The Land of Decoration

The Empty Room

IN THE BEGINNING there was an empty room, a little bit of space, a little bit of light, a little bit of time.

I said: “I am going to make fields,” and I made them from place mats, carpet, brown corduroy, and felt. Then I made rivers from crêpe paper, plastic wrap, and shiny tinfoil, and mountains from papier mâché and bark. And I looked at the fields and I looked at the rivers and I looked at the mountains and I saw they were good.

I said: “Now for some light,” and I made a sun from a wire metal cage strung with beads that hung down from above, I made a sliver of moon and luminous stars, and at the edge of the world I made a sea from a mirror, reflecting the sky and the boats and the birds and the land (where it touched). And I looked at the sun and I looked at the moon and I looked at the sea and I saw they were good.

I said: “What about homes?” And I made one from a ball of dry grass and one from a hollow tree stump and one from a barrel that toffees came in and I gave it a fishing line and sail and made space for a blanket and toothbrush and cup, and a stove, and put a gull high on the mast (which was really a broom handle) and launched it out on the sea (which was really a mirror).

I made houses from chocolate-dip-cookie cartons: the plastic scoop where the chocolate was, that was the bedroom, and the round room below, where the cookies had been, that was the living room. I made houses from a matchbox and a bird’s nest and a pea pod and a shell. And I looked at the houses and saw they were good.

I said: “Now we need animals,” and I made paper birds and wool rabbits and felt cats and dogs. I made furry bears, striped leopards, and fire-breathing, scale-crusted dragons. I made glittering fish and cockleshell crabs and birds on very thin wires.

Last I said: “We need people,” and I modeled faces and hands, lips, teeth, and tongues. I dressed them and wigged them and breathed into their lungs.

And I looked at the people and I looked at the animals and I looked at the land. And I saw they were good.

The Ground from the Air

IF YOU LOOK at the earth from the ground, it seems very big. Stand in a playground and bend down and put your face to the ground as if you were looking for something small, and it seems bigger still. There are miles of concrete going outward and miles of sky going upward and miles of nothing going nowhere in between. Boys playing football are giants, the ball is a planet, girls skipping are trees uprooting themselves, and with each turn of the rope the ground trembles. But if you look down from the sky, the boys and the girls and the ball and the rope seem smaller than flies.

I watch the boys and girls. I know their names but I don’t speak to them. When they notice me, I look away. I pick up a candy wrapper next to my shoe. I will make it into flowers or a rainbow or maybe a crown. I put the wrapper inside a bag and walk on.

Through the concrete, weeds are growing. At the corners of buildings they are pushing through, whittling their way to the light. I wiggle some loose and settle them with soil in a tiny tin cup that held chocolate and a tube that held sweets. They will be planted again and then they will be oaks and pampas and beeches and palms. I pick up a shoelace lying in a puddle. “This will be a hose,” I say. “Or a stream. Or a python. Or maybe a creeper.” And I am happy because in just a few hours I will be back in my room making things.

Then suddenly I am falling; the ground rushes up to meet me, and gravel is biting my knees. A boy is standing over me. He is tall. He has a thick neck. He has blue eyes and freckles and white skin and a nose like a pig. He has yellow hair and pale lashes and a cowlick. Though I don’t think anyone would want to lick him, not even cows, who lick their own noses. Two boys are with him. One takes the bag I am holding. He tips it up and wrappers and laces and can tops blow away.

The yellow-haired boy pulls me up. He says: “What shall we do with her?”

“Hang her on the railings.”

“Pull down her pants.”

But the boy with yellow hair smiles. He says: “Have you ever seen the inside of a toilet, freak?”

A bell rings and, all across the playground, groups of children run to line up at the double doors. The yellow-haired boy says: “Shit.” To me he says: “Wait till Monday,” pushes me backward, and runs off with the others.

When they are a little way off he turns round. He has a sleepy look in his eyes, as if he is dreaming and enjoying the dream. He draws his finger across his throat, then takes off laughing.

I close my eyes and lean against the dustbins. When I open my eyes I pick the gravel out of my knees and spit on them. I hold them hard at the edges to make them stop stinging. Then I begin walking back to the school building. I am sad because I will not be able to make flowers or a stream or an oak tree after all. But what is worse is that, on Monday, Neil Lewis will put my head down the toilet, and if I die who will make me again?

The bell has stopped ringing now and the playground is empty. The sky is lowering. It looks like rain. Then from nowhere a gust of wind rises. It whips my hair and balloons my coat and carries me forward. And tumbling and flapping and fluttering around me go wrappers and papers and laces and tops.

Holding My Breath

MY NAME IS Judith McPherson. I am ten years old. On Monday a miracle happened. That is what I’m going to call it. And I did it all. It was because of what Neil Lewis said about putting my head down the toilet. It was because I was frightened. But it was also because I had faith.

It all began on Friday night. Father and I were eating lamb and bitter greens in the kitchen. Lamb and bitter greens are Necessary Things. Our lives are full of Necessary Things because we are living in the Last Days, but Necessary Things are often difficult, like preaching. Preaching is necessary because Armageddon is near, but most people don’t want to be preached to and sometimes they shout at us.

Lamb represents the firstborns God killed in Egypt and Christ, who died for mankind. Bitter greens reminded the Israelites of the bitterness of slavery and how good it was to be in the Promised Land. Father says they are full of iron. But I like to think of lambs in a field, not on my plate, and when I try to swallow bitter greens, my throat closes up. I was having more trouble eating than usual that Friday night on account of what Neil Lewis said. After a while I gave up and put down my fork. I said: “What’s dying like?”

Father had his overalls on from the factory. The kitchen light made hollows around his eyes. He said: “What?”

“What’s dying like?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“I just wondered.”

His face was dark. “Eat up.”

I loaded my fork with bitter greens and closed my eyes. I would have held my nose but Father would have seen. I counted, then swallowed. After a while I said: “How long could someone survive if their head was held underwater?”

“What?”

“How long could someone survive underwater?” I said. “I mean, I expect they’d last longer if they were used to it. At least until someone found them. But if it was their first time. If the person holding them down wanted them to die—which they would—I mean, if their head was held down.”

Father said: “What are you talking about?”

I looked down. “How long could someone survive underwater?”

He said: “I have no idea!”

I swallowed the rest of the bitter greens without chewing; then Father took away the plates and got the Bibles out.

We read the Bible every day and then we ponder what we have read. Reading the Bible and pondering are also Necessary Things. Pondering is necessary because it is the only way we can find out what we think about God. But God’s ways are unsearchable. This means you could ponder forever and still not know what to think. When I try to ponder, my mind slips to other things, like how I make a swimming pool and steps from an embroidery loop for the model world in my room or how many pear drops I can buy with my pocket money or how much more pondering there is still left to do. But afterward we always talk about what we have pondered, so there’s no way you can pretend you have been pondering when you haven’t.

It was getting dark outside the window. I could hear boys riding their bikes in the back lane. They were going up a ramp, and every time they came down it the board clanked. I looked at Father. I could tell by the way his eyebrows jutted that I must pay attention. I could tell by the way his glasses glittered that he must not be interrupted. I looked down, took a deep breath, and held it.

“In the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth day, the voice of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, remember this date, this very day, because the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem.’…”

At twenty-five seconds the room began to pulse and my breath escaped in little puffs. I waited a minute, then took another.

A dog barked. A dustbin lid clattered. Seconds dripped from the clock on the mantelpiece. At twenty-five seconds the room began to pulse again and I had to let my breath out again. I must have done it quite suddenly, because Father looked up and said: “Are you all right?”

I opened my eyes wide and nodded.

“Are you following?”

I nodded again and opened my eyes even wider. He looked at me from under his eyebrows, then began to read again.

“‘Now your impurity is badness. Because I tried to save you but you would not be saved, and you will not be saved again until my wrath against you has subsided. I the Lord have spoken.’”

I waited two whole minutes, then I took another breath.

I held it. And held it.

I said: “I am going to do this. I am not going to drown.”

I hung on to the arms of the chair. I pushed my feet into the floor. I pressed my bottom to the seat. I got to twenty-four seconds when Father said: “What are you doing?”

“Pondering!” I said, and my breath came out in a rush.

A vein in Father’s temple flickered. “You’re very red.”

“It’s hard work,” I said.

“This isn’t a game.”

“I know.”

“Are you following?”

“Yes!”

Father blew a little air out of his nose, then began to read again.

I waited three whole minutes. Then I took another breath.

I filled each bit of my body with air: my stomach, my lungs, my arms, and my legs. My chest hurt. My head pounded. My legs jumped up and down.

I didn’t notice that Father had stopped reading. I didn’t see him looking at me till he said: “What’s going on?”

“I don’t feel well.”

He put down his Bible. “Let’s get something straight. I am not reading this for your entertainment. I am not reading this for the benefit of my health. I’m reading this because it will save your life. So, sit up, stop fidgeting, and start paying attention!”

“OK,” I said.

He waited a minute, then began to read again. “‘The time has come. I will not hold back; I will not have compassion, nor will I relent. You will be judged according to your actions,’ declares the Sovereign Lord.”

I tried to follow, but all I could think about was the toilet bowl, all I could hear was the cistern flushing, all I could feel were hands pushing me down.

“Then the people asked me, ‘Tell us, what do these things have to do with us?’ And I said to them, ‘The voice of the Lord came to me, saying: “Say to the house of Israel, Judith!”’”

Father read it just like that, without stopping and without looking up.

“What?” My heart snagged on my cardigan.

“Carry on reading please.”

“Oh.”

I looked, but the page teemed with ants. I turned and my face got hot. I turned back and my face got hotter.

Father closed his Bible. He said: “Go to your room.”

“I can do it!” I said.

“No, you obviously have better things to do.”

“I was listening!”

Father said: “Judith.”

I stood up.

My head felt very hot, as if there were too many things going on in it. It was jumbled too, as if someone had shaken it up. I went to the door. I put my hand on the handle and I said: “It’s not fair.”

Father looked up. “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

His eyes glittered. “It better be.”

What Is Dying Like?

THERE IS A world in my room. It is made from things no one else wanted and it is made with things that were my mother’s, that she left to me, and it has taken most of my life to make.

The world stretches from the second floorboard by the door to the radiator underneath the window. There are mountains by the wall, where the room is darkest, and great cliffs and caves. There are rivers running down from the mountains to hills and pastures, and here is where there are the first houses. Then there is the valley and the fields and the town, and after the town there are some more farms and then there is the beach and the beach road and a forest of pine trees and a bay and a pier, and finally, right by the radiator under the window, there is the sea, with a few rocks and a lighthouse and some boats and sea creatures. Strung from the ceiling on short strings there are planets and stars, from longer strings there is the sun and the moon, and from the longest strings of all, clouds, airplanes, and the light shade is a paper hot-air balloon.

The world is called the Land of Decoration. In the Book of Ezekiel it says God swore to bring the Israelites out of captivity to a wonderful country. It was flowing with milk and honey. It lacked nothing, it was a miracle, a paradise. It was so different from everything around it that it stood out like a jewel and was called “the decoration of all the lands.” When I close the door of my room, the walls fold back and there are planets and rainbows and suns. The floor rolls up and there are fields and roads at my feet and hundreds of small people. If I stretch out my hand I can touch the top of a mountain, if I blow I can ripple the sea. I lift my head and look right into the sun. I feel happy when I go into my room. But that Friday night, I didn’t notice any of those things.

