Зенна Гендерсон - The Anything Box

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 the
Anything Box. Could I make one for myself? Could I square off this aching
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waiting, this outreaching, this silent cry inside me, and make it into anAnything Box? I freed my hands and brought them together, thumb to thumb,framing a part of the horizon's darkness between my upright forefingers. Istared into the empty square until my eyes watered. I sighed, and laughed alittle, and let my hands frame my face as I leaned out into the night. To havemagic so near—to feel it tingle off my fingertips and then to be so bound thatI couldn't receive it. I turned away from the window—turning my back onbrightness.
It wasn't long after this that Alpha succeeded in putting sharp points ofworry back in my thoughts of Sue-lynn. We had ground duty together, and onemorning 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 beforethe sentence ended because I suddenly realized whom she meant.
"Well, I call it abnormal to stare at nothing." You could almost taste theacid 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 downfrom her bare pink legs and half covered her face as she swung from one of thebars by her knees. Alpha clutched her wizened, blue hands together andbreathed 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 shewasn'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 serenelyunaware of essentials and so sensitive to trivia.
But she had succeeded in making me worry about Sue-lynn again, and theworry exploded into distress a few days later.
Sue-lynn came to school sleepy-eyed and quiet. She didn't finish any of herwork and she fell asleep during rest time. I cussed TV and Drive-Ins andassumed a night's sleep would put it right. But next day Sue-lynn burst intotears and slapped Davie clear off his chair.
"Why Sue-lynn!" I gathered Davie up in all his astonishment and tookSue-lynn's hand. She jerked it away from me and swung 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 doubledup her fists and pressed them to her streaming eyes. In the shocked silence ofthe room, she stumbled over to Isolation and seating herself, back to theclass, on the little chair, she leaned her head into the corner and sobbedquietly in big gulping sobs.
"What on earth goes on?" I asked the stupefied Davie who satspraddle-legged on the floor fingering a detached tuft of hair. "What did youdo?"
"I only said 'Robber Daughter,'" said Davie. "It said so in the paper. Mymama said her daddy's a robber. They put him in jail cause he robbered a gasstation." 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.
"It isn't nice to call names," I said weakly. "Get back into your seat.I'll take care of Sue-lynn later."
He got up and sat gingerly down in his chair, rubbing his ruffled hair,wanting to make more of a production of the situation but not knowing how. Hetwisted his face experimentally to see if he had tears available and had none.
"Dern girls," he muttered, and tried to shake his fingers free of a wisp ofhair.
I kept my eye on Sue-lynn for the next half hour as I busied myself withthe class. Her sobs soon stopped and her rigid shoulders relaxed. Her handswere softly in her lap and I knew she was taking comfort from her AnythingBox. We had our talk together later, but she was so completely sealed off fromme by her misery that there was no communication between us. She sat quietly
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watching me as I talked, her hands trembling in her lap. It shakes the heart,
somehow, to see the hands of a little child quiver like that.
That afternoon I looked up from my reading group, startled, as though by a
cry, to catch Sue-lynn's frightened eyes. She looked around bewildered and
then down at her hands again—her empty hands. Then she darted to the Isolation
corner and reached under the chair. She went back to her seat slowly, her
hands squared to an unseen weight. For the first time, apparently, she had had
to go get the Anything Box. It troubled me with a vague unease for the rest of
the afternoon.
Through the days that followed while the trial hung fire, I had Sue-lynn in
attendance bodily, but that was all. She sank into her Anything Box at every
opportunity. And always, if she had put it away somewhere, she had to go back
for it. She roused more and more reluctantly from these waking dreams, and
there finally came a day when I had to shake her to waken her.
I went to her mother, but she couldn't or wouldn't understand me, and made
me feel like a frivolous gossipmonger taking her mind away from her husband,
despite the fact that I didn't even mention him—or maybe because I didn't
mention him.
"If she's being a bad girl, spank her," she finally said, wearily shifting
the weight of a whining baby from one hip to another and pushing her tousled
hair off her forehead. "Whatever you do is all right by me. My worrier is all
used up. I haven't got any left for the kids right now."
Well, Sue-lynn's father was found guilty and sentenced to the State
Penitentiary and school was less than an hour old the next day when Davie came
up, clumsily a-tiptoe, braving my wrath for interrupting a reading group, and
whispered hoarsely, "Sue-lynn's asleep with her eyes open again, Teacher."
We went back to the table and Davie slid into his chair next to a
completely unaware Sue-lynn. He poked her with a warning finger. "I told you
I'd tell on you."
And before our horrified eyes, she toppled, as rigidly as a doll, sideways
off the chair. The thud of her landing relaxed her and she lay limp on the
green asphalt tile—a thin paper doll of a girl, one hand still clenched open
around something. I pried her fingers loose and almost wept to feel
enchantment dissolve under my heavy touch. I carried her down to the nurse's
room and we worked over her with wet towels and prayer and she finally opened
her eyes.
"Teacher," she whispered weakly.
"Yes, Sue-lynn." I took her cold hands in mine.
"Teacher, I almost got in my Anything Box."
"No," I answered. "You couldn't. You're too big."
"Daddy's there," she said. "And where we used to live."
I took a long, long look at her wan face. I hope it was genuine concern for
her that prompted my next words. I hope it wasn't envy or the memory of the
niggling nagging of Alpha's voice that put firmness in my voice as I went on.
"That's playlike," I said. "Just for fun."
Her hands jerked protestingly in mine. "Your Anything Box is just for fun.
It's like Davie's cow pony that he keeps in his desk or Sojie's jet plane, or
when the big bear chases all of you at recess. It's fun-for-play, but it's not
for real. You mustn't think it's for real. It's only play."
"No!" she denied. "No!" she cried frantically, and hunching herself up on
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