A Song for Issy Bradley (3 page)

Sister Campbell was in charge last night. Sister Valentine would have done a nicer presentation, but she isn’t married, so she had to sit at the front of the chapel in her best dress and nod while Sister Campbell spoke. It was a shame Sister Valentine didn’t have anywhere better to go on a Friday night, especially as she’d made a real effort and put lots of makeup on. She looked quite nice from a distance, but when she held the chapel door open for everyone and said, “Come in! Welcome!” Zippy could see she hadn’t exfoliated before she applied foundation and her forehead was rutted like the fine side of a cheese grater.

Sister Campbell didn’t help with doors and she didn’t welcome anyone. She just stood at the front of the chapel and waited, her long hair in its usual braid, dangling past her bottom like the tail on a coonskin cap. Long hair can be beautiful, but there is something taxidermic about Sister Campbell’s braided rope. A couple of years ago there were some polygamists from Texas on the news and the women all had long hair and high, stern foreheads; they looked as if they might break if they laughed; they looked like Sister Campbell.

Zippy hovered by the chapel doors while she waited for Adam Carmichael to sit down
—half agony, half hope
. He plonked himself in the front row beside his dad, then turned and waved and patted the empty space on the pew beside him. She hurried to the front and Mum and Dad followed.

Brother and Sister Campbell were supposed to present Standards Night together, that’s the way it works, but Brother Campbell spoke for only five minutes at the end to remind the boys that porn is everywhere: online and in the Next catalog. Sister Campbell spent the majority of the night talking about the things girls need to know.

“Stand up please, girls,” she said after the opening prayer.

“Before you go out every morning, you must check your clothes. You can do this by singing ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’ in front of the mirror. Tonight you can practice in front of the young men and your parents.”

Zippy’s T-shirt rose when she raised her hands and she wondered whether Adam could see her bare skin. It slipped back down as she touched her shoulders, but she felt it lift again as she bent to touch her knees, and while her hands were resting on her toes Dad murmured, “You’ll have to get rid of that top; I can see your back.”

When she sat down there seemed to be less space on the pew and her leg ended up pressed against Adam’s. He leaned in to whisper, “You look cold.” And then, while Sister Campbell talked about the importance of subjecting skirts to The Sit-Down Test and The Sunlight Check, he rubbed his hand along her goose-bumped arm, which wasn’t the slightest bit helpful as he had made her shiver in the first place.

“Girls who choose to be modest choose to be respected. If you check your clothes every day before you go out, you will never be
walking pornography
. I’m sure none of you want to be responsible for putting bad thoughts into men’s heads.
Please
think about the men,” Sister Campbell said.

So Zippy did. She thought about men; with Adam’s thigh pressed
up against hers and his warm fingers rubbing her arm, it was hard to think of anything else.

The quiet of the house is broken by the slam of the front door, which means Dad has gone to help whoever was on the phone. Zippy can hear Mum coming up the stairs, plod, plod, plod; a moment of quiet as she pads along the first-floor landing and then the glum sound of her feet again, plod, plod, plod.

Mum knocks first, she always does, and then she opens the door and peers around it. She looks tired and old. There are purple smudges under her eyes and gray streaks whisker the hair at her temples. Zippy has told her to dye it like Lauren’s mum, but she says it’s too expensive.

“Could you get up? Dad’s gone out, Issy’s still asleep, and Alma won’t budge. Jacob’s desperate to eat some pancakes. He wanted everyone to have breakfast together.”

“OK.”

“And after breakfast will you help Issy get ready while I go to Asda? Dad was supposed to be here, so I’d planned on him helping out, but—”

“Aw, Mum, I’ve got homework.”

“Please.”

Zippy glances at the homemade poster on the wall. Kindness leads to all sorts of blessings. Lauren calls blessings karma. She got really into it during the Buddhism topic in Year Nine and she still goes on about it; the right kind of pizza in the canteen, a treat from her mum, Jordan Banks saying “Hello”—all karma, according to Lauren. But she’s wrong; when good stuff happens it’s not a cosmic mystery, it’s the natural consequence of good works and faith.