I closed the door and leaned against it. I wondered if I should go back down and tell Father why I had been holding my breath. But if I did he would only say: “Have you told the teacher?” and I would say: “Yes,” and Mr. Davies had said: “No one is going to put anyone’s head down the toilet,” and Father would say: “Well, then.” But I knew that Neil would just the same. And I wondered why Father never believed me.

I sat down on the floor. A wood louse was crawling out from underneath my knees, flicking its antennae and strumming its feet. It looked like a tiny armadillo. I watched it climb the sand dunes in the Land of Decoration and wondered if it would ever find its way out again. We did an experiment with wood lice in school. We built a plasticine maze and counted the number of times they turned left or right. They nearly always turned left. This is because they cannot think for themselves. I wondered if this meant the wood louse would come out eventually or would just keep going round in circles until it died in a little crusty ball.

Darkness was closing the valley up like a book between black covers. It was sifting down over the broken-backed streets, over roofs, and over aerials, back lanes, shops, dustbins and streetlights, the railway, and great chimneys of the factory. Soon the darkness would blot out the lights. For a while they would glow all the more brightly, but eventually they, too, would be eaten up. If you looked into the sky, you would see their glow for a little while. Then nothing. I wondered what it would be like to die. Was it like going to sleep or like waking up? Was there no more time? Or did time go on forever?

Perhaps everything I thought was real would turn out not to have been and everything that wasn’t real was. I don’t know why but I looked for the wood louse. It suddenly seemed very important to find it, but I couldn’t, even though only a few seconds ago it had been there, and there was not enough air in the room and it was like someone had struck a match and it was burning up all the oxygen.

I sat back against the wall and my heart began to beat hard. Something was coming toward me, unfurling like a cloud low down on the horizon. The cloud gathered. It filled my mouth and my eyes and there was roaring and things happening very quickly and all at the same time, and then I was sitting back against the wall and sweat was running down from underneath my hair and I felt stranger than I had ever felt in my life.

And if I had to say how I felt, I would say like a box that had been turned upside down. And the box was surprised by just how empty it was.

Why I Will Not Live Very Long

I DO NOT expect to live long in this world. This is not because I have an illness or someone is going to kill me (though Neil Lewis might). It is because very soon God will bring Armageddon.

At Armageddon there will be rock faces yawning and buildings buckling and roads splitting. The sea will rise and there will be thunder and lightning and earthquakes and balls of fire rolling down streets. The sun will be dark and the moon won’t give its light. Trees will be uprooted and mountains flattened and houses will crumble to the ground. The stars will be hurled down and the heavens broken and the planets toppled. The stars will be torn down and the sea will crack with a sound like a plate and the air will be full of what was, and in the end there will be nothing left but a heap of rubbish.

We know Armageddon is close because we live in a Den of Iniquity, and Father says there is nowhere for the Righteous Man to put his foot, quite literally sometimes. We also know we are near the end because there are wars and earthquakes and famines and people having “no natural affection,” so they strap explosives to themselves or stab someone because they like the watch they’re wearing or film one another cutting people’s heads off. There are Sheep (Brothers like us) and Goats (unbelievers) and Lost Sheep (Brothers who have been Removed from the congregation or have fallen away). There are Weeds in the Wheat (people who pretend to be Brothers but aren’t), False Prophets (leaders of other religions), the Wild Beast (all world religions), Locusts (us with our stinging message), a rise in Immoral Relations (sex), and signs in the sun, moon, and stars (no one knows what they mean yet).

But in the real Land of Decoration, there won’t be any unbelievers or any war or any famine or any suffering. There won’t be any pollution or any towns either. There will be fields, and those who have died will come back to life and those who are living will never die at all and there will be no more sickness, because God will wipe out every tear from our eyes. We know this because God has promised.

Father says it’s only a matter of time before someone blows the world up anyway or money becomes useless, or a virus wipes us out, or the hole the size of Greenland in the ozone layer becomes the size of Australia. So it’s a good thing Armageddon is coming and nothing of this old world will be left.

And I think it’s good, because polar bears are starving and trees are dying and if you put a plastic bag in the earth it will never go away and the earth has had enough of plastic bags. And because in the new world I will see my mother.

Moving Mountains

ON SATURDAY MORNING I woke from a dream in which I was swimming in a gigantic toilet bowl and Neil Lewis was reeling me in on a line. As I came through the water, I woke up. The bedside clock said 9:48. In forty-seven hours and twelve minutes I might be dead.

I practiced holding my breath that day and got to twenty-eight seconds. At bedtime I had a stomach pain and had to have Gaviscon and crackers. On Sunday I woke up as if I were coming through water again, and my clothes were sticking to me and the pain was worse. I looked at the clock. There were now twenty-six hours to go.

I couldn’t eat breakfast, but Father didn’t notice. He dropped an armful of wood beside the Rayburn stove and swigged his tea. “Ready?”

I was. I had on my best pinafore and the blouse with the roses on the collar and my black shiny shoes. My hair was in plaits. I’m not sure how even they were. Father grabbed his sheepskin coat and cap and I put on my coat.

Outside, it was very still and very cold. The air was misty and the sky was one block of cloud the color of feathers. No one was about, except the dog from number 29. We went over the roundabout and turned down the hill. I could see the town, the aerials and chimneys and rooftops, the river, and the electricity pylons striding like lonely giants down the valley. And at the bottom of the valley was the factory, a great black thing with funnels and towers and ladders and pipes and above it huge clouds of smoke.

At the foot of the hill we passed the multistory car park, the bingo hall, the Labour Club, the unemployment office, the betting shop, and the pub where bleach mixes with the beer smell. On weekends there are water balloons on the pavement and sometimes nappies stained red. Once I saw a needle and we had to cross over.

In our town nothing seems to be where it should. There are car engines in gardens and plastic bags in bushes and shopping trolleys in the river. There are bottles in the gutter and mice in the bottle bank, walls with words on and signs with words crossed out. There are streetlights with no lights and holes in the road and holes in the pavement and holes in exhaust pipes. There are houses with broken windows and men with broken teeth and swings with broken seats. There are dogs with no ears and cats with one eye and once I saw a bird with not many feathers.

We passed Woolworths, the pound shop, Kwik Save, and the Co-op grocery store. Then we went through the tunnel beneath the bridge where the walls are dark green and trickling, and when we came out we were on a piece of wasteland and there was the Meeting Hall. The Meeting Hall is a black metal shed and has three windows down each side. Inside there are a lot of red seats and on each windowsill bowls of yellow plastic roses with pretend droplets of water stuck onto the petals at regular intervals.

Father and Mother helped to build the Meeting Hall. It isn’t very big but it belongs to the Brothers. There weren’t many people in the congregation then, only four or five. Without Father and Mother, the congregation might have fizzled out, but they kept preaching, and eventually more people got baptized. It was wonderful when they finally had a meeting place of their own. It took three years to build and every penny was donated by the Brothers.

Inside the hall, it was cold because the radiators hadn’t warmed up yet. At the front of the hall, Elsie and May were talking to old Nel Brown in the wheelchair.

May said: “Well, if it isn’t my little treasure!”

Elsie said: “Well, if it isn’t my little love!”

“Ah, she’s a lovely girl!” said May, hugging me.

“She’s a blessing, that’s what she is!” said Elsie, kissing my cheek.

May said: “Auntie Nel was just telling us about the time she and the priest had a dustup.”

“Grape?” Nel said. Her chin wobbled as she chewed, because she doesn’t have teeth. Her top lip was whiskery. Her bottom lip was spitty.

“No thanks, Auntie Nel,” I said. I was too worried to eat, and even if I hadn’t been I wouldn’t have fancied one, because Auntie Nel smells of wee.

Uncle Stan came up. Uncle Stan is the Presiding Overseer. He drinks milk because of his ulcer and he’s from “Beemeengoomb.” Apparently Beemeengoomb is an even bigger Den of Iniquity than our town. It’s where he got his stomach ulcer, though some people say he got it because of Auntie Margaret. Stan put his arm round Auntie Nel and said: “How’s my favorite Sister?”

Nel said: “That carpet looks like it could do with Hoovering.”

Uncle Stan stopped smiling. He looked at the carpet. He said: “Right.”

Stan went to find the Hoover and I went to find Father. He was in the book room, sorting out last month’s surplus magazines with Brian. There are small white flakes on the shoulders of Brian’s jacket and in his hair. “H-h-h-how are y-y-y-you, J-J-Judith?” Brian said.

“Fine thanks,” I said. But I wasn’t. The pain in my stomach was coming back. I’d stopped thinking about Neil for a minute, only to remember again.

Alf came up. His tongue was flicking in and out at the corners of his mouth like a lizard. He said to Father: “Report cards in?” Father nodded. Alf is what Father calls “Second in Command.” He’s not much taller than me but wears little boots with heels. He is almost bald, but his hair is combed over and sprayed in a lid. I saw it lift once in the wind when we were preaching, and he jumped into the car and said: “Run and buy me some hairspray, kid!” and wouldn’t get out until I had.

Uncle Stan appeared, lugging the Hoover. He looked gray. “The speaker’s not here,” he said. “I don’t feel like giving the talk if he doesn’t turn up.”

“He will,” said Father.

“I don’t know,” said Alf. He hoisted his trousers. “The last speaker we were supposed to have got lost.” Suddenly he saw me and stopped frowning. “Josie’s got something for you.”

I didn’t like the way he was grinning. “What is it?” I said.

Father said: “It’s polite to say, ‘Thank you,’ Judith.” He frowned at me as if he was disappointed, and I flushed and looked down.

But Alf said: “I couldn’t tell you what it is, could I? That would spoil the surprise.”

Josie is Alf’s wife. She is very short and very wide, has a long white ponytail and a mouth like a slit, where creamy saliva collects in the corners and stretches like a concertina when she talks. She wears funny clothes and likes to make them for other people. So far she has made me: a crocheted dress with blue and peach roses, which she asked about until it shrank in the wash, a turquoise skirt with ribbon around the edge, which reached to the ground, a crocheted Cinderella-doll toilet-roll holder, which Father refused to have in the bathroom so I made it into a hill for the Land of Decoration, a toilet-seat cover, which now keeps drafts out at the foot of the back door, bright blue leg warmers, an orange bodysuit, two cardigans, and a balaclava. Josie must think either that we are very poor, that I am much bigger than I am, or that I am very cold. One day I will tell her that she is wrong: that we aren’t rich but we have enough money to buy clothes, that though I may appear to be older because I read the Bible well and talk to the grown-ups I am ten, and four foot four, and that most of the time I am just the right temperature.

I scanned the crowd but couldn’t see any sign of her. To be on the safe side, I went to stand behind the sound equipment with Gordon. There isn’t anyone my age in our congregation, so although Gordon is a lot older than me, I chat to him. Gordon was testing the microphones, making a pock-pock sound.

