Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  The children had gone home, happy and excited, chattering and laughing, until they reached the edge of the school grounds. There, smiles died and laughter stopped and faces and feet grew heavy again. All but Esther’s. Hers had never been light. I sighed and turned to the papers. Here was Abie’s little book. I thumbed through it and drew a deep breath and went back through it slowly again.

  A second grader drawing this? Six pages—six finished adult-looking pages. Crayolas achieving effects I’d never seen before—pictures that told a story loudly and clearly.

  Stars blazing in a black sky, with the slender needle of a ship, like a mote in the darkness.

  The vasty green cloud-shrouded arc of Earth against the blackness. A pink tinge of beginning friction along the ship’s belly. I put my finger to the glow. I could almost feel the heat.

  Inside the ship, suffering and pain, heroic striving, crumpled bodies and seared faces. A baby dead in its mother’s arms. Then a swarm of tinier needles erupting from the womb of the ship. And the last shriek of incandescence as the ship volatilized against the thickening drag of the air.

  I leaned my head on my hands and closed my eyes. All this, all this in the memory of an eight-year-old? All this in the feelings of an eight-year-old? Because Abie knew—he knew how this felt. He knew the heat and strivings and the dying and fleeing. No wonder Abie whispered and leaned. Racial memory was truly a two-sided coin.

  I felt a pang of misgivings. Maybe I was wrong to let him remember so vividly. Maybe I shouldn’t have let him...

  I turned to Martha’s papers. They were delicate, almost spidery drawings of some fuzzy little animal (toolas?) that apparently built a hanging hammocky nest and gathered fruit in a huge leaf basket and had a bird for a friend. A truly out-of-this-world bird. Much of her story escaped me because first graders—if anyone at all—produce symbolic art and, since her frame of reference and mine were so different, there was much that I couldn’t interpret. But her whole booklet was joyous and light.

  And now, the stories...

  I lifted my head and blinked into the twilight. I had finished all the papers except Esther’s. It was her cramped writing, swimming in darkness, that made me realize that the day was gone and that I was shivering in a shadowy room with the fire in the old-fashioned heater gone out.

  Slowly I shuffled the papers into my desk drawer, hesitated and took out Esther’s. I would finish at home. I shrugged into my coat and wandered home, my thoughts intent on the papers I had read. And suddenly I wanted to cry—to cry for the wonders that had been and were no more. For the heritage of attainment and achievement these children had but couldn’t use. For the dream-come-true of what they were capable of doing but weren’t permitted to do. For the homesick yearning that filled every line they had written—these unhappy exiles, three generations removed from any physical knowledge of the Home.

  I stopped on the bridge and leaned against the railing in the half dark. Suddenly I felt a welling homesickness. That was what the world should be like—what it could be like if only—if only...

  But my tears for the Home were as hidden as the emotions of Mrs. Diemus when she looked up uncuriously as I came through the kitchen door.

  “Good evening,” she said. “I’ve kept your supper warm.”

  “Thank you.” I shivered convulsively. “It is getting cold.”

  I sat on the edge of my bed that night, letting the memory of the kids’ papers wash over me, trying to fill in around the bits and snippets that they had told of the Home. And then I began to wonder. All of them who wrote about the actual Home had been so happy with their memories. From Timmy and his Shinny ship as high as a montin and faster than two jets, and Dorcas’ wandering tenses as though yesterday and today were one: The flowers were like lights. At night it isn’t dark becas they shine so bright and when the moon came up the breeos sing and the music was so you can see it like rain falling around only happyer; up to Miriam’s wistful On Gathering Day there was a big party. Everybody came dressed in beautiful clothes with flahmen in the girls’ hair. Flahmen are flowers but they’re good to eat. And if a girl felt her heart sing for a boy they ate a flahmen together and started two-ing.

  Then, if all these memories were so happy, why the rigid suppression of them by grownups? Why the pall of unhappiness over everyone? You can’t mourn forever for a wrecked ship. Why a hidey hole for disobedient children? Why the misery and frustration when, if they could do half of what I didn’t fully understand from Joel and Matt’s highly technical papers, they could make Bendo an Eden?

