CHARISMA

Emma Devlin

I.

ELISHEBA MCKEOWN, 13, of Charisma Independent Pentecostal Church, performed a miracle. She manifested a toad between her clasped hands as she sat in prayer before lunch. When its golden head eked out between her thumb and pointer finger, the girl quietly placed it on the table and continued to pray. She prayed for – and here she took out a slip of paper from the Pray4U box – prayed for:

My name is FUKEEN LOSER. I am TWAT years old. I need forgiveness for: FUCK SHIT UP

We will Pray4U.

She prayed for the poor souls who were only able to vent their frustrations in such small, sacrilegious ways. May their fury find an out, she said, before they went to Hell. Elisheba always prayed for those in need of her help.

And when Janine, a girl without a church, heard about it she thought, ah yes, something I can relate to.

* 

Charisma Independent Pentecostal Church occupied a floor above the fishmonger and counted some two dozen among its congregation.

// And the pastor said: so we are gathered here in our humble church above our friend the fishmonger, and surely we are not so proud as to turn up our noses at the smell of fish, as Jesus Christ Himself took but five fish to feed five thousand hungry souls, and the smell must have been damnable, friends, but there were no complaints, and so praise God for the fine catch of haddock fresh from the Irish Sea, for sale below, just mention my name to get a discount, God bless //

The toad itself lived in a tank in Pastor McKeown’s office. News of the toad accompanied every sermon: Incilius periglenes, last seen by man in Costa Rica on the 15th May 1989; his throat pulses with life; he eats well; he does not move though he sits prepared to leap in the manner of saint; he does not make a sound; he is happy and fat and grateful for the privacy offered by the McKeown family.

The toad was definitely a himself, said the Pastor, not a herself. The Lord God had told him so.

// Yes he did say that, and he also said, perhaps the good Lord might see fit to manifest a female for him one day, an Eve to his Adam, you might say, maybe on your birthday, Elisheba, when you are sixteen. And she said, ha ha ha //

And so, not a single one of the congregants ever laid eyes on the toad in person, though they all donated towards its upkeep. They imagined a life of considerable luxury, for a toad. Greenness and heat. Their own Pastor’s office a little tropical climate of its own, in defiance of the endless rain outside. A sign, of course, but a sign of what? One of the local papers published a photo of Elisheba holding the toad in her outstretched hands, a little dab of yellow light. Elisheba smiled tightly to hide her braces. A cowlick stuck out from the side of her head. Her father was taller than her in the photo, even though everyone knew she had at least a foot on him, maybe more. He beamed beside her, one arm around her shoulder. The toad just sat there on her hand like a fat little idol, golden and strange. Glassy eyes. An expressionless head.

 It was common knowledge that Elisheba herself dropped flies and worms into the tank one by one with a pair of tweezers. Anyone worried about idolatry was reassured that it was all quite, quite holy. And the girl herself, Elisheba, the church people said, was as wholly strange and unknowable as any sign, any wonder, and they were no stranger to wonder, though there was little of wonder, strictly speaking, about her. They knew all about the spiritual gifts, the charismata, of which miracles were certainly one. But how dour the girl was, how large and ungainly. Truly, they said, the meek shall inherit the earth.

 *

Janine knew Elisheba from school. The girls were paired together sometimes in French class, donnez-moi une pomme de terre, voilà une pomme de terre. They weren’t friends. For a start, Janine didn’t take to all that mon Sauveur, notre Sauveur, delivre-nous de Mal, etc. Whatever small talk Janine could coax out of Elisheba was in simple, tortured French: I like reading, I like animals, my favourite food is sandwiches. But devotion fascinated Janine. She had toyed with it herself. For a while she prayed mightily every night. She had a bone to pick with Our Lord about one thing and another, and that leads us to another thing, Lord, and another. She wanted a sign, any sign, of anything. If you are there, God, if I am here, Lord, if there is anything, anything at all in the world besides myself, anything bigger than myself, smaller than myself, because I do not know myself at all, send me a sign, send me a sign, send me a sign. No, that stuff wasn’t for her. Faith of any kind seemed like an all-in, a sunk cost; she had felt the rage of someone whose dearest, most furious prayer had yet to be heard, and still felt her pulse quicken at the memory of such immense, indifferent silence. If there were ever going to be miracles, Janine had thought, surely they would have happened back then. She had the constitution for miracles. So, when the photograph of Elisheba and her shiny toad did the rounds at school – un crapaud, as the French have it, Elisheba, you look like you’re taking un crapaud – Janine was obsessed.

