Child’s Play

One afternoon toward the end of summer, Nanny said, “There’s a beast abroad. I’ve seen it at dusk several times, lurking about in the ferns. What sorts of creatures are native to these hills anyway?”

“You don’t find anything larger than a gopher,” said Melena. They were at the side of the brook, working at laundry. The small spring wetness had long since ceased, and the drought had clamped its hand down again. The stream was only a thin trickle. Elphaba, who would not come near the water, was stripping a wild pear tree of its stunted crop. She clung to the trunk with her hands and out-turned feet, and threw her head around, catching the sour fruit with her teeth and then spitting seeds and stem on the ground.

“This is larger than a gopher,” said Nanny. “Trust me. Have you bears? It could have been a bear cub, though it moved mighty fast.”

“No bears. There’s the rumor of rock tigers on the felltop, but they tell me not a single one has been sighted in ages. And rock tigers are notoriously skittish and shy. They don’t come near human dwellings.”

“A wolf then? Are there wolves?” Nanny let the sheet droop in the water. “It could have been a wolf.”

“Nanny, you think you’re in the desert. Wend Hardings is desolate, I agree, but it’s a tame barrenness for all that. You’re alarming me with your wolf and your tiger talk.”

Elphaba, who would not speak yet, made a low growl in the pocket of her throat.

“I don’t like it,” said Nanny. “Let’s finish up and dry these things back at the house. Enough is enough. Besides, I have other things I want to say to you. Let’s give the child to Turtle Heart and let’s go off somewhere.” She shuddered. “Somewhere safe.”

“What you have to say you can say within earshot of Elphaba,” said Melena. “You know she doesn’t understand a word.”

“You confuse not speaking with not listening,” said Nanny. “I think she understands plenty.”

“Look, she’s smearing fruit on her neck, like a cologne—”

“Like a war paint, you mean.”

“Oh, dour Nanny, stop being such a goose and scrub those sheets harder. They’re filthy.”

“I need hardly ask whose sweat and leakage this is . . .”

“Oh you, no you needn’t ask, but don’t start moralizing at me—”

“But you know Frex is bound to notice sooner or later. These energetic afternoon naps you take—well, you always had an eye for the fellow with a decent helping of sausage and hard-boiled eggs—”

“Nanny, come, this is none of your affair.”

“More’s the pity,” said Nanny, sighing. “Isn’t aging a cruel hoax? I’d trade my hard-won pearls of wisdom for a good romp with Uncle Flagpole any day.”

Melena flipped a handful of water in Nanny’s face to shut her up. The older woman blinked and she said, “Well, it’s your garden, plant there what you choose and reap what you may. What I want to talk about is the child, anyway.”

The girl was now squatting behind the pear tree, eyes narrowed at something in the distance. She looked, thought Melena, like a sphinx, like a stone beast. A fly even landed on her face and walked across the bridge of her nose, and the child didn’t flinch or squirm. Then, suddenly, she leaped and pounced, a naked green kitten after an invisible butterfly.

“What about her?”

“Melena, she needs to get used to other children. She’ll start talking a little bit if she sees that other chicks are talking.”

“Talking among children is an overrated concept.”

“Don’t be glib. You know she needs to get used to people other than us. She’s not going to have an easy time of it anyhow, unless she sheds her greeny skin as she grows up. She needs the habits of conversation. Look, I give her chores to do, I warble nursery rhymes at her. Melena, why doesn’t she respond like other children?”

“She’s boring. Some children just are.”

“She ought to have other pups to play with. They would infect her with a sense of fun.”

“Frankly, Frex doesn’t expect a child of his to be interested in fun,” said Melena. “Fun is counted for overmuch in this world, Nanny. I agree with him on that.”

“So your dragon-snaking with Turtle Heart is what—devotional exercises?”

“I said don’t be catty, please!” Melena focused on the toweling, beating it with annoyance. Nanny would go on about this; she was up to something. And Nanny had hit the nail on the head. There crept Turtle Heart into the cool shadows of the cottage, when Melena was tired from a morning’s work in the vegetable garden. He covered her with a sense of holiness, and it was more than her undergarments that would drop away from her when they tumbled panting onto the bedclothes. She would lose her sense of shame.

