Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

by Jonathan Strahan

  “I’ll be very have,” Lizzy says. The words tremble.

  He puts her down and Mommy kisses the top of her head. Then they are gone.

  Mrs. Sloupe does not want to play a game. It is time for her stories on TV. They can play after dinner. Dinner is something called chicken ala king, which is yellow and has peas in it. Lizzy only eats two bites because it is icky, and her stomach is scared.

  Lizzy wins Candy Land. Mrs. Sloupe will not play again. It is bedtime. But she does not know how bedtime works. She says the now-I-lay-me prayer with the wrong words, and tucks the covers too tight.

  “Playing fairy tales, were you?” she says, reaching for Maleficent. “I’ll put this ugly witch in the toy chest, where you can’t see it. Don’t want you having bad dreams.”

  “No!” Lizzy holds on to the puppet with both arms.

  “Well, aren’t you a queer little girl?” Mrs. Sloupe says. “Suit yourself.” She turns off the light and closes the door, all the way, which makes the shadows even more wrong. When Lizzy finally falls asleep, the witch’s cloth body is damp and sticky with tears.

  Her father comes home the next morning, unshaven and bleary. He picks Lizzy up and hugs her. “You have a baby sister,” he says. “Rosemary, after your mother’s aunt.” Then he puts her down and pats her behind, shooing her into the living room to watch Captain Kangaroo.

  Lizzy pauses just beyond the hall closet, and before he shuts the kitchen door, she hears him tell Mrs. Sloupe, “She was breech. Touch and go for a while, but they’re both resting quietly, so I think we’re out of the woods.”

  He takes Mrs. Sloupe home after dinner, and picks her up the next morning. It is three days before Teck arrives to be the real babysitter, and she is there every day for a week before he brings Mommy and the baby home.

  “There’s my big girl,” her mother says. She is sitting up in bed. Her face looks pale and thinner than Lizzy remembers, and there are dark places under her eyes. The baby is wrapped in a pink blanket beside her. All Lizzy can see is a little face that looks like an old lady.

  “Can we go to the playground today?”

  “No, sweetie. Mommy needs to rest.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Maybe next week. We’ll see.” She kisses Lizzy’s cheek. “I think there’s a new box of crayons on the kitchen table. Why don’t you go look? I’ll be down for dinner.”

  Dinner is a sack of hamburgers from the Eastmoor Drive-In. At bedtime, Mommy comes in and does all the right things. She sings two songs, and Lizzy falls asleep smiling. But she has a bad dream, and when she goes to crawl into bed with Mommy and Daddy, to make it all better, there is no room. The baby is asleep between them.

  For days, the house is full of grown-ups. Ladies and aunts come in twos and threes and bring casseroles and only say hi to Lizzy. They want to see the baby. They all make goo-goo sounds and say, “What a little darling!” At night, some men come, too. They look at the baby, but just for a minute, and do not coo. They go out onto the porch and have beers and smoke.

  The rest of the summer, all any grown-up wants to do is hold the baby or feed the baby or change the baby. Lizzy doesn’t know why; it is very stinky. She tries to be more interesting, but no one notices. The baby cannot do a somersault, or say the Pledge of Allegiance or sing “Fairy Jocka Dormy Voo.” All she can do is lie there and spit up and cry.

  And sleep. The baby sleeps all the time, and every morning and every afternoon, Mommy naps with her. The princess is sleeping, so the whole house has to stay quiet. Lizzy cannot play her records, because it will wake the baby. She can’t jump on her bed. She can’t even build a tall tower with blocks because if it crashes, it will wake the baby. But when the baby screams, which is a lot, no one even says Shhh!

  Lizzy thinks they should give the baby back.

  “Will you read to me?” she asks her mother, when nothing else is happening.

  “Oh … not now, Lizzy-Lou. I’ve got to sterilize some bottles for Rosie. How ’bout you be a big girl, and read by yourself for a while?”

  Lizzy is tired of being a big girl. She goes to her room but does not slam the door, even though she wants to, because she is also tired of being yelled at. She picks up Maleficent. The puppet comes to life around her hand. Maleficent tells Lizzy that she is very smart, very clever, and Lizzy smiles. It is good to hear.

  Lizzy puts on her own bathrobe, so they match. “Will you read to me?” she asks. “Up here in our castle?”

