Ella
Ella said, "Stop fighting," but nobody listened.
It was her birthday, and the table was set with her birthday tea. Ella and her brother were not supposed to talk at the table, not unless they were spoken to. Her parents were talking, but they weren’t talking to her. When Ella worked up the courage to say, "Stop fighting," she was not brave enough to say it very loudly. Nobody paid any attention.
Her father kept mashing his fork into a slice of birthday cake. "I ain't discussing it no more," he was telling Ella’s mother, over and over.
Juliette nodded, and nodded, and stared at her slice of the cake without ever eating it. "I’m not asking to discuss it. I know very well the score." She tried hard not to copy the Bristol slang her husband used. She tried hardest when she was angry. Juliette would not say, "I ain’t." She said, "I’m not," in a tremulous French accent. "I’m not asking to discuss it."
Ella’s brother, Frank, said nothing. He had already eaten his slice, and was waiting silently for the chance of another. Frank knew he wasn’t supposed to say much.
It was a good cake. Ella’s Auntie Sylvie had baked it in the shape of a heart, and dressed it in frills of pink icing, with 14 pink candles arranged in a small heart at the centre. Auntie Sylvie had not been there to see Ella blow out the candles and pierce the brittle pink shell with a bread knife, because Ella’s father had lain down the law: "I ain't having her coming and sitting down, all coo-ey coo-ey and luvvy duvvy, when I’m trying to have my tea. Make me throw it all up again."
"Of course, you don’t ever have to see my sister," Juliette said. "It is your house. Of course we have only the guests you wish. All I am saying, Ella is so fond of Sylvie."
"I don’t care who Ella’s fond of. What I’m telling you is this: you have your sister Sylvie round here if you wants. Just don’t think I’m going to be here at the same time."
That debate had been at breakfast. When Ella came home from school at half past four, Auntie Sylvie had brought the cake round and gone again. Auntie Sylvie wanted to see her brother-in-law even less than he wanted to see her.
The argument at tea was about something else entirely. It started as Juliette was lighting the candles.
"Come on, Ella, hurry up and get them blown out," her father told her.
"It is my fault," answered her mother. "Always I am so clumsy with matches." She shook out another and scrabbled with the box to light the next. "But why are you in such a rush to eat the cake? Do you decide you like my sister’s cooking now? There, Ella, that’s the last one now. Before you blow, we have to sing to you."
"Oh, for pity’s sake!" Ken Wallis started to stand up, checked his watch and sat down again.
"Happy birthday to you," sang Ella’s mother, and Frank chimed in. "Happy birthday, oh of course, it’s Wednesday," Juliette added innocently.
"Happy birthday to you," sang Frank, squinting at their father from the corner of his eye. Ken was not singing.
"Wednesday, who is it Wednesday?" murmured Juliette. "Marcia Wednesday, of course."
"Happy birthday dear Ella, happy-birthday-to-you," rushed Frank’s little voice.
"Are you going to blow those out?" Her father’s voice implied Ella could expect a wallop if she didn’t do as she was told, sharpish.
"Marcia likes you to be at her house by seven, doesn’t she? Well done, Ella, all out in one breath. But does she not forgive you to be a tiny bit late, if it is your daughter’s birthday? Cut the cake now, darling."
"I ain't discussing it now. You knows that. Children present."
"I am not asking to discuss it. I know very well the score. Give the first slice to your father, Ella."
"I ain't discussing it no more," insisted Ken.
"I am not asking."
"Stop fighting," said Ella, her chin pressed against the lace neck of her birthday dress. Her parents ignored her.
"I’m here, ain't I?" said her father. "What more do you want?"
"I want you to do what is the best thing, of course you know best." Juliette spoke painstakingly, her hand picking at the tablecloth the whole time. She had never learned to think in English — she had not known one word of the language fourteen years and nine months ago. She had simply thumbed a ride away from her father’s house in Orleanais and ended up driving with Ken and his friends, to Britain, to Bristol, in a VW Kombi camper van.
Her thoughts were always in French, and she had to translate carefully. "Naturally it is Wednesday."
"Yeah. Wednesday! And?"
"Like you are saying. Marcia Wednesday."
