Nobody's Family is Going to Change

by Louise Fitzhugh

  “Sort of.” Emma felt that, in some subtle way, she was losing ground. She found herself wishing her father had belted her once, then it would be simple.

  Harrison Carter nodded shortly, as though now he understood the problem. This seemed to please him, reinforce him in some way.

  “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood the purpose, the most valid purpose of the Children’s Army, and that is the question of children’s rights. The Army is devoted, primarily, to the study of children’s rights. The purpose of the complaints being filed and committees handling those complaints is primarily for the education of the membership. Naturally, pressing cases, which are the only kind we handle, are also helped, but the main purpose is not so much to help individuals as it is to impress upon the membership that children have no rights under our legal system. I mean, you understand, don’t you, that your father actually owns you, like a slave?”

  Emma nodded. She had thought of that, but not in exactly those terms. “He can’t sell me, though. Remember that dope addict that tried to sell his baby on the subway?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, we’re looking into that. I think we may move on that. Now, there is a serious case.”

  Humiliating, thought Emma. My case isn’t serious enough. I guess I sound like one of those kids who wants her wallpaper changed. “What does Willie have to do? Come out in a dress for you to see this is serious?” she snapped back at him.

  Harrison Carter looked shocked, but recovered quickly. “If, for example, your father were dressing him or forcing him to dress in girl’s clothes, we would handle that.”

  Emma felt totally frustrated. As usual when she felt like that, she attacked. “By the way, I have a serious complaint about the name of this organization.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I see no reason for it to be called an army. We have no guns, we have no plans to attack anyone—”

  “We don’t?”

  “Do we?” She wondered, suddenly, how much of this group was submerged like an iceberg. Was all that she had seen only the tip?

  “You see your reaction?” asked Harrison Carter. “That’s exactly why we are called the Children’s Army, because, if and when we are ever discovered by adults, or by the police, then at least we have the advantage of instilling fear into their hearts. People will be afraid of something called the Children’s Army.”

  “What good will that do? If they get afraid, they’ll really squash us!”

  Harrison Carter smiled. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.” He smiled again.

  She realized that it was a condescending smile. “Why not?”

  “Well, first of all, you’re a girl.”

  “So?” Emma felt a sinking feeling. Here it comes. They’re all alike.

  “If we’re attacked, we’ll mobilize. That is, the boys—”

  “Oh, I see. You guys will handle the situation.”

  “Something like that.” He seemed to want to change the subject.

  “Where are you training all these midget John Waynes?” Emma was furious. They had lied. They had said there was no violence involved. Training for future violence was certainly violence.

  “Listen, Sheridan, we’ve gotten off the subject here. I’d like you to understand that we would like to help your brother, but at the moment we can’t. If things get worse, we can discuss it again. You see, if we went in there now, your father would throw us out, and he’d be right. He’s just raising his kid the way he sees fit, and that’s his legal right. Besides, he’s a lawyer, he’d get suspicious, he might even investigate, he might find out things. He might blow everything up in our faces.”

  “You’re chicken, aren’t you?”

  “If that’s all you want to talk about, Sheridan, I think we’ll break up this meeting now.” Harrison Carter took a loud slurp of his Coke and got up. He pulled his jacket around him and went out the door, never looking back.

  Emma ordered a hamburger. When it was put down in front of her, she ordered another. She ate steadily through the first and through the second.

  The situation, she said to herself, is impossible. My father controls my life. He controls Willie’s life. I am only fighting for Willie because I want to fight for myself.

  She let this last thought fly through her mind like a southbound goose, not really hearing herself think it.

  When it gets right down to it, the Children’s Army is no different from any adult organization. Males were in control and would depend upon force. Did they really think they were going to have a war with adults? She had a vision of Harrison Carter in a uniform on a salt flat in Jersey somewhere, saluting and goose-stepping in front of a bunch of three-year-olds.

  “Ridiculous,” she said aloud, then remembered where she was. She ordered another chocolate milk.

  Whatever the Children’s Army was or wasn’t, it was not going to help her now. That was clear.

  Where did things stand?

  This afternoon Willie was being allowed to go to rehearsal. He had told Emma at breakfast that their mother had told Dipsey to pick him up after school. Emma had gotten Willie out of the house before Mrs. Sheridan could change her mind.

  My father will find out about it tonight. It’s a good thing I ate something, she said to herself as she got up to leave. God knows what dinner will be like.

  The minute Emma walked in the door, she knew something was very different.

  For one thing, her father was sitting in the living room looking out at the river. He did not see her when she came in. Her father never sat in the living room until after dinner.

  For another, her mother was sitting in the living room too. “Hello, dear. You’re late.”

  “I went to get a Coke,” said Emma. Her father did not turn his head.

  “Did you eat anything?”

  “I saw some great-looking hamburgers,” said Emma, hedging. She hated to lie and wouldn’t, unless her back was pushed to the wall.

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t eat any, because we’re having pot roast for dinner. Why don’t you go to your room now, dear? You must have some homework to do.”

  Emma looked from her mother to the still-silent figure of her father. What was happening?

