The Family Nobody Wanted

by Helen Doss

  We made an appointment with our doctor. Psychologists warn that such trips must not be sprung upon innocent children without due advance preparation; this works well for all our children except Laura.

  “Tomorrow is the day we go to the doctor for our blood tests and X rays,” I announced cheerfully one morning.

  “Will that doctor stick a needle in us?” Laura asked, instantly suspicious.

  “Well, yes, the needle will make a bit of a prick, but—”

  “Why do we have to get a needle stuck in us?” Laura wailed, retreating.

  “So we won’t get dippy-theria,” Teddy said.

  “So your face won’t get locked up if you step onna nail,” Susie added.

  “We don’t need that kind of shots,” Donny said warily, joining Laura. “We had that kind this summer already.”

  “This isn’t the same thing,” I explained. “This time the doctor just takes out a tiny sample of blood to make a test. This shows that we’re all healthy.”

  “Like we all hadda have before we could take Timmy and Teddy to the judge?” Donny asked.

  Insight lighted Laura’s round face, then a black curtain came down as she wheeled and pointed an accusing finger at Elaine. “She’s why we have to go to the doctor.” Her chin quivered. “I don’t like that girl. I wish you’d send that girl back on the airplane.”

  The rest of the children took the matter philosophically, dismissing it from their minds as they dashed out to play. Not Laura. Like many grownups, she was not one to put off worrying until tomorrow, if she could worry just as well today. She followed me around like a forlorn puppy, sometimes wistful, sometimes defiant.

  “Do we really have to ever’body have shots?” she whispered. Then she was shouting. “That old doctor can’t have any of my blood. I need it all myself.”

  I took her in my lap again. “Goodness, don’t keep thinking about it,” I smiled, stroking her shining brown hair. “Sure, you’ll get a little prick, but it’s over so soon that you’ll forget it right away. You remember how it was?”

  Laura remembered all too well. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. She found a sharp pin and followed Elaine around with a gleam in her eye; when Elaine taunted her and disappeared, Laura decided to play doctor with her dolls, jabbing them all viciously in their rubber arms. Even this was not release enough for her tension. With all her doll clothes packed in a small cardboard suitcase, she put on her coat, tucked her favorite doll under her arm, and announced she was running away.

  “I’m going to find a better house, where the doctor won’t stick little girls with needles,” she said. “And where there aren’t any mean old girls getting off airplanes to come live with you.”

  The frying hamburgers smelled so good, and we were having tapicoa pudding for dessert, so Laura finally decided to stay and put up with us. But, after dinner she doubled over and held her hand over her stomach, rolling her eyes.

  “I think I’m getting sick. I think I’ll just have to stay home in bed all day tomorrow.”

  “Maybe some germs ate your healthy up,” Susie said.

  “Maybe the doctor will stick a getting-well shot in your bottom,” Elaine said vindictively. “And stick the blood test in your arm, too.”

  Laura’s hand flew off her stomach and she straightened up. “Probably just ate too much,” she said with dignity. “I’ve still got my healthy.”

  The next morning Laura suggested that she stay home. “I’d probably scream, and it might scare the other children,” she hinted delicately.

  At the doctor’s, the waiting room was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey by the time all of our children climbed into chairs and reached for magazines. Laura, disdaining the diversion of literature or pictures, began to whimper immediately. When the doctor opened the inner door, Rita, encouraged by Laura’s now open sobs, hung back with wide fearful eyes, while the rest marched in. Always curious, Teddy stood with his short-tilted brown nose against the glass case full of shining scissors, knives and gadgets, completely fascinated. We put him on the table first, because he set such a good example. Although we tried to turn his attention away before the prick, with his scientific mind he had to see exactly how it was done; he winced when the needle went in, but didn’t cry. When he was set down, he walked back to continue his study of the instrument cabinet.

