When I Was a Little Girl/Chapter 13
XIII
WHY
There was a day when Mary Elizabeth and Delia and Calista and Betty and I sat under the Eating Apple tree and had no spirit to enter upon anything. Margaret Amelia was not with us, and her absence left us relaxed and without initiative; for it was not as if she had gone to the City, or to have her dress tried on, or her hair washed, or as if she were absorbed in any real occupation. Her absence was due to none of these things. Margaret Amelia was in disgrace. She was, in fact, confined in her room with every expectation of remaining there until supper time.
“What'd she do?” we had breathlessly inquired of Betty when she had appeared alone with her tidings.
“Well,” replied Betty, “it's her paper dolls and her button-house. She always leaves ’em around. She set up her button-house all over the rug in the parlour—you know, the rug that its patterns make rooms? An' she had her paper dolls living in it. That was this morning and we forgot ’em. And after dinner, while we’re outdoors, the minister came. And he walked into the buttons and onto the glass dangler off the lamp that we used for a folding-doors. And he slid a long ways on it. And he scrushed it,” Betty concluded resentfully “And now she’s in her room.”
We pondered it. There was justice there, we saw that. But shut Margaret Amelia in a room! It was as ignominious as caging a captain.
“Did she cry?” we indelicately demanded.
“Awful,” said Betty. “She wouldn't of cared if it had only been raining,” she added.
We looked hard at the sky. We should have been willing to have it rain to make lighter Margaret Amelia’s durance, and sympathy could go no further. But there was not a cloud.
It was Mary Elizabeth who questioned the whole matter.
“How,” said she, “does it do any good to shut her up in her room?”
We had never thought of this. We stared wonderingly at Mary Elizabeth. Being shut in your room was a part of the state of not being grown up. When you grew up, you shut others in their rooms or let them out, as you ruled the occasion to require. There was Grandmother Beers, for instance, coming out the door with scissors in her hands and going toward her sweet-pea bed. Once she must have shut Mother in her room. Mother!
Delia was incurably a defender of things as they are. Whenever I am tempted to feel that guardians of an out-worn order must know better than they seem to know, I remember Delia. Delia was born reactionary, even as she was born brunette.
“Why,” said she with finality, “that's the way they punish you.”
Taken as a fact and not as a philosophy, there was no question about this.
“I was shut in one for pinching Frankie Ames,” I acknowledged.
“I was in one for getting iron-rust on my skirt,” said Calista, “and for being awful cross when my bath was, and for putting sugar on the stove to get the nice smell.”
“I was in one for telling a lie,” Betty admitted reluctantly. “And Margaret Amelia was in one for wading in the creek. She was in a downstairs one. And I took a chair round outside to help her out—but she wouldn't do it.”
“Pooh! I was in one lots of times,” Delia capped it. And, as usual, we looked at her with respect as having experiences far transcending our own. “I'll be in one again if I don't go home and take care of my canary,” she added. “Mamma said I would.”
“Putting sugar on the stove isn't as wicked as telling a lie, is it?” Mary Elizabeth inquired.
We weighed it. On the whole, we were inclined to think that it was not so wicked, “though,” Delia put in, “you do notice the sugar more.”
“Why do they shut you in the same way for the different wickeds?” Mary Elizabeth demanded.
None of us knew, but it was Delia who had the theory.
“Well,” she said, “you've got to know you're wicked. It don't make any difference how wicked. Because you stop anyhow.”
“No, you don't,” Betty said decidedly, “you're always getting a new thing to be shut in about. Before you mean to,” she added perplexedly.
Mary Elizabeth looked away at Grandmother Beers, snipping sweet-peas. Abruptly, Mary Elizabeth threw herself on the grass and stared up through the branches of the Eating Apple tree, and then laid her arms straight along her sides, and began luxuriously to roll down a little slope. The inquiry was too complex to continue.
“Let's go see if the horse-tail hair is a snake yet,” she proposed, sitting up at the foot of the slope.
“I'll have to do my canary,” said Delia, but she sprang up with the rest of us, and we went round to the rain-water barrel.
