“The Little Match Girl” the Short Story was written by Hans Christian Andersen; Most terribly cold it was; it snowed and was nearly quite dark, and evening—the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.
One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.
She crept along trembling with cold and hunger a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!
The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year’s Eve; yes, of that she thought.
In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.
Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but—the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.
The Little Match Girl
She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil so that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife and fork in its breast, till it came up to the poor little girl; when—the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind. She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant’s house.
Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when—the match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.
“Someone is just dead!” said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God.
She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lluster there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression of love.
“Grandmother!” cried the little one. “Oh, take me with you! You go away when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!” And she rubbed the whole bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety—they were with God.
But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. “She wanted to warm herself,” people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother, she had entered on the joys of a new year.
“The Last Leaf” the Short Story was written by O. Henry; In a small part of the city west of Washington Square, the streets have gone wild. They turn in different directions. They are broken into small pieces called “places.” One street goes across itself one or two times. A painter once discovered something possible and valuable about this street. Suppose a painter had some painting materials for which he had not paid. Suppose he had no money. Suppose a man came to get the money. The man might walk down that street and suddenly meet himself coming back, without having received a cent!
This part of the city is called Greenwich Village. And to old Greenwich Village, the painters soon came. Here they found rooms they like, with good light and at a low cost.
Sue and Johnsy lived at the top of a building with three floors. One of these young women came from Maine, the other from California. They had met at a restaurant on Eighth Street. There they discovered that they liked the same kind of art, the same kind of food, and the same kind of clothes. So they decided to live and work together.
That was in the spring.
Toward winter a cold stranger entered Greenwich Village. No one could see him. He walked around touching one person here and another there with his icy fingers. He was a bad sickness. Doctors called him Pneumonia. On the east side of the city he hurried, touching many people; but in the narrow streets of Greenwich Village, he did not move so quickly.
Mr. Pneumonia was not a nice old gentleman. A nice old gentleman would not hurt a weak little woman from California. But Mr. Pneumonia touched Johnsy with his cold fingers. She lay on her bed almost without moving, and she looked through the window at the wall of the house next to hers.
One morning the busy doctor spoke to Sue alone in the hall, where Johnsy could not hear.
“She has a very small chance,” he said. “She has a chance if she wants to live. If people don’t want to live, I can’t do much for them. Your little lady has decided that she is not going to get well. Is there something that is troubling her?”
“She always wanted to go to Italy and paint a picture of the Bay of Naples,” said Sue.
“Paint! Not paint. Is there anything worth being troubled about? A man?”
“A man?” said Sue. “Is a man worth—No, doctor. There is not a man.”
“It is a weakness,” said the doctor. “I will do all I know how to do. But when a sick person begins to feel that he’s going to die, half my work is useless. Talk to her about new winter clothes. If she were interested in the future, her chances would be better.”
After the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom to cry. Then she walked into Johnsy’s room. She carried some of her painting materials, and she was singing.
Johnsy lay there, very thin and very quiet. Her face was turned toward the window. Sue stopped singing, thinking that Johnsy was asleep.
Sue began to work. As she worked she heard a low sound, again and again. She went quickly to the bedside.
Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting—counting back.
“Twelve,” she said; and a little later, “Eleven”; and then, “Ten,” and, “Nine”; and then, “Eight,” and, “Seven,” almost together.
Sue looked out the window. What was there to count? There was only the side wall of the next house, a short distance away. The wall had no window. An old, old tree grew against the wall. The cold breath of winter had already touched it. Almost all its leaves had fallen from its dark branches.
“What is it, dear?” asked Sue.
“Six,” said Johnsy, in a voice still lower. “They’re falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It hurt my head to count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are only five now.”
“Five what, dear? Tell your Sue.”
“Leaves. On the tree. When the last one falls, I must go, too. I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?”
“Oh, I never heard of such a thing,” said Sue. “It doesn’t have any sense in it. What does an old tree have to do with you? Or with your getting well? And you used to love that tree so much. Don’t be a little fool. The doctor told me your chances of getting well. He told me this morning. He said you had very good chances! Try to eat a little now. And then I’ll go back to work. And then I can sell my picture, and then I can buy something more for you to eat to make you strong.”
“You don’t have to buy anything for me,” said Johnsy. She still looked out the window. “There goes another. No, I don’t want anything to eat. Now there are four. I want to see the last one fall before night. Then I’ll go, too.”
“Johnsy, dear,” said Sue, “will you promise me to close your eyes and keep them closed? Will you promise not to look out the window until I finish working? I must have this picture ready tomorrow. I need the light; I can’t cover the window.”
“Couldn’t you work in the other room?” asked Johnsy coldly.
“I’d rather be here by you,” said Sue. “And I don’t want you to look at those leaves.”
“Tell me as soon as you have finished,” said Johnsy. She closed her eyes and lay white and still. “Because I want to see the last leaf fall. I have done enough waiting. I have done enough thinking. I want to go sailing down, down, like one of those leaves.”
“Try to sleep,” said Sue. “I must call Behrman to come up here. I want to paint a man in this picture, and I’ll make him look like Behrman. I won’t be gone a minute. Don’t try to move till I come back.”
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the first floor of their house. He was past sixty. He had had no success as a painter. For forty years he had painted, without ever painting a good picture. He had always talked of painting a great picture, a masterpiece, but he had never yet started it.
He got a little money by letting others paint pictures of him. He drank too much. He still talked of his great masterpiece. And he believed that it was his special duty to do everything possible to help Sue and Johnsy.
Sue found him in his dark room, and she knew that he had been drinking. She could smell it. She told him about Johnsy and the leaves on the vine. She said that she was afraid that Johnsy would indeed sail down, down like the leaf. Her hold on the world was growing weaker.
Old Behrman shouted his anger over such an idea.
“What!” he cried. “Are there such fools? Do people die because leaves drop off a tree? I have not heard of such a thing. No, I will not come up and sit while you make a picture of me. Why do you allow her to think such a thing? That poor little Johnsy!”
“She is very sick and weak,” said Sue. “The sickness has put these strange ideas into her mind. Mr. Behrman, if you won’t come, you won’t. But I don’t think you’re very nice.”
“This is a woman!” shouted Behrman. “Who said I will not come? Go. I come with you. For half an hour I have been trying to say that I will come. God! This is not any place for someone so good as Johnsy to lie sick. Someday I shall paint my masterpiece, and we shall all go away from here. God! Yes.”
Johnsy was sleeping when they went up. Sue covered the window and took Behrman into the other room. There they looked out the window fearfully at the tree. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A cold rain was falling, with a little snow in it too.
Behrman sat down, and Sue began to paint.
She worked through most of the night.
In the morning, after an hour’s sleep, she went to Johnsy’s bedside. Johnsy with wide-open eyes was looking toward the window. “I want to see,” she told Sue.
Sue took the cover from the window.
But after the beating rain and the wild wind that had not stopped through the whole night, there still was one leaf to be seen against the wall. It was the last on the tree. It was still dark green near the branch. But at the edges it was turning yellow with age. There it was hanging from a branch nearly twenty feet above the ground.
“It is the last one,” said Johnsy. “I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time.”
“Dear, dear Johnsy!” said Sue. “Think of me, if you won’t think of yourself. What would I do?”
But Johnsy did not answer. The loneliest thing in the world is a soul when it is preparing to go on its far journey. The ties that held her to friendship and to earth were breaking, one by one.
The day slowly passed. As it grew dark, they could still see the leaf hanging from its branch against the wall. And then, as the night came, the north wind began again to blow. The rain still beat against the windows.
When it was light enough the next morning, Johnsy again commanded that she be allowed to see.
The leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was cooking something for her to eat.
“I’ve been a bad girl, Sue,” said Johnsy. “Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how bad I was. It is wrong to want to die. I’ll try to eat now. But first bring me a looking-glass, so that I can see myself. And then I’ll sit up and watch you cook.”
An hour later she said, “Sue, someday I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.”
The doctor came in the afternoon. Sue followed him into the hall outside Johnsy’s room to talk to him.
“The chances are good,” said the doctor. He took Sue’s thin, shaking hand in his. “Give her good care, and she’ll get well. And now I must see another sick person in this house. His name is Behrman. A painter, I believe. Pneumonia, too. Mike is an old, weak man, and he is very ill. There is no hope for him. But we take him to the hospital today. We’ll make it as easy for him as we can.”
The next day the doctor said to Sue: “She’s safe. You have done it. Food and care now that’s all.”
And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay. She put one arm around her.
“I have something to tell you,” she said. “Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia today in the hospital. He was ill only two days. Someone found him on the morning of the first day, in his room. He was helpless with pain.”
“His shoes and his clothes were wet and as cold as ice. Everyone wondered where he had been. The night had been so cold and wild.