She cornered Elisheba at lunchtime.

“So, is it still about?” Janine said. “Or did it, like, ascend?”

Elisheba looked up from her lunch. A fat, homemade sandwich – mon préféré – on homemade bread, stuffed with salad, fromage, jambon, spilling out over the table, suggestive of cupboards overflowing at home, and so, by extension, rooms full of stuff, whatever stuff they needed, whatever stuff they wanted. Let us give thanks for this bounty, or whatever. Elisheba had the look of a puritan in her black and white school uniform. Only the red splash of the tie ruined the effect. A bunch of cherries at her elbow. It was hard to imagine what self-sacrifice would be for these people. Zero carbs. Fat free. Sugar tax. Janine’s lunch was a cereal bar from the vending machine.

“He lives in the Church,” said Elisheba.

“Can I see him?”

“We don’t want to stress him out too much.”

“Does it have a name?”

“No.”

“You should give it a name.”

“Yeah, maybe. In Genesis—”

“Why a toad?”

“I don’t—”

“Are there toads in the Bible?”

“No, but—”

“There’s, like, a plague of frogs, because of Noah.”

“Actually, Moses, and—”

“Is this another plague?”

“No.”

“How can you tell?”

“There’s only the one.”

“So far.”

“For good.”

Both girls took a breath. Janine took the last bite from her cereal bar, and let the crumbs fall on Elisheba. Elisheba didn’t move to brush them away. She looked up at Janine with her dark blue eyes, her hands clasped loosely in front of her. Is there something else I can help you with, the posture said, are you finished? She smelled, faintly, of brine. Her hands were thick and red as if scoured. Working hands, you might say, and they looked as if something might spring from them, right enough. Something massive, next time, though, like a dodo, or a fucking mammoth. Now that would be class.

“Look,” said Elisheba, “There’s a group of us meets every Tuesday lunchtime and maybe –”

“Happy clappers.”

“No. Talking. It’s not a big thing. And maybe I’ll do it again.

“The toad thing? Are you serious?”

She was already turning back to her sandwich. “Yes. Sometime. Come if you want.”

// And I remember thinking, okay, I’m in. //

II.

Pastor McKeown requested that he be allowed to address a special assembly for the third formers, which he promised would be an extended lesson for females on the virtues of modesty, chastity, grace, humility. Janine lined up with the other girls in her class. The Pastor, who she had seen only once or twice when he collected Elisheba from school, was seated on the stage. Girls, he said. Girls. He spoke without a microphone. He didn’t need one. He said, Baby Jesus cries when girls wear trousers, he said, Baby Jesus cries when He sees a shoulder, a knee, and, God forbid  

– and here he was forced to pantomime a whisper –

c l e a v a g e

not there’s much of that around here, you girls are half-starved, you and your diets, but still, girls, be vigilant for the valley of the shadow of breasts, or His mother must spend another sleepless night comforting Him because of you, girls, and you mustn’t make baby Jesus cry, girls.

Row after row of mortified teenagers unrolled the skirts from their hips. The sacred feminine knees were safely covered. But they all knew that later, after lunch, their skirts would be hiked back up again to their rightful place, Baby Jesus or not. If Elisheba was embarrassed, she didn’t show it. Her skirt was, of course, the perfect length.

It was around this time that Janine found Elisheba in the girls’ toilets with her forehead pressed against the mirror. She was looking into her own eyes as she very deliberately, very slowly, said aloud every bad word she could think of, even the c-word. Janine had heard her use bad language before, reading from the Pray4U slips. But now her voice had never sounded so deep, so ragged. She said the f-word, the c-word and the f-word in the same sentence, an elaborate sentence about God, her parents, Hell, eyeballs, rats, that made even Janine freeze to the spot. Elisheba’s face was as solid and unreadable as stone. She saw Janine, finally. She smoothed her hair. She adjusted her collar. She left without a word and went back to class.

Okay, thought Janine, I can work with this.

* 

The congregation came to Pastor McKeown with their stories. Elisheba reported it all back to the girls. A strange shape rounding the farthest-away corner of the coastal path, disappearing into the rain. A loping shape coming up the Main Street one night, flicking down a side-street when passed over by a set of headlights. Stripes, they said, and a long tapered tail. Like nothing they had ever seen before. McKeown passed a dismissive hand over them and told them that not all signs were equal. You have glimpsed a dog, a cat, or a fox, and the wanting of yet another miracle – when the one should be enough – has put your head away. They looked at the closed door of his office. A tantalising sliver of greenish light peeking under the door. It was true, they trusted him. But still, they thought, it was not a dog, a cat, or a fox. They knew that. There are people in this world who will have you give them all that you own for the promise of a miracle, he said, and you, not being on your guard, would give it to them. No matter. Here is the collection plate, my friends, dig good and deep. 