The rain-water barrel stood at the corner of the house, and reflected your face most satisfyingly, save that the eaves-spout got in the way. Also, you always inadvertently joggled the side with your knee, which set the water wavering and wrinkled away the image. At the bottom of this barrel invisibly rested sundry little “doll” pie-tins of clay, a bottle, a broken window-catch, a stray key, and the bowl of a soap-bubble pipe, cast in at odd intervals, for no reason. There were a penny doll and a marble down there too, thrown in for sheer bravado and bitterly regretted.
Into this dark water there had now been dropped, two days ago, a long black hair from the tail of Mr. Branchett's horse, Fanny. We had been credibly informed that if you did this to a hair from a horse’s tail and left it untouched for twenty-four hours or, to be perfectly safe, for forty-eight hours, the result would inevitably be a black snake. We had gone to the Branchetts' barn for the raw material and, finding none available on the floor, we were about to risk jerking it from the source when Delia had perceived what we needed caught in a crack of the stall. We had abstracted the hair, and duly immersed it. Why we wished to create a black snake, or what we purposed doing with him when we got him created, I cannot now recall. I believe the intention to have been primarily to see whether or not they had told us the truth—“they” standing for the universe at large. For my part, I was still smarting from having been detected sitting in patience with a handful of salt, by the mousehole in the shed, in pursuance of another recipe which I had picked up and trusted. Now if this new test failed. . . .
We got an old axe-handle from the barn wherewith to probe the water. If, however, the black snake were indeed down there, our weapon, offensive and defensive, would hardly be long enough; so we substituted the clothes-prop. Then we drew cuts to see who should wield it, and the lot fell to Betty. Gentle little Betty turned quite pale with the responsibility, but she resolutely seized the clothes-prop, and Delia stood behind her with the axe-handle.
“Now if he comes out,” said Betty, “run for your lives. He might be a blue racer.”
None of us knew what a blue racer might be, but we had always heard of it as the fastest of all the creatures. A black snake, it seemed, might easily be a blue racer. As Betty raised the clothes-prop, I, who had instigated the experiment, weakened.
“Maybe he won't be ready yet,” I conceded.
“If he isn't there, I'll never believe anything anybody tells me again—ever,” said Delia firmly.
The clothes-prop Betty plunged to the bottom, and lifted. No struggling black shape writhed about it. She repeated the movement, and this time we all cried out, for she brought up the dark discoloured rag of a sash of the penny doll, the penny doll clinging to it and immediately dropping sullenly back again. Grown brave, Betty stirred the water, and Delia, advancing, did the same with her axe-handle. Again and again these were lifted, revealing nothing. At last we faced it: No snake was there.
“So that's a lie, too,” said Delia, brutally.
We stared at one another. I, as the one chiefly disappointed, looked away. I looked down the street: Mr. Branchett was hoeing in his garden. Delivery wagons were rattling by. The butter-man came whistling round the house. Everybody seemed so busy and so sure. They looked as if they knew why everything was. And to us, truth and justice and reason and the results to be expected in this grown-up world were all a confusion and a thorn.
As we went round the house, talking of what had happened, our eyes were caught by a picture which should have been, and was not, of quite casual and domestic import. On the side-porch of Delia’s house appeared her mother, hanging out Delia’s canary.
“Good-bye,” said Delia, briefly, and fared from us, running.
We lingered for a little in the front yard. In five minutes the curtains in Delia’s room stirred, and we saw her face appear, and vanish. She had not waved to us—there was no need. It had overtaken her. She, too, was “in her room.”
Delicacy dictated that we withdraw from sight, and we returned to the back yard. As we went, Mary Elizabeth was asking:
“Is telling a lie and not feeding your canary as wicked as each other?”
It seemed incredible, and we said so.
“Well, you get shut up just as hard for both of ’em,” Mary Elizabeth reminded us.
“Then I don't believe any of ’em's wicked,” said I, flatly. On which we came back to the garden and met Grandmother Beers, with a great bunch of sweet-peas in her hand, coming to the house.
