There was that boy, so close I could touch him, but the shock of all of them was quivering in the air, smothering, like a blanket that would deaden my voice. I felt I had to shout.
“Everything they tell you is lies!” I said. “See here—here, this is the truth!” I had the figurine in front of his eyes, but he didn’t see.
“Risha, go below,” said the young woman quietly. He turned to obey, quick as a ferret. I got in front of him again. “Stay,” I said, breathing hard. “Look—”
“Remember, Risha, don’t speak,” said the woman.
I couldn’t stand any more. Where the boy went I don’t know; I ceased to see him. With the image in one hand and the paper with it, I leaped at the woman. I was almost quick enough; I almost reached her; but the buzzing took me in the middle of a step, louder, louder, like the end of the world.
It was the second time that week. When I came to, I was sick and too faint to move for a long time.
The house was silent. They had gone, of course…the house had been defiled, having me in it. They wouldn’t live here again, but would build elsewhere.
My eyes blurred. After a while I stood up and looked around at the room. The walls were hung with a gray close-woven cloth that looked as if it would tear, and I thought of ripping it down in strips, breaking furniture, stuffing carpets and bedding into the oubliette. . . . But I didn’t have the heart for it. I was too tired. Thirty years. . . . They had given me all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory thereof, thirty years ago. It was more than one man alone could bear, for thirty years.
At last I stooped and picked up the figurine, and the paper that was supposed to go under it—crumpled now, with the forlorn look of a message that someone has thrown away unread.
I sighed bitterly.
I smoothed it out and read the last part.
YOU CAN SHARE THE WORLD WITH ME. THEY CAN’T STOP YOU. STRIKE NOW—PICK UP A SHARP THING AND STAB, OR A HEAVY THING AND CRUSH. THAT’S ALL. THAT WILL MAKE YOU FREE. ANYONE CAN DO IT.
Anyone. Someone. Anyone.
The Anything Box (1956)
ZENNA HENDERSON
ZENNA HENDERSON (1917–1983) was an Arizona schoolteacher for most of her adult life. Her stories of “the People”—humanoids who are here on Earth because their home planet was destroyed—were among F&SF’s most popular stories for decades. All of them are collected in one volume, titled Ingathering. Most of her other stories are collected in Holding Wonder and The Anything Box.
“The Anything Box,” like many of her tales, concerns subjects she knew well: schoolteachers and children in the American Southwest. And, like many of her tales, “The Anything Box” is moving and memorable.
SUPPOSE IT was about the second week of school that I noticed Sue-lynn particularly. Of course, I’d noticed her name before and checked her out automatically for maturity and ability and probable performance the way most teachers do with their students during the first weeks of school. She had checked out mature and capable and no worry as to performance as I had pigeonholed her—setting aside for the moment the little nudge that said, “Too quiet”—with my other no-worrys until the fluster and flurry of the first days had died down a little.
I remember my noticing day. I had collapsed into my chair for a brief respite from guiding hot little hands through the intricacies of keeping a Crayola within reasonable bounds and the room was full of the relaxed, happy hum of a pleased class as they worked away, not realizing that they were rubbing “blue” into their memories as well as onto their papers. I was meditating on how individual personalities were beginning to emerge among the thirty-five or so heterogeneous first graders I had, when I noticed Sue-lynn—really noticed her—for the first time.
She had finished her paper—far ahead of the others as usual—and was sitting at her table facing me. She had her thumbs touching in front of her on the table and her fingers curving as though they held something between them—something large enough to keep her fingertips apart and angular enough to bend her fingers as if for corners. It was something pleasant that she held—pleasant and precious. You could tell that by the softness of her hold. She was leaning forward a little, her lower ribs pressed against the table, and she was looking, completely absorbed, at the table between her hands. Her face was relaxed and happy. Her mouth curved in a tender half-smile, and as I watched, her lashes lifted and she looked at me with a warm share-the-pleasure look. Then her eyes blinked and the shutters came down inside them. Her hand flicked into the desk and out. She pressed her thumbs to her forefingers and rubbed them slowly together. Then she laid one hand over the other on the table and looked down at them with the air of complete denial and ignorance children can assume so devastatingly.
