Holding Wonder Part 22

Gloryanne's mother says it must have been an atom bomb.

Malina's Uncle Don says the San Andreas fault did it. That means a big earthquake all over everywhere.

Celia's grandfather says the Hand of G.o.d smote a wicked world.

Victor thinks maybe it was a flying saucer.

Ken thinks maybe the world just turned over and we are Australia now.

Willsey doesn't want to know what happened. Maria doesn't know.

She couldn't see when it was happening.

"So you see," I summed up. "n.o.body knows for sure what happened. Maybe we'll never know. Now, why do we stay here?"

"Because"-Bobby hesitated-"because maybe if here is like this, maybe everywhere is like this. Or maybe there isn't even anywhere else anymore."

"Maybe there isn't," I said, "But whether there is or not and whatever really happened, it doesn't matter to us now. We can't change it. We have to make do with what we until we can make it better.

"Now, paper monitor," I was briskly routine. "Pa.s.s the paper. All of you write as carefully as you can so when: take your story home and let people read it, they'll say, 'Well! What an interesting story! instead of 'Yekk! Does this say something? Writing is no good unless it can be read. The eraser's here on my desk in case anyone goofs You may begin."

I leaned against the window sill, waiting. If only we adults would admit that we'll probably never know what really happened-and that it really doesn't matter. Inexplicable things are always happening, but life won't wait for answers-it just keeps going. Do you suppose Adam's grandchildren knew what really happened to close Eden? Or that Noah's grandchildren sat around wondering why the earth was so empty? They contented themselves with very simple, home-grown explanations-or none at all-because what was, was. We don't want to accept what happened and we seem to feel that if we could find an explanation that it would undo what has been done. It won't. Maybe some day someone will come along who will be able to put a finger on one of the points in the children's story and say, "There! That's the explanation." Until then, though, explanation or not, we have our new world to work with.

No matter what caused the Torn Time, we go on from here-building or not-building, becoming or slipping back. It's as simple as that.SWEPT AND GARNISHED THE STREET looked so wide and empty! Oh, so beautifully empty all the way from the bus corner to her apartment building that ended the street and made of it a sort of corridor two blocks long. The sun, at its setting, came slanty between the warehouses behind and a little to the left of the apartment. Long shadows striped the street-long sharp shadows that mouthed- Tella laughed quietly and clasped her hands together under her chin, her purse thumping her thin chest. Long, sharp shadows that used to mouth! Oh, how wonderful to be free, to be emptied of the torment of anxiety, the dread, the fear, the terror that walketh- She tucked her purse under her elbow and started up the old familiar street that had become so new.

Just look! Just look how smoothly one step follows another when you have no terror to stumble your feet, when walking is just for going home, not for evading, dodging, fleeing- And here's that bas.e.m.e.nt areaway. Tella closed a thin hand around one of the black iron spikes and, leaning over, looked down into the diagonal shadow. See? Nothing! Empty.

Her chest tightened. Of course it didn't tighten with the old dread, but with the realization that the old dread was gone, was finished, was through.

And now the broken patch of sidewalk. She crossed it in two carefully casual steps, smiling to know that no Anything would ever again tw.a.n.g itself up in the cabalistic pattern of the cracks in the paving to tangle her feet and strangle her ankles. She stamped her foot on the last humping of the buckled walk. Hollow-that's all. Empty.

How easily she could walk the whole two blocks now. Some day soon she might even smile and speak to someone-maybe Mr. Favella who always spoke to everyone who pa.s.sed him as he stood in front of his little butcher shop, his plump hands clasped over the tight white roundness of his ap.r.o.n. Him first, of course, because, after all, it was his door frame that she had clung to that incredible day when the whole two blocks of the street had upended itself in a vast convulsion and poured all its terror and menacing horror down upon her so furiously and so fast that the only way she could keep from being smothered and crushed and disintegrated was to scream and cling and scream and cling until they wrapped a hospital around her and helped her empty herself of terror and delusion.

And there was the window. She could smile almost affectionately at it now.

