Katherine Anne Porter (57 page)

“Come over here, fellow, and see what I’ve got,” he said, pulling off quantities of green paper and string from the box which was full of flat, folded colors. He put something in the little boy’s hand. It was limp and silky and bright green with a tube on the end. “Thank you,” said the little boy nicely, but not knowing what to do with it.

“Balloons,” said Uncle David in triumph. “Now just put your mouth here and blow hard.” The little boy blew hard and the green thing began to grow round and thin and silvery.

“Good for your chest,” said Uncle David. “Blow some more.” The little boy went on blowing and the balloon swelled steadily.

“Stop,” said Uncle David, “that’s enough.” He twisted the tube to keep the air in. “That’s the way,” he said. “Now I’ll blow one, and you blow one, and let’s see who can blow up a big balloon the fastest.”

They blew and blew, especially Uncle David. He puffed and panted and blew with all his might, but the little boy won. His balloon was perfectly round before Uncle David could even get started. The little boy was so proud he began to dance and shout, “I beat, I beat,” and blew in his balloon again. It burst in his face and frightened him so he felt sick. “Ha ha, ho ho ho,” whooped Uncle David. “That’s the boy. I bet I can’t do that. Now let’s see.” He blew until the beautiful bubble grew and wavered and burst into thin air, and there was only a small colored rag in his hand. This was a fine game. They went on with it until Grandma came in and said, “Time for supper now. No, you can’t blow balloons at the table. Tomorrow maybe.” And it was all over.

The next day, instead of being given balloons, he was hustled out of bed early, bathed in warm soapy water and given a big breakfast of soft-boiled eggs with toast and jam and milk. His grandma came in to kiss him good morning. “And I hope you’ll be a good boy and obey your teacher,” she told him.

“What’s teacher?” asked the little boy.

“Teacher is at school,” said Grandma. “She’ll tell you all sorts of things and you must do as she says.”

Mama and Papa had talked a great deal about School, and how they must send him there. They had told him it was a fine place with all kinds of toys and other children to play with. He felt he knew about School. “I didn’t know it was time, Grandma,” he said. “Is it today?”

“It’s this very minute,” said Grandma. “I told you a week ago.”

Old Janet came in with her bonnet on. It was a prickly looking bundle held with a black rubber band under her back hair. “Come on,” she said. “This is my busy day.” She wore a dead cat slung around her neck, its sharp ears bent over under her baggy chin.

The little boy was excited and wanted to run ahead. “Hold to my hand like I told you,” said Old Janet. “Don’t go running off like that and get yourself killed.”

“I’m going to get killed, I’m going to get killed,” sang the little boy, making a tune of his own.

“Don’t say that, you give me the creeps,” said Old Janet. “Hold to my hand now.” She bent over and looked at him, not at his face but at something on his clothes. His eyes followed hers.

“I declare,” said Old Janet, “I did forget. I was going to sew it up. I might have known. I
told
your grandma it would be that way from now on.”

“What?” asked the little boy.

“Just look at yourself,” said Old Janet crossly. He looked at himself. There was a little end of him showing through the slit in his short blue flannel trousers. The trousers came halfway to his knees above, and his socks came halfway to his knees below, and all winter long his knees were cold. He remembered now how cold his knees were in cold weather. And how sometimes he would have to put the part of him that came through the slit back again, because he was cold there too. He saw at once what was wrong, and tried to arrange himself, but his mittens got in the way. Janet said, “Stop that, you bad boy,” and with a firm thumb she set him in order, at the same time reaching
under his belt to pull down and fold his knit undershirt over his front.

“There now,” she said, “try not to disgrace yourself today.” He felt guilty and red all over, because he had something that showed when he was dressed that was not supposed to show then. The different women who bathed him always wrapped him quickly in towels and hurried him into his clothes, because they saw something about him he could not see for himself. They hurried him so he never had a chance to see whatever it was they saw, and though he looked at himself when his clothes were off, he could not find out what was wrong with him. Outside, in his clothes, he knew he looked like everybody else, but inside his clothes there was something bad the matter with him. It worried him and confused him and he wondered about it. The only people who never seemed to notice there was something wrong with him were Mommanpoppa. They never called him a bad boy, and all summer long they had taken all his clothes off and let him run in the sand beside a big ocean.