“Wicked?” she said, in her way of soft surprise. “I didn't know you knew such a word.”
“It's a word you learn at Sunday school,” I explained importantly.
“Come over here and tell me about it,” she invited, and led the way toward the Eating Apple tree. And she sat down in the swing! Of course whatever difference of condition exists between your grandmother and yourself vanishes when she sits down casually in your swing.
My Grandmother Beers was a little woman, whose years, in England, in “New York state,” and in her adopted Middle West, had brought her only peace within, though much had beset her from without. She loved Four-o'clocks, and royal purple. When she said “royal purple,” it was as if the words were queens. She was among the few who sympathized with my longing to own a blue or red or green jar from a drug store window. We had first understood each other in a matter of window-sill food: This would be a crust, or a bit of baked apple, or a cracker which I used to lay behind the dining-room window-shutter—the closed one. For in the house at evening it was warm and light and Just-had-your-supper, while outside it was dark and damp and big, and I conceived that it must be lonely and hungry. The Dark was like a great helpless something, filling the air and not wanting particularly to be there. Surely It would much rather be light, with voices and three meals, than the Dark, with nobody and no food. So I used to set out a little offering, and once my Grandmother Beers had caught me paying tribute.
“Once something did come and get it,” I defended myself over my shoulder, and before she could say a word.
“Likely enough, likely enough, child,” she assented, and did not chide me.
Neither did she chide me when once she surprised me into mentioning the Little Things, who had the use of my playthings when I was not there. It was one dusk when she had come upon me setting my toy cupboard to rights, and had commended me. And I had explained that it was so the Little Things could find the toys when they came, that night and every night, to play with them. I remember that all she did was to squeeze my hand; but I felt that I was wholly understood.
What child of us—of Us Who Were—will ever forget the joy of having an older one enter into our games? I used to sit in church and tell off the grown folk by this possibility in them—“She’d play with you—she wouldn't—she would—he would—they wouldn't”—an ancient declension of the human race, perfectly recognized by children, but never given its proper due. . . . I shall never forget the out-door romps with my Father, when he stooped, with his hands on his knees, and then ran at me; or when he held me while I walked the picket fence; or set me in the Eating Apple tree; nor can I forget the delight of the play-house that he built for me, with a shelf around. . . . And always I shall remember, too, how my Mother would play “Lost.” We used to curl on the sofa, taking with us some small store of fruit and cookies, wrap up in blankets and shawls, put up an umbrella—possibly two of them and there we were, lost in the deep woods. We had been crossing the forest—night had overtaken us—we had climbed in a thick-leaved tree—it was raining—the woods were infested by bears and wolves—we had a little food, possibly enough to stave off starvation till daylight. Then came by the beasts of the forest, wonderful, human beasts, who passed at the foot of our tree, and with whom we talked long and friendly—and differently for each one—and ended by sharing with them our food. We scraped acquaintance with birds in neighbouring nests, the stars were only across a street of sky, the Dark did its part by hiding us. Sometimes, yet, when I see a fat, idle sofa in, say, an hotel corridor, I cannot help thinking as I pass: “What a wonderful place to play Lost.” I daresay that some day I shall put up my umbrella and sit down and play it.
Well—Grandmother Beers was one who knew how to play with us, and I was always half expecting her to propose a new game. But that day, as she sat in the swing, her eyes were not twinkling at the corners.
“What does it mean?” she asked us. “What does ’wicked' mean?”
“It's what you aren't to be,” I took the brunt of the reply, because I was the relative of the questioner.
“Why not?” asked Grandmother.
Why not? Oh, we all knew that. We responded instantly, and out came the results of the training of all the families.
“Because your mother and father say you can't,” said Betty Rodman.
“Because it makes your mother feel bad,” said Calista.
“Because God don't want us to,” said I.
“Delia says,” Betty added, “it's because, if you are, when you grow up people won't think anything of you.”
Grandmother Beers held her sweet-peas to her face.
