Chapter 14
For some inexplicable reason, Hana agreed to lead Sunday school just once, the promise extracted under duress.
“But I don’t like children,” she protested. “Not unless they’re blood relatives and none of these are.”
“Please, Hana,” Pastor Allen begged. “Christine’s overseas. We’ve all taken a turn. The youngest is five and the oldest around nine. Two of them are mine. You love my kids, don’t you?”
“Yours yes! But I’ve seen the others and it’s all snot and bad manners. They cry over silly things and exact petty revenges we can never catch them doing.”
“Hana, you work in a school; I promise it will be easy,” the pastor informed her in his best, ‘I’m–so–desperate–please–say–yes voice.’ “All the stuff is there in the book, you just have to teach it on the day. You’ll be perfect. Thanks so much.”
Hana opened her mouth to refuse and spoke to an empty phone line. Off Alan fled on his next mission to coerce someone else into doing another job.
“I hate you,” Hana groaned, knowing he’d set her up for failure.
She spent the week getting to grips with the lesson plan and produced a cut out Goliath and a smaller David for the children to colour. Anka’s children posed under protest for the cut-outs, which meant laying on the concrete garage floor while Hana drew round them with felt tip. Charlotte dissolved into chronic giggles every time Hana went near her bare legs and arms with the pen. Gareth lay on his back and fell asleep with ear buds jammed into his ear holes.
Hana struggled into Oadby church early to set up before the children arrived. The bright, clear Sunday held little evidence of the previous day’s endless rain. Super-heated air chased the puddles into the lower patches of ground, leaving mush in places where it hung around in the soil. Mount Pirongia stood over the Sunday school room, rising above Hamilton with a tiny speckling of snow at its tips. The little community church was still surrounded by fields and hills, untouched by a growing suburbia which extended its fingers outwards at a determined rate. The city grew more each year, swallowing small townships like a hungry monster.
Hana struggled to separate David and Goliath. They became entangled on the back seat of the car and she experienced despair as their arms and legs tore under pressure. It took half an hour to lay them out on rickety paste tables, side by side and tape up their wounds. Hana got the story straight in her head and laid her notes on the chair, thinking bad thoughts about Pastor Allen. “It’s only an hour with the little darlings,” she promised herself. “What can go wrong in that time?”
Hana entered the church through a side door and stopped in horror. The usual members of the congregation bunched to one side and strangers filled the rest of the pews, numbering over a hundred. Instead of the regular eight infants, at least twenty more sat on parents’ knees dressed in their Sunday best. Pastor Allen saw Hana attempting to bolt and caught her by the elbow. “Sorry, there’s a baptism. Didn’t I mention it?”
“No!” Hana growled, her hiss rising to a wail. “You didn’t!”
Allen shrugged and shoved her towards the front pew. Unused to sitting still and listening, the visiting children squirmed and writhed for the first twenty minutes, switched from mother to father and back again. Hana escaped during the second hymn to raid the cupboards for extra crayons and biscuits. She found it hard to concentrate, worrying about controlling the children by herself. Successive memories of Sunday mornings covered in biscuit crumbs and bogies ran unbidden through her brain. Bodie never bothered if Hana accompanied him or not, but Isobel required her mother’s presence at all times. For a while, Hana served as the Sunday school teacher, but an accident with matches and a rubbish bin full of confessed sin encouraged the deacons to question the insurance liability surrounding her presence in such an important ministry.
With a brief prayer from Allen, he released the Sunday school crowd into Hana’s dubious care. Anka watched Hana as she waited in the doorway for the little brigade to clatter across. Leaning towards Charlotte and Gareth, Anka whispered something and judging by their incredulous faces, they didn’t like it. Hana observed failed but whispered resistance and then the teenagers hauled themselves to their feet and slouched towards her. She gave Anka a grateful smile across a sea of children’s heads and left the church like the Pied Piper.
Everyone squashed into the tiny schoolroom and Hana didn’t give them time to start getting bored. With haste, she picked out two reluctant actors. “Okay, gentleman with the smart blue shirt, you can be Goliath and you with the lovely orange dress can be David. I’m Hana. What are your names?”
They mimed what she read out loud and the result moved from pleasing to hilarious. A skinny visitor named Duncan played Goliath and enjoyed pushing the little David around far too much. Marcia played David, in the interests of sex equality and threw herself into the part with gusto. She proved an accurate shot with paper stones and an elastic-band slingshot.
“Ouch! My head!” Duncan Goliath wailed, smacked square in the forehead by a balled up paper lump. The squeals of delight from the children rose to a crescendo and threatened to disturb the service next door.
Hana’s pleas of, “Let’s be quieter,” fell on selectively deaf ears as Marcia got into her rock slinging like a professional.
