“You’ll find out quick enough if you talk.”
“What happens?”
“I don’t think you ever want to find out.”
“What?” Emma couldn’t stand it. “If you’re violent to each other, it’s still violence!”
“No. No violence. How would you like it, for instance, if you were turning in an A paper and a D paper was substituted?”
“Oh,” said Emma. “Things like that?”
“Things like that,” said Cathy. “Or have all your clothes taken out of your closet. Try and explain that to your parents!”
“That’s stealing,” said Emma, feeling complacent. They could be caught if they did that.
“Suppose the clothes were brought back mysteriously and put back in the closet. That would be even harder to explain.”
Emma was silenced. So were Saunders, Goldin, and Ketchum. They all stood there, not knowing what to do.
“Brigade meeting is on Wednesday every week,” said Cathy. “It’s in the park, weather permitting, or we go to my house.”
They all nodded.
“Why don’t you guys go pay your dues if you want to?” Cathy smiled so brightly that it seemed only the natural thing to go over to the card table and hand a dollar bill to the girl there, who put it into a strongbox. Ketchum whispered frantically to Goldin, who produced another dollar and gave it to Ketchum, who gave it to the girl.
Everyone was going. A boy with a lapel pin that said MONITOR on it stopped them at the door.
“Wait,” he said.
“Why?” asked Saunders.
“We can’t be seen leaving in droves. People will wonder what goes on here. Let the eight that just left get ahead a bit.” He ducked his head out the door and back in again. “Okay, you can go now.”
Once out on the street, they walked silently, four abreast, each sunk in her thoughts.
Emma felt as if her hair were standing on end, being pushed out by the surprise in her brain. These people were really doing something! She looked sideways at the others. Ketchum was watching her feet. Goldin was chewing a fingernail. Saunders was pursing her lips and frowning like Judge Learned Hand. The tic took over suddenly. Emma watched the evolution of it in amazement. Extraordinary.
“I think,” said Saunders.
“Yes?” said Goldin.
“They seem like a good outfit.” Having delivered herself of this pompousness, she stared straight ahead.
“We,” whispered Ketchum.
“What?” asked Saunders.
“We joined. We’re a good outfit, not they.”
Saunders looked at her. “True,” she said.
It came in on Emma then that she actually had joined. She became possessed immediately of a desire to get out. Here she was, a person who had never belonged to any group, not even a group of friends, joining up with a bunch of crackpots. Suppose her father ever found out about this? That’s what he’d call them, a bunch of crackpots. That’s what he called everybody. She had an image of her father being confronted by a committee. He’d have the police at the house in ten minutes. He’d have the whole Army up in front of the Grand Jury in twenty minutes. One word out of their mouths: “Mr. Sheridan, we understand that you are not sympathetic to your daughter becoming a lawyer, or, for that matter, to your son becoming a dancer—” That’s as far as they would get, and that committee would committee no more, they would have just committeed themselves to death.
“Do you think?” began Saunders.
“Yes?” asked Goldin.
“Do you think the four of us could get together and talk about this thing?”
“I think somebody better talk about it,” said Emma.
“You don’t mean it?” Saunders stopped in her tracks,
as did they all, and looked at Emma.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean …” Emma suddenly realized they thought she was going to spill the beans. “I didn’t mean that. I’m not going to tell.”
They walked on. “I mean, I want to talk.” Here she was, Emma, reduced to having to say she wanted not only to be part of this big group, this Army, but also to be part of this small group. Me, she thought, me, the non-joiner?
“What about Monday?” asked Saunders. “We’ll meet after school and go to the park.”
“Great!” said Goldin, who would have given her life to meet Saunders every day after school.
“Okay?” Saunders looked at Ketchum and Emma. They nodded. “See you then,” said Saunders, and turned at her corner. Goldin went after her, and Emma and Ketchum watched them walking away hurriedly, their heads together as they went up the block.
