People are sewn into their skins for life and cannot alter any of the seams, at least not with their own hands. - Kafka
2005, August 06
Once upon a time
An old short story, Margaret Greentree 1985
It was a nice day, late summer merging into fall. The sun was hot and bright; shadows were cut out, black with hard edges. The wide blue sky of Kansas made a limitless world. Someone was cutting grass. The odor of the new cut grass lay over the day.
The little girl was outside the small aluminum trailer where she lived with her father, mother and new baby brother. Her white-blond hair bounced around barretts, curling, not well controlled. She was just over four, sturdy, and strong with bony knees and elbows. She played ball, bouncing it off the fence next door. Her blue and white pin-striped shorts bounced with her body.
Ring ring ring a laryo
Ring ring ring a laryo
went the solitary ball game. Suddenly she spied Art, the young fellow next door lying under his car, legs out on the sidewalk.
"What are you doing?" she asked, running up to the car.
"Fixing the motor so's it'll run."
"Oh" she said, sitting down on the sidewalk and hugging her knees.
"Guess what."
"What?" said Art.
"I have a baby brother. He's mine. I carry him sometimes. Yesterday I helped with his bath."
"Is that right?" said Art.
Just then the trailer door opened and a small red-haired woman stepped down.
"All right, Hank. I'll be right back." she said.
"Mama, can I go?" called the little girl, running up to her.
"No, you stay and help daddy with the baby. I'm just going to the store and I'll be right back."
The red-haired woman walked on down the block and the child ran back over to Art.
"I have to go and get a drink. Bye. See you later."
She skipped to the trailer step, stopped for a minute to hitch up her shorts and went in.
Coming in out of the sun, it was dark inside and cool. She peeked at the baby and glanced at the tall thin young man sitting at the small counter where they ate.
"Hi" she said, reaching for the water glass.
He had not always been with them. He had been away for a long time in a place called France. Then they hadn't lived in the trailer, mama and the little girl, they had lived with grandma and grandpa and all the aunts and uncles. The big house was always full of open friendly people, grown-ups who were always there with the child and who knew everything that happened. When daddy came to live with them they moved into the trailer and then baby brother had come along.
It was dark and quiet inside the trailer. The tall man sat very quietly in the chair by the counter.
"Come here" he said.
"What--" she said as he took her head in his hands. Suddenly something was filling her mouth, a part of him, like a hand but not a hand. She couldn't breathe and choked but couldn't even choke. It was very slippery; she cried with no sound and no breath. He held her very tight. The thing shrank back and went away and he was shaking with sobbing as he kept holding her very close and not letting her breathe. He held on to her very tightly until he was quiet. He loosened up on her and set her back; she choked to get her breath.
His white face hung there, up in front of her. His face was very white and his voice shook as he held a knife in front of her eyes and said "You must not tell. If you tell, I'll cut you up. The knife is very sharp."
Unprepared for the sudden violence, she looked at him bewildered, her face blank with astonishment. Tell? Of course she couldn't tell. She was dazed, it went so fast and she had no words to know what had happened, how could she tell? But everything had always been known, mama would know, just as mama knew everything.
The days passed, mama didn't know. Something was wrong. In the dark of night the child curled up around a dull center on her bed on her small shelf. An incomprehensible thing had happened, so disconnected with anything she knew, with getting up and getting dressed, with eating and taking naps, that soon it seemed not to have happened.
The days passed, the sun grew weaker and the child more listless but no one saw. Mama did not know, so the secret could not exist. No one saw, so what had happened must be invisible. She withdrew. Her face seemed to her to have blurred, her features to have lost definition. The secret became a daydream and was forgotten.