Only an empty window in an empty- Her steps quickened. And there-and there-nothing any more. Ended. Over with. No need for all the subterfuge, the patterns, the devices, to insure her getting past them safely once more.

The intersection-now it was only two streets, crossing each other, with no special menacing significance. She crossed, looking to the right to no fire, looking to the left to no flood. Now the houses. Only houses where people lived. Maybe someday she'd say 'hi' to a child, if there was a child to come out of one of the houses. When you are so busy surviving two endless blocks, you can't waste energy noticing people. People don't devour- She looked back openly. No more the furtive, stricken, sideglance to be sure that nothing- And now, the picket fence she no longer had to touch in such a frozen pattern.

She let her forefinger flick across six or eight pickets and smiled to see the white paint chalking off on her finger. How busy she had always been remembering the required pattern here, the necessary movements there. But nomore! Oh, no more!

The grating! Oh my! The grating in the sidewalk! She smiled tenderly for her old self, remembering one rainheavy night when it had taken her two hours to cross the grating because the counting wouldn't come right for some reason.

Even Mrs. Larson's coming out of her house and taking her hand and pulling her over the grating did no good. She had had to go back and do it right.

Otherwise-well, the tension alone would have pulled her back like a rubber band, even if the broken pattern hadn't destroyed her first. One day soon she must speak to Mrs. Larson, too. But now-the grating. Easy! Step-clutter-over.

Nothing but an em- The feeling in her chest was stronger. It was so heavy that it caught her breath. Or maybe it was so light that it sucked her breathing.

She came to her building. She fumbled for her keys as she walked firmly up the four steps. She unlocked the front door and stepped in. See? See how nice not to have to pay a toll of terror to get into the building. And the stairs up to her second floor apartment innocent stairs, shadowy only because the light was so small. Nothing anywhere, now. All em- Her feet slowed as she approached the landing. She hesitated, then she unlocked her door. She stepped in quickly and closed the door behind her. The feeling in her chest was an expanding balloon now, tight, hurting. She stood rigidly against the door until the pressure suddenly released and let her sag.

She groped for her bed and slumped down on the edge of it. She stared around her, not needing a light to see the familiar room.

"It's empty, too!" Her mouth shaped the words in anguish. "Not even a refuge any more. There's nothing here -nothing at all!" Tears bit at the backs of her eyes then scalded thinly down. She got up and stumbled to her one window. It looked out on the length of her narrow, shadowy street.

"And now that's all empty, too-empty and neutral! And that's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way I'm supposed to keep it!"

The room and the street were much darker when she turned away, heavy-shouldered, pulling down the blind and groping to flick the lights on.

Bedtime ritual you can go through untroubled, because it's normal to have a bedtime ritual.

After she had turned out the light, Tella slid to her knees beside her bed.

She clasped her hands tensely and began, "Oh, G.o.d-" She groped for words but no words came. She twisted around in troubled frustration and huddled on the floor, drawing her knees up tight to her chest and pressing her face into them fiercely. "Empty of prayers, even!" she mourned. "Nothing to pray about any more!" She hugged her knees convulsively, then stumbled up and over to the window. She stared past the edge of the awkward fold of the shade out into the darkness, to the dim glow of lights behind closed blinds and curtains. She saw the street-dead-empty.

She squeezed her eyes shut despairingly as the vast void inside her began to expand to gulp her down into eternal emptiness, to make her a cipher and then erase that symbol of nothing so that nothing- Something! she screamed silently, her knuckles white on the corner of the blind. I have to have something somewhere!

Then, behind her flattened lids she saw herself, running down the stairs, herwhite gown ghosty in the darkness, her bare feet hardly pausing for the door.

She was in the street, running so swiftly, so lightly, that her gown was only a flick in the shadows, a flutter in the thin leakings of light from the buildings.

She saw herself at the bus stop. She turned and, starting back home, began to kindle the street.

The Darkness, the breath-clutching terror that rolled like smoke, darkly invisible, from the bas.e.m.e.nt areaway.

