JUDGEMENT

I might be in trouble this time. Did she spy me smoking in the yard, or overhear me making a sneaky phone call home outside of the allotted time? What other reason would she have for talking to me? Normally, she flitters around the house like a fairy about to bestow wishes – silent, serene and on a mission. She freaks me out.

‘I am the least judgemental person you will ever meet, Janine,’ says Mrs Monk in her Gone With the Wind accent that I kind of love and kind of want to sneer at, at the same time. I guess it’s because she’s pretty and delicate, and both those things make you fair game for a piss-take where I’m from. 

She straightens out a tiny crease in her pink pencil skirt. 

‘I hate judgemental people. Well, hate is an evil word, used by stupid people. To be judgemental, to apply labels, is so wrong. Am I right, or am I right? You are such a good girl, Janine. I’m sure you make your mother just as proud as pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving.’

This is a weird way to start a bollocking. I can’t look at her birdy gaze. I haven’t been able to since she met me off the plane and kindly, but firmly, took my Walkman, saying, ‘It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools.’ As we’d stepped out of the airport into that wall of heat, I continued to have chills, knowing I was staying with a bunch of nutters. Thanks Mum. That’s why you don’t answer adverts on the back of religious junk mail.

She’s making strange noises, a smacking sound, as her birdy beak cracks peanuts. 

‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged,’ Mrs Monk says to herself. Is she talking to someone else in the room who I can’t see? A ghost that is keeping us company. Whoever it is, they are not in Mrs Monk’s good books. 

There’s a life-sized crucifix on the wall behind her. Six-foot Jesus is partly obscured by her shoulder pads and blow-out blonde hair. I’m trying not to judge the sculptor for his decision to make the guy an Aryan with anaemia. There’s been loads of times I’ve gone to tell Mrs Monk about the ethnic inaccuracies of her ‘art’, but when I do, I always see Mum’s raised eyebrows. All I’m saying is that the Palestinian in this room could do with some of the Savannah sunshine that’s on the other side of the triple glazing.

How did I end up here?

‘What you going to do in Reading this summer, except listen to Spandau Ballet and squeeze your blackheads?’ Mum had had a point. ‘Georgia, USA, will help you make decisions about what you want to do with the rest of your life. What’s not to like?’ 

Well, the lady in front of me, for one thing. And don’t even get me started on her three little angels. Since my arrival, a month ago, the fifteen-year-old (Noah) has done nothing but watch MTV and make obscene phone calls to random numbers he picks out in the directory. The middle girl, Lou-Lou the mute, floats around dressed head-to-toe in black, as though haunting her own future. I don’t blame her, she’s trapped in this whitewashed, wisteria mansion, where everyone is saying grace while having none. And the littlest, Mary-Beth, makes my kid sister look like a princess (and she is on drugs because she ate too much ketchup as a toddler). 

Grinder, the family Rottweiler, saunters past, giving me a sideways glance and one of his disgusted lip curls. He tolerates me because I am the one who leaves him the Flintstone’s-sized cow carcass each day.  

Dear Chrissy, it’s like being in a music video here. I get my kicks swimming in the pool, eating fries, and listening to compact discs. They have light-up players in every room. So cool – I wrote to my best friend on the back of postcard featuring an incarcerated manatee. I decided not to mention the vicious dog that can’t escape on account of the electrified fence surrounding the perimeter. 

The sound of canine teeth breaking bone makes my stomach lurch. Grinder is the head of the family when Mr Monk is away, and he is always away. (‘Doing God’s work.’ Mrs Monk says with sorrowful pride). Watching Grinder dismember his bloody treat prompts me to pick at the fleabite scab on my calf. If you look closely at the sheepskin rug beneath my bare feet, you can see the blood suckers dancing in the deep shag. At least someone here is having a party. 

