The Lethal Sex

by Christianna Brand

  “You’re lying,” he said desperately.

  I shrugged.

  “Will all passengers for Pan American Flight Number 361-A kindly extinguish their pipes and cigarettes and proceed at once to the aircraft,” said the British voice.

  “You’d better run along, Bart. Make the most of whatever time you have.”

  He grabbed my arm. “Tell me you’re lying. Good God, I’ll never go through— Anything but that!”

  “Wasn’t Anna Marie worth it? You’ve always thought your little adventures were worth whatever they cost, haven’t you, Bart? Cost other people, that is.”

  The loudspeaker was growing impatient. “Will passenger Barton Wentworth for Flight Number 361-A kindly board the aircraft at once? You are delaying the take-off.”

  I shoved Bart through the gate.

  “Get going, old man. If you stay on the island, I’ll have to report the matter to the Board of Health. I’m just giving you a break out of old friendship.”

  He shook his head groggily, like a punchy fighter, and in a quiet, hoarse voice he said, “You son of a bitch.” Then he turned and made his way across the field toward the plane, walking like a very old or a very drunk man. Going up the steps he stumbled.

  Smiling, I turned to Ellen, whose dark eyes were shooting sparks.

  “I think you’re horrible!” she said. “I won’t work for you another hour. I don’t care why you’re getting even with him. Only a monster would deliberately expose anybody, even his worst enemy, to—to—that.”

  “Dear child,” I said, “save your indignation. Anna Marie no more has leprosy than you do or I do. How could I, a doctor, willfully allow a fellow human being to become infected? It wouldn’t be ethical.”

  “But—”

  “Of course, he will undoubtedly develop some very interesting symptoms, even if they are all psychosomatic. He may even,” I added quietly, “shoot himself.”

  What Is Going to Happen?

  NEDRA TYRE

  There is a lady sitting across from me at a kind of table. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen her. She says I’m to tell her all about it if I want to. I don’t know what she means. Now, she says, just a minute, I want to see if this is working—I haven’t used it often. She reaches toward something funny like a record player only different. Out of it come squeaks, and I hear my voice saying there is a lady sitting across from me at a kind of table. The lady grabs at the record player or whatever it is. It makes another squeak, and I don’t hear my voice any more and the lady turns around to me.

  I haven’t been here long. I came last night. I slept in a funny room. I had breakfast with some other children. If you count just the others there were seven. With me there were eight. We sat around a table close to the floor in little short chairs. One boy was big and his legs seemed doubled up under his chin. Nobody talked, though there was a lady, not this one, saying things to us. I hate milk. The lady said, drink your milk. She said it in a nice voice. She didn’t seem to care whether I did or didn’t. She said it as if it really didn’t matter. At home I don’t drink milk unless my mother does something for me or promises me something. If it’s just a promise she doesn’t keep it always, so I try to make her give me something first before I drink the milk.

  My name is Betty. It’s really Elizabeth but when you’re named Elizabeth you’re called Betty, why I don’t know. I’m eight. I’m nearer nine than eight, but however close you come, even if it’s the day before, you can’t say you’re nine until your birthday, because it’s not being truthful if you do.

  I hate school. I like the teacher all right, but the other children scare me. I won’t let them know I’m scared of them and to prove I’m not I bite them or pull their hair or snatch what’s in their hands.

  My mother and I live alone. We didn’t always. My daddy was there for a long time. He went away and I cried and cried and said, my daddy is dead, and my mother said he’s not dead, he just doesn’t love us any more. I called her a liar which is a bad word that I’m not allowed to say and told her I’d kill her if she said my father didn’t love me.

  Once he came back to the apartment and he said hello to my mother in a funny way and he said he’d come because the settlement said he could see me. He took me to walk in the park. At first I was happy. I was glad we passed Patty Evans in the park because at school she yelled at me in front of all the other children, Betty’s daddy doesn’t live at her house any more. When my daddy and I were sitting on the park bench I felt the hot sun pouring down on me but all the same it seemed like winter and he didn’t say anything much. He asked me if I wanted popcorn. I said no thank you. Then he asked if I wanted ice cream. I didn’t want anything. A long time later he said good-bye though my mother said when I went back home that he didn’t stay as long with me as he might have. I haven’t seen him since. I wanted to ask my mother if I could see him or when I could see him but I couldn’t say a word about him. I felt like at Christmas when my mother will say, what do you want Santa Claus to bring you? Santa Claus and my mother ought to know without being told. I can’t say a word about what I want.

  I go to the movies lots. My mother takes me. She gives the usher money and tells him to look after me. At five or whenever she has told him to send me home he’ll come down the aisle with his flashlight where I’m sitting and say, Betty, it’s time for you to go.

  For a while my mother went with some men. She didn’t like them but she said she went because she’d do anything to make time go, as if she wanted to shove time out the door. She went lots with one she called Bill. One night he telephoned and my mother told me to answer and to say she wasn’t at home. I said, my mother is not at home and she doesn’t like you and I don’t like you and you’d just better not come back here bothering us as long as you live. And he didn’t.