All the cracks in the broken pavement, coiling and kinking, winding and snaring. She s.n.a.t.c.hed her chilling angle from a noose of terror and plunged past Mr. Favella's door.

Oh, door, door! Be here for me if ever again I must scream me back from destruction!

The window-the eyes-the eyes that never blinked, only pulsed and dimmed like cigarettes in the dark as they watched and watched until you felt them like blunt hot metal pressed against you, never quite hot enough for blistering.

The m.u.f.fled scream from the narrow crack between two buildings. The scream that beat itself silently against the brick walls that were forever narrowing, narrowing on whatever was in there-maybe me? Maybe me?-in the crack too narrow to live in but not narrow enough to kill.

The patterns-oh, the familiar engrossing steps, the secret, careful posturings no one would notice, but how else could you pa.s.s this spot and that spot unscathed, at least this once more!

The intersection-the roaring lift of flame to the right, scorching her cheek, the gurgling splash of waters reaching from the left, their forward misting beading in cold sweat along her hair line--but safely pa.s.sed, safely past-this time.

No child from the sleeping houses to say 'hi' to, only a child's hand that walked itself on its fingers, back and forth, back and forth with all the other hands, quietly parading, all, all the same-except that the child's fingerprints on the paving were blood.

The picket pattern. Oh quickly, touch each dark smudge her fingers had deepened over the years. The grating. The numbers. Five, seven, thirteen, eleven, eleven, thirteen. Over, safely-at least this time. Mrs. Larson! It was the eleven twice I kept forgetting that time!

Then the Terror, broadening and lifting, rolling in like choking fog around her building, the horror unnamed and unnamable, that some day, someday, might not part before her fear-tightened steps, her pointing bra.s.s key, that led her up to her front door.

And finally the stairs, and the gurgling gasp, the s.n.a.t.c.hing of hands unseen that never came quite quickly enough from beneath the steps, but someday might! Someday might.

Then sanctuary. How wonderful, now, the emptiness of her room! How good the nothingness-the un-struggle! How home!

At the window, Tella, afraid to look and afraid not to look, willed her eyes to open. She clutched the blind so tightly that one fingernail cut a half moosin the dusty fabric. And a new terror made her hastily change her hold. Always after this, hold only with little finger and thumb, or who knows what might happen- The street was alive! Oh, the street was horribly alive! And crowded and boiling with all its old terrifying possibilities, all its menace! Not this time, perhaps, but maybe next!

Her bones were again familiarly waxen with dread. Her heart was shaking her white gown with its terrified-fugitive pounding. Tella stumbled to her bed, feeling behind her the quieting, infolding of the street, since she was no longer looking at it. She slumped to her knees, her tense face in her icy hands.

Oh G.o.d, give me the courage to face the terror of tomorrow. Help me to get to the bus without anyone noticing my fear. Strengthen me to meet whatever menace I may have to meet. Help me to be brave, O Lord, help me to be brave!

ONE OF THEM.

I'M AFRAID! I'm afraid! I'm afraid! My fear has come on tiptoe many times before or peered around some corner or glinted through some crack, but this afternoon it came into the office, big and heavy-footed and breathed cold, unpleasant breath down the back of my neck. I could feel the starchiness of fear across my face and I blinked to clear my eyes of it. My hand slowed almost imperceptibly, waiting for my eyes to feed it more figures from the endless papers stacked by my machine. Then it clattered away busily again at the keys, independent of my fear, independent of me.

Me? I'm afraid! I'm afraid! I'm afraid! I don't know who I am. Oh, it's no amnesia-no sudden losing of my total self. I just don't know who I am. But I'm not lost entirely. There are five of us-and I am one of them.

That's hardly close enough, though. There in the office, I held myself, waiting and secret inside, not daring to take my eyes off my work, afraid to look up for fear I'd find myself someone I couldn't bear to be. Then Jimmy slid another sheaf of papers under the pile I'd nearly finished and I smiled at him and knew again who I was. But now I'm lying on a bed in a room alone-all alone-and I'm lost again.