The incident caught my fancy and I began to notice Sue-lynn. As I consciously watched her, I saw that she spent most of her free time staring at the table between her hands, much too unobtrusively to catch my busy attention. She hurried through even the fun-est of fun papers and then lost herself in looking. When Davie pushed her down at recess, and blood streamed from her knee to her ankle, she took her bandages and her tear-smudged face to that comfort she had so readily—if you’ll pardon the expression—at hand, and emerged minutes later, serene and dry-eyed. I think Davie pushed her down because of her Looking. I know the day before he had come up to me, red-faced and squirming.
“Teacher,” he blurted. “She Looks!”
“Who looks?” I asked absently, checking the vocabulary list in my book, wondering how on earth I’d missed where, one of those annoying wh words that throw the children for a loss.
“Sue-lynn. She Looks and Looks!”
“At you?” I asked.
“Well . . .” He rubbed a forefinger below his nose, leaving a clean streak on his upper lip, accepted the proffered Kleenex and put it in his pocket. “She looks at her desk and tells lies. She says she can see . . .”
“Can see what?” My curiosity picked up its ears.
“Anything,” said Davie. “It’s her Anything Box. She can see anything she wants to.”
“Does it hurt you for her to Look?”
“Well,” he squirmed. Then he burst out. “She says she saw me with a dog biting me because I took her pencil—she said.” He started a pellmell verbal retreat. “She thinks I took her pencil. I only found—” His eyes dropped. “I’ll give it back.”
“I hope so,” I smiled. “If you don’t want her to look at you, then don’t do things like that.”
“Dern girls,” he muttered and clomped back to his seat.
So I think he pushed her down the next day to get back at her for the dog-bite.
Several times after that I wandered to the back of the room, casually in her vicinity, but always she either saw or felt me coming and the quick sketch of her hand disposed of the evidence. Only once I thought I caught a glimmer of something—but her thumb and forefinger brushed in sunlight, and it must have been just that.
Children don’t retreat for no reason at all, and, though Sue-lynn did not follow any overt pattern of withdrawal, I started to wonder about her. I watched her on the playground, to see how she tracked there. That only confused me more.
She had a very regular pattern. When the avalanche of children first descended at recess, she avalanched along with them and nothing in the shrieking, running, dodging mass resolved itself into a withdrawn Sue-lynn. But after ten minutes or so, she emerged from the crowd, tousle-haired, rosy-cheeked, smutched with dust, one shoelace dangling and, through some alchemy that I coveted for myself, she suddenly became untousled, undusty and unsmutched. And there she was, serene and composed on the narrow little step at the side of the flight of stairs just where they disappeared into the base of the pseudo-Corinthian column that graced Our Door and her cupped hands received whatever they received and her absorption in what she saw became so complete that the bell came as a shock every time.
And each time, before she joined the rush to Our Door, her hand would sketch a gesture
to her pocket, if she had one, or to the tiny ledge that extended between the hedge and the building. Apparently she always had to put the Anything Box away, but never had to go back to get it.
I was so intrigued by her putting whatever it was on the ledge that once I actually went over and felt along the grimy little outset. I sheepishly followed my children into the hall, wiping the dust from my fingertips, and Sue-lynn’s eyes brimmed amusement at me without her mouth’s smiling. Her hands mischievously squared in front of her and her thumbs caressed a solidness as the line of children swept into the room.
I smiled too because she was so pleased with having outwitted me. This seemed to be such a gay withdrawal that I let my worry die down. Better this manifestation than any number of other ones that I could name.
Someday, perhaps, I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut. I wish I had before that long afternoon when we primary teachers worked together in a heavy cloud of ditto fumes, the acrid smell of India ink, drifting cigarette smoke and the constant current of chatter, and I let Alpha get me started on what to do with our behavior problems. She was all raunched up about the usual rowdy loudness of her boys and the eternal clack of her girls, and I—bless my stupidity—gave her Sue-lynn as an example of what should be our deepest concern rather than the outbursts from our active ones.