“I live on the corner,” said Emma.
“I live over on York,” said Ketchum.
They walked along saying nothing, until they got to the corner.
“I’ll see you,” said Emma.
“Okay,” said Ketchum, and ducking her head, she ran.
Emma felt as though she’d been through World War II, and it was now only five by the clock in the lobby.
She and Willie almost collided at the elevator. “Ho, Emma!” said Willie loudly, dancing around.
“Stop making a fool of yourself in the lobby,” said Emma.
Willie kept right on dancing. He seemed to be doing something different, as though he were trying out something new and couldn’t get it right. He paid no attention to Emma.
“Can’t you see people looking at you?” Emma whispered hoarsely in his ear.
Willie turned around and looked at the woman waiting for the elevator. She smiled at him. Just for that, he did a break for her.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Emma. The elevator doors opened and they got in. The woman was evidently waiting to go to the basement, so she didn’t.
Willie kept dancing in the elevator.
“I know something you don’t know that’s going to change your whole life,” said Emma, grinning evilly at him.
“I know something you don’t know that’s going to change my life too,” said Willie happily. Wait till I pass that audition and get that job, and then what old Emma going to say.
“What?” asked Emma.
“I ain’t telling,” said Willie.
“Have you done something?” asked Emma darkly, not knowing exactly what she meant herself.
“I ain’t done nothing,” said Willie, trying to dance up the wall again. How did that Donald O’Connor do it?
“You’re going to wreck this elevator!” yelled Emma.
The door opened. Emma walked out. Willie danced past her. He stuck his key in the door and opened it. “Em home!” he yelled cheerfully.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Emma, trudging in behind him.
At the dinner table, a battle was raging over Emma’s head. Her mind was up on a barricade she had helped the Children’s Army put up across East End Avenue. She was, naturally, leading her troops, with Saunders as First Lieutenant and Ketchum as Water Boy. She set the scene carefully. It was the early-morning rush-for-taxi time.
“Okay, guys! Here they come!” Emma had on a large plumed helmet. The plan was to scoop up all the fathers as they left for work, starting with the Mayor. At the other end of East End she fantasied another barricade topped by Harrison Carter in the uniform of a Zouave. They would catch the Mayor as he left Gracie Mansion. It was all timed to the second.
“Your father wants to know where you were this afternoon, Willie.”
“Fooling around,” whispered Willie.
Where had he been? Emma let her mind sway into reality for a minute, but only for a minute; life in fantasy was too compelling. The Mayor’s long black car had just turned slowly out of the driveway of Gracie Mansion. It turned downtown instead of up, meaning that she, General Emancipation Sheridan of the First Children’s Army, was going to do the capturing! “Get ready,” she said to Saunders, whose jaw muscles tensed. Goldin peered over Saunders’ shoulders. Ketchum’s hat fell over her eyes and she dropped the water bucket.
“Willie.
You weren’t just fooling around for two hours.” Mrs. Sheridan’s voice was soft. She seemed to be pleading with Willie to tell the truth.
“Come on now, son. Were you playing ball?” Mr. Sheridan sounded hopeful.
The long black car came slowly down East End, headed for the entrance to the East River Drive. General Sheridan raised her head to examine the sandbags piled ten high and four deep across the avenue. Not a chink! They’d get him this time. Her mind skipped ahead to getting the Mayor out of his car, leading him down to the warehouse, proudly, into the room full of screaming, admiring, stunned kids. Surely they would make her the head of the Army.
“I was over to Dipsey’s,” mumbled Willie.
“Dipsey’s? His apartment?” Mrs. Sheridan sounded horrified.
“You mean you went all the way over to Fifty-eighth Street? By yourself?” Mr. Sheridan sounded torn between pride and anger.
Emma came to enough to watch Willie nod. What were they going to do to him, the little bugger, traipsing all over town by himself, only seven years old?