Look-did you ever wake up in the dark not knowing where you were or which way you were facing or which way the windows were, with a lovely-or frightening-feeling of not being anywhere-or anyone? Nor needing to be anywhere-or anyone? It's like that-a little like that.

I think I know what has happened. All my life I haven't particularly wanted to be. I got born and some day I'll die, but meanwhile-I like to watch though, to watch and listen. I'm not in the cast of this play, but by some quirk of stage management I'm sitting on stage. I'd rather be in the audience.

It's pleasant to come home in the evenings, back to the big Dorm behind the hospital, and slip into my room without turning on the lights, and slip out of my work clothes and curl up on the end of the bed in the shadowiness of the room and listen to all the comings and goings in the hall. The calls and answers-the hurried feet-the water hissing down in the shower room, and to know that no one knows I'm here-no one in all the world knows where I am-and if no one knows, then maybe I'm not here at all!

I hug this warmth to me, and savor the pleasure of hearing someone call, "Is she home yet?" and hear someone else say, "I don't know. I don't know whereshe is." Most of the time I have to conform and go through all the motions the others do. And this is fun too, because no one knows I'm not really there. No one knows I have curled up behind my face and only watch and watch.

And listen. I love to listen-to be the sounding board for most anyone.

Everyone needs a listener-everyone except me. If I listen long enough to enough people, I hear them say everything I need to say. And if all these things that need to be said can be said by others-there's no need of me!

From long practice I can become anyone. I can react with them, evaluate with them, and submerge myself in them, never having to Be at all. This ability to not Be has been my pride, my refuge, my attainment. But now I am betrayed by my own hand. Now I don't know who I am. Now I am lost.

Oh, I'd hate to be Allison. When we first arrived at Margin which is two intersecting gravel roads, a gash in the mountains, and a bright green dream of water and power, it was Allison who complained. She complains about the food-but she fattens on it and complains about that. She complains about the locale-though she had known how isolated it was. She complains about the heat and the dust and boredom and the Sat.u.r.day night dances and the Dorm and the office and the bosses and the people she works with -I'd hate to be Allison.

It takes so much energy to complain, and even negative complaints are so positive.

But I'd hate to be Kit. Kit was the first one in the Dorm to date anyone in Margin. She, started down as far as the busboy in the cafeteria but has methodically worked her way up as far as a GS 12. That means Government Service and we're just GS 5 and salaries and prestige rise in direct proportion to your GS rating-so she has achieved a GS 12 for a date. And she talks. Not in so many blank unmistakable words, but in hintings and half sentences and sly looks out of the corners of her hungry eyes. Her tongue is sharp and pointed, touching the corners of her mouth as she smiles a thin, hungry smile. Kit is starving to death-withering with famine. She feeds her hunger on dates and innuendoes and finds them husks, but something has convinced her that the only nourishment in her life is M-E-N and she tries to make up in quant.i.ty what she lacks in quality. I'd hate to be Kit. Sometimes her red fingernails cut half-moons in the base of her thumb because she's so hungry.

But then, I'd hate to be Greta. She's dying. She's been dying ever since she was born. She has a row of medicine bottles all along the bookshelf in her room, right in front of all her doctor books. She saves up her sick-leave carefully staving off death and destruction with vitamins and tranquilizers, capsules and fizzy powders until she has a little acc.u.mulated and her work well caught up, and then she collapses. And dies in semi-darkness with wet towels over her suffering eyes and the currently favorite bottles ranged neatly on the bedside table. Her trays come up regularly from the cafeteria-she has to keep up her strength. I'd hate to be Greta. By paying that much attention to herself she's making living-and dying-a positive thing-something of importance.

