Blow Out the Moon (18 page)

But although I WANTED to believe in God, and tried to believe, I just didn’t see how there could be someone up in the sky who cared about everyone. But maybe it was true, in ways I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t understand how space could go on forever — but it did.

I wondered a lot if all the English children believed; I thought probably they did — God seemed so English. It seemed as though they thought God had blessed England in a special way and that in church they were worshipping England as much as God.

There were hymns and prayers about English sailors:

O hear us when we cry to thee

For those in peril on the sea
…

and soldiers:

Our fathers heard the trumpet call

From lowly cot and castle wall
…

and the English ruling foreign lands:

From Greenland’s icy mountain

To India’s coral strand
…

The hymns gave a picture of English people all over the world, ruling it and being protected by God. In America we only had God on money and in the Pledge of Allegiance, but in England, even the national anthem was called “God Save the Queen.” I
know
Marza believed, in England and in God. You could tell by the way she said the prayers every morning, even by the way she walked into prayers. Maybe, I thought, if I were English I’d believe, too — but I wasn’t and I didn’t.

Chapter Twenty-nine:

Little Women

Clare and I were both ill and had to stay in bed all day — it was fun. We talked all morning without stopping, and I was wondering how to ask her what
she
thought about God when Matron (the
new
Matron — just a typical grown-up, not bad, not good) brought our dinners in on trays.

As soon as she left Clare said, “Do you bother with proper manners when you’re alone?”

I wasn’t sure what to say; finally I decided it would be safe to tell the truth.

“No,” I said.

She looked relieved and happy.

“Shall we eat with our fingers, then?” she said.

We did — REALLY messily. We didn’t even wipe our faces or fingers at all until we were all done. It was a lot of fun and I was really glad I’d said no. And we talked about books: One of the most fun things about Sibton Park was that everyone read a lot so you could talk about books with people and they would say things back. In America I could never do that. We talked about
Little Women
(it was one of her favorites, too).

I told her about a book I’d taken out from the library in America. A girl in this book was getting married to an old man. Her little sister didn’t want her to. She said so and someone else in the book said, “Oh, I think it’s so romantic — think of Jo and Professor Baer.” The little sister said, “I always wanted her to marry Laurie.”

In real life, another child who had taken that book out of the library had written in the margin: “Me too.” So I got a pencil and wrote under HER writing, “So did I.” (I always thought that was neat: a little club of girls who didn’t know each other all thinking the same thing and telling each other, in a book.)

Clare said, “I wanted Jo to marry Laurie, too: Everyone does.”

Then I told her that I had always thought I was like Jo. She gave me one of those sensible, considering English looks.

“I think you’re more like Amy,” she said.

Jo not marrying Laurie, from an old copy of
Little Women.

Amy!
She wasn’t a writer, she wasn’t a tomboy; and she was so selfish and so ridiculous, using all those big words and sleeping with a clothespin on her nose. How could anyone think I was like that?

Maybe it was because I tried so hard at everything — to talk and eat properly, to ride well, to be really good at lessons, especially French — and Amy tried hard, too. Jo didn’t care what other people thought: the book said Jo “walked through life with her elbows sticking out,” but Amy wanted people to like and admire her, and at Sibton Park, I did, too. But I didn’t think anyone knew that — I didn’t even really know it myself until Clare said I was like Amy, if that’s what she meant. I didn’t ask her: I was too hurt to say anything.

Chapter Thirty:

Guy Fawkes

It was Guy Fawkes Day and everyone was at the bonfire. I wasn’t going because I had wrecked my mackintosh. I’m not sure if this was a punishment (to teach me to be more careful and sensible) or just that everyone else was wearing theirs and I didn’t have one. Anyway I wasn’t going.

In England they have Guy Fawkes Day instead of Halloween. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament. He put lots of gunpowder underneath it — but it was discovered before it went off. They don’t have trick-or-treating on Guy Fawkes Day: they have fireworks and bonfires.

I was really CURIOUS about the bonfire and the guy (they burn a guy on the bonfire — I thought it was a kind of scarecrow but I wasn’t sure, and that was one of the things I was curious about) and the fireworks — kinds we don’t have in America. Roman Candles and Catherine Wheels sounded especially interesting — I pictured Roman Candles as like the Roman time candles we learned about in second grade (they were striped and timed to burn for exactly an hour). But the fireworks, I thought, would also do something exciting: sparkle, maybe, or explode. Catherine Wheels I imagined as circles of fire revolving in the air, but I couldn’t really imagine how they would work. So I was disappointed that I wouldn’t see them — I was so curious, and I probably wouldn’t be in England by the next Guy Fawkes Day.

A mackintosh is a warm, completely waterproof raincoat, with buttons and a belt. Our Sibton Park ones were tan on the outside and a brownish plaid on the inside, with rubber in between. Mackintoshes weren’t always tan: Emmy, Willy, and Bubby’s school had navy-blue ones.

But they were there, I wasn’t; there was no sense in thinking about it.

I looked around the room, at the blue-and-white tiles by the fireplace (each tile was different), and at the pale yellow walls. The house was so quiet that I could hear the wind in the bare branches and even against the creepers that grew all over the outside walls.