  My mother stays in bed lots, sometimes sleeping, lots of time just looking at the ceiling. At suppertime she will say, I’m not hungry, go ahead and order whatever you want from the drugstore. I telephone for a chicken salad sandwich, peanuts, potato chips, chocolate crackers with icing in between, two candy bars and vanilla ice cream. Tom brings it. He’s the delivery boy. He’s really a man but you call him a boy because he delivers things on a bicycle, I guess. He hands me the things and my mother signs the tickets. She signs them E. Mitchell Harris. She used to sign them Mrs. James Harris.

  I am a good little girl. You ask my mother. She and my father used to brag about me. They would say, listen to that bad, naughty child next door, screaming like that. Betty doesn’t cry at all. I did cry every day though for a long while and I’ll tell you why I stopped crying. Well, my mother put me in the dark closet when I cried. She said that was the only way to punish me for being bad. I was scared of the dark and the shut-up feeling. I was so scared I turned around and around in the closet and the clothes grabbed at me like they had live people in them who wanted to smother me and squeeze me to death. I would scream and beg my mother to let me out and when I thought I must be dead I’d hear her voice saying, Betty, are you going to be a good girl, do you promise never, never, never as long as you live to be bad again? I’d say yes and try hard not to do anything that would make my mother put me in the closet.

  Not long ago we moved. At first I didn’t like the new place. I don’t know why. I wanted to stay where we were. I hated moving and finding a new place for my toys and learning names of new people. It all made me cry again. I’d cry until my mother said she would scream and go crazy if I didn’t stop. She put me in the closet in the new place and locked the door.

  That first time after I screamed and screamed with my eyes shut I opened them. It was a big closet I was in. It wasn’t dark. A light came from somewhere outside. It wasn’t scary with light in it. It was almost like a playhouse. And it was nearly as big as a room.

  I tried on my mother’s dresses and her hats and her shoes. I played like I was two grown-up ladies visiting each other. I would turn this way and say, Mrs. Meriwether, how are your chi
ldren, and I’d turn the other way and say, very well, thank you, Mrs. Lovelace, my oldest daughter Betty is an especially sweet child, and how are your children?

  Around a corner in the closet I found a little window, and that was where the light came from. It wasn’t like other windows, not nearly as big and it was higher than I was. I pulled two suitcases over to it and put one on top of the other and climbed up. It was getting dark outside on the street. The lights were just coming on. One came on in one house, then one in a house two doors down. Then all the street lights popped on at once.

  Right across from the little window was an apartment house. I guess it must be the back of the house I could see. I guess it was the back bedrooms and kitchens I could look in. I looked and looked. It was exactly like seeing four movies at once. In one room a woman hid behind a door. A man came in holding a box behind him. The woman jumped out. They hugged each other. He made her scramble for the box. He grabbed her and kissed her in that silly way they do in the movies mostly when the picture ends.

  I wanted to keep looking at them but so much else was happening. In another room I watched three little girls play. They ran around a table. One would stop and then they would all start running around the table in a different direction. I knew they were giggling and laughing. I could tell because they were all wrinkled up in their faces and all drawn up in their bodies but they were far away and I couldn’t hear them, like at the movies when something breaks down and the voices stop and still the people go on moving and acting.

  In another room there was a sad grown-up girl. She sat by the telephone and looked and looked at it. I wanted it to ring too so she wouldn’t be sad any more. Oh, telephone, I said, please ring, by the time I count up to twenty-five please ring. But it didn’t. I counted on to fifty, then to a hundred by fives but it didn’t ring and I couldn’t look at her any longer it was so sad.

  The best of all to look at was a little man who was practicing to be a magician. He had all kinds of things in his room. Rabbits hopped about. Pigeons flew around. He had boxes everywhere with doors in them and he wore a funny coat that he pulled things out of. He tried and tried a trick. It didn’t work. He kept on. Still it didn’t work. He spanked a rabbit, then held it close to him, patting it. I think he must have asked the rabbit to forgive him for being angry.

  So ever since that first night I do something, when the lights start coming on, that my mother doesn’t like and she sends me to the closet. Sometimes the sad girl gets a telephone call. I am so glad. She dances around the room and starts pulling dresses and hats from her closet and smelling of bottles on her dresser, dabbing perfume behind her ears like my mother used to do. I haven’t seen my mother do that lately. The little children play and play. They don’t act like the children I know. I think I would like to play with them. I pretend I’m there with them. I run just ahead of the one whose name I pretend is Betty, like mine. I try to guess what the man will bring to the woman who hides behind the door. I can’t. If I guess flowers it’s a handkerchief. If I guess a handkerchief it’s stockings. I haven’t been right a single time..

  Most of all I love the little magician. I can’t take my eyes off him. I may glance at the others but I come back to him. I beg the rabbits to behave and act so that his tricks will work. Please, please, rabbits. Please, please, pigeons. Please, please, colored handkerchiefs and funny coat and all you boxes, do what he wants.

