Snyder, Zilpha Keatley

NOT LONG AGO IN A LARGE UNIVERSITY TOWN IN

California, on a street called Orchard Avenue, a strange old man ran a dusty shabby store. Above the dirty show windows a faded peeling sign said:

A-Z

ANTIQUES

CURIOS USED MERCHANDISE

Nobody knew for sure what the A-Z meant. Perhaps it referred to the fact that all sorts of strange things-everything from A to Z-were sold in the store. Or perhaps it had something to do with the owner’s name. However, no one seemed to know for sure what his name actually was. It was all part of a

mysterious uncertainty about even the smallest item of public information about the old man. Nobody seemed certain, for instance, just why he was known as the Professor.

The neighborhood surrounding the Professor’s store was made up of inexpensive apartment houses, little family-owned shops,, and small, aging homes. The people of the area, many of whom had some connection with the university, could trace their ancestors to every continent, and just about every country in the world.

There were dozens of children in the neighborhood; boys and girls of every size and style and color, some of whom could speak more than one language when they wanted to. But in their schools and on the streets they all seemed to speak the same language and to have a number of things in common. And one of the things they had in common, at that time, was a vague and mysterious fear of the old man called the Professor.

Just what was so dangerous about the Professor was uncertain, like everything else about him, but his appearance undoubtedly had something to do with the rumors. He was tall and bent and his thin beard straggled up his cheeks like dry moss on gray rocks. His eyes were dark and expressionless, and set so deep under heavy brows that from a distance they looked like dark empty holes. And from a distance was the

only way that most of the children of Orchard Avenue cared to see them. The Professor lived somewhere at the back of his dingy store, and when he came out to stand in the sun in his doorway, smaller children would cross the street if they had to walk by.

Now and then, older and braver boys, inspired by the old man’s strangeness, would dare each other into an attempt to tease or torment him-but not for long. Their absolute failure to get any sort of a reaction from their victim was not only discouraging, it was weird enough to spoil the fun for even the bravest of bullies.

Since there were several antique stores in the area to draw the buyers, the Professor seemed to do a fairly good businesss with out-of-town collectors; but his local trade was very small. It was said that he sold items that were used, but not antique, very cheaply, but even for grownups the prospect of a bargain was often not enough to offset the discomfort of the old man’s stony stare.

It was one day early in a recent September that the Professor happened to be the only witness to the very beginning of . He had been,looking for something in a seldom used storeroom at the back of his shop, when a slight noise drew him to a window. He lifted a gunnysack curtain, rubbed a peephole in the thick coating of dirt, and peered through. Outside that particular window was a small storage

yard surrounded by a high board fence. It had been years since the Professor had made any use of the area, and the weed-grown yard and open lean-to shed were empty except for a few pieces of forgotten junk. But as the old man peered through his dirty window, two girls were pulling a much smaller boy through a hole in the fence.

The Professor had seen both of the girls before. They were about the same age and size, perhaps eleven or twelve years old. The one who was tugging at the little boy’s leg was thin and palely blond, and her hair was arranged in a straggly pile on the top of her head. Her high cheek-bones and short nose were faintly spattered with freckles and there was a strange droopy look to her eyes. The old man recalled that she had been in his store not long before, and along with some other improbable information she had disclosed that her name was April.

The other girl, who had the little boy by the shoulders, was Negro, as was the little boy himself. A similarity in their pert features and slender arching eyebrows indicated that they were probably brother and sister. The Professor had seen them pass his store many times and knew that they were residents of the neighborhood.

The fence that surrounded the storage yard was high and strong and topped by strands of barbed wire, but one thin plank had come loose so that it

was possible to swing it to one side. Both the girls were very slender and they had apparently squeezed through without much trouble, but the boy was causing a problem. He was only about four years old but he was sturdily built; moreover, he was clutching a large stuffed toy to his chest with both arms. He paid not the slightest attention to the demands of the two girls that he, “Turn loose of that thing for just a minute, can’t you?” and, “Let me hold Security for you just till you get through, Marshall.” Marshall remained very^ calm and patient, but his grip on his toy didn’t relax for a second.

When the little boy and his huge plush octopus at last popped free into the yard, the girls turned to inspect their discovery. Their eyes flew over the broken bird bath, the crumbling statue of Diana the Huntress, and the stack of fancy wooden porch pillars, and came to rest on something in the lean-to shack. It was a cracked and chipped plaster reproduction of the famous bust of Nefertiti. The two girls stared at it for a long breathless moment and then they turned and looked at each other. They didn’t say a word, but with widening eyes and small taut smiles they sent a charge of excitement dancing between them like a crackle of electricity.

The customer, an antique dealer from San Francisco, was stirring restlessly in the main room of the store. Hearing him, the Professor was reminded of

his errand. He replaced the sacking curtain and left the storeroom. It was more than an hour later that he remembered the children and returned to the peephole in the dirty window.

There had been some changes made in the storage yard. Some of the ornate old porch pillars had been propped up around the lean-to so that they seemed to be supporting its sagging tin roof; the statue of Diana had been moved into position near this improvised temple; and in the place of honor at the back and center of the shed, the bust of Nefertiti was enthroned in the broken bird bath. The little boy was playing quietly with his octopus on the floor of the shed and the two girls were busily pulling the tall dry weeds that choked the yard, and stacking them in a pile near the fence.

“Look, Melanie,” the girl named April said. She displayed a prickly bouquet of thistle blossoms.

“Neat!” Melanie nodded enthusiastically. “Lotus blossoms?”

April considered her uninviting bouquet with new appreciation. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Lotus blossoms.”