But who'd want to be Cleo? She's afraid. You name the fear-she has it. Only mostly she's afraid to show it for fear she might be laughed at. If there is a thunderstorm, cold little beads of sweat mark her forehead and upper lip. Her hands shake and so does her laugh when the thunder comes so close it blinks your eyes. She's afraid to stay out here on the job because life goes so fast and there's nothing here you could call real living, but she's afraid to leave here. Jobs don't grow on trees and you know how many frightening things can happen while you're learning a new job. And whatever fears are current, Cleo adopts them. She feared the A bomb and now the H bomb. She's afraid to breathedeeply in a smoke-filled room-lung cancer. She's afraid to drive at night-twice as dangerous as daytime. If a tree dies, she fears drought. If there's rains, she fears floods. She's afraid of her boss and her fellow workers and of making mistakes and of getting fat or wasting away. Her crest should be two hands covering closed eyes and the motto J' ai peur. Who'd want to be Cleo?

But not Dorothea. Please not Dorothea. She's neat and precise. Her room is so dusted you can't even find a finger smudge on the top of the window casing.

She goes at her cleaning as some people do weed pulling. You can't relax in a room where an incautious movement might displace a cus.h.i.+on. Her office desk is always so neat that the rest of them look like hurrahs nests. Personally you can hardly look at her for neatness. She's a precise band box-y person. So much so that she seems to be painted against her various backgrounds. Even her repose is neat. She never lounges or slumps or fidgets. She never slops around on Sat.u.r.day mornings. She never appears anywhere-not even in the Dorm hall-in pin curls and bathrobe. She seems so serene and placid. And yet-and yet- She eats smally and neatly, but each forkful is pounced upon with delicate viciousness, each neat bite a snap of sharp teeth. Every controlled motion is a tiny act of violence. Even her voice, brisk and competent, is somehow just short of snapping and cursing. And her careful smile is just a wave-length short of a snarl.

So there they are, all working in the same office, all competent, well-adjusted, nice girls, who inhabit East Wing, second Floor, Dorm One. But none that I, knowing them from the inside out, would want to be. And one of them is me! I'm one of them! But which one? I'm afraid, afraid! Not only because I don't know who I am, but because one of them-one of them has murder in her mind-and on her lips-and is carrying murder in her hands.

It's almost dark now. I'll have to turn on the lights. Then I'll know which one I am. I think I'll know.

"I could kill him!" Kit's fingernails glinted redly as she flexed the long fingernail file she held in her hands.

"Oh, come now!" Dorothea smoothed her skirt with a soft controlled motion of her hands. "Not the GS-iest date you've had so far! You're getting up in the world! It's a far cry from a busboy to GS 12-"

"Busboy?" Kit's eyes flashed. "I've never dated a busboy!

"Why Kit!" Cleo's mouth sagged. "Jake was so a busboy and you-"

"Jake!" Kit tw.a.n.ged the nail file viciously. "I never dated him-"

"Why you did so," persisted Cleo. "It must have been a dozen times before you changed-"

"I did not!" Kit said flatly, the planes of her thin face sharpening.

"Save your breath, Cleo," smiled Dorothea. "She has a good forgettery."

"And you have a long nose for other people's business!" snapped Kit. "Keep it out of mine."

"Well, at least," said Allison, "don't kill him yet. He's GS-ier than Our Pharmacist. You dated him last month and don't deny him! I'd still like to pick your bones over that one!" "Don't quarrel, girls, don't quarrel," begged Cleo. "It's nice to see you up again, Greta," she quavered in such a transparent attempt to change the subject that everyone laughed.

"Yes" said Allison. "Is your sick-leave exhausted already?"

"Yes," Greta's voice came faintly. "I don't know whether-"

"I should think you'd get tired of being sick," said Allison.

"After all," Greta's voice was very patient. "It isn't a question of being tired of having a frail const.i.tution. One bears-"

"Just so much," said Allison, "just so much of that-"'

Not now! Not now! I can't lose myself now. Oh, Lord, am I already in my room?

Or was I about to leave? We were about to break up. Should I get up and go, too? Who am I? Who am I? I don't dare look around.

"What's the matter with everyone lately?"

"Have you noticed it, too?" Kit was intent on her nails. "Seems like everyone's on edge any more."

"Let's get ready for supper," said Allison. "A meal in our cafeteria is enough to kill anyone-or at least stun them long enough to cool them down a little."

A small silence fell on the group.