“You mean she just sits and looks at nothing?” Alpha’s voice grated into her questioning tone.
“Well, I can’t see anything,” I admitted. “But apparently she can.”
“But that’s having hallucinations!” Her voice went up a notch. “I read a book once—”
“Yes.” Marlene leaned across the desk to flick ashes in the ashtray. “So we have heard and heard and heard.”
“Well!” sniffed Alpha. “It’s better than never reading a book.”
“We’re waiting,” Marlene leaked smoke from her nostrils, “for the day when you read another book. This one must have been uncommonly long.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Alpha’s forehead wrinkled with concentration. “It was only about—” Then she reddened and turned her face angrily away from Marlene.
“Apropos of our discussion—” she said pointedly. “It sounds to me like that child has a deep personality disturbance. Maybe even a psychotic—whatever—” Her eyes glistened faintly as she turned the thought over.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, surprised into echoing her words at my sudden need to defend Sue-lynn. “There’s something about her. She doesn’t have that apprehensive, hunched-shoulder, don’t-hit-me-again air about her that so many withdrawn children have.” And I thought achingly of one of mine from last year that Alpha had now and was verbally bludgeoning back into silence after all my work with him. “She seems to have a happy, adjusted personality, only with this odd little . . . plus.”
“Well, I’d be worried if she were mine,” said Alpha. “I’m glad all my kids are so normal.” She sighed complacently. “I guess I really haven’t anything to kick about. I seldom ever have problem children except wigglers and yakkers, and a holler and a smack can straighten them out.”
Marlene caught my eye mockingly, tallying Alpha’s class with me, and I turned away with a sigh. To be so happy—well, I suppose ignorance does help.
“You’d better do something about that girl,” Alpha shrilled as she left the room. “She’ll probably get worse and worse as time goes on. Deteriorating, I think the book said.”
I had known Alpha a long time and I thought I knew how much of her talk to discount, but I began to worry about Sue-lynn. Maybe this was a disturbance that was more fundamental than the usual run-of-the-mill that I had met up with. Maybe a child can smile a soft, contented smile and still have little maggots of madness flourishing somewhere inside.
Or, by gorry! I said to myself defiantly, maybe she does have an Anything Box. Maybe she is looking at something precious. Who am I to say no to anything like that?
An Anything Box! What could you see in an Anything Box? Heart’s desire? I felt my own heart lurch—just a little—the next time Sue-lynn’s hands curved. I breathed deeply to hold me in my chair. If it was her Anything Box, I wouldn’t be able to see my heart’s desire in it. Or would I? I propped my cheek up on my hand and doodled aimlessly on my time schedule sheet. How on earth, I wondered—not for the first time—do I manage to get myself off on these tangents?
Then I felt a small presence at my elbow and turned to meet Sue-lynn’s wide eyes.
“Teacher?” The word was hardly more than a breath.
“Yes?” I could tell that for some reason Sue-lynn was loving me dearly at the moment. Maybe because her group had gone into new books that morning. Maybe because I had noticed her new dress, the ruffles of which made her feel very feminine and lovable, or maybe just because the late autumn sun lay so golden across her desk. Anyway, she was loving me to overflowing, and since, unlike most of the children, she had no casual hugs or easy moist kisses, she was bringing her love to me in her encompassing hands.
“See my box, Teacher? It’s my Anything Box.”
“Oh, my!” I said. “May I hold it?”
After all, I have held—tenderly or apprehensively or bravely—tiger magic, live rattlesnakes, dragon’s teeth, poor little dead butterflies and two ears and a nose that dropped off Sojie one cold morning—none of which I could see any more than I could the Anything Box. But I took the squareness from her carefully, my tenderness showing in my fingers and my face.
And I received weight and substance and actuality!
Almost I let it slip out of my surprised fingers, but Sue-lynn’s apprehensive breath helped me catch it and I curved my fingers around the precious warmness and looked down, down, past a faint shimmering, down into Sue-lynn’s Anything Box.
