Nobody's Family is Going to Change

by Louise Fitzhugh

  “He would have to change everything about himself,” said Goldin. “I can’t see them asking for that—like, Hi, there, Mr. Goldin, go change yourself.”

  “The boys do things to you, though. He could be made to see that, and he could be made to stop them, right?” Emma felt triumphant at having discovered this.

  Goldin nodded uncertainly. Saunders’ eyes brightened. “You could tell the committee about the one who steals your clothes. Then, when they tell your father to stop him from stealing your clothes, your father will—”

  “—look like a ninny and let you have it,” said Emma. “I think the best thing would be to punch the physical violence. Make a lot of them tripping you and socking you and so forth. That way, even your father will have to say there’s something wrong with that, but he can just chalk it off to ‘boys will be boys.’ It wouldn’t make him look bad, which would make him turn against you.”

  “Right!” said Goldin. “Hey, that’s brilliant! Hey, Saunders, isn’t she great?” Goldin glistened her eyes at Emma.

  Emma looked away. She didn’t want Goldin switching from Saunders to her and following her around the halls.

  “I think that’s good,” said Saunders, as though Emma had said something perfectly ordinary that everybody knew and that she, Saunders, just hadn’t got around to saying because it was so dull. “Okay, so the proposal is that your father stop the boys from beating up on you. I vote yes.” Saunders raised her hand.

  Emma raised hers, and Ketchum raised hers. “Okay,” said Saunders. “Anybody else?”

  Since there was no one left but Saunders and herself, Emma said, “How about you?”

  “I’m thinking about something,” said Saunders. “I don’t know if I’m ready yet to bring it up.”

  Clever, thought Emma, get them all to expose themselves before you tell anything about yourself.

  “We can wait,” said Emma.

  “Do you have a complaint?” asked Saunders.

  Pinned, thought Emma, right to the ass of the donkey. Okay, she said to herself, here goes nothing. She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Three white faces leaned toward her. She had never been more aware than at this moment that they were white. She remembered one of the fears of her childhood, her fear of white faces. Her mother would laugh about it now and tell about Emma rearing back when a white face leaned down into the bassinet. Now white faces only looked weak to her, as though white people didn’t have as much substance, but were so much protoplasm without much reality.

  “Uh,” she said intelligently. “This may be a matter for the courts.” Rats. Why had she said that? She was going to look like an utter fool now, when she told the truth. “I mean, this kind of behavior should be a matter for the courts, whereas it is not, in this day and age, in the legal system we have.” She was dribbling on wildly. Why couldn’t she just start?

  “What’s the problem?” asked Goldin with a kindly look on her face.

  They probably expect me to say that I live in Harlem and the rats are running all over our apartment and we have no clean drinking water.

  “I live on East End at Seventy-ninth,” she said, although no one had asked her, nor had anyone else given her address. “Uh, my little brother wants to be a dancer, my father doesn’t want him to be.” How to explain that dancing used to be something everybody tried to do because there wasn’t anything else, and now, since her father was a lawyer, he wanted his son not to go down socially but to be a lawyer too and carry everybody forward. She looked at the white faces. They wouldn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. “My father thinks it’s sissy,” she said finally. “My brother doesn’t like to do anything in the world but dance, and my father is stopping him.”

  “How old is your brother?” asked Saunders.

  “Seven.”

  “Does he dance well?” asked Goldin.

  “Terrific. He’s really good. See, we have an uncle who’s a dancer, a professional, and he’s in all the shows—”

  “What’s his name?” asked Goldin.

  “Dipsey Bates.”

  “Wow! Dipsey Bates is your uncle? No kidding!” Goldin was really impressed. Even Saunders murmured something, and Ketchum’s eyes got wide.

  “You heard of him?”

  “Sure! Everybody has. You mean, here you have an uncle in show business and your father won’t let your brother—won’t let him what?—dance around the house?”

