Reasons She Goes to the Woods (4 page)

Pearl thinks about her leg inside its lumpy plaster cast. How it must be growing strong, like a pale, sturdy root does, in the dark. She has been patient, all these weeks, and silent, even when needles of pain jabbed her. Today the cast will be removed. It feels like a huge thing is about to happen. Her aunty takes her to the hospital. Pearl is glad; her aunty is comfortable, and doesn’t expect anything. When they get there, Pearl is so excited, she feels as if her whole body is shimmering with white light. Don’t be nervous, her aunty says, patting her hands. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Then she examines Pearl’s face. But you’re not frightened, are you? Pearl shakes her head. You are a funny little thing. Pearl nods from where she lies on the couch and watches the nurse use a little instrument with a whirring blade to cut through the thick cast. White powder flies around, and then Pearl sees the nurse force apart the crumbling shell. Suddenly, the cast looks old and fragile. And there is Pearl’s new leg, all covered in wisps of bandage and fluff. The nurse uses a wet cloth to wipe it clean. Pearl can see strange pink signs on her shin, and remembers the bone splintering through. She examines her leg. As good as new, her aunty says, stroking her back. Pearl is silent. She knows her leg is better than new. She is even more beautiful now, with the marks like a secret message only she can read. Up she gets from the bed. Can I go? she asks, limping to the door. She wants to run and run and never
stop.

When Pearl gets home from school, the front door is ajar and in the kitchen nothing’s on the table, just a bowl of wrinkled apples. Where’s my snack? she shouts, and throws her bag down. She’s so hungry her hands are sweating. Then she sees smashed china on the floor, and across the wall a long, streaky stain. Pearl’s scalp begins to tingle; the house feels wrong. From upstairs she can just make out a rumble of voices. She tiptoes to the hall and waits. Her father appears on the landing and after him, a strange man. When they come down the stairs Pearl hides and peeps out as the man shakes her father’s hand and leaves. She decides to stay hidden, and when the coast is clear, grab some food and go to the woods, but her father stands in the hall and doesn’t move. Pearl sees how his hand rests on the doorknob, and she frowns, watching the nerveless way he eventually lets go and allows his arm to drop to his side. He’s not his usual, substantial self. Now she understands. Her mother is ill again, and that man was the special doctor. Pearl feels her chest emptying; everything will be ruined now. The house has turned itself inside out. She realises with a jolt her father has gone, though she didn’t see him move. She picks up a jagged chunk of plate. There are sounds from the lounge and she hides again. With the chunk she scrapes a note to herself on the back of the kitchen door. Then she creeps out and looks into the lounge. There is her father with his hands hiding his face. His shoulders are moving. Oh no, Daddy, she cries, and runs to embrace
him.

Pearl is staying at Aunty Betty’s. She loves the spicy, untidy kitchen, and the way her aunty darts round, always knowing where every little thing is. Yes, I’m your mother’s sister, she explains. But Pearl still thinks her mother could never have a sister; it feels impossible. She gazes with narrowed eyes while her aunt continues to flash a knife through potatoes, trying to catch a glimpse of her mother in her aunty’s smiling face. I don’t think I believe you, Aunty Betty, Pearl says politely. Her aunty kisses her cheek and shoos her out of the kitchen. She climbs the wide wall that surrounds the garden to sit on a comfortable, sun-warmed stone. The world’s confusing, she thinks. Raspberry-coloured valerian fizzes out from the cracks below like mad eyelashes, and a creeping plant with round leaves is inching its way over the surface of the wall. Pearl fingers a hairy, coin-shaped leaf. It’s just the same as the belly skin of a hamster. Most things are like something else, she thinks. But her mother’s not like anyone. Then she realises that these plants think the wall is the earth; and she doesn’t blame them. On her front she hangs her head over the edge. Below her, on the ground at the base of the wall, spreads a pool of sky-blue flowers. From this angle Pearl is seeing down the wall, through the plants that sprout from it and on into the billowy blueness. After looking and looking she gets mixed up, and starts to feel as if she’s pinned to a forgotten surface. So, she wonders sleepily, am I looking the right way? Where exactly is the sky? And where is the earth?