  We hoped to do Laura last, since she was such a bad example, but her sobs were so loud and poignant, we agreed to get her misery over with quickly. Laura’s reaction was the opposite of the rest. She was howling when she went up on the table, but the minute the needle went into her arm, she stopped. When she was set down, she icily withdrew to a stool in the corner, crossed her chubby legs with a ladylike smoothing of her short skirt over her knees, and sat with the haughty look of a queen whose toes have been trod upon by a commoner.

  “This does it,” I sighed to Carl that afternoon. “Before, we did everything possible to break up this feud between Laura and Elaine. Now, with the added fuel of the shots, I wonder how many years it will be before we can even get them to civil speaking terms?”

  They fooled us. That night they came to us, arms twined lovingly about each other, asking if they could share the same room and let Diane move in with Rita or Susie.

  We were stunned, as if looking at a mirage. Yet it was obviously the real thing. They pressed each other with gifts of their own favorite dolls and possessions, and went everywhere hand in hand. To this day, we have never found out what caused this small miracle. Did ever-sensitive Laura feel sorry for Elaine when she, too, suffered the needle? Did they reach some kind of spontaneous pact? We could only guess, and then give up. At the time, we were too overjoyed to take any chances of destroying this beautiful thing by inquisitive prying.

  A long time later, when the friendship was as solid and secure as the mountains rising behind our house, we asked them what made them decide to stop fighting each other, and be friends.

  They looked at us as if we were senile, losing mind as well as memory.

  “Us fight?” Elaine asked incredulously.

  “We’re the best friends in the whole world,” Laura said. “I liked Elaine the minute she got off that airplane.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The Sky Lark

  DONNY isn’t mechanically minded, not the way little Teddy is. Still, one summer day when Donny was eight, he had an inspiration.

  “Hey, kids,” he hollered. “I’m going to build an airplane!”

  “A real airplane?” Timmy wanted to know. “A really, really airplane?”

  “Sure,” Donny said. He hunted up some paper and pencil, climbed up by the dining-room table and started drawing plans, filling his papers with sketches. “This has got to be planned just right,” he murmured. “If you want things to work, you’ve got to plan them right.”

  “You mean it’ll really fly?” Rita asked.

  “Why not?” Donny said. “Now you little kids stay back and don’t bother me. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  When the planning stage was over, he stuffed the papers into the hip pocket of his jeans. His brothers and sisters followed him outside, where he began to assemble his materials. He found some apple boxes stacked behind the garage, some lumber on the scrap pile, some discarded wheels from an old doll buggy. He kept running back to the house asking for “some string, please, good sturdy string,” “some wire about as long as from here to there,” and “some good, tough nails that won’t bend when I hit them.”

  The younger children scurried around, hunting up required parts, asking endless questions.

  “Can people ride in it?” Rita wanted to know.

  “Of course,” Donny said, hammering.

  The children started jumping up and down, clamoring for turns to ride. “All right,” Donny conceded, “I’ll give each one of you a ride.”

  “How many can go at once?” Teddy asked.

  “Well, it all depends,” Donny said, “on the size I make it.”

  “Make it
big enough for all of us to ride at once,” little Timmy hollered.

  “Yes, yes!” Teddy, Rita, Elaine, Laura, Susan, and Diane echoed, while Alex, who didn’t talk yet, jumped up and down in the general excitement.

  “All right,” Donny agreed. “I’ll make it big enough for everybody.”

  “Where will we fly?” Teddy wanted to know.

  “Let’s fly over the ocean and say hello to my Other-Mother,” Diane said.

  “Okay,” Don said. “We’ll take our first trip to Hawaii.”

  A destination picked, everyone began preparations for the trip. Diane had a new dress she wanted to take back to show the Other-Mother. Laura had a doll that would cry if it were left behind, some doll clothes to be packed, and a supply of her fanciest handkerchiefs to be tucked in her purse.

  “Is Mama going?” Timmy asked.

  “We’ll take her next time,” Donny whispered. “This time we’re going to be care-free.”

  “The lady on our plane gave us food to eat,” Elaine hinted.

  “We’ll pack up some sandwiches,” Don said. “We can eat those while we’re up in the air.”