“And then they found some things. There was a light that he had taken outside. And there were his materials for painting. There was paint, green paint, and yellow paint. And
“Look out the window, dear, at the last leaf on the wall. Didn’t you wonder why it never moved when the wind was blowing? Oh, my dear, it is Behrman’s great masterpiece he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.”
“Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen” the Short Story was written by O. Henry; There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all Americans go back to the old home and eat a big dinner. Bless the day. The President gives it to us every year.
Sometimes he talks about the people who had the first Thanksgiving. They were the Puritans. They were some people who landed on our Atlantic shore. We don’t really remember much about them.
But those people ate a large bird called turkey on the first Thanksgiving Day. So we have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner if we have enough money to buy a turkey. That is a tradition.
Yes. Thanksgiving Day is the one day of the year that is purely American. And now here is the story to prove to you that we have old traditions in this new country. They are growing older more quickly than traditions in old countries. That is because we are so young and full of life. We do everything quickly.
Stuffy Pete sat down on a seat in the New York City park named Union Square. It was the third seat to the right as you enter Union Square from the east.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had sat down there at one in the afternoon. Every time, things had happened to him. They were wonderful things. They made his heart feel full of joy—and they filled another part of him, too. They filled the part below his heart.
On those other Thanksgiving Days, he had been hungry. (It is a strange thing. There are rich people who wish to help the poor. But many of them seem to think that the poor are hungry only on Thanksgiving Day.)
But today Pete was not hungry. He had come from a dinner so big that he had almost no power to move. His light green eyes looked out from a gray face on which there was still a little food. His breath was short. His body had suddenly become too big for his clothes; it seemed ready to break out of them. They were torn. You could see his skin through a hole in the front of his shirt. But the cold wind, with snow in it, felt pleasantly cool to him.
For Stuffy Pete was overheated with the warmth of all he had had to eat. The dinner had been much too big. It seemed to him that his dinner had included all the turkey and all the other food in the whole world.
So he sat, very, very full. He looked out at the world without interest, as if it could never offer him anything more.
The dinner had not been expected.
He had been passing a large house near the beginning of that great broad street called Fifth Avenue. It was the home of two old ladies of an old family. These two old ladies had a deep love of traditions. There were certain things they always did. On Thanksgiving Day at noon, they always sent a servant to stand at the door. There he waited for the first hungry person who walked by. The servant had orders to bring that person into the house and feed him until he could eat no more. Stuffy Pete happened to pass by on his way to the park. The servant had gathered him in. Tradition had been followed.
Stuffy Pete sat in the park looking straight before him for ten minutes. Then he felt a desire to look in another direction. With a very great effort, he moved his head slowly to the left.
Then his eyes grew wider and his breath stopped. His feet in their torn shoes at the ends of his short legs moved about on the ground.
For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth Avenue toward Stuffy’s seat.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come there to find Stuffy Pete on his seat. That was a thing that the Old Gentleman was trying to make into a tradition. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there. Then he had led Stuffy to a restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner.
They do these things more easily in old countries like England. They do them without thinking about them.
But in this young country, we must think about them. In order to build a tradition, we must do the same thing again and again for a long time. The Old Gentleman loved his country. He believed he was helping to build a great American tradition. And he had been doing very well. Nine years is a long time here.
The Old Gentleman moved, straight and proud, toward the tradition that he was building. Truly feeding Stuffy Pete once a year was not a very important tradition. There are greater and more important traditions in England. But it was a beginning. It proved that a tradition was at least possible in America.
The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in black. He wore eyeglasses. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year. His legs did not seem as strong as they had seemed the year before.
As this kind Old Gentleman came toward him, Stuffy began to shake and his breath was shorter. He wished he could fly away. But he could not move from his seat.
“Good morning,” said the Old Gentleman. “I am glad to see that the troubles of another year have not hurt you. You continue to move in health about the beautiful world. For that blessing, you and I can give thanks on this day of thanksgiving. If you will come with me, my man, I will give you a dinner that will surely make your body feel as thankful as your mind.”
That is what the Old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years. The words themselves were almost a tradition. Always before, they had been music in Stuffy’s ear. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman’s face with tears of suffering in his eyes. The snow turned quickly to water when it fell upon his hot face. But the Old Gentleman was shaking with the cold. He turned away, with his back to the wind, and he did not see Stuffy’s eyes.
Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman seemed sad as he spoke. He did not know that it was because the Old Gentleman was wishing that he had a son. A son would come there after he himself was gone. A son would stand proud and strong before Stuffy, and say: “In remembrance of my father.” Then it would really be a tradition.
But the Old Gentleman had no family. He lived in a room in one of the old houses near the park. In the winter he grew a few flowers there. In the spring he walked on Fifth Avenue. In the summer he lived in a farmhouse in the hills outside New York, and he talked of a strange bug he hoped someday to find. In the fall season, he gave Stuffy a dinner. These were the things that filled the Old Gentleman’s life.
Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, helpless and very sorry for himself. The Old Gentleman’s eyes were bright with the giving-pleasure. His face was getting older every year, but his clothes were very clean and fresh.
And then Stuffy made a strange noise. He was trying to speak. As the Old Gentleman had heard the noise nine times before, he understood it. He knew that Stuffy was accepting.
“Thank you. I’m very hungry.”
Stuffy was very full, but he understood that he was part of a tradition. His desire for food on Thanksgiving Day was not his own. It belonged to this kind Old Gentleman. True, America is free. But there are some things that must be done.
The Old Gentleman led Stuffy to the restaurant and to the same table where they had always gone. They were known here.
“Here comes that old man,” said a waiter, “that buys that old no-good fellow a dinner every Thanksgiving.”
The Old Gentleman sat at the table, watching. The waiters brought food and more food. And Stuffy began to eat.
No great and famous soldier ever battled more strongly against an enemy. The turkey and all the other food were gone almost as quickly as they appeared. Stuffy saw the look of happiness on the Old Gentleman’s face. He continued to eat in order to keep it there.
In an hour the battle was finished.
“Thank you,” Stuffy said. “Thank you for my Thanksgiving dinner.”
Then he stood up heavily and started to go to the wrong door. A waiter turned him in the right direction.
The Old Gentleman carefully counted out $1.30 and left fifteen cents more for the waiter.
They said goodbye, as they did each year, at the door. The Old Gentleman went south, and Stuffy went north.
Stuffy went around the first corner and stood for one minute. Then he fell.
There he was found. He was picked up and taken to a hospital. They put him on a bed and began to try to discover what strange sickness had made him fall.
And an hour later the Old Gentleman was brought to the same hospital. And they put him on another bed and began to try to discover what his sickness could be.
After a little time, one of the doctors met another doctor, and they talked.
“That nice old gentleman over there,” he said. “Do you know what’s wrong with him? He is almost dead for need of food. A very proud old man, I think. He told me he has had nothing to eat for three days.”
“Once there was a King” the story was written by Rabindranath Tagore; “Once upon a time, there was a King.”
When we were children there was no need to know who the king in the fairy story was. It didn’t matter whether he was called Shiladitya or Shaliban, whether he lived at Kashi or Kanauj. The thing that made a seven-year-old boy’s heart go thump, thump with delight was this one sovereign truth, this reality of all realities: “Once there was a king.”
But the readers of this modern age are far more exact and exacting. When they hear such an opening to a story, they are at once critical and suspicious. They apply the searchlight of science to its legendary haze and ask: “Which king?”
The story-tellers have become more precise in their turn. They are no longer content with the old indefinite, “There was a king,” but assume instead a look of profound learning and begin: “Once there was a king named Ajatasatru.”
The modern reader’s curiosity, however, is not so easily satisfied. He blinks at the author through his scientific spectacles and asks again: “Which Ajatasatru?”
When we were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own. We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth. And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the Crystal Palace of Truth lay and how to reach it. But to-day we are expected to write pages of facts, while the truth is simply this:
“There was a king.”
I remember vividly that evening in Calcutta when the fairy story began. The rain and the storm had been incessant. The whole of the city was flooded. The water was knee-deep in our lane. I had a straining hope, which was almost a certainty, that my tutor would be prevented from coming that evening. I sat on the stool in the far corner of the verandah looking down the lane, with a heart beating faster and faster. Every minute I kept my eye on the rain, and when it began to diminish I prayed with all my might: “Please, God, send some more rain till half-past seven is over.” For I was quite ready to believe that there was no other need for rain except to protect one helpless boy one evening in one corner of Calcutta from the deadly clutches of his tutor.
If not in answer to my prayer, at any rate, according to some grosser law of nature, the rain did not give up.
But, alas, nor did my teacher!
Exactly to the minute, in the bend of the lane, I saw his approaching umbrella. The great bubble of hope burst in my breast, and my heart collapsed. Truly, if there is a punishment to fit the crime after death, then my tutor will be born again as me, and I shall be born as my tutor.
