Riddance

by Shelley Jackson

  At present, I confess, the case is otherwise. To put it baldly, I am broke.

  Expecting your imminent reply, I am,

  Very sincerely yours,

  Miss Sybil Joines

  Postscript: If you are not in the position to lend me money, could you lend me, instead, your name? A testimonial from a great man like yourself could do much to warm the frigid public eye toward this earnest Seeker.

  2. The Final Dispatch, contd.

  Someone is missing, a child is missing, calamity, havoc, ruination, snatch her back, fetch her home, remember her, recover her, save her!

  These words pl pulse through me, urging me onward, and yet they have no meaning.

  Save her? From death? It’s life that’s the emergency. Death is the haven—sequined bough to which the sparrow homes, beetle’s duff and worm’s earth, whale’s harpoonless hiding place. This I teach. Maybe a little too well: my kids go early and eager. It is a lie that only a Munch (rhymes with lunch) could believe, that my students are driven by the rigors of their training to destroy themselves; though I am rigorous. Death is not departure but arrival. We are latchkeys kept by wanderers against a future homing. With our last strength, we fit our bodies into this locked world, and turn.

  But this time, when I saw the barrel rolling, heard the oiled pins click, I stuck a stick in it. Dove after her, howling to the shades to hold her back.

  Her who?

  [Static, sound of breathing.]

  Finster. Eve Finster, that must have been her name, the girl I sought. Unless it was another girl, but I don’t know who, but it might have been.

  Ahead, I glimpsed her narrow shoulders twisting in her pus-yellow organdy, what nonsense, her black linsey-woolsey, a little scorched, as she wriggled trout-like through the [inaudible]. Then she and I alike were lost in din and tumult to fetch up here, that is, nowhere, that is, in the land of the dead.

  White everywhere, complicating into color, into form, fading again to white. White sky. White plains onto which white cataracts thunder down from an impossible height: souls, pouring without surcease into death, and roaring as they fall. The cataracts—the one stable landmark, the one feature on which all travelers report—are in such incessant motion that they seem immobile: one immense hoary figure, frozen in place, head bowed. Sometimes a bulge travels down the length of it: a fire in a shirtwaist factory, a great ship sunk in icy waters, a [word indistinct].

  But my business is not with the deluge, but with the one drop that does not belong here. To find her is the problem. Like all children she is changeable as thought, passing through form after fugitive form—newt, spoon, little toy car. She does not remember who she is. So I remind her. “Finster!” For a moment her name imposes order on the flux and I see her. Then she changes.

  I lower a bucket to scoop her up, this bucket here, which is enameled red and emblazoned fire and has a crescent of clean water swinging and ringing around the bottom, and is a bucket I made to catch her in, am making now, as I describe it. For I too make my changes, but with method. The bucket comes up dry and different, oaken staves and rusted hoops and a fly on the cracked rim rubbing its hands. But I recognize her, think I do, in the fly, which flies; I follow. Road, I propose, and a road pours out of me. She is a tiny black speck against the, say, warm brown dust. A net, I suggest, and raising it, stride toward the speck. Dust rims the stiff black hem of my skirt. I bring down the net. She scoots away: wind-up mouse, thistledown, cloud.

  I gather my resources, my pitons and plotlines, grammar hooks and grapnels, and go after her. The cloud, a small ground-loving one, leaves the road for a path I do not know (I who thought I made all the paths), her own path, thread-thin and tangled, through dendrite forms that one might call trees, in an optimistic mood. I feel something unfamiliar: Fear? Delight? I plant the butterfly net by the path; call it a mailbox, one of a battalion of mailboxes pertaining, mostly, to cranks and hermits, and frequently upset by hooligans; and the path widens to a road.

  I know this road. It veers off fromt he from the Cheesehill post road, drops into a ravine and burrows down it through sunless, scrubby, undistinguished woods until it emerges into marshy flatlands dotted with copses and thick with thistles, where already in the distance one may catch glimpses of a gabled roof, stately trees, outbuildings. So now I know where we are going. Where else? I follow.

  Green-gray grublike bouncing things that are not dogs bark regardless and keep pace with us through the trees that are not trees. I call my rabbits, the ones with beaks opening red all over their bodies, with wings in their mouths for tongues, with tongues in their fur for wings, these flying, crying, dangerous rabbits that are not rabbits, my protectors. They do battle with the dogs that are not dogs, harrying them toward the hills, the familiar hills of Cheesehill and vicinity now rising like dough at my say-so to enfold both dogs and rabbits, which vanish, for the time being. Time that is not time. Being that is not being.

  The what—who—yes, the child [pause] races on, no cloud now, just a child in a pus-yellow, no, a black school uniform, a little scorched, and I after her.

  Why do I not let her go? [Static, sound of breathing.]

  Really, when one considers the question rationally one does not have to look far for an answer. Obviously, one does not wish to misplace a student under the evaluative eye of a Regional School Inspector. And under circumstances that, under circumstances, under—

  Someone is missing, a child is missing, calamity, havoc—

  Are you receiving?

  The Stenographer’s Story, contd.

  Another pause. The room is quiet, though today’s events have left their spoor: the smell of smoke and lamp oil, shivers of glass, a stain on the carpet. Nothing that cannot wait, so I shall resume what I can still call “my own” narrative, though I keep wanting to type not “I,” but “she” or “the girl,” probably because, as the car rattled on, the feeling only grew that I was not myself, but some third party—an unattributed pronoun in an unfamiliar story. The clouds came thicker; the day grew darker; we turned at last onto a better-kept road, and almost at once deserted it again for a narrow unmarked drive that plunged down into a thrashing, tree-choked ravine and across a swollen brook, then turned and followed this for a while, crossing it several more times before veering away across slanted muddy fields.

  “That,” said Miss Exiguous, extending her cane across me to rap the window, “is the Vocational School.” Though the sun duly broke through the clouds, illuminating the scene, I saw only a clutch of swaying trees, huddled together as if conspiring to hide something from view. But as we slid closer, these parted and fell back as if in capitulation, and there it stood amid its several outbuildings, black and angled, like a house in a book in which something frightening is going to happen. Black birds screamed and fell through the wind. A few orphaned raindrops tapped out a telegraphic message on the roof of the car.

  Once more we crossed the stream, now wide and shallow and edged with rushes, and motored up to a heavy iron gate, through whose grim old-fashioned ornamentation an incongruously bright new chain had—no. That was added only recently, after the troubles began. The gate stood open when I arrived (if with no great air of welcome), had probably not been shut in years, in fact, as weeds grew up through it. So we rolled through without hindrance, then hissed and spat up the gravel drive to a point still somewhat short of the entrance, as if the driver did not care to come too close.

  “Out you get, missy,” he said, extending a hand in through the open door, for though Miss Exiguous was already walking up the drive I had not moved. I scooted stiffly across the seat. For a moment I clung to his lean long fingers as he looked curiously down at me, and then he gently detached himself, went around and wrestled my battered suitcase, a relict of my father, out of the back. “I’ll carry that in for you,” he said, but I saw that he was eager to leave, and shook my head against his protests. “Sure? Then I’ll be off. No, child, you keep that—well, all righ
t, thank you, then.” He glanced at Miss Exiguous. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into, or maybe it’s better if you don’t. Well, so long! Keep your chin up!” The car slithered as it backed and turned, and shot a piece of gravel into the back of my leg. I cried out and bent over, clapping a hand to the spot.

  When I stood up, the feeling of estrangement that, until then, had been contained within me broke free to affect all that I saw. Everything was hard and shining and separate. The drive was separate from the shrubs on its verge, in which separate sparrows shrieked, and from the trees beyond. The trees, unnaturally bright against the storm-dark sky, were separate from one another and from the field on which their separate shadows fell, and the shadows, too, were separate from the field on which they were inflicted by the light. The grass drew itself apart from the mud, the mud from the thistles whose stickers were very similar to one another and yet not the same, and the thistles from the sky. And everything shrank from the school.

