by Lisa Yaszek
July 10.
. . . Believe it or not, as you like, but your daughter can talk, and I don’t mean baby talk. Alice discovered it—she’s a dental assistant in the WACs, you know—and when she heard the baby giving out what I thought was a string of gibberish, she said the kid knew words and sentences, but couldn’t say them clearly because she has no teeth yet. I’m taking her to a speech specialist.
September 13.
. . . We have a prodigy for real! Now that all her front teeth are in, her speech is perfectly clear and—a new talent now—she can sing! I mean really carry a tune! At seven months! Darling my world would be perfect if you could only get home.
November 19.
. . . at last. The little goon was so busy being clever, it took her all this time to learn to crawl. The doctor says development in these cases is always erratic . . .
SPECIAL SERVICE TELEGRAM
December 1, 1953
08:47 LK59F
From: Tech. Lieut. H. Marvell
X47-016 GCNY
To: Mrs. H. Marvell
Apt. K-17
504 E. 19 St.
N.Y. N.Y.
WEEK’S LEAVE STARTS TOMORROW STOP WILL ARRIVE AIRPORT TEN OH FIVE STOP DON’T MEET ME STOP LOVE LOVE LOVE HANK
Margaret let the water run out of the bathinette until only a few inches were left, and then loosed her hold on the wriggling baby.
“I think it was better when you were retarded, young woman,” she informed her daughter happily. “You can’t crawl in a bathinette, you know.”
“Then why can’t I go in the bathtub?” Margaret was used to her child’s volubility by now, but every now and then it caught her unawares. She swooped the resistant mass of pink flesh into a towel, and began to rub.
“Because you’re too little, and your head is very soft, and bathtubs are very hard.”
“Oh. Then when can I go in the bathtub?”
“When the outside of your head is as hard as the inside, brainchild.” She reached toward a pile of fresh clothing. “I cannot understand,” she added, pinning a square of cloth through the nightgown, “why a child of your intelligence can’t learn to keep a diaper on the way other babies do. They’ve been used for centuries, you know, with perfectly satisfactory results.”
The child disdained to reply; she had heard it too often. She waited patiently until she had been tucked, clean and sweet-smelling, into a white-painted crib. Then she favored her mother with a smile that inevitably made Margaret think of the first golden edge of the sun bursting into a rosy pre-dawn. She remembered Hank’s reaction to the color pictures of his beautiful daughter, and with the thought, realized how late it was.
“Go to sleep, puss. When you wake up, you know, your Daddy will be here.”
“Why?” asked the four-year-old mind, waging a losing battle to keep the ten-month-old body awake.
Margaret went into the kitchenette and set the timer for the roast. She examined the table, and got her clothes from the closet, new dress, new shoes, new slip, new everything, bought weeks before and saved for the day Hank’s telegram came. She stopped to pull a paper from the facsimile, and, with clothes and news, went into the bathroom, and lowered herself gingerly into the steaming luxury of a scented tub.
She glanced through the paper with indifferent interest. Today at least there was no need to read the national news. There was an article by a geneticist. The same geneticist. Mutations, he said, were increasing disproportionately. It was too soon for recessives; even the first mutants, born near Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1946 and 1947 were not old enough yet to breed. But my baby’s all right. Apparently, there was some degree of free radiation from atomic explosions causing the trouble. My baby’s fine. Precocious, but normal. If more attention had been paid to the first Japanese mutations, he said . . .
There was that little notice in the paper in the spring of ’47. That was when Hank quit at Oak Ridge. “Only two or three per cent of those guilty of infanticide are being caught and punished in Japan today . . .” But MY BABY’S all right.
She was dressed, combed, and ready to the last light brush-on of lip paste, when the door chime sounded. She dashed for the door, and heard, for the first time in eighteen months the almost-forgotten sound of a key turning in the lock before the chime had quite died away.
“Hank!”
“Maggie!”
And then there was nothing to say. So many days, so many months, of small news piling up, so many things to tell him, and now she just stood there, staring at a khaki uniform and a stranger’s pale face. She traced the features with the finger of memory. The same high-bridged nose, wide-set eyes, fine feathery brows; the same long jaw, the hair a little farther back now on the high forehead, the same tilted curve to his mouth. Pale . . . Of course, he’d been underground all this time. And strange, stranger because of lost familiarity than any newcomer’s face could be.
She had time to think all that before his hand reached out to touch her, and spanned the gap of eighteen months. Now, again, there was nothing to say, because there was no need. They were together, and for the moment that was enough.
“Where’s the baby?”
“Sleeping. She’ll be up any minute.”
No urgency. Their voices were as casual as though it were a daily exchange, as though war and separation did not exist. Margaret picked up the coat he’d thrown on the chair near the door, and hung it carefully in the hall closet. She went to check the roast, leaving him to wander through the rooms by himself, remembering and coming back. She found him, finally, standing over the baby’s crib.
She couldn’t see his face, but she had no need to.