  “Okay.” She started back toward the hall. “Is Willie home?”

  Her father moved almost imperceptibly, nothing much, just a slight gesture of the shoulders.

  “Not yet, dear,” said her mother with a forced gaiety. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.” Her mother glanced at her in a way that was almost pleading. She seemed to be asking Emma not to ask any more questions. “I’ll call you for dinner,” she said sweetly.

  Emma went down the hall. The kitchen door was closed. She could hear Martha inside. She reasoned that the door was closed to allow Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan to talk without being overheard. Or were they waiting to pounce on Willie when he came in?

  She wanted desperately to listen. She went down the hall to her room, opened the door, and put her books on the desk. If she were caught, there would be hell to pay.

  She had to know what they were planning to do to Willie. She crept down the carpeted hall until she was right next to the living-room door.

  “It’s not that, Ginny, not that at all. It’s the loss of respect that I am going to suffer. You’ve countermanded my order, don’t you see? It’s you who’s the father, in Willie’s mind.”

  How can my mother be my father? thought Emma. Is he nuts?

  “That is not so,” said Mrs. Sheridan in a voice that was stronger than any Emma had ever heard her use. “We are two people. I think one thing. You think another. We disagree with each other. I do not think this will harm Willie, and I do think it will do a great deal for him. If he’s got something going for him that is exclusively his, the way dancing is, I think he’ll feel better about himself and I think he will do better in school.”

  “Wait till the first guy finds out about it, just wait till Willie comes home from school all beaten up because some guy
has called him a faggot.”

  “Oh, honey. I don’t think that’s going to happen. That might have happened in your day, but kids aren’t that way now. Even Dipsey wasn’t beaten up. I think you’re exaggerating this.”

  “Look, Ginny, I’m a man and I understand men. I understand boys too. If you buck me in this, you’re going to make Willie lose respect for me. He’s going to think that women are the strong ones, that all he has to do is run to his mama and cry a little and he’ll get what he wants. You’re not going to make a man of him. Don’t you see that?”

  “No. I don’t see that. I think Willie will grow up to be a man because he’s a little boy. I don’t think you have to take the only thing he loves away from him to make him grow up a man.”

  Emma’s eyes widened in surprise. Her mother was absolutely right. Willie was a little boy, so how could he grow up to be anything else but a man?

  There was silence in the living room. The next time her father spoke, Emma could hear in his voice that the expression in his eyes was cold.

  “Do you plan to continue this, Virginia?”

  He had to be furious. He never called her mother by her full name.

  There was a long pause before her mother said, “Yes. I have to. I have to do what I think is right.”

  There was silence then. Emma heard Martha coming toward the kitchen door. If she came out to set the table, she’d run smack into Emma crouched there.

  Emma stole back toward her room. She went in, closed the door, and sank into her old chair.

  She was thunderstruck. Her mother was standing up to her father. It wasn’t like her mother at all. What had made her change? Emma had always thought of her mother as being too frightened to disagree, much less to stand up for what she believed in.

  The strangest thing of all seemed to be that her father was taking it. He wasn’t yelling, or bellowing orders, or making speeches about himself. He was just sitting in a chair looking at the river with a defeated look on his face.

  She wondered if her father felt he was wrong or if he felt that somebody had gotten the better of him.

  A curious feeling began to snake its way up to Emma’s consciousness. It was a feeling she didn’t remember ever having before. It curled softly around the edges of her brain. She felt a torpid reluctance to let it in.

  What she was feeling burst through to her. I’ve done this, she thought. I’ve beaten him.

  Shame overtook her. She felt lost. She was rolling around in an area where every feeling was unfamiliar.

  What am I talking about? She tried to get hold of herself, sat up in the chair, shook herself like a wet dog to ward off a flood of feeling.

  My mother has stood up to him. She has done this, not me. In her heart, Emma knew this was a lie. She, Emma, had wanted to beat her father for so long and she had wanted it so hard that now she didn’t know what to feel. Now that he was beaten, it didn’t matter who had done it, but only that it was done and that she didn’t feel what she thought she would feel.

  She thought of all the times he had beaten her. Every game of checkers, chess, cards, arm-wrestling, had always ended in the same way, with her father gloating and Emma sulking and feeling like a nothing.

  It hadn’t even been being beaten. That wasn’t it. It had been the look on her father’s face. It had been the gleam in his eye, as though once again, by beating his daughter, he had proven something. But what? What did you prove if you beat a four-year-old at checkers?

  She remembered something her father used to do when she was very small.

  He would sit down and make a circle with his arms. He would make her stand inside that circle. He would tell her to feel his muscles to see how strong he was. She would do that. He would then say, “Try to get out. Try to break through.”

  She remembered trying with all her might, pushing against his arms which ran like steel bands around her body. She would push and sweat and finally scream. He would laugh. “See,” he’d say. “See how strong I am!” He would be exultant, laughing as she screamed, proud to busting of his power.

  She let the humiliation of those moments fall into her. She felt the frustration, the helplessness, the rage. She wanted to cry, feeling it. She felt like a nothing.