‘UH, uh, uh. Feet off the couch, young lady,’ Mrs Monk scolds. The leather couch is so red it makes me want to call up Israel and tell them to stand down. The heifer, that portent of the messianic era, has been found. The only trouble is, it’s already been slaughtered for an American family to sit on while they eat moon-sized pizzas and marvel at all the lost souls on chat shows fit for Roman gladiators. Generally, the thumbs go down in this house. Heathens must be sacrificed. Am I about to be sacrificed?

‘Now then, you may be wonderin’ why we’re having this intimate little chat?’ She says ‘intimate’ like I am going to need to visit the Walmart pharmacy afterwards. This is going to be bad. Did she see me eat that entire packet of cheese slices the other day? Or did Mary-Beth grass me up for letting her have a lemonade after swim-meet? Mrs Monk shuffles down the leather; the sound of the manmade fibres bristling in her skirt promises a shock upon her arrival. There it is. I do not flinch as she rests her cold, cold hand on my bare, bare thigh. 

‘It’s nothing sinister sweetie. I’m just wondering how you’re settling into the fold?’

‘Thank Christ!’

‘Hallelujah!’ 

‘I’m doing fine thanks.’

‘Because last week, at Funday Sunday, you did not seem to be having a heck of a lot of fun?’

‘Oh no, I love making crafty crosses with six-year-olds on weekends.’ How I miss my duvet and my bedroom door lock.

‘I have razor sharp intuition, or at least my husband, Mr Monk, does, and I knew he picked right when he picked you. Someone who can be trusted.’

(To eat all your cheese?)

Mrs Monk goes quiet. She turns her head from side to side, listening to a silence that I swear is talking out loud, saying something about being so embarrassed it could just curl up and die, right here, right now. Maybe she is not listening to the silence like me, maybe there is a cartoon angel and devil on her shoulders, like the Tom and Jerry show Mary-Beth watches in the den. Mrs Monk certainly seems to be listening intently, her birdy head moving from side to side. Which one will win? The angel or the devil. She stands up.

‘You stay right here.’

A few minutes later she returns with a bottle of white wine and a single plastic wine glass, the type that can be taken to the beach. Devil then.

‘I would never normally do this, you understand, but it is a Saturday, and it is almost six.’

I nod at Jesus. He and I both know it is not even four. Mrs Monk seems to have lost more than time.

‘Let’s play some music, we deserve music.’ 

I did not know Bonnie Tyler was something people deserved, unless they had committed a crime, but OK. Standing over the compact disc player, the blue light of the machine is dazzling as she drums along to the opening beats of Holding Out for a Hero like she’s Animal from The Muppet Show. Her behaviour is so odd I find myself looking at the windows leading to the avenue, to see if they are bolted.

Have you seen the music video that goes with the song that has her so mesmerised? It’s Bonnie on some prairie, kneeling outside a burning homestead and there are three men in black cowboy outfits coming for her, very, very slowly. They look like horny zombies, and they are holding electric whips. If that is not pure perve action, I don’t know what is. The video ends with her kneeling at the feet of a man wearing a white Stetson. You can’t see his face because he is meant to symbolise all good men who are heroes just because they are not outright villains, and we ladies should want to kneel in front of them in gratitude and sauciness. I bet Mrs Monk would love to do a bit of kneeling before someone other than a pastor, maybe even the pastor. He is quite hot, that Michael. I’d do him.   

As she sits down, I see her mascara has smudged and her eyes are glassy. I want to believe that it was the mini workout to the song that’s done it, but I know it isn’t, it’s Bonnie’s lyrics. Mrs Monk believes in God, so it’s not a stretch that she believes men can be heroes too. Poor woman. And now I feel bad about the gang bang/priest fantasy stuff. 

‘Where were we? You’ve not got any problems with Missy-in-the-Middle, have you?’ She pours herself a large glass of white wine like a nurse administering medicine and then drinks it like a patient who is quite ill. 

‘No, she’s no trouble at all.’

Mrs Monk looks disbelieving, which doesn’t quite sit right on her resolutely believing face. ‘Well, I am relieved to hear that. She so aggrieves me, but as my husband, Mr Monk,’ (the way she gives me his surname every time is creepy), “say we have to let the sheep, even the black ones, come into the fold as and when the spirit takes them.”’ 