  “No, see, Dipsey’s been giving him lessons, and Willie, that’s my brother, he wants to go away to summer stock with Dipsey this summer, and my father won’t let him, and now my father has even stopped the dancing lessons.”

  “Is he a sissy?” asked Goldin.

  “Willie?” Emma thought a minute. When she thought about it in any concrete way, she realized she didn’t know what a sissy was. “How do you mean?” she asked guardedly.

  “Well, you know,” said Goldin, “like my brother who wants to wear dresses, he’s a sissy. He’s afraid of everything and screams like a girl when he sees a mouse. My brothers tease him all the time and he cries.”

  Willie cried, but then he had a reason. Was he afraid of everything? Actually, Willie didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. She, Emma, had tried to make him afraid on many occasions. She thought of this now with the beginnings of shame. She remembered once holding him against the sill of an open window and telling him she was going to push him out. That was only last year. All he’d done was kick her in the stomach and run down the hall. Just the other day, he had gone all the way across town by himself. Somebody afraid wouldn’t do that.

  “No. He’s not a sissy. He just wants to do what he wants to do. He wants to dance.”

  “Then I think your father ought to be stopped.” Goldin spoke very definitely.

  “Suppose”—everybody looked at Ketchum when she spoke—“suppose he were a sissy. What difference would it make?”

  Emma felt even guiltier, for having called Willie a faggot.

  “I guess,” said Saunders, “his father might want him to stop being one.”

  “Ha! My brother couldn’t stop being like himself if the roof fell in on him!” Goldin laughed. “I think he’s that way forever.”

  “I think”—they all looked at Ketchum again—“I think that whatever a person is, that’s what he is, and a person wants to be the way he is.” They all kept looking at her even though she’d stopped. “I don’t see anything wrong with sissies anyway,” she said, to get them to stop looking at her.

  “Yeah,” said Saunders. “Why does everybody go around all the time trying to change everybody else?” Saunders crossed and uncrossed her legs, as though philosophy made her nervous. “I have a similar problem,” she said unexpectedly. “I plan to go into physics when I’m older. I’m very good at science and—”

  “Yes, she is,” said Goldin. “She’s fantastic. You should see her in the lab!”

  Saunders waited for this praise and seemed to ignore it at the same time, “—and I know exactly how I want to live my life. Believe me, it doesn’t include raising a bunch of brats and washing some guy’s socks. My mother keeps telling me how wonderful babies are, and it really makes me barf. I ask you, what’s wonderful about a dirty diaper? You know, these guys have it good, having a wife. I wouldn’t mind having a wife myself.”

  “That’s right,” said Goldin, nodding away and looking glisteny-eyed, as though she couldn’t wait for Saunders to pop the question. She would have washed Saunders’ socks and changed her diapers.

  “My complaint,” continued Saunders, “is just the way my mother and father talk to me. Whenever I mention science, it’s as though I’ve said a dirty word. My mother actually talks right through me and says, ‘Well, you’ll meet a nice young doctor and then you’ll be able to help him with his practice.’ Can you imagine? Help him change the diapers on the patients, I suppose.”

  “That’s the way my mother talks,” said Emma, amazed that anyone else had had
such an experience. “She said to me the other night, ‘And you’ll grow up and marry a lawyer and have two lovely children!’ I keep trying to tell her I don’t want two lovely children and I want to be a lawyer, not marry one!”

  “Why don’t you tell the committee about that?” Saunders seemed much more friendly to Emma.

  “Same reason you don’t, hot-shot,” said Emma, and Saunders jumped back. “They don’t do anything to me. It’s just their attitude.”

  “But, Saunders, your mother does do things to you. She keeps introducing you to all those medical students and making you sit and talk to them.” Goldin looked ready to kill Saunders’ mother.

