ANNA,
JUNE 7th
So Much Skin
The
heat is unbearable here
but Mother doesn’t care.
Day and night we must
cover up.
Our skirts trail the floor,
high collars scratch our necks.
After
breakfast, she lines us up –
Tabitha, Mary and me –
frowns if our sleeves
are rolled up
like a servant’s. Then she doses us
with Syrup for our bowels.
If
our hair has escaped from its pins
she scolds us for the brown ringlets
snaking between our
shoulder-blades.
I think of Esther, eight weeks dead,
her wild blonde curls cascading.
Father
is building a church before the rains come.
At supper his hair is full of dust.
Sometimes
he tells us stories
about witch-doctors, chicken bones, twins.
Tab says they are true but she
often lies.
The day we arrived at the mission
in best Sunday dresses, white cotton gloves,
the
natives just stared.
I’d never seen such huge eyes anywhere
or so much skin.
TABITHA, JULY 11th
The Red Ribbon
I say
I have stomach ache.
They leave me alone in my room
with the curtains drawn.
I jam a chair under
the door-handle,
peel off my clothes.
Now I am used to the heat, I like it –
how
my body runs with water,
paints me white and smooth.
I hang my red ribbon
out of the window,
close my eyes,
anticipate his touch.
He will find an excuse
to leave the sheds,
flit like a shadow across the yard.
MARY, AUGUST 12th
Borrowing Wings
They’ve been
calling me Baby all day.
It makes me so cross.
I watch them bent
over their journals
with sharp pencils, pressing down words
as if they hate them.
Anna
bites her lips as she writes.
At night she grinds her teeth
saying her prayers.
Sometimes
Tab comes into our room
and we all squeeze into one bed.
No one can move until
someone rolls out.
Esther rolled out.
She’s inside me now
but I can still feel
her hair brush my neck at night.
She says I can borrow her wings to fly away.
TABITHA, SEPTEMBER 3rd
Behind the Laundry Wall
Mother
nearly caught us!
Daniel and I were behind the laundry wall,
his
fingers were on my neck, stroking,
when I heard Mother shout at Zora
for using too much
soap.
They were so close!
I did up my buttons but Daniel froze.
His eyes took over
his face.
MARY, SEPTEMBER 29th
Squeaker Frog
Yesterday Esther and I sat on the step,
my hot elbow against
her cold one.
Twigs snapped in the undergrowth.
There was breathing, snuffling.
Was
a lion stalking the house?
Was it stalking us!
This morning we looked.
There
were flattened sections of earth
under the mango tree.
Other things found:
a squeaker
frog (heard it before we saw it)
six different sorts of spider,
a toad, slightly squashed
–
we could see inside its stomach.
Copyright © Jennifer Copley, 2009-02-16
Note:
These poems are taken from Jennifer Copley’s chapbook The Wells Journals, which is a narrative account of one
year in the life of Tabitha, Anna and Mary Wells. Mike Barlow
writes: ‘In this fictional account, Jennifer Copley draws on the events in her own family history to bring to life emotions,
pre-occupations and tragedies of three children in an early C20th missionary’s family. The story is told with great
economy, using the device of the girls' journal entries. Through deft allusions and understated drama she manages to convey
not only the pre-occupations and personalities of the girls but also something of the predicaments and attitudes of the colonial
world they are brought up in.' For more information about The Wells Journals, contact Jennifer
Copley at info@jennifercopley.co.uk.