I must have pulled a face. 

‘Oh my, when I say black ones, you just know I mean bad sheep, not coloured folk.’

If you say so.

‘Lou-Lou’s alright – she just gets a bit hot in all that dark clothing and listens to Metallica too loud.’

Mrs Monk reaches into her white silk top to stroke the nailed golden man between her breasts. At least that one doesn’t have goosebumps. If it were a competition, I know which Son of God I’d rather be. I can feel the envy coming off the life-sized one behind her.

Back in England, my mates are meeting up in Reading town centre and going to see that film about a woman who boils some bloke’s family pet because he doesn’t leave his wife for her. Extreme, but, you know, fair. That behaviour seems more normal than this. I want to be doing that. Not boiling bunnies I mean, see the film, maybe go smoke some fags in the pub after, chat up Steve, who I got off with at the civic centre the week before I came out here. All my friends are well jel of my summer trip. I know this because I used my one phone call a week to check. ‘We’re all well-jel,’ Chrissy said. But I know she’s secretly pleased I’m out of the picture, so she can get off with Steve.

‘The thing is Janine,’ another big slurp of wine, ‘I am worried about Lou-Lou. It’s not just the lack of interest in our church, it’s the black nails, the sad poems –’

‘She’s a teenager.’

When I was fourteen, I locked myself inside my bedroom and didn’t come out until my education was done. Well, the physical me went to school and got A’ levels and what not, but the best bit of me stayed in my room and waited it out. There are prisons that don’t look like prisons. Some even have the radio on in the kitchen to drown out the sound of your mum crying. 

The white phone on the breakfast bar behind us starts ringing. Its sounds furious and futuristic, as if pissed-off we haven’t answered after the first brim-brim. Mrs Monk looks startled, like she’s never heard a phone ring before and turns to me, all concern and fear on her face. Now I’m freaking out because it’s just a phone and what does she expect me – a nineteen-year-old gap-year student – do about it? Bonnie Tyler is belting out a ballad about ‘getting a little bit terrified’, and I don’t wait around to watch Mrs Monk start to cry, because I know she is going to. 

‘Hello?’

‘Is this the house of the monster that keeps telling my Gran-Mammy to take her panties off?’

‘Who is it, Janine?’ Mrs Monk sniffs as she applies coral lipstick and scrunches her already scrunched-up hair.

‘No-one.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Not you sir, I am talking to my boss.’

‘Are you English, young lady? I just love your accent.’

‘Aw, cheers, but to address your concerns about the “monster,” …’

‘Oh heck, don’t worry yourself, she said it was a man, not a sweet English girl. God bless you. You know what old folk can be like, she was probably just imagining it.’

‘No, there is a monster here.’

Mrs Monk is up, bouncing on the balls of her feet, suddenly unsure if I am friend or foe. Her mouth opens and closes like one of the fish Mr Monk likes to slap down onto his shiny boat when he makes an unannounced appearance.

‘The thing is sir; the dad is absent if you know what I mean?’ Mrs Monk squeals and claps her hand over her mouth. ‘And the poor mother, she works all the hours God sends to make ends meet. They are good Christian folk, but the boy, he has lost his way and we are praying daily that Satan will leave his dirty little mouth and index finger. Will you pray for him, sir?’

This God shit is powerful stuff – like voodoo. Here are two adults, one on the phone and another in the room, relaxing into the arms of suggestion that someone other than themselves has ‘got this’.  Monster Noah, who has learnt to navigate life without a male role model, does not need psychoanalysing because the good Lord is going to have a word. Now Noah, do you want another deluge? Then quit the dirty phone calls. Of course, Noah will see the light and stop masturbating furiously in between sexy chats with grannies, hoping they are Cindy Crawford.

