Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Rosel G Brown

  “Thunk!” went the minute hand of the clock as Delia stood up and the class waited for her somewhat ponderous mind to get into action.

  Where was Jerome?

  “Half an hour’s too long,” Mr. Mines said.

  “Automatic,” said Delia slowly, “we have an automatic defroster on our refrigerator.”

  “Um,” I said. “You used the word right, but can someone else give us a sentence to show what the word means?”

  Several hands went up.

  Mr. Mines was edging across the back of the room.

  Where was Jerome?

  “Just a moment,” I said, slapping the ruler hard against my palm.

  “Have to get out of here,” he said. But he was edging slowly, moving his feet carefully, as though he thought this was making him invisible.

  “Please stay where you are a moment,” I said. “Emily, let us hear your sentence.”

  “An automatic dishwasher washes the dishes by itself without you having to do anything,” said Emily with her usual prim correctness. Emily always wore starched plaid dresses with little white collars, and I couldn’t help wondering if this were not what made her right all the time.

  “Very good,” I said. “The ‘auto’ part of the word means ‘self.’ Like an automobile is something that runs by itself, instead of having to be pulled by horses.” I hunted around in my distracted mind for other “auto” words suitable for the fifth grade.

  “Thunk!” went the clock.

  The door clattered, creaked and opened, and in came Joyce leading Jerome. Joyce carefully closed the door behind her and led Jerome to where I was standing in front of the blackboard.

  What now?

  Gerald had his hand up, swelling out of his desk with eagerness. Poor Gerald so seldom knew anything at all that whenever his hand was one of the raised ones, I called on him. “Yes, Gerald?”

  “An autocrat,” he said, triumphantly remembering from the morning spelling lesson, “is a man who is king all by himself instead of having a president and senators.”

  Jerome just stood there. Wondering, no doubt, what forgotten misdemeanor on the playground I might want to scold him about.

  I wondered what it was I had expected him to do about Mr. Mines.

  “Jerome,” I said, taking him by the shoulders and turning him to face the back of the room, “this is David’s daddy, Mr. Mines.”

  Puzzled, Jerome looked.

  Mr. Mines was at the door, his hand on the knob, his face pale and frightened.

  “Thunk!” went the clock.

  Suddenly I could feel Jerome’s little body grow taut under my hands, and he looked around at me with bottomless eyes.

  “It’s going to blow up,” he said, “when the hands are like that.” And he made two-thirty with his arms.

  I swallowed and looked around at the clock.

  “Thunk!”

  Two twenty-five.

  “Bang!” went the door. It was Mr. Mines, gone.

  And Jerome and I were alone with it. We were the only ones who really knew.

  “Monitor!” I said, and Gerard marched up and came to the front of the class.

  “Messenger!” I said, and Delia marched up. “Get Mr. Buras immediately.”

  I brought Jerome outside the room and closed the door behind me. It was too late to try to catch Mr. Mines. It was too late for almost anything. It was all up to Jerome, now.

  Through the glass topped door I could see David with his head down on his desk, quietly sobbing. He didn’t know about the bomb. But he knew about his daddy. And now everyone else did, too.

  “Thunk!” went the clock in the hall.

  “Where is it, Jerome?”

  “A dark place,” he said. “A little place.”

  I ran down the hall to the broom closet.

  Mr. Buras came out of his office with Delia.

  “Go back into the room, Delia,” I said. “Run.”

  She ran.

  “There’s a bomb in the school,” I said. “I’m finding it now. We have four minutes.”

  “I’ll fill a washtub with water,” he said, “while I get the kids out and call the police.”

  There was no time to find out how I knew or if I was crazy.

  He looked into the seventh grade room and called out three of the big boys.

  He rang the bell for fire drill. But there wouldn’t be time. Time. I hoped my class would know enough to follow Miss Fremen’s and get out safely without me.