She knew this did not follow conventional reason. Nevertheless, should a tribunal of unionist ministers call her to court for adultery, she would tell the truth. Somehow Turtle Heart had saved her and restored her sense of grace, of hope in the world. Her belief in the goodness of things had been dashed into bits when little green Elphaba crawled into being. The child was extravagant punishment for a sin so minor she didn’t even know if she had committed it.

It was not the sex that saved her, though the sex was mighty vigorous, even frightening. It was that Turtle Heart didn’t blush when Frex showed up, that he didn’t shrink from beastly little Elphaba. He set up shop in the side yard, blowing glass and grinding it, as if life had brought him here just to redeem Melena. Wherever else he might have been heading had been forgotten.

“Very well, you old interfering cow,” said Melena. “For the sake of argument, what do you propose?”

“We must take Elphie to Rush Margins and find some small children for her to play with.”

Melena sat back on her haunches. “But you have to be jesting!” she cried. “Slow and deliberate as Elphaba is, at least she’s unharmed here! I may not be able to summon much maternal warmth, but I feed her, Nanny, and I keep her from hurting herself! How cruel, to inflict the outside world on her! A green child will be an open invitation for scorn and abuse. And children are wickeder than adults, they have no sense of restraint. We might as well go throw her in the lake she’s so terrified of.”

“No no no,” said Nanny, putting her fat hands on her own knees; her voice was thick with determination. “Now I am going to argue with you about this, Melena, until you give in. Time in its wisdom will bring you around to my way of thinking. Listen to me. Listen to me. You are only a pampered little rich girl who flitted about from music lessons to dance lessons with neighborhood children equally rich and stupid as you. Of course there’s cruelty. But Elphaba must learn who she is and she must face down cruelty early. And there will be less of it than you expect.”

“Don’t play Nanny Goddess with me. I won’t have it.”

“Nanny is not giving up,” said Nanny, just as fiercely. “I have a long-range view of your happiness as well as hers, and believe me, if you don’t give her the weapons and armor with which she can defend herself against scorn, she’ll make your life miserable as hers will be miserable.”

“And the weapons and armor she’ll learn from the dirty urchins of Rush Margins?”

“Laughter. Fun. Teasing. Smiling.”

“Oh, please.”

“I’m not above blackmailing you about this, Melena,” said Nanny. “I can wander into Rush Margins this afternoon and find where Frex is trying to hold his revival meeting and whisper a few words to him. While Frex is busy cranking up the religious ardor of Rush Margins sluggards, would he be interested in knowing what his wife is up to with Turtle Heart?”

“You are a miserable old fiend! You are a foul, unethical bully!” cried Melena.

Nanny grinned with pride. “No later than tomorrow,” she said, “we’ll go in tomorrow and get her life started.”

In the morning a stiff, unforgiving wind galloped from the heights. It picked up old leaves and the remains of failed crops and kitchen gardens. Nanny pulled a shawl across her rounded shoulders and tugged a bonnet over her brow. Her eyes were full of marginal beasts; she kept turning to see a slinking cat-thing or a vixen dissolve into clots of skeleton leaves and debris.

Nanny found a blackthorn staff as if to aid her over stones and ruts, but she hoped to be ready to wield it against some hungry beast. “The land is dry and cold,” she observed, almost to herself. “And so little rain! Of course the big beasts would be driven from the hills. Let’s walk together, no running ahead, little green.”

They made their way in silence: Nanny fearful, Melena angry at having to miss her afternoon dalliance, and Elphaba like a windup toy, one foot solidly in front of the other. The margins of the lake had receded, and some of the crude docks were now walkways over pebble and drying greenrot, with the water pulled back beyond their reach.

Gawnette’s was a dark stone cottage with a roof of moldering thatch. Because of a bad hip, Gawnette was no good at hauling the fishing nets or at kneeling over the wasting vegetable gardens. She had a mess of small children in various stages of undress, squawling and sulking and trotting around the dirty yard in a little pack. She looked up as the minister’s family approached.

“Good day, and you must be Gawnette,” said Nanny brightly. She was pleased to open the gate and be safely inside the garden, even of this hovel. “Brother Frexspar told us we would find you here.”

“Sweet Lurline, what they say is true!” said Gawnette, making a holy sign against Elphaba. “I thought it vicious lies, and here she is!”

The children had slowed to a walk. They were boys and girls, brown-faced and white, all of them filthy, all of them keen on something new. Though they kept walking, playing some game of endurance or make-believe, their eyes never left Elphaba.

