Nobody's Family is Going to Change (12 page)

Ketchum burst out laughing, inexplicably. Everybody turned to her. She stopped laughing and went back to her strange glancing around.

It was then that they all realized that Ketchum had been swiveling her head around, darting her eyes back and forth, and generally looking frightened to death ever since they came into the park.

“What's the matter with you?” asked Emma.

Ketchum started, grabbed her books, and looked ready to run out of the park.

“Wait,” said Goldin. “What's the matter?”

“I'm not supposed to be here,” whispered Ketchum, her eyes flying around in her head like frightened birds.

“Where?” asked Emma.

“In the park.” She hugged her books.

“You supposed to be somewhere else?” Emma felt amused. Ketchum looked so tiny huddled there, her eyes flying.

“A man was murdered here,” whispered Ketchum. She leaned forward so far that she almost fell, and all her books dropped.

Emma helped her pick them up, noticing as she did that Ketchum had spidery little white hands, covered with
freckles. Emma was fascinated by the ugliness of them. She thought white skin ugly anyway, but Ketchum's hands took the cake. She tried to hand the books back without touching them.

“My father told me not to set foot in this park, even in the daytime.” Ketchum was breathless with her own deceit.

Emma looked around. There were nannies with baby carriages, children being pushed on swings. Everything looked the way it always did.

“I think we'll be all right,” said Saunders. Goldin nodded.

“But a whole bunch of guys came across from Eighty-sixth Street and killed this guy,” said Ketchum.

“At night?” asked Emma.

Ketchum nodded. “Well, then,” said Saunders. “What I think we ought to talk about,” she continued, dismissing murder, “is whether we have any complaints. Cathy said that the best thing to do was to talk over complaints with friends and choose the really important ones, you know, so nobody is embarrassed in front of the whole brigade by some, you know, dumb complaint, like they don't like their breakfast cereal and they want it changed.”

Emma laughed her silent laugh. They all watched her shaking and making no noise, until she saw them watching her. She stopped laughing and said, “That's ridiculous. Who would do that?”

“Obviously, she didn't really mean that,” said Saunders, looking superior.

Emma became aware that Saunders had mean eyes. Mean eyes and a dull mind, she thought. “Obviously,” she said. “Okay, who's first with a complaint?”

Nobody said a word. Everyone looked at the river as though they'd never seen it before. Ketchum must have moved, because all her books fell again. Emma helped her again.

“Uh, Saunders”—Ketchum leaned over Emma, who was picking up books—“could I speak to you privately?”

“Certainly,” said Saunders. She stood up and walked over to the railing. Ketchum followed her. They stood, leaning over the river, talking.

Emma felt like a fat frog, sitting there watching them. She looked at Goldin. Goldin was watching them too. Goldin was looking only at Saunders, as usual.

“Nice day,” said Emma. Goldin was too engrossed in watching her master to answer.

Saunders put an arm around Ketchum and led her back to the bench.

“This is definitely a serious problem,” she said, and sat down next to Emma, making a place for Ketchum beside her. Ketchum seemed to have picked up Goldin's disease, because she looked up into Saunders' eyes adoringly.

“Ketchum's uncle is posing a problem. This uncle is her father's brother. He's out of a job all the time and is always coming over and hanging around the house, especially the afternoons, when Ketchum is home alone after school.” Saunders paused for drama, checking everyone to
see if they were paying attention. “This uncle makes indecent proposals to Ketchum.”

Emma couldn't believe her ears. Ketchum? Who would make any kind of proposal to Ketchum, let alone indecent. She searched Ketchum's face. Was Ketchum making this up?

“Ketchum wants him stopped,” finished Saunders.

“Naturally,” said Goldin.

“Let's take a vote,” said Saunders. “Is this serious enough for presentation?”

“Has this happened more than once?” asked Emma.

Ketchum looked petrified, but nodded.

“Is your family—are your mother and father aware of this?”

Ketchum said, “Oh, no,” and tried to get to her feet, presumably to run out of the park.