  Jerome and I ran to the little room where old books and the movie projector are kept. He shook his head.

  “Which way?” I asked.

  He didn’t know. Only he would know the room if he saw it.

  I waved my class toward Miss Fremen’s room as they came filing out. One look and she took them over.

  Small, dark room. Jerome and I ran down the stairs to the boys’ lavatory. He shook his head.

  Girls lavatory.

  No.

  Dear God!

  We rushed in and out of cloak rooms.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  “Jerome,” I said. “You’ve got to. What else besides small, dark room?”

  “Scared. Very scared.

  “Of course. What else?”

  “No. Scared of a whipping. Scared of God.”

  “Scared of . . .” I dragged Jerome into Mr. Buras’ office. “Surely not here? And it isn’t small and dark.”

  “Almost,” said Jerome, “This is how it feels, but this isn’t where it is.”

  I looked around the office. So bare and clean. No big, empty boxes with small, dark places in them.

  “The john!” I cried, for there is a little men’s room attached to the principal’s office. I yanked open the door.

  “Yes!” said Jerome. “Oh, quickly!”

  Yes, but where? Such a bare, clean little room. He must have slipped in during lunch hour, probably even before I saw him hanging around the playground.

  Where? Just walls, the wash basin—the radiator! It was too warm a day for the heat to be on and perhaps there was room behind—there it was!

  “Run, Jerome,” I cried, and I edged the thing out carefully. It was a briefcase affair, with one broken handle. A sad, forgotten briefcase.

  But Jerome didn’t run. He hung on to the back of my skirt and followed me into the teachers’ washroom where I could hear the wash tub filling up.

  I threw the briefcase into the wash tub, and splashed water all over Jerome and me, and I pulled him out of the room and closed the door behind me and sat down in the middle of the hall and had hysterics.

  Mr. Buras was there and it was a while before I realized he had two asperin tablets and a glass of water for me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Oh, dear God.”

  “Come in my office and sit down,” Mr. Buras said. “The police will be here any minute. Maybe they can catch him. If you can describe him.”

  I stood up as best I could, ashamed of having broken down in front of Jerome. Children are terribly frightened when grown people lose control.

  We walked through the hollow school, so strange with all the children outside. I looked down at Jerome. Those eyes! I thought of the things he must know, with that reaching mind of his. He knew. He knew the most frightful thing there is to know in the whole world. That there is nobody, nobody at all who is sure about anything. Children should not have to know this thing.

  “Can you describe him? Do you know who it was?”

  I paused, passing the door of my room, for something caught my eye through the glass.

  It was David, his head still in his arms, all alone, waiting for the fire to come. So many things were worse than death.

  “It was . . .” Why did I have to be the one to tell? Why was this responsibility mine?

  I looked at Jerome. His, too. So many responsibilities would be his.

  “It was David’s father,” I said, and I went in to David.

  Maybe there would be
some assurance I could give David.

  But not Jerome.

  For he would know assurance was not mine to give.

  Nor anyone else’s.

  THE END

  STEP IV

  Steps 1, 2 and 3 went according to plan. Then she moved on to . . .

  The first time Juba saw him, she couldn’t help recalling the description of Ariovistus in Julius Caesar: Hominem esse barbarum, iracundum, temerarium.

  She unpinned the delicate laesa from her hair, for Terran spacemen are educated, and if they have a choice, or seem to have, prefer seduction to rape.

  Step. I. A soft answer turneth away wrath, leaving time for making plans.

  He caught the flower, pleased with himself, Juba saw, for not fumbling, pleased with his manhood, pleased with his morality in deciding not to rape her.

  Rule a—A man pleased with himself is off guard.

  He was big, even for a Man, and all hair, and in his heavy arms the veins were knotted and very blue. He had taken off his shirt, letting the air blow shamelessly over him.

  It was true he was wonderful to see. And Juba knew that such is the nature of our violences, if she had been born into such a body, she too, would be a thing of wars and cruelty, a burner of cities, a carrier of death and desolation.