As soon as I saw his umbrella I ran as hard as I could to my mother’s room. My mother and my grandmother were sitting opposite one another playing cards by the light of a lamp. I ran into the room, and flung myself on the bed beside my mother, and said:
“Mother, the tutor has come, and I have such a bad headache; couldn’t I have no lessons to-day?”
I hope no child of immature age will be allowed to read this story, and I sincerely trust it will not be used in textbooks or primers for junior classes. For what I did was dreadfully bad, and I received no punishment whatever. On the contrary, my wickedness was crowned with success.
My mother said to me: “All right,” and turning to the servant added: “Tell the tutor that he can go back home.”
It was perfectly plain that she didn’t think my illness very serious, as she went on with her game as before and took no further notice. And I also, burying my head in the pillow, laughed to my heart’s content. We perfectly understood one another, my mother and I.
But everyone must know how hard it is for a boy of seven years old to keep up the illusion of illness for a long time. After about a minute I got hold of Grandmother and said: “Grannie, do tell me a story.”
I had to ask this many times. Grannie and Mother went on playing cards and took no notice. At last, Mother said to me: “Child, don’t bother. Wait till we’ve finished our game.” But I persisted: “Grannie, do tell me a story.” I told Mother she could finish her game tomorrow, but she must let Grannie tell me a story there and then.
At the last, Mother threw down the cards and said: “You had better do what he wants. I can’t manage him.” Perhaps she had it in her mind that she would have no tiresome tutor on the morrow, while I should be obliged to be back at those stupid lessons.
As soon as ever Mother had given way, I rushed at Grannie. I got hold of her hand, and, dancing with delight, dragged her inside my mosquito curtain onto the bed. I clutched hold of the bolster with both hands in my excitement and jumped up and down with joy, and when I had got a little quieter said: “Now, Grannie, let’s have the story!”
Grannie went on: “And the king had a queen.”
That was good, to begin with. He had only one!
It is usual for kings in fairy stories to be extravagant in queens. And whenever we hear that there are two queens our hearts begin to sink. One is sure to be unhappy. But in Grannie’s story, that danger was past. He had only one queen.
We next hear that the king had not got any son. At the age of seven, I didn’t think there was any need to bother if a man had no son. He might only have been in the way.
Nor are we greatly excited when we hear that the king has gone away into the forest to practice austerities in order to get a son. There was only one thing that would have made me go into the forest, and that was to get away from my tutor!
But the king left behind with his queen a small girl, who grew up into a beautiful princess.
Twelve years pass away, and the king goes on practicing austerities, and never thinks all this while of his beautiful daughter. The princess has reached the full bloom of her youth. The age of marriage has passed, but the king does not return. And the queen pines away with grief and cries: “Is my golden daughter destined to die unmarried? Ah me, what a fate is mine!”
Then the queen sent men to the king to entreat him earnestly to come back for a single night and take one meal in the palace. And the king consented.
The queen cooked with her own hand, and with the greatest care, sixty-four dishes. She made a seat for him of sandal-wood and arranged the food in plates of gold and cups of silver. The princess stood behind with the peacock-tail fan in her hand. The king, after twelve years’ absence, came into the house, and the princess waved the fan, lighting up all the room with her beauty. The king looked in his daughter’s face and forgot to take his food.
At last, he asked his queen: “Pray, who is this girl whose beauty shines as the gold image of the goddess? Whose daughter is she?”
The queen beat her forehead and cried: “Ah, how evil is my fate! Do you not know your own daughter?”
The king was struck with amazement. He said at last: “My tiny daughter has grown to be a woman.”
“What else?” the queen said with a sigh. “Do you not know that twelve years have passed by?”
“But why did you not give her in marriage?” asked the king.
“You were away,” the queen said. “And how could I find her a suitable husband?”
The king became vehement with excitement. “The first man I see to-morrow,” he said, “when I come out of the palace shall marry her.”
The princess went on waving her fan of peacock feathers, and the king finished his meal.
The next morning, as the king came out of his palace, he saw the son of a Brahman gathering sticks in the forest outside the palace gates. His age was about seven or eight.
The King said: “I will marry my daughter to him.”
Who can interfere with a king’s command? At once the boy was called, and the marriage garlands were exchanged between him and the princess.
At this point, I came up close to my wise Grannie and asked her eagerly: “When then?”
In the bottom of my heart, there was a devout wish to substitute myself for that fortunate wood-gatherer of seven years old. The night was resonant with the patter of rain. The earthen lamp by my bedside was burning low. My grandmother’s voice droned on as she told the story. And all these things served to create in a corner of my credulous heart the belief that I had been gathering sticks in the dawn of some indefinite time in the kingdom of some unknown king, and in a moment garlands had been exchanged between me and the princess, beautiful as the Goddess of Grace. She had a gold band on her hair and gold earrings in her ears. She had a necklace and bracelets of gold, and a golden waist chain round her waist, and a pair of golden anklets tinkled above her feet.
If my grandmother were an author, how many explanations she would have to offer for this little story! First of all, everyone would ask why the king remained twelve years in the forest? Secondly, why should the king’s daughter remain unmarried all that while? This would be regarded as absurd.
Even if she could have got so far without a quarrel, still there would have been a great hue and cry about the marriage itself. First, it never happened. Secondly, how could there be a marriage between a princess of the Warrior Caste and a boy of the priestly Brahman Caste? Her readers would have imagined at once that the writer was preaching against our social customs in an underhand way. And they would write letters to the papers.
So I pray with all my heart that my grandmother may be born a grandmother again, and not through some cursed fate take birth as her luckless grandson.
With a throb of joy and delight, I asked Grannie: “What then?”
Grannie went on: Then the princess took her little husband away in great distress, and built a large palace with seven wings, and began to cherish her husband with great care.
I jumped up and down in my bed and clutched at the bolster more tightly than ever and said: “What then?”
Grannie continued: The little boy went to school and learnt many lessons from his teachers, and as he grew up his class-fellows began to ask him: “Who is that beautiful lady living with you in the palace with the seven wings?”
The Brahman’s son was eager to know who she was. He could only remember how one day he had been gathering sticks and a great disturbance arose. But all that was so long ago that he had no clear recollection.
Four or five years passed in this way. His companions always asked him: “Who is that beautiful lady in the palace with the seven wings?” And the Brahman’s son would come back from school and sadly tell the princess: “My school companions always ask me who is that beautiful lady in the palace with the seven wings, and I can give them no reply. Tell me, oh, tell me, who you are!”
The princess said: “Let it pass to-day. I will tell you some other day.” And every day the Brahman’s son would ask: “Who are you?” and the princess would reply: “Let it pass to-day. I will tell you some other day.” In this manner four or five more years passed away.
At last, the Brahman’s son became very impatient and said: “If you do not tell me to-day who you are, O beautiful lady, I will leave this palace with the seven wings.” Then the princess said: “I will certainly tell you to-morrow.”
Next day the Brahman’s son, as soon as he came home from school, said: “Now, tell me who you are.” The princess said: “To-night I will tell you after supper when you are in bed.”
The Brahman’s son said: “Very well”; and he began to count the hours in expectation of the night. And the princess, on her side, spread white flowers over the golden bed, and lighted a gold lamp with fragrant oil, and adorned her hair, and dressed herself in a beautiful robe of blue, and began to count the hours in expectation of the night.
That evening when her husband, the Brahman’s son, had finished his meal, too excited almost to eat, and had gone to the golden bed in the bedchamber strewn with flowers, he said to himself: “To-night I shall surely know who this beautiful lady is in the palace with the seven wings.”
The princess took for her food that which was left over by her husband and slowly entered the bedchamber. She had to answer that night the question, who was the beautiful lady that lived in the palace with the seven wings. And as she went up to the bed to tell him she found a serpent had crept out of the flowers and had bitten the Brahman’s son. Her boy-husband was lying on the bed of flowers, with face pale in death.
My heart suddenly ceased to throb, and I asked with the choking voice: “What then?”
Grannie said: “Then …”
But what is the use of going on any further with the story? It would only lead on to what was more and more impossible. The boy of seven did not know that, if there were some “What then?” after death, no grandmother of a grandmother could tell us all about it.
But the child’s faith never admits defeat, and it would snatch at the mantle of death itself to turn him back. It would be outrageous for him to think that such a story of one teacherless evening could so suddenly come to a stop. Therefore the grandmother had to call back her story from the ever-shut chamber of the great End, but she does it so simply: it is merely by floating the dead body on a banana stem on the river and having some incantations read by a magician. But in that rainy night and in the dim light of a lamp death loses all its horror in the mind of the boy, and seems nothing more than a deep slumber of a single night. When the story ends the tired eyelids are weighed down with sleep. Thus it is that we send the little body of the child floating on the back of sleep over the still water of time, and then in the morning read a few verses of incantation to restore him to the world of life and light.