“OK, OK,” she says. The words leak into a yawn, and while she stretches her arms high to lever the stale air out, Mum comes in properly. She drifts past the bed to open the curtains and unfasten the wet windows; a slice of autumn breeze arrows past the gaps, and the sound of seagull caws and the squawked conversations of
geese seep into the room. Mum stands there staring at the changing trees in the park across the road, and it seems like a good opportunity to ask.

“You know what you did during Standards Night?” Zippy pauses, relieved to have begun and nervous about how to continue. “Well, it made me wonder …”

Mum turns and tries a smile, but her lips don’t lift properly. She steps away from the window and fiddles her wedding ring with her thumb. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t just sit there,” she says.

Zippy waits for her to continue, but Mum tilts her head slightly and adopts the quizzical expression she wears on Sunday afternoons when she asks, “What did you learn at church today?”—an expression that seems to have very little to do with listening and a lot to do with deciding, as if she’s making up her mind whether she agrees.

Sometimes Dad jokes that Mum could write a fifth gospel,
The Gospel According to Claire
, and he has to remind her not to look beyond the mark. Zippy doesn’t want to hear an installment of
The Gospel According to Claire
, but there
are
things she would like to know, things she is beginning to feel curious about, small things such as the name of Mum’s first boyfriend. But Mum rarely begins sentences with “I,” and she frequently changes the subject when she is asked about herself.

“No one’s perfect, Zipporah. People make mistakes.” Zippy stares at Mum’s hand, at her thumb as it sneaks around the back of her ring finger and flicks the diamond round and round and round. Mum’s got crocodile hands; they’re bumped by blue-green veins, and her skin is dry and scaly. Zippy wonders how long her hands have looked like that. Mr. McLean said in Biology that the cells of the human body are replaced every seven to ten years. That means all of Mum, except for her cerebral cortex, is literally a different person from the one who met and fell in love with Dad. Maybe that’s how repentance works—a sort of gradual baptism of skin and tissue, the shedding of the old self and the cultivation of the new.

“Perhaps there
is
an ideal way to live,” Mum says. “I suppose I
can get behind that, but is it helpful to punish people who don’t live up to that ideal? We don’t live in an ideal world.”

Zippy already knows the world is not ideal; Mum is just changing the subject, and two can play that game. “Well, our house is definitely not ideal. We’ve got that stuff on the wall—what’s it called?” she asks and waits for Mum to cheer up and sing the woodchip song.

“It’s called paper.”

“Aw, Mum.”

“I’m not talking about houses. I’m talking about people’s lives.”

“OK, OK.” She’ll ask again later, after Jacob’s party, when the day is winding down and things are more relaxed. “Was it Sister Anderson on the phone?”

Mum nods.

“What’s up with her now?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“I wish she’d go away.”

“Zipporah.”

“Well, I do. She’s always bothering us. I’ll be down in a bit.” Mum pulls the door closed behind her and Zippy listens to the steady rhythm of her feet as she heads down to the first-floor landing, past the other bedrooms and down the next flight of stairs, plod, plod, plod. She snuggles back under the covers, flicks
Persuasion
open, rereads Captain Wentworth’s letter, and thinks
Half agony, half hope;
that’s
exactly
what it’s like being in love. Every gesture, touch, and word has to be weighed and measured and placed on one side of the scale: He loves me, he loves me not; half agony, half hope. Poor Anne Elliot has to wait ages to get married; she’s entirely given up hope of finding happiness when Wentworth reappears. Perhaps Sister Valentine would like
Persuasion;
it might give her hope. She’s getting old, and when she talks about being unmarried she does this brave, windshield-wiper grin. She did it each time someone caught her eye last night, which was quite often as she was sitting at the front, facing everyone. It made Zippy feel
horribly sorry for her, so she lowered her gaze. But then she noticed the way Sister Valentine’s feet plumped out of her shoes like sugar puffs, and the sorry feeling got worse. She looked up at Sister Campbell instead. No one could ever feel sorry for Sister Campbell.

“What’s the worst sin you can commit?” she asked as she opened her presentation. Parents waited for their children to answer, and the silence stretched uncomfortably until Zippy plunged into it.

“Murder.”

“No.” Sister Campbell pursed her lips and shook her head. It was clear she was pleased to hear the wrong answer. “Denying the Holy Ghost is the worst sin, followed by murder. What sin is next to murder in seriousness?” She rapped the book she was holding into the palm of one hand and it made a thwack like a fist. “Come on!”