I looked at the clock. There were now exactly twenty-three hours until Neil Lewis put my head down the toilet. There was nothing for it. Gordon was setting up the microphones. I said to him: “Have you got a mint?” Gordon rummaged in his pocket. He unrolled the top of a packet and dropped a dusty white tablet into my hand. “Thanks,” I said. I only ask for Gordon’s mints in emergencies. Gordon took two and went back to untangling cables.

Gordon has not long come off heroin; he got hooked on heroin because he Got In with the Wrong Crowd. He Battles Depression, so he does very well coming to meetings. It was really serious for a While. It looked like Gordon might have to be Removed. He was marked as a bad influence. They say that God shone His light into Gordon’s heart, but I think his recovery is to do with the extra-strong mints. Father said heroin makes people happy because it takes away pain; the mints make you happy because when you have finished eating one you realize you’re not in pain anymore. It comes down to the same thing. The trouble is, Gordon is getting used to them. He can already knock back four in a row. I don’t know what he will do when he manages to get through a whole packet, because they don’t make them any stronger.

There were a lot of people in the hall now, or a lot for our congregation anyway—nearly thirty, I would say. There were even some faces we don’t usually see. Pauline, the woman who had the poltergeist Uncle Stan exorcised last spring, and Sheila from the women’s refuge. Geena from the mental home, with scars on her arms, and Wild Charlie Powell, who lives up the Tump in a wooden house among the fir trees. It felt as if something special was going to happen but I couldn’t think what.

On the platform, Alf tapped the microphone. “Brothers and Sisters,” he said, “if you’d like to take your seats, the meeting’s about to start.”

So the speaker hadn’t made it. I imagined his car tumbling down the mountain, his cries getting fainter and fainter till the battered hunk of metal disappeared into the mist. “See you later,” I said to Gordon, and went to my seat.

Father and I sit right at the front, so our knees are almost touching the platform. My neck gets a crick looking up. Father says it is better than being Distracted. Distraction leads to Destruction. But the front row has distractions of its own. The smell of Auntie Nel being one of them. I was glad of my extra-strong mint.

We stood to sing “The Joys of Kingdom Service.” Father sang loudly, bringing the sound deep from within his chest, but I couldn’t sing, partly because thinking about Neil and partly because the extra-strong mint had vacuumed all the spit out of my mouth. Father nudged me and frowned, so I stuck the mint into my cheek and shouted as loudly as he did.

We had to do the magazine study first because there was no speaker. It was called “Illuminators of the World” and was all about how we weren’t to hide our light under a bushel, which turned out to be a kind of basket. Alf said the best way we could do this was to fill in a report card. Father answered up and said what a privilege it was to be God’s mouthpieces. Elsie answered and said we met skeptics, but if we didn’t tell people how would they know? Brian said: “Th-th-th-th-th-the thing. Th-th-th-th-thing is—” But we never found out what the thing was. Auntie Nel waved her hand about but it turned out she was only telling May she had wet herself.

By that time my mint had gone, so I put my hand up and said how happy God must be to see all the little lights shining in the darkness, and Alf said: “Well, we can all see your light is shining, Sister McPherson!” But it wasn’t, and I didn’t feel happy, and just then I wished I wasn’t one of God’s lights, because if I wasn’t, Neil Lewis wouldn’t put my head down the toilet.

When the magazine study was over, Father got onto the platform and said: “Now, Brothers, due to unforeseen circumstances…” I could see Uncle Stan collecting his papers and wiping his neck with his hanky. Then a rush of air swept into the hall and we heard the outer door close.

I turned round. A man was coming through the foyer doors. They seemed to have blown open, because they held themselves wide as he passed through, then closed behind him. The man had caramel skin and hair the color of blackbirds. He looked like one of the Men of Old, except that he wasn’t wearing a robe but a suit of dark blue and, where the light shone, it glistened like petrol in a puddle. The man came right up to our row and sat at the end, and I smelled something like fruit cake and something like wine.

Alf hurried up to him. He whispered to the man, then nodded at Father. Father smiled. He said: “And we are very glad to welcome…”

“Brother Michaels,” said the man. His voice was the strangest thing of all. It was like dark chocolate.

Father said: “Our visiting speaker, from…?” But Brother Michaels didn’t appear to have heard. Father asked again and Brother Michaels only smiled. “Well, anyway Brother, we’re very glad to have you,” Father said, then got down.

There was a lot of clapping, then Brother Michaels got onto the platform. He didn’t seem to have notes. He took something out of his briefcase and put it on the rostrum. Then he looked up. Now that he was looking at us, I could see just how dark his skin was. His hair was dark too, but his eyes were strange and pale. Then he said: “What beautiful mountains you have here, Brothers!”

I could feel how surprised everyone was. No one ever said anything about our valley being beautiful. Brother Michaels said: “Don’t you think so? I was coming over them today in my car and thinking how lucky you are to live here. Why, from the top I thought I could see right into the clouds.”

I looked out the window. Brother Michaels must either be crazy or need glasses; the clouds were even lower now—you couldn’t see more than three feet in front of you.

He smiled. “The theme of our talk today is ‘Moving Mountains.’ What do you think you would need, Brothers, to move that one over there?”

“Dynamite,” said Alf.

“You couldn’t,” said Uncle Stan.

“A pretty big digger,” said Gordon, and everyone laughed.

Brother Michaels held something up between his finger and thumb. “Do you know what this is?”

“It isn’t anything,” I whispered, but Father smiled.

“Which of you believes I’m holding anything at all?” said Brother Michaels.

Some people put up their hands; lots didn’t. Father was still smiling and he put up his hand, so I did too. Brother Michaels held a piece of paper out just below the microphone. Then he opened his finger and thumb and we heard something fall. “Those of you who guessed I was holding something, give yourself a pat on the back,” he said. “You were seeing with Eyes of Faith.”

“What is it?” I said, but Father only put his finger to his lips.

“That, Brothers, is a mustard seed,” said Brother Michaels. He held up a picture of a mustard seed blown up. It was like a tiny yellow ball. “It’s the smallest of seeds but grows into a tree that the birds of heaven sit in.” Then he began to talk about the world.

He said that many difficulties would befall God’s people before the system ended. He said the Devil was roaming the earth, seeking to devour someone. We read about how the Israelites stopped believing they would get to the Land of Decoration, how they scorned God’s miracles and the miracle workers. “Never let us be like that,” he said. “Faith is not a possession of all people. The world laughs at faith. They wouldn’t think of telling that mountain to move. But turn with me in your Bibles, Brothers, and see what Jesus says.”

Then he began to read, and as he did my heart beat hard and it was as if I was catching light.

“For I say to you truthfully, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to a mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.”

“Of course,” he said, “Jesus was speaking metaphorically. We can’t really move mountains. But we can do things we think are impossible if we have faith. Faith sees the mountain as already moved, Brothers. It isn’t enough to think what the new world will be like, we have to see ourselves there; all the while we’re thinking what it will be like, we’re still here. But faith has wings. It can carry us wherever we need to go.”

Then he began to talk, and it was like listening to a great story unraveling, and I knew the story but didn’t remember having heard it before, or not told this way.

In the beginning, Brother Michaels said, all of life was miraculous. Humans lived forever and never got sick. Every fruit, every animal, every part of the earth, was a perfect reflection of God’s glory, and the relation between the humans was also perfect. But Adam and Eve lost something. They lost faith in God. So they began to die, the cells in their bodies began to deteriorate, and they were expelled from the garden.

“After that there were only glimpses of how things used to be: a sunset, a hurricane, a bush struck by lightning. And faith became something you prayed for in a room at midnight or on a battlefield or in a whale’s stomach or in a fiery furnace. Faith became a leap, because there was a gap between how things were and how they used to be. It was the space where miracles happened.

“Everything is possible, at all times and in all places and for all sorts of people. If you think it’s not, it’s only because you can’t see how close you are, how you only need to do a small thing and everything will come to you; miracles don’t have to be big things, and they can happen in the unlikeliest places. Miracles work best with ordinary things. Paul says: ‘Faith is the assured expectation of things long hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld,’ and if we have just a little, other things will follow, Brothers. Sometimes more than we dreamed.”

The talk was finished, but for a second there was no clapping; then there was a storm of it. I felt I had woken up. But I had been sleeping longer than the talk; I felt I had been sleeping all my life.

I couldn’t wait for the song and prayer to be over. I thought Brother Michaels would be just the person to talk to about Neil Lewis.

AFTERWARD, I STOOD by Brother Michaels and waited for Uncle Stan to finish talking to him. But when Stan went away, Elsie and May came up. Then Alf. Brother Michaels shook hands with them, he listened, he nodded; he smiled and smiled. None of them wanted to go.

I was beginning to think I would never talk to him, but at last there was a gap and he turned round to put his papers in his briefcase and saw me.

“Hello,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Judith,” I said.

“Are you the one who gave the lovely answer?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you were.” Brother Michaels held out his hand. “Good to meet you.”

I said: “I liked your talk,” but my voice didn’t seem to be working properly. “I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a talk so much.”

“Thank you.”

“I was wondering if I could see the mustard seed?”

Brother Michaels laughed. “You can,” he said. “But I’m not sure it will be the same one.” He took a small jar from his bag and it was full of seeds.

I said: “I’ve never seen mustard like that before!”

“This is what it’s like before they grind it up.”

I said: “I wish I had some.”

Brother Michaels shook a little pile of seeds into my hand. “Now you do.”

I stared at the seeds. I was so pleased I almost forgot what I was going to ask him. “Brother Michaels,” I said at last, “I came to talk to you because I have a problem.”

“I knew it,” he said.

“You did?”

He nodded. “What sort of problem?”

“Someone—I’m afraid that—” I sighed. Then I knew I must tell him exactly how it was. “I think that soon I may be no more.”

Brother Michaels raised his eyebrows.

“I mean: not exist.”

Brother Michaels lowered them. “Are you ill?” he said.

“No.”

He frowned. “Has someone told you this or is it just a feeling?”

I thought about this. “No one has told me,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure.”

“And have you told anyone?”

“No. There’s nothing they can do.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” I said. Grown-ups seemed to think that you could tell a teacher everything. They didn’t see it only made things worse.

Brother Michaels didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said: “Have you tried praying?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes prayers take time to be answered.”

“I only have until tomorrow.”

Brother Michaels inhaled. Then he said: “Judith, I think I can safely say nothing is going to happen to you before tomorrow.”

“How do you know?”

“What you’re facing is simply fear,” he said. “Not that there’s anything simple about fear; fear is the most insidious enemy of all. But good things come from facing it.”

I said: “I don’t see how anything good will come from this.”

“Start looking at things differently, then. When we look at things from another vantage point, it’s amazing how problems we thought were insoluble disappear altogether.”

My heart beat hard. “That would be nice,” I said.

Brother Michaels smiled. “I’ve got to go, Judith.”

“Oh,” I said. I suddenly felt afraid again. “Do you think you’ll be coming back?”

“I’m sure I will sometime.”

Then he did a strange thing. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes, and warmth traveled all the way down my arms to my fingers and right across my shoulders and back. “Have faith, Judith,” he said. Then he looked up. Father was calling me.