  Maleficent nods, and says in a smooth voice, “Of course I will. That would be lovely,” and reads to her all afternoon. Even though she can change into anything she wants—a dragon, a ball of green fire—her eyes are always kind, and every time Lizzy comes into the room, she is smiling.

  On nights when Mommy is too tired, and Daddy puts Lizzy to bed, the witch sings the good-night song in a sweet, soft voice. She knows all the words. She whispers “Good night, Lizzy-Tizzy-Toot,” the special, only-at-bedtime, good-dreams name.

  Maleficent loves Lizzy best.

  6

  Lizzy is glad when it is fall and time for nursery school, where they do not allow babies. Every morning Mrs. Breyer and Mrs. Huntington and Mrs. Lawton take turns driving to Wooton Methodist Church. When her mother drives, Lizzy gets to sit in the front seat. Other days she has to share the back with Tripper or Timmy.

  She has known Timmy her whole life. The Lawtons live two doors down. They have a new baby, too, another boy. When they had cocktails to celebrate, Lizzy heard her father joke to Mr. Lawton: “Well, Bob, the future’s settled. My two girls will marry your two boys, and we’ll unite our kingdoms.” Lizzy does not think that is funny.

  Timmy is no one’s handsome prince. He is a gangly, insubstantial boy who likes to wear sailor suits. His eyes always look as though he’d just finished crying because he is allergic to almost everything, and is prone to nosebleeds. He is not a good pick for Red Rover.

  The church is a large stone building with a parking lot and a playground with a fence around it. Nursery school is in a wide, sunny room on the second floor. Lizzy climbs the steps as fast as she can, hangs up her coat on the hook under L-I-Z-Z-Y, and tries to be the first to sit down on the big rug in the middle of the room, near Mrs. Dickens. There are two teachers, but Mrs. Dickens is her favorite. She wears her brown hair in braids wrapped all the way around her head and smells like lemons.

  Lizzy knows all the color words and how to count up to twenty. She can write her whole name—without making the Z’s backward—so she is impatient when the other kids do not listen to her. Sometimes she has to yell at them so she can have the right color of paint. The second week of school, she has to knock Timmy down to get the red ball at recess.

  Mrs. Dickens sends a note home, and the next morning, the next-door neighbor comes over to watch the baby so Lizzy’s mother can drive her to school, even though it is not her turn.

  “Good morning, Lizzy,” Mrs. Dickens says at the door. “Will you get the music basket ready? I want to talk to your mother for a minute.”

  Lizzy nods. She likes to be in charge. But she also wants to know what they are saying, so she puts the tambourine and the maracas in the basket very quietly, and listens.

  “How are things at home?” Mrs. Dickens asks.

  “A little hectic, with the new baby. Why?”

  “New baby. Of course.” Mrs. Dickens looks over at Lizzy and puts a finger to her lips. “Let’s continue this out in the hall,” she says, and that’s all Lizzy gets to hear.

  But when they make Circle, Mrs. Dickens pats the right side of her chair, and says, “Come sit by me, Lizzy.” They sing the good-morning song and have Share and march to a record and Lizzy gets to play the cymbals. When it is time for Recess, Mrs. Dickens rings the bell on her desk, and they all put on their coats and hold hands with their buddies and walk down the stairs like ladies and gentlemen. For the first time, Mrs. Dickens is Lizzy’s buddy, and no one gets knocked down.

  On a late October morning,
Lizzy’s mother dresses her in the green wool coat, because it is cold outside. It might snow. She runs up the stairs, but the coat is stiff and has a lot of buttons, and by the time she hangs it up, Anna von Stade is sitting in her place in the circle. Lizzy has to sit on the other side of Mrs. Dickens, and is not happy. Timmy sits down beside her, which does not help at all.

  “Children! Children! Quiet now. Friday is a holiday. Who knows what it is?”

  Lizzy’s hand shoots straight up. Mrs. Dickens calls on Kevin.

  “It’s Halloween,” he says.

  “Very good. And we’re going to have our own Halloween party.”

  “I’m going to be Pinocchio!” David says.

  “We raise our hand before speaking, David.” Mrs. Dickens waggles her finger at him, then waits for silence before she continues. “That will be a good costume for trick-or-treating. But for our party, I want each of you to come dressed as who you want to be when you grow up.”

  “I’m going to be a fireman!”