“You know this is Melena—of course you do—and I am their Nanny,” said Nanny. “We’re pleased to meet you, Gawnette.” She slid a glance at Melena and bit her upper lip and nodded.

“Very pleased, I’m sure,” said Melena stonily.

“And we need some advice, for you come well recommended,” said Nanny. “The little girl has problems, and the best of our thinking just doesn’t seem to bring forth any good ideas.”

Gawnette leaned forward, suspicious.

“The child is green,” whispered Nanny confidentially. “You may not have noticed, being attracted by her charm and warmth. Of course, we know the good people of Rush Margins wouldn’t let a thing like that bother them. But because she is green, she is shy. Look at her. Little frightened spring turtle. We need to draw her out, make her happier, and we don’t know how.”

“She’s green all right,” said Gawnette. “No wonder useless Brother Frexspar retired from his preaching for so long!” She threw back her head and laughed raucously, unkindly. “And he’s only now had the nerve to take it up again! Well, that’s balls if ever I heard it!”

“Brother Frexspar,” interrupted Melena coldly, “reminds us of the scriptures—‘No one knows the color of a soul.’ Gawnette, he suggested I remind you of that very text.”

“Did he now,” mumbled Gawnette, chastised. “Well then, what do you want with me?”

“Let her play, let her learn, let her come here and be minded by you. You know more than we do,” said Nanny.

The cunning old cow, thought Melena. She is trying that rarest of strategies, telling the truth, and making it sound plausible. They sat down.

“I don’t know if they’d take to her,” said Gawnette, holding out a while. “And you know my hip doesn’t let me hop up and stop them when they get going.”

“Let’s see. And of course there’d be some payment, some cash, Melena fully agrees,” said Nanny. The barren vegetable plot had caught her attention. This was poverty. Nanny gave Elphaba a push. “Well, go on in, child, and see what’s what.”

The girl didn’t budge, didn’t blink. The children came near to her. There were five boys and two girls. “What an ugly pug,” said one of the older boys. He touched Elphaba on the shoulder.

“Play nicely now,” said Melena, about to leap up, but Nanny kept her hand out to say, Stay down.

“Tag, let’s tag,” said the boy, “who’s the greenfly?”

“Not it, not it!” The other children shrieked, and rushed in to brush Elphaba with their hands, and then raced away. She stood for a minute, unsure, her own hands down and clenched, and then she ran a few steps, and stopped.

“That’s the way, healthful exercise,” said Nanny, nodding. “Gawnette, you’re a genius.”

“I know my chicks,” said Gawnette. “Don’t say I don’t.”

Herdlike, the children rushed in again, tapping and darting away, but the girl would not chase them. So they neared her once more.

“Is it true you got a Quadling muckfrog staying with you too?” said Gawnette. “Is it true he only eats grass and dung?”

“I beg your pardon!” cried Melena.

“That’s what they say, is it true?” said Gawnette.

“He’s a fine man.”

“But he’s a Quadling?”

“Well—yes.”

“Don’t bring him around here then, they spread the plague,” said Gawnette.

“They spread no such thing,” snapped Melena.

“No throwing, Elphie dear,” called Nanny.

“I’m only saying what I hear. They say at night that Quadlings fall asleep and their souls climb out through their mouths and go abroad.”

“Stupid people say a lot of stupid things.” Melena was curt and too loud. “I have never seen his soul climb out of his mouth while he was sleeping, and I’ve had plenty of opportu—”

“Darling, no rocks,” shrilled Nanny. “None of the other children have rocks.”

“Now they do,” observed Gawnette.

“He is the most sensitive person I’ve ever met,” said Melena.

“Sensitive isn’t much use to a fishwife,” said Gawnette. “How about to a minister and a minister’s wife?”

“Now there’s blood, how vexing,” said Nanny. “Children, let Elphie up so I can wipe that cut. And I didn’t bring a rag. Gawnette?”

“Bleeding is good for them, makes them less hungry,” said Gawnette.

“I rate sensitive a good sight higher than stupid,” said Melena, seething.

“No biting,” said Gawnette to one of the little boys, and then, seeing Elphaba open her mouth to retaliate, raised herself to her feet, bad hip or no, and screamed, “no biting, for the love of mercy!”

“Aren’t children divine?” said Nanny.