“Willie! You can’t do that!” Mrs. Sheridan looked genuinely frightened. “How did you get there?”
“I took the bus.” Willie didn’t seem to know what was going on. He seemed confused.
“You mean your brother didn’t even call you and tell you the child was there?” Mr. Sheridan glared at Mrs. Sheridan. “That irresponsible—”
“You can’t blame Dipsey if Willie just showed up,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “What were you doing there?” She looked at Willie.
“I had a lesson.” Willie took his life in his hands to say, “He’s getting me ready for an audition.”
“That does it,” said Mr. Sheridan. “This stupidity has gone far enough. What’s your damned brother’s phone number?”
“William!”
“Daddy, he didn’t do nothing bad!” Willie was on the verge of tears. “Dipsey just helping me, that’s all!”
Mr. Sheridan slammed his napkin down and got up from the table. “That will be just about enough help from him. Is it in your phone book? I’m calling him right now and put a stop to this!”
“Daddy, please.” Willie scrambled off his chair and after his father down the hall. Mr. Sheridan walked with heavy purpose back to his den.
“William!” Mrs. Sheridan looked helplessly at Emma.
“He got home safe anyway,” said Emma, suddenly feeling a kinship with her brother which she had never felt before and which surprised her.
“He could have been killed, or run over, or gotten lost, or—” Mrs. Sheridan couldn’t seem to decide whether she should sit there talking to Emma or get up and run down the hall. A noise could be heard coming from the den.
Martha came in. “What’s Willie screaming about?” she asked, a frown settling uncertainly on her freckled face.
Mrs. Sheridan got up and went down the hall.
“You the only one for dessert, or they coming back?” Martha put down an apple pie in front of Mrs. Sheridan’s place.
Emma didn’t bother to answer, because at that moment the long black car in her mind found a way out by turning west onto Eighty-first Street. The Mayor had bypassed the barricade completely! General Emancipation Sheridan had just been made a fool of in front of everybody!
She cut herself a piece of pie, slipped it on one of the plates stacked at her mother’s place, put it in front of her own place, and started to eat.
Into her mind came: We must report injustice whenever we see it. It must be a question of a child being hurt now or being hurt sometime in the future.
Emma put down her fork. Wasn’t Willie being hurt? Was his future being hurt? He felt so, but was it true?
She got up and walked down the hall to the den. Her father was talking on the phone as she came into the room. Willie was crying his eyes out in his mother’s arms.
“And furthermore I don’t want to see your face around here any more. Never mind giving dancing lessons. Go give dancing lessons to some kid whose father doesn’t care what happens to him. Leave my kid alone. He’s had enough of your damned lessons. He’s going to grow up a normal kid, and without any help from you!” Mr. Sheridan slammed down the phone.
Willie wailed as though his legs had been cut off. Mrs. Sheridan hugged him, trying to comfort him.
“This is unfair,” said Emma.
Mrs. Sheridan looked up, surprised. Mr. Sheridan, who had been in the process of pacing the floor, stopped.
“You can’t do this to him,” said Emma.
Willie stopped crying in utter amazement.
“Great,” said Mr. Sheridan. “Just great. Now we hear from the peanut gallery. Unfair, is it? I’ll tell you what’s fair, and what’s fair is that I raise my son my own way without interference from you or anybody else!”
“You’re not doing the right thing,” said Emma. She was beginning to think she had made a mistake. She’d opened her mouth before she realized she was going to be in a knock-down, drag-out fight with her father.
“Don’t talk to me about the right thing!” Her father’s voice sounded like the bellow of an elephant. “I’ll tell you what is the right thing and what is the wrong thing. Who do you think you are, talking to your father like that! I’m your father and don’t you forget it! I decide what is right in this house and I don’t need any back talk from squirts. Get out of here. I don’t want to look at your face!”
Emma went back to the dining room. She had forgotten a cardinal rule of the Children’s Army. Never try to solve a problem by yourself. There is power in numbers.