  “I’m going to be a bus driver!”

  “I’m going—”

  Mrs. Dickens claps her hands twice. “Children! We do not talk out of turn, and we do not talk when others are talking.”

  The room slowly grows quiet.

  “But it is good to see that you’re all so enthusiastic. Let’s go around the circle, and everyone can have a chance to share.” She looks down to her right. “Anna, you can start.”

  “I’m going to be a ballerina,” Anna says.

  Lizzy does not know the answer, and she does not like that. Besides, she is going to be last, and all the right ones will be gone. She crosses her arms and scowls down at the hem of her plaid skirt.

  “I’m going to be a doctor,” Herbie says.

  Fireman. Doctor. Policeman. Teacher. Mailman. Nurse. Baseball player. Mommy. Lizzy thinks about the lady jobs. Nurses wear silly hats and have to be clean all the time, and she is not good at that. Teacher is better, but two people have already said it. She wonders what else there is.

  Tripper takes a long time. Finally he says, “I guess I’ll be in sales.”

  “Like your father? That’s nice.” Mrs. Dickens nods. “Carol?”

  Carol will be a mommy. Bobby will be a fireman.

  Timmy takes the longest time of all. Everyone waits and fidgets. Finally he says he wants to drive a steam shovel like Mike Mulligan. “That’s fine, Timmy,” says Mrs. Dickens.

  And then it is her turn.

  “What are you going to be when you grow up, Lizzy?”

  “Can I see the menu, please?” Lizzy says. That is what her father says at the Top Diner when he wants a list of answers.

  Mrs. Dickens smiles. “There isn’t one. You can be anything you want.”

  “Anything?”

  “That’s right. You heard Andrew. He wants to be president someday, and in the United States of America, he can be.”

  Lizzy doesn’t want to be president. Eisenhower is bald and old. Besides, that is a daddy job, like doctor and fireman. What do ladies do besides mommy and nurse and teacher? She thinks very hard, scrunching up her mouth—and then she knows!

  “I’m going to be a witch,” she says.

  She is very proud, because no one has said that yet, no one in the whole circle. She looks up at Mrs. Dickens, waiting to hear, “Very good. Very creative, Lizzy,” like she usually does.

  Mrs. Dickens does not say that. She shakes her head. “We are not using our imaginations today. We are talking about real-life jobs.”

  “I’m going to be a witch.”

  “There is no such thing.” Mrs. Dickens is frowning at Lizzy now, her face as wrinkled as her braids.

  “Yes there is!” Lizzy says, louder. “In ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ and ‘Snow White,’ and ‘Sleeping—’ ”

  “Elizabeth? You know better than that. Those are only stories.”

  “Then stupid Timmy can’t drive a steam shovel because Mike Mulligan is only a story!” Lizzy shouts.

  “That’s enough!” Mrs. Dickens leans over and picks Lizzy up under the arms. She is carried over to the chair that faces the corner and plopped down. “You will sit here until you are ready to say you’re sorry.”

  Lizzy stares at the wall. She is sorry she is sitting in the dunce chair, and she is sorry that her arms hurt where Mrs. Dickens grabbed her. But she says nothing.

  Mrs. Dickens waits for a minute, then makes a tsk noise and goes back to the circle. For almost an hour, Lizzy hears nursery school happening behind her: blocks clatter, cupboards open, Mrs. Dickens gives directions, children giggle and whisper. This chair does not feel right at all, and Lizzy squirms. After a while she closes her eyes and talks to Maleficent without making any sound. Out of long repetition, her thumb and lips move in concert, and the witch responds.

  Lizzy is asking when she will learn to cast a spell, how that is different from spelling ordinary W-O-R-D-S, when the Recess bell rings behind her. She makes a disappearing puff with her fingers and opens her eyes. In a moment, she feels Mrs. Dickens’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Have you thought about what you said?” Mrs. Dickens asks.

  “Yes,” says Lizzy, because it is true.

  “Good. Now, tell Timmy you’re sorry, and you may get your coat and go outside.”

  She turns in the chair and sees Timmy standing behind Mrs. Dickens. His hands are on his hips, and he is grinning like he has won a prize.

  Lizzy does not like that. She is not sorry.

  She is mad.

  Mad at Mommy, mad at the baby, mad at all the unfair things. Mad at Timmy Lawton, who is right here.