  His face softened, as though the hand of Juno had passed over it. Softly he gazed at the flower, softly at Juba.

  Rule b—This is the only time they are tractable.

  “Vene mecum,” she bade him, retreating into the glade—what was left of it after his ship burned a scar into it. She ran lightly, so as to give the impression that if he turned, only so far as to pick up the weapon on the ground by his shirt, she would disappear.

  “I follow,” he said in her own language, and she stopped, surprise tangling her like a net. For she had been taught that Men speak only New-language in our time, all soft tongues having been scorned to death.

  She should not have stopped. He looked back toward his gun. “Wait a moment,” he said. His “a“‘s were flat and harsh, his words awkwardly sequenced.

  “Come with me,” she said, and ran off again. She had been caught off guard.

  Would he follow her? “Wait!” he cried, hesitated, and came after her again. “I want to get my gun.” He reached for Juba’s hand.

  She shrank back from him. “Mulier enim sum.” Would he get the force of the particle? What could he fear from a mere woman?

  When he had followed her far enough, when he had gone as far as he would, for fear of losing his way from his ship, she let him take her hand.

  “Terran sum,” he said. And then, with meaning, “Homino sum.”

  “Then you are, naturally, hungry,” Juba said. “You have no need to come armed. Let me take you to my home. There are only my sisters and I and the mother.”

  “Yes,” he said, and took her other hand.

  She blushed, because he was strangely attractive, and because the thought came to her that his ways were gentle, and that if he spoke a soft tongue, perhaps he was not like other Men.

  Rule c—They are all alike.

  “Come,” Juba said, turning, “We are not far from the cottages.”

  She watched, during the meal, to see how he impressed the sisters and the mother. The little sisters—all bouncy blond curls and silly with laughter—their reaction to everything was excitement. And the mother—how could she seem so different from her daughters when they were so completely of her? They had no genes but her genes. And yet, there she sat, so dignified, offering a generous hospitality, but so cold Juba could feel it at the other end of the table. So cold—but the Man would not know, could not read the thin line of her taut lips and the faint lift at the edges of her eyes.

  Juba brought him back to the ship that night, knowing he would not leave the planet.

  “Mother,” Juba said, kneeling before the mother and clasping her knees in supplication. “Mother . . . isn’t he . . . different?”

  “Juba,” the mother said, “there is blood on his hands. He has killed. Can’t you see it in his eyes?”

  “Yes. He has a gun and he has used it. But mother—there is a gentleness in him. Could he not change? Perhaps I, myself . . .”

  “Beware,” the mother said sternly, “that you do not fall into your own traps.”

  “But you have never really known a man, have you? I mean, except for servants?”

  “I have also,” she said, “never had an intimate conversation with a lion, nor shared my noonday thoughts with a spider.”

  “But lions and spiders can’t talk. That’s the difference. They have no understanding.”

  “Neither have men. They are like your baby sister, Diana, who is reasonable until it no longer suits her, and then the only difference between her and an animal is that she has more cunning.”

  “Yes,” Juba said resignedly, getting to her feet. “If thus it is Written. Thank you, Mother. You are a wellspring of knowledge.”

  “Juba,” Mother said with a smile, pulling the girl’s cloak, for she liked to please them, “would you like him for a pet? Or your personal servant?”

  “No,” she said, and she could feel the breath sharp in her lungs. “I would rather . . . He would make a good spectacle in the gladiatorial contests. He would look well with a sword through his heart.”

  She would not picture him a corpse. She put the picture from her mind. But even less would she picture him unmanned.

  He would rather die strong than live weak. And Juba—why should she have this pride for him? For she felt pride, pangs as real as the pangs of childbirth. There are different kinds of pride, but the worst kind of pride is pride in strength, pride in power. And she knew that was what she felt. She was sinning with full knowledge and she could not put her sin from her.

