Ring-a Ring-a Rosie

Rosie is speaking. She is small, and sits in a large chair that looms over her.

At night, on the telephone in the basement, I get to speak to God.

It’s one of those really old telephones, with a top bit you pick up and the numbers all in a circle on the bottom bit, like no one has any more. But it’s the only one there is down here, and I’m not allowed my own phone yet, like my older sisters have already.

But anyway, there’s a man who always answers when I pick up the telephone, and he says his name is God. He has this weird crackly voice, all deep and slow and croaky like a frog, like the static on the radio when you wiggle the twisty bit around [She makes static-y noises, and giggles]. Daddy gets very cross when I fiddle with his radio.

Actually, I think he sounds a bit like Daddy actually, the telephone man, only Daddy said it wasn’t him and that I shouldn’t talk to strangers, not ever. So I said ‘well he still sounds like you’ and he said ‘you still shouldn’t talk to strangers’, so I said ‘he isn’t a stranger because I talk to him everyday’ and Daddy said, ‘well who the hell is he then?’ And I didn’t say anything because Daddy isn’t supposed to be rude. 

So I waited, until he said ‘who on earth is he Rosie?’ and I said he says he’s called God. And Daddy just said ‘oh’, and walked away. He hasn’t asked about the telephone man again.

But anyway, the man doesn’t actually say his name is God, what he says is, in his funny frog voice, ‘This is the Voice of God.’ ‘This is the Voice of God.’

Except he only says it once, and then he waits. And I tried one time and checked, and you can wait a really long time, count up to a hundred and he still won’t say anything else or even ask if you’re okay. You have to say something else, so’s he can reply.

He’s not very good at replying though, cos if the question’s too hard he just doesn’t say anything except make a little hissy noise. More static. Maybe he’s sighing. And even if he does actually say something it’s just ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Perhaps’, or, um, ‘Soon’, yeah, ‘Soon’. That’s all he ever says. Really, I’ve tried all the questions I can think of and he’s still never said anything else, not once.

So for example, when I first spoke to him, I was just down there looking at things and trying to see what was on the high shelves I couldn’t reach, and I picked up the telephone because I’d never actually seen one like that in real life before, only on telly. It was very dusty, and made me cough, but I heard the funny static noise coming out of the speaker so I said ‘Hello who’s there?’, and that’s when I first heard the man say ‘This is the voice of God.’ I said, ‘Are you really the voice of God?’, and he said ‘Yes’, so I said ‘You’re not just someone pretending?’ and he said ‘No.’ Then I said, ‘Does that mean you know everything?’ and he said ‘Perhaps’, so I asked him when my dinner would be ready, and he said ‘Soon.’ ‘How do you know that?’, I said, and that’s when he did the first not-talking hissing thing, like a weird sigh. Or maybe like breathing through his teeth, like Daddy also does when I ask difficult questions.

When he didn’t say anything for a bit, I said ‘if you are God and you’re so important really, then why do you live in a telephone in my basement?’ And instead of saying a reply like he had before he just said ‘This is the Voice of God’ again. Which wasn’t really an answer so I thought he must mean that he was only the voice part, and then I understood a bit what people mean when they say God is in lots of places all at once, as the other bits of God must be in different places. So somewhere else is his head, and then his eyes, and his nose, his arms and legs and toes and fingers, and somewhere else as well is his heart. But I only got his voice.

Anyway, he never said any different things after that, even when I kept going back and asking lots of questions, all the questions I could think of. Everyday, loads of questions, and still only ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘perhaps’, ‘soon’ and ‘this is the voice of blah-blah’.

But actually my dinner really was ready right after that and I had to go, so he’s good and right about some things.

[interlude: static buzz and distant beep-beeps of a phone line, cutting off after the seventh beep with a click]

After I mentioned the telephone man to Daddy he didn’t like me going in the basement to talk to him. He kept giving me these funny, sad looks whenever I went down there, or he asked me to do a job if he saw me on the way. So instead I started going at night. I have to wait til I hear Daddy go to his bedroom in the attic, then I go, super quiet. If Molly, my sister who I share with, is still awake, I tell her I’m going to the toilet, but really I sneak downstairs, very slowly. I hold my hands out in the darkness, feeling all the walls and banisters, until I get the door under the stairs. Then, I slide in, pull it closed carefully so it doesn’t click, and then I can turn the little light on and go and talk to God, and ask all the questions I thought of that day. Though usually I can actually guess the answer before he says it.

And I can never do that many because I get tired, so I always have to save some for tomorrow. Sometimes I can also do some extra questions after school, if Daddy’s late home, but I have to be careful in case he catches me, and looks at me all sad again.

That’s why it’s so good that the man’s always there, on the telephone, so I can talk whenever I have time. It’s very nice of him to be always ready to talk. Sometimes I even spin the numbers around with my finger and go ring-ring, ring-ring for a bit so it’s more like a normal telephone call and also so I don’t surprise him too much, in case he’s busy. But he’s always there, even if I run from upstairs and pick it up really fast with no ring-ring-rings at all.