“I think we can wake her just this once.” Margaret pulled the covers down, and lifted the white bundle from the bed. Sleepy lids pulled back heavily from smoky brown eyes.
“Hello.” Hank’s voice was tentative.
“Hello.” The baby’s assurance was more pronounced.
He had heard about it, of course, but that wasn’t the same as hearing it. He turned eagerly to Margaret. “She really can—?”
“Of course she can, darling. But what’s more important, she can even do nice normal things like other babies do, even stupid ones. Watch her crawl!” Margaret set the baby on the big bed.
For a moment young Henrietta lay and eyed her parents dubiously.
“Crawl?” she asked.
“That’s the idea. Your Daddy is new around here, you know. He wants to see you show off.”
“Then put me on my tummy.”
“Oh, of course.” Margaret obligingly rolled the baby over.
“What’s the matter?” Hank’s voice was still casual, but an undercurrent in it began to charge the air of the room. “I thought they turned over first.”
“This baby,” Margaret would not notice the tension, “this baby does things when she wants to.”
This baby’s father watched with softening eyes while the head advanced and the body hunched up, propelling itself across the bed.
“Why the little rascal,” he burst into relieved laughter. “She looks like one of those potato-sack racers they used to have on picnics. Got her arms pulled out of the sleeves already.” He reached over and grabbed the knot at the bottom of the long nightie.
“I’ll do it, darling.” Margaret tried to get there first.
“Don’t be silly, Maggie. This may be your first baby, but I had five kid brothers.” He laughed her away, and reached with his other hand for the string that closed one sleeve. He opened the sleeve bow, and groped for an arm.
“The way you wriggle,” he addressed his child sternly, as his hand touched a moving knob of flesh at the shoulder, “anyone might think you were a worm, using your tummy to crawl on, instead of your hands and feet.”
Margaret stood and watched, smiling. “Wait
till you hear her sing, darling—”
His right hand traveled down from the shoulder to where he thought an arm would be, traveled down, and straight down, over firm small muscles that writhed in an attempt to move against the pressure of his hand. He let his fingers drift up again to the shoulder. With infinite care, he opened the knot at the bottom of the nightgown. His wife was standing by the bed, saying: “She can do ‘Jingle Bells,’ and—”
His left hand felt along the soft knitted fabric of the gown, up towards the diaper that folded, flat and smooth, across the bottom end of his child. No wrinkles. No kicking. No . . .
“Maggie.” He tried to pull his hands from the neat fold in the diaper, from the wriggling body. “Maggie.” His throat was dry; words came hard, low and grating. He spoke very slowly, thinking the sound of each word to make himself say it. His head was spinning, but he had to know before he let it go. “Maggie, why . . . didn’t you . . . tell me?”
“Tell you what, darling?” Margaret’s poise was the immemorial patience of woman confronted with man’s childish impetuosity. Her sudden laugh sounded fantastically easy and natural in that room; it was all clear to her now. “Is she wet? I didn’t know.”
She didn’t know. His hands, beyond control, ran up and down the soft-skinned baby body, the sinuous, limbless body. Oh God, dear God—his head shook and his muscles contracted, in a bitter spasm of hysteria. His fingers tightened on his child—Oh God, she didn’t know.
1948
WILMAR H. SHIRAS
In Hiding
PETER Welles, psychiatrist, eyed the boy thoughtfully. Why had Timothy Paul’s teacher sent him for examination?
“I don’t know, myself, that there’s really anything wrong with Tim,” Miss Page had told Dr. Welles. “He seems perfectly normal. He’s rather quiet as a rule, doesn’t volunteer answers in class or anything of that sort. He gets along well enough with other boys and seems reasonably popular, although he has no special friends. His grades are satisfactory—he gets B faithfully in all his work. But when you’ve been teaching as long as I have, Peter, you get a feeling about certain ones. There is a tension about him—a look in his eyes sometimes—and he is very absent-minded.”
“What would your guess be?” Welles had asked. Sometimes these hunches were very valuable. Miss Page had taught school for thirty-odd years; she had been Peter’s teacher in the past, and he thought highly of her opinion.
“I ought not to say,” she answered. “There’s nothing to go on—yet. But he might be starting something, and if it could be headed off—”
“Physicians are often called before the symptoms are sufficiently marked for the doctor to be able to see them,” said Welles. “A patient, or the mother of a child, or any practiced observer, can often see that something is going to be wrong. But it’s hard for the doctor in such cases. Tell me what you think I should look for.”
“You won’t pay too much attention to me? It’s just what occurred to me, Peter; I know I’m not a trained psychiatrist. But it could be delusions of grandeur. Or it could be a withdrawing from the society of others. I always have to speak to him twice to get his attention in class—and he has no real chums.”
Welles had agreed to see what he could find, and promised not to be too much influenced by what Miss Page herself called “an old woman’s notions.”
Timothy, when he presented himself for examination, seemed like an ordinary boy. He was perhaps a little small for his age, he had big dark eyes and close-cropped dark curls, thin sensitive fingers and—yes, a decided air of tension. But many boys were nervous on their first visit to the—psychiatrist. Peter often wished that he was able to concentrate on one or two schools, and spend a day a week or so getting acquainted with all the youngsters.
