“You can’t be confirmed now,” Ann and Barbara whisper when I show ’em me treasure during final class, their shocked breath scorching me ears.
Our mams have knitted us white cardigans. Barbara’s and Ann’s are tight-ribbed. Mine’s more like a dressing-gown. They say me mam’s a slack knitter.
Their mams made their white dresses. Mine isn’t capable, so I had fittings in the vestry. Vicar’s wife stitched a veil from pillowcases stinking of camphor. Vicar skewered it to me head, bobby-pins shuddery in his ropy fingers.
They’ve not got kiddies. Vicar doesn’t believe in ’em, his wife says. When she went looking for her thimble, he said different.
After class, Ann and Barbara say, “God disapproves of thieves.”
I only pinched a handful of Liquorice Allsorts sitting by the pin-cushion. To give, not just take. I’ve broken a Commandment, they say, stuffing the pink coconut and the all-over-blue-pimples, leaving me the plain black pipe.
“Well you’ve accepted stolen goods,” I want to say.
But I don’t, because I can’t help showing ’em the golden needle-case etched with what Vicar’s wife said were the maternal spiral of love, its end tucked into its beginning, so your finger can trace it forever.
Ann and Barbara are dumbstruck.
Better fib, than say it were a present for summat secret I did in the vestry, summat I’d never tell, for fear of upsetting me mam.
A present from Vicar’s wife, for calling her ‘Mother’ while she made me ready for God’s approval.
Joanna has had two novels, a short story collection, and two novellas-in-flash published. She was shortlisted twice for the Rubery Book Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Her last novel was shortlisted for The Independent's Book of the Month. Her prizewinning short fiction is published in numerous anthologies.
'Confirmation Class' was first published in the 2017 Bridport Prize Anthology.
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