“If,” she said after a moment, “you wanted to do something wicked more than you ever wanted to do anything in the world—as much as you'd want a drink to-morrow if you hadn't had one to-day—and if nobody ever knew—would any of those reasons keep you from doing it?”
We consulted one another's look, and shifted. We knew how thirsty that would be. Already we were thirsty, in thinking about it.
“If I were in your places,” Grandmother said, “I'm not sure those reasons would keep me. I rather think they wouldn't,—always.”
We stared at her. It was true that they didn't always keep us. Were not two of us “in our rooms” even now?
Grandmother leaned forward—I know how the shadows of the apple leaves fell on her black lace cap and how the pink sweet-peas were reflected in her delicate face.
“Suppose,” she said, “that instead of any of those reasons, somebody gave you this reason: That the earth is a great flower—a flower that has never really blossomed yet. And that when it blossoms, life is going to be more beautiful than we have ever dreamed, or than fairy stories have ever pretended. And suppose our doing one way, and not another, makes the flower come a little nearer to blossoming. But our doing the other way puts back the time when it can blossom. Then which would you want to do?”
Oh, make it grow, make it grow, we all cried—and I felt a secret relief: Grandmother was playing a game with us, after all.
“And suppose that everything made a difference to it,” she went on, “every little thing—from telling a lie, on down to going to get a drink for somebody and drinking first yourself out in the kitchen. Suppose that everything made a difference, from hurting somebody on purpose, down to making up the bed and pulling the bed-spread tight so that the wrinkles in the blanket won't show. . . .”
At this we looked at one another in some consternation. How did Grandmother know. . . .
“Until after a while,” she said, “you should find out that everything—loving, going to school, playing, working, bathing, sleeping, were all just to make this flower grow. Wouldn't it be fun to help?”
Yes. Oh, yes, we were all agreed about that. It would be great fun to help.
“Well, then suppose,” said Grandmother, “that as you helped, you found out something else: That in each of you, say, where your heart is, or where your breath is, there was a flower trying to blossom too! And that only as you helped the earth flower to blossom could your flower blossom. And that your doing one way would make your flower droop its head and grow dark and shrivel up. But your doing the other way would make it grow, and turn beautiful colours—so that bye and bye every one of your bodies would be just a sheath for this flower. Which way then would you rather do?”
Oh, make it grow, make it grow, we said again.
And Mary Elizabeth added longingly:—
“Wouldn't it be fun if it was true?”
“It is true,” said Grandmother Beers.
She sat there, softly smiling over her pink sweet-peas. We looked at her silently. Then I remembered that her face had always seemed to me to be somehow light within. Maybe it was her flower showing through!
“Grandmother!” I cried, “is it true—is it true?”
“It is true,” she repeated. “And whether the earth flower and other people’s flowers and your flower are to bloom or not is what living is about. And everything makes a difference. Isn't that a good reason for not being ’wicked'?”
We all looked up in her face, something in us leaping and answering to what she said. And I know that we understood.
“Oh,” Mary Elizabeth whispered presently to Betty, “hurry home and tell Margaret Amelia. It'll make it so much easier when she comes out to her supper.”
That night, on the porch alone with Mother and Father, I inquired into something that still was not clear.
“But how can you tell which things are wicked? And which ones are wrong and which things are right?”
Father put out his hand and touched my hand. He was looking at me with a look that I knew—and his smile for me is like no other smile that I have ever known.
“Something will tell you,” he said, “always.”
“Always?” I doubted.
“Always,” he said. “There will be other voices. But if you listen, something will tell you always. And it is all you need.”
I looked at Mother. And by her nod and her quiet look I perceived that all this had been known about for a long time.
“That is why Grandma Bard is coming to live with us,” she said, “not just because we wanted her, but because—that said so.”
In us all a flower—and something saying something! And the earth flower trying to blossom. . . . I looked down the street: At Mr. Branchett walking in his garden, at the lights shining from windows, at the folk sauntering on the sidewalk, and toward town where the band was playing. We all knew about this together then. This was why everything was! And there were years and years to make it come true.
What if I, alone among them all, had never found out?