  I reached for Esther’s paper. I had put it on the bottom on purpose. I dreaded reading it. She had sat with her head buried on her arms on her desk most of the time the others were writing busily. At widely separated intervals she had scribbled a line or two as though she were doing something shameful. She, of all the children, had seemed to find no relief in her remembering.

  I smoothed the paper on my lap.

  I remember, she had written. We were thursty. There was water in the creek we were hiding in the grass. We could not drink. They would shoot us. Three days the sun was hot. She screamed for water and ran to the creek. They shot. The water got red.

  Blistered spots marked the tears on the paper.

  They found a baby under a bush. The man hit it with the wood part of his gun. He hit it and hit it and hit it. I hit scorpins like that.

  They caught us and put us in a pen. They built a fire all around us. Fly “they said,” fly and save yourselfs. We flew because it hurt. They shot us.

  Monster “they yelled” evil monsters. People can’t fly. People can’t move things. People are the same. You aren’t people, Die die die.

  Then blackly, traced and retraced until the paper split:

  If anyone finds out we are not of earth we will die.

  Keep your feet on the ground.

  Bleakly I laid the paper aside. So there was the answer, putting Karen’s bits and snippets together with these. The shipwrecked ones finding savages on the desert island. A remnant surviving by learning caution, suppression, and denial. Another generation that pinned the evil label on the Home to insure continued immunity for their children, and now, a generation that questioned and wondered—and rebelled.

  I turned off the light and slowly got into bed. I lay there staring into the darkness, holding the picture Esther had evoked. Finally I relaxed. “God help her,” I sighed. “God help us all.”

  Another week was nearly over. We cleaned the room up quickly, for once anticipating the fun time instead of dreading it. I smiled to hear the happy racket all around me, and felt my own spirits surge upward in response to the lightheartedness of the children. The difference that one afternoon had made in them! Now they were beginning to feel like children to me. They were beginning to accept me. I swallowed with an effort. How soon would they ask, “How come? How come you knew?” There they sat, all nine of them—nine, because Esther was my first absence in the year—bright-eyed and expectant.

  “Can we write again?” Sarah asked. “I can remember lots more.”

  “No,” I said. “Not today.” Smiles died and there was a protesting wiggle through the room. “Today we are going to do. Joel.” I looked at him and tightened my jaws. “Joel, give me the dictionary.” He began to get up. “Without leaving your seat!”

  “But I—!” Joel broke the shocked silence. “I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can,” I prayed. “Yes, you can. Give me the dictionary. Here, on my desk.”

  Joel turned and stared at the big old dictionary that spilled pages 1965 to 1998 out of its cracked old binding. Then he said, “Miriam?” in a high tight voice. But she shook her head and shrank back in her seat, her eyes big and dark in her white face.

  “You can.” Miriam’s voice was hardly more than a breath. “It’s just bigger—”

  Joel clutched the edge of his desk and sweat started out on his forehead. There was a stir of movement on the bookshelf. Then, as though shot from a gun, p
ages 1965 to 1998 whisked to my desk and fell fluttering. Our laughter cut through the blank amazement and we laughed till tears came.

  “That’s a-doing it, Joel!” Matt shouted. “That’s showing them your muscles!”

  “Well, it’s a beginning.” Joel grinned weakly. “You do it, brother, if you think it’s so easy.”

  So Matt sweated and strained and Joel joined with him, but they only managed to scrape the book to the edge of the shelf, where it teetered dangerously.

  Then Abie waved his hand timidly. “I can, teacher.”

  I beamed that my silent one had spoken and at the same time frowned at the loving laughter of the big kids.

  “Okay, Abie,” I encouraged. “You show them how to do it.”

  And the dictionary swung off the shelf, and glided unhastily to my desk, where it came silently to rest.

  Everyone stared at Abie and he squirmed. “The little ships,” he defended. “That’s the way they moved them out of the big ship. Just like that.”