I was running barefoot through the whispering grass. The swirl of my shirts caught the daisies as I rounded the gnarled apple tree at the corner. The warm wind lay along each of my cheeks and chuckled in my ears. My heart outstripped my flying feet and melted with a rush of delight into warmness as his arms—
I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, my palms tight against the Anything Box. “It’s beautiful!” I whispered. “It’s wonderful, Sue-lynn. Where did you get it?”
Her hands took it back hastily. “It’s mine,” she said defiantly. “It’s mine.”
“Of course,” I said. “Be careful now. Don’t drop it.”
She smiled faintly as she sketched a motion to her pocket. “I won’t.” She patted the flat pocket on her way back to her seat.
Next day she was afraid to look at me at first for fear I might say something or look something or in some way remind her of what must seem like a betrayal to her now, but after I only smiled my usual smile, with no added secret knowledge, she relaxed.
A night or so later when I leaned over my moon-drenched window sill and let the shadow of my hair hide my face from such ebullient glory, I remembered about the Anything Box. Could I make one for myself? Could I square off this aching waiting, this out-reaching, this silent cry inside me, and make it into an Anything Box? I freed my hands and brought them together, thumb to thumb, framing a part of the horizon’s darkness between my upright forefingers. I stared into the empty square until my eyes watered. I sighed, and laughed a little, and let my hands frame my face as I leaned out into the night. To have magic so near—to feel it tingle off my fingertips and then to be so bound that I couldn’t receive it. I turned away from the window—turning my back on brightness.
It wasn’t long after this that Alpha succeeded in putting sharp points of worry back in my thoughts of Sue-lynn. We had ground duty together, and one morning when we shivered while the kids ran themselves rosy in the crisp air, she sizzed in my ear,
“Which one is it? The abnormal one, I mean.”
“I don’t have any abnormal children,” I said, my voice sharpening before the sentence ended because I suddenly realized whom she meant.
“Well, I call it abnormal to stare at nothing.” You could almo
st taste the acid in her words. “Who is it?”
“Sue-lynn,” I said reluctantly. “She’s playing on the bars now.”
Alpha surveyed the upside-down Sue-lynn whose brief skirts were belled down from her bare pink legs and half covered her face as she swung from one of the bars by her knees. Alpha clutched her wizened, blue hands together and breathed on them. “She looks normal enough,” she said.
“She is normal!” I snapped.
“Well, bite my head off!” cried Alpha. “You’re the one that said she wasn’t, not me—or is it ‘not I’? I never could remember. Not me? Not I?”
The bell saved Alpha from a horrible end. I never knew a person so serenely unaware of essentials and so sensitive to trivia.
But she had succeeded in making me worry about Sue-lynn again, and the worry exploded into distress a few days later.
Sue-lynn came to school sleepy-eyed and quiet. She didn’t finish any of her work and she fell asleep during rest time. I cussed TV and Drive-Ins and assumed a night’s sleep would put it right. But next day Sue-lynn burst into tears and slapped Davie clear off his chair.
“Why Sue-lynn!” I gathered Davie up in all his astonishment and took Sue-lynn’s hand. She jerked it away from me and flung herself at Davie again. She got two handfuls of his hair and had him out of my grasp before I knew it. She threw him bodily against the wall with a flip of her hands, then doubled up her fists and pressed them to her streaming eyes. In the shocked silence of the room, she stumbled over to Isolation and seating herself, back to the class, on the little chair, she leaned her head into the corner and sobbed quietly in big gulping sobs.
“What on earth goes on?” I asked the stupefied Davie who sat spraddle-legged on the floor fingering a detached tuft of hair. “What did you do?”
“I only said ‘Robber Daughter,’” said Davie. “It said so in the paper. My mama said her daddy’s a robber. They put him in jail cause he robbered a gas station.” His bewildered face was trying to decide whether or not to cry. Everything had happened so fast that he didn’t know yet if he was hurt.
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