  Juba ran straight to the altar of Juno, and made libation with her own tears. “Mother Juno,” she prayed, “take from me my pride. For pride is the wellspring whence flow all sins.”

  But even as she prayed, her reason pricked at her. For she was taught from childhood to be reasonable above all things. And, having spoken with this Man, having found him courteous and educated, she could not believe he was beyond redemption simply because he was a Man. It was true that in many ways he was strange and different. But were they not more alike than different?

  And as for his violences—were they much better, with their gladiatorial combats? Supposed to remind them, of course, of the bloodshed they had abhorred and renounced. But who did not secretly enjoy it? And whose thumbs ever went up when the Moment came? And this making of pets and servants out of Men—what was that but the worst pride of all? Glorying that a few incisions in the brain and elsewhere gave them the power to make forever absurd what came to them with the seeds at least of sublimity.

  Juba stood up. Who was she to decide what is right and what is wrong?

  She faced the world and its ways were too dark for her, so she faced away.

  There was a sound in the brush near her, and she wished the stars would wink out, for the sound had the rhythm of her Mother’s approach, and Juba wanted to hide her face from her mother.

  The mother frowned at Juba, a little wearily. “You have decided to forsake the world and become a Watcher of the Holy Flame. Am I not right?”

  “You are right, mother.”

  “You think that way you avoid decision, is that not right?”

  “That is right,” Juba answered.

  She motioned the girl to the edge of the raised, round stone and sat. “It is impossible to avoid decision. The decision is already made. What you will not do, someone else will do, and all you will have accomplished is your own failure.”

  “It is true,” Juba said. “But why must this be done, Mother? This is a silly ceremony, a thing for children, this symbolic trial. Can we not just say, ‘Now Juba is a woman,’ without having to humiliate this poor Man, who after all doesn’t . . .”

  “Look into your heart, Juba,” the mother interrupted. �
�Are your feelings silly? Is this the play of children?”

  “No,” she admitted. For never before had she been thus tormented within herself.

  “You think that this Man is different, do you not? Or perhaps that all men are not so savage of soul as you have been taught. Well, I tell you that a Man’s nature is built into his very chromosomes, and you should know that.”

  “I know, mother.” For Juba was educated.

  “There was a reason once, why men should be as they are. Nature is not gentle and if nature is left to herself, the timid do not survive. But if bloodlust was once a virtue, it is no longer a virtue, and if men will end up killing each other off, let us not also be killed.”

  “No,” Juba said. For who would mind the hearths?

  “All that,” the mother said, rising and dusting off her robe, “is theory, and ideas touch not the heart. Let me but remind you that the choice is yours, and when the choice is made I shall not yea or nay you, but think on this—a woman, too, must have her quiet strength, and you spring of a race of queens. How shall the people look to the Tanaids for strength in times of doubt and trouble, if a Tanaid cannot meet the Trial? The choice is yours. But think on who you are.”

  The mother slipped away and left Juba alone in the quiet precinct of Juno, watching how the little fire caught at the silver backs of turned leaves when the wind blew.

  Yes, Juba knew who she was, though they had never made it an important thing to be a ruler. But ruler or not, she loved her land and her home and her people, and even this ringed space of quiet where the spirit of Juno burned safely. Life somehow had chosen for her to be born and had made room for her in this particular place. Now she must choose it, freely. Otherwise she would never have in her hands the threads of her own life, and there would be no life for her. Only the complete loss of self that comes to the Watchers of the Holy Flame. And that is a holy thing, and an honor to one’s house, if it is chosen from the heart. But if it is chosen from fear of crossing the passageways of life—then it is no honor but a shame.

  And Juba knew she could not bear such a shame, either for her house or within the depths of her soul.

  “Mother Juno,” she prayed, “make clear the vision of my soul, and let me not, in my vanity, think I find good what the goddesses see to be evil.”