magazines I took to the bathroom every time I had to deal with my changing body.
When we asked why he had come to live with us, Mother said we shouldn’t ask questions about the family and that he had no way of knowing the diamonds he had sold to those Japanese people were fake.
I thought he was a bus driver, said Father.
They were looking for souvenirs, said Mother, You can’t be rude to overseas people.
I would have bought unlabelled chemicals from Rupert. I had never met anybody like that. He smoked cigarettes and walked around the house in cowboy boots and a pair of jeans that changed my outlook on life completely. Sometimes when my parents were not in the house he would speak on the phone and use bad words and say things that made me run into my room and bite into my desk so as not to cry out from joy.
It was like discovering the earth was round.
Every day Rupert opened new worlds to me and I followed him like a shadow. I even started forgetting about the day in the revival tent.
Just before Rupert had arrived, Father took us to the tent at the railway crossing. He said he heard the man was really good and maybe we needed a change. The tent was filled with plastic chairs and people with desperate expressions. People I had known for years were behaving strangely. They put their hands in the air and starting waving like they saw an aeroplane. A man with a microphone and a Memphis wig sang eight songs in the same key and then he screamed we should all be like babies. Father started crying. Then he took off his clothes and ran to the front, screaming, Wash me! Wash me!
I was at that period in life where you wanted to see everybody on the planet naked except your family. The sight of my father running naked through a possessed congregation filled me with emotions that will never be resolved in this life.
When I told Rupert about the tent, he smiled in a way I did not know was possible.
Then one night we were having supper when Mother asked Rupert to pass the peas. As Rupert put his hand out he looked at Father.
So, he said, I heard you let the old banger out for Elvis.
We immediately realised something memorable was about to happen and stopped eating. Father turned as white as mash and looked at Rupert.
I beg your pardon, he said.
Rupert put his arm around my shoulder. My friend here tells me you showed your sins to the world, he said, That is wild.
Father said nothing. He took me to my room and beat me like we were living in a trailer. I thought I was going to faint but I did not make a sound. That night Rupert came into my room and asked me if I wanted a cigarette. I asked him if we could go away. The next night we got onto the bus and drove to a town I’d never been before. There we had breakfast, saw a movie and then Rupert bought me a pair of jeans that must have been sewn by Satan and every slut in the world. Turning around in front of that mirror was the sexiest, most deliciously sinful moment of my life. Then I burst into tears and asked Rupert to phone my parents.
It was evening when they finally drove into town. I turned around and Rupert was gone.
I got into the car and for hours nobody spoke. Until Mother got the sandwiches out. Then she turned around and looked at me.
There are no rules, she said, Everybody finds Jesus their own way.
When I was 15
When I was 15 years old my father called me into the kitchen and told me that although they were churchgoers, my mother was pregnant again. He said that my music lessons were costing them a lot of money and if I wanted to continue, I would have to get a job during the holidays.
Just two weeks before that our schoolteacher had told us that it was much easier for attractive people to find work, but if the ugly ones tried really hard, they would find work too, although there would be emotional scarring.
I wasn’t sure what I looked like. Because I was a gifted child I had to practise the piano for hours and could not go to the sports grounds with the other children for premature sexual activities.
So I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror. I was as ugly as the truth. My face was round and pink with scared little eyes and lips that looked like somebody made them out of scone dough. I looked like something very drunk people had blown up to play with. I cried for days. I couldn’t think of a place in the world that would give me a job.
Then one day, I was on my way home, the couple from across the street called me. Nobody knew much about them. They were Methodist people, their name was Bluebottle, they wore identical glasses, had lots of gold in their teeth and cement animals on their lawn. They told me they were going away for Christmas and would pay me to look after their house. All I had to do was open the windows every day and water the garden twice a week.
That night I told my parents I had found a job. My father said the money was too little, but my mother said it was fine, as long as I didn’t open their drawers, because it was like looking into somebody’s soul and that could be a very dark place.
Two weeks later the Bluebottles left for their holiday. That afternoon I went to their house and opened all their drawers. They were filled with tools, knives and forks, photographs, magazines, unopened mail, underwear, chocolates, very old make-up and broken jewellery. I was shaking with excitement. Not even the doorbell of a whorehouse could match the promise of an unoccupied house in the care of an adolescent. But for some reason, the same reason that is still a mystery after twenty years, in the middle of my treasure hunt, I turned around, went back to the kitchen and opened the fridge.
It was filled with food. Not for a moment did I think it was strange for people to fill their fridge when they were going away for three weeks. I was overjoyed. I bent over to reach a can of cooldrink.
The food is for me, said a voice.
I jumped up, banged my head and fell to the floor.
You are all the same, said the voice.
I turned around to see the where the voice was coming from. On the stove-top sat the ugliest little creature I had ever seen. It looked like a dwarf with a very large head. He had pointed yellow teeth, a long crooked nose, tiny hands like a bat, and wore clothes from five hundred years ago.
Why does everybody always want to drink my cooldrink? asked the creature.
Who are you? I asked.
My name is Edward Bluebottle, said the little man, My parents hired you to babysit.
They did not, I said, I just water the garden.
No, you open the drawers, said Edward Bluebottle, And the fridge, like all the others. So I just wait here.
I got up from the floor.
How can they just lock you up? I said, Do the police know?
Edward pointed to a hole in the door.
I’m not locked up, he said, Did you think that was for the dog?
Why didn’t they take you with? I asked.
They always try to, said Edward.
He scratched