Mrs Monk sits back down on the couch and is pecking away at the nuts in her palm. She has just found out that her son has been making obscene phone calls, but you wouldn’t know it. She looks up at me and smiles serenely.  That’s a Valium smile if ever I saw one.

‘Some folks are so strange. Accusing my boy of immoral acts,’ she says, patting the dead heifer for me to come join her. If I were a suspicious person, and I am, I’d say she was relieved that the call had been about her son offending the neighbourhood and not something worse. I smell a big fat rat. 

‘Come, where were we?’

‘We were talking about Lou-Lou and how you think pop music will make her evil.’

Satan is not allowed in a house that smells of orange blossom and violin bows.

‘Yes, well, she doesn’t speak to me anymore, I’m afraid. Not since she told me she saw Mr Monk dancing with the devil, or should I say Miss Du Bois, the English teacher. She also tells me he has danced with Mrs Rumner the Brownie’s leader and Miss Batshaw, the artist who lives down by the water. The one who never washes.’ The hygiene issue seems to be as offensive as the adultery. ‘I told her, I said, “Lou-Lou, you have got to be outta your mind, if you thought your Daddy would ever break the sixth commandment.” Well, she started acting all crazy, like a child possessed. Told me I was blind. So little Missy-in-the-middle is no longer my favourite young lady.’ 

This announcement has made her play nurse again with the wine bottle.

 ‘I think she is mad as a marsh hare at her daddy because he is always away. I explained to her that he is a lone wolf. He is not selfish, self-serving, conceited and in need of affirmation from others to feel valued, no sir. He is a giver. He comes back to the pack when he can, but his heart is in saving lost souls. He is goodness made flesh; he is a good man. You believe me don’t you, Janine?’

I wanted to lie that of course I did, to reassure her that the kids weren’t being teased at school for having the father with the proselytizing penis. I really did just want to go watch cartoons with Mary-Beth and plait her hair. I knew how this would go. The wife would eventually believe what she already knew, and she’d find the courage to leave but then, oh then, the children would learn not go into her room at night for comfort because she’d be grappling around in the dark for such treasure herself. 

‘Go to Savannah,’ Mum said. ‘Have some fun,’ she’d suggested. What she’d meant was get away from all my pain for a while.

So now what? I am nineteen, this woman is old, at least forty. Do I tell that her living God is a dirty toad? Do I unlock Lou-Lou’s bedroom door from here with a verbal key? To whom do I owe allegiance? I know the thing to do for Mrs Monk is to let her keep believing, but for the children well, shit, someone must help, otherwise the whole town is going to be asked what underwear they have on.

‘Hold that thought,’ I say.

I go get a plastic glass and pour myself some wine. Mrs Monk stares but says nothing. Bonnie Tyler is singing about her heart being totally eclipsed.

‘Mrs Monk, Kathy, may I call you Kathy?’ And that’s all I need to say. The woman collapses onto the couch in despair, a proper Vivienne Leigh swoon. The tips of her back-combed hair tickle my croptop-exposed belly. I take a large gulp of wine and reach into my bag for the fags hidden there and offer her one. She takes it without hesitating. Aryan Jesus seems to be smiling behind us. She smokes quietly, flicking ash onto the lambs’ skin and disturbing the family of fleas who were siesta-ing in the hairs. 

‘He’ll take everything. This town is just bursting with hypocrites. I’ll never be able to prove he’s a philanderer.’ Her birdy eyes close in defeat.

‘What if you can?’

‘But I can’t, Janine. The women folk have too much to lose themselves.’

‘I have nothing to lose.’ 

She takes a moment to process what I’m getting at. The girl is just passing through. We can make him comply, bribe him with compromising pictures. Nothing too serious. Keep my clothes on, obvs, just a kiss would do. It would be no different than getting off with Steve down the civic centre. 

We don’t even need to discuss it. I have my reasons; she has hers. Hell hath no fury and all that. She nods. 

No judgement, but suddenly the Summer of ’87 just got a whole lot more interesting, and all without a single bunny getting boiled.

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash