the words that were like good music, profundity expressed in terms that pleased the ear while challenging the mind.
“Everybody likes me,” she said. “Absolutely everybody.”
It was not that she was conceited. It was simply that she was only three. No one had ever taken her with sweet and whispered promises that turned into morning-after lies, ugly and cold as unwashed dishes from last night’s dinner lying in the sink. She had never heard a dictator rock her country to sleep with peaceful lullabies one day and rock it with bombs the next. She was undeceived. Her father ran his hands reverently through her soft yellow hair. She is virgin, he thought, for this is the true virginity, that brief moment in the time of your life before your mind or your body has been defiled by acts of treachery.
It was just before Christmas and she was sitting on her little chair, her lips pressed together in concentration, writing a last-minute letter to Santa Claus. The words were written in some language of her own invention but she obligingly translated as she went along.
Dear Santa, I am a very good girl and everybody likes me. So please don’t forget to bring me a set of dishes, a doll that goes to sleep and wakes up again, and a washing machine. I need the washing machine because Raggedy Ann’s dress is so dirty.
After she had finished her letter, folded it, and asked him to address it, he tossed her up in the air, caught her and tossed her again, to hear her giggle. “Higher, Daddy, higher,” she instructed. His mind embraced her sentimentally: She is a virgin island in a lewd world. She is a winged seed of innocence blown through the wasteland.
If only she could root somewhere. If only she could grow like this.
“Let me down, Daddy,” she said when she decided that she had indulged him long enough, “I have to mail my letter to Santa.”
“But didn’t you see him this afternoon?” he asked. “Didn’t you ask for everything you wanted? Mommy said she took you up to meet him and you sat on his lap.”
“I just wanted to remind him,” she said. “There were so many other children.”
He fought down the impulse to laugh, because she was not something to laugh at. And he was obsessed with the idea that to hurt her feelings with laughter was to nick her, to blemish the perfection.
“Daddy can’t catch me-ee,” she sang out, and the old chase was on, following the pattern that had become so familiar to them, the same wild shrieks and the same scream of pretended anguish at the inevitable result. Two laps around the dining-room table was the established course before he caught her in the kitchen. He swung her up from the floor and set her down on the kitchen table. She stood on the edge, poised confidently for another of their games. But this was no panting, giggling game like tag or hide-and-seek. This game was ceremonial. The table was several feet higher than she was. “Jump, jump, and Daddy will catch you,” he would challenge. They would count together, one, two and on three she would leap out into the air. He would not even hold out his arms to her until the last possible moment. But he would always catch her. They had played the game for more than a year and the experience never failed to exhilarate them. You see, I am always here to catch you when you are falling, it said to them, and each time she jumped, her confidence increased and their bond deepened.
They were going through the ceremony when the woman next door came in with her five-year-old son, Billy. “Hello, Mr. Steevers,” she said. “Would you mind if I left Bill with you for an hour while I go do my marketing?”
“No, of course not, glad to have him,” he said and he mussed Billy’s hair playfully. “How’s the boy, Billy?”
But his heart wasn’t in it. This was his only afternoon of the week with her and he resented the intrusion. And then too, he was convinced that Billy was going to grow up into the type of man for whom he
“Everybody likes me,” she said. “Absolutely everybody.”
It was not that she was conceited. It was simply that she was only three. No one had ever taken her with sweet and whispered promises that turned into morning-after lies, ugly and cold as unwashed dishes from last night’s dinner lying in the sink. She had never heard a dictator rock her country to sleep with peaceful lullabies one day and rock it with bombs the next. She was undeceived. Her father ran his hands reverently through her soft yellow hair. She is virgin, he thought, for this is the true virginity, that brief moment in the time of your life before your mind or your body has been defiled by acts of treachery.
It was just before Christmas and she was sitting on her little chair, her lips pressed together in concentration, writing a last-minute letter to Santa Claus. The words were written in some language of her own invention but she obligingly translated as she went along.
Dear Santa, I am a very good girl and everybody likes me. So please don’t forget to bring me a set of dishes, a doll that goes to sleep and wakes up again, and a washing machine. I need the washing machine because Raggedy Ann’s dress is so dirty.
After she had finished her letter, folded it, and asked him to address it, he tossed her up in the air, caught her and tossed her again, to hear her giggle. “Higher, Daddy, higher,” she instructed. His mind embraced her sentimentally: She is a virgin island in a lewd world. She is a winged seed of innocence blown through the wasteland.
If only she could root somewhere. If only she could grow like this.
“Let me down, Daddy,” she said when she decided that she had indulged him long enough, “I have to mail my letter to Santa.”
“But didn’t you see him this afternoon?” he asked. “Didn’t you ask for everything you wanted? Mommy said she took you up to meet him and you sat on his lap.”
“I just wanted to remind him,” she said. “There were so many other children.”
He fought down the impulse to laugh, because she was not something to laugh at. And he was obsessed with the idea that to hurt her feelings with laughter was to nick her, to blemish the perfection.
“Daddy can’t catch me-ee,” she sang out, and the old chase was on, following the pattern that had become so familiar to them, the same wild shrieks and the same scream of pretended anguish at the inevitable result. Two laps around the dining-room table was the established course before he caught her in the kitchen. He swung her up from the floor and set her down on the kitchen table. She stood on the edge, poised confidently for another of their games. But this was no panting, giggling game like tag or hide-and-seek. This game was ceremonial. The table was several feet higher than she was. “Jump, jump, and Daddy will catch you,” he would challenge. They would count together, one, two and on three she would leap out into the air. He would not even hold out his arms to her until the last possible moment. But he would always catch her. They had played the game for more than a year and the experience never failed to exhilarate them. You see, I am always here to catch you when you are falling, it said to them, and each time she jumped, her confidence increased and their bond deepened.
They were going through the ceremony when the woman next door came in with her five-year-old son, Billy. “Hello, Mr. Steevers,” she said. “Would you mind if I left Bill with you for an hour while I go do my marketing?”
“No, of course not, glad to have him,” he said and he mussed Billy’s hair playfully. “How’s the boy, Billy?”
But his heart wasn’t in it. This was his only afternoon of the week with her and he resented the intrusion. And then too, he was convinced that Billy was going to grow up into the type of man for whom he
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