Everyone is staring at me in horror. Juliette’s mouth twists from side to side like a snake slithering towards you before it opens its jaw to swallow you whole.
Mama has that look again. The one of desperation.
‘Clara’ is all she manages.
Pastor Brown demands that Mama and Papa punish me. ‘This is abhorrent behaviour. You are members of this community. This—’ he wags his finger at me—‘this is inexcusable.’
I want Mama to tell him that I was right to do what I did. That she will not quieten me, because I am just like her, like a force of wind that will not be tamed. Maybe that is the problem. I am too much like her, and I am not enough like them.
The diary falls out of my hands. I run down the steps and around the back.
As I stumble down the hill, I hear Rudy shouting after me. And both our mamas yelling at us to come back.
Chapter Eight
‘Who does she think she is? She’s not perfect. None of them are.’ I march ahead as Rudy tries to keep up with me. ‘I could have told her all the things her perfect daughter did to me, but I didn’t.’
‘You showed them!’ Rudy says.
‘That woman is the meanest person I’ve ever met. I thought it was Ms Gee, but it’s not.’
‘Grandma really came through for you,’ Rudy agrees.
I ignore her ongoing commentary and continue my rant.
‘I’ll bet she’s in this mean-old-lady club, but she kicked everyone out for not being mean enough, because she’s the meanest out of anybody.’
A snort escapes Rudy. I glare at her as she desperately tries to hold back a laugh. Her cheeks get bigger, and her eyes start to bulge, then the laugh escapes.
‘A mean-old-ladies club?’ she hollers, holding her stomach. ‘I can just imagine them in their nightgowns and headties, sitting in a circle in their rocking chairs with a cauldron in the middle.’
I have no idea what a cauldron is, but it sounds like something Juliette would have.
We are in the banana grove. I didn’t realise we had got this far.
‘They’ll chant spells about all the children they hate.’ Rudy adopts this croaky voice, pinches her nose, and turns her lips downwards. ‘Every night when all the children are asleep, we will pick out of a hat the name of which child to cast a spell on.’
Rudy takes a hold of my hands in the middle of the banana field. ‘Let’s make up a song about them. I’m really good at making up songs.’ She screws up her face and wiggles her nose. Then she looks me deep in the eye and starts to chant.
‘Evil old ladies are here to say
We want Clara Dee to pay
Evil ladies every day chant
We want Rudy out of the way.’
I join in the chant. We skip in a circle, chanting louder, skipping faster and faster until we are so dizzy we fall on the ground laughing.
I lie in the dirt, staring up at the night sky. I try to catch my breath.
‘Will they be mad that we ran off?’ Rudy asks.
I think about Mama’s worried face as I read from the diary, knowing full well that her worry turned to anger when I ran off.
‘I can’t go back,’ I tell her.
I feel her take my hand.
‘We’ll get in trouble together,’ she whispers.
I remember her mother at Ms Gee’s, worried that I was walking home alone. She will blame me for taking Rudy with me.
I sigh, pulling my hand away. ‘You should go.’ I can’t have another person mad at me. I just can’t.
Rudy continues to stare at the sky, unfazed by me pulling away.
‘You shouldn’t let people make you so angry,’ she says. ‘My mother says if they make you angry, then they’ve won.’
I turn my head to look at her. ‘Is that why she didn’t get mad at Ms Gee that night when I was over there?’
She nods, not looking away from the sky. ‘Mm-hmm.’
I turn on my side to face her.
‘Why didn’t Ms Gee tell anybody she had a daughter?’
Her chest rises and falls, and her hands link across her chest. For a moment, she says nothing. Then, as if making a firm decision, she turns on her side to face me. I make myself comfortable. This feels like it’s going to be juicy.
‘My nana and my grandpa fell out when Mum was fifteen. He got a job in London, but Nana didn’t want to leave Sycamore Hill. Mum said they asked her to choose. Stay in Sycamore with Nana or go to England with Grandpa.’
My heart beats fast, as if I didn’t already know the ending. ‘She chose London?’
Rudy nods. ‘It’s not her fault,’ she mumbles. ‘They should never have made her choose.’
‘So Ms Gee got mad?’
‘She thought when Mum chose London, she chose Grandpa and that meant Mum didn’t love her any more. So they stopped speaking. Your mum might remember her.’
I think about Ms Gee and how she pushes people away. Now it all makes sense.
‘Mum kept trying to contact her, but she wouldn’t answer her letters. She told me she didn’t know how much longer Nana had left, so if she wouldn’t answer our letters, we would go to her.’
I’ve seen Ms Gee’s letters. I don’t know who picks them up from the post office, but she makes us read them to her. I’ve never seen a letter from England. Maybe Gaynah or Calvin did, but wouldn’t they have mentioned it?
‘I don’t know if she received the letters.’
I explain to Rudy how it works around here. Ms Gee yells at us and we do things for her. If there was a letter from England, we would know about it.
She shrugs. ‘Mum didn’t like where we lived anyway. It wasn’t good for me. She said it was time I saw where she came from and maybe we might like it and stay. But before we could even think about how to go about it, we got a letter out of the blue inviting us down. Mum isn’t sure why Nana Gee sent the letter inviting us, though, because now we’re here, she doesn’t talk to Mum at all if she can help it.’
Suddenly I feel very sorry for Rudy, this girl from England. It’s not easy dealing with Ms Gee. Around here, we try not to take anything she says to heart, but I think I might take it to heart if she were my nana.
Rudy jumps to her feet suddenly. ‘Last one in the river turns into Juliette!’ She darts through the trees. She peeks behind her to see me catching up and squeals, digging her feet in the dirt and pushing herself faster.
How weird that she changed the subject like that. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it. She’s already fitting in. This town is full of things no one wants to talk about.
I catch her at the slope and we both run down it at full speed.
Rudy is squealing, ‘I can’t stop.’
I veer into her, using her as a barrier. She does the same to me until we are entwined, holding on to each other and tumbling into the water. My trousers expand in the water. I look like an inflatable toy. Rudy points at me, laughing hysterically. I splash her, and her eyes widen in shock.
‘Oh no you didn’t!’ She wades towards me, but the water pulls her back and she can’t get to me fast enough. This makes us laugh harder.
‘Can we join?’ The voice comes from across the river. It’s Calvin with his friend Anton.