“In a minute,” I said, but Father tapped his watch. “OK!” I said. I turned back and the row was empty.

I ran up the aisle. “Where did Brother Michaels go?” I said. Alf shrugged. I ran into the foyer. “Uncle Stan,” I said, “have you seen Brother Michaels?”

“No,” said Stan. “I was just looking for him myself. Margaret and I wanted to invite him back for lunch.”

I ran into the car park. Gordon was showing the other boys his new spoiler. “Where did Brother Michaels go?” I said, and I felt my eyes prick.

It was colder now but there still wasn’t a breath of wind. The mist had lifted, but the sky was thick with cloud.

A hand on my elbow made me turn. Father handed me my coat and bag. He said: “The roast’ll be burned to a crisp.” Then he said: “What have you got there?”

I had forgotten.

“Seeds,” I said. I opened my hand and showed him.

Why Faith Is Like Imagination

I KNOW ABOUT faith. The world in my room is made out of it. Out of faith I stitched the clouds. Out of faith I cut the moon and the stars. With faith I glued everything together and set it humming. This is because faith is like imagination. It sees something where there is nothing, it takes a leap, and suddenly you’re flying.

Circles of paper from a hole punch become saucers for tea parties when you press the end of a pen into them. Glue that has hardened into bubbles becomes a bowl of soapsuds for a pair of aching feet. An acorn cap becomes a bowl, toothpaste caps funnels for ocean liners, twigs knees for an ostrich, an eyelet a small pair of scissors. Matches become logs, drops from the griddle tiny Scottish pancakes, cloves oranges, orange peel a slide, orange tops rows of plants in a garden, the net bag fencing for tennis courts, the bar code a zebra crossing.

Everything is pointing to something, and if we look hard enough for long enough we can see what those other things are. The real Land of Decoration pointed to the way the world would be again one day, after Armageddon. This is called Prefiguration. Father says Prefiguration is showing on a small scale what will happen on a grand scale, it’s like soaring above things and seeing it all. But we can only see the possibilities with Eyes of Faith. Some of the Israelites stopped seeing with Eyes of Faith and they died in the wilderness. Losing faith is the worst sin of all.

Once a girl came to my room and said: “What’s all this rubbish?” Because to her that was what it looked like. But faith sees other things peeping through the cracks just itching to be noticed. Every day the cracks in this world get bigger. Every day new ones appear.

Snow

THAT AFTERNOON I planted the mustard seeds in a pot on the kitchen windowsill. I asked Father if they would grow, and he said he didn’t know. Then he turned off the electricity to save money and went into the middle room to have Peace and Quiet. Peace and Quiet is another Necessary Thing. I went upstairs and sat on the floor. The clock said 2:33. Less than nineteen hours to go till Neil drowned me.

I imagined them finding my body on the school bathroom floor, my hair spread out like a mermaid’s, my eyes staring, my lips as blue as if I’d been drinking a blueberry Jubbly. Neil would be looking on too; he’d have raised the alarm; no one would know. I saw the funeral. Elsie and May would be crying. Stan would be praying. Alf would be saying that at least I had been spared the Tribulation. Gordon’s neck would be sunk in his suit collar deeper than usual. I couldn’t imagine what Father would be doing.

I knew that Brother Michaels said I should have faith that God would help me, that things we thought were impossible were possible with God. But I didn’t see how, short of magicking the school or Neil Lewis away. If I was God, I would bring a hurricane or a plague or a tidal wave that would wipe out the town and the school. I would bring Armageddon, or an asteroid to make a hole in the earth where the school used to be or, if it was a very small asteroid and fell in just the right place, flatten Neil Lewis. But I knew none of those things would happen.

I began to feel like I did the other evening when the cloud swallowed me up. I went to the window and leaned my head against the glass, and my breath kept clouding it and I kept wiping it away. Outside was a row of houses. Above those was another row and above those another. Above the houses was the mountain. Above the mountain was the sky. The houses were brown. The mountain was black. The sky was white.

I looked at the sky. It was so white it might not be there at all. It was like paper, like feathers. Like snow. “It could snow,” I said aloud.

There had been a lot of snow once before and school had closed. I looked at the sky. It could be full of snow this very minute, just waiting to fall. It could snow; it was even quite cold. Brother Michaels had said that if we had a little faith, other things would follow, sometimes more than we dreamed, and I thought I did have a little faith, and perhaps a little was enough.

I began thinking about snow; I began thinking hard, about the crunchiness of it and the clean smell of it, the way it muffles everything and makes the world new. How the air comes alive when the earth is asleep and things listen and hold their breath. I saw the town laid out under a blanket of snow, the houses asleep and the factory covered and the Meeting Hall and mountain white, reaching into a sky that was white, and from the sky more whiteness falling. And the more I thought, the heavier the sky seemed and the colder the pane beneath my fingers.

I turned back to the room. I had an idea, though I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t even know where it had come from, except it was as if a giant hand had written “Snow” on a blank piece of paper. I could see the way they had written the “S,” the tail coming back to the “n” so it looked more like an “8.” And the hand was writing other things, and I began hurrying to do as it said before the sheet was wiped clean.

I went to the trunk in the corner of my room, which used to be Mother’s. Inside were materials and beads and threads she had and all then things I have found. I searched and I took out white cotton. I cut up the cotton and draped it over the fields and hills of the Land of Decoration.

“Good,” said a voice. “More!”

Something hot licked my spine. My scalp pricked. “Who’s that?” I said. No one answered.

My hands were shaking. I felt my heart in my throat. I took sugar and flour and sprinkled them over sponge treetops and paper grass and heather hedges.

“Faster!” said the voice. And although I didn’t know where the voice was coming from, I knew it was real this time and meant for me, and I didn’t care who or what was speaking.

I ran to the bathroom. I ran back. I squirted shaving foam along windowsills and eaves and gutters. I let glue dry clear in small drops around eaves and on branches and on bandstands and streetlights.

“More!” said the voice.

There was a drum in my brain. The whole room was pulsing. I made a fire in a caramel keg with gold sweet papers on the side of the lake where tall firs stood. I made frankfurters and marshmallows on sticks with pieces of plasticine. I made a polystyrene-ball snowman, a line of white paper geese. I hung them on a string across the moon. I took some down from my leaky duvet and shook it above, and it fell over the towns and seas and hills and lakes.

I snowed in houses and shops and post offices and schools. I iced roads and blocked bridges and strung white pipe cleaners along telegraph wires. I set cardboard skaters on a tinfoil lake and on the hill a woolly tobogganing party.

I grazed my hand and didn’t feel it.

My foot went to sleep.

I stamped around and sat down again.

WHEN I OPENED my eyes the light was gone and the Land of Decoration was glowing whitely in the darkness, the line of geese tiny arrows in the sky. I was curled on my side, at the edge of the sea. My cheek hurt because it was pressing on the edge of the mirror. I sat up. Then I heard Father calling me. I held my breath. I heard him come to the foot of the stairs.

My heart was beating so fast it hurt but I didn’t know why. He called again and I shut my eyes tight. At last Father went back into the kitchen and closed the door. He must have thought I had gone to bed.

I was shaking. I got up and went to the window. I couldn’t see the mountain now, and the sky was black. Behind me the room was still. I could feel the stillness all around me, like water. I took a deep breath, turned back to the room, and I said: “Snow.” I looked at the sky and I said: “Snow.”

A car flashed by. It lit me up, then left me in darkness. The sound of that car pulled me after it. I thought it had gone but it came back again. I listened to the sound of that car, then I closed the curtains and got into bed.

I heard the clock chime nine times in the hall. I heard Mrs. Pew call her cat, Oscar, for his supper. I heard Mr. Neasdon come home from the Labour Club and the dog from number 29 begin to bark. I heard the bell from the factory toll the night shift and Father come upstairs, his steps hollow on the boards of the landing.

The Stone and the Book

THAT NIGHT I had a wonderful dream. I dreamed I was walking in the Land of Decoration. I was passing Glacier Mint ice palaces and tinsel fountains and Rolo Giant causeways and calico trees where jeweled fruits clustered and birds with long tail feathers sang. I wished I had time to stop and look at it all, but a voice was calling me. The voice led me to a field.

The air was warm and smelled of summer. I went walking, leaving a trail in the grass. Sometimes I went this way and sometimes I went that. Sometimes the sun was in my face and sometimes it was at my back. The hedges were filled with tissue cow parsley. Paper birds flew up under my nose. Paisley butterflies fluttered away. There were sweet-paper gnats and down dandelion clocks and glittering hat-pin dragonflies darting then stopping quite still in the air.

In the middle of the field there was a tree. Beneath the tree was an old man with a beard. His skin was like caramel and his hair was very black. He was dressed in a white robe and held his hands behind his back. He said: “Welcome, child. This is a great day. You have been chosen to receive a gift of inestimable value.” And his voice was like dark chocolate.

“Thank you,” I said. Then I said: “What does ‘inestimable’ mean?”

“Something whose worth can’t be estimated,” he said.

“In one hand I hold a stone that contains more power than anyone has ever possessed, and its fruits are sweet but the aftertaste is bitter. In my other hand I hold a book the wisest seek to read, and its fruits are loathsome but it gives the reader wings.”

I said: “Why are you holding them behind your back?”

“Because the sight of them might influence you,” said the man. “Now you must choose. Think carefully, because much hangs on your decision.”

It was difficult. Because I wanted to have all the power in the world, and make Neil Lewis disappear, and never go back to school again. But I also wanted to find out what the secret was that even the wisest seek to read. And I would definitely like to have wings. And there was a moment when I thought perhaps I shouldn’t choose at all and should go away through the long grass and not look back.

But I didn’t. I said: “I’d like the stone please.” And when the old man took his right hand from behind his back and gave it to me, it glinted many colors in my palm and I felt myself swell and become heavy, and when I spoke I thought it had thundered.

It could have been a long time or it could have been a short time that passed, I couldn’t tell but I know that I said: “Could I look at the book?”

The old man pursed his lips. I thought he wasn’t going to let me. But finally he said: “All right. But you can’t touch it,” and he brought a small brown book from behind him. The spine was coming away and the pages were dog-eared, and when he opened it it was full of letters I had never seen before.

I said: “Why are the pages wrinkled?”

And the man said: “They are wet with the tears of all those who have tried to read it and failed.”

Suddenly I felt cold. “Would I have been able to?” I said.

He smiled. “We will never know now.”

And then I woke up. But it wasn’t morning. It was dark and I was shivering. The air was stirring and full of the sound of beating wings.

I pulled the blankets higher and wriggled down. I shut my eyes and tried to find the old man. I wanted to ask him about the aftertaste of the stone. But the air was no longer filled with gnats and dandelion clocks. It was filled with feathers, as if someone had shaken a giant pillow somewhere above my head, and as I watched, the feathers grew thicker.

It wasn’t easy to see with the air so full of swirling. I sheltered beneath the tree in the middle of the field as the air got colder. The stone grew hot in my pocket and I warmed my hands on it, but soon it grew too hot to hold and I had to put it on the ground, and it grew brighter and brighter while all around the world grew white.