  Lizzy clenches her fists and feels a tingling, all over, like goosebumps, only deeper. She glares at Timmy, so hard that she can feel her forehead tighten, and the anger grows until it surges through her like a ball of green fire.

  A thin trickle of blood oozes from Timmy Lawton’s nose. Lizzy stares harder and watches blood pour across his pale lips and begin to drip onto his sailor shirt, red dots appearing and spreading across the white stripes.

  “Help?” Timmy says.

  Mrs. Dickens turns around. “Oh, dear. Not again.” She sighs and calls to the other teacher. “Linda? Can you get Timmy a washcloth?”

  Lizzy laughs out loud.

  In an instant, Lizzy and the chair are off the ground. Mrs. Dickens has grabbed it by the rungs and carries it across the room and out the classroom door. Lizzy is too startled to do anything but hold on. Mrs. Dickens marches down the hall, her shoes like drumbeats.

  She deposits Lizzy with a thump in the corner of an empty Sunday school room, shades drawn, dim and chilly with brown-flecked linoleum and no rug.

  “You. Sit. There,” Mrs. Dickens says in a voice Lizzy has not heard her use before.

  The door shuts and footsteps echo away. Then she is alone and everything is very quiet. The room smells like chalk and furniture polish. She lets go of the chair and looks around. On one side is a blackboard, on the other a picture of Jesus with a hat made of thorns, like the ones Maleficent put around Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

  Lizzy nods. She kicks her feet against the rungs of the small chair, bouncing the rubber heels of her saddle shoes against the wood. She hears the other children clatter in from Recess. Her stomach gurgles. She will not get Snack.

  But she is not sorry.

  It is a long time before she hears cars pull into the parking lot, doors slamming and the sounds of many grown-up shoes on the wide stone stairs.

  She tilts her head toward the door, listens.

  “… Rosemary? Isn’t she adorable!” That is Mrs. Dickens.

  And then, a minute later, her mother, louder. “Oh, dear, now what?”

  Another minute, and she hears the click-clack of her mother’s shoes in the hall, coming closer.

  Lizzy turns in the chair, forehead taut with concentration. The tingle begins, the green fire rises inside her. She smiles, staring at the doorway, and waits.

  THE THREEFOLD WORLD

&
nbsp; ELLEN KUSHNER

  WHEN HE WAS an old man, honored by his countrymen and foreign scholars alike, Elias Lönnrot was still a humble person. What else would he be, he who had been born in a one-room cottage where people spoke only Finnish, the language of poor peasants? His father was a tailor, who sewed rough clothes for others and taught his son his trade. But young Elias was too hungry to sit still and sew. He wanted knowledge; he wanted the wide world. He wanted it so much that he learned to read, and taught himself Swedish, the language of the ones who had ruled his poor country for hundreds of years. He made his way to school, this boy with the much-darned shirt cuffs and the letters dancing in his eyes, all the way to Turku by the sea, the great capital city.

  When he got to Turku Cathedral School, he wasn’t the only poor boy, though he may have been the smartest. Elias and his friends, the other hungry ones, slept four to a bed, head to foot—which was all right, as the Finnish winters are bitter cold, even in Turku by the sea. They shared everything: food and heat and their precious books, the Latin and the Greek texts with pages worn and covers battered by the scholars before them.

  “There’s a world out there,” Elias would say, “a world of words and knowledge, and it’s ours for the taking, boys!”

  He meant “mine for the taking,” in those days; for his friends, though good-hearted and intelligent enough, seemed weak to him, lacking in discipline and understanding, slow to grasp what seemed obvious to him in the lectures of the Turku masters. So what if his friends’ Swedish ran more smoothly on their tongues sometimes than his? Could his friends recite from memory the Latin poems of Virgil? So what if they knew the tavern gossip about the Frenchman Napoleon’s escape from St. Helena before he did? Their tongues stumbled when they read the Greek epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, the roots of the civilization that had spawned Western culture, all that a wise man truly needed to know.

  And lately they’d even gotten some notion about studying Finnish language and history! But Finnish was useless to Elias Lönnrot. There was nothing to read in Finnish, nothing new for almost three hundred years, and even then just a rendering of a greater work, when the scholar Agricola translated the Bible back in 1548, so that his ignorant people could hear God’s word in their own tongue.