  He was sitting in that room, beaten. If she had done this, what would he do to her?

  Terror struck her heart, climbed her throat, forced a constriction of a scream.

  She was a small helpless dot of terror, spinning through space alone.

  She thought of the times she had lain in bed at night and wanted to kill her father. If he knew, if he only knew what she had felt all these years, he would certainly want to kill her. He could kill her, that was the difference.

  Would being beaten like this make him want to? She thought of herself the night before, screaming at him and telling him she was bored with his stories of his life.

  Oh, God. Her heart sank. He knows, she thought, he knows I’m out to get him, and he’s going to get me.

  This is the low point of my life, she thought. If I even get up out of this chair, it will be a miracle. How can I ever walk into that room and face my father? I’ll be terrified. I’ll have to sit here in this chair the rest of my life.

  “Emma,” she heard her mother call, “dinner is ready.”

  Emma got up, without thinking, and went to the door.

  Willie came dancing through the front door. After the rehearsal, Dipsey had taken him to a place down the block for a soda. Willie had been full of questions about all he had seen. Dipsey had answered them, laughing and every now and then punching Willie on the arm. Dipsey had said, “You’re a real little hoofer, man.” Willie had held this to his heart all the way home.

  He had danced halfway into the living room before he saw his mother and father sitting there.

  He saw his father’s eyes. His knees began to tremble. He stopped where he was, dropping his books.

  “Hello, dear,” said his mother. She was smiling, but she looked nervous.

  Uh-oh, thought Willie, here it comes. He wanted to run back to the door, out of the building, back to Dipsey. He wanted to have never come home.

  “Come and tell us all about it,” said his mother.

  His father was looking out the window again, as if he hated the river and wanted to kill it.

  “Was it as wonderful as you thought it would be? Was it hard?”

  “Yes, mam,” said Willie. He didn’t know what to do. He could hear that his mother was on his side, but he could also hear that she was afraid. She must be as afraid of his father as he was.

  In his pocket was a piece of paper he had to get his father to sign before tomorrow. How could he do that? He looked at his father’s bulk. I can’t ask him, he thought. The whole thing is going to fly out of my hands because I’m too scared to ask him.

  I have to, he thought. I just have to. I don’t care what happens. If I don’t get to go back to rehearsal, I’ll kill myself.

  “Dad?” He said this so softly he could barely hear it himself. Louder, he repeated, “Dad?”

  His father turned his head slowly, rather as a lion does.

  “Yes?” His voice was deep.

  “I have something I have to ask you.”

  “Ask your mother,” said his father, and turned his head back to the window in the same slow way.

  “William!” said his mother. She seemed shocked. “Willie, run and wash your hands now. Dinner is almost ready. Whatever you have to ask your father can wait until after dinner.”

  Willie ran, liberated, to his room. Once inside, with the door closed, he felt his heart fill up again with the joy, the excitement, the overwhelming love he had felt all afternoon.

  Willie was dancing all over the dining room. He was doing some crazy step up and down, up and down, and around the table. It looked like a cakewalk.

  Mr. Sheridan loped in from the living room, easing himself into his chair as though his body hurt. He neither said anything nor looked at Willie, who was orbiti
ng the table like something in outer space.

  “Sit down, dear,” said Mrs. Sheridan. Willie sat, if what he did could be called sitting, since he continued moving even though he was on a chair.

  “I learned six new steps today,” he said wildly. “I learned to do a back flip too and—”

  “What’s for dinner?” interrupted his father in a heavy voice.

  “Pot roast,” said Mrs. Sheridan.

  “—and I learned how the curtain goes up and down, and a little bit about lights—”

  “And roast potatoes and gravy?” Mr. Sheridan sounded as though he were asking what time the funeral was.

  Emma went off into a courtroom, a summer courtroom, its wide windows open all the way, the participants in the trial sweating and wiping their faces with handkerchiefs.

  “The State of New York against Ms. Emancipation Sheridan on a charge of first-degree murder.”

  “Well, Emma,” said her father in a sepulchral voice, “how was school today?”

  “Fine,” said Emma, helping herself to gravy. She had been through so much that for a minute she couldn’t remember school at all.

  “We went to get a soda afterwards,” said Willie, rolling his eyes at his father without turning his head. “Dipsey and me.”

  Mr. Sheridan ignored him, continuing to eat in a steady way, looking pained.

  “That’s nice, dear,” said Mrs. Sheridan.

  “Did you or did you not plot the death of your own father, not one night but many nights?”

  “The thought is not the deed,” said Emma to the judge. She wore what she had come to think of as her working clothes: conservative pants suit, large flamboyant hat.

  She was, in this fantasy, her own attorney, representing herself. The saying “He who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client” ran through her mind, to no avail.

  “Your honor, I would like to plead not guilty.”

  “What is your defense?”

  “There’s no corpus delicti.”

  “You are aware, are you not, Counselor Sheridan, that the absence of a body does not necessarily mean you are cleared of these charges.”

  “Your honor, may it please the court, he’s sitting right over there.” She pointed at her father sitting in the back row of the courtroom.