Pearl is sitting cross-legged in School Assembly. A mass of children sway to another stupid song, and Pearl is looking about, trying to find something. She scans along the huge curtains that flank one wall, and there amongst the folds and big blue roosters she sees, for the first time, the little skeleton girl. Over the heads of the fidgeting children Pearl gazes into the eye sockets of the skeleton girl, who holds the curtain out of the way with her bone hand and smiles back with long teeth. Then she points at Pearl with one finger and lets the curtain fall. Through Spelling and English, and when her teacher tells a story, Pearl keeps looking around the classroom. In the canteen, sitting amongst the plastic plates of uneaten dinner and the shouting children, she thinks maybe she’s caught a glimpse of the girl hanging quietly from the rafters, but she knows she’s mistaken. After school, Pearl walks quickly, but doesn’t go home. She sits by the stream, dabbles her feet and thinks. There is a minty perfume in the dim, mobile air. As she gazes across the shallow water into the ferns, she realises the skeleton girl is there, watching. Pearl listens to the clink of bones as the girl walks down the bank and folds with a clatter into the sludge and shale on the opposite side of the stream. Through the girl’s ribs Pearl can see ferns trembling. In the stream Pearl’s feet look grey, and so do the fanned-out bones of the skeleton girl’s feet. Pearl doesn’t say a thing when the girl drops her head to one side and splashes her stick legs in the water. She’s just glad the skeleton girl is with her
now.

It’s always nicer when Pearl’s mother is not at home. The Blob and Pearl are friends then, and help their father in the garden. This evening The Blob plays with his cars, but Pearl is hard at work digging with a spade, and later, riddling rough earth. Look, Daddy, she calls, holding up a big circular riddle with its heap of captured stones until he notices and says she’s his good girl. Pearl walks between the tall runner-bean aisles, smelling the plants and searching for earwig horns that poke out from the scarlet flowers. Her father clears the ground and throws weeds and garden rubbish in a heap. After the fire is lit he calls the children to sit and listen to it hiss and sing, but the smoke always makes Pearl hungry. The evening blackbirds calling to each other from the row of watchful trees are so sad she ends up hugging her father’s leg until he can’t work any more. Then they all go into the kitchen and prepare the plants he’s thinned out of the vegetable rows. I’ll be mother, Pearl says, tying on a big apron, and sets about splashing cold water over them in the sink; wispy carrots, soft, heartless florets of lettuce and, best of all, wands of spring onions, their bulbs slippery, eyeball-white. With chilled hands Pearl first shares out the tiny carrots. Father slices thick hunks of bread, butters them, then piles on the tender lettuces and onions and rains down salt. He puts more bread on top and cuts the whole thing into four squares. On the side of their plates sit cubes of cheese. In the evening light, Pearl and her brother smile at each other over the juicy, green-filled, oniony sandwiches.

Pearl hates birthday parties. Here’s your pretty dress and ribbons, her mother says, holding up a flounced, white frock embroidered with navy stars. Look at these sweet shoes I bought you. She’s home again, and trying to be nice. But Pearl lies on the floor singing la-la, la-la, la-la, using just two notes, while her mother stands with the outfit in her spread arms. Pearl’s hair will not behave. Her mother gets upset, messing with the cow’s lick and curl, wetting it, clipping. This thing, she mutters. It just won’t stay put. When she’s ready, Pearl hunkers down, the puffy dress spread out. Everything she wears is disgusting, she tells her mother; then she jumps up and gallops off. Her brother hides, but Pearl finds him in the understairs cupboard and drags him out. He’s holding his squashy, bald tiger. Give, shouts Pearl, but he hides it behind his back. Pearl draws in her lips. You will be sorry, she hisses through bared teeth. He begins to cry. I’m counting to three, she says
,
then it’s The Claw for you, matey. Pearl’s brother furrows his brow and juts his lower lip. Oh no, I’m so sc-sc-scared, she says, glad he won’t hand over his tiger
.
Right
you little nit, she whispers, and raises one hand, stiffening the thumb and fingers inwards, then grabs his cheeks and squeezes her fingers together. Feel The Claw
,
she yells, her silver curl bouncing free. Her brother’s face is crunched between his upper and lower teeth. He wriggles, but her grip is strong and each move hurts him. Then she lets go; she’s had a good idea. Later, she will go up to the stupid birthday girl, there amongst the sickening jelly and balloons, and do The Claw on
her.

