A Matter of Angels

'The Virgin Mary had more lines but I had the better costume.' Nine year old Nyla is cast as an angel in her school play. Well, at least she’s not a sheep. So far… This school production is not pretty. It opens up the cracks in the social and religious divides, and all those dark family secrets. Told with wry humour and compassion. For everyone who's ever been in a school play.'The Virgin Mary had more lines but I had the better costume.'After the Christmas play was announced, I had been dreaming all autumn of the Virgin Mary and the essence of femininity that I knew the role possessed if I could only get it.No longer would I have to pull on pants, hide my hair, swagger around with plastic swords or sit in a chair uttering the mild regrets of middle age. No, for once I would be the centre of delight and attention, with a husband, a donkey and various deferential well-wishers from all walks of life to support my soft and vulnerable womanhood while at the same time getting the lion’s share of lines and scenes.Tender, frail, passive and beautiful, I would be the chosen one. The star. But since I had the wrong religion, this was not to be.'For everyone who has ever been in a school play, or whose daughter is in one right now. At the age of nine, Nyla runs into the hard facts of life. Her school nativity play turns out to be a pretty ugly affair. It opens up the cracks in the social divides, religious discrimination and dark family secrets.Told with wry humour and compassion for the pain of children, unseen by adults, a complex web of history unfolds underneath the rivalries and small disasters of Nyla's school play in which she is cast as an angel. Well, at least she’s not a sheep. So far…‘However, when I saw the costume, I started to love the angel.For the first time in my life, my costume white, like the costume for a princess, it even had little frills and a starchy petticoat.I stared at it and couldn’t believe I was actually going to put this on.Instinctively I looked for my sister but she wasn’t there. This costume was mine.It was shiny and smooth and soft and pliable, except for the bits where the petticoat propped it up. In those places it was grand and majestic.When I tried it on, I could feel the softness all over my skin and I wanted to swoon. Never mind that nobody was there to catch me, for me it was all in the falling.I opened my braids and my hair cascaded over my shoulders and the dress. My hair, of course, was a rich dark brown like the colour of well-polished furniture, as my mother never tired of pointing out. Not that we had a lot of such furniture, but perhaps it was part of my mother’s aspirations, garnered from the romance novels she loved to read when my father wasn’t looking. From photographic evidence I knew that I had actually started life as a blonde, like my mother and sister, and like our Virgin Mary. But now, at the age of nine, my hair had already darkened towards the dark brown that would accompany me throughout adulthood. This process was a process of failure, foreshadowing a dark fate. Luckily my sister had so far retained her honey coloured hair.’