// A Short History of Margaret Thylacine, the late, great Queen of Tasmania. Known as THE TASMANIAN TIGER, or WOLF, for she was dog-headed and also striped as in the way of big cats. In 1937 Margaret of Tasmania, opened her great mouth – and you must understand that the jaw of the Thylacine is a frightening, gaping thing, opening so wide that the skull seems like it must come apart at the hinges  – and sang. A miracle. She was invited to the ballet, the opera. She toured the rural schools and sang for the children. They called her the Queen of Tasmania. In return she graciously drank milk from the cupped hands that were proffered in thanks. Charming, quite charming. It is a gift to be so cherished. Until her jaws happened to open around the neck of some sheep. Oh, the betrayal. Oh, the hurt. And from that day on her song sounded too much like a howl. Find the Queen of Tasmania, the government said, and we will give you money. Dead, we will offer you $$. Alive, $$$. For they didn’t want her dead, only safe. And so they removed her to a concrete chamber where women and children, the very same, maybe, whom she had once allowed to stand steady in her presence while she lapped at the milk, could visit her. Other animals joined her. She fought for space, for attention, for food. And so in the end the Queen of Tasmania perished on the floor of her cell, with the words FAMILY CIRCUS above her head.  You see? Absolutely anyone can tell wee stories. //

III. 

A new sign. Not the mystical kind, but still mysterious. A plank of wood nailed to a tree appeared on the coast. It was painted with an arrow pointing down the path where the golf course met the edge of the sea, and a message: Here is where the Thylacine roams. The kids ignored it, the joggers didn’t notice it, the teenagers broke it, the other teenagers photographed it, the other-other teenagers wrote poems about it, the council removed it, and the church, Charisma Independent Pentecostal Church, denounced it as a fraud. The sign would be removed. Then a new sign would appear. Fresh paint glistening in morning sunlight. A board swinging on the nail. Here is the where the Thylacine roams. On the newest one, an extra line of paint read: The Tasmanian Tiger lives. 

*

Janine thought of the group as Elisheba’s Happy Clappers. They spoke to her in the same way you might cheer on a child who has only just found its feet. Little singsongs about her hair, her shoes, her nails. Little performances, it seemed, to hide their unease. Before the miracle, the rest of the school had viewed Elisheba as someone to pick on, sure, with her stern ways, the perceived disapproving crook of her mouth, the religious stuff, oh God, the endless lessons. She might have expected the comments she got in the corridors, shouted at her from the back of the classroom. All borne with the utmost fortitude, her head held high. Now she was simply odd. A little scary. Ignored. It occurred to Janine that even the Happy Clappers might be a little wary of Elisheba now, wary of what the miraculous might hands do next.

All the same, they had all largely ignored Janine from the beginning, looking past her when she said hello to the table where Elisheba was already sitting. Three in particular stuck close to her. They all had something in common which they assumed Janine lacked. Something about the way they dressed, wore their hair, spoke. Signals at a pitch far above Janine’s range.

// So they like to think. // 

*

The first thing the girls did every Tuesday lunchtime was open the Pray4U box and pull out whatever had been shoved inside. Janine had seen the box sitting at the school reception for months. A smooth, white wooden box with a hinged lid, kept closed by a heart-shaped lock. A slot at the top. Elisheba unlocked the box and read out the first slip of paper she found.

My name is AWAY SHITE. I am 12340 years old. I need forgiveness for: actually get a fuckin life

We will Pray4U. 

There were more, all of them garbage. To Janine’s surprise, Elisheba prayed over them all as seriously as if she was praying for her own salvation. Her smooth, polished voice. Rehearsed, Janine would have described it, except that Elisheba spoke like that all the time. Please Jesus, she said, let these people find peace, and let them know I have forgiven them. In her voice was years and years of her expecting to speak without interruption, without reproach, and her astonishment that there were people in the world who wouldn’t take her seriously.