“Ketchum can't tell her family,” said Saunders. “She's tried, but she can't talk to them, about that or about anything else.”

“Would they be violent if approached by a committee?” Emma pressed on. As she did this, she was thinking of her own family and how she would answer these questions.

“I don't think so,” said Ketchum. “They never hit me or anything.”

Who would hit a frightened thing like you, thought Emma.

“Let's take a vote,” said Saunders. “I vote yes, that this is serious enough.” She raised her hand.

Goldin raised hers immediately, then Emma.

Ketchum gave a sort of little screech. “Oooo, you mean they're going to come to my house?”

“That's what you want, isn't it?” asked Goldin.

“Oooo, I don't know,” squealed Ketchum.

“We'll come back to that later,” said Saunders. “Goldin, you have a problem, I believe?”

“Yes,” said Goldin. “I have three brothers. My father thinks everything they do is wonderful. My mother is dead. Like, when they bring home report cards, he makes a big chazzerei over every B they get, and when I bring home my report card, which is all A's, he doesn't say a damn thing, like that's what I should get, that's what's expected of me. And my brothers can't stand me, like they trip me all the time and hide my clothes so I'm late for school, and they steal all my pens and pencils and notebooks, and my sweaters. One of them likes to dress in girl's clothes and he's all the time stealing my sweaters.”

“And you can't talk to your father about this, can you?” asked Saunders, prompting.

“God, no. He thinks the boys hung the moon. When I was little, I couldn't even say one of them hit me, even when I was bleeding from it. He wouldn't believe me, he would make out like I walked into a door or something. They never do anything wrong as far as he's concerned.”

“So there would be your father and three boys for the committee to face?” Saunders seemed to have thought about all this before. Emma figured they had talked about it together before this.

“That's right,” said Goldin. “And they're big, too. My brothers are big guys, at least two of them are—the one who likes to dress up is smaller.”

“Does your father know of this tendency?” asked Emma.

“What do you mean?” asked Goldin.

“Does your father know this boy has a tendency toward transvestitism?” Emma was proud of her vocabulary.

“What?” asked Ketchum abruptly.

“Oh, right,” said Goldin. “No, he doesn't know it goes on all the time. He saw him once dressed up for a school play like that and he told him he was beautiful. I tell you, anything they do is just perfect with him. They can't do any wrong.”

“What do you want the committee to tell him?” asked Emma.

“I don't know, exactly,” said Goldin. “I mean, he's not going to listen, I'll tell you that right now. I guess he should be told to change his attitude, but I don't think he'd listen for one minute. I mean, he doesn't see anything wrong with his attitude.”

“Let's vote,” said Saunders.

“On what?” asked Emma. “We have to know what she wants accomplished first.”

“I think we just have to vote on whether it's serious or not,” said Saunders.

“The point is,” said Emma, “it has to be clear-cut that the committee can do some good, like something she could ask that the father stop doing, not just his attitude,
but something he does to her.” Emma knew she was right, but her heart sank as she said what she said, because wasn't it her own father's attitude that was at fault? If he would just change his attitude about Willie—but no, he had done something too. He had said that Willie couldn't take dance lessons any more. The committee could get the dance lessons reinstated.

“He would have to change everything about himself,” said Goldin. “I can't see them asking for that—like, Hi, there, Mr. Goldin, go change yourself.”

“The boys do things to you, though. He could be made to see that, and he could be made to stop them, right?” Emma felt triumphant at having discovered this.

Goldin nodded uncertainly. Saunders' eyes brightened. “You could tell the committee about the one who steals your clothes. Then, when they tell your father to stop him from stealing your clothes, your father will—”

“—look like a ninny and let you have it,” said Emma. “I think the best thing would be to punch the physical violence. Make a lot of them tripping you and socking you and so forth. That way, even your father will have to say there's something wrong with that, but he can just chalk it off to ‘boys will be boys.' It wouldn't make him look bad, which would make him turn against you.”

