The Red Wagon, the Barn, and Hiding (excerpt from Marguerite)
Kids weren't encouraged to drink water. It's just another way of asking for attention, and besides, they only have to go to the toilet more often. So it was good when we moved to Damascus. I was four by then and could reach the handle on the pump in the kitchen sink all by myself. It was a little hard to pump with one hand and hold the glass steady under the spout with the other one so to begin with, I put the glass down in the sink about where I expected the water to land and used both hands to pump. I raised the handle high as I could and brought it down hard. A splendid rush of waster gushed from its shiny zinc mouth. Whoops! Have to be more careful; the water splashes everywhere!
I was supposed to take care of company. Most weekends somebody or other came, aunts and uncles or friends. That's how I got into trouble. Lee, one of the friends, well, more like the husband of Frances who everybody liked but he was a sort pf picky, fussy person without much interesting to say, Lee came into the kitchen where the women were making sandwiches up at the other end. He fussed around the sink. Lots of dishes and glasses standing in it. Kids running in and out. So I said, "Did you want something in perticular?" I said "in particular" because I knew my Dad didn't like him and because he never listened to my stories.
He said he'd like a glass of water please. I thought that's strange since the pump was right there and there were a lot of glasses, but my job was to take care of things so I picked up a glass from the sink (looked like one of the kids had had some milk in it) and performed my expert pumping operation. I handed him the glass of pale white water. He held back a minute, then took it between his thumb and first finger, not the one with the ring on, and moved it carefully away from him as if it's gonna bite.
"Don't be sissy," I confidently repeated my father's hearty growl. "It'll put hair on your chest!" I must have hit a nerve somewhere because he turned sort of white hinself and was just about to drink it anyhow when Mom saw. She flew across the kitchen, scarcely touching the floor, and snatched the glass from his hand all in one swoop. flustered, red-faced.
"What's the matter with that girl!" grabbing the glass. Then taking a sparkling clean glass from the top shelf, she filled it for him and dried the bottom with a new dish towel from the drawer. He didn't say a word.
"Of all the people to pull a stunt like that with!" she mourns next day. "Where was your head?" Daddy looks around the edge of the Sunday paper and scrunches up his eyes.
Mamma likes it here in Damascus. For one thing, it isn't a farm and for another, her mother-in-law never comes here. In fact, it's almost town! A streetcar runs along tiny tracks high behind the row of houses. Ten minutes into Salem. Light and painted like a toy, we play a game of climbing aboard and riding happily into town, Mama in a little veiled hat and matching high-heel shoes. She wears size four and gets the sample shoes they show in store windows for almost nothing. She likes having small feet and having this special trick.
If there's money enough, we go to the picture show. Two to choose from but the good ones are at the State; a block farther down, the Mercury has the cowboys and scary stuff. We don't go to the Mercury. She scratches right down into the bottom of her purse. I get in for free but she has to pay a dime for herself. Don't tell Daddy. She was disgusted when I got too big to shrink down and look like six. The woman looks down at me from her glass cage with a little mouth and little eyes.
I liked it in Damascus, too. As soon as it was Spring, I went outdoors all by myself and here was the big sunshine and all these kids! There was a bunch of them, all sizes, and they didn't care at all that I was littler than them. They already knew so many things to do!
The best thing was going to the barn, a ramshackle building behind the row of houses. The doors were wide open and there were only a few bales of hay and some empty drums and lots of straw all over the floor. A high raised platform at one end. We swarmed in, me running to keep up, already starting hide-and-seek or tag, or grocery store. Then somebody decided we could put on a play! We would go down every day to practise and it would be up on the stage and we would charge a penny for people to come and everybody could bring a chair to sit on.
I could bring one, too, because I had a new red wagon to carry it. Daddy had brought it home in the front yard and told me to come out and I was so surprised, I just stood still and didn't think it was for me! It was shiny and very red! He showed me how to hold the handle in the same direction you want to go when you back up. But if you sit inside, you put it in the opposite direction! Very fancy! After that, it went with me everywhere. It had to hide with me for hide-and-seek, and deliver "groceries" in playing store and it had to go on stage if I did, I knew a piece to say.
(Hands on hips, head on one side and eyebrows up to make a question.)
"Little fly upon the wall,
Ain't you got no clothes at all?
Ain't you got no pettiskirt?
Ain't you got no shimmy shirt?
Gee, ain't you cold?"
They said all right; you can say it.
Late in the afternoon when the yellow sun was making the inside of the barn all yellow, too, and there were drifting little yellow dusts all in the air 'cause we'd been yelling and hollering so much, somebody yelled, "The ***sies are coming!" and all the kids except me ran away quick and I was left in the barn. Me and the wagon couldn't run very fast. We'd have to hide! I pulled a feed barrel on its side, put the wagon behind it, and crawled inside. Very still, breathing just softly so I could hear when the ***sies came. I knew what to look for; they were were great dirty blackish people who stole things and took little children away and you never got to come home again. They liked to do it.
I couldn't hear anything. Maybe they had got one of the other kids and gone home. Maybe Johnny. I thought about playing without Johnny and that was okay.
It was getting hot and sweaty but I tried not to move. I peeked out of the open end of the barrel. The sunshine wasn't coming straight in the window any more but was lying slantways across the floor. Everything was quiet. Is that the way they trick you? Nobody around...No kids....no ***sies... I picked up the tongue of the wagon and headed around the block towards home. My tummy felt sort of squiggly. They might be still looking for me! Maybe everybody else knew to keep on hiding!
When I came in the back door, my mother was at the kitchen sink peeling things. "Where have you been?" she frowned at me sideways. I was a little scared to explain about the ***sies (us kids never talked to grown-ups about them) but I had to say why I was at the barn too long so I said about being inside the barrel. Mama stopped peeling and put her wet hands on her hips.
"Humph!" she said, drying her hands on the kitchen towel as she left the potatoes. She reached with one hand for the clean apron and flew out the front door. In a few minutes she was back at the sink, peeling even faster. That night after supper, the mothers stood beside the road at the front of our house. The sun shone red up one side of their faces from a low corner of the sky, darkness creeping up from the ground. They leaned their heads together in a circle and floated on the warm night air.
Next day there wasn't play practise any more. The rickety old door of the barn was propped shut with a piece of wood and Jeffrey Stratton says we're not allowed to go in there any more and he can't come to play with me either. He turns his head around both shoulders like if anybody's watching and shoves off on his bike down the street.
It always changes.
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