses her pale lips. Four days’ time, Pearl says. Then she’s silent again.

Pearl thinks about how she has only one grandmother. Fee has two, other children have two. She doesn’t mind so much about not having grandads, but her one Gran is so nice, she would like another. She sits on the settee and feels the knobbly cushion under her thighs. Her father is reading the paper beside her. She looks at his crossed leg and brown shoe with its laces firmly tied, and the gap between his fawn sock and cord trouser. The skin she can see is darker than the sock, lightly covered with pretty brown hairs, and she can’t stop herself reaching to touch. He puts the paper down. Are you tickling me? he asks, smiling. Yes, says Pearl, but really she knows that’s not true. Daddy, she says, why have I only got one granny? Her father folds the paper and lifts her onto his lap. My mother would have been your other gran, he explains, while Pearl rests her head on his chest. But she’s not here any more. Where is she then? Pearl says, although suddenly she almost knows. She’s dead, her father says. She was ill, and then she died. And I was very sad. Pearl sits up straight. She feels a new idea taking shape in her head. It’s amazing. Her father looks a little worried. But Pearl, he says, then you came along and cheered me up. You are my little star. Pearl smiles at her father and gives him a long hug. Now that’s true, she thinks. I am star-ish. I have to get going, she says, giving him a kiss on his fragrant cheek. Then she slides down from her father’s lap and runs out into the garden. In amongst the apple trees she feels so excited she wants to float like a balloon. So, mothers can die, she thinks, running from tree to tree. I never knew
that.