I try not to ask him any difficult questions, in case he can’t answer them properly. So I say one like ‘Is the sky blue?’ at the start, to start off easy, but then I’ll do some like, ‘Are there penguins that can fly?’ or ‘Will I enjoy being at school tomorrow?’ And he always gets them right, even ones about the future, although sometimes he says ‘soon’ for things that are actually a really long time away, like ‘When will I be old?’ Sometimes I ask him things like ‘Is 12 times 12 equal to 144?’ or ‘Is astronaut spelled A-S-T-R-O-N-A-U-T?’ to check my homework was right. He can’t do difficult questions, like ‘What is it like to live in Australia?’ because he can’t say many words, but if you say it like, ‘Is it true that in Australia they live upside-down?’ then he can do a ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘perhaps’. That one was a ‘no’, by the way.

I can ask him about anything really, but he doesn’t like talking about himself. That’s just like Daddy too. He ignores those questions, or makes funny noises instead of answering. Like, if Daddy asks me how was my day, I tell him all about it, but when I ask him he always says ‘it was fine’ and asks something else instead! And also, Daddy doesn’t talk about the telephone man, like I said, and he doesn’t like talking about Daddy. When I ask him, ‘Was Daddy’s day actually fine?’ he does the hissing noise, and nothing else. They must not like each other, for some reason.

I think the big difference between them is I can ask God about what happened to Mummy, but not Daddy. Well, I never actually tried to but I’m sure that I can’t talk about her to him. I think when he looks at me I can see that his eyes are saying, ‘don’t ask, don’t ask, please don’t ask’ at me, so I don’t. But the telephone man listens, and even answers some questions about her. Like when I asked ‘Was Mummy nice and pretty, and kind, and lovely?’ and he said ‘Yes.’ I mean, I did know that already but it still made me feel a little better, to be reminded. Sometimes I think I might even forget that she was nice, one day.

[interlude: as above]

I asked Daddy at breakfast on Saturday morning if I could turn the basement into my room, because I don’t like having to share one. I had the idea the night before when I’d asked the telephone-man if he liked having me down there asking questions, which he didn’t answer but I thought his silence might count as a yes. Grown-ups do that sometimes, say yes by not saying anything. And I thought it would be nicer for me too if I didn’t have to sneak downstairs any more to talk to God, but I didn’t tell Daddy that part. And he said, ‘No, the basement is not a place for a young girl to grow up.’ And even when I said I would clean it and do all the moving myself he said ‘No, we’re not discussing this, Rosie’, which is actually what we were doing but I didn’t say that. Anyway, he had to go to work even though it’s Saturday, so we did have to stop discussing then.

Once he was gone, my oldest sister Lina said she would be very happy if I cleaned the basement, because it’s her job to clean the house now and she doesn’t like it. So she gave me the box with all the bottles and cloths and dusters and stuff, and also the hoover, and I went to clean, so it would be nicer by the telephone even if I wasn’t allowed to sleep there. Sometimes all the dust makes me cough, and I’m frightened that Daddy will hear it.

That was when I found the exciting thing. I was doing the dusting, with the long furry ones, trying to get into all the corners and between all the tools and boxes on the shelves. But then I pushed one of the boxes a bit accidentally. Its corner swivelled around, so I could see it over the edge. At the bottom it was all dark and wet. I thought maybe I’d broken something, so I pushed the box back and tried to keep cleaning, but then I smelled it. Perfume. Mummy’s perfume. It must have been squashed or broken by something in the box, because it had leaked and all the shelves smelt of it. So I didn’t do any more cleaning, in case one of the cleaning smells covered it up.

I don’t actually really like the smell, as a smell. I told her one time she should get a different one that was less smelly, but she said it was the one she liked best. And it’s still her that it smells of. It makes me think of wet soil after the rain, and old books you can find with spots on the pages, and cobwebs and clothes that need washing. And Mummy, of course.

I think the rest of the box must also be Mummy’s things, but I can’t tell as it’s too high. I wonder if Daddy put them there in case there’s some of her sickness on them maybe, so we don’t catch it too. But I don’t think you can catch what Mummy had.

I did some more dusting, and maybe that helped spread the smell around, because now the whole basement smells of it, right up the steps to the door. As soon as I come in I have to shut the door quick so none of it escapes, and as well as talking to the telephone man I can sit there and just breathe in the smell. In little sniffs, though, so I don’t waste it all. I don’t know how long the smell will last.

[interlude: as above]

It was really good to find the boxes and know that some of Mummy’s things are still there, at home, and have her smell to go down and sit in, because I had a really bad day at school on Friday.

It’s Show and Tell time on Friday, and Mrs Green my teacher said we should bring something important to us, so I took the telephone. It was the first time I ever had it out of the basement. And I was really excited because I talked to Miss Ennis the assistant about it, when she asked if my family went to church and I said ‘no, but I can talk to God, or at least the voice of God on the telephone.’ She said that was wonderful, and that there’s an angel who’s the voice of God, so maybe the telephone-man was actually an angel talking to me. But she couldn’t tell me more because another teacher came in, and the other teachers don’t like Miss Ennis telling us about angels. For some reason.