"I never mentioned Marcia. It was you what mentioned Marcia."
"Of course," his wife said instantly. "I am wrong. I said it. I am sorry."
"I never brought it up. That was you what says it in front of the kids."
Ella had not met Marcia. She didn’t remember hearing the name before. Marcia would never come to the house, or sit in church with them. Still, Ella knew who Marcia was. There had been Marcias all her life. Ken would go out of the house about seven o’clock with a sports bag over his shoulder, and his chair would be empty at breakfast the next morning. Wednesday nights and Sunday nights.
"Of course Sunday night is different," said Juliette. "Not Marcia. Aileen? I hope I am right. I am so bad with names."
Ken leant towards her. His broad shoulders were heavy with menace. "Ai-lish," he corrected her with a cruel smile. "Her name’s Ailish." His weight loomed over the table. This word Ailish, this was going to be the last word on the subject. He wasn’t discussing it further.
Juliette nodded. Pick, pick, went her raw nails on the white cotton tablecloth.
"Ella!" Ken Wallis sat back and glared at his daughter. "Your mother told you to blow those candles out."
One thin pink stalk was burning on the cake.
"I did," said Ella.
Her father regarded her with contempt. "What’s that then?"
Ella stood up and snuffed it. The flame flared back.
"It is a joke candle?" Juliette asked anxiously. She never understood jokes.
"You been spending your pocket money on stupid jokes, Frank?" demanded his father. Frank sat rigid, his head quivering from side to side. The candle was not a joke.
Ella was still standing. She blew the flame out again. The wick smouldered for a second before burning once more.
Ken spat on his fingers and pinched the flame, pulling the fragile stalk from its holder and crushing it in his palm. "Out," he said.
Juliette and Ella kept their eyes down. Frank broke the silence — "Dad, can I have another slice of cake?"
"Is your room tidy? Go on, then"
Before Frank could even wipe his knife, the cake landed icing-down by Juliette’s chair. It hit the floor with a thump that shook the table.
"Ella! What do you think you’re doing?" Her father seized her by the lace collar and pulled her out of the chair.
"Oh my God look at the mess," shrieked Juliette.
"I don’t believe you just did that!" Ken bellowed.
"I didn’t" answered Ella, hanging terrified from his fist. She knew better than to struggle when her father had a grip on her.
"Don’t lie to me! I saw you do it."
"I didn’t touch it," she pleaded.
"Don’t," and he was shaking her hard, "don’t you lie to me, my girl, don’t you try, don’t you make it worse."
"My God, the stain will never come out."
"Don’t you blaspheme, woman," he warned his wife. The sponge and the jam filling were ground into the polyester pile as though the cake had been trampled by boots. "Ella’s going to get the stain out. Aren’t you, my girl?"
"Yes, Dad. Yes."
"Dad," implored Frank, daring to hang on his father’s other arm. "Ella didn’t touch it."
"Well, who threw it then? It weren’t you what threw it?"
"No, honestly. It just fell."
"Don’t you stick up for her Frank, she ain't worth it. That cake was in the middle of the table. She just deliberately chucked it on the floor."
"I didn’t, honest Dad honest."
"I SAW YOU!"
But he hadn’t seen her. In one instant the cake had been suspended, upside-down, at the edge of the table and then an invisible hand had driven it down on the floor, so hard that bits of cream and jam spattered the walls.
"I ought to make you eat it. On your hands and knees. Every bit of it." Ella barely had one toe on the floor, and her father’s face was hot against her lips and nose. "Are you going to keep lying to me?"
"No."
"Did you throw that cake?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Don’t know."
"Get it cleared up." He shoved her away. Pointing at Frank, he added, "Don’t you help her. And if there’s one crumb when I get back... just one." He slammed the door, and then the front door banged. Ella, kneeling beside her mother’s chair, began to scrape the pink lumps onto a plate.
Ella was small for her age. Her silver-blonde hair hung all the way down her back. Across her forehead it was cropped harshly, like a helmet around her white face. Her father had started to insist she tie it up at the back, or else have it shorn to neck-length. It was indecent to walk around with hair that long. Just vanity. She wasn’t a child any longer, he declared, and vanity in a woman was an evil.
