Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 7
SARA was more openwork. You got all sorts of glimpses about what she was up to, especially if you took the trouble to listen to the tuneless chants which she was forever singing. She sang to herself hours at a time things like:
"My mama, oh, she's bee-yu-ti-ful; oh, she's bee-yu-ti-ful. She's got gold teeth. Big long dangly golds in her ears." (Spoken colloquially.) "You know, like John the peanut man's wife." (Sung.) "Two, free times as long, my mama. An' wouldn't y' like to go out ridin' all day in the trolley? My papa he rides around all day, for he's a trolley man. He takes me along. Oh, my mama's got gold, gold teeth." (Spoken defiantly.) "And when I grow up, Robert Marcey, all my teeth's goin' to be gold, too."
It used to make Alice quite ashamed that in real life she had no long ear-rings and not so much as one gold tooth, and that Tom was a mere business man.
So Sara chanted to herself continually. She would chant:
"Robert's a bad, bad boy. They ought to spank 'm good. He's gone off with Uncle Zotsby! Old Uncle Zotsby-hotsby. Old Hotsby Totsby." At this Robert would cry:
"Shut up!" This chant of hers disturbed and embarrassed him. "Leave Uncle Zotsby alone," he would cry savagely. "He'll set his dog on you!" Serious altercations occurred over Sara's treatment of Uncle Zotsby. Robert, usually serene, usually the one to do the teasing, was here most vulnerable. But why the name of Uncle Zotsby should be so crucial Alice could not find out. When she would ask Robert:
"Who's Uncle Zotsby?" he would blush furiously. If she asked Sara, Sara would turn the subject with ingenuity. Turning the subject was one of Sara's talents and she loved to display it. Alice had to take Zotsby or leave Zotsby, but she couldn't find out who Zotsby was. She had never even so much as heard the name in her life until it came into her nursery, bringing warfare and destruction in its train. She got to the point that when she heard a certain sort of scuffle occurring she would call out, "You children stop fighting about Uncle Zotsby at once," or "I won't have Zotsby's dog bothering Sara." It was very humiliating to a mother to have the peace of her home disturbed by a name, and especially a name like Zotsby.