Sister Emily's Lightship

by Jane Yolen

  “What I mean is that it’s not fair that they get to have adventures and you get to clean the house,” Darla explained carefully.

  “Who will clean it if we don’t?” Wendy asked. She picked up the mop and handed it back to Darla. “Not them. Not ever. So if we want it done, we do it. Fair is not the matter here.” She went back to her place in the line of girls mopping the floor.

  With a sigh that was less a capitulation and more a show of solidarity with the Wendys, Darla picked up her own mop and followed.

  When the room was set to rights again, the Wendys—with Darla following close behind—tromped into the kitchen, a cheerless, windowless room they had obviously tried to make homey. There were little stick dollies stuck in every possible niche and hand-painted birch bark signs on the wall. SMILE, one sign said, YOU ARE ON CANDIED CAMERA. And another: WENDYS ARE WONDERFUL. A third, in very childish script, read: WENDYS ARE WINERS. Darla wondered idly if that was meant to be WINNERS or WHINERS, but she decided not to ask.

  Depressing as the kitchen was, it was redolent with bakery smells that seemed to dissipate the effect of a prison. Darla sighed, remembering her own kitchen at home, with the windows overlooking her mother’s herb garden and the rockery where four kinds of heather flowered till the first snows of winter.

  The girls all sat down—on the floor, on the table, in little bumpy, woody niches. There were only two chairs in the kitchen, a tatty overstuffed chair whose gold brocaded covering had seen much better days, and a rocker. The rocker was taken by the oldest Wendy; the other chair remained empty.

  At last, seeing that no one else was going to claim the stuffed chair, Darla sat down on it, and a collective gasp went up from the girls.

  “At’s Peter’s chair,” the littlest one finally volunteered.

  “Well, Peter’s not here to sit in it,” Darla said. But she did not relax back against the cushion, just in case he should suddenly appear.

  “I’m hungry, Wendy,” said one of the girls, who had two gold braids down to her waist. “Isn’t there anything left to eat?” She addressed the girl in the rocker.

  “You are always hungry, Madja,” Wendy said. But she smiled, and it was a smile of such sweetness, Darla was immediately reminded of her mom, in the days before the divorce and her dad’s new wife.

  “So you do have names, and not just Wendy,” Darla said.

  They looked at her as if she were stupid.

  “Of course we have names,” said the girl in the rocker. “I’m the only one truly named Wendy. But I’ve been here from the first. So that’s what Peter calls us all. That’s Madja,” she said, pointing to the girl with the braids. “And that’s Lizzy,” the youngest girl. “And that’s Martha, Pansy, Nina, Nancy, Heidi, Betsy, Maddy, JoAnne, Shula, Connie, Corrie, Barbara…” She went around the circle of girls.

  Darla interrupted. “Then why doesn’t Peter—”

  “Because he can’t be bothered remembering,” said Wendy. “And we can’t be bothered reminding him.”

  “And it’s all right,” said Madja. “Really. He has so much else to worry about. Like—”

  “Him!” They all breathed the word together quietly, as if saying it aloud would summon the horror to them.

  “Him? You mean Hook, don’t you?” asked Darla. “Captain Hook.”

  The look they gave her was compounded of anger and alarm. Little Lizzy put her hands over her mouth as if she had said the name herself.

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  “You are an extremely stupid girl,” said Wendy. “As well as a dangerous one.” Then she smiled again—that luminous smile—at all the other girls, excluding Darla, as if Wendy had not just said something that was both rude and horrible. “Now, darlings, how many of you are as hungry as Madja?”

  One by one, the hands went up, Lizzy’s first. Only Darla kept her hand down and her eyes down as well.

  “Not hungry in the slightest?” Wendy asked, and everyone went silent.

  Darla felt forced to look up and saw that Wendy’s eyes were staring at her, glittering strangely in the candlelight.

  It was too much. Darla shivered and then, all of a sudden, she wanted to get back at Wendy, who seemed as much of a bully as Peter, only in a softer, sneakier way. But how to do it? And then she recalled how her mom said that telling a story in a very quiet voice always made a jury lean forward to concentrate that much more. Maybe, Darla thought, I could try that.