  Joel and Matt turned their eyes to some inner concentration and then exchanged exasperated looks.

  “Why, sure,” Matt said. “Why, sure.” And the dictionary swung back to the shelf.

  “Hey!” Timmy protested. “It’s my turn!”

  “That poor dictionary,” I said. “It’s too old for all this bouncing around. Just put the loose pages back on the shelf.”

  And he did.

  Everyone sighed and looked at me expectantly.

  “Miriam?” She clasped her hands convulsively. “You come to me,” I said, feeling a chill creep across my stiff shoulders. “Lift to me, Miriam.”

  Without taking her eyes from me she slipped out of her seat and stood in the aisle. Her skirts swayed a little as her feet lifted from the floor. Slowly at first and then more quickly she came to me, soundlessly, through the air, until in a little flurried rush her arms went around me and she gasped into my shoulder. I put her aside, trembling. I groped for my handkerchief. I said shakily, “Miriam, help the rest. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  And I stumbled into the room next door. Huddled down in the dust and debris of the catchall storeroom it had become, I screamed soundlessly into my muffling hands. And screamed and screamed! Because after all—after all!

  And then suddenly, with a surge of pure panic, I heard a sound—the sound of footsteps, many footsteps, approaching the schoolhouse. I jumped for the door and wrenched it open just in time to see the outside door open. There was Mr. Diemus and Esther and Esther’s father, Mr. Jonso.

  In one of those flashes of clarity that engrave your mind in a split second, I saw my whole classroom.

  Joel and Matt were chinning themselves on nonexistent bars, their heads brushing the high ceiling as they grunted upward. Abie was swinging in a swing that wasn’t there, arcing across the corner of the room, just missing the stovepipe from the old stove, as he chanted, “Up in a swing, up in a swing!” This wasn’t the first time they had tried their wings! Miriam was kneeling in a circle with the other girls and they were all coaxing their books up to hover unsupported above the door, while Jimmy vroom-vroomed two paper jet planes through intricate maneuvers in and out the rows of desks.

  My soul curdled in me as I met Mr. Diemus’ eyes. Esther gave a choked cry as she saw what the children were doing, and the girls’ stricken faces turned to the intruders. Matt and Joel crumpled to the floor and scrambled to their feet. But Abie, absorbed in his wonderful new accomplishment, swung on, all unconscious of what was happening until Talitha frantically screamed, “Abie!”

  Startled, he jerked around and saw the forbidding group at the door. With a disappointed cry, as though a loved toy had been snatched from him, he stopped there in midair, his fists clenched. And then, realizing, he screamed, a terrified panic-stricken cry, and slanted sharply upward, trying to escape, and ran full tilt into the corner of the high old map case, sideswiping it with his head, and, reeling backward, fell!

  I tried to catch him. I did! I did! But I caught only one small hand as he plunged down onto the old wood-burning heater beneath him. And the crack of his skull against the ornate edge of the cast-iron lid was loud in the silence.

  I straightened the crumpled little body carefully, not daring to touch the quiet little head. Mr. Diemus and I looked at each other as we knelt on opposite sides of the child. His lips opened, but I plunged before he could get started.

  “If he dies,” I bit my words off viciously, “you killed him!”

  His mouth opened again, mainly from astonishment. “I—” he began.

  “Barging in on my classroom!” I raged. “Interrupting classwork! Frightening my children! It’s all your fault, your fault!” I couldn’t bear the burden of guilt alone. I just had to have someone share it with me. But the fire died and I smoothed Abie’s hand, trembling.

  “Please call a doctor. He might be dying.”

  “Nearest one is in Tortura Pass,” Mr. Diemus said. “Sixty miles by road.”

  “Cross country?” I asked.

  “Two mountain ranges and an alkali plateau.”

  “Then—then—” Abie’s hand was so still in mine.

  “There’s a doctor at the Tumble A Ranch,” Joel said faintly. “He’s taking a vacation.”

