A VERY GOOD SCHOOL by Nicola Wiggins

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Willow’s mother tucks the hem of her hand-stitched skirt into the waistband to pluck fruit from the apple tree in her cottage garden. As she reaches up, her cropped T-shirt pulls away to bare a clay-streaked, stretch-marked abdomen. The vengeful fingers of the tree tug at her bandana, picking out tendrils of hair the colour of the midnight ocean.

The other mothers whisper about her husband, long gone. He ran off with her sister, they say. Not surprised, they say. She needs to cover up her stomach. No-one wants to see the marks of birth and motherhood, snaking like veins of milk under her skin. Motherhood is supposed to be beautiful, they say.

Willow’s mother throws pottery and sells it at the craft market on Sunday, along with handsewn cosmetic bags, baskets of russet apples, and wooden carvings of foxes and owls. She rises with the morning sun and strokes wet clay with warm hands, moulding the medium into jugs of dreams and bowls of hope. ‘A waiting place only,’ she tells her customers. ‘For when you need them.’ She makes beaded jewellery out of baubles thread onto silver wire. A jumble of tiger’s eye stones and translucent beads. ‘For inner strength,’ she smiles.

Willow’s mother needs to get a proper job, say the other mothers as they click-clack in their Manolo Blahniks through the school gates. Maybe if she got a proper job, she could drive to school like everyone else.

Willow’s mother doesn’t own a car. Her ex-husband took it when he left. Instead, she walks Willow to school through a corridor of elder trees. In late summer, their branches hang heavy with petite umbrellas of berries that Willow’s mother takes home in a basket. The road to school is long, but Willow’s mother tricks time by telling stories on the way, of the animals living in the hedgerows, feeding on the hips and seeds. Willow’s soles are wearing out, but Willow’s mother sells enough bowls at the weekend to buy her daughter a new pair.

Willow’s mother is called into school. Willow wears the wrong shoes, they say. Change her shoes and she would be great on our cross-country running team. Our sports lessons have given Willow strong legs, they say.

Willow’s mother brings Willow with her to the craft market. Willow carefully wraps the jugs and bowls and foxes and owls in soft, black tissue paper and ties the bundles with string. Then she counts out the customer’s change and thanks them for their kindness.

At home, Willow’s mother gives her daughter some coins for her piggy bank then makes a rich cottage pie with cheesy mashed potato and thick gravy. Together, they sit on the front step, eating out of homemade bowls perched on their laps, huffing out staccato breaths and curling up scorched tongues. They share a blanket and stories and watch the sun, like a huge gold coin, slide into the horizon. Willow’s mother gives her daughter a necklace of tiger’s eye stones, shiny and round.

The other mothers whisper about Willow’s grades. She’s useless at trigonometry, they say, and she can’t speak a word of French. These things are important, they say.

Willow’s mother is called into school. Willow’s mental arithmetic is astonishing, they say, but we can’t give her full marks unless she writes it down the way we want her to. She is also a gifted storyteller, they say. She is lucky because she has an exceptional class teacher, but she needs to read the stories we choose.

Willow sits and makes daisy chains alone on the school field at lunchtime. There is a rumour that Willow curses the people she touches.

A girl trips on the grass and tumbles over onto Willow’s feet. The horrified child pulls Willow’s wild, raven locks, kicks her in the shin and runs away.

Willow’s mother is called into school. Willow needs to find some friends to play with. She spends too much time on her own, they say.

At home, Willow’s mother pats ointment onto the graze whilst Willow traces a finger along the marks on her mother’s tummy.

Later, Willow stands in her mother’s dungarees in the garden, feeding the rosemary and calendula from a yellow-painted metal watering can. She watches her mother throwing and turning and moulding and glazing and firing. She notices how her mother handles her creations with care, welcoming them to the world with a gentle touch, her fingertips making each one unique.

Willow stands in the school hall at open evening, offering prospective parents a coffee and a square of elderberry and lemon cake. She describes with eloquence the squirrel living in the old oak in the far corner of the playground. They are impressed when she tells them how many mosaic tiles make up the school’s emblem on the front wall and about the school’s position at the top of the county’s long-distance running league.

What a remarkable young girl, they say. Just remarkable. This must be a very good school. A very good school indeed.

Afterwards, Willow pulls handfuls of secreted pecans and almonds from her pockets, sneaks into the playground and leaves them amongst the acorns for the squirrel to find. Within the deep embrace of the oak’s root flare, she lifts fistfuls of mossy dirt and shapes them into dark, earthy orbs, moulding and turning and forming with her fingers, just as she had been taught.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Nicola is an accountant, and writer, with work published online and in print. She was raised in North Wales, but now lives in rural Hertfordshire, UK. She writes between pleas for food and/or affection from both human and non-human dependents. Find her on socials @npwigginswrites

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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “A Very Good School”:

We loved the wonderful irony in this piece. Author Nicola Wiggins reminds us of the importance of parental teaching and guidance and that our educational system supplements, rather than replaces, those. She also points out the hypocrisies of a rigid educational system and of parents who expect all students should learn the same things to the same degree while ignoring individuality.

Note the effective repetition that the author uses here in starting many of the paragraphs with “Willow’s mother…” This technique serves to reinforce and build the narrative to its strong conclusion.

We applaud the author for saying so much in such a short space.