“Look at him, isn’t he a love?” Mama would say and Papa would look, and say, “He’s got a back like a prize fighter.” Uncle David was a prize fighter when he doubled up his mitts and said, “Come on, fellow.”

Old Janet held him firmly and took long steps under her big rustling skirts. He did not like Old Janet’s smell. It made him a little quivery in the stomach; it was just like wet chicken feathers.

School was easy. Teacher was a square-shaped woman with square short hair and short skirts. She got in the way sometimes, but not often. The people around him were his size; he didn’t have always to be stretching his neck up to faces bent over him, and he could sit on the chairs without having to climb. All the children had names, like Frances and Evelyn and Agatha and Edward and Martin, and his own name was Stephen. He was not Mama’s “Baby,” nor Papa’s “Old Man”; he was not Uncle David’s “Fellow,” or Grandma’s “Darling,” or even Old Janet’s “Bad Boy.” He was Stephen. He was learning to read, and to sing a tune to some strange-looking letters or marks written in chalk on a blackboard. You talked
one kind of lettering, and you sang another. All the children talked and sang in turn, and then all together. Stephen thought it a fine game. He felt awake and happy. They had soft clay and paper and wires and squares of colors in tin boxes to play with, colored blocks to build houses with. Afterward they all danced in a big ring, and then they danced in pairs, boys with girls. Stephen danced with Frances, and Frances kept saying, “Now you just follow me.” She was a little taller than he was, and her hair stood up in short, shiny curls, the color of an ash tray on Papa’s desk. She would say, “You can’t dance.” “I can dance too,” said Stephen, jumping around holding her hands, “I can, too, dance.” He was certain of it.
“You
can’t dance,” he told Frances, “you can’t dance at all.”

Then they had to change partners, and when they came round again, Frances said, “I don’t
like
the way you dance.” This was different. He felt uneasy about it. He didn’t jump quite so high when the phonograph record started going dumdiddy dumdiddy again. “Go ahead, Stephen, you’re doing fine,” said Teacher, waving her hands together very fast. The dance ended, and they all played “relaxing” for five minutes. They relaxed by swinging their arms back and forth, then rolling their heads round and round. When Old Janet came for him he didn’t want to go home. At lunch his grandma told him twice to keep his face out of his plate. “Is that what they teach you at school?” she asked. Uncle David was at home. “Here you are, fellow,” he said and gave Stephen two balloons. “Thank you,” said Stephen. He put the balloons in his pocket and forgot about them. “I told you that boy could learn something,” said Uncle David to Grandma. “Hear him say ‘thank you’?”

In the afternoon at school Teacher handed out big wads of clay and told the children to make something out of it. Anything they liked. Stephen decided to make a cat, like Mama’s Meeow at home. He did not like Meeow, but he thought it would be easy to make a cat. He could not get the clay to work at all. It simply fell into one lump after another. So he stopped, wiped his hands on his pull-over, remembered his balloons and began blowing one.

“Look at Stephen’s horse,” said Frances. “Just look at it.”

“It’s not a horse, it’s a cat,” said Stephen. The other children
gathered around. “It looks like a horse, a little,” said Martin.

“It is a cat,” said Stephen, stamping his foot, feeling his face turning hot. The other children all laughed and exclaimed over Stephen’s cat that looked like a horse. Teacher came down among them. She sat usually at the top of the room before a big table covered with papers and playthings. She picked up Stephen’s lump of clay and turned it round and examined it with her kind eyes. “Now, children,” she said, “everybody has the right to make anything the way he pleases. If Stephen says this is a cat, it
is
a cat. Maybe you were thinking about a horse, Stephen?”

“It’s a
cat
,” said Stephen. He was aching all over. He knew then he should have said at first, “Yes, it’s a horse.” Then they would have let him alone. They would never have known he was trying to make a cat. “It’s Meeow,” he said in a trembling voice, “but I forgot how she looks.”

His balloon was perfectly flat. He started blowing it up again, trying not to cry. Then it was time to go home, and Old Janet came looking for him. While Teacher was talking to other grown-up people who came to take other children home, Frances said, “Give me your balloon; I haven’t got a balloon.” Stephen handed it to her. He was happy to give it. He reached in his pocket and took out the other. Happily, he gave her that one too. Frances took it, then handed it back. “Now you blow up one and I’ll blow up the other, and let’s have a race,” she said. When their balloons were only half filled Old Janet took Stephen by the arm and said, “Come on here, this is my busy day.”