  “Go get him.” I held Joel with my eyes. “Go as fast as you know how!”

  Joel gulped miserably. “Okay.”

  “They’ll probably have horses to come back on,” I said. “Don’t be too obvious.”

  “Okay,” and he ran out the door. We heard the thud of his running feet until he was halfway across the schoolyard, then silence. Faintly, seconds later, creek gravel crunched below the hill. I could only guess at what he was doing—that he couldn’t lift all the way and was going in jumps whose length was beyond all reasonable measuring.

  The children had gone home, quietly, anxiously. And after the doctor arrived we had improvised a stretcher and carried Abie to the Peterses’ home. I walked along close beside him watching his pinched little face, my hand touching his chest occasionally just to be sure he was still breathing.

  And now—the waiting...

  I looked at my watch again. A minute past the last time I looked. Sixty seconds by the hands, but hours and hours by anxiety.

  “He’ll be all right,” I whispered, mostly to comfort myself. “The doctor will know what to do.”

  Mr. Diemus turned his dark empty eyes to me. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “We almost had it stamped out. We were almost free.”

  “Free of what?” I took a deep breath. “Why did you do it? Why did you deny your children their inheritance?”

  “It isn’t your concern—”

  “Anything that hampers my children is my concern. Anything that turns children into creeping frightened mice is wrong. Maybe I went at the whole deal the wrong way, but you told me to teach them what I had to—and I did.”

  “Disobedience, rebellion, flouting authority—”

  “They obeyed me,” I retorted. “They accepted my authority!” Then I softened. “I can’t blame them,” I confessed. “They were troubled. They told me it was wrong—that they had been taught it was wrong. I argued them into it. But oh, Mr. Diemus! It took so little argument, such a tiny breach in the dam to loose the flood. They never even questioned my knowledge—any more than you have, Mr. Diemus! All this—this wonder was beating against their minds, fighting to be set free. The rebellion was there long before I came. I didn’t incite them to something new. I’ll bet there’s not one, except maybe Esther, who hasn’t practiced and practiced, furtively and ashamed, the things I permitted—demanded that they do for me.

  “It wasn’t fair—not fair at all—to hold them back.”

  “You don’t understand.” Mr. Diemus’ face was stony. “You haven’t all the facts—”

  “I have enough,” I replied. “So you have a frightened memory of an unfortunate period in your history. But what people doesn’t have such a memory in larger or lesser degree? That
you and your children have it more vividly should have helped, not hindered. You should have been able to figure out ways of adjusting. But leave that for the moment. Take the other side of the picture. What possible thing could all this suppression and denial yield you more precious than what you gave up?”

  “It’s the only way,” Mr. Diemus said. “We are unacceptable to Earth but we have to stay. We have to conform—”

  “Of course you had to conform,” I cried. “Anyone has to when they change societies. At least enough to get them by until others can adjust to them. But to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you! Why, the other Group—”

  “Other Group!” Mr. Diemus whitened, his eyes widening. “Other Group? There are others? There are others?” He leaned tensely forward in his chair. “Where? Where?” And his voice broke shrilly on the last word. He closed his eyes and his mouth trembled as he fought for control. The bedroom door opened. Dr. Curtis came out, his shoulders weary.

  He looked from Mr. Diemus to me and back. “He should be in a hospital. There’s a depressed fracture and I don’t know what all else. Probably extensive brain involvement. We need X rays and—and—” He rubbed his hand slowly over his weary young face. “Frankly, I’m not experienced to handle cases like this. We need specialists. If you can scare up some kind of transportation that won’t jostle—” He shook his head, seeing the kind of country that lay between us and anyplace, and went back into the bedroom.

  “He’s dying,” Mr. Diemus said. “Whether you’re right or we’re right, he’s dying.”

  “Wait! Wait!” I said, catching at the tag end of a sudden idea. “Let me think.” Urgently I willed myself back through the years to the old dorm room. Intently I listened and listened and remembered.

  “Have you a—a—Sorter in this Group?” I asked, fumbling for unfamiliar terms.