Gareth sat mute in the centre of the carpet listening to music on his phone. He appeared oblivious until the biscuits came out. Charlotte sat next to him texting. That’s the reason the colouring activity went so horribly wrong.
Apart from an overenthusiastic Goliath, the visiting children seemed well behaved. The same wasn’t true of the usual merry band of regulars, who worked hard to show off and impress their new audience. One family of four boys came from what Hana believed were a fine, upstanding home of godly principles. Yet their behaviour reminded her of all the reasons she said no to the gig in the first place. Not content with roughhousing each other on the carpet, they proved vocal and entertaining for the benefit of the visiting girls. The youngest expressed every filthy word in his vocabulary relating to toilet activities, encouraged by the snorted giggles of his brothers. Besotted by the glamorous presence of Marcia, he set out to impress in ways that only a seven-year-old might find acceptable. “Poo, bum, willy.”
“I don’t think so!” Hana pulled his reluctant body around to the other side of the table, standing him next to a quiet little boy with dark rimmed glasses whose good behaviour might rub off on the tearaway.
She fed and watered the group before letting them loose on the defenceless cut-outs with crayons. Gareth sat cross legged on the floor swaying to his music and Charlotte lounged on the only armchair, texting into the ether. The children coloured with great concentration, amidst a gentle hum of chatter. “No, I’m putting pink spots on his shirt.”
They whispered to each other and Hana sighed with relief and checked her watch. The older church kids dropped into an authoritarian role, sorting out stolen crayons and directing the visiting children to legs and arms. Hana used the sink in the corner to wash up the plastic juice cups while they were busy. She examined the crack in one and contemplated the economy of reusing fragile disposable cups. A muffled cry from Charlotte caused her to whip round in alarm.
“Oh. My. God!”
“Charlotte!” Hana’s eyes widened with shock. “Don’t call him unless you need him.” She dried her hands on a towel and walked towards the colouring table.
“Well, look!” Charlotte and Gareth stood at the table, examining one of the cut-outs over the children’s heads. Charlotte’s hand covered her mouth and Gareth looked away stifling a snort. A hush fell over those gathered around Goliath and Hana sensed all eyes ready to witness her reaction.
“David looks great,” she began, observing a wild rainbow man of random blocks of colour. Children’s names decorated his body like genealogical tattoos and a unicorn replaced his nose. Hana moved around to Goliath, standing shoulder to shoulder with Charlotte and peering over the children?
??s heads.
The boy in front of Gareth scratched his hair with constant, seeking fingernails and the teenager took a cautious step back as his sister whispered, “Nits.”
Hana admired Goliath’s colourful armour and impressive soldier’s helmet. Large and proud, between the bottom of his pink and purple breastplate sat the biggest genitalia Hana ever saw.
“Do you think that’s normal?” Gareth asked. “It doesn’t look in proportion.”
Charlotte turned on the little group which stood in silent complicity with crayons at half mast. “Who put the dick on Goliath?”
Mutterings began until the group unanimously pointed fingers at the family of four boys, in particular the middle child. Instead of looking guilty, the boy announced, “It’s my dad.”
Hana swallowed and cast around for something to make a loin cloth out of. Her gaze settled on Gareth’s scarf. “Give me that.” She held her hand out but panicked when he turned away.
“No! I don’t want my scarf next to some guy’s nads!”
With his usual exuberance, Allen burst into the silent room, an expectant smile playing across his lips. “The whole church is excited to see what the Sunday school have done. David and Goliath, isn’t it this week?” He glanced across at the tables, seeing the edge of a decorated foot. “Marvellous! Bring it out in about five minutes.” He ignored the tragedy on the table and the ashen face of the adult who mouthed, ‘I hate you.’ He blasted back out to the sound of organ music cranking through the last verse of a hymn.
The group filed back into the church on cue, the children looking forward to their lunch and Hana traumatised by the whole experience. Having press ganged one of the older boys to explain what they’d learned, Hana held her breath and retreated into the shadows at the side of the stage. She edged nearer to the exit as Allen unrolled the giant Goliath and a congregation member stood to help with the rainbow David. “Oh,” Allen said. “That’s interesting.”
Goliath’s nether regions sported an enormous felt tipped bow of fluorescent green, with vivid black spots. The unmistakable shadow of hastily covered rude parts showed through the bow. Allen swallowed and avoided Hana’s eye. “These would look nice on display in the coffee room,” he suggested.
Humiliated, Hana slid through the side door and made a run for the Sunday School classroom. She snatched up her bag and car keys and bolted. Through the open doors she caught the shrill voice of the youngest member of the family from Hell shouting in an aggravated tone, “They maked Daddy’s willy into a present!”