“The Homecoming” the story was written by Rabindranath Tagore; Phatik Chakravorti was ringleader among the boys of the village. A new mischief got into his head. There was a heavy log lying on the mud-flat of the river waiting to be shaped into a mast for a boat. He decided that they should all work together to shift the log by main force from its place and roll it away. The owner of the log would be angry and surprised, and they would all enjoy the fun. Everyone seconded the proposal, and it was carried unanimously.
But just as the fun was about to begin, Mākhan, Phatik’s younger brother, sauntered up and sat down on the log in front of them all without a word. The boys were puzzled for a moment. He was pushed, rather timidly, by one of the boys and told to get up; but he remained quite unconcerned. He appeared like a young philosopher meditating on the futility of games. Phatik was furious. “Mākhan,” he cried, “if you don’t get down this minute I’ll thrash you!”
Mākhan only moved to a more comfortable position.
Now, if Phatik was to keep his regal dignity before the public, it was clear he ought to carry out his threat. But his courage failed him at the crisis. His fertile brain, however, rapidly seized upon a new manœuvre which would discomfit his brother and afford his followers an added amusement. He gave the word of command to roll the log and Mākhan over together. Mākhan heard the order and made it a point of honor to stick on. But he overlooked the fact, like those who attempt earthly fame in other matters, that there was peril in it.
The boys began to heave at the log with all their might, calling out, “One, two, three, go!” At the word “go” the log went; and with it went Mākhan’s philosophy, glory and all.
The other boys shouted themselves hoarse with delight. But Phatik was a little frightened. He knew what was coming. And, sure enough, Mākhan rose from Mother Earth blind as Fate and screaming like the Furies. He rushed at Phatik and scratched his face and beat him and kicked him, and then went crying home. The first act of the drama was over.
Phatik wiped his face, and sat down on the edge of a sunken barge by the river bank, and began to chew a piece of grass. A boat came up to the landing and a middle-aged man, with gray hair and dark moustache, stepped on shore. He saw the boy sitting there doing nothing and asked him where the Chakravortis lived. Phatik went on chewing the grass and said: “Over there,” but it was quite impossible to tell where he pointed. The stranger asked him again. He swung his legs to and fro on the side of the barge and said: “Go and find out,” and continued to chew the grass as before.
But now a servant came down from the house and told Phatik his mother wanted him. Phatik refused to move. But the servant was the master on this occasion. He took Phatik up roughly and carried him, kicking and struggling in impotent rage.
When Phatik came into the house, his mother saw him. She called out angrily: “So you have been hitting Mākhan again?”
Phatik answered indignantly: “No, I haven’t! Who told you that?”
His mother shouted: “Don’t tell lies! You have.”
Phatik said sullenly: “I tell you, I haven’t. You ask Mākhan!” But Mākhan thought it best to stick to his previous statement. He said: “Yes, mother. Phatik did hit me.”
Phatik’s patience was already exhausted. He could not bear this injustice. He rushed at Mākhan and hammered him with blows: “Take that,” he cried, “and that, and that, for telling lies.”
His mother took Mākhan’s side in a moment, and pulled Phatik away, beating him with her hands. When Phatik pushed her aside, she shouted out: “What! you little villain! Would you hit your own mother?”
It was just at this critical juncture that the grey-haired stranger arrived. He asked what was the matter. Phatik looked sheepish and ashamed.
But when his mother stepped back and looked at the stranger, her anger was changed to surprise. For she recognized her brother and cried: “Why, Dada! Where have you come from?”
As she said these words, she bowed to the ground and touched his feet. Her brother had gone away soon after she had married, and he had started the business in Bombay. His sister had lost her husband while he was there. Bishamber had now come back to Calcutta and had at once made enquiries about his sister. He had then hastened to see her as soon as he found out where she was.
The next few days were full of rejoicing. The brother asked after the education of the two boys. He was told by his sister that Phatik was a perpetual nuisance. He was lazy, disobedient, and wild. But Mākhan was as good as gold, as quiet as a lamb, and very fond of reading. Bishamber kindly offered to take Phatik off his sister’s hands and educate him with his own children in Calcutta. The widowed mother readily agreed. When his uncle asked Phatik if he would like to go to Calcutta with him, his joy knew no bounds and he said: “Oh, yes, uncle!” in a way that made it quite clear that he meant it.
It was an immense relief to the mother to get rid of Phatik. She had a prejudice against the boy, and no love was lost between the two brothers. She was in daily fear that he would either drown Mākhan some day in the river, or break his head in a fight, or run him into some danger. At the same time, she was a little distressed to see Phatik’s extreme eagerness to get away.
Phatik, as soon as all was settled, kept asking his uncle every minute when they were to start. He was on pins and needles all day long with excitement and lay awake most of the night. He bequeathed to Mākhan, in perpetuity, his fishing-rod, his big kite, and his marbles. Indeed, at this time of departure, his generosity towards Mākhan was unbounded.
When they reached Calcutta, Phatik made the acquaintance of his aunt for the first time. She was by no means pleased with this unnecessary addition to her family. She found her own three boys quite enough to manage without taking anyone else. And to bring a village lad of fourteen into their midst was terribly upsetting. Bishamber should really have thought twice before committing such an indiscretion.
In this world of human affairs, there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental nor useful. It is impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy, and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact, any talk at all from him is resented. Then he is at the unattractive, growing age. He grows out of his clothes with indecent haste; his voice grows hoarse and breaks and quavers; his face grows suddenly angular and unsightly. It is easy to excuse the shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even unavoidable lapses in a boy of fourteen. The lad himself becomes painfully self-conscious. When he talks with elderly people he is either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of his very existence.
Yet it is at this very age when, in his heart of hearts, a young lad most craves for recognition and love; and he becomes the devoted slave of anyone who shows him consideration. But none dare openly love him, for that would be regarded as an undue indulgence and therefore bad for the boy. So, what with scolding and chiding, he becomes very much like a stray dog that has lost his master.
For a boy of fourteen, his own home is the only Paradise. To live in a strange house with strange people is little short of torture, while the height of bliss is to receive the kind looks of women and never to be slighted by them.
It was anguish to Phatik to be the unwelcome guest in his aunt’s house, despised by this elderly woman and slighted on every occasion. If ever she asked him to do anything for her, he would be so overjoyed that he would overdo it; and then she would tell him not to be so stupid, but to get on with his lessons.
The cramped atmosphere of neglect oppressed Phatik so much that he felt that he could hardly breathe. He wanted to go out into the open country and fill his lungs with fresh air. But there was no open country to go to. Surrounded on all sides by Calcutta houses and walls, he would dream night after night of his village home and long to be back there. He remembered the glorious meadow where he used to fly his kite all day long; the broad river-banks where he would wander about the live-long day singing and shout for joy; the narrow brook where he could go and dive and swim at any time he liked. He thought of his band of boy companions over whom he was despot; and, above all, the memory of that tyrant mother of his, who had such a prejudice against him, occupied him day and night. A kind of physical love like that of animals, a longing to be in the presence of the one who is loved, an inexpressible wistfulness during absence, a silent cry of the inmost heart for the mother, like the lowing of a calf in the twilight,—this love, which was almost an animal instinct, agitated the shy, nervous, lean, uncouth and ugly boy. No one could understand it, but it preyed upon his mind continually.
There was no more backward boy in the whole school than Phatik. He gaped and remained silent when the teacher asked him a question, and like an overladen ass patiently suffered all the blows that came down on his back. When other boys were out at play, he stood wistfully by the window and gazed at the roofs of the distant houses. And if by chance he espied children playing on the open terrace of any roof, his heart would ache with longing.
One day he summoned up all his courage and asked his uncle: “Uncle, when can I go home?”
His uncle answered: “Wait till the holidays come.”
But the holidays would not come till October and there was a long time still to wait.
One day Phatik lost his lesson book. Even with the help of books he had found it very difficult indeed to prepare his lesson. Now it was impossible. Day after day the teacher would cane him unmercifully. His condition became so abjectly miserable that even his cousins were ashamed to own him. They began to jeer and insult him more than the other boys. He went to his aunt at last and told her that he had lost his book.
His aunt pursed her lips in contempt and said: “You great clumsy, country lout! How can I afford, with all my family, to buy you new books five times a month?”
That night, on his way back from school, Phatik had a bad headache with a fit of shivering. He felt he was going to have an attack of malarial fever. His one great fear was that he would be a nuisance to his aunt.
The next morning Phatik was nowhere to be seen. All searches in the neighborhood proved futile. The rain had been pouring in torrents all night, and those who went out in search of the boy got drenched through to the skin. At last Bishamber asked help from the police.
At the end of the day, a police van stopped at the door before the house. It was still raining and the streets were all flooded. Two constables brought out Phatik in their arms and placed him before Bishamber. He was wet through from head to foot, muddy all over, his face and eyes flushed red with fever and his limbs trembling. Bishamber carried him in his arms and took him into the inner apartments. When his wife saw him she exclaimed: “What a heap of trouble this boy has given us! Hadn’t you better send him home?”