  “I remember…” Darla began quietly. “…I remember a story my mom read to me about a Greek girl who was stolen away by the king of the underworld. He tricked her into eating six seeds and so she had to remain in the underworld six months of every year because of them.”

  The girls had all gone quiet and were clearly listening. It works! Darla thought.

  “Don’t be daft,” Wendy said, her voice loud with authority.

  “But Wendy, I remember that story, too,” said the whey-faced girl, Nancy, in a kind of whisper, as if by speaking quietly she could later deny having said anything at all.

  “And I,” put in Madja, in a similarly whispery voice.

  “And the fairies,” said Lizzy. She was much too young to worry about loud or soft, so she spoke in her normal tone of voice. “If you eat anything in their hall, my mum allas said…you never get to go home again. Not ever. I miss my mum.” Quite suddenly she began to cry.

  “Now see what you’ve done,” said Wendy, standing and stamping her foot. Darla was shocked. She’d never seen anyone over four years old do such a thing. “They’ll all be blubbing now, remembering their folks, even the ones who’d been badly beaten at home or worse. And not a sticky bun left to comfort them with. You—girl—ought to be ashamed!”

  “Well, it isn’t my fault!” said Darla, loudly, but she stood, too. The thought of Wendy towering over her just now made her feel edgy and even a bit afraid. “And my name isn’t girl. It’s Darla!”

  They glared at one another.

  Just then there was a brilliant whistle. A flash of light circled the kitchen like a demented firefly.

  “It’s Tink!” Lizzy cried, clapping her hands together. “Oh! Oh! It’s the signal. ’Larm! ’Larm!”

  “Come on, you lot,” Wendy cried. “Places, all.” She turned her back to Darla, grabbed up a soup ladle, and ran out of the room.

  Each of the girls picked up one of the kitchen implements and followed. Not to be left behind, Darla pounced on the only thing left, a pair of silver sugar tongs, and pounded out after them.

  They didn’t go far, just to the main room again. There they stood silent guard over the bolt-holes. After a while—not quite fifteen minutes, Darla guessed—Tink fluttered in with a more melodic all clear and the boys slowly slid back down into the room.

  Peter was the last to arrive.

  “Oh, Peter, we were so worried,” Wendy said.

  The other girls crowded around. “We were scared silly,” Madja added.

  “Weepers!” cried Nancy.

  “Knees all knocking,” added JoAnne.

  “Oh, this is really too stupid for words!” Darla said. “All we did was stand around with kitchen tools. Was I supposed to brain a pirate with these?” She held out the sugar tongs as she spoke.

  The hush that followed her outcry was enormous. Without another word, Peter disappeared back into the dark. One by one, the Lost Boys followed him. Tink was the last to go, flickering out like a candle in the wind.

  “Now,” said Madja with a pout, “we won’t even get to hear about the fight. And it’s the very best part of being a Wendy.”

  Darla stared at the girls for a long moment. “What you all need,” she said grimly, “is a backbone transplant.” And when no one responded, she added, “It’s clear the Wendys need to go out on strike.” Being the daughter of a labor lawyer had its advantages. She knew all about strikes.

  “What the Wendy’s need,” Wendy responded sternly, “is to give the cupboards a good shaking-out.” She patted her hair down and looked dagg
ers at Darla. “But first, cups of tea all ‘round.” Turning on her heel, she started back toward the kitchen. Only four girls remained behind.

  Little Lizzy crept over to Darla’s side. “What’s a strike?” she asked.

  “Work stoppage,” Darla said. “Signs and lines.”

  Nancy, Martha, and JoAnne, who had also stayed to listen, looked equally puzzled.

  “Signs?” Nancy said.

  “Lines?” Joanne said.

  “Hello…” Darla couldn’t help the exasperation in her voice. “What year do you all live in? I mean, haven’t you ever heard of strikes? Watched CNN? Endured social studies?”

  “Nineteen fourteen,” said Martha.

  “Nineteen thirty-three,” said Nancy.

  “Nineteen seventy-two,” said Joanne.

  “Do you mean to say that none of you are…” Darla couldn’t think of what to call it, so added lamely, “new?”

  Lizzy slipped her hand into Darla’s. “You are the onliest new Wendy we’ve had in years.”