  Last week Uncle Frank came to see us. He’s the only relative my mother has besides me. He lives way out at a place they call the West Coast and this was the first time I’d ever seen him. My mother was in bed. Betty, Betty, he said. He meant my mother not me. You can’t go on like this. You’re killing yourself. You can’t grieve your life away. You’ve got to have some help. He said some more words I didn’t understand. Then the next day we went to the train with him. He couldn’t stay. He said his business was pressing and his youngest son was very sick but he wouldn’t leave until my mother promised to see a doctor and my mother said all right she would.

  Yesterday she told me to be good while she went where she promised my Uncle Frank she would go. She came back tired. She lay down on the sofa in the living room. Dark was coming quick and I wanted to look at the house through the little window in the closet. I threw a dish on the kitchen floor and started yelling. My mother didn’t say anything and she didn’t do anything. She always leads me straight to the closet when I do those things. I said, I’m a bad girl, put me in the closet. No, she said, the doctor told me this afternoon that’s no way to punish a child. She patted me on the shoulder and said, it’s all right, Betty, about the dish. Just play, dear, or do anything you like while I take a nap.

  I sat in the corner and watched her go to sleep. Then I ran to the closet. I looked and looked at all the people. The magician started his tricks. He threw cards up in the air like water spewing from a fountain and they all came down together and he caught them in one hand.

  My mother woke up and called me. I didn’t answer.

  I could tell she was going from room to room trying to find me. She tried all the doors and they were locked from the inside so she knew I was somewhere in the house. She found me in the closet. She pulled me down from the window just when it looked like the rabbits were going to behave and do exactly what the little man told them to do.

  I hit my mother. Let me stay, I screamed. Please go away. I want to stay here. She dragged me out. She said, I told you the doctor said children must not be punished by being put in closets. She locked the closet door and put the key in her pocket. You must be quiet, she said. My head hurts after talking so much to the doctor. She lay back down on the sofa.

  I sat and sat in the dark. Then I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to watch the magician. My mother was sleeping. I reached in her pocket for the key. She turned over and started to wake up. Her little bronze horse was on the table by the sofa. My daddy gave her the horse before they were married. She takes him wherever she goes in the house. If she’s in the kitchen the horse is there. If she goes to the bedroom she takes him. He’s heavy. I picked him up with both hands and said, horse, kick her, kick my mean mother who won’t let me watch the man and the rabbits. I made him kick her good and hard and he didn’t want to stop. She was still then. I got the key from her pocket and unlocked the closet door and stood up on the suitcases and looked out.

  I pretended I was with the children playing and eating ice cream. I pretended we didn’t call each other by our right names but made up grand ones. My name was Maurine Stella. Then I looked at the little man and laughed out loud and clapped my hands because one of the pigeon tricks was perfect. The man was so pleased. I watched and watched. The children went to bed and the light in their room went out. The little man still kept at his tricks. I was so hungry I couldn’t watch any more. I left the closet. I went to the telephone to order my supper.

  After a while Tom came with the things for my supper. He asked me where my mother was so she could sign the ticket. He couldn’t leave the things unless she signed for them. He brought them in the kitchen. I told him my mother was in the living room.

  He called her. He turned on the lights. I heard him say, My God, my God. I’m not saying God, which is not a word nice children use. I’m only saying what Tom said. He stood at the door with his cap in both hands and I thought he would pull his cap to pieces.

  I was eating my sandwich. Come on, Betty, he said. Come with me.

  I will not, I told him. I’m hungry and I want my supper.

  He wrapped the food up anyway and he took me by the hand. I can’t go with you, I said. You’ll have to ask my mother. I’m not allowed to leave the apartment without permission.

  Come on, Tom said. Your mother won’t mind. She won’t mind at all.

  He let me ride on his handlebars. That was fun. When we got to the drugstore where he works he spread out my supper on one of the tables. He got me a glass of water. I put straws in it. I like to drink water through straws. When I finished my supper I g
ot up and looked at the comic books on the racks in the front of the store. Tom made some telephone calls and the man that owns the drugstore made some and they hunched all over and turned their backs to me as if they were talking about secrets. I didn’t care about their old secrets.

  After a while a woman opened the door and Tom asked if she was so and so. Then the lady and Tom came over toward me. Tom said I was to go with the lady and that I could have some comic books to take with me. I said to wait a minute because I had looked at so many funny books I wanted to find some that I hadn’t looked at. I took two and Tom said to go on and take more so I took five. After that I came here.

  What is going to happen to me? I don t know why I’m here. What is going to happen to me I keep asking the lady who’s sitting across from me. Not the lady who brought me here last night and not the lady who sat with us at breakfast. This lady says, well, Betty, what do you want to happen?

  What I want to happen is for my mother to stop crying so much. What I want to happen is to go back to our apartment and watch the house from the little window in the closet and pretend I’m playing with the children and just once to guess right what is in the box the man brings to the woman hiding behind the door and just once to count up to ten and have the telephone ring for that sad girl. Most of all I want to happen is for those rabbits and pigeons to behave themselves so that little man can do all his tricks.

  Thirty-Nine

  D. Jenkins Smith

  The smell of the chicken yard wedged into the openings of her nose. It was a hot and cloying smell. She couldn’t get used to it the way she could forget the smell of horse manure. If she stayed in the chicken yard all day, she’d be as choked up at the end of the day as at the beginning.