WHEN I WOKE it was morning. The air was still and it was heavy. It pressed close to me like a blanket, and the blanket was cold. I got out of bed. I pulled back the curtains. And the whole world was white.

The First Miracle

I STARED AT the snow and wondered if I was still dreaming. But the houses weren’t made out of cardboard and the people weren’t made out of clay: Mr. Neasdon was trying to start his car, Mrs. Andrews was peeping through her curtains, little kids were building a snowman, and the dog from number 29 was lifting his leg against a heap of snow and trotting off to the next. I blinked and it was all still there. I pinched myself and it hurt. I sat on the bed and looked at my knees. Then I got up and looked out the window again. Then I pulled on my clothes and ran downstairs and opened the front door.

The snow wasn’t cotton wool or pipe cleaners or felt. It was real. I turned my face to the sky. Whiteness sealed my eyes and my lips. The cold was like silence around me. I went back inside.

The back door crashed as Father came into the kitchen. His cheeks were red and his mustache bristled. He put down a bucket of coal and poured himself tea. “Put plenty on,” he said. “It’ll be cold until the house heats up.”

“Aren’t you going to work?”

“There isn’t any,” he said. “The power’s down at the factory. There’ll be no school for you either. The road’s closed; even the gritter can’t get through.”

Then I sat down at the table and kept very still, because something was fizzing inside me. Father was saying: “I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in October,” and it was as if he was a long way away, and everything was now new and strange: the clank of the Rayburn stove lid, the shunt of the scuttle, the wheeze and pop of the porridge. I was standing in a high place but I didn’t want to get down. I wanted to go higher. I said: “Perhaps the snow is a sign of the end! That would be exciting.”

Father said: “The only exciting thing around here is that our breakfast is getting cold.” He put two bowls of porridge on the table, sat down, and bowed his head. He said: “Thank you for this food, which gives us strength, and thank you for this new day of life, which we intend to use wisely.”

“And thank you for the snow,” I said under my breath, and I reached out and put my hand on his.

Father said: “Through Jesus’s name, amen.” He moved his hand away and said: “The prayer is for concentrating.”

“I was concentrating,” I said. I tucked my hand into my sleeve.

“Eat up,” Father said. “I want to get down to the shops before they sell out of bread.”

WE PUT ON wellies and coats. We walked in the road, in the pink trail left by the gritter. It wasn’t snowing anymore; the sky was fiery and sun flashed in each of the windows. And all the things we usually saw—the dog mess and cigarette butts and chewing gum and gob—had been washed away. Cars were tucked up beneath snowy eiderdowns. There was nothing except people carrying bags or shoveling snow or blowing on their hands.

At the top of the hill, the town spread out before us. I knew it was all there, but today you had to look hard to be sure. We passed the multistory car park and the bus station and the main street, and they, too, were deep under snow. I said: “I like this. I hope we have more.”

Father said: “There won’t be any more.”

“How do you know?”

“The forecast is clear.”

“They didn’t forecast this, did they?”

But he wasn’t listening.

THE CO-OP WAS busy. Hot air was blowing and people were pushing. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” they said. “No mention on the forecast,” and “In October too.” There were no newspapers by the tills and not many loaves of bread left. We paid for the groceries, Father took four bags and I took one, and we began walking home.

Halfway up the hill I said: “Father, how would you know that a miracle had happened?”

“What?” He was puffing, his face red.

“How would we know if a miracle happened?”

“A miracle?”

“Yes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think the snow might be a miracle.”

“It’s just snow, Judith!”

“But how do you know?”

Father said: “Now, look, we don’t want a long discussion, OK?”

“But how do you know that lots of things aren’t really miracles?” I said.

I ran to keep up. “I don’t think people would believe a miracle happened even if it was right in front of them, even if someone told them. They would always think it was caused by something ordinary.”

Father said: “Judith, where is this going?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “I can’t tell you yet,” I said. “I need more evidence first.”

“Evidence?”

“Yes.”

Father stopped walking. “What did I just say?”

“But—”

Then Father frowned. He said: “Drop it, Judith. Just drop it, OK?”

Evidence

BETWEEN THE KITCHEN and the front room is the middle room. The middle room is Father’s room. It’s dark and smells of leather and sheepskin. There is a moth-eaten tapestry of creepers and snakes, a clock with no pendulum, and a chaise longue with no springs. There’s a threadbare fur rug and a picture of angels and a coat stand made from a tree. There’s a large black fireplace with birds-of-paradise tiles. And on either side of the fireplace is a cupboard.

In one cupboard there are photographs of Father and Mother before I was born, cards and piles of letters and lots of photos of people I don’t know—Mother and Father’s families before they came into the religion. Now the family doesn’t speak to us, all except Auntie Jo, Father’s sister, who sends us a Christmas card she has made every year inviting us to visit her in Australia. It annoys Father a lot because she knows we don’t celebrate Christmas, but he can’t bring himself to throw them out.

In the other cupboard there are a lot of books. There are books about the planet and the universe that have pictures of superclusters and black holes and cells and things. Father gets these out sometimes. But most of the books are written by the Brothers and these have titles like: Then They Will Know, The Lord’s Day and You, and You Know Not the Hour. I knew I would find out about miracles in one of those books.

The problem was, the cupboards were Father’s and I should ask before going in there.

I waited for him to go out all afternoon, but he didn’t. He stoked the fire and made an omelet. He read the paper. He made dinner. He washed up. Then he got the look he gets when he’s about to make something and went into the garage. In a while I heard sawing, and I went into the middle room and closed the door.

My heart was banging as I opened the glass doors. This was a sin, but a sin in service to a greater good, so in the grand scheme of things it could be overlooked.

The first book I took down was called The Gentile Times Have Ended. It was full of charts and numbers, and I put it to the side. The next book was called Gog of Magog: The Arch Deceiver. That didn’t talk about miracles either. I took down another. A pile began to form beside me on the carpet. I could still hear Father sawing. Every so often there was the sound of the blocks toppling to the floor. My heart was beating so loudly that the room was vibrating.

I was beginning to think I would never find anything about miracles, when I came to a book with a dark-green jacket and a bush, pale green and burning, pressed into the cover. It was called Gifts in Men.

Inside, there were pictures of people walking on water and the dead coming to life. A man was praying in the belly of a fish. Another in a fiery furnace. Another in a lion’s den. The book spoke of gifts and signs, of messengers and callings. Miracles, it said, were God’s calling card, His credentials, seals of divine mission. It said: For where miracles are, there certainly God is. I sat cross-legged on the floor.

What is possible with God is seldom possible with men, the book said. From times of old, faithful ones have known this. God knows no order of difficulty. There are no limits to His ability to intervene on behalf of His loyal ones. Age is no barrier to the outworking of God’s purpose. Remember the Midianite maiden who far from home afforded the cure of Naaman’s leprosy and the child Samuel who heard God’s voice night after night in the temple, warning of the downfall of Eli’s household. There is no knowing whom God will deem a suitable vehicle for the manifestation of His powers, nor how He will choose to reveal them.

My heart was still hammering hard but my blood was singing now and I felt very light, as if I was hovering a few inches above the carpet. The greatest period of miraculous activity was when Christ walked the earth, I read, but the Lord’s Day will also afford limitless possibilities for God’s expression of His Kingship. Christians should be on the watch for signs in the sun, moon, and stars and other supernatural indications that the end is at hand. This will be a time when to discerning eyes God’s hand will be seen at work in the lives of His servants.

God has been known to intervene in lives on more than one occasion when the supplicant is earnest and real faith has been demonstrated. It should be remembered that to skeptics acts of God will always be attributed to earthly sources. This should not deter faithful ones from taking heart. They are lights shining in the darkness, and the darkness is afraid of light. I held the book to my chest and closed my eyes.

I DON’T KNOW how long I sat there, but after a while I realized I couldn’t hear sawing anymore. I opened one eye. A pair of legs were standing in front of me. I opened the other eye. The legs were attached to Father’s boots. Father’s voice said: “What are you doing?”

“Reading,” I said, and stood up.

Father said: “How many times have I told you to ask before getting these books out?” He bent down and began piling the books one on top of the other. He opened the cupboard doors and slotted them back into place, thwack, thwack, thwack.

“Father.”

Thwack.

“Father.”

Thwack.

My breath caught me and hurt inside. “Father, it says here that we can still see miracles today.”

He sighed sharply. “What is all this miracle nonsense?”

I bit my lip hard, then I said: “I think something happened on Sunday. I mean last night. I think the snow was a miracle.”

Father looked at me, then he took the book and blew on the pages. He shut it with a snap and put it back with the others.

I said: “The book said we may meet with disbelief, that we shouldn’t be downhearted! It says most people don’t realize they have seen a sign—”

“Sign?”

Father shut the cupboard, took me by the elbow, brought me outside, and closed the door. He said: “I’m getting just a bit tired of this. It snowed because it does sometimes. Even here. Even in October. Now, that’s an end to it.”

My heart was making it difficult to breathe. “I heard a voice as well!” I said suddenly. “Like Samuel in the temple. It told me what to do.”

“This is making me cross now, Judith. You know how serious it is to lie.”

“I’m not lying!” I said. “I don’t know where the voice came from but I heard it!”

Father’s face was flushed and his eyes were very black. He said: “Judith, you’re always imagining this or that. You live in a complete fantasy world.”

“Well, this is real,” I said.

Father looked at me for a moment. Then he said in a low voice: “I don’t want to hear any more about this, d’you understand?” and he went into the kitchen and the door shut behind him. I looked at the door for a long time. Then I went upstairs and sat on the floor in my room and I looked at the Land of Decoration.

And though I was sad to begin with because Father didn’t believe me, after a while I was glad I hadn’t said any more, because it would be best to wait until I had more proof and for that I would do a test, to find out whether the snow was a coincidence. “And then we shall see,” I said to no one in particular.

“We certainly shall,” no one said back.

Why Seeing Really Is Believing

PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE in very much. They don’t believe politicians and they don’t believe ads and they don’t believe things written on packets of food in the grocery store. Lots of them don’t believe in God either. Father says it’s because science has explained so many things that people think they should be able to know how everything happens before they believe it, but I think there is another reason.

I think people don’t believe things because they are afraid. Believing something means you could be wrong, and if you’re wrong you can get hurt. For instance, I thought I could climb the whole way round my room without touching the floor, and it hurt when I fell down. All the important things, like whether someone loves you or something will turn out right, aren’t certain, so we try to believe them, whereas all the things you don’t have to wonder about, like gravity and magnetism and the fact that women are different from men, you can bet your life on but you don’t have to.

I used to worry when Father said we shouldn’t believe in God blindly because the type of evidence for God is either too much (the apostle Paul says it is “inexcusable”) or not enough (Richard Dawkins, a scientist the Brothers like to argue with, says it is “superstitious bosh”). I used to worry it meant that I was thinking for myself. But believing isn’t just about evidence, and here’s why.