 // Just wait. //

 *

“What, like, is a Thylacine, though?” one of the girls asked. //Thigh-luh-sign.// With the Pray4U box finished with, they sat in a tidy circle as they ate their lunches. The Lenten period, Janine remembered, meaning that half of them were avoiding all the good stuff like cake, chocolate, sweets, crisps. Not that Elisheba ate much of that stuff anyway. She plucked one grape after another from the vine in her lunchbox, peeled them absent-mindedly as she listened to the other girls chat about their day, popped them in her mouth. Janine’s lunches these days tended to be a pancake, an apple, anything she got get hold of to avoid the look of going hungry on purpose.

“A Thylacine,” said Elisheba. //Thigh-la-sin.// “It’s an extinct animal. A marsupial, striped at the back, with a head like a dog. It lived in Tasmania. Australia.”

“What even is this person on then, with that sign?”

Janine said, “Is it another miracle, Elisheba?” The other girls looked at her. Surprised that she was there, or surprised that she had spoken.

“No.”

“What would you call it?”

Elisheba hesitated. “I don’t know. Stupid. A joke.”

“People have been seeing a weird animal around the town. Is it that?”

“It can’t be.”

“How do you know? If you’ve got a toad why not a Thylacine?” //Thy-la-seen.// “Miracles happen, don’t they?”

Elisheba raised an eyebrow. An arch of surprise, of flinty interest. “Miracles don’t just happen.”

“Is that right,” Janine said.

IV. 

The Pray4U box was filled. Ah yeah, praise God etc., thought Janine when she saw how Elisheba’s face lit up.

// No. I just thought, Finally. //

The first one was the usual thing:

My name is fuck yez. I am mind your own business years old. I need forgiveness for: youse are fuckin mental I s2g.

We will Pray4U.

Some were blank. A few had vulgar drawings on them. Someone had marked one with a rigid grille of straight lines, the pen driven so forcefully into the paper that in places it was ripped and frayed. Elisheba held this one up by a corner and tossed it silently into the bin. She had never done this before. 

“I’d like to do something else,” she said. “Nobody takes this seriously.”

“Yeah,” said one of the other girls. “And, to be honest, it’s kind of boring.”

“Listen,” said another, “What about this toad?”

As one they all started talking over one another, chirping pleas to Elisheba to let them, just this once, see the miracle she had performed, just this once.

“Wait,” said Janine, amid the clamour. “I thought you’d seen it? Did none of you see it?” Nobody heard her or, more accurately, nobody listened. Janine watched Elisheba as the girls talked above her head. Eyes downcast. The image of perfect, perfected placidity and poise, cultivated so beyond her own nature that she sat, even at ease, with a little quiver of tension, a little kick of her toes. She held one final slip of paper from the Pray4U box in her hand.

“All right,” she said. “But you can’t tell anyone.”

// We won’t, we won’t! //

The bell rang. They made plans to meet at the church that evening. Seven. Utmost secrecy. You’re just going to church. Elisheba crumpled the slip of paper she had been holding and left it on the desk and left. Janine lingered for a few moments in order to grab it. She smoothed it out and read it:

My name is LIAR. I am LIAR years old. I need forgiveness for: LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR

We  I will Pray4U.

// Yes. That was me. I did that. //

*

Janine arrived at the building a little before seven. Someone was singing. She had been able to hear them from as far away as the stalled redevelopment along the seafront, just beside the pier off which she had once leapt into the cold, braided water of the lough. Just because.

// You wouldn’t have liked Elisheba’s singing, but I wish you could have heard her. All other ground is sinking sand/all other ground is sinking sand. //

 The door to the building was unlocked. Janine stepped into a dark, cramped hallway. The door slammed and bounced on the frame behind her. The singing stopped abruptly. On the right was the door to the fishmongers, locked and barred. All the lights were off, though Janine could see something glittering on the counter which she supposed could be eyes or scales, even teeth, or just trays of ice. It struck her that Elisheba smelled of this place, as if she, with her big red hands, had been here herself scrubbing and scrubbing to get rid of the smell – which she might well have done, are those Christian people not all about weird acts of service and notions of humility – though it doesn’t seem to have done much good. Janine picked her way up the staircase.

Someone upstairs took a deep breath. Janine stopped. Someone breathed out, but in a whisper like

Lalalalaaaaaa

and as Janine turned a corner on the stairs, all light from the street was lost. She couldn’t see.

“Uh, hi,” she called.

Nobody answered. A note played over and over again on a piano. High and brittle, like a glass struck by a knife. Janine held out her hands. It must be Elisheba up there, she thought. The pastor’s daughter arriving early to spruce the place up. It made perfect sense. It made sense for the pastor’s daughter to play the piano, sing. For some reason, it even made sense that there were no lights leading the way to the church, just a voice and that one repetitious note, the one making its way into Janine’s brainstem, into her heart, over and over again, Jesus Christ, she thought, is it any wonder nobody can get to Heaven?