Phatik heard her words and sobbed out loud: “Uncle, I was just going home; but they dragged me back again.”
The fever rose very high, and all that night the boy was delirious. Bishamber brought in a doctor. Phatik opened his eyes, flushed with fever, and looked up to the ceiling and said vacantly: “Uncle, have the holidays come yet?”
Bishamber wiped the tears from his own eyes and took Phatik’s lean and burning hands in his own and sat by him through the night. The boy began again to mutter. At last, his voice became excited: “Mother!” he cried, “don’t beat me like that…. Mother! I am telling the truth!”
The next day Phatik became conscious for a short time. He turned his eyes about the room as if expecting someone to come. At last, with an air of disappointment, his head sank back on the pillow. He turned his face to the wall with a deep sigh.
Bishamber knew his thoughts and bending down his head whispered: “Phatik, I have sent for your mother.”
The day went by. The doctor said in a troubled voice that the boy’s condition was very critical.
Phatik began to cry out: “By the mark—three fathoms. By the mark—four fathoms. By the mark——.” He had heard the sailor on the river-steamer calling out the mark on the plumb-line. Now he was himself plumbing an unfathomable sea.
Later in the day Phatik’s mother burst into the room, like a whirlwind, and began to toss from side to side and moan and cry in a loud voice.
Bishamber tried to calm her agitation, but she flung herself on the bed, and cried: “Phatik, my darling, my darling.”
Phatik stopped his restless movements for a moment. His hands ceased beating up and down. He said: “Eh?”
The mother cried again: “Phatik, my darling, my darling.”
Phatik very slowly turned his head and without seeing anybody said: “Mother, the holidays have come.”
“The Cabuliwallah,” wrote by Rabindranath Tagore; My five years’ old daughter Mini cannot live without chattering. I really believe that in all her life she has not wasted a minute in silence. Her mother often vexed at this and would stop her prattle, but I would not. To see Mini quiet is unnatural, and I cannot bear it long; accounting services. And so my own talk with her is always lively.
One morning, for instance, when I was in the midst of the seventeenth chapter of my new novel, my little Mini stole into the room, and putting her hand into mine, said: “Father! Ramdayal the door-keeper calls a crow a krow! He doesn’t know anything, does he?”
Before I could explain to her the differences of language in this world, she was embarked on the full tide of another subject. “What do you think, Father? Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing water out of his trunk, and that is why it rains!”
And then, darting off anew, while I sat still making ready some reply to this last saying: “Father! what relation is Mother to you?”
With a grave face, I contrived to say: “Go and play with Bhola, Mini! I am busy!”
The window of my room overlooks the road. The child had seated herself at my feet near my table and was playing softly, drumming on her knees. I was hard at work on my seventeenth chapter, where Pratap Singh, the hero, had just caught Kanchanlata, the heroine, in his arms, and was about to escape with her by the third-story window of the castle, when all of a sudden Mini left her to play, and ran to the window, crying: “A Cabuliwallah! a Cabuliwallah!” Sure enough in the street below was a Cabuliwallah, passing slowly along. He wore the loose, soiled clothing of his people, with a tall turban; there was a bag on his back, and he carried boxes of grapes in his hand.
I cannot tell what were my daughter’s feelings at the sight of this man, but she began to call him loudly. “Ah!” I thought, “he will come in, and my seventeenth chapter will never be finished!” At which exact moment the Cabuliwallah turned and looked up at the child. When she saw this, overcome by terror, she fled to her mother’s protection and disappeared. She had a blind belief that inside the bag, which the big man carries, there were perhaps two or three other children like herself. The pedlar meanwhile entered my doorway and greeted me with a smiling face.
So precarious was the position of my hero and my heroine, that my first impulse was to stop and buy something since the man had been called. I made some small purchases, and a conversation began about Abdurrahman, the Russians, the English, and the Frontier Policy.
As he was about to leave, he asked: “And where is the little girl, sir?”
And I, thinking that Mini must get rid of her false fear, had her brought out.
She stood by my chair and looked at the Cabuliwallah and his bag. He offered her nuts and raisins, but she would not tempt, and only clung the closer to me, with all her doubts increased.
This was their first meeting.
One morning, however, not many days later, as I was leaving the house, I was startled to find Mini, seated on a bench near the door, laughing and talking, with the great Cabuliwallah at her feet. In all her life, it appeared, my small daughter had never found so patient a listener, save her father. And already the corner of her little sari was stuffed with almonds and raisins, the gift of her visitor. “Why did you give her those?” I said, and taking out an eight-anna bit, I handed it to him. The man accepted the money without demur and slipped it into his pocket.
Alas, on my return an hour later, I found the unfortunate coin had made twice its own worth of trouble! For the Cabuliwallah had given it to Mini; and her mother, catching sight of the bright round object, had pounced on the child with: “Where did you get that eight-anna bit?”
“The Cabuliwallah gave it me,” said Mini cheerfully.
“The Cabuliwallah gave it you!” cried her mother much shocked. “O Mini! how could you take it from him?”
I, entering at the moment, saved her from impending disaster, and proceeded to make my own inquiries.
It was not the first or second time, I find, that the two had met. The Cabuliwallah had overcome the child’s first terror by a judicious bribery of nuts and almonds, and the two were now great friends.
They had many quaint jokes, which afforded them much amusement. Seated in front of him, looking down on his gigantic frame in all her tiny dignity, Mini would ripple her face with laughter and begin: “O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah! what have you got in your bag?”
And he would reply, in the nasal accents of the mountaineer: “An elephant!” Not much cause for merriment, perhaps; but how they both enjoyed the fun! And for me, this child’s talk with a grown-up man had always in it something strangely fascinating.
Then the Cabuliwallah, not to be behindhand, would take his turn: “Well, little one, and when are you going to the father-in-law’s house?”
Now, most small Bengali maidens have heard long ago about the father-in-law’s house; but we, being a little new-fangled, had kept these things from our child, and Mini at this question must have been a trifle bewildered. But she would not show it, and with ready tact replied: “Are you going there?”
Amongst men of the Cabuliwallah’s class, however, it well knows that the words father-in-law’s house has a double meaning. It is a euphemism for jail, the place where we are well cared for, at no expense to ourselves. In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my daughter’s question. “Ah,” he would say, shaking his fist at an invisible policeman, “I will thrash my father-in-law!” Hearing this, and picturing the poor discomfited relative, Mini would go off into peals of laughter, in which her formidable friend would join.
These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight of a foreigner in the streets, I would fall to weaving a network of dreams, —the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home, with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of far-away wilds.
Perhaps the scenes of travel conjure themselves up before me and pass and repass in my imagination all the more vividly because I lead such a vegetable existence that a call to travel would fall upon me like a thunder-bolt. In the presence of this Cabuliwallah, I was immediately transported to the foot of arid mountain peaks, with narrow little defiles twisting in and out amongst their towering heights.
I could see the string of camels bearing the merchandise, and the company of turbanned merchants carrying some their queer old firearms, and some their spears, journeying downward towards the plains. I could see—. But at some such point Mini’s mother would intervene, imploring me to “beware of that man.”
Mini’s mother is, unfortunately, a very timid lady. Whenever she hears a noise in the street or sees people coming towards the house, she always jumps to the conclusion that they are either thieves, or drunkards, or snakes, or tigers, or malaria, or cockroaches, or caterpillars. Even after all these years of experience, she is not able to overcome her terror. So she was full of doubts about the Cabuliwallah and use to beg me to keep a watchful eye on him.
I tried to laugh her fear gently away, but then she would turn round on me seriously, and ask me solemn questions: —
Were children never kidnapped?
Was it, then, not true that there was slavery in Cabul?
Was it so very absurd that this big man should be able to carry off a tiny child?
I urged that, though not impossible, it was highly improbable. But this was not enough, and her dread persisted. As it was indefinite, however, it did not seem right to forbid the man the house, and the intimacy went on unchecked.
Once a year in the middle of January Rahmun, the Cabuliwallah, was in the habit of returning to his country, and as the time approaches, he would be very busy, going from house to house collecting his debts. This year, however, he could always find time to come and see Mini. It would have seemed to an outsider that there was some conspiracy between the two, for when he could not come in the morning, he would appear in the evening.
Even to me, it was a little startling now and then, in the corner of a dark room, suddenly to surprise this tall, loose-garmented, much-bagged man; but when Mini would run in smiling, with her “O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!” and the two friends, so far apart in age, would subside into their old laughter and their old jokes, I felt reassured.
One morning, a few days before he had made up his mind to go, I was correcting my proof sheets in my study. It was the chilly weather. Through the window, the rays of the sun touched my feet, and the slight warmth was very welcome. It was almost eight o’clock, and the early pedestrians were returning home with their heads covered. All at once I heard an uproar in the street, and, looking out, saw Rahmun being led away bound between two policemen, and behind them a crowd of curious boys.