But I thought, maybe if I could show everyone the telephone and tell them about how God talks through it, then they would believe her about the angels. I put my hand straight up to go first, and told everyone about it, and how the man always comes to the phone and answers most of the questions you can think of, but only with a few words. Then Mrs Green said, ‘Thank you very much Rosie, that’s plenty’, but I said I wasn’t finished and I wanted to give everyone a go at talking to God, but she said it was other people’s turn now, and when I said that my talking to God was much more important and interesting than anyone else’s Show and Tell, she said I shouldn’t be rude and it was time to be quiet. 

And mine really was more interesting and important than all the other boring ones, even if I wasn’t allowed to say that. And it didn’t matter anyway because I went and tried it in the toilet after and he didn’t answer me, because he must hate school too, and if God hates school then it must be really bad, even worse than bad!

It made me really frightened, the telephone-man not answering back. I was so worried he’d never talk to me again, I didn’t say anything for the whole rest of the day. Mrs Green noticed and said that other people’s things are important too, to them. And I wanted to say that I didn’t say they weren’t, I just thought being able to talk to God was more important than most other things. But I had decided not to speak at all until the man answered me again, so I just looked at the floor until she left me alone.

I actually cried a bit when I got home, back in the basement, and I heard his same silly voice. Still croaky like a frog. I didn’t have any questions, I just sat there sniffing instead. That was before the smell though, so all I could smell was the dust.

There was also another time when things went a bit bad with the telephone-man a few days before. It’s because we watched this thing in school about how smoking is really bad and makes your lungs black and kills you and stuff. And there was a lady in it who smoked so much, like every day, that her throat went all nasty and the doctors had to remove bits of it and she had a hole in her neck now. It was so gross! All the other girls were going eurrghhcch and wouldn’t look, and some of the boys too, but I was looking and she really did have a hole there and everything. But it was interesting because I thought she sounded like the phone man, so maybe the phone man isn’t a phone man but a phone lady who smoked a lot or something. So when I got home I went straight downstairs and I picked up and he said ‘This is the voice of God’ and I said ‘hello God, are you actually a woman maybe?’

He didn’t answer that, not even with the hiss noise, not even for ages, and I thought I’d upset him,  or he’d gone away, maybe because of how excited I sounded, so I said instead ‘I wouldn’t mind if you were actually a lady, I would quite like it really’, but he didn’t answer that either. It wasn’t a proper question, but still. I really wouldn’t mind. Promise.

[interlude: as above]

I’m not crying any more, not now, but I was earlier and that’s why I sound all funny and sniffly. It’s because Daddy took away my telephone and won’t let me talk to God anymore. Not ever again with the telephone, he said. The school told him about me taking it in for Show and Tell, and being rude and not nice. And he said the lady he sometimes goes to see told him that he should talk to us more, and that I should tell him about my problems and not some silly telephone. But I said it’s not the telephone I tell but the man who talks through the telephone. He said that was very clever of me but I still wouldn’t be doing it any more.

I think he’s really just jealous because I get to talk to the telephone man every night, and he only gets to see his talking-lady once a week. So now I’m not allowed to talk to him any night, ever.

It’s especially unfair because I don’t like talking to Daddy as much, at all. When I tell him about something, like other kids talking about their Mummies at school, or when they ask me what happened to mine, and how it makes me sad, he always gets upset and says he wants to do something. He really said he’d call my school and tell them to stop everyone talking about the Mummies they still have. That’s silly, because it’s not their fault they still have Mummies.

My most grown-up sister explained it to me, she said that Daddy is too practical because he’s a man, and he doesn’t understand how to listen. I said he does know how to listen, he just says too much after he finishes listening, but she said that’s what she meant and called me a doofus. Which I didn’t tell Daddy about because then he’d make her stop calling me a doofus, which I actually quite like sometimes.

Next time we might have to go with him to the talking-lady but she probably won’t let me ask her lots of questions like the telephone-man. Daddy says she’s the one who asks the questions, so maybe I won’t even be allowed to ask her one. I guess if I don’t have anyone to ask any more, I’ll have to stop thinking of questions about things. What’s the point in asking questions if there’s no one there to answer them?

[interlude: as above]

When he moved my telephone he also moved the boxes of Mummy’s stuff, and when I realised that it actually made me more angry, because I didn’t even get to look at them before he took them away from me. But I know that he didn’t throw it away like he probably did the telephone, because I can still smell the perfume. That big rich Mummy smell. Not just in the basement now, but along the hall and into the kitchen and other rooms, and up the stairs, and now I can even smell it in my room, in my bed, at night and in the morning. It’s gone down into the garden, I can smell it right up to the fence. Sometimes it even goes out the front door, like it’s following me in a big smelly cloud, stretching out from somewhere in the house.

Some days, it’s like everything in the world smells just a little bit like her.