Feed My Dear Dogs. Emma Richler

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СКАЧАТЬ Look, um, try Mum, OK? I’m not sure I get it either.’

      I remember it, this morning, the sudden picture I had in my head, of soldiers flying out of trenches into gunfire, falling men, and of people ambling along all casual and keeling over, hurling themselves to the ground, they can’t help it, and there were cartoon images too, of people falling down wells, or off clifftops, or through holes in a frozen lake, hovering in mid-air for a full horror moment of realisation, unless, of course, the character is a hero, in which case he will be saved by a skinny branch on the way down, or land softly in a passing boat, and this is what is so depressing about the snake part in Sister Lucy’s story, and what I do not want Harriet to know, that somehow, due to the events in the Garden, according to nuns, not even an all-out hero can count on a passing boat, which accounts for that story from Mum’s childhood, about the very nice boy at her school who fell down a lift shaft by mistake. In my opinion, telling the fallen man story first thing in the morning at assembly is dodgy behaviour on the part of nuns, kicking off everyone’s day with this terrible news, and giving kids like my sister a doomy outlook on life when they are barely seven years old and have yet to face the facts. Furthermore, I am now deeply worried about lifts, especially as I forget, each time I step into one, to check first off that it is there. I give myself a very hard time about it so I will not step through the doors unawares again, but it is hopeless. I have been lucky so far, but I am only nine and have a long way to go. It is very weird, if you are not a forgetful type, to carry on forgetting the same bitty thing every time. Bloody.

      ‘So why is everyone falling, then?’ says Harriet, kind of cross.

      ‘Fallen.’

      ‘It’s silly.’

      ‘Right. So let’s drop it.’

      ‘BARKIS is willin’,’ says Harriet in a growly voice, using her new favourite saying from David Copperfield, a book by Mr Charles Dickens Mum is reading to us at present, which is great, because she does all the voices in a very realistic manner, the posh ones going, my dear, my dear, all the time, and the rough ones, such as Barkis. Harriet is very keen on Barkis. It is possible he reminds her of our dad, who is also a man of few words with a growly voice that is not scary once you get to know him.

      ‘Harriet Weiss!’ my sister adds. ‘Where are your shoes, put on your shoes! BARKIS is willin’.’

      ‘Did you say that to nuns today? Barkis is willin’?’

      ‘Tired of shoes.’

      ‘Harriet. Don’t say the Barkis thing to them, they won’t understand. They’ll think you’re being rude. Save it for home, OK? And try to keep your shoes on at school. Please.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘It’s rules, Harriet. They have to have rules.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because they need to keep control of things. Like in wartime, in the army. You know.’

      ‘Is this the army?’

      ‘No. Forget that. I mean – they don’t want us to run wild, that’s all.’

      ‘Like golliwogs,’ Harriet says, her lower lip all trembly.

      Oh-oh. It’s a Golliwog Day. I look at my sister who is only 3ft 4²/₈in high since last measured, with her fluffy fair hair mashed down flat, that is, for top accuracy, my little sister with big blue eyes and, I happen to know, one or two tiny soft woollen chicks with plastic feet and beads for eyes in her pocket, I look at her and I wonder how it is nuns can foretell trouble, and suppose she will run wild, as if chaos begins with Harriet taking off her shoes in a classroom, like the first step on the way to the Fall of the Roman Empire and barbarian invasions and so on. Nuns are not very hopeful regarding Humanity.

      ‘Harriet. Remember what Mum said on that subject?’

      ‘Golliwogs are made up.’

      ‘Yup. And what else?’

      ‘Rude. It’s a rude word. It starts wars.’

      ‘Yes. No. That’s prejudice. Prejudice starts wars. Got that?’

      ‘Think so.’ Harriet is not happy, I can tell, because she does a little soft-shoe shuffle and then grins at me, meaning she is trying to forget something bad.

      My sister is going through a golliwog phase and it will soon be over, I hope, but I do see her problem. We are five kids in the Weiss family with me bang in the middle and Ben the eldest, and very tallest, and the only one with a taste for jam and other stuff from jars, of the sweet kind, i.e. not peanut butter, aside from Mum who eats honey, though not on toast like a regular person, but mixed into plain yogurt. She has special ways, but that is another matter. OK. When Harriet first saw it, the golliwog leaping around on the label of a strawberry jam jar, she was downright spooked and refused henceforth to sit at the same table with golliwog jam upon it. Preparations had to be made. Everyone needs protection from something.

      After my dad finished up laughing and teasing and leaping around with mussed hair, there was a discussion, beginning with Mum explaining about prejudice and African slavery and made-up words, and even my dad getting serious and telling us about yellow turbans on Jews in ancient times leading to yellow badges in later times and cartoons of pigs, until I had a sudden confused and stupid feeling going back to the golliwog, because I had no idea a golliwog was meant to be a person at all. I thought it was a grizzly bear. What an eejit, as Jude would say. The golliwog is deepest black with shaggy spiky hair and wild eyes and I always thought the artist drew stripy colourful clothing on it so it would be less scary for people like Harriet, the way stuffed bears in shops have little bow ties and other accoutrements so that a kid will think it is not an animal, it is a person, and therefore very friendly. No one is thinking straight. A plastic baby doll is a person, and just about the most gruesome thing a kid will ever clap eyes on, and no amount of stripy clothing can take away the spook element from a golliwog. Harriet’s fear of golliwogs has made me see the light on a few subjects of pressing importance, and I am now quite interested in prejudice, whereas Harriet has taken to slavery, and is now very inquisitive regarding slaves and slavery BC and AD, which is fine with me, as it means she is likely to find rescue in her big thing for slaves any time she is rattled by golliwogs, on a day when a golliwog is a monster chasing her straight off a label of a jam jar.

      We do not buy this jam any more, but there was worse horror to come for Harriet the time she crossed paths with Mary Reade in the playground, Mary and her golliwog doll tucked under one arm, a sight so bad, my sister was a jibbering wreck and I was called for to restore sanity and peace. Harriet held my hand and would not let go, like she was right inside a nightmare and needed my company until she could remember that a made-up thing is a made-up thing and ought not to have lasting spook power, it does not exist. On that day, I tried to distract her courtesy of intellectual matters, raising fond issues of war and prejudice and slavery and so on, and today, I am wondering whether she has had another brush with Mary’s golliwog.

      ‘Anything else you want to tell me, Harriet?’

      ‘We are all God’s creatures.’

      ‘What? Was that Mean Nun? Did she give you the creatures speech?’

      ‘Yes. Mean Nun.’

      Mean Nun is the only bad nun around the place and I am beginning to think she is a little bit crazy. Any time there is some kind of slip-up committed СКАЧАТЬ