Ella didn’t think she was evil, but she did wash her hair every night, and brushed it morning and night. The monotonous movement of her hand against the flowing silk of her hair helped shut out all her feelings.
She sat on the edge of her bed on her birthday, when every speck of cake had been polished out of the carpet. Frank was asleep in the next room. Her mother was downstairs — Ella could hear the blurred echo of the Nine O’Clock News.
With only a thin chink of light from her bedroom door, Ella brushed and brushed her hair until her arm ached. She liked the tug of each tress at her scalp and the watery touch as each length slid over the back of her hand.
The crack of light from the landing shone on her wall. She had painted a picture of an angel during school art class, and cut around it, and Blu-tacked it to the wallpaper. The angel had blond hair, which flowed out into blond wings. The wings were half folded, and the tips reached to the angel’s sandals. Ella thought the Archangel Gabriel must have looked like this when he appeared to Mary.
She had not told this to her father, when he saw the angel on her wall. "What’s that?" he demanded, during one of his spot-checks for tidiness in her bedroom.
"I made it at school."
"Is that what they teaches you? Blaspheming? D’you know what’s the Second Commandment?"
"Thou shalt not make thee no graven image."
"Any graven image. God speaks proper English, not like you."
"Sorry, Dad. It’s just a painting, cos the wall looked bare." She always spoke so softly to her father, he could barely hear her. "All my friends, they got posters up, but I knows you don’t like that."
"Any graven image," repeated Ken, "or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above."
"Yes."
"You knew that, and you went ahead and made a picture." He shook his head and left the room. But he hadn’t told her to take it down.
An angel came to Ella in her dream. Tonight, the birthday night, was not the first time she had dreamed it, but it frightened her more than ever tonight. The dream had been returning for weeks now, always beginning under the water. She was fighting towards a point of light, bubbles streaming from her lips and nose, with a whirling rush in her ears. Ella kicked and struggled, but a strong hand was clamped to her ankle. Its fingers were clawing her to the bone. She reached up and up for the light, and another hand caught her wrist. It was a small hand, weak, like a child’s, and it tugged desperately at her arm. Against the merciless grip of the hand at her ankle, this feeble rescuer was pitiful and powerless.
She always managed to get her lips to the surface in this dream, and gulp down a breath sprayed with droplets of icy water. The droplets choked her and she opened her mouth again, and this time what rushed in was much more water than air. Ella had never swum even in the sea, was barely able to paddle a width of the warm, chlorinated baths at the leisure centre, but the water flooding into her lungs now tasted terrifyingly real. It was saturated with mud and flecked with debris, and just above her eyes it was pitted and rippled as though heavy rain was hosing down on the surface.
She twisted down through the dark water, scrabbling at the remorseless fingers that clamped her leg. And she kept fighting to the light at the surface, but the surface got further and further away, until her lips could no longer break into the air and when she heaved another breath it was all water.
Ella’s dream began to drift now – she did not leave the water but the sensations became less intense. Her leg numbed. Her arm drifted above her but she could not tell if she were reaching for the pitiful, childlike hand of her helpless rescuer. The water in her lungs ceased to be cold – or perhaps her lungs ceased to be warm. The light still lingered above her.
She felt the tickle of her hair as it washed around her face.
The light grew brighter. It throbbed, and the throbbing built to a steady pulse. With each pulse she saw more clearly that the light was in fact three lights. Three lights, spinning around each other.
They flared like a halogen halo through the film of water, and behind them where grey clouds had been was sunlit blue sky. The lights were straining down for her. There was safety inside them. If they could only touch her, touch her only for an instant.
The lights, like a flame hissing through water, reached her face. For one moment, she saw an angel in the blue sky. The angel’s silver hair flowed almost to its feet, and its hands were clasped straight before it. She wanted to believe the angel was pleading for her to go with it, but she could not make out its face against the blindingly intense glow. And then she was conscious of nothing but the lights.
That was the end of the dream.
She always woke up with a void behind her ribs, as if she had forgotten to breathe properly.
This time, when Ella woke up, she was floating several feet above her bed.
Back to Uri Geller's home page.