  Miss Exiguous had disappeared under its tall narrow portico, where a door must have opened to receive her and closed again. The car, too, was gone, and with it my last chance, I thought confusedly. But to do what, go where? I felt the bones in my fingers, crushed against the handle of my suitcase. From the building, a low hum or murmur rose, swelling and sinking with the wind.

  I am invited, I thought stoutly, I have a right to be here, and I started up the drive. The front door seemed very far away. My suitcase, big enough—yes, quite big enough to transport a body—knocked painfully against my ankle bone at every step. In each perforation of my too-large oxfords, a crescent shadow waxed and waned as its angle to the light changed, or disappeared in my own larger shadow, and inside my loose black stockings, on which tiny fuzz balls clung, my ankles individually flexed and strained. All these phenomena were separate from one another, and so was I separate from them all and even from myself, this girl crunching up a white gravel drive, to the very foot of the entrance steps. This is what they call a haunted house, I said to myself. It is not what I thought. The ghost—I am the ghost.

  But the door was opening and a white girl in a school uniform was coming out. “H-h-hello,” I said, loud with relief, “I am—”

  Then I saw that her eyes were taped shut, her mouth open not in greeting but for some other exercise. She felt her way to the top of the stairs and started down, feeling for the edge of each step with her foot. The shadow of the portico slid off her head, like a veil snagged on a splinter, and the sun slipped a bright sickle into her mouth. When her investigating foot discovered the flagstone at the base of the stairs, she stepped confidently forward onto the drive, and struck against me with the full length of her body.

  It had not occurred to me to move. It had in fact not occurred to me that I was really there, and could be touched.

  I staggered back, dropping my suitcase, and for a moment I held the hard little chicken wings of her elbows and we struggled together. It was not clear whether we were trying not to fall or to accomplish some other project entirely. She was even shorter than I, so I could see how her skull showed through her thin flat hair like something rising through silty water that one had much rather stayed where it was. A fine white down covered her forehead, barely thickening into eyebrows, and hazed even her sharp cheekbones, on one of which a mud-colored mole stood out. Through the blindfold I could see her eyeballs shift as though to follow something moving inside her head.

  Now she drew herself up, forcing out a series of little huffs through her nostrils, as her mouth, as if possessed by a succession of other mouths, stretched itself into an effortful almost-smile, pursed, then gaped, the tongue pulsing visibly in the breach. Clamping her mouth shut again, she pressed out a long, groaning “Wwwww,” and all at once, with a surprise that flooded my body with meltwater, I understood that she was trying to speak.

  Banished was the spell the house had cast on me. The feeling of separate, separate gave way to one of interest and affinity. Here was a stutterer as afflicted as myself! She appeared no great shakes and I began again to feel that I might fit in and even distinguish myself in this place.

  Then she opened her mouth, and said in a man’s voice, bewildered and peremptory, and without any hint of a stammer, “Who are you? You’re no child of mine.”

  I jerked back. The girl reeled away, veered into the bushes, and, shaking out a flock of sparrows, forced herself through.

  Shaken, I heaved up my suitcase and mounted the steps to the door, which to my relief was still open; I did not think I could bear to offend it with my fist. I managed to maneuver myself and my suitcase through without touching its plated edge or the cold tongue it stuck out at me.

  Before me, a great staircase surged up to a landing and turned out of sight. The treads were scuffed almost white except near the walls, where they were black with polish in which just a few golden scratches flared like comets. There was no sign of Miss Exiguous, but a few steps from the bottom lounged a skinny ginger-haired white boy of about fourteen, lashing himself in the mouth with a thin peeled stick. His lips were cut and bleeding. The stick was red where it struck.

  Seeing me, he stopped this occupation and cocked his head impatiently.

  “Mmmmm . . . uh-hmmm . . .” A fine sweat broke out all over me. I could feel my sleeves sticking to my damp skin. “Mmmm . . . Uh-hmmm—mmm . . .”

  I had squeezed my eyes shut. Now I opened them, only to see that the boy was taking no interest in my difficulties, but had begun striking himself again with his stick in a bored manner. I took a careful breath and started over. “Mmm-may I ask where I am supposed to present myself?” I said.