People take the same bit of evidence and jump to different conclusions. Mr. Williams, the headmaster, said I was “extremely bright” for my age, which is why I am a year younger than everyone else in my class and Mr. Davies says I have the best grasp of language he has ever seen in a ten-year-old. But Neil Lewis says I am a “spastic.” Mr. Davies told us about fossils and he said: “This is how living things evolved,” but Father says: “Mutations never survive.” Mr. Davies thinks religion is a mirage. He and Father had a debate at the last parents’ evening. Mr. Davies said I should be taught the facts about how the world came to be, and Father said those were only the facts as Mr. Davies sees them.

There are mirages in space, crosses and arcs and circles that are the reflections of galaxies that existed billions of years ago and that show us what happened in the past, and Father says that scientists want to see things as much as religious people, he says they make leaps all the time. The fossil record for evolution isn’t that good, but the scientists had already decided creation wasn’t an option so they made fake fossils and covered them up. And you would think, being scientists, they wouldn’t. But scientists make leaps of faith all the time, because there’s a lot of guessing and waiting, and some of the best discoveries, like Albert Einstein’s, were made that way. Father says the only people who don’t leap at all are agnostics.

Scientists say miracles couldn’t happen because they are miraculous, but that doesn’t make sense, because they believe in plenty of “miraculous” things, like the universe coming from nothing, and the odds for that are mathematically impossible. Years ago people thought an eclipse of the sun meant God was angry with them, but it isn’t a miracle now because we understand it, and neither is radioactivity or an airplane or germs, though things like bees are, because we still don’t understand how they are able to fly. One day someone will explain it, and then bees won’t be a miracle either.

It makes you think lots of things are miraculous, like the chances of me hitting exactly the same bit in my mouth with the toothbrush that I did a few seconds before, or of my tomato squirting Father on the nose at dinner, or the chance of me being me instead of millions of other people. But they are very small chances, and a bee isn’t a miracle either, only a wonderful thing, because miracles are made to happen.

Evidence isn’t all there is to believing, and neither is being able to explain it. Even if people can’t explain something—like seeing a ghost or being healed—once they have experienced it, they believe it, though they might have spent their whole life saying it was nonsense. Which means that people who say something is impossible have probably just never experienced it.

Of course, they might still want to explain it away and look for a rational explanation. But they are doing what Father is doing and missing the point. Which is that miracles are what you see when you stop thinking, and they happen because someone made them and because someone, somewhere, had faith.

The Test

WHEN I WOKE on Tuesday, the sky was blue and empty and the sun was winking in the windows. Already the snow piles by the front doors and along the sides of the road were softening. I said: “Now for my test.”

I went to the trunk and I got out my materials. I rolled up the sky in the Land of Decoration and in its place I hung gauze. I unhooked the clouds and in their place put a blizzard funnel of wire mesh and tiny polystyrene balls. I removed the cotton fabric and laid cotton wool over houses and steeples, railway lines, mountains, and viaducts.

“Colder!” said a voice, and again I felt as if I had caught light.

I put the tiny people inside their houses. I bundled them in blankets and coats. I put hot cups of cocoa in their hands. I lit hurricane lamps. I sprayed frost on windows and made ice for the roads with sheets of Plexiglas.

“Colder!” said the voice.

I tore the paper lighthouse beam and on top of the waves laid shards of floating plastic ice. I glued icicles to the masts of the ships, turned on the fan, and flurries of paper hail stung sailors’ hands and faces. Snowmen sneezed. Polar bears shivered. Penguins danced to keep warm.

Then I said: “Snow,” just like before. And I saw the town and the steelworks and the mountain sewn up in it, heaps of snow, more than anyone had ever seen here or ever would again.

I said: “Now I must wait.”

I waited through breakfast. I waited through lunch. I waited as Father and I brought in the last of the wood to dry in the lean-to and we pondered Jesus dying to save the world. I waited as we sat by the fire that evening and Father listened to Nigel Ogden playing his organ. I waited all night, checking and looking out at the stars and the white waste of the moon. I ran to the window next morning, but the sun was shining so brightly it hurt my eyes and a steady dripping was coming from above my window.

I felt sick and sat on the bed. I said: “What did I do differently?” I said: “Perhaps I just have to be patient.”

THAT MORNING WE went preaching. Father said it was the ideal time for it. What he meant was that people would be in. Getting people in is a problem for us, because though we are trying to save people, they will do almost anything to avoid it. They don’t answer the door, they tell lies (“My grandmother just died,” “I’ve got a war wound and can’t stand up for long,” “I’m on my way to church”), they get nasty (shouting, letting the dog out, threatening to call the police), they run away (this is a last resort, but it does happen; once someone took off running when he saw us at his door and dropped some of his shopping in the road). These are all what Father calls Tactics of Evasion. We have tactics of our own, which include asking thought-provoking questions, turning Conversation Stoppers into Conversation Starters, and knocking twice the same morning (though once someone threw a bucket of water over Father’s head when we did this, so perhaps that was not such an effective tactic after all).

We met the group at the corner of King Street. There were small hills of snow on either side of the road. Elsie and May were there, Alf and Josie. Stan, Margaret, and Gordon. Josie was wearing a fur hat and a cape and a knitted all-in-one suit that came down to her shins. She said: “I looked for you on Sunday. I brought you something.”

I went round to the other side of Father. “We must have missed each other,” I said.

“What do you think of this snow?” said Uncle Stan. “Beats everything, doesn’t it?”

“The Tribulation is on the way!” said Alf.

Elsie said: “My joints don’t like it.” She offered me a Ricola Locket.

“Nor my chilblains,” said May. She offered me a Werther’s Original.

“Well,” said Father, “we’ve got a good show of spirit in any case.”

Uncle Stan said the prayer and we started. Elsie worked with Margaret, Stan worked with Gordon, Josie worked with May, Alf worked alone, and I worked with Father. It was cold. Our steps rang on the pavement. Father said hello to passersby. Some of them nodded. Some said hello. Most ducked their heads and kept walking. Despite the ideal circumstances, not many answered. Sometimes a curtain moved. Sometimes a child came and said: “No one’s at home,” and when that happened there was laughter.

The sky was incredibly blue. The blueness bothered me. “It could still happen,” I said to myself. “It could still snow.” But two hours later, when we met on the corner, the sky was just as blue as before. “We don’t seem to be having much success,” said Uncle Stan. I couldn’t have agreed with him more.

Father and I said goodbye to the group and went on Return Visits. Return Visits are people we always call on; they don’t hide from us. Mrs. Browning sat up bright as a pin with rollers in her hair and invited us in for tea and butter puffs. There were dog hairs and grease on the plate, and the cups were brown inside. Usually I can’t drink the tea, which is made with condensed milk and only just warm, but today I swallowed it without thinking. Then Father asked me to read the scripture and Mrs. Browning said: “Such a bright girl! I bet you’re looking forward to going back to school.”

Father raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t bank on it.”

We left Mrs. Browning and went to see Joe and his dog, Watson. Joe leaned against the porch as he always did, there was a stain on the wall he had done it so long. Watson dragged his bottom across the step.

Father said: “Any day now, Joe.”

And Joe said: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Father said: “You have to believe it or you won’t see it.”

Joe laughed, and a chain rattled in his chest. We left some magazines with him, then Father said we’d have to get back or the fire would be out.

I could see my legs going in and out beneath me all the way up the street. There was a lollipop stick lying in the gutter. I usually made garden fences with them but this time I stepped over it. “I won’t make anything ever again,” I said to myself. “It would have been better for me never to have made the snow at all if it was just a coincidence.” Suddenly going back to how things were before was too terrible to think about.

We went up the mountain road in the tracks left by the cars, and the sun was coming through the fir trees in long molten strokes, stammering and jabbering through the branches. Father took long strides. His boots splattered slush sideways in little showers. I listened to the crunching of boots and the flapping of sheepskin and my Bible bag bumping about on my back and I wanted everything to stop. Father said: “Come on! What are you dawdling for?”

“I’m not dawdling,” I said. “I’m tired.”

“Well, the quicker you walk, the sooner we’ll be home.”

The mountain seemed higher than I remembered. We reached a curve in the road and it went up again. We reached another and it went up still further. The higher we climbed, the whiter it got. The whiteness got into my clothes. It pierced the stitching, the buttonholes, the wool of my tights. I shut my eyes, but it pricked through my eyelids and made patterns there.

We reached the top. Father kept going, but I stopped in the road. I listened to his footsteps as they went away, and for a minute I didn’t mind if they never came back. I put my hands over my eyes and stood very still and all I could hear was the emptiness around me and for the longest time I didn’t think anything at all. Then a cold gust buffeted me and I opened my eyes.

The sky wasn’t bright anymore. It was thick and it was whirling. Something was drifting in front of me. Something was lighting on my coat and my nose and my cheeks, touching me then disappearing over and over. I stood very still, and somewhere inside me a bolt slid home.

There were tears in my eyes but not from the cold. And then I was running down the steep mountain road, running and shouting: “Wait for me!”

I ran past him and swung right round, slipping and laughing and just staying up. “It’s snowing!” I shouted.

“I had noticed.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

“It’s a pain in the neck.”

I began running again, blinking, spreading my arms like a bird. Father said: “Watch you don’t fall!” And I ran even faster to show him I wouldn’t.

Snowflakes and Mustard Seeds

MIRACLES DON’T HAVE to be big, and they can happen in the unlikeliest places. Sometimes they are so small people don’t notice. Sometimes miracles are shy. They brush against your sleeve, they settle on your eyelashes. They wait for you to notice, then melt away. Lots of things start by being small. It’s a good way to begin, because no one takes any notice of you. You’re just a little thing beetling along, minding your own business. Then you grow.

High in the heavens snowflakes are born. When they fall to earth they are so light they fall sideways. But flakes find brothers and when they do they stick together. If enough of them stick they begin to roll. If they roll far enough they pick up fence posts, trees, a person, a house.

A mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, but when it has grown, the birds of heaven lodge in its branches; a grain of sand becomes a pearl; and prayers that begin with very little or nothing at all are spoken, because if there is enough of something it begins to grow, and if there is more than enough a great thing will happen which was there from the start in the smallest of ways.

Which comes first, the prayer or the particles? How can the smallest of things become the biggest of all and the thing that could have been stopped unstoppable, and something you never thought would amount to much amount to it all? Perhaps it’s because miracles work best with ordinary things, the more ordinary the better. Perhaps it’s because they begin with odds and ends—the greater the odds, the bigger the miracle.

A Skeptic

THAT AFTERNOON THE sky grew dark with the weight of the snow. It kept spiraling down, wondering which way to go. I sat and watched. I could have watched it forever. I didn’t eat dinner. My hands felt hot or other things felt cold and my skin was prickling all over. Father asked if I had a temperature; I told him I had never felt better.

The next morning it was still snowing. Drifts reached to the sills of windows, cars were small white hillocks, my breath formed clouds, and the floorboards creaked with the cold. Father was rubbing his hands by the Rayburn when I came down. He said he’d had to dig a tunnel to get out the back door.

I decided the time had come to tell him what was happening. I took a deep breath. “You know I was asking about miracles?”

He banged the fire door and said: “Not now, Judith. I’ve got to saw more wood and I have to see if Mrs. Pew is all right. In fact, you could do that for me.”