There are soft mounds of newly mown grass on the field. Fee and Pearl gather armfuls for the walls of a house. They need a kitchen and lounge. You be father, Pearl tells Fee. I will be the kind, beautiful mother. She considers, her face almost obscured by fragrant, loose grass. No, you be my child, she says. Fathers are never there when you need them. Fee thinks she’ll be a baby, but Pearl says, be a girl about your own age. Okay, says Fee, that’s easy; I am a girl my own age. Pearl shakes out a layer of grass for the lounge carpet. Yes, but you’ll be a
pretend girl
, she states. Okay, my love, Fee says. She knows Pearl hates explaining games too much. They go on being mother and child, and time passes. I must say, you are a very good child, Pearl says, rearranging Fee’s straggly hair. Now wait there, she adds, pointing to a grass chair. And no, sshhh, she says, when Fee opens her mouth; little ones should be quiet. Pearl disappears, and when she gets back she’s carrying a bag. Now it’s dinner, she announces, kissing Fee’s cheeks and tidying her dress. They sit and Pearl spreads a tea towel, placing on it an orange, dried prunes and a ham-and-egg pie. Fee contemplates the pie. Pearl, she says, won’t your mother be angry you’ve stolen her food? Pearl doesn’t answer. Instead she shares the picnic out. Nibbling prunes, she watches Fee eating half of the pie. Isn’t that nice, my treasure? she asks, smiling. I’m sure you’d like more. So Fee eats the other half. Thank you, Mummy, Fee says. Pearl is busy peeling the orange. I think you’re a lovely mother, Fee tells her. Really? Pearl asks, am
I?

Walkies! Pearl’s mother calls. She makes them stand up straight in the hallway. Hands by your sides! she commands. Then she explains that only Pearl is allowed out. Her brother has to stay and guard the house. He couldn’t even guard his bottle of milk, Pearl thinks. He’s too little. And he’ll be scared all alone. I’m the boss of you both, their mother says, picking up her purse and holding the door open for Pearl. You out, you in, she points at them in turn. The Blob’s chin trembles and he stares hard at Pearl. Don’t touch anything, she calls back as she’s dragged into the windy afternoon. I’ll think of a plan! Outside, it seems to Pearl that the birds are being hurled about the sky like small, feathered stones. Her mother’s hair is spiky and the wind has slapped a makeshift red smile on her white face. Come along you, she shouts. Stop dawdling. I’m following my nose, and it won’t wait for ever. On they go, Pearl hunched against the cold and her mother striding out, throwing her purse into the air and catching it like a sporty girl. When Pearl thinks about her brother and his trembling chin, something pings inside her skull. She looks at her mother’s back and the pinging gets louder. From the tips of her fingers, jets of fire arc out towards her mother’s head. Stop that or else, her mother says calmly, without looking round. Cars blare past while they wait to cross the road. Pearl hears one final loud click as she sees the skeleton girl nodding her skull amongst the pink flowers in the hedgerow opposite. Then, in blessed silence, she slips behind her mother and gets ready to shove.

Ever since the traffic incident with her mother, Pearl has been in her father’s bad books. She tripped, I expect, he’d said to Pearl’s mother, after she’d dragged Pearl home. Gently pulling her onto his knee, he’d asked Pearl if it was an accident. But she wouldn’t answer, even though her heart was about to break out from her chest and flop like an almost dead fish down to the rug. After a short while he’d squeezed her hands and said, go to your room. I can’t look at you. Pearl’s legs felt as if they were filled with some heavy liquid. The stairs towered above her. To climb them she had to use her hands and knees. Now she doesn’t want to come out of her room ever again. She pokes her tongue between her upper lip and front teeth, and even there it’s cold. Every time she thinks of how her daddy said he didn’t want to look at her she dry-sobs. Finally she realises the sun is shining, and so she climbs out of the window. Dropping lightly to the porch, she scrambles down the wall, grazing her knees. Deep in the flickering woods she struggles amongst the ferns, makes a burrow and falls asleep. She dreams that the roof of her mouth is crammed with innumerable grubs. It feels as if they are packed deep inside her head, growing fat. Clouds travel the sky and rain falls on her. Birds hop across her chest, grass grows between her toes. Underneath her knees insects make their homes. Then comes the moment when thousands of tiny blue butterflies fly out from her mouth in dazzling ribbons. As Pearl watches them merge with the sky, she thinks she hears her father’s voice.