When God Was a Rabbit

January 1975 was snowless and mild. A drab, uninspiring month that left sledges unused and resolutions unsaid. I tried most things to delay my imminent return to school, but eventually I passed through those heavy, grey doors with the sullen weight of Christmas Past pressed firmly on my chest. This would be a dull term, I concluded, as I dodged airless pools of malignant torpor. Colourless and dull. Until I turned the corner, that is, and there she was; standing outside my classroom.

It was her hair I noticed first, wild and dark and woolly, and breaking free from the ineffectual Alice band that had slipped down onto her shiny forehead. Her cardigan was too long – handmade and handwashed – stretched at the last wringing out, and it hung down by her knees and was only a little shorter than the grey school skirt we were all forced to wear. She didn’t notice me as I walked past her, even when I coughed. She was staring at her finger. I looked back; she’d drawn an eye on the skin at the tip. Practising hypnosis, she would later say.

I held up the final picture of my rabbit to the bewildered faces of my classmates.

‘. . . And so at Christmas, god finally came to live with me,’ I ended triumphantly.

I paused, big smile, waiting for my applause. None came and the room fell silent, unexpectedly went dark; the overhead lights useless and straining and yellow against the storm clouds gathering outside. All of a sudden, the new girl, Jenny Penny, started to clap and cheer.

‘Shut up!’ shouted my teacher, Miss Grogney, her lips disappearing into a line of non-secular hatred. Unknown to me, she was the product of missionaries who had spent a lifetime preaching the Lord’s work in an inhospitable part of Africa, only to have found that the Muslims had got there first.

I started to move towards my desk.

‘Stay there,’ said Miss Grogney firmly, and I did, and felt a warm pressure build in my bladder.

‘Do you think it’s right to call a hare—’ Miss Grogney started.

‘It’s a rabbit, actually,’ interrupted Jenny Penny. ‘It’s just called a Belgian—’

‘Do you think it’s right to call a rabbit god?’ Miss Grogney went on with emphasis.

I felt this was a trick question.

‘Do you think it’s right to say, “I took god out on a lead to the shops”?’

‘But I did,’ I said.

‘Do you know what the word “blasphemy” means?’ she asked.

I looked puzzled. It was that word again. Jenny Penny’s hand shot up.

‘Yes?’ said Miss Grogney.

‘Blasphemy means stupid,’ said Jenny Penny.

‘Blasphemy does not mean stupid.’

‘What about rude, then?’ she said.

‘It means,’ said Miss Grogney loudly, ‘insulting God or something sacred. Did you hear that, Eleanor Maud? Something sacred. You could have been stoned if you’d said that in another country.’

And I shivered, knowing full well who’d have been there to cast the first one.

Jenny Penny was waiting at the school gates, hopping from one foot to another, playing in her own spectacular world. It was a strange world, one that had already provoked the cruelty of whispers by morning’s end, and yet it was a world that intrigued me and crushed my sense of normality with the decisiveness of a fatal blow. I watched her wrap a see-through plastic rain bonnet around the mass of frizzy curls that framed her face. I thought she was waiting for the rain to stop, but actually she was waiting for me.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.

I blushed.

‘Thanks for clapping,’ I said.

‘It was really good,’ she said, hardly able to open her mouth due to the tightness of her bow. ‘Better than everyone else’s.’

I unfolded my pink umbrella.

‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘My mum’s boyfriend’s going to buy me one of them. Or a ladybird one. If I’m good, that is.’

But I wasn’t that interested in umbrellas any more, not now that she’d mentioned a different word.

‘Why’s your mum got a boyfriend?’ I said.

‘Because I don’t have a dad. He ran away before I was born.’

‘Gosh,’ I said.

‘I call him “my uncle”, though. I call all my mum’s boyfriends my uncles.’

‘Why?’

‘Easier. Mum says people judge her. Call her names.’

‘Like what?’

‘Slag.’

‘What’s a slag?’

‘A woman who has a lot of boyfriends,’ she said, taking off her rain bonnet and inching under my umbrella. I shuffled over and made room for her. She smelt of chips.

‘Fancy a Bazooka? I asked, holding the gum out in my palm.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I almost choked last time I had one. Almost died, my mum said.’

‘Oh,’ I said, and put the gum back in my pocket, wishing I’d bought something less violent instead.

‘I’d really like to see your rabbit, though,’ Jenny Penny said. ‘Take it out for a walk. Or a hop,’ she added, doubling over with laughter.

‘All right,’ I said, watching her. ‘Where do you live?’

‘In your street. We moved there two days ago.’

I quickly remembered the yellow car everyone was talking about, the one that arrived in the middle of the night pulling a dented trailer.

‘My brother will be here in a minute,’ I said. ‘You can walk home with us, if you like.’

‘All right,’ she said, a slight smile forming on her lips. ‘Better than walking home by myself. What’s your brother like?’

‘Different,’ I said, unable to find a more precise word.

‘Good,’ she said, and started once again to hop from one foot to the glorious other.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘Pretending I’m walking on glass.’

‘Is it fun?’

‘Try it if you like.’

‘OK,’ I said, and I did. And it strangely was.