In response to Welles’ preliminary questioning, Tim replied in a clear, low voice, politely and without wasting words. He was thirteen years old, and lived with his grandparents. His mother and father had died when he was a baby, and he did not remember them. He said that he was happy at home, that he liked school “pretty well,” that he liked to play with other boys. He named several boys when asked who his friends were.
“What lessons do you like at school?”
Tim hesitated, then said: “English, and arithmetic . . . and history . . . and geography,” he finished thoughtfully. Then he looked up, and there was something odd in the glance.
“What do you like to do for fun?”
“Read, and play games.”
“What games?”
“Ball games . . . and marbles . . . and things like that. I like to play with other boys,” he added, after a barely perceptible pause, “anything they play.”
“Do they play at your house?”
“No; we play on the school grounds. My grandmother doesn’t like noise.”
Was that the reason? When a quiet boy offers explanations, they may not be the right ones.
“What do you like to read?”
But about his reading Timothy was vague. He liked, he said, to read “boys’ books,” but could not name any.
Welles gave the boy the usual intelligence tests. Tim seemed willing, but his replies were slow in coming. Perhaps, Welles thought, I’m imagining this, but he is too careful—too cautious. Without taking time to figure exactly, Welles knew what Tim’s I.Q. would be—about 120.
“What do you do outside of school?” asked the psychiatrist.
“I play with the other boys. After supper, I study my lessons.”
“What did you do yesterday?”
“We played ball on the school playground.”
Welles waited a while to see whether Tim would say anything of his own accord. The seconds stretched into minutes.
“Is that all?” said the boy finally. “May I go now?”
“No; there’s one more test I’d like to give you today. A game, really. How’s your imagination?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cracks on the ceiling—like those over there—do they look like anything to you? Faces, animals, or anything?”
Tim looked.
“Sometimes. And clouds, too. Bob saw a cloud last week that was like a hippo.” Again the last sentence sounded like something tacked on at the last moment, a careful addition made for a reason.
Welles got out the Rorschach cards. But at the sight of them, his patient’s tension increased, his wariness became unmistakably evident. The first time they went through the cards, the boy could scarcely be persuaded to say anything but, “I don’t know.”
“You can do better than this,” said Welles. “We’re going through them again. If you don’t see anything in these pictures, I have to mark you a failure,” he explained. “That won’t do. You did all right on the other things. And maybe next time we’ll do a game you’ll like better.”
“I don’t feel like playing this game now. Can’t we do it again next time?”
“May as well get it done now. It’s not only a game, you know, Tim; it’s a test. Try harder, and be a good sport.”
So Tim, this time, told what he saw in the ink blots. They went through the cards slowly, and the test showed Tim’s fear, and that there was something he was hiding; it showed his caution, a lack of trust, and an unnaturally high emotional self-control.
Miss Page had been right; the boy needed help.
“Now,” said Welles cheerfully, “that’s all over. We’ll just run through them again quickly and I’ll tell you what other people have seen in them.”
A flash of genuine interest appeared on the boy’s face for a moment.
Welles went through the cards slowly, seeing that Tim was attentive to every word. When he first said, “And some see what you saw here,” the boy’s relief was evident. Tim began to relax, and even to volunteer some remarks. When they had finished he ventured to ask a question.
“Dr.
Welles, could you tell me the name of this test?”
“It’s sometimes called the Rorschach test, after the man who worked it out.”
“Would you mind spelling that?”
Welles spelled it, and added: “Sometimes it’s called the ink-blot test.”
Tim gave a start of surprise, and then relaxed again with a visible effort.
“What’s the matter? You jumped.”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on! Let’s have it,” and Welles waited.
“Only that I thought about the ink-pool in the Kipling stories,” said Tim, after a minute’s reflection. “This is different.”
“Yes, very different,” laughed Welles. “I’ve never tried that. Would you like to?”
“Oh, no, sir,” cried Tim earnestly.
“You’re a little jumpy today,” said Welles. “We’ve time for some more talk, if you are not too tired.”
“No, I’m not very tired,” said the boy warily.
Welles went to a drawer and chose a hypodermic needle. It wasn’t usual, but perhaps— “I’ll just give you a little shot to relax your nerves, shall I? Then we’d get on better.”
When he turned around, the stark terror on the child’s face stopped Welles in his tracks.
“Oh, no! Don’t! Please, please, don’t!”
Welles replaced the needle and shut the drawer before he said a word.
“I won’t,” he said, quietly. “I didn’t know you didn’t like shots. I won’t give you any, Tim.”
The boy, fighting for self-control, gulped and said nothing.
“It’s all right,” said Welles, lighting a cigarette and pretending to watch the smoke rise. Anything rather than appear to be watching the badly shaken small boy shivering in the chair opposite him. “Sorry. You didn’t tell me about the things you don’t like, the things you’re afraid of.”