  “Oh,” Darla said. “I guess that explains it.” But she wasn’t sure.

  “Explains what?” they asked. Before Darla could answer, Wendy called from the kitchen doorway, “Are you lot coming? Tea’s on.” She did not sound as if she were including Darla in the invitation.

  Martha scurried to Wendy’s side, but Nancy and JoAnne hesitated a moment before joining her. That left only Lizzy with Darla.

  “Can I help?” Lizzy asked. “For the signs. And the ’ines? I be a good worker. Even Wendy says so.”

  “You’re my only …” Darla said, smiling down at her and giving her little hand a squeeze. “My onliest worker. Still, as my mom always says, Start with one, you’re halfway done.”

  Lizzy repeated the rhyme. “Start with one, you’re halfway done. Start with one …”

  “Just remember it. No need to say it aloud,” Darla said.

  Lizzy looked up at her, eyes like sky blue marbles. “But I ’ike the way that poem sounds.”

  “Then ’ike it quietly. We have a long way to go yet before we’re ready for any chants.” Darla went into the kitchen hand-in-hand with Lizzy, who skipped beside her, mouthing the words silently.

  Fourteen Wendys stared at them. Not a one was smiling. Each had a teacup—unmatched, chipped, or cracked—in her hand.

  “A long way to go where?” Wendy asked in a chilly voice.

  “A long way before you can be free of this yoke of oppression,” said Darla. Yoke of oppression was a favorite expression of her mother’s.

  “We are not yoked,” Wendy said slowly. “And we are not oppressed.”

  “What’s o-oppressed?” asked Lizzy.

  “Made to do what you don’t want to do,” explained Darla, but she never took her eyes off of Wendy. “Treated harshly. Ruled unjustly. Governed with cruelty.” Those were the three definitions she’d had to memorize for her last social studies exam. She never thought she’d ever actually get to use them in the real world. If, she thought suddenly, this world is real.

  “No one treats us harshly or rules us unjustly. And the only cruel ones in Neverland are the pirates,” Wendy explained carefully, as if talking to someone feebleminded or slow.

  None of the other Wendys said a word. Most of them stared into their cups, a little—Darla thought—like the way I always stare down at my shoes when Mom or Dad wants to talk about something that hurts.

  Lizzy pulled her hand from Darla’s. “I think it harsh that we always have to clean up after the boys.” Her voice was tiny but still it carried.

  “And unjust,” someone put in.

  “Who said that?” Wendy demanded, staring around the table. “Who dares to say that Peter is unjust?”

  Darla pursued her lips, wondering how her mom would answer such a question. She was about to lean forward to say something when JoAnne stood in a rush.

  “I said it. And it is unjust. I came to Neverland to get away from that sort of thing. Well…and to get away from my stepfather, too,” she said. “I mean, I don’t mind cleaning up my own mess. And even someone else’s, occasionally. But…” She sat down as quickly as she had stood, looking accusingly into her cup, as if the cup had spoken and not she.

  “Well!” Wendy said, sounding so much like Darla’s home ec teacher that Darla had to laugh out loud.

  As if the laugh freed them, the girls suddenly stood up one after another, voicing complaints. And as each one rose, little Lizzy clapped her hands and skipped around the table, chanting, “Start with one, you’re halfway done! Start with one, you’re halfway done!”

  Darla didn’t say a word more. She didn’t have to. She just listened as the first trickle of angry voices became a stream and the stream turned into a flood. The girls spoke of the boys’ mess and being under-appreciated and wanting a larger share of the food. They spoke about needing to go outside every once in a while. They spoke of longing for new stockings and a bathing room all to themselves, not one shared with the boys, who left rings around the tub and dirty underwear everywhere. They spoke of the long hours and the lack of fresh air, and Barbara said they really could use every other Saturday off, at least. It seemed once they started complaining they couldn’t stop.

  Darla’s mom would have understood what had just happened, but Darla was clearly as stunned as Wendy by the rush of demands. They stared at one another, almost like comrades.

  The other girls kept on for long minutes, each one stumbling over the next to be heard, until the room positively rocked with complaints. And then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped. Red-faced, they all sat down again, except for Lizzy, who still capered around the room, but now did it wordlessly.

