Dat's Love and Other Stories by Leonora Brito & 9781910901731

Author:Leonora Brito & 9781910901731
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910901731
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2023-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

MOONBEAM KISSES

The day after the Pope died they put me in an orphanage, which they said was a ‘home’. Fair enough. But I fell asleep in the car, and when we got there, all I could hear was this voice saying: ‘Welcome to the Home of St Michael and All the Archangels.’ Well, I was only nine and although I threw my head back as far as I could, the stone letters over the archway were so tangled up with thorns and leaves and fat white roses that I couldn’t make out what they said. Then I saw the nun, kneeling on the path with a trowel in her hands, and I thought I must have died and gone to heaven. Except that I knew, no girl like me would go there.

The nun with the trowel was Sister Mary John. When she stood up, she shook out the black sleeves of her habit like great bat wings and stamped her feet hard so that the loose earth fell over the crazy paving. She wore black Wellington boots with the tops turned down like a worky, and she did not smile as she looked at me and said, ‘What is it they call you? What?’ I told her my name and she grunted. Behind the nun was a stone-rimmed fountain with a statue of Our Lady in the middle of it. Water sprayed up in front of Her outstretched hands, while the first toe of Her right foot flattened the head of a snake completely.

Inside the house, which was tall with windows arched like a church, a small nun with red cheeks smiled and flipped a hand at the bun on top of my head. ‘It’s Margaret-Rose isn’t it? Well, Margaret-Rose, we’ll have to get rid of this muff, won’t we?’ She slapped my hair again and I seemed to see the dust motes whizz around my head like some shameful halo.‘Yes, Sister.’

‘Yes,’ she clamped her mouth and nodded, ‘but it’s bath first, then something to eat and then we’ll get the pinking shears out!’

By early evening I was tucked up in bed, just like the children in the picture books, and before the curtains were drawn, I lay inside my wide striped sheets and watched the clouds in glory. First they were yellow and pale like gold, then red like lolly ice with the colouring almost sucked out. My head felt small against the pillow and as I watched the rain clouds seep across, I could feel the silver clippers on the back of my neck and hear the nuns crying ‘Shorn! Shorn! Shriven!’ as the hair came away in clumps. After it was all off they threw it onto the fire where it raised a white wispy smoke that stank.

At St. Michael and All the Archangels I was happy for a time. I had a name, Margaret-Rose, and a parentage that put me down in the gold coloured ledgers as ‘half-caste’. I knew that this meant me, my arms, my legs, my head, my body.

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