“But I have to talk to you!” I said. “It’s important.”

“Later,” Father said. He swigged the last of his tea.

I stared at him. “Do I really have to go round to Mrs. Pew?”

“Well, it would help me.”

“What if I don’t come back?”

“Don’t be silly, Judith. There’s nothing wrong with Mrs. Pew.”

“Her head wobbles.”

“So would yours if you had Parkinson’s.”

Snow came over the top of my wellingtons as I waded through the front gate. My legs were wet by the time I got next door to Mrs. Pew’s front door. The bell went on for a while. I shuffled from foot to foot. The little kids in the street say Mrs. Pew invites children into her house and they’re never heard of again; they say that’s what happened to Kenny Evans. Though some people said he went to live with his father. I looked up and down the street to see if there would be any witnesses if Mrs. Pew tried anything.

The door opened a crack and I smelled something strong and musty, heard the latch turn, old hats and gloves from secondhand shops. Then I saw a black dress, a high collar, and a white face with red lips, drawn-on eyebrows, and little black curls that shook and glinted greasily. Spider eyes peered at me. There were lines around her mouth, and the red of her lips ran into them. It looked as though she was bleeding. “Yes?” Mrs. Pew said in her cracked-china voice.

I swallowed and said: “Hello, Mrs. Pew. Father told me to come and see if you needed anything.”

She turned up her hearing aid and leaned closer, and I backed away and said: “Father said: Do you need anything?” I was about to say it a third time when she shook her head, tweaked my sleeve, and pulled me into the hallway. I turned round, as the door shut. My heart began to beat very fast indeed.

Through the doorway, a television was blaring. A woman was standing in front of a lorry on a motorway, saying: “Yesterday a blast of Arctic weather brought snow and ice to much of the country for the second time this week. The first taste of winter came just two days ago, when a mild October was shattered by an eight-inch fall of snow. The weather is causing problems on the roads and at sea. Four sailors, including a fifteen-year-old boy, had to be rescued yesterday after their yacht capsized off Plymouth. Both falls of snow have confounded weather forecasters…”

Mrs. Pew turned the sound off, then came back and said: “Now, what is it? Speak up, child!”

“Father said: DO YOU NEED ANYTHING?”

“Oh!” she said. “There’s no need to shout! That’s kind of your father. But you can tell him I’m well provided for; I’ve enough tins in my pantry to feed the army.”

“Good,” I said, and turned to undo the door.

“Wait, young lady! Have you seen Oscar?”

“What?”

“Have you seen Oscar?”

“No.”

“He didn’t come in for his cat food last night,” she said. “It’s most unlike him. Usually he doesn’t set foot outside if it so much as spits with rain. He holes himself up somewhere. If you see him, let me know, won’t you?”

My legs were shaky as I went to the gate. I turned back to say goodbye, and then I stopped. Mrs. Pew was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, but her head was wobbling too much to do it properly. She said: “I can’t help thinking something terrible has happened to him.”

I looked down. I said: “I have to go now.”

Father was on top of the wall at the side of the lean-to, raking off snow. “Mrs. Pew has enough tins to feed the army,” I shouted, “but Oscar is missing. Can I talk to you now?”

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Yes.”

“Later!”

BUT AFTER CLEARING the roof he was busy shoveling snow, and after that he was busy chopping wood, and after that he was busy reading the paper, listening to the forecast, and getting dinner. I played in the garden. I made a snow cat and a snow man and a snow dog, and by then the day was almost over. At dinnertime he was only busy eating, so I laid down my knife and fork and said: “Father, I’ve got to tell you something.” I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t, so I said: “On Sunday I made snow for the Land of Decoration.” I said: “I wanted it to snow.”

He went on chewing. I could see the muscles in his jaw move. He must be playing it cool.

I said: “Father, I made snow for the Land of Decoration and then it happened. It was a miracle! It happened twice, just as I wanted it to. But you mustn’t tell anyone yet, because it might scare them and I’ve only just found out myself.”

Father looked at me for probably the longest he has ever looked at me. Then he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed. When he had finished laughing he said: “You’re a star turn. So this is what all the miracle business has been about?”

“Yes,” I said. I hoped the laughter was due to shock. “I’ve been wanting to tell you. And I did it a second time, just to make sure—and it happened again! Even though you said that it wouldn’t. Because I had faith!”

Father said: “It’s because you spend too much time in that room.” Then he sighed.

“Judith, whatever you made for your model world has nothing to do with the real one—you’re always making this or that. It’s a coincidence.”

“It’s not!” I said, and I felt strange, as if I was getting a temperature. “It wouldn’t have happened without me.”

Father said: “Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?”

“Yes,” I said. But my head began to feel full again like it did on the day I made the snow, as if there were too many things in it.

Father said: “Judith, ten-year-old girls do not perform miracles.”

I said: “How do you know if you’re not a ten-year-old girl?”

Father pinched his eyes shut with his finger and thumb. When he opened them, he said he’d had enough of this ridiculous conversation. He took my plate, though I hadn’t finished, and put it on top of his own and went to the sink, ran the tap, and began to wash the dishes.

I stood up. I tried to speak calmly. “I know it’s hard to believe,” I said. “But it wasn’t just once—”

He held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Why?”

Father stopped washing the dishes. “Because! Because it’s dangerous, that’s why!”

“Dangerous to who?”

“Dangerous to whom.”

“Dangerous to whom?”

“It’s dangerous to think you have that sort of power. It’s … presumptuous—it’s blasphemous.” He stared at me. “Just who do you think you are? It was a coincidence, Judith.”

I heard what he said, but my head was getting too hot to think about what the words meant. I looked down and said quietly: “You’re wrong.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I looked at him. “It wasn’t a coincidence.”

Father reached up and banged the cupboard door hard. Then he leaned on the sink and said: “You spend far too much time in that room!”

“I have a gift!” I said. “I made a miracle happen!”

Then Father came up to me and said: “I want you to drop this right now, d’you understand? You do not have a gift. You can not make miracles happen. Is that clear?”

I could hear our breath and the drip of the tap. There was a pain in my chest.

Father said: “Is that clear?” For a minute the pain in my chest was too great to breathe.

And then it was as if a switch had been turned off and I didn’t feel hot anymore. The pain went away and I was cool and separate from things.

“Yes,” I said. I went to the door.

“Where are you off to?”

“To my room.”

“Oh no, you’re not; the less time you spend in that room the better. You can dry the dishes, and after that there’s some other things you can do.”

SO I DRIED and then sorted out Bible magazines. I put the oldest ones on the top of the pile and the latest at the bottom. I brought in four bucketfuls of sticks and two of coal and stacked them by the Rayburn.

Father said how well I had stacked the sticks, but that was just because he felt guilty he had shouted, like he always does. I didn’t say anything back, because I wasn’t going to let him off that easily.

I waited till nine o’clock, then I said good night and went upstairs and got out my journal and wrote all of this down, everything that had happened since Sunday. Because it was too important not to, and if I couldn’t talk about it I would have to write it somewhere instead.

A Secret

I HAVE A secret. The secret is this: Father doesn’t love me.

I don’t know when I first guessed, but I have been sure for a while now. He’ll say: “That’s a good answer,” or “I liked the way you used that scripture,” or he’ll come to my room and stand in the doorway and say: “Everything all right?” But he sounds as though he is reading the words from a sheet, and afterward he tells me how I could have done the presentation better, and though I tell him he can come into my room he doesn’t.

These are the reasons I know Father doesn’t love me.

1) He doesn’t like looking at me.

2) He doesn’t like touching me.

3) He doesn’t like talking to me.

4) He is often angry with me.

5) He is sad because of me.

1) Father doesn’t look at me if he can help it, and when he does his eyes are black. They are actually green, but they look black because he is angry. There is a verse in the Bible where it says God’s spirit is sharper than a two-edged sword and divides even the soul from the spirit, and joints from their marrow, and knows thoughts and secrets of the heart. That’s how it feels when Father looks at me. It looks like he doesn’t like what he sees there.

2) Father doesn’t touch me. We don’t kiss good night or hug or hold hands, and if we are sitting too close he will suddenly notice and clear his throat or move away or get up. Sometimes when we are together, something in the air changes and it is as if we are the only people in the universe, but instead of there being lots of space, as there would be if we really were, we are locked in a very small room and there is nothing to talk about.

3) Father doesn’t like talking to me. This may be because I ask a lot of questions, such as: “What will it be like in the new world?” and “Does God know everything that will happen in the future?” To which Father said: “God can decide what to know and what not to know.” To which I said: “Then He must know what’s going to happen in order not to want to know about it,” and Father said: “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

So I said: “Does God let bad things happen because He can’t see them or because He doesn’t want to stop them?”

“God lets bad things happen in order to prove that humans can’t rule themselves. If God stopped everything bad happening, then people wouldn’t be free. They would be little puppets.”

I said: “I suppose so. But if everything we do is already written out somewhere, are we free to do what we want or do we just think we are?”

Father said: “We can’t understand God, Judith. His ways are unsearchable.”

“Then why ponder them?” I said.

Father raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes.

I said: “Perhaps you can ponder too much.”

And Father said he thought you probably could.

But most of the time I don’t say much to Father and he doesn’t say much to me, and this is the biggest problem we have, because all the time we are not saying things, the air is filled with the things we could. I am always trying to hook one of these things down, but they are usually out of reach.

4) Father is often angry with me. This is because there is a list of things he approves of, which must be done a certain way, such as:

a) speaking (not mumbling)

b) sitting (not slouching)

c) walking (not running)

d) thinking (not daydreaming)

e) saving (not spending)

and an even longer list that must not be done at all, such as:

a) crying

b) playing with food

c) leaving food

d) running around (including hopscotch in the hall, which breaks another rule too; see f)

e) scuffing shoes

f) noise in general

g) leaving doors open

h) not paying attention

And sooner or later I am bound to do one and forget to do the other.

Sometimes, though, I don’t know why Father is angry with me. Once I asked him what I had done wrong.

He said: “You?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You always seem cross.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not cross.”

“Oh.”

“You’d know if I was cross!”

“That’s all right, then.”

He said: “Cross indeed!” And he was angrier than he had been to start with.

5) But worse, much worse than Father being cross, much worse than Father not talking to me or not wanting to look at me or not wanting to touch me, is when he is sad.

Sometimes when I was younger, I used to come downstairs at night to get a drink and the light would be on under the kitchen door. I would see Father through the glass panel, sitting at the table, not doing anything, just sitting there. I stood by the door waiting for him to move, and if he did it was like stepping into warm water. If he didn’t I would go back to bed with a pain in my chest and promise to be better and wait for the light to come.

That was when I thought I could make Father love me, but I don’t anymore. Because the reason he doesn’t happened a long time ago and I can’t do anything about it now, even though without me it wouldn’t have happened at all.

A Voice in the Dark

WHEN I HAD finished writing in my journal, I put it under the loose floorboard beneath my bed. I would have to hide it for now. Until Father came to his senses and saw what was staring him in the face.

I suddenly wondered what Brother Michaels would say if he knew what had happened, and I wished I could tell him how right he had been, that I could make things happen just like he said.