  “How about when we get there?” Teddy asked. “We’ll be hungry again.”

  “Don’t worry,” Diane said. “We’ll eat pineapples. And pick bananas off the trees.”

  “And coconuts,” Donny said learnedly. “And we’ll all drink coconut milk.”

  “How will we get them open?” Timmy asked.

  “We’ll get a hatchet,” Susie said, “and hatch them open. Don’t worry.”

  When noontime came, the pilot and his passengers settled on an unglamorous glass of ordinary cow’s milk to tide them over, and decided to eat the sandwiches they had packed. The made a picnic out of it, sitting in a big circle under the aromatic bay tree.

  Timmy, staring intently at his sandwich, murmured, “Hey, there’s a bug on my lettuce.”

  “Couldn’t be,” Donny said, “I washed it good. I’ll have to train one of you to be my navigator.”

  “I want to be the alligator,” Diane said.

  “There is too a bug on my lettuce,” Timmy said.

  “Not alligator,” Donny said. “Navigator.”

  “There is too a bug,” Timmy insisted.

  “It’s probably just a speck of dirt,” Donny said. “I guess I’ll have to read the maps myself, because I’m the only one who can read.”

  Timmy was still staring at his sandwich. “Well, it’s crawling,” he complained.

  A number of changes had to be made during the afternoon. A heavy cardboard box, once used for shipping a chest of drawers, replaced the apple boxes for the cabin. “This will hold more people,” Donny said, cutting out windows on the sides with my kitchen paring knife.

  Rita looked at the contraption with a cautious skepticism. “I’m not going,” she said. “It might get bust.”

  “Not a chance,” Donny assured her. “Not the way I make it.”

  “Yeah,” Rita said, tossing back her jet hair, “but what if the bottom falls out, right when we’re over the ocean?”

  “Don’t worry so much. I’m making it properly sturdy.”

  “I don’t trust it,” Rita decided, starting away on her slim, brown legs that never seemed to touch the ground. “I’m going to catch me some grasser-hoppers.” Suddenly she jumped back. “Hey, what’s this bug? Hey, Donny, what’s this bug? Is it poison?” Her fingers were poised to catch it if it weren’t.

  “That’s a dragon fly,” Donny said.

  Timmy, studying the insect, said, “What does it drag? I don’t see it draggin’ anything.”

  “What do you kids want to monkey around with dragon flies for?” Donny said. “You just stick around me, and you can fly better than any little old bug.”

  “When we’re going over the ocean, I’m not going to look out the windows,” Susie said. “I don’t want to get dizzy and fall out. I can’t swim.”

  Teddy said, “Hadn’t we better practice a little bit, before we try such a long trip?”

  “We might,” Donny said. “If we get through early tonight, we might fly straight up in the air and hoover around over the house for a day or two, first.”

  Late that afternoon, Teddy canceled his reservation. “You haven’t got any motor in it,” he said, his brown face screwed up as he squatted down to view the assembly. “I don’t see how it’s going to work.”

  “It’s going to work, isn’t it kids?” Donny said.

  The rest of the loyal passengers, minus Rita who had gone off bug hunting, gave loud cheers of approval.

  “Anyway,” Teddy said, “I think I’ll stay home. I got some other things to do.”

  “Hey, you can’t back out now,” Donny begged, scratching his blond head. “I’m depending on you.”

  “What for?” Teddy’s large brown eyes were wary.

  “To help me fly it.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I was going to have you sit in the middle, and flap the wings,” Donny said. “I was going to get Timmy to sit behind you and work the tail part.”

  “That’s not the way airplanes fly,” Teddy said. “They have motors, and the motors make the propellers go round.”

  “Not this airplane,” Donny said. “It’s going to fly like a bird. Birds don’t have motors. They flap their wings.”

  “I’ll be your ground crew,” Teddy compromised. “I’ll help you take off, and I’ll signal you in, when you come home.”

  When it grew dark, the children didn’t want to come in to supper.

  “We’ll be leaving pretty soon,” Diane said.

