Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

often over. When she caught me stealing money she said, ‘I will never trust you again.’ She didn’t. When she knew I was keeping a diary she said, ‘I never had secrets from my mother . . . but I am not your mother, am I?’ And after that she never was. When I wanted to learn to play her piano she said, ‘When you come back from school I will have sold it.’ She had.
    But lying in bed, pretending not to see the flashlight, pretending to be asleep, and then burying myself back down into Helen’s smell, I could believe that nothing had happened – because in truth it hadn’t. Not then.
    I didn’t know that she had let Helen stay because she was looking for proof. She had intercepted a letter. She had seen us holding hands. She had seen the way we looked at each other. Her mind was corrupt and there was no room in there for the clean free place we had made.
    She said nothing the next morning, nor for some time to come. She hardly spoke to me, but she often disappeared into herself. Things were calm, like before an air raid.
    And then the air raid happened.
    *

    It was an ordinary Sunday-morning service. I was a bit late. I noticed everyone was looking at me. We sang, we prayed, and then the pastor said that two of the flock were guilty of abominable sin. He read the passage in Romans 1:26: The women did change their natural use into that which is against nature . . .
    As soon as he began I knew what was going to happen. Helen burst into tears and ran out of the church. I was told to go with the pastor. He was patient. He was young. I don’t think he wanted trouble. But Mrs Winterson wanted trouble and she had enough of the old guard behind her. There was going to be an exorcism.
    Nobody could believe that anyone as faithful as I was could have had sex – and with another woman – unless there was a demon involved.
    I said there was no demon. I said I loved Helen.
    My defiance made things worse. I didn’t even know I had a demon whereas Helen spotted hers at once and said yes yes yes. I hated her for that. Was love worth so little that it could be given up so easily?
    The answer was yes. The mistake they made at church was to forget that I began my small life ready to be given up. Love didn’t hold when I was born, and it was tearing now. I did not want to believe that love was such flimsy stuff. I held on tighter because Helen let go.
    Dad wouldn’t have anything to do with the exorcism but he didn’t try and stop it. He took overtime at the factory and it was my mother who let in the elders for the service of prayer and renunciation. They were doing the praying – I was doing the renouncing. They did their bit. I didn’t do mine.

    The demon is supposed to pop out and maybe set the curtains on fire or fly into the dog who will foam at the mouth and have to be strangled. On occasions we have known demons inhabit pieces of furniture. There was a radiogram that had a demon in it – every time the poor woman tuned in to Songs of Praise , all she could hear were manic cackles. The valves were sent away to be blessed and when they were refitted the demon had gone. It might have been something to do with the soldering but nobody mentioned that.
    Demons rot foodstuffs, lurk in mirrors, live in groups where there are any Dens of Vice – public houses and betting shops – and they like butchers’ shops. It’s the blood . . .
    When I was locked in the parlour with the curtains closed and no food or heat for three days I was pretty sure I had no demon. After three days of being prayed over in shifts and not allowed to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, I was beginning to believe that I had all Hell in my heart.
    At the end of this ordeal, because I was still stubborn, I was beaten repeatedly by one of the elders. Didn’t I understand that I was perverting God’s plan for normal sexual relationships?
    I said, my mother won’t sleep in the same bed as my father – is that a normal sexual relationship?
    He shoved me onto my knees to repent those words and I felt the bulge in his suit trousers. He tried to kiss me. He said it would be better than with a girl. A lot better. He put his tongue in my mouth. I bit it. Blood. A lot of blood. Blackout.
    I woke up in my own bed in the little room my mother had made for me when she got a grant to put in a bathroom. I loved my little bedroom but it was not a safe place. My mind felt clean and clear. That was probably the sharpness of hunger but I was sure