  Into the sudden silence, Wendy rose. “How could you…” she began. She leaned over the table, clutching the top, her entire body trembling. “After all Peter has done for you, taking you in when no one else wanted you, when you had been tossed aside by the world, when you’d been crushed and corrupted and canceled. How could you?”

  Lizzy stopped skipping in front of Darla. “Is it time for signs and ’ines now?” she asked, her marble-blue eyes wide.

  Darla couldn’t help it. She laughed again. Then she held out her arms to Lizzy, who cuddled right in. “Time indeed,” Darla said. She looked up at Wendy. “Like it or not, Miss Management, the Lost Girls are going out on strike.”

  Wendy sat in her rocker, arms folded, a scowl on her face. She looked like a four-year-old having a temper tantrum. But of course it was something worse than that.

  The girls ignored her. They threw themselves into making signs with a kind of manic energy and in about an hour they had a whole range of them, using the backs of their old signs, pages torn from cookbooks, and flattened flour bags.

  WENDYS WON’T WORK, one read. EQUAL PLAY FOR EQUAL WORK, went another. MY NAME’S NOT WENDY! said a third, and FRESH AIR IS ONLY FAIR a fourth. Lizzy’s sign was decorated with stick figures carrying what Darla took to be swords, or maybe wands. Lizzy had spelled out—or rather misspelled out—what became the girls’ marching words: WE AIN’T LOST, WE’RE JUST MIZ-PLAYST.

  It turned out that JoAnne was musical. She made up lyrics to the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and taught them to the others:

  We ain’t lost, we’re just misplaced,

  The outside foe we’ve never faced.

  Give us a chance to fight and win

  And we’ll be sure to keep Neverland neat as a pin.

  The girls argued for awhile over that last line, which Betsy said had too many syllables and the wrong sentiment, until Magda suggested, rather timidly, that if they actually wanted a chance to fight the pirates, maybe the boys should take a turn at cleaning the house. “Fair’s fair,” she added.

  That got a cheer. “Fair’s fair,” they told one another, and Patsy scrawled that sentiment on yet another sign.

  The cheer caused Wendy to get up grumpily from her chair and leave the kitchen in a snit. She must have called for the boys then, because no so
oner had the girls decided on an amended line (which still had too many syllables but felt right otherwise)—

  And you can keep Neverland neat as a pin!

  —then the boys could be heard coming back noisily into the dining room. They shouted and whistled and banged their fists on the table, calling out for the girls and for food. Tink’s high-pitched cry overrode the noise, piercing the air. The girls managed to ignore it all until Peter suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “What’s this I hear?” he said, smiling slightly to show he was more amused than angry. Somehow that only made his face seem both sinister and untrustworthy.

  But his appearance in the doorway was electrifying. For a moment not one of the girls could speak. It was as if they had all taken a collective breath and were waiting to see which of them had the courage to breathe out first.

  Then Lizzy held up her sign. “We’re going on strike,” she said brightly.

  “And what, little Wendy, is that?” Peter asked, leaning forward and speaking in the kind of voice grown-ups use with children. He pointed at her sign. “Is it…” he said slyly, “like a thimble?”

  “Silly Peter,” said Lizzy, “it’s signs and ’ines.”

  “I see the signs, all right,” said Peter. “But what do they mean? WENDYS WON’T WORK. Why, Neverland counts on Wendys working. And I count on it, too. You Wendys are the most important of what we have made here.”

  “Oh,” said Lizzy, turning to Darla, her face shining with pleasure. “We’re the mostest important…”

  Darla sighed heavily. “If you are so important, Lizzy, why can’t he remember your name? If you’re so important, why do you have all the work and none of the fun?”

  “Right!” cried JoAnne suddenly, and immediately burst into her song. It was picked up at once by the other girls. Lizzy, caught up in the music, began to march in time all around the table with her sign. The others, still singing, fell in line behind her. They marched once around the kitchen and then right out into the dining room. Darla was at the rear.

  At first the Lost Boys were stunned at the sight of the girls and their signs. Then they, too, got caught up in the song and began to pound their hands on the table in rhythm.