“Adultery?”

“Assault?”

“Stealing?”

“No, no, no.” Sister Campbell was triumphant. She opened the book and began to read about the
diabolical
crimes of sexual impurity.

Mum’s hand fluttered for a moment and then she raised it high. Sister Campbell stopped reading.

“Yes, Sister Bradley?”

“You know I wasn’t raised in the Church, so it’s possible I don’t know …”

Sister Campbell nodded her agreement that Mum likely didn’t know.

“… but, I think that might be an old quotation,” Mum continued, her hand partially raised in a way that simultaneously protected her head. “The word ‘diabolical’ seems a bit … much.”

Sister Campbell flicked to the front of the book. “It was published in 1992. Not particularly old, I’d say.”

Mum’s hand was still shielding her head; she looked like she was expecting Sister Campbell to belt her, but she carried on.

“I do think twenty years is quite a long—”

“God is the same yesterday, today, and forever; we know that from the scriptures, Sister Bradley, don’t we? Let’s have an object lesson.”

Sister Campbell likes object lessons. Once, she brought a dartboard to church and everyone had to take aim at a target she had Blu-tacked to the board. At the end of the lesson she peeled the paper target away from the board and on its underside was a picture of Jesus’s face, smiling out through the perforations
—“This
is what you do to Jesus
every time
you sin,” she said.

Last night she reached into her homemade scripture case to pull out a stick of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum.

“Who would like this?”

No one said anything. Everyone suspected a trick.

“You would, wouldn’t you, Zipporah?”

Zippy shook her head but then thought better of it and nodded. Sister Campbell stripped away the foil wrapping, put the gum in her own mouth, and chewed loudly.

“Mmm. Delicious.” She reached into her mouth and pulled out the chewed gum. “There you are, Zipporah,” she said. “Come on up and get it; it’s all yours.”

Zippy gave a surprised laugh and a couple of other people joined in.

“It’s no laughing matter. These are the fruits of sexual immorality.” Sister Campbell held the gum out and shook her hand for emphasis. “Who wants dirty, chewed gum?”

The laughter stopped. Mum whispered something to Dad, who shook his head. Mum poked him, and when he ignored her, she stood up. Zippy assumed she was headed for the bathroom, but she stepped forward and joined Sister Campbell. They stood side by side, Mum nervously fingering her wedding ring as Sister Campbell’s face set into an expression hard enough to chop wood.

Mum’s voice trembled and the air in the room was suddenly thinned by held breath. “I don’t mean to cause contention, but …”
She grabbed the sticky ball from Sister Campbell’s fingers and put it into her mouth.

Everyone breathed out at once.

“Yum,” Mum said, her jaw working determinedly. She looked like a contestant from
I’m a Celebrity
, munching on a kangaroo testicle. “Repentance is delicious. Forgiveness tastes wonderful, too. You’d never know anyone had eaten this before. It’s still lovely and minty.”

Sister Campbell’s cheeks went red and she held out her hand, but Mum ignored her and carried on chomping.

Finally, she removed the gum from her mouth and placed it on Sister Campbell’s upturned palm. Then she sat back down beside Dad.

Sister Campbell held her hand out. “Would anyone else like a chew?”

Poor Sister Valentine was in agony. She looked from Sister Campbell to Mum and back again, uncertain as to whether it was best to emphasize the cleansing power of repentance or the diabolical nature of sin.

A horrible tickle of laughter began to scramble up Zippy’s windpipe. She tried to swallow it and ended up coughing. The cough took her by surprise and caught in her throat. She tried another swallow, which led to another cough, and her eyes began to stream. Adam patted her back, but the surprise of his touch through the fabric of her T-shirt made things worse.

“Go and get a drink of water,” Sister Campbell said.

Zippy left the chapel. She coughed and giggled all the way down the corridor to the ladies’ bathroom. She stood beside the big mirror next to the paper-towel dispenser. She didn’t feel like laughing anymore; in fact she felt as if she’d been tipped upside down and emptied of every last chuckle and snigger. She snatched a paper towel and wiped her face. It was red and blotchy. She couldn’t go back looking like that, so she locked herself in one of the cubicles, sat on
the toilet lid for ten minutes, and worried about how to fall in love and get married without ever making any diabolical mistakes.