  “Yeah. My dad’s a doctor and he brings home all these medical students to dinner and they’re all half asleep sitting around after dinner because none of them get enough sleep and my mother makes me go in and talk to them. What do they want with an eleven-year-old kid asking them about lab experiments? So they yawn at me and laugh at me a lot. And my mother really thinks I can catch a husband if I just sit there and be quiet. ‘Let them talk,’ she says to me. ‘Let them tell you all about themselves. Don’t ask about the experiments. They think you know too much. Let them remember you as a sweet child. Then when you’re older, they’ll see a lovely young lady and they’ll be interested.’”

  “Isn’t that incredible?” Goldin asked Emma.

  The idea of Saunders being married to anybody but Goldin was what was incredible, but Emma didn’t say so. She put herself in Saunders’ shoes and thought about her own father bringing home law students. She wished he would. She could learn a lot that way, but she wouldn’t even be allowed in the room with them, much less allowed to talk.

  “But you could say no to her, couldn’t you?” asked Emma. “You could say you didn’t want to talk to those medical students and that you wouldn’t, couldn’t you?” Saunders considered this. “Yes. Yes, I could.”

  “Then I don’t think that’s valid. It’s got to be something they make you do, or won’t let you do. It can’t just be attitude.”

  Saunders rummaged into her book bag again. “Cathy gave me some other things too. Elere’s one that might apply.”

  She handed around a list. “These are committees for study. If you’re interested, you put your name down and you gather research on a particular thing, like here it says ‘Legal Committee.’”

  “Where?” Emma asked breathlessly. “Where does it say ‘legal’?”

  “Here.”

  “I’ll do that.” Emma felt something calm down inside herself. There was a place for her.

  “Here’s the Committee for the Study of Parental Attitudes,” said Saunders. “Maybe we should go to them with problems about attitudes.”

  “No,” said Emma, “they just study attitudes. They wouldn’t do anything.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Saunders.

  She doesn’t like to be crossed, thought Emma, about anything, even about something obvious like this.

  Saunders seemed to read Emma’s mind. “What about your brother?”

  “My brother?” Emma knew full well what she meant. “Yes,” said Saunders with an edge to her voice. “Do you want the committee to come to your house?”

  Emma’s knees went to water. She wanted to squeal like Ketchum at the thought. She could feel her eyes darting around because she didn’t want to look at Saunders.

  “You chicken?” asked Saunders.

  Oh-ho, thought Emma, I know now how she got to be a leader. She makes other people do what she’s afraid to do.

  “What about them coming to your house?” asked Emma.

  “We’re asking you now,” said Saunders coldly.

  Goldin, evidently, did not like seeing her mentor in a cruel light. “Emma doesn’t have to decide now, does she? I mean, it’s a big decision.”

  “I don’t want to decide now either,” said Ketchum.

  Emma cleared her throat, trying to fight down her fear, to regain some of the calm she had felt earlier. “I think these things should be given all due consideration. This is tantamount to making a decision to go to court. The law does not take kindly to those who are just litigation-happy.”

  She looked around, satisfied. They all looked at her as though they didn’t know what she was talking about.

  Perfect, she thought. Keep ’em guessing.

  When Emma first walked into the park, Willie was on the phone with Dipsey.

  “Now look, kid. I can’t get into trouble with your parents. You heard what your father said.”

  “Dipsey, you got to teach me!”

  “Baby, I ain’t got to do nothing but dance, pay taxes, and die. I know how you feel. It’s rough, but if I were you, I’d go to your old man and have a long talk with him. Maybe this just isn’t the time, you know? Maybe you just ought to wait a few years until you’re older.”

  “Aw, please, Dipsey—”

  “Don’t go trying to break my heart now. I told you how I feel. Listen, baby, I got to be at rehearsal in ten minutes and it’s way cross town at the Winter Garden. I’ll be talking to you.”

  “That’s right next door, practically!”

  “Yeah? Well, I forgot. I’ll be talking to you, baby. Hang in there!”

  The phone clicked down. Willie stood there holding the receiver. A man in a raincoat waiting for the phone booth hit the glass with a quarter. “Come on out! You finished! Give somebody else a chance!”

