Free Stone Cradle by Louise Doughty

Sister.’
    She gave another of those smiles, and I still didn’t like it.
    Before I turned to go, I bent down to him and said, ‘You show me up today young man and I’ll tan your hide so hard you won’t sit down for a week. And don’t let nobody touch that apple.’
    He turned without a word.
    *
    I got the full story later, of course. They always like to make sure you get the full story, don’t they? What I think happened, more or less, was this.
    My Lijah gets into the classroom and to start off with he behaves himself right enough, even though he hasn’t a clue what’s going on. He knows enough to watch the other children and to copy them, and the lesson begins, and there’s a nun at the thing on the wall they call a Black Board and she’s writing on it with chalk and they all have their slates and chalks and they’re copying her. And maybe the other children aren’t quite as common as I thought as I’d stood behind a bush and watched them arrive after Lijah had gone in: the girls all had pressed pinnies and aprons and the boys had cleaned shoes and oiled hair, although none of them had a kiss-curl as smart as my Lijah’s.
    What I heard is something like this. While one nun is writing on the Black Board, another nun is walking up and down between the rows of desks to keep an eye on the children. Maybe she’s flexing a ruler, just to make sure they knows what’s what. She gets to the point where she’s passing Lijah, and she stops and she sees a bulge in his pocket. ‘Elijah Smith!’ she says, and heads lift. ‘What is that in your pocket?’
    ‘It’s my apple, Sister,’ Lijah says.
    The nun sticks out her hand. ‘No food allowed in the classroom, boy, you should know that.’
    At this point, I reckon my Lijah is faced with what you might call a bit of a dilemma. And the dilemma is this: what is he more scared of, the ruler in the nun’s hand, or the leather strap that I keep in the vardo which I take out each morning and hang from a nail in the porch? Well, there’s no contest, the strap wins hands down.
    ‘I’m not to give the apple to nobody, Sister.’
    At this, the nun might’ve got nasty, of course, but some of them looked quite nice so she might have just as easily been understanding and kind being as it was my Lijah’s first day and he wasonly a poor, ignorant gipsy boy. ‘It’s all right, Elijah,’ she might have said. ‘You can give the apple to me, and I will keep it nice and safe for you and give it back to you at break time.’
    Well, my Lijah wouldn’t have been fooled by that. Oh no, the kindness would have tipped him off. This nun wants that apple for herself, he would have thought. She’s heard tell of how red and shiny it is, how it is hard as a conker and will burst with juice as soon as you bite into it. The very thought of it is making her mouth water. She’s feeling peckish. She’s thinking, if I’ve got to walk up and down this class half the morning flexing this ruler, I reckon I need a little something to keep me going.
    He always went a little red himself when he was angry, did Lijah. ‘You can’t have my apple, Sister.’
    At this, the kindness would have disappeared, I reckon. The nun would have held her hand out and lifted the ruler. Meanwhile, the other children would be staring open-mouthed – little slugs would never have seen such defiance.
    Well, at some point, my Lijah decides to bolt for it. The nuns told me he did it of his own accord but I reckon one of them tried to grab him because suddenly he’s up and running rings round them. They chase him round and round the classroom and when one of them nearly catches hold of him, he leaps up on a desk and the next thing he’s leaping from desk to desk over the heads of all the other children who are squeaking like mice and cowering and the nuns are shouting for help and it all ends up with Lijah standing on the nun’s table in front of the Black Board where she has foolishly left a pile of spare