There were blood-stains on the clothes of the Cabuliwallah, and one of the policemen carried a knife. Hurrying out, I stopped them and inquired what it all meant. Partly from one, partly from another, I gathered that a certain neighbor had owed the pedlar something for a Rampuri shawl, but had falsely denied having bought it, and that in the course of the quarrel Rahmun had struck him. Now, in the heat of his excitement, the prisoner began calling his enemy all sorts of names, when suddenly in a verandah of my house appeared my little Mini, with her usual exclamation: “O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!” Rahmun’s face lighted up as he turned to her.
He had no bag under his arm to-day, so she could not discuss the elephant with him. She at once therefore proceeded to the next question: “Are you going to the father-in-law’s house?” Rahmun laugh and say: “Just where I am going, little one!” Then, seeing that the reply did not amuse the child, he held up his fettered hands. “Ah!” he said, “I would have thrashed that old father-in-law, but my hands are bound!”
On a charge of murderous assault, Rahmun was sentenced to some years’ imprisonment.
Time passed away and he did not remember. The accustomed work in the accustomed place was ours, and the thought of the once-free mountaineer spending his years in prison seldom or never occur to us. Even my light-hearted Mini, I am ashamed to say, forgot her old friend. New companions filled her life. As she grew older, she spent more of her time with girls. So much time indeed did she spend with them that she came no more, as she used to do, to her father’s room. I was scarcely on speaking terms with her.
Years had passed away. It was once more autumn and we had made arrangements for our Mini’s marriage. It was to take place during the Puja Holidays. With Durga returning to Kailas, the light of our home also was to depart to her husband’s house and leave her father’s in the shadow.
The morning was bright. After the rains, there was a sense of ablution in the air, and the sun-rays looked like pure gold. So bright were they, that they gave a beautiful radiance even to the sordid brick walls of our Calcutta lanes. Since early dawn that day the wedding-pipes had been sounding, and at each beat, my own heart throbbing. The wail of the tune, Bhairavi, seemed to intensify my pain at the approaching separation. My Mini was to marry that night.
From early morning noise and bustle had pervaded the house. In the courtyard the canopy had to be slung on its bamboo poles; the chandeliers with their tinkling sound must be hung in each room and verandah. There was no end of hurry and excitement. I was sitting in my study, looking through the accounts, when someone enters, saluting respectfully, and stood before me. It was Rahmun the Cabuliwallah. At first, I did not recognize him. He had no bag, nor the long hair, nor the same vigor that he used to have. But he smiled, and I knew him again.
“When did you come, Rahmun?” I asked him.
“Last evening,” he said, “I was released from jail.”
The words struck harsh upon my ears. I had never before talked with one who had wounded his fellow, and my heart shrank within itself when I realized this; for I felt that the day would have been better-omen having he not turn up.
“There are ceremonies going on,” I said, “and I am busy. Could you perhaps come another day?”
At once he turned to go; but as he reached the door he hesitated, and said: “May I not see the little one, sir, for a moment?” It was his belief that Mini was still the same. He had pictured her running to him as she used, calling “O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!” He had imagined too that they would laugh and talk together, just as of old. In fact, in memory of former days he had brought, carefully wrapped up in the paper, a few almonds and raisins and grapes, obtained somehow from a countryman; for his own little fund was dispersed.
I said again: “There is a ceremony in the house, and you will not be able to see any one to-day.”
The man’s face fell. He looked wistfully at me for a moment, then said “Good morning,” and went out.
I felt a little sorry and would have called him back, but I find he was returning of his own accord. He came close up to me holding out his offerings with the words: “I brought these few things, sir, for the little one. Will you give them to her?”
I took them and was going to pay him, but he caught my hand and said: “You are very kind, sir! Keep me in your recollection. Do not offer me money! —You have a little girl: I too have one like her in my own home. I think of her, and bring fruits to your child—not to make a profit for myself.”
Saying this, he put his hand inside his big loose robe and brought out a small and dirty piece of paper. With great care, he unfolded this and smoothed it out with both hands on my table. It bore the impression of a little hand. Not a photograph. Not a drawing. The impression of an ink-smeared hand laid flat on the paper. This touch of his own little daughter had been always on his heart, as he had come year after year to Calcutta to sell his wares in the streets.
Tears came to my eyes. I forgot that he was a poor Cabuli fruit-seller, while I was—. But no, what was I more than he? He also was a father.
That impression of the hand of his little Pārbati in her distant mountain home reminded me of my own little Mini.
I sent for Mini immediately from the inner apartment. Many difficulties were raised, but I would not listen. Clad in the red silk of her wedding-day, with the sandal paste on her forehead, and adorned as a young bride, Mini came and stood bashfully before me.
The Cabuliwallah looked a little staggered at the apparition. He could not revive their old friendship. At last, he smiled and said: “Little one, are you going to your father-in-law’s house?”
But Mini now understood the meaning of the word “father-in-law,” and she could not reply to him as of old. She flushed up at the question and stood before him with her bride-like face turned down.
I remembered the day when the Cabuliwallah and my Mini had first met, and I felt sad. When she had gone, Rahmun heaved a deep sigh and sat down on the floor. The idea had suddenly come to him that his daughter too must have grown in this long time and that he would have to make friends with her anew. Assuredly he would not find her as he used to know her. And besides, what might not have happened to her in these eight years?
The marriage-pipes sounded, and the mild autumn sun streamed round us. But Rahmun sat in the little Calcutta lane and saw before him the barren mountains of Afghanistan.
I took out a bank-note and gave it to him, saying: “Go back to your own daughter, Rahmun, in your own country, and may the happiness of your meeting bring good fortune to my child!”
Having made this present, I had to curtail some of the festivities. I could not have the electric lights I had intended, nor the military band, and the ladies of the house were despondent at it. But to me, the wedding-feast was all the brighter for the thought that in a distant land a long-lost father met again with his only child.
“The Gardenia Corsage” story wrote By Edith Patterson Hill, Rockford, Illinois.
My father was an astute observer of human character. Within seconds of meeting someone, he could sum up their strengths and flaws. It was always a challenge to see if any of my boyfriends could pass Dad’s test. None did. Dad was always right they didn’t pass my test either. After Dad died, I wondered how I’d figure it out on my own.
That’s when Jack arrived on the scene. He was different from any other guy I’d dated. He could sit for hours on the piano bench with my mother, discussing obscure composers. My brother Rick loudly announced that Jack wasn’t a turkey like the other guys I’d brought home. My sister, Denise, belly-laughed with him over old Danny Kaye films. And Jack was great with my brother Chuck, who has a mental disability. One time, Chuck put his greasy hands, just dislodged from a cheeseburger, on Jack’s shoulders, kissed his cheek with ketchup-covered lips and called him by the wrong name, shouting, “Ah, Jeff, I Luv ya!” Jack didn’t miss a beat. “I love you too, George!” Jack passed my family’s test. But what about Dad’s?
Then came the weekend of my mom’s birthday. Jack was coming down from his home in Milwaukee to Chicago. The day he was supposed to drive, I got a call: “Don’t worry,” he said, “but I’ve been in an accident.” His car had stalled; when he pulled over, another car careened into it. “I’m fine but I need you to pick me up.”
Thank God he’s okay, I thought, as I drove up to Milwaukee. When I got there, we rushed to a flower shop for something for Mom. “How about gardenias?” Jack said, pointing out a beautiful white corsage.
“You never see those this time of year,” I said. the florist put the corsage in a box.
The entire ride, Jack was unusually quiet. “Are you all right?” I asked. We were pulling onto my mother’s street. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” he said. “I might be moving.”
Moving? When was he going to tell me this? After he packed?
Then he added, “Moving in with you.”
I nearly put the car on the sidewalk. “What?” I asked.
“I think we should get married,” he said. He told me he’d planned his proposal for a fancy restaurant, but after the accident, he decided to do it right away. “Yes,” I whispered. We both sat stunned, tears running down our cheeks, unable to speak. I’d never known such a tender moment. If only Dad were here to give his final approval.
“Oh, let’s just go inside,” Jack said, laughing. We got out of the car and he walked up the driveway, carrying the corsage. My mother opened the door. “Happy Birthday!” we shouted. Jack thrust the box at her. She opened it up. Suddenly, her eyes brimmed with tears. Jack and I looked at each other. “Mom, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “this is only the second gardenia corsage I’ve ever received. I was given one year ago, long before you kids were born.”
“From who?” I asked.
“Your father,” Mom said. “He gave me one right before we were engaged.” My eyes locked on Jack’s as I blinked away tears. Dad’s test? I knew Jack had passed.