Melanie had another inspiration. She stood up, dumping her lap full of weeds and reached for the blossoms-gingerly because of the prickles. Holding them at arm’s length she announced dramatically, “The Sacred Flower of Egypt.” Then she paced with

dignity to the bird bath and with a curtsy presented them to Ncfcrtiti.

April had followed, watching approvingly, but now she suddenly objected. “No! Like this,” she said.

Taking the thistle flowers she dropped to her knees and bent low before the bird bath. Then she crawled backward out of the lean-to. “Neat,” Melanie said and taking the flowers back, she repeated the ritual adding another refinement by tapping her forehead to the floor three times. April gave her stamp of ap-proyal to this latest innovation by trying it out herself, doing the forehead taps very slowly and dramatically. Then the two girls went back to their weed pulling, leaving the thistles before the altar of Nefertiti.

A few moments later the blond girl sat back suddenly on her heels and clapped a hand to her right eye. When she took it away the Professor, peering through his spy-hole noticed that the eye had lost its strange droopy appearance. “Melanie,” April said. “They’re gone. I’ve lost my eyelashes.”

At about that point, a customer, entering the Professor’s store, forced him to leave his vantage point at the dirty window. So he missed the frantic search that followed. He also missed the indignant scolding when the girls discovered that April’s false eyelashes had fallen before the altar of Nefertiti, where Marshall had found them and quietly beautified one

The Egfpt Game

of the button eyes of his octopus.

When the Professor finally was free to return to his peephole the children had gone home, leaving the storage yard almost free from weeds, and a thistle blossom offering before the bird bath.

HER NAME WAS APRIL HALL, BUT SHE OFTEN CALLED herself April Dawn. Exactly one month before began in the Professor’s backyard she had come, very reluctantly, to live in the shabby splendor of an old California-Spanish apartment house called the Casa Rosada. She came because she had been sent away by Dorothea, her beautiful and glamorous mother, to live with a grandmother she hardly knew, and who wore her gray hair in a bun on the back of her head. None of April and Dorothea’s Hollywood friends ever had gray hair, except the kind you have on purpose, no matter how old they got otherwise.

It had been on that very first day, early in August, that April and the Professor first met. On that first morning of her new life April had spent half an hour

arranging her limp blond hair in a high upsweep, such as Dorothea sometimes wore. It was hard work, much harder than it looked when Dorothea did it. As she pinned and repinned, April told herself with righteous bitterness, that Caroline was sure to make her take it all down again anyway, and all her hard work would be for nothing.

But if her grandmother noticed the hairdo, she said nothing about it at the breakfast table. She didn’t even seem to notice how quiet and depressed April was and try to cheer her up with questions and conversation. April decided that Caroline must be the uninterested kind of person who didn’t notice much of anything. Well, that was good. Because, for the short while she was here, April intended to go right on leading the kind of life she was used to, and if Caroline didn’t even notice-well, at least there wouldn’t be any trouble. All through breakfast Caroline went on saying almost nothing, but finally when she was almost through she did say that she wouldn’t mind being called Grandma or even Grannie, if April liked.

“Oh, I guess I’ll just go on calling you Caroline,” April said. And then with pointed sweetness she added, “That is, unless you’d rather I didn’t.” Dorothea always called her Caroline instead of Mother, so what was wrong with Caroline instead of Grandmother? Of course, Caroline wasn’t Dorothea’s

mother. She was the mother of April’s father, who had died in the Korean War before April even had a chance to get to know him.

Nothing more was said until Caroline began to clear’the table. Then she said, “I’ve arranged for you. to have lunch with Mrs. Ross and her children on the second floor. She said she’d send Melanie, her little girl, up for you about twelve o’clock. The rest of the time you’ll be more or less on your own, but I’d appreciate it if you’d let Mrs. Ross know if you leave the building. Just tell her where you’re going and how soon you’ll be back.”

“I could get my own lunch,” April said. “I cooked a lot at home.”

“I know,” Caroline said, “but I’ve made this arrangement with Mrs. Ross, so we’ll try it for a while, just till school starts. The Rosses are very nice people. Mrs. Ross teaches school and her husband is a graduate student at the university. Their little girl is about your age, and_ they have a boy about four. They’re Negroes,” she added.

April shrugged, “Dorothea and I know a lot of Negro people. There are a lot of Negro people in show business.”

Caroline smiled. “I see,” she said. “Tell me April, what do you think of the Casa Rosada?”

“The what?” April said.

“The Casa Rosada, this apartment house.”

“Oh,” April repeated her shrug. “It’s okay.” Actually it had been a pleasant surprise-that is, it would have been if she’d been in the mood for pleasant surprises. The last time she’d visited Caroline, she’d lived in a tiny super-modern apartment, like a cell, only with paintings. The Casa Rosada was very different. Somehow it made April think of Hollywood and home. It was very Spanishy-looking with great thick walls, arched doorways, fancy iron grillwork, stained glass panels in the windows and tile floors in the lobby. Outside it was painted pink.

Caroline smiled her small prim smile. “Mr. Ross calls it the Petrified Birthday Cake, and I’m afraid that’s a pretty good description. It must have been quite the thing when it was built back in the twenties. Of course, it’s terribly run down now, but the apartments are roomy. It’s so hard to find a modern place with two bedrooms that’s not awfully expensive.”

It hadn’t occurred to April that Caroline had moved because of her-so she could have a bedroom of her own. She knew she ought to feel grateful, but for some reason what she really felt was angry. What made Caroline think that April was going to be with her long enough for it to make any difference whether she had a room of her own or not? Dorothea had promised it would only be for a little while. Only until things got more settled down and she wasn’t on tour so much of the time.