  “Mama, why don’t you pack us some sammitches to eat on the plane, for our supper?” Laura wheedled, dimples in her round cheeks, her arm and Elaine’s mutually around each other’s waists.

  “Mama’s dinner smells good,” said Elaine, more to Laura than to me. “I think we all ought to go in and eat one last dinner with Mama, before we go. We might not be seeing her for a while.”

  “You might miss the take-off,” Donny warned, “if you’re in the house when I get the plane finished.”

  “Why don’t you all come in,” I suggested. “You could eat a hearty meal now, and finish the plane in the morning when it’s light.”

  “Well,” Donny admitted, “I still do have a lot of work to do on it.”

  “Besides,” I added, bringing the strength of my adult reasoning to bear on the subject, “you’ll all need a good sleep before you go. There won’t be room for all of you to lie down and sleep on the plane.”

  “That’s right,” Elaine pointed out. “It takes lots and lots of hours to fly across the water to our Other-House.”

  So everyone came in, ate the hearty supper, and scooted off to bed, chattering about the fun they were going to have on the trip. A storm blew up in the night, and the play yard turned into a lake. Donny’s cardboard fuselage disintegrated amidst the debris of boards, nails, string, wire, and doll-buggy wheels. In the morning the children ran to the windows and pressed their noses against the glass, staring out at the rain. Some of the smaller ones looked disconsolate.

  “Well,” Donny said, with a philosophical shrug. “It’s a good thing it fell apart now, and not when we were about a thousand miles up in the sky,”

  “Are you going to build another one, Donny?” all the kids wanted to know.

  “Oh, sure,” Don said. “Maybe I’ll wait till next year when I’m older, and I can learn how to make a more durable one out of metal.”

  “Yeah,” someone sighed.

  “That is,” Donny added, with a trace of wistfulness, “if I don’t have too much sense by then.”

  CHAPTER 12

  All God’s Children

  OUR children never thought of themselves as looking particularly different from each other. One day, when Donny was eight and Alex a year old, Donny crouched on the floor to encourage his little brother to walk. Alex reached out both hands, took a hesitating step, and tumbled into Donny’s arms. The high-pitc
hed baby giggle interlaced with the hearty boy-sized chuckle, then Donny looked up at me, blue eyes wide and sincere under his thatch of blond hair.

  “Mama,” he said, glancing fondly at the Oriental ivory face beside him, at the black appleseed eyes that crinkle into slits when Alex laughs, “if he was seven years older, and if I had black hair, everybody would think that him and me was twins!”

  They felt that much alike, our children, and often they took it for granted that this alikeness would show. Naturally they could see that there were minor and inconsequential variations, that Rita had “the blackest, shiniest hair,” that Teddy could toast browner in the sun than the rest, but persons bearing such unearned distinctions were polite enough not to gloat. There are only two times I can remember when differences within our family seemed to be of any concern, and then, each time, it was only because a small child developed a sudden fear that a minor dissimilarity might be a physical handicap to the bearer. Once Teddy looked into the mirror at his own brown eyes and then studied Donny, solicitude puckering his face like a walnut.

  “Donny,” he asked, “how can you see out of blue eyes?”

  Also there was the early-winter day when Timmy watched Carl trim brown spots from apples with the point of a knife.

  “Why you do that, Daddy?” he asked.

  “Bad spots,” Carl said.

  Later I noticed Timmy staring at me, his usually frolicking brown eyes now worried. “Daddy gonna cut pieces out of you?”

  “Heavens, no,” I laughed. “What made you say that?”

  His fingers slid gently over the freckles on my arm. “Bad spots,” he said.

  It is the outsiders who imagine that our family is made up of incompatible opposites. Those who have never ventured beyond the white bars of their self-imposed social cages too often take for granted that a different color skin on the outside makes for a different kind of being, not of necessity completely human, on the inside. Granting the usual personality range found in any blood-related, racially identical family, some strangers go far beyond this and expect to find amongst us the lamb lying down uneasily with the lion.