Read Online Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller - Free Book Online
Authors: Alexandra Fuller
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pale. “They smacked me and punished me and banished me, but it just made me more difficult and defiant and determined not to learn.”
One day the nuns blocked all the drains and gassed the school’s stray cats. “Dozens of cats, corpses everywhere,” Mum remembers. “Their poor little poisoned bodies piled up in heaps, swelling in the sun. If you’d put them tip to tail, they would have gone all the way around the school buildings. And the next day we were overcome by the awful stench of burned fur and flesh when the gardeners doused them in fuel and set fire to them. It was too awful. Too, too wicked.”
Mum considers that the nuns became bloodless and heartless because they weren’t allowed to drink and gamble or have any fun, while the priests were allowed to get drunk and bet on horses at the racetrack. “The nuns were supposed to be above all earthly desires and temptations. They weren’t even allowed to be observed eating. They had a furtive dining room at the back of school where they had to eat behind closed doors and closed curtains. No one could ever see them do anything biological. We schoolchildren had an ongoing argument about whether or not nuns really did eat, and if they did, what happened at the other end. Of course, I think they took all their irritation and disappointments and repressed urges out on us.”
After four years at the school, Mum had a fairly good idea that hell involved nuns and convents, so when an inferno worthy of Hades exploded in the blue gum trees near the school, it was not a surprise, but what was a shock was that Suk, as usual, was tethered to one of the trees. It was toward the end of the long dry season; the wind had been red all day with dust blown in from Uganda and settling on everything like powdered blood, the sun blistered out of a high, clear sky. Finally at noon that day, the volatile eucalyptus sap caught fire. From her desk in the classroom, Mum saw the flames out of the corner of her eye and was in a full run toward her donkey before her mind fully understood what her body already knew. But before she could run into the flames, she was caught fast in the powerful grip of Sister Philip’s manly hands.
“I could feel the explosion of those trees in the pit of my stomach,” Mum says. One tree after the other blew up, each flaring limb and trunk bringing the fire closer and closer to Suk. The little donkey tugged and strained at his halter, but the rope held fast. Mum watched helplessly as a wall of fire consumed the tree under which Suk fretted. The donkey disappeared from sight and his screams were lost in the roar of the oily flames. Mum felt the world contract into the denial that comes with tragedy, the refusal to believe that time cannot be stopped, reversed, undone. “No! No! No!”
Then, out of the flames, singed and braying in pain and fright, the donkey staggered, flesh and fur hanging from his back in charred strips. His halter rope had burned through, and was dangling under his chin. Mum tried to squirm out of Sister Philip’s grip, but the woman’s hands only squeezed tighter.
“Let me go!” Mum cried. She twisted and kicked in the vice of Sister Philip’s grasp, but she could not get free. Then she swiveled her head and looked up at the nun and what she saw chilled her then, and stayed with her forever. “Sister Philip was staring at Suk with furious, cold blue eyes under her bushy ginger eyebrows. I knew then that she had put the Evil Eye on him. She’d started that fire.” Mum nods. “I’ve never had any doubt about it. That bloody nun was a witch.”
My grandmother nursed the donkey back to health with liquid paraffin and May & Baker antibiotic powders, but Suk sensibly refused to go anywhere near the school again. Anyway, he remained completely bald over much of his body, “and you can’t ride a bald donkey.” So for some months Mum was forced to walk to school every morning alone, and when she was sent to sit under the
One day the nuns blocked all the drains and gassed the school’s stray cats. “Dozens of cats, corpses everywhere,” Mum remembers. “Their poor little poisoned bodies piled up in heaps, swelling in the sun. If you’d put them tip to tail, they would have gone all the way around the school buildings. And the next day we were overcome by the awful stench of burned fur and flesh when the gardeners doused them in fuel and set fire to them. It was too awful. Too, too wicked.”
Mum considers that the nuns became bloodless and heartless because they weren’t allowed to drink and gamble or have any fun, while the priests were allowed to get drunk and bet on horses at the racetrack. “The nuns were supposed to be above all earthly desires and temptations. They weren’t even allowed to be observed eating. They had a furtive dining room at the back of school where they had to eat behind closed doors and closed curtains. No one could ever see them do anything biological. We schoolchildren had an ongoing argument about whether or not nuns really did eat, and if they did, what happened at the other end. Of course, I think they took all their irritation and disappointments and repressed urges out on us.”
After four years at the school, Mum had a fairly good idea that hell involved nuns and convents, so when an inferno worthy of Hades exploded in the blue gum trees near the school, it was not a surprise, but what was a shock was that Suk, as usual, was tethered to one of the trees. It was toward the end of the long dry season; the wind had been red all day with dust blown in from Uganda and settling on everything like powdered blood, the sun blistered out of a high, clear sky. Finally at noon that day, the volatile eucalyptus sap caught fire. From her desk in the classroom, Mum saw the flames out of the corner of her eye and was in a full run toward her donkey before her mind fully understood what her body already knew. But before she could run into the flames, she was caught fast in the powerful grip of Sister Philip’s manly hands.
“I could feel the explosion of those trees in the pit of my stomach,” Mum says. One tree after the other blew up, each flaring limb and trunk bringing the fire closer and closer to Suk. The little donkey tugged and strained at his halter, but the rope held fast. Mum watched helplessly as a wall of fire consumed the tree under which Suk fretted. The donkey disappeared from sight and his screams were lost in the roar of the oily flames. Mum felt the world contract into the denial that comes with tragedy, the refusal to believe that time cannot be stopped, reversed, undone. “No! No! No!”
Then, out of the flames, singed and braying in pain and fright, the donkey staggered, flesh and fur hanging from his back in charred strips. His halter rope had burned through, and was dangling under his chin. Mum tried to squirm out of Sister Philip’s grip, but the woman’s hands only squeezed tighter.
“Let me go!” Mum cried. She twisted and kicked in the vice of Sister Philip’s grasp, but she could not get free. Then she swiveled her head and looked up at the nun and what she saw chilled her then, and stayed with her forever. “Sister Philip was staring at Suk with furious, cold blue eyes under her bushy ginger eyebrows. I knew then that she had put the Evil Eye on him. She’d started that fire.” Mum nods. “I’ve never had any doubt about it. That bloody nun was a witch.”
My grandmother nursed the donkey back to health with liquid paraffin and May & Baker antibiotic powders, but Suk sensibly refused to go anywhere near the school again. Anyway, he remained completely bald over much of his body, “and you can’t ride a bald donkey.” So for some months Mum was forced to walk to school every morning alone, and when she was sent to sit under the
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