“The Education of Ruby Dell” story wroteBy Ruby Bridges Hall, New Orleans, Louisiana
In November 1960, I walked up the steps of William Frantz Public School in New Orleans, the first black student at the formerly all-white elementary school. Today I am married and a mother of four. Many years have passed since that historic day and today. Those years have brought incredible changes in our country, forged in the crucible of the civil rights movement and the battle to end segregation. Years that changed me as well.
I was born in Mississippi in 1954, the oldest child of Abon and Lucille Bridges. That year the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision ordering the integration of public schools. Not that I knew anything about school at the time. What I knew and loved was growing up on the farm my paternal grandparents sharecropped.
It was a very hard life, though, and my parents heard there were better opportunities in the city. We moved to New Orleans, where my father found work as a service station attendant, and my mother took night jobs to help support our growing family.
As I got a bit older, my job was to keep an eye on my younger brothers and sister, which wasn’t too difficult. Except for church and the long walk to the all-black school where I went to kindergarten, our world didn’t extend beyond our block. But that was about to change.
Under federal court order, New Orleans public schools were finally forced to desegregate. In the spring of 1960, I took a test, along with other black kindergartners in the city, to see who would go to an integrated school come September. That summer my parents learned I’d passed the test and had been selected to start first grade at William Frantz Public School.
My mother was all for it. My father wasn’t. “We’re just asking for trouble,” he said. He thought things weren’t going to change, and blacks and whites would never be treated as equals. Mama thought I would have an opportunity to get a better education if I went to the new school—and a chance for a good job later in life. My parents argued about it and prayed about it. Eventually, my mother convinced my father that despite the risks, they had to take this step forward, not just for their own children, but for all black children.
A federal judge decreed that Monday, November 14, 1960, would be the day black children in New Orleans would go to school with white children. There were six of us chosen to integrate the city’s public school system. Two decided to stay in their old schools. The other three were assigned to McDonogh. I would be going to William Frantz alone.
The morning of November 14 federal marshals drove my mother and me the five blocks to William Frantz. In the car one of the men explained that when we arrived at the school, two marshals would walk in front of us and two behind, so we would be protected on both sides.
That reminded me of what Mama had taught us about God, that he is always there to protect us. “Ruby Nell,” she said as we pulled up to my new school, “don’t be afraid. There might be some people upset outside, but I’ll be with you.”
Sure enough, people shouted and shook their fists when we got out of the car, but to me, it wasn’t any noisier than Mardi Gras. I held my mother’s hand and followed the marshals through the crowd, up the steps into the school.
We spent that whole day sitting in the principal’s office. Through the window, I saw white parents pointing at us and yelling, then rushing their children out of the school. In the uproar, I never got to my classroom.
The marshals drove my mother and me to school again the next day. I tried not to pay attention to the mob. Someone had a black doll in a coffin, and that scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.
A young white woman met us inside the building. She smiled at me. “Good morning, Ruby Nell,” she said, just like Mama except with what I later learned was a Boston accent. “Welcome. I’m your new teacher, Mrs. Henry.” She seemed nice, but I wasn’t sure how to feel about her. I’d never been taught by a white teacher before.
Mrs. Henry took my mother and me to her second-floor classroom. All the desks were empty, and she asked me to choose a seat. I picked one up front, and Mrs. Henry started teaching me the letters of the alphabet.
The next morning my mother told me she couldn’t go to school with me. She had to work and look after my brothers and sister. “The marshals will take good care of you, Ruby Nell,” Mama assured me. “Remember, if you get afraid, say your prayers. You can pray to God anytime, anywhere. He will always hear you.”
That was how I started praying on the way to school. The things people yelled at me didn’t seem to touch me. Prayer was my protection. After walking up the steps past the angry crowd, though, I was glad to see Mrs. Henry. She gave me a hug, and she sat right by my side instead of at the big teacher’s desk in the front of the room. Day after day, it was just Mrs. Henry and me, working on my lessons.
Militant segregationists, as the news called them, took to the streets in protest, and riots erupted all over the city. My parents shielded me as best they could, but I knew problems had come to our family because I was going to the white school. My father was fired from his job. The white owners of a grocery store told us not to shop there anymore. Even my grandparents in Mississippi suffered. The owner of the land they’d sharecropped for 25 years said everyone knew it was their granddaughter causing trouble in New Orleans and asked them to move.
At the same time, there were a few white families who braved the protests and kept their children in school. But they weren’t in my class, so I didn’t see them. People from around the country who’d heard about me on the news sent letters and donations. A neighbor gave my father a job painting houses. Other folks babysat for us, watched our house to keep away troublemakers, even walked behind the marshals’ car on my way to school. My family couldn’t have made it without our friends’ and neighbors’ help.
And me, I couldn’t have gotten through that year without Mrs. Henry. Sitting next to her in our classroom, just the two of us, I was able to forget the world outside. She made school fun. We did everything together. I couldn’t go out in the schoolyard for recess, so right in that room, we played games and for exercise did jumping jacks to music.
I remember her explaining integration to me and why some people were against it. “It’s not easy for people to change once they’ve gotten used to living a certain way,” Mrs. Henry said. “Some of them don’t know any better, and they’re afraid. But not everyone is like that.”
Even though I was only six, I understood what she meant. The people I passed every morning as I walked up the school steps were full of hate. They were white, yet so was my teacher, who couldn’t have been more different from them. She was one of the most loving people I’d ever known. The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry’s class was the lesson Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to teach us all. Never judge people by the color of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper.
From her window, Mrs. Henry always watched me walk into the school. One morning when I got to our classroom, she said she’d been surprised to see me talk to the mob. “I saw your lips moving,” she said, “but I couldn’t make out what you were saying to those people.”
“I wasn’t talking to them,” I told her. “I was praying for them.” Usually, I prayed in the car on the way to school, but that day I’d forgotten until I was in the crowd. Please be with me, I’d asked God, and be with those people too. Forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.
“Ruby Nell, you are truly someone special,” Mrs. Henry whispered, giving me an even bigger hug than usual. She had this look on her face like my mother would get when I’d done something to make her proud.
Another person who helped me was Dr. Robert Coles, a child psychiatrist who happened to see me being escorted through the crowd outside my school. Dr. Coles volunteered to work with me through this ordeal. Soon he was coming to our house every week to talk with me about how I was doing in school.
Really, I was doing fine. I was always with people who wanted the best for me: my family, friends, and in school, my teacher. The more time I spent with Mrs. Henry, the more I grew to love her. I wanted to be like her. Soon, without realizing it, I had picked up her Boston accent.
Neither of us missed a single day of school that year. The crowd outside dwindled to just a few protestors, and before I knew it, it was June. For me, first grade ended much more quietly than it began. I said good-bye to Mrs. Henry, fully expecting her to be my teacher again in the fall.
But when I went back to school in September, everything was different. There were no marshals, no protestors. There were other kids—even some other black students—in my second-grade class. And Mrs. Henry was gone. I was devastated. Years later I found out she hadn’t been invited to return to William Frantz, and she and her husband had moved back to Boston. It was almost as if that first year of school integration had never happened. No one talked about it. everyone seemed to have put that difficult time behind them.
After a while, I did the same. I finished grade school at William Frantz and graduated from an integrated high school. I went to business school and studied travel and tourism. For 15 years I worked as a travel agent. Eventually, I married and threw myself into raising four sons in the city I grew up in.
I didn’t give much thought to the events of my childhood until my youngest brother died in 1993. For a time, I looked after his daughters. They happened to be students at William Frantz, and when I took them there every morning, I was literally walking into my past, into the same school that I’d helped to integrate years earlier.
I began volunteering three days a week at William Frantz, working as a liaison between parents and the school. Still, I had the feeling God had brought me back in touch with my past for something beyond that. I struggled with it for a while. Finally, I got on my knees and prayed, Lord, whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing, you’ll have to show me.
Not long after that, a reporter called the school. The psychiatrist Dr. Robert Coles had written a children’s book, The Story of Ruby Bridges; now everyone wanted to know what had happened to the little girl in the famous Norman Rockwell painting that had appeared in Look magazine. No one expected to find me back at William Frantz. Dr. Coles had often written about me, but this was the first book intended for children. To me, it was God’s way of keeping my story alive until I was able to tell it myself.
One of the best parts of the story is that I was finally reunited with my favorite teacher, Barbara Henry. She reached me through the publisher of Dr. Coles’s book, and in 1995 we saw each other in person for the first time in more than three decades. The second she laid eyes on me, she cried, “Ruby Nell!” No one had called me that since I was a little girl. Then we were hugging each other, just like we used to every morning in first grade.
I didn’t realize how much I had picked up from Mrs. Henry (I still have a hard time calling her anything else)—not only her Boston accent but her mannerisms too, such as how she tilts her head and gestures with her hands when she talks. She showed me a tiny, dog-eared photo of me with my front teeth missing that she’d kept all these years. “I used to look at that picture and wonder how you were,” she said. “I told my kids about you so often you were a part of my family.”