Frances ran after them, calling, “Stephen, you give me back my balloon,” and snatched it away. Stephen did not know whether he was surprised to find himself going away with Frances’ balloon, or whether he was surprised to see her snatching it as if it really belonged to her. He was badly mixed up in his mind, and Old Janet was hauling him along. One thing he knew, he liked Frances, he was going to see her again tomorrow, and he was going to bring her more balloons.

That evening Stephen boxed awhile with his uncle David, and Uncle David gave him a beautiful orange. “Eat that,” he said, “it’s good for your health.”

“Uncle David, may I have some more balloons?” asked Stephen.

“Well, what do you say first?” asked Uncle David, reaching for the box on the top bookshelf.

“Please,” said Stephen.

“That’s the word,” said Uncle David. He brought out two balloons, a red and a yellow one. Stephen noticed for the first time they had letters on them, very small letters that grew taller and wider as the balloon grew rounder. “Now that’s all, fellow,” said Uncle David. “Don’t ask for any more because that’s all.” He put the box back on the bookshelf, but not before Stephen had seen that the box was almost full of balloons. He didn’t say a word, but went on blowing, and Uncle David blew also. Stephen thought it was the nicest game he had ever known.

He had only one left, the next day, but he took it to school and gave it to Frances. “There are a lot,” he said, feeling very proud and warm; “I’ll bring you a lot of them.”

Frances blew it up until it made a beautiful bubble, and said, “Look, I want to show you something.” She took a sharp-pointed stick they used in working the clay; she poked the balloon, and it exploded. “Look at that,” she said.

“That’s nothing,” said Stephen, “I’ll bring you some more.”

After school, before Uncle David came home, while Grandma was resting, when Old Janet had given him his milk and told him to run away and not bother her, Stephen dragged a chair to the bookshelf, stood upon it and reached into the box. He did not take three or four as he believed he intended; once his hands were upon them he seized what they could hold and jumped off the chair, hugging them to him. He stuffed them into his reefer pocket where they folded down and hardly made a lump.

He gave them all to Frances. There were so many, Frances gave most of them away to the other children. Stephen, flushed with his new joy, the lavish pleasure of giving presents, found almost at once still another happiness. Suddenly he was popular among the children; they invited him specially to join whatever games were up; they fell in at once with his own notions for play, and asked him what he would like to do next. They had festivals of blowing up the beautiful globes, fuller
and rounder and thinner, changing as they went from deep color to lighter, paler tones, growing glassy thin, bubbly thin, then bursting with a thrilling loud noise like a toy pistol.

For the first time in his life Stephen had almost too much of something he wanted, and his head was so turned he forgot how this fullness came about, and no longer thought of it as a secret. The next day was Saturday, and Frances came to visit him with her nurse. The nurse and Old Janet sat in Old Janet’s room drinking coffee and gossiping, and the children sat on the side porch blowing balloons. Stephen chose an apple-colored one and Frances a pale green one. Between them on the bench lay a tumbled heap of delights still to come.

“I once had a silver balloon,” said Frances, “a beyootiful silver one, not round like these; it was a long one. But these are even nicer, I think,” she added quickly, for she did want to be polite.

“When you get through with that one,” said Stephen, gazing at her with the pure bliss of giving added to loving, “you can blow up a blue one and then a pink one and a yellow one and a purple one.” He pushed the heap of limp objects toward her. Her clear-looking eyes, with fine little rays of brown in them like the spokes of a wheel, were full of approval for Stephen. “I wouldn’t want to be greedy, though, and blow up all your balloons.”

“There’ll be plenty more left,” said Stephen, and his heart rose under his thin ribs. He felt his ribs with his fingers and discovered with some surprise that they stopped somewhere in front, while Frances sat blowing balloons rather halfheartedly. The truth was, she was tired of balloons. After you blow six or seven your chest gets hollow and your lips feel puckery. She had been blowing balloons steadily for three days now. She had begun to hope they were giving out. “There’s boxes and boxes more of them, Frances,” said Stephen happily. “Millions more. I guess they’d last and last if we didn’t blow too many every day.”