It felt strange to be all by myself: not unpleasant, just strange — I’d never been all alone in the house before. I hadn’t been by myself in a long time except to go to the loo, and that only takes a minute.

What about baths? you might think. We were together for those, too — each dormitory had its own time. There were four bathtubs in the room; each one had a curtain, but it was modest in a bad way to draw it so no one ever did. We played and talked while we had our baths.

Once, when I first came, Veryan turned on both faucets (they call them “taps”) and then squatted and, pointing between her legs, said, “Three taps!”

Everyone laughed; I was a little bit shocked. At first I hadn’t liked to take off my clothes in front of strangers, or have them see me in the bathtub, but by now I was used to these English ways.

I thought about how cozy our study was, and then I got out the story I was working on — I was hoping to finish it in time for Hobby Day. This was a day when things we had made were displayed in the Art Room. The whole school walked around and looked at them. My first term, mine looked very childish compared to the things the other girls had made.

But for THIS Hobby Day I was writing a story I hoped would be really good. It was called “The Richardsons” and it was already seventeen pages long — seventeen
big
pages, not composition-book pages (our composition books were only about half the size of regular big paper).

I hoped I could finish another chapter before the others came back and then read it to them. It felt snug to be writing in bed. After I’d been writing for a while I heard a lot of noise in the cloakroom downstairs, and soon everyone was running in. Their cheeks were all pink and they smelled of leaves and smoke and fresh air and everyone was talking at once. They described food they’d had, and then Clare pulled out her handkerchief tied up in a knot.

“We brought you some roast chestnuts,” she said.

“And I smuggled out two roast potatoes!” said Jennifer.

That was so nice of them! And, while I was trying to get to sleep (I was the last one to fall asleep and the first one to wake up in this dormitory, too), thinking of smuggling those potatoes gave me an idea.

Chapter Thirty-one:

Food for a Feast

The next morning I told the idea to the others.

“Let’s have a midnight feast!”

“With what food?” Jennifer said.

We talked it over: It wouldn’t be as much fun with food from our meals, and we weren’t allowed to go into the village. Then Clare said, “My parents are coming to take Carol and me out one Saturday. Perhaps I could go shopping.”

We made a list of all the things we’d LIKE to get: lemon squash, Cadbury’s chocolate fingers, butter, and lemon curd. Jennifer said that if Clare could get butter and lemon curd, the rest of us could stuff bread into our pockets at tea.

Clare told me privately that her parents had said that she and Carol could each bring a friend, and she had already decided to invite me. She had just been waiting for her parents to tell her when they were coming.

Lemon curd comes in a jar and it looks like bright yellow jam. You put it on bread. It tastes kind of like sour lemon candies, or a lemon meringue pie filling that’s not very sweet. Like many English foods, it sounds strange but tastes very good.

Finally the day came and Clare and I were sitting at a table in a restaurant with her parents, Colonel and Mrs. Sweeting, and Carol and her friend Georgina Miskin.

It was the first time I’d ever been to a grown-up restaurant without my parents. I think I did everything politely and ate everything properly.

Mrs. Sweeting did most of the talking. After a while she paused in her conversation and looked at Georgina’s plate. Georgina had eaten everything except her Yorkshire pudding.

“Don’t you like the Yorkshire pudding?” Mrs. Sweeting said.

“Actually it’s my favorite thing,” Georgina said politely. “I —”

“You like to save the best until last,” Mrs. Sweeting said. Then, with a big smile, “How wise you are!”

I started to say that I did, too; and then I thought it would be better not to, so I didn’t. That’s one of the only times that I’ve started to say something and then stopped myself: I did it because I realized (very quickly, it was as though suddenly I saw myself from the outside) how — unbecoming, I guess you could call it, that remark would be: it would make me seem so pushy and greedy for attention!

The thought was much faster than that explanation, though. Afterwards I felt quite pleased that I had had the thought quickly enough to keep quiet.

Meanwhile, Clare’s mother was talking about saving the best until last in life as well.

When we had put our knives and forks together, Clare said that we had an errand to do for the girls in our dormitory and could we go to the shop by ourselves, while everyone else had dessert?

Clare’s mother and father both looked mildly surprised; Carol and Georgina looked at each other. Georgina (who I decided I didn’t like very much) was smiling in kind of a superior way.

“It’s rather a private errand,” Clare said firmly, giving her sister and Georgina a cold look.

Her parents looked at each other, and then Mrs. Sweeting said we could go.

“Thank you very much for the lunch — dinner,” I said. “It was delicious.”

“I’m so glad you were able to come,” Mrs. Sweeting said (in England they don’t say “You’re welcome”).

Clare and I didn’t talk to each other until we were outside.

“Do you feel proud to be out in your uniform?” she said. I thought about it.

“Yes,” I said, finally. “Do you?”

She nodded.

We were in a little village, with a green in the middle of the street and old-fashioned shops with big windows divided up into lots of little panes. One had sweets in the window — we went in and found all the things.

While Clare was paying, I saw a little white box with pale shapes in different colors — hearts and bells and horseshoes — and CONFETTI in pale blue capital letters.