When God Was a Rabbit

‘Good morning,’ said Nancy, opening her eyes to the dull November morn.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘What’s up?’ she said, rolling over and meeting my face.

‘It’s the auditions today,’ I said to her quietly, placing my red and blue school tie over my head.

‘What auditions?’ she said, quickly sitting up.

‘For the Nativity play,’ I said.

‘I didn’t know you were interested in that.’

‘I wasn’t, but Jenny Penny persuaded me.’

‘What part are you going up for?’ Nancy asked.

‘Mary, Joseph, the usual,’ I said. ‘The lead.’ (Omitting baby Jesus since it was a nonspeaking part and also I didn’t know if I’d been forgiven for saying he was a mistake.)

‘What do you have to do in the audition?’ she asked.

‘Just stand there,’ I said.

‘Nothing more?’

‘Nope,’ I said.

‘You sure?’

‘Yes, Jenny Penny said so,’ I said. ‘She said they can tell star quality just by that. She said it’s in my jeans.’

‘OK then. Well, good luck, angel,’ she said, leant across to her bedside table and opened the drawer.

‘Take these,’ she said. ‘For luck. They exude star quality and always work for me.’

I’d never heard her use the word exude before. I would use it later that day.

I walked briskly to the end of the road where a large privet hedge had made its home. It was where I always met Jenny Penny to walk to school; we never met at her house because it was difficult at her house, something to do with her mum’s new boyfriend. She got on OK with him, she said, when her mum was there. But her mum wasn’t always there, you see; she was often at funerals now, a new hobby that she had recently embraced. I guessed her mum simply liked to cry.

‘Laughing? Crying? It’s all the same really, isn’t it?’ said Jenny Penny.

I didn’t think it was but I didn’t say anything. Even then I knew her world was different from mine.

I looked up the road and saw Jenny Penny running towards me with a shimmering line of moisture hanging off her plump upper lip.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said.

She was always late because she had unmanageable hair.

‘That’s all right,’ I said.

‘They’re nice glasses,’ she said. ‘Did you get them from Nancy?’

‘I did,’ I said proudly. ‘She wears them at premieres.’

‘I thought so,’ said Jenny.

‘They don’t look too big?’ I ventured.

‘No, they don’t,’ she said. ‘But they’re really dark. Can you see all right?’

‘Of course I can,’ I said, lying, having just missed a lamppost but not unfortunately the curl of dog turd that was positioned at its base. It coated the underside of my shoe like grease and its sour smell lounged around in my nostrils.

‘What’s that smell?’ asked Jenny, looking around.

‘Winter drawing in,’ I said with a heavy sigh, and I grabbed her arm and we marched towards the safety of the black iron gates.

In hindsight, I probably should have taken the glasses off for my audition, because I stumbled towards the school assembly hall like an old seer.

‘Sure you’re OK?’ said the prefect, leading me by the arm.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I said as I tripped over his shoe. The large doors opened and Jenny Penny ran out.

‘How’d it go?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Great,’ she said, giving me the thumbs up.

‘What part did they give you?’ I whispered.

‘The octopus. Nonspeaking,’ she said. ‘What I wanted.’

‘I didn’t know there was an octopus,’ I said.

‘There’s not,’ she said. ‘They asked me to be a camel. But with all the animals marching in two by two, there must have been an octopus.’

‘That’s Noah’s Ark,’ I said.

‘Same thing. Still the Bible,’ she said. ‘They’ll never know the difference.’

‘Probably not,’ I said, trying to be supportive.

‘I’m making the costume myself,’ she said, and I suddenly felt nervous.

As I walked into the great hall, I could barely make out the five faces seated behind the desk; but there was one face that cut through the blackness like the all-seeing eye of Horus: my old teacher, Miss Grogney. The Nativity play was her ‘baby’ and she boasted that she had written it all by herself; strangely omitting any mention of either Matthew or Luke.

‘Eleanor Maud?’ said a man’s voice.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Are your eyes OK?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, nervously adjusting the frames on my face.

‘Don’t fidget,’ shouted Miss Grogney, and I waited for her to add, You blasphemer.

‘What do you have for us?’ asked the man.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Your audition piece,’ said Miss Grogney.

Panic gripped my unprepared being.

‘Well?’ said Miss Grogney. ‘Hurry up.’

I moved slowly to the front of the stage, words floating in and out of my mind, some lucid, many random, until a group huddled together and I recognised the coherent rhythmic pattern. I couldn’t remember it all, but it was one of Nancy’s favourite speeches and I’d heard her practise it as religiously as a scale. I didn’t understand it all, but maybe they would and I coughed and said, ‘It’s from the film The Covenant¹ and I’m the character Jackie and I’m ready.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Miss Grogney.

I took a deep breath and opened my arms.

‘I know you won’t pay for the shoes or even the dress. But what about the abortion, godammit! At least give me money for a bottle of gin.’

‘That’s enough!’ screamed Miss Grogney, and she pointed her finger at me. ‘You. Wait.’

I stood in my self-imposed darkness and watched them huddle together and whisper. I heard them say, ‘Interesting’. I heard them say, ‘Great idea’. But what I didn’t hear them say was Mary or Joseph.

That night, my mother carried in her favourite casserole dish and placed it, steaming, onto the table. The kitchen was dark and candles flickered on every surface.

My mother lifted the lid. Rich dark smells of meat and onion and wine.

‘I wish we could dine like this every night,’ my brother said.

Dine was his new word. Fine dining would come next.

‘Maybe we could have a séance later?’ said Nancy, and my mother quickly looked at her – a look I’d seen so often – a look that said, Bad idea, Nancy, and you’d know that if you had children.

‘You’re quiet, Elly. Everything OK?’ asked my mother.

I nodded. If I spoke I felt tears would tumble out onto the backs of my words. I stood up instead, mumbled something about ‘forgetting to feed him’ and went towards the back door. My brother handed me a torch, and with two carrots in my pocket I slipped out into the cold night.

It felt late but it wasn’t; the darkness of our house made it feel late. The climbing frame cut a weird skeleton in the dusk like a spine bending backwards. It would be demolished the coming spring and used for firewood. I walked down the path towards the hutch. God was already straining at the wire; his nose was twitching, picking up the scent of my sadness as determinedly as a dog. I flicked the catch and he bundled towards me. Wisps of blue and green fur stood out in the torchlight; a good idea left over from a bored weekend when Nancy and my brother dyed his pelt and took pictures of him balanced on their heads. God loved performing as much as Nancy. I pulled him onto my lap. He felt good, he felt warm. I bent down and kissed him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, in his strangled little voice. ‘It’ll all come good in the end. Always does.’

‘OK,’ I said calmly; unperturbed that it was actually the first time I’d ever heard him speak.

I saw the long striding shape of Nancy come down the path towards me. She had a cup in her hand, steam spiralling into the chill November sky.

‘So tell me,’ said Nancy, crouching down, ‘how did it go?’

My mouth made a kind of shape, but I was too distraught to speak, so I had to whisper it instead.

‘What?’ she said, leaning towards me.

I cupped my hand around her ear and whispered it again.

‘The innkeeper?’ she said. ‘The bloody innkeeper?’

I shook my head, convulsions racking my body. I looked up at her and said, ‘The blind innkeeper.’