We have stayed a part of each other’s lives ever since. It turns out that because of what I went through on the front lines of the battle for school integration, people recognize my name and are eager to hear what I have to say about racism and education today. I speak to groups around the country, and when I visit schools, Mrs. Henry often comes with me. We tell kids our story and talk about the lessons of the past and how we can still learn from them today especially that every child is a unique human being fashioned by God.
I tell them another important thing I learned in first grade is that schools can be a place to bring people together kids of all races and backgrounds. That’s the work I focus on now, connecting our children through their schools. It’s my way of continuing what God set in motion all those years ago when he led me up the steps of William Frantz Public School and into a new world with my teacher, Mrs. Henry—the world that under his protection has reached far beyond just the two of us in that classroom.
“Skunk on The Loose” story wrote By Elizabeth Sherrill, Hingham, Massachusetts.
It was a rustling in the woods that made me glance out the window beside my computer. At the edge of the trees, I caught sight of a skunk, his black-and-white pattern duplicating the dappled light. He seemed to be busy burrowing, maybe? My knowledge of skunks began and ended with their dreadful odor.
The next moment, though, the animal emerged from beneath the trees and zigzagged across the lawn: plume-like tail, striped back and … where his head should have been, a bizarre-looking yellow helmet. As he came closer I saw what the “helmet” was: a plastic yogurt container.
The cartoon struck a rock, and the creature whirled in another direction, only to bump up against our picnic table. For a second he stood still, shaking his head frantically. But the yogurt carton was wedged fast. The skunk charged blindly back into the woods.
I stared at him in dismay. How long had he been running in darkness and terror?
It would be the work of a second for me, I thought, to pull that thing off. But the idea of pursuing a skunk through the undergrowth kept me immobilized at the window. How would I ever catch him? And then what? Wouldn’t he spray me?
I sat down and tried to pick up the thread of the story due in the mail that afternoon. But I could think only of an animal running till he dropped from exhaustion. Hadn’t this sort of thing happened before? Might animal experts know what to do?
I dialed the local SPCA. “We only handle domestic animals,” the woman told me. “You want the Department of Wildlife.” She gave me a number in New Paltz, New York.
By now the skunk was probably a long way off. Maybe someone else would see him. Someone braver and more athletic.
I dialed the number in New Paltz. A man in the Department of Wildlife listened to my story, then held a muffled conversation. “If skunks can’t see you,” he said, “they don’t spray.”
Well … that sounded all right, as long as the skunk’s head was inside the container. “What happens after the carton comes off?” I asked.
“Make sure,” the man advised, “that he doesn’t feel threatened.”
I wondered how one went about reassuring a terrified skunk.
“You could throw a blanket over him,” the wildlife man suggested, “then run while he’s finding his way out.”
“That might work,” I said, but I must have sounded as unsure as I felt because the man asked where I was calling from and began looking up names of conservation officers in my area.
How long would it take, I wondered, for someone to get here? Where would the skunk be by then? I was gripped by a sudden strange urgency. I thanked the man, hung up and ran outside. Without stopping to change out of my next-to-best slacks, and forgetting about the blanket theory, I ran up our driveway to the road.
Of course, the skunk wasn’t there. Nor did I know why I was. In his frenzy, when I had seen him last, the animal had been heading the opposite way, straight down the hill into the woods. But my feet never slowed. I turned left and dashed down the street as though rushing to a long-ordained appointment. I had run perhaps a hundred yards when a black-and-white streak emerged from the bushes beside the road and ran straight at me, the carton bumping the pavement with each step.
I stopped and grabbed hold of the yogurt carton before the astonishment of finding the skunk hit me. The animal was tugging and twisting, unexpectedly strong, to get away. His front claws scrabbled against the slippery yellow plastic, his body strained backward, and still, he could not wrench free of the carton’s vise-like neck. It took both of my hands tugging the other way to hold on until a small black head suddenly popped free.
And there we were, facing each other, two feet apart. I don’t know what he saw, and how threatening or not the apparition was, but what I saw was a sharp quivering nose, two small round ears, and alert black eyes that stared straight into mine.
For fully 10 seconds we held each other’s gaze. Then the skunk turned, ran a few yards and vanished into a culvert that goes beneath the road. I stood there, looking after him. Three minutes could not have passed since I had hung up the telephone.
But a timeless parable had played itself out, I thought as I headed back down the drive. The skunk was all those needs I hesitate to get involved in: Involvement takes time and I have deadlines to meet. I probably can’t do anything anyway. Somebody else can handle it better. Besides, involvement can be ugly, and the stench may rub off on me.
And all these things, of course, may be true. But I’ve got a yellow pencil holder on my desk, a rather scratched and battered one, to remind me that every now and then God’s answer to a need is me.
“The Last Tape” Story wrote By Nan Pinkston, Stone Mountain, Georgia.
The bustle of the hospital was a welcome distraction as I opened my new patient’s chart and headed for her room. My son, Eric, had just brought home a disappointing report card, and my daughter, Shannon, and I had argued again about her getting a driver’s license. For the next eight hours, I wanted to throw myself into helping people who I knew had much more to worry about than I did.
Rebekah was only 32, admitted for chemotherapy after breast cancer surgery. When I entered her room it took me a moment to spot her amid the bouncing forms of three giggling little girls.
I told Rebekah I would be her nurse and she introduced her husband, Warren; six-year-old Ruthie; four-year-old Hannah; and two-year-old Molly. Warren coaxed the girls away from their mother with a promise of ice cream and assured Rebekah they would return the next day.
As I rubbed alcohol on her arm to prepare it for the intravenous line, Rebekah laughed nervously. “I have to tell you I’m terrified of needles.”
“It’ll be over before you know it,” I said. “I’ll give you a count of three.”
Rebekah shut her eyes tightly and murmured a prayer until it was over. Then she smiled and squeezed my hand. “Before you go, could you get my Bible from the table?” I handed her the worn book. “Do you have a favorite Bible verse?” she asked.
“‘Jesus wept.’ John 11:35.”
“Such a sad one,” she said. “Why?”
“It makes me feel closer to Jesus, knowing he also experienced human sorrow.”
Rebekah nodded thoughtfully and started flipping through her Bible as I shut the door quietly behind me.
During the following months, I watched Rebekah struggle with the ravages of chemotherapy. Her hospital stays became frequent and she worried about her children. Meanwhile, I continued to contend with raising my own kids. They always seemed either out or holed up in their rooms. I missed the days when they were as attached to me as Rebekah’s little girls were to her.
For a time, it had seemed Rebekah’s chemotherapy was working. Then doctors discovered another malignant lump. Two months later, a chest X-ray revealed cancer had spread to her lungs. It was terminal. Help me to help her through this, I prayed.
One day when I entered her room, I found her talking into a tape recorder. She picked up a yellow legal pad and held it out to me. “I’m making a tape for my daughters,” she said.
I read the list on her pad: starting school, confirmation, turning 16, first date, graduation. While I worried how to help her deal with death, she was planning for her children’s future.
She usually waited until the early hours of the morning to record the tapes so she could be free from interruptions. She filled them with family stories and advice trying to cram a lifetime of love into a few precious hours. Finally, every item in her notes had been checked off and she entrusted the tapes to her husband.
I often wondered what I would say in her place. My kids joked that I was an FBI agent, with my constant questions about where they’d been and who they’d been with. Where, I thought, are my words of encouragement and love?
It was three o’clock one afternoon when I got an urgent call from the hospital. Rebekah wanted me to come immediately with a blank tape. What topic has she forgotten? I wondered.
She was flushed and breathing hard when I entered her room. I slipped the tape into the recorder and held the microphone to her lips. “Ruthie, Hannah, Molly this is the most important tape.” She held my hand and closed her eyes. “Someday your daddy will bring home a new mommy. Please make her feel special. Show her how to take care of you. Ruthie, honey, help her get your Brownie uniform ready each Tuesday. Hannah, tell her you don’t want meat sauce on your spaghetti. She won’t know you like it separate. Molly, don’t get mad if there’s no apple juice. Drink something else. It’s okay to be sad, sweeties. Jesus cried too. He knows about sadness and will help you to be happy again. Remember, I’ll always love you.”
I shut off the recorder and Rebekah sighed deeply. “Thank you, Nan,” she said with a weak smile. “you’ll give this one to them, won’t you?” she murmured, sliding into sleep.
A time would come when the tape would be played for her children, but right then, after I smoothed Rebekah’s blanket, I got in my car and hurried home. I thought of how my Shannon also liked her sauce on the side and suddenly that quirk, which had annoyed me so many times, seemed to make her so much more precious. That night the kids didn’t go out; they sat with me long after the spaghetti sauce had dried onto the dishes. And we talked without interrogations, without complaints late into the night.