She finished her piece of pie and had another. She could hear the low mumble of voices from the den.
She considered briefly, very briefly, walking back into the den and presenting herself to her father as an amicus curiae; that is, a friend of the court, meaning someone who volunteers information on a point of law in a case in which he is not directly involved.
In fantasy, she watched her father throw a chair at her head for her trouble.
Steadily, she finished the whole pie. She walked back to her room. The door to the den was closed and all she heard was a mumble of voices and an occasional wail from Willie.
Her room felt wonderful to her, as usual. She looked around with satisfaction. Certainly there were books piled every which way, but what did it matter? It gave the place a warm, understanding look. She couldn’t fathom why Martha always gave a shriek of horror whenever she came in to clean. It wasn’t as though there was a lot of dirt around, like old candy wrappers or something like that. There were just books and more books, filling the bookshelves, piled on the floor, under the bed, crawling along the windowsill, and falling off the chair.
The room had soft blue walls, one of which Emma had covered with an Indian bedspread. Everything else seemed colorless, being different shades of beige. There was a bed, a desk, a chair, her old armchair, a small television, and a radio with an alarm which woke her every morning with news, generally featuring the murders of the night, to which she listened as she dressed. She imagined to herself that she would always live this way, even after she had grown up and moved away from her family. She planned to have exactly the same room wherever she was, because this room was her. No matter what happened out there in the rest of the world, she felt totally comfortable once she got into this room and closed the door. She wondered if Golda Meir had a room like this, or Simone de Beauvoir.
She turned on the television and sat down in her armchair. She piled her schoolbooks next to the chair.
She sped through her homework. Homework was a snap to her. It had always been easy. The thing was to get through it fast, so she could concentrate on what to do about Willie. She left the television picture on with the volume turned down so she couldn’t hear the sound.
For one fleeting moment she wondered at herself that she cared what happened to Willie, but it didn’t seem strange, even though it was different and she knew it was a change for her.
It seemed, on the contrary,
relaxing, a natural feeling, as though all the old hates and jealousies had been the strange feelings.
She wondered if this was all false. Maybe she was just using his case to create a complaint for the Children’s Army.
Was it a genuine case for a committee? She put down her homework. There was no way not to think about Willie, try as she might.
She decided that she would try to be perfectly objective. She would try to think about Willie as though he were not her brother, as though he were one of the cases mentioned by Harrison Carter.
She imagined Harrison Carter up on his packing crate. “The committee visited the home of one Willie Sheridan, the brother of a member. Willie is being persecuted by his father. The only thing that Willie wants in life is to go away to summer stock this summer and do what he wants to do, and that’s dance. His father thinks dancing is sissy.”
Emma stopped herself. Is that what her father thought? All he had actually said was that blacks didn’t have to do the kinds of things they used to have to do, like dance and sing. What was it that her father objected to so much? What was her father so mad about?
I don’t have enough information, she thought suddenly. I better find out what I’m talking about before I bring this thing up. She went back to her homework.
“Come on, dear, I have to get you to bed.” Mrs. Sheridan was poking Willie, who had fallen asleep after crying.
Willie opened one eye and saw his father looking at him. Memory flooded back, accompanied by horror. His father had actually screamed at Dipsey on the phone. His father had told Dipsey once and for all that he had to leave Willie alone. He had told Willie that he was not to see Dipsey, or to meet him secretly, or, in fact, to have anything to do with him, even talk to him on the phone.
Willie groaned and closed his eye again.
“Come on, dear, you’re too big to pick up,” Mrs. Sheridan said warmly.
His father came over and scooped him up as though he were so many throw pillows. Mrs. Sheridan opened the door to the den and his father went down the hall carrying him in his arms. He carried him into his room and put him down on the bed. Mrs. Sheridan stood in the doorway.
“I want you to know, son, that I am doing the best for you.” His father stood by the bed heavily, awkwardly.
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