“Right!” said Goldin. “Hey, that's brilliant! Hey, Saunders, isn't she great?” Goldin glistened her eyes at Emma.

Emma looked away. She didn't want Goldin switching from Saunders to her and following her around the halls.

“I think that's good,” said Saunders, as though Emma had said something perfectly ordinary that everybody knew and that she, Saunders, just hadn't got around to saying because it was so dull. “Okay, so the proposal is that your father stop the boys from beating up on you. I vote yes.” Saunders raised her hand.

Emma raised hers, and Ketchum raised hers. “Okay,” said Saunders. “Anybody else?”

Since there was no one left but Saunders and herself, Emma said, “How about you?”

“I'm thinking about something,” said Saunders. “I don't know if I'm ready yet to bring it up.”

Clever, thought Emma, get them all to expose themselves before you tell anything about yourself.

“We can wait,” said Emma.

“Do
you
have a complaint?” asked Saunders.

Pinned, thought Emma, right to the ass of the donkey. Okay, she said to herself, here goes nothing. She opened her mouth, but she couldn't bring herself to say anything. Three white faces leaned toward her. She had never been more aware than at this moment that they were white. She remembered one of the fears of her childhood, her fear of white faces. Her mother would laugh about it now and tell about Emma rearing back when a white face leaned down into the bassinet. Now white faces only looked weak to her, as though white people didn't have as much substance, but were so much protoplasm without much reality.

“Uh,” she said intelligently. “This may be a matter for the courts.” Rats. Why had she said that? She was going to look like an utter fool now, when she told the truth. “I mean, this kind of behavior should be a matter for the courts, whereas it is not, in this day and age, in the legal system we have.” She was dribbling on wildly. Why couldn't she just start?

“What's the problem?” asked Goldin with a kindly look on her face.

They probably expect me to say that I live in Harlem and the rats are running all over our apartment and we have no clean drinking water.

“I live on East End at Seventy-ninth,” she said, although no one had asked her, nor had anyone else given her address. “Uh, my little brother wants to be a dancer, my father doesn't want him to be.” How to explain that dancing used to be something everybody tried to do because there wasn't anything else, and now, since her father was a lawyer, he wanted his son not to go down socially but to be a lawyer too and carry everybody forward. She looked at the white faces. They wouldn't have the faintest idea what she was talking about. “My father thinks it's sissy,” she said finally. “My brother doesn't like to do anything in the world but dance, and my father is stopping him.”

“How old is your brother?” asked Saunders.

“Seven.”

“Does he dance well?” asked Goldin.

“Terrific. He's really good. See, we have an uncle who's a dancer, a professional, and he's in all the shows—”

“What's his name?” asked Goldin.

“Dipsey Bates.”

“Wow! Dipsey Bates is your uncle? No kidding!” Goldin was really impressed. Even Saunders murmured something, and Ketchum's eyes got wide.

“You heard of him?”

“Sure! Everybody has. You mean, here you have an uncle in show business and your father won't let your brother—won't let him what?—dance around the house?”

“No, see, Dipsey's been giving him lessons, and Willie, that's my brother, he wants to go away to summer stock with Dipsey this summer, and my father won't let him, and now my father has even stopped the dancing lessons.”

“Is he a sissy?” asked Goldin.

“Willie?” Emma thought a minute. When she thought about it in any concrete way, she realized she didn't know what a sissy was. “How do you mean?” she asked guardedly.

“Well, you know,” said Goldin, “like my brother who wants to wear dresses, he's a sissy. He's afraid of everything and screams like a girl when he sees a mouse. My brothers tease him all the time and he cries.”

Willie cried, but then he had a reason. Was he afraid of everything? Actually, Willie didn't seem to be afraid of anything. She, Emma, had tried to
make
him afraid on many occasions. She thought of this now with the beginnings of shame. She remembered once holding him against the sill of an open window and telling him she was going to push him out. That was only last year. All he'd done was kick her
in the stomach and run down the hall. Just the other day, he had gone all the way across town by himself. Somebody afraid wouldn't do that.