  Willie hung up, opened the door, and ran past the man. He kept running for a bit, because he wasn’t even aware that he was running. He sat down on a stoop to think.

  How could Dipsey say a crazy thing like that? Talk to your father. How could you talk to a mountain? How could you talk to a Boeing jet?

  Dipsey knows that’s stupid. He can’t talk to my father either. How come he’s saying that? He knows I can’t do it. He want to get me off his back?

  I can’t get down now. If I get down now, I’ll never get up.

  He sat on the stoop, unconsciously tapping his feet to the rhythm of the song Dipsey had used as audition music.

  An idea hit him. The idea grew and swelled into a beautiful thing in his mind, a thing he couldn’t let go, a thing so wonderful that it filled his heart, moved his body up and off the stoop, pushed his feet along until they had him running down the street.

  He jumped onto the Seventy-ninth Street crosstown bus. He rode to Fifth, his eyes seeing nothing but an image. He got on a Fifth Avenue bus and rode downtown to Fiftieth Street.

  He started running. He skipped, he hopped, he danced around people, threaded his way through the crowd at the corner of Broadway, ran again until he was in front of the theater.

  He tried one door. It was locked. The middle one was unlocked. He was in an empty lobby. He opened a door to the theater.

  I’ll do it, he said to himself as he slipped into the dark theater, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.

  The stage was bare except for a piano. There were five or six men in the front rows down near the stage. The entire theater, except for one light on the stage, was dark.

  “Okay!” yelled one of the men.

  The piano player sat down and started a number. The music filled the theater and took Willie’s heart all the way up to the balcony.

  “Next,” yelled the man.

  A woman came out of the wings and started singing. Willie sat down in the back row, hoping the light from the stage didn’t make him visible.

  I’ll do it, he said to himself again. I’ll just wait here and I’ll do it.

  The man down front stood up. He waved his hand. “Okay,” he said. The piano stopped. “Thank you so much for coming,” he said to the singer, who looked only mildly surprised. She turned and walked offstage.

  “Get Dipsey,” the man said to the piano player. “We got all these kids to try, three of them look okay. I want them to try it with him.”

  Willie’s mouth flew open. Other kids? Over my dead body, he said to himself. I don’t know how I’ll do it,
but I’ll do it. I could run backstage—no, there must be lots of people there. Dipsey would see me. Dipsey would stop me.

  Dipsey came walking out. He peered down at the man. “Hi, Fred. How you doing?”

  “Hey, Dips, we got three kids we can’t decide between. I thought you might help. Do a little with them and see if one grabs you. Okay?”

  “Sure thing,” said Dipsey. He took off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. He went toward the wings and dropped his jacket on a chair.

  Willie felt his throat go dry as he watched Dipsey. He’s going to dance with some other kid! I’ll murder him.

  “Let’s do the ice-cream number,” he said to the piano player. “If they can do that, they can do anything.”

  “Send out the first kid,” yelled the stage manager, who had appeared from the wings, holding a clipboard and a pen.

  The music started. Dipsey started. Willie almost forgot why he was there. As he watched Dipsey, his whole body began to move with him. More than anything in life, he loved the way Dipsey moved. He stayed in his seat, but his feet started to move with Dipsey’s feet and he was doing all the same steps they had done that afternoon.

  A small boy ran out of the wings and started dancing with Dipsey.

  Willie looked at him coldly. His feet even stopped moving. He looked at every part of that boy’s body. No, no, not like that. Stop trying to look nice.

  “Easy,” said Dipsey to the boy. “Take it easy, like this.”

  Like you told me, thought Willie, like I know how to do. The boy kept on stomping away and at the same time waving his arms like he was some show girl.

  When the boy’s back was turned, Dipsey managed to give the thumbs-down signal to the man in the audience.

  “Okay,” said the man, standing up. The piano stopped. “Thanks for coming by,” he said to the kid. “You’re doing real well. Keep up the lessons.”

  The kid skipped off like an idiot. He didn’t know he’d just blown it.