  “I—” He stopped, eyelids fluttering. Then with an upward jerk of his chin, “Wouldn’t,” said the boy, and went on hurting himself.

  “Wouldn’t what?” Consternation at this incivility vied with elation. I had known I was going to be among stutterers like myself, but I had not understood what it would feel like to excite neither curiosity, nor pity, nor mirth. I was ordinary. How glorious!

  “A-a-a-ask. Or present myself. If I wa-was you. She don’t want to see you. If she wanted to see you she would a-already have seen you. And called you to her office. A-a-a-and given you a uniform, and maybe other privileges too” (this in a highly ironical tone), “privileges the rest of us can only dr-r-r-r-eam of, because there’s no telling what honors she might bestow on you if she wa-wants to see you, and without your having time to ask ‘Wh—’”—he stopped, stuck out his chin, closed his eyes, struck himself in the mouth, went on—“‘where should I present myself?’ as if you had any say in the matter. No sir, if you haven’t seen her already you’d better just leave.”

  “But I’ve only just come!”

  “That’s good, it means you haven’t ha-ad time to offend her yet. Go away quick.” He slid his whip between his lips, tasting it.

  I was silent, confounded. I hoped I should not cry. I imagined knocking on Aunt Margaret’s door, suitcase in hand—the words “all a mistake,” her look of dismay—and knew that I would sooner throw myself under the wheels of the train than go back. The thought had a steadying influence, and now my letter of admission swam up in my mind: the envelope with the typed address, the single long half-white, half-dark hair windingly affixed to the adhesive, the brief missive on tissue-thin paper, the enclosed train ticket. And Miss Exiguous on the train platform, holding up a placard with a hole through it in place of words, and pronouncing my name. No, it was not possible that I had misunderstood.

  So it was something else. Well, it would not be the first time I was made unwelcome on account of the color of my skin. I was readying a pert reply when the boy jumped up and hurried away down the narrow hall that, skirting the stairs, led back into the depths of the building. I heard a door close.

  A moment later a pair of feet descended the stairs into view. They were encased in solid black orthopedic shoes and made with each step the sound—doom, doom, doom—of something too heavy to
carry being set down only just in time to keep from dropping it. I shrank back a little; even once the adult person to whom the legs belonged turned the corner onto the landing and showed herself in increments, I thought she had for a moment the appearance of legs that had only accidentally and somewhat gruesomely acquired a torso and head, especially because she was wearing a long sort of stiff smock or robe under which one could imagine that her legs went up all the way to her shoulders. There was even something footlike about her red face with its big dry creased heel of a chin.

  “You must come at once! I don’t know why you are hanging around down here!” she said to me, then turned around and—doom, doom, doom—shrank to legs again.

  My suitcase banging on a riser, as I hurried after her, caused one of the locks to pop open, so I stopped to fasten it, and when I attained the second floor the woman was nowhere in sight. But neither could I hear her tread on the stairs above me, so I exited the stairwell for a wide hallway, lined with closed doors, and dimly lit by a window at the far end.

  It was full of children in school uniform, some perhaps as young as six, some (to my eyes) practically adult. I saw among them, to my relief, several Blacks as well as Orientals and others whose race I could not guess at sight. Most of the children were standing in line outside one or another of the doors, these lines crossing and plaiting without merging. But the impression of order this might have given was greatly offset by other sights: A girl spread-eagled on the floor while a bigger girl, whose uniform had been fitted in back with what looked like a sort of sail, giving her no small resemblance to a Dimetrodon, attempted to fit the tapered end of an eight-foot-long, wobbling cardboard cone into her mouth . . . Another seemingly talking to a small rhombic rubber eraser, periodically holding it up to her ear to receive its reply . . . Three boys, one of them mixed race like me, trying to insert their whole hands into one another’s mouths. A door banged open and a youth ran out, black paper streamers flying from his mouth, jerked open the opposite door, and slammed it shut behind him. I had stopped dead to take in these portents and now, without meaning to, I giggled. Nobody paid the least attention to me. Again I thought, I am a ghost—no one can see or hear me. It was an oddly comfortable notion.