Ahead, a door swung open and hard florescent light lit up the staircase. It was Elisheba.

“Hiya,” said Janine.

“Hello.”

Elisheba was in jeans and a t-shirt, which Janine hadn’t expected. She looked shorter, somehow. Janine’s eyes stung in the florescent light of the church hall, which wasn’t a hall at all but a square, medium sized room that might have been a storeroom once. Small piles of chairs lined the walls. A poster here and there, with psalms and verses from the Bible splashed across them in elaborate, cursive handwriting. Painted with a dove, an olive branch, a globe, a cross. The posters felt familiar, though Janine had never stepped into such a Church in her life. The floor was just bare boards, chipped and scuffed. God love them, they had tried to keep it tidy and clean. Someone had whitewashed the walls. Someone had added neat yellow curtains to the one narrow window at the front. All the same, the room was a jumble of colours from white to red to pale, olive green, all layers of exposed plaster that gleamed in the damp. It was cold.

// There was a bar around the corner like that place. Darker. For a while I went there once a week to pick up a bottle of whiskey for my grandmother and nobody bothered to check my age. Everyone was beige. Everyone wore black and blue clothing that was much too big for them. Everyone despondently followed the line of red and blue party lights that flicked all over the room with pale, half-closed eyes. Lights of a different time, of different people. I never stayed long. What kinds of stories would they have told, I have often wondered, to the Pray4U box? //

“Where’s everyone else?”

“I don’t know.”

Janine spotted a plain wooden door on the left with PASTOR MCKEOWN spelled out in large, ornate golden stickers, a little off centre, a little cracked and flaked, like everything else.

// P ST    C  O N //

In addition to the rising smell of the fish downstairs and the sour, musty smell of damp – which was not bad, actually, only strong, playing on the mind in half-conceived images of seaweed, molluscs, salty water – there was something else. Just a trace. Dust, heated up. A hint of the outdoors, like turned earth, a sour note of green, of grass, of plants Janine had no names for except: they are green. Janine tried the handle of the Pastor’s office. Locked.

“So…?” said Janine.

“So…” said Elisheba.

Whatever Elisheba had been about to do

// and her hand was resting on the piano, where a bunch of keys was sitting, so whatever else you may hear, I believe she would have told me everything // 

was interrupted by a shriek from the street, a plaintive howl. Janine went to the window. It was full dark, aside from the orange streetlights, and for a moment she couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing.

// I’ll tell you what I saw. //

Elisheba’s three girls were pressed together into the doorway of the building opposite. Janine could make out the reflective strips of hoodies, shoes, the shine of the clips and ties in their hair. They were crying openly, calling for help. They were packed against the locked door, clutching one another, gesticulating at something on the street directly below Janine, out of her sight.

// I saw Elisheba smile. //

By the time Janine was on the street, whatever had scared them so much was gone. As a group they launched themselves at her, and she found herself ringed by them, with them uncomfortably close to her face, pinning her against them as they tried to tell her, shouting over each other, what they’d seen. She pieced it together, that they had seen the shadow of a long, loping animal, who hind legs bent slightly beneath its weight, whose tail swung stiffly like a lizard’s, striped like a cat, with the face of a dog.

“You scared it off,” one of them said. “It was looking at us!”

“Tasmanian Tiger!”

// I saw Elisheba go to her father’s office. //

Janine looked over her shoulder. The street behind her, along with the entrance to the church, was nearly solid darkness. The small window above gave out only the weakest yellow light. If Elisheba came the dark staircase now she might look like she was manifesting herself out of the void.

“You saw nothing,” she said, cutting them all off, silencing them. “How could you have seen anything? It’s pitch black.”

// She opened the door and walked inside. Before it closed, I saw a sign. //

“But we –”

“Screaming over nothing.”

“Where’s Elisheba?”

“She’s –”

“Look!” one of the girls pointed at the window.

// If there is anything, anything at all in the world besides myself, anything bigger than myself, smaller than myself, because I do not know myself at all, send me a sign, send me a sign, send me a sign. //

Janine turned. The window above was open. The colour of the light had changed from pale yellow to bright, bright white. Bright enough that the girls could see what looked like hundreds upon hundreds of golden toads spilling down into the street.

// And the sign I saw read, The Tasmanian Tiger lives. //