I got into bed. My head still felt hot and I was feeling even stronger than before. I could see myself in bed as if I wasn’t in my body. I’d fainted once and it felt similar. I was thinking about Father and the argument, thinking how surprised he would be when he finally did realize I could perform miracles, but it was as if it had all happened to someone else now, as if the little body lying in the bed and the house and our street and the town and the whole universe was pouring into my head and my head was big enough for it all, but it went on getting hotter and hotter, and it was all so strange I just lay back and let it happen. Then I heard something.

“So, you can make it snow,” said a voice. “What else can you do, I wonder?” Something shot up my spine and into my hair, and it felt like something inside me had melted.

“Hello?” I said, but no one answered. I waited.

Then someone sighed. I was sure of it.

I sat up in bed. I was breathing very hard. I pulled the blankets around me and took a deep breath. “Who’s there?” I whispered.

Everything was silent again. Then the voice said: “I said: ‘What else can you do?’”

I gasped. “Who are you?” I said.

“Now, there’s a question.”

I opened my mouth. I shut it again. “Where did you come from?”

“There’s another.”

I said: “I want to know—”

“You already do,” said the voice. It sounded quite close.

I shook my head. “Where are you?” I said.

“I’m all around,” the voice said. “Inside things and outside them too. I was, and am, and will be.”

Then my heart beat once, very hard, and I said: “You’re God, aren’t You?”

“Shh,” said the voice.

I swallowed. “Can You see me?”

“Of course,” said God. “I’ve been watching you for some time. You could be very useful to Me.”

I sat up. “What do You mean?”

“Well,” said God, “you’ve got a great imagination. I need someone like you to be My Instrument.”

“Your Instrument?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“Miracles, that sort of thing.”

I put my hands over my face and then I took them away. I said: “I knew I was meant to do something important!”

“Shh!” said God. “Not so loud. We don’t want to wake your father.” He paused. “But there’s one condition: You have to have complete faith; you have to be prepared to do whatever I ask, no doubting, no grumbling, no asking why.”

“OK,” I said. “I won’t.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes!”

“All right,” said God. “We’ll talk later. Right now I have to get on with some other things.”

“What other things?”

“Well, this is a busy time in heaven right now. Four horsemen are straining at the bit, there’re some winds that are very restless, and there are a lot of locusts that are getting under everyone’s feet. Oh, and some seals that have to be opened. In the meantime, no blabbing, all right?”

“Can I carry on using my powers?”

“Yes,” said God. “I’ll let you get used to them for a bit.”

“Do you think I could make things happen to people and animals as well?”

God said: “Judith, it’s all a matter of faith.”

“The mustard seed!”

“Precisely.”

“I won’t say any more to Father.”

“Very wise.”

“But he’ll believe me in the end?”

“Yes.”

“Because I’ll do more and more things and he’ll have to see. He will have to see I am doing something special.”

“No doubt about it,” said God.

Then God went wherever it is that He goes and I lay down and thought two things. The first was that I had been silly to expect Father to understand about the miracles but I didn’t have to worry because it would all come right in the end.

The second thought was strange. It was that this had been waiting to happen to me, and thinking that made me happier than anything I had thought before in my whole life. The miracles had been waiting all this time, and so had I. And now the waiting was over, and things could begin.

The Long-Distance Call

FATHER SAYS THAT God is the voice in every Christian’s head helping him to do the right thing. He says that the Devil tells the Christian to do the exact opposite. This means we must be careful which of them we listen to. Up until yesterday, I hadn’t heard God’s voice but I had been talking to Him. I think I must have been saving up things to say, because for a long time I didn’t talk at all.

WHEN I WAS small, Father took me to see a doctor because I didn’t do anything but stare straight in front of me. There is a photograph of me taken by Father at that time. It’s a warm day and I am sitting beneath the cherry tree he planted for Mother in the front garden. The grass is littered with blossoms. I am wearing a blue T-shirt and shorts that come down to my knees. There is a scab on the right one. My legs stick straight out in front of me. My hands are in my lap.

I can’t imagine Father thinking it was a good idea to take me to the doctor, because he never goes to them himself, but he did. I remember that the doctor’s room smelled funny. I remember there was a chair with a leather seat and in the corner a box of plastic blocks and a big red bus. I played with the bus and Father talked to the doctor.

The doctor did tests and made a plan and came to a conclusion. The conclusion was that we were both missing Mother, and the plan was that Father should read to me. So he did, and I learned all about the Nephilim, and the Ark of the Covenant, and why circumcision must be performed on the eighth day, how to clean an infected house of leprosy, what not to say to a Pharisee, and how to remove the sting of a gadfly. And as I began to read I began talking, and in a while I was talking as much as anyone—though perhaps not about the same things.

There weren’t many people to talk to except Father, so I began talking to God. I always supposed it was just a matter of time before He answered me. I used to think of it as a long-distance telephone call. The line was bad, there were birds sitting on it, there was heavy weather, so I couldn’t make out what the other person was saying, but I never doubted I would hear them eventually. Then one day the birds flew off, the rain cleared up, and I did.

The Third and Fourth Miracles

I DECIDED TO use my power to help people, and first on my list was Mrs. Pew. I had been thinking about her since I saw her crying. I didn’t think she could be the type of person to kidnap children if she was so upset about Oscar; it was quite disappointing to think that Kenny Evans probably did go to live with his father after all.

Oscar is a large ginger cat who sits in Mrs. Pew’s front-room window between a bowl of hyacinths and a yellow china dog. I didn’t know why he had decided to disappear. Perhaps he was tired of the dog, who didn’t do anything but grin in an empty way, or perhaps he was tired of the view. Anyway, all that mattered was that I bring him back. So on Thursday when the snow came down in flurries, I made a cat with marmalade wool. Father called: “What are you doing?” and I called back: “Reading!” The lie was justified: I was now God’s Instrument and had work to do.

I gave the cat a blue collar and one white paw and took a chip out of his ear, just like Oscar, though I couldn’t remember which ear and hoped it didn’t matter. I made an old woman in a black dress and gave her a high lace collar and little black boots and pushed very small beads in the sides of the clay for buttons. I gave the lady black curly hair, glued pieces of cut-up staple in her hair for clips, painted her face white and her lips red. I made a trail of cat prints leading through the snow to the old lady and put the cat on her lap and made sure he was curled up and didn’t look like he was going to get up again. I sewed his eyes closed and tucked his paws in. Then I said: “Come home Oscar.”

When I had finished, I wondered what might actually happen if the miracle worked. Would Oscar’s whiskers be singed after being flown back from wherever he was at the speed of light, or would his fur stand on end after being brought back to life with a bolt of lightning? Anyway I went round to Mrs. Pew’s and knocked on the door. I saw her wobbling head and smelled the secondhand-shop smell and felt a bit queasy, but I stayed where I was and when she opened the door I said: “Don’t worry about Oscar, Mrs. Pew. I have a feeling he’ll be home very soon.”

She turned up her hearing aid and I said it all over again, and then she said: “Oh, I do hope so. I do hope so!”

I said: “Have faith, Mrs. Pew.”

Then she said: “Pardon?”

And I said: “HAVE FAITH!”

Her hand fluttered at the base of her throat and she said: “Oh. I certainly will.”

She watched me go down the garden path. When I was at the gate she said suddenly: “You’re Judith, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

She said: “Thank you, Judith. It was nice of you to come by.”

I said: “You’re welcome, Mrs. Pew.”

When I got back, I wrote up the miracle in my journal, then turned over three pages and wrote: Has Oscar come home yet? and then I wrote the same on the next.

I WAITED FOR Oscar all that day and the next day too but it just went on snowing. In the meantime I decided that even though I didn’t want to go back to school, because of Neil Lewis, the snow would have to go. Father kept talking about how much work he was missing and accidents were happening on roads and old people like Joe were getting sick. Father said Joe had gone into the hospital and Watson was being looked after by a neighbor. So that afternoon I undraped the gauze and peeled back the cotton wool and blew away the flour and broke the icicles off the houses. I rolled up the cotton and dismantled the blizzard and packed up the snowmen and wiped away the shaving foam and put the blue back in the sky and turned on the sun.

On Saturday night the wind dropped. The next morning, blue sky appeared. By the afternoon the sun was quite warm. Icicles dripped outside my window like someone playing jars of water. The snow in the street became slushy and broke into platelets of ice. Father said: “I knew it couldn’t last.” I didn’t say anything but went and stood on the pavement and listened to water running into the drains at the side of the pavement and said: “Thank You, God. You have me again.”

But there was no Oscar. I waited all day and I waited all evening. I said: “Did I do it right, God?” But God must still have been busy with the four horsemen or something, because He didn’t answer.

I sat up in bed that night and watched clouds crossing the moon and veiling and unveiling the Land of Decoration. I watched the sun come over the mountain and blink a bleary red eye, striping the sky pink and yellow like a stick of rock. But there was still no sight of Oscar.

I WAS STANDING in the garden with Father after the meeting the next day when the fourth miracle happened.

Father was clearing the paths and I was helping him. Little birds had left prints here and there on the bird table and on the top of the walls. A trail of larger prints that belonged to some larger animal led from the garage doors. The buddleia bushes and golden cane bowed beneath a foam of snow, and the cherry-tree branches were black and dripping. There were open patches of ground here and there where the earth and a little sodden grass were beginning to show.

Father was drinking tea, looking around with his hand on his hip, his breath a pink cloud in the air. He said: “I think it’s going to be pretty next spring when your mother’s cherry tree is out. And a few more weeks and we’ll have the first Christmas roses.” That’s when we heard tapping and looked up to see Mrs. Pew standing at her kitchen window. She was beckoning me.

When I got to the wall, she opened the back door and pointed. By her feet, bent over a bowl of cat biscuits, cracking them with his teeth, turning his head this way and that, and making hungry noises, was Oscar. Mrs. Pew said: “I looked up and there he was on the windowsill!” Her head was wobbling twice as fast as usual. She said: “I thought he was dead, and here he is, right as rain, eating for England!”

I climbed over to Mrs. Pew’s and reached out to stroke Oscar’s head. I was pleased to see that not one bit of fur was singed and all his whiskers looked perfectly straight. “I told you he’d come home,” I said. Mrs. Pew was smiling and nodding. Her eyes looked watery. At that moment I didn’t feel afraid of her at all.

She said: “Judith, would you and your father like some jam tarts?”

A vision of Father and me rolling around clutching our sides, with smears of jam and pastry crumbs on our faces, flashed before my eyes. Then I said to myself: “Don’t be silly.” Out loud I said: “Thank you, Mrs. Pew.”

She wrapped a plate in a tea towel and gave it to me. “Come and have tea with me one afternoon,” she said.

When I got back, Father had gone inside. I could see him through the kitchen window, getting tea. I didn’t go in straightaway. I stood on the path, watching the sky redden, smelling the earth, and feeling the warm plate in my hands.

I suddenly saw how everything would get better and better, and wondered why God had helped me like this. And though He didn’t answer and had gone wherever He goes, He must have known what He had done, to make me happy so suddenly, to make everything begin changing.