I knew very little about Him except that He was a right old meanie and behaved the way the rest of the people in my world did. If you wanted something and asked for it, you were automatically disqualified from getting it. It seemed to me that the only safe way to live your life with God around, was to want things you didn’t want.
The God I grew up with was a cruel one.
The sister I grew up with was a cruel one.
I was confused by her self-control, confused by my own weakness. How come I wanted her Easter egg so badly and she didn’t seem bothered at all?
The day I finally cracked, I didn’t intend to eat it.
Not all of it, in any case.
I only meant to scoff the little cellophane bag of Beanos in the middle. The plan was to rewrap the Easter egg in its red tinfoil and cardboard box and replace it on top of the wardrobe, as good as new. And, if Margaret ever came to eat it, and found her little bag of sweets missing, she’d just think she got a dud one from the factory. I might even say that I didn’t get any Beanos in the middle of mine either, I thought, pleased with my cunning. That claim would certainly add authenticity.
The notion of stealing it gestated slowly and resentfully. I chose my time carefully.
Claire and Margaret were at school; Margaret’s teacher said she’d never met such a well-behaved little girl in her thirty-eight years of teaching. Smelly-bum Anna was asleep in her cot, and Mum was out at the clothes-line, a trip that usually meant an absence of several hours as she stood at the garden wall talking to Mrs Kilfeather, mother of Angela of the angelic, golden ringlets.
I dragged a yellow wicker chair over to the big, heavy, brown wardrobe (sleek, white, jerry-built, plastic-looking fitted wardrobes were still in our future. Such wardrobes were ‘mod-cons’ and our house had no ‘mod-cons’.)
I clambered up on the chair and stood on my tippy-toes, stretching hard to reach. I told myself over and over again that it was obvious that Margaret didn’t want the Easter egg. I nearly had myself convinced I was doing her a favour. Finally, I tipped it with my hand and it tumbled down on top of me.
I carried the box and lay on the floor between my bed and the wall, so that if Mum came in, I wouldn’t get caught.
There was a moment of fear before I pulled at the cardboard. But I was beyond resisting by then. My mouth watered, my heart pounded, my adrenalin pumped. I wanted chocolate and I was going to have it.
Opening the box wasn’t easy. Margaret still had the sellotape on it, for Janey’s sake. That meant, I realized in disgust, she hadn’t opened it, even to lick it.
Carefully, fat little hands sweating, I lifted the sellotape. But it was no good, the cardboard came with it. But I decided I was too excited to care and that I’d worry about that later.
Reverentially, I lifted the red, shiny ball of chocolate from the box and the smell hit me. Desperate to start cramming chunks of chocolate into my mouth, instead I forced myself to carefully peel away the tinfoil. Once off, the two halves fell apart, exposing the rustly cellophane bag of Beanos nestling within. Like Little Baby Jesus in the manger, I thought excitedly.
I had genuinely only planned to eat the Beanos but, once I’d finished them, I wanted more. More. LOTS MORE!
Why not? I asked myself. There’s plenty. Anyway, she doesn’t even want it.
I can’t, I realized, she’ll kill me.
You can, I coaxed, she won’t even notice.
OK, I thought, a compromise quickly forming, I could eat one half of it, then cover the other half again with the red paper, stick it back on top of the wardrobe with the good side facing out and Margaret will never know.
Happily convinced, proud of how clever I’d been, I took one half of Margaret’s Easter egg in my hand and, panting slightly from fear and anticipation, snapped it in half. Joyously, blood racing from fulfilment, I stuffed it into my mouth, barely tasting the chocolate before I swallowed it.
The frenzy was brief.
At about the time the last mouthful disappeared, the shame arrived. Guiltily, rapidly, I covered the remaining half with the tinfoil. I didn’t want to look at it anymore.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop the shiny paper from looking puckered and wrinkled. But when I tried to smooth it out with my fingernail, I ripped it! My lust for sugar and chocolate had been sated. Fear, which couldn’t coexist with such lust, reappeared.
With deep regret, I wished I hadn’t touched anything. I wished I’d never even heard of Easter eggs. Margaret would know. And, even if Margaret didn’t, God knew. I’d go to Hell. I’d burn and sizzle like the chips Mum made for us every Friday.
Sick with chocolate overload and nostalgia for ten minutes previously when the chocolate was still unconsumed, I rearranged the paper, and put the remaining half of the Easter egg back into the box. But it wouldn’t stay upright because the other half wasn’t there to support it against the back part of the box.
And now that the sellotape had half the box attached to it, it was no longer sticky.
Then I was really afraid. Really, really afraid. I would have given anything to put time back, before I’d eaten it. Anything.
Please God, help me, I prayed. I’ll be good, I’ll never do anything like this ever again. I’ll give her my Easter egg next year. I’ll give her my Cadbury’s éclairs every Sunday, just don’t let me get caught.
Eventually, I managed to jam the remains of the Easter egg into the front hole of the box. I closed it up and put it back on top of the wardrobe.
I convinced myself it looked fine. The front bit was perfect, you’d never know that the back bit no longer existed. Margaret’s Easter egg was just like the man they found down in O’Leary’s swamp who’d had his skull beaten in, I realized, not displeased with the image. The discovery had caused great excitement along our road and in at least four other roads either side of us. But our road was the centre of all the fuss because one of our citizens, Dan Bourke’s father, found the corpse. At first, he thought the man was just having a little lie-down because his face looked normal. But when Mr Bourke lifted him up, his brains spilled all down his back. Dan Bourke said it was so disgusting that his dad got sick.
We weren’t supposed to know about it, I heard Mum say, ‘Ssshh, walls have ears,’ and jiggle her eyebrows at us. But Dan Bourke, who had the inside track, told us everything. He said it happened with a poker and I subsequently took a great interest in our poker and wondered if that too could make a man’s brains spill down his back. I asked my mother and she said, no, that our poker was a nice person’s poker.