The Beloved Read Online Free Page B

as I took the tape off his ear flopped down again.
    â€˜Well?’ said Grandma.
    Slowly, I pulled up my knee.
    â€˜Hallelujah, Roberta. Thanks be to God, your faith has made you whole.’
    â€˜Faith!’ Mama snorted, bringing in my lunch tray. ‘Hard work more like it. Our hard work.’
    Our hard work – mine and Mama’s. She told me I’d move my leg and I did. She told me I’d walk, and soon I would. Mama said so. Her smile and her words . . . My beloved child. I’d walk forever to hear her say those words again.
    She set the tray on my lap.
    Grandma frowned. ‘Foreign muck. Why don’t you feed her proper food – beef and vegetables?’
    â€˜It’s not foreign muck, Grandma, it’s macaroni cheese.’
    â€˜Be quiet, child.’
    â€˜No, you be quiet,’ Mama said. ‘Shut your spiteful mouth or leave.’
    Grandma gasped. ‘How dare you speak to me like that? In my son’s house and in front of my own granddaughter!’
    â€˜ My daughter. My house. If you don’t like it, go.’
    I held my breath. Grandma’s lips were clamped together so tightly they made little pillows under her nose.
    â€˜Enjoy your visit,’ Mama said, and walked out.
    Grandma glared at Mama’s back and a steely grey fog gathered around her body.
    â€˜Are you sick?’ I said.
    â€˜No.’ She smiled and the grey turned lavender.
    â€˜Look, it’s going purple.’
    â€˜What has, lovey?’
    â€˜That lavender on your chest.’
    Grandma looked down at her navy dress. ‘There’s no lavender there.’
    â€˜Yes, there is.’
    â€˜No, Roberta. Come now. Let us pray.’ Grandma shut her eyes. ‘Thou art the potter, Lord, we are the clay. Mould us according to thy will.’ On and on she went, her voice winding around a million thees and thys and we-beseech-thees. Finally, she stopped . ‘Amen.’
    â€˜Amen,’ I said. ‘Are we clay, Grandma?’
    â€˜Indeed we are, Roberta, God’s clay. God’s children. We belong to Him.’
    What a lot of people I belonged to – Mama, Dad, Grandma and now God. Grandma leafed through her Bible and found another picture. Jesus looked nice, I thought, with blond hair and a sad face.
    â€˜Have you got a picture of God, Grandma?’
    â€˜Heavens, no. No mortal looks upon the face of God in this life, Roberta. One cannot see God and live.’
    How awful! God must be hideous, a gargoyle with craters in his skin, burning eyes and flaming hair. Poor Jesus; no wonder he looked sad. Imagine having that for a father.
    That night I dreamed I was sitting on God’s knee, trying to plait his beard which dangled and curled like the chain on Grandma’s dunny. Her toilet had a name on it, Thomas Crapper , and I tugged on God’s beard to see if he flushed like Mister Crapper. He didn’t. He roared, a terrible sound that echoed down the long drop between where he lived up there and where I lived down here. Mine , he roared. You’re M-I-I-I-NE!
    I woke with a thud, as if I’d been dropped from the sky, and stared into the darkness. Whose was I?
    Plenty of people thought they knew. ‘So much Lily May’s child,’ they said, or, ‘Look at those Lightfoot eyes.’ Nobody said, ‘So much Roberta’.
    The next morning, I asked Tim, ‘Whose child am I?’
    â€˜The devil’s.’
    â€˜ What? ’
    â€˜I’m joking, Bertie, but you’re a bit different.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜You know. You see things.’
    Colours. That didn’t make me different, it made other people different. They were the ones who couldn’t see what was going on in front of them. Lately, whenever I talked about the colours, Mama got cranky. ‘They’re not real, Roberta, you’re old enough to understand that now.’
    They were real, as real as rainbows or smells. Everyone knew