The bed's the same. The floor's the same. All our rooms are so alike, I can't tell, I can't tell. Oh, G.o.d! Help me! Help me!

There, the door shut. I'm alone now, so this must be my room after all. But I still don't know who I am. When I'm lost, I'm so far from Being and from Here, that it feels as though I could never get back. It was fun to not Be when I could come back as I willed, but this being taken, s.n.a.t.c.hed out of Being!

But already this lost me is beginning to acc.u.mulate memories. That's why I'll have to go to someone-if I can ever get both of me together. I must talk. I must. I heard them talking, then I heard her talking. Or her eyes talked. Or the turn of her head. "Murder is easy," she said, "When you've got someone who needs killing. Oh, nothing in all of life will become her so as the way she leaves it. And when you have access to lots of little bottles and boxes and pills and powders-so much the easier."

I heard it, I tell you, but I daren't go to anyone. I don't know who said it, or thought it, or conveyed it-only that it's one of us five. One has murder in her hands-one must hold her hands out for it. And I might be either one. I must be the Planner-else how could I have heard what she said? Who would speak of murder to another? But who am I going to kill? I don't hate anyone bad enough to kill. I don't hate anyone-except-except everyone! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! You're tearing me loose from my safeness! You're pus.h.i.+ng me to death! Oh, G.o.d, give me something to hang onto if it's only a blood-stained knife or-a-crumpled-pillow. I'm-so-tired-I'm-so-tired-let-me-sleep- Have you seen those Christmas bells made of honeycombed paper? You open them out and they're big and solid and lovely. Then you fold them and all of Christmas is compressed wafer thin. That's how my Not Being times unfold, big and endless and frightful, but after they're gone, there's only a thin, frightened ache left. But now there's a thread of memory that runs through Being and Not Being.This murderous red thread stains both ways. Now that I'm here and know myself, I've been watching-watching to see in whose eyes murder is waiting-or in whose eyes death is waiting. Whom did I hear talking? Was it my own voice that said Murder was easy? I couldn't murder. It's wrong. I'd be afraid to. It's too untidy and all the endless aimless uproar before it's finished. It'd wear you out physically before it was half-over. And yet, when I'm Not Being, I'm not the same person, so maybe that un-person could kill. Maybe it isn't wrong for her- But I might be the victim! I might find my breath stopped in mid-scream. I might feel the knife go in and life run out!

We all went to the cafeteria together. With my eyes shut I could have told you just what we would choose. I wish, oh, I wish I hadn't learned everyone so well. Now instead of trying to ignore one life-which is me-I have the burden of five lives. Well, we all chose from the drearily familiar food-the invalid diet, the calorie counter, the What-does-it-matter, the Did-you-ever-see-such-food and the What-if-there's-botulism-in-the-beans. We all sat at a table together, Dorothea s.n.a.t.c.hing the trays away and stacking them neatly, Kit carefully arranging herself so she could see everyone who came into the cafeteria, Cleo cautiously pus.h.i.+ng the beans to one side, wondering if botulism could be carried in their watery juice, Allison keeping up a running fire of comment-derogatory-and Greta, sighing wearily over the lumpy mashed potatoes as she deftly devoured them.

I held on-I held on as long as I could. I almost laughed out loud, wondering what they'd think if they knew I was holding on to me by the strength of one withered looking string bean! I clung to it with my eyes, fiercely, telling myself to stay, stay, stay! But I'm gone again and I'm in death. Death is all around me like a miasma. I'm groping through an endless haze and way down there, a million miles from me, I see it-oh, cautiously concealed-oh, adroitly palmed-oh, deftly dropped. Close your eyes quick! Close your eyes quick! Death is glancing up! Your cup. Tip it up. Drink deep. Eyes closed above cooling coffee can't see death-falling-dissolving-dissolving me and the world and the hand that held death.

I'm restless tonight. Ever since we got back from the cafeteria. I've held a book-unread-before my eyes for ten minutes. I've straightened the top dresser drawer frantically. I've sewed two b.u.t.tons on two wrong blouses. I can't give it up. Let's go over it again.