Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 37
IT was only two days after this that Alice witnessed a cryptic performance.
She saw Sara talking with William Travers Jenkins, known as Bill. Sara was at her most ingratiating; it would have seemed she would have moved any boy to admiration; but what did Bill do? At the end of Sara's discourse he flung her violently against the fence. Not daunted by this, Sara pursued him, still sweet. With every evidence of shame and anger he cried rudely, "Shut up! You shut up!" Words unbecoming to a well-brought-up boy like William Travers Jenkins.
The other boys took up the hue and cry, not against Sara, but against Bill. They danced around him in an indecorous manner, and shrilly mocked Sara's beguiling tones. At this, Bill made mud balls, rapidly, hastily, angrily, which he threw at his tormentors. He threw other things, even stones.
Strangely enough, instead of taking part against him it was Sara who performed the act known as "standing up for him." It was Sara who helped throw, disproving that the girl child has naturally a poor aim and cannot throw straight. While she performed these acts of friendly valor, Alice heard him crying menacingly to Sara:
"You get away from here,—we don't want you around!"
Then, anger in his voice and tears in his eyes, he fled the yard, followed by a group of mocking and derisive boys.
Alice was dressing or she would have been sooner on the scene with the historic words of outraged parenthood upon her lips:
"I should like to know the meaning of this!"
"I only told him my dream," said Sara now in tears, "and he shoved me against the fence. I only told him my dream, and now he says he'll never speak to me again."
Robert stood by, darkly disapproving.
"Yes, and what was it you told him?"
Through her tears Sara smiled. Mischief gleamed in her eyes; her finger went to her lips.
"You tell," she urged her brother.
"I won't tell it," said Robert.
"What happened?" Alice demanded. "What was it all about?"
Then said Robert: "I don't blame him for anything he threw—only he ought to have thrown them at Sara."
Here Alice's patience reached its limit.
"What I want to know," she said, addressing her daughter, "is what it's all about?"
"Yes, tell her—tell her!" urged her brother, with deep and outraged bitterness.
"I was walking by the fence with Bill," said Sara. "I'd just told him a dream, and then" Grief again overwhelmed her as well as tears.
"But what had you told him to make him shove you against the fence?" Robert insisted.
"What was it?" Alice wanted to know.
With limpid innocence Sara told them all.
"I had a dream," she said. "You remember Grandma was in and I said to her why was it we couldn't have Christmas when it was fall, and she told me about the Holly and Mistletoe and the Star of Bethlehem, and everything. And I had a lovely dream."
"A lovely dream!" snorted Robert.
"Yes, a lovely dream, and I told it to Bill—and see what he did. He threw things at the boys, and the boys laughed, and he won't ever speak to me again."
"But what did you say?" urged Alice.
"All I said was what I dreamed, and it was like this: it was a very short dream. I dreamed we had a Christmas party, and you were there, and Father was there, and Grandma was there, and Jamie was there, and Robert was there, and lots of children were there—and there was Holly and Mistletoe, and I forgot, Bill was there. I said to Bill, 'Oh, see the lovely mistletoe!' And then we kissed each other, and that was all the dream."
Tears again overcame her. "And then—then he threw me against the fence!"
"You see!" Robert cried. "You see! Is that the kind of thing to say to any feller? A feller don't want to be kissed by a girl!"
"I didn't kiss him—I just dreamed about it, and it was only a play kiss, like it is Christmas time," cried Sara.
"And what did you say to him, sticking your finger in your mouth like a fool? You said, 'Now will you tell me the name of Uncle Zotsby's dog!' As if she'd done something to be proud of."
From the depths of her ignorance, Alice said, "Still I see no reason for Bill having been so rude to Sara."
For once Robert strove for speech.
"How'd you like it if everybody laughed at you? How'd you like it if everybody called you 'Mistletoe,' and you was a little feller and couldn't fight more'n a feller your own size? How'd you like it to be me, and have them all making fun of me on account of her talking like such a simp?"
Before this logic Alice gave way. Sara had offended against one of the decalogues of childhood. She had been obscurely guilty of the last act of indelicacy. She had done the most awful thing a child can do, which is to cause ridicule to descend upon other children, and worst of all, one of those children was her own brother.
"Why didn't they make fun of her?" Alice asked Robert.
"They do," he replied succinctly; "but then they make fun of all girls. Everybody knows that girls are nutty; that's why the fellows don't want them around."
Alice sighed. Apparently, if your daughter was to be any more than tolerated in wholesome games in her own yard she had to be a sort of super-boy, matchless in strength, peerless in tact, and sacrificing all the endearing mannerisms which made her beloved of her elders. And how could one teach Sara a feat like this? It seemed hopeless.
Alice had no comfort from Tom's mother, to whom she told this occurrence as one of the vagaries of childhood. The elder Mrs. Marcey had been reading Freud.
"I would keep a sharp eye on that child," was her contribution; "that dream may have a precocious significance; and I think distinctly that Sara lacked delicacy, as, indeed, she often does."
"If you mean 'lacked delicacy' by telling innocently anything that happens to be thrown up in your mind," began Alice, to which Mrs. Marcey replied austerely:
"Well, can you explain to me why she is not contented to play with little girls and dolls and other suitable things?" To which Alice replied:
"For the same reason that I was not, because I wanted some active outdoor exercise. Why should a child be thwarted in its wholesome activities at every turn?"