Pottage

Thinking back I realized that not only the children of Bendo scuffled but all the adults did, too—as though they were afraid to lose contact with the earth, as though… I shook my head and went on with the lesson. Before noon, though, the endless shoosh, shoosh, shoosh of feet began again. Habit was too much for the children. So I silenty filed the sound under 'Uncurable, Endurable,' and let the matter drop. I sighed as I watched the children leave at lunchtime. It seemed to me that with the unprecedented luxury of a whole hour for lunch they'd all go home. The bell tower was visible from nearly every house in town. But instead they all brought tight little paper sacks with dull crumbly sandwiches and unimaginative apples in them. And silently with their dull scuffly steps they disappeared into the thicket of trees around the spring. 'Everything is dulled around here,' I thought. 'Even the sunlight is blunted as it floods the hills and canyons. There is no mirth, no laughter. No high jinks or cutting up. No preadolescent silliness. No adolescent foolishness. Just quiet children, enduring.' I don't usually snoop but I began wondering if perhaps the kids were different when they were away from me—and from their parents. So when I got back at twelve thirty from an adequate but uninspired lunch at the Diemuses' house I kept on walking past the schoolhouse and quietly down into the grove, moving cautiously through the scanty undergrowth until I could lean over a lichened boulder and look down on the children. Some were lying around on the short still grass, hands under their heads, blinking up at the brightness of the sky between the leaves. Esther and little Martha were hunting out fillaree seed pods and counting the tines of the pitchforks and rakes and harrows they resembled. I smiled, remembering how I used to do the same thing. 'I dreamed last night.' Dorcas thrust the statement defiantly into the drowsy silence. 'I dreamed about the Home.' My sudden astonished movement was covered by Martha's horrified 'Oh, Dorcas!' 'What's wrong with the Home?' Dorcas cried, her cheeks scarlet. 'There was a Home! There was! There was! Why shouldn't we talk about it?' I listened avidly. This couldn't be just coincidence— a Group and now the Home. There must be some connection… I pressed closer against the rough rock. 'But it's bad!' Esther cried. 'You'll be punished! We can't talk about the Home!' 'Why not?' Joel asked as though it had just occurred to him, as things do just occur to you when you're thirteen. He sat up slowly. 'Why can't we?' There was a short tense silence. 'I've dreamed, too,' Matt said. 'I've dreamed of the Home —and it's good, it's good!' 'Who hasn't dreamed?' Miriam asked. 'We all have, haven't we? Even our parents. I can tell by Mother's eyes when she has.' 'Did you ever ask how come we aren't supposed to talk about it?' Joel asked. 'I mean and ever get any answer except that it's bad.' 'I think it had something to do with a long time ago,' Matt said. 'Something about when the Group first came—' 'I don't think it's just dreams,' Miriam declared, 'because I don't have to be asleep. I think it's remembering.' 'Remembering?' asked Dorcas. 'How can we remember something we never knew?' 'I don't know,' Miriam admitted, 'but I'll bet it is.' 'I remember,' volunteered Talitha, who never volunteered anything. 'Hush!' whispered Abie, the second-grade next-to-youngest who always whispered. 'I remember,' Talitha went on stubbornly. 'I remember a dress that was too little so the mother just stretched the skirt till it was long enough and it stayed stretched. 'Nen she pulled the waist out big enough and the little girl put it on and flew away.' 'Hoh!' Timmy scoffed. 'I remember better than that' His face stilled and his eyes widened. 'The ship was so tall it was like a mountain and the people went in the high high door and they didn't have a ladder. 'Nen there were stars, big burning ones—not squinchy little ones like ours.' 'It went too fast!' That was Abie! Talking eagerly! 'When the air came it made the ship hot and the little baby died before all the little boats left the ship.' He scrunched down suddenly, leaning against Talitha and whimpering. 'You see!' Miriam lifted her chin triumphantly. 'We've all dreamed—I mean remembered!' 'I guess so,' said Matt. 'I remember. It's lifting, Talitha, not flying. You go and go as high as you like, as far as you want to and don't ever have to touch the ground—at all!' He pounded his fist into the gravelly red soil beside him. 'And you can dance in the air, too,' Miriam sighed. 'Freer than a bird, lighter than—' Esther scrambled to her feet, white-faced and panic-stricken. 'Stop! Stop! It's evil! It's bad! I'll tell Father! We can't dream—or lift—or dance! It's bad, it's bad! You'll die for it! You'll die for it!' Joel jumped to his feet and grabbed Esther's arm. 'Can we die any deader?' he cried, shaking her brutally. 'You call this being alive?' He hunched down apprehensively and shambled a few scuffling steps across the clearing. I fled blindly back to school, trying to wink away my tears without admitting I was crying, crying for these poor kids who were groping so hopelessly for something they knew they should have. Why was it so rigorously denied them? Surely, if they were what I thought them… And they could be! They could be! I grabbed the bell rope and pulled hard. Reluctantly the bell moved and rolled. One o'clock, it clanged. One o'clock! I watched the children returning with slow uneager shuffling steps. That night I started a letter: 'Dear Karen, 'Yep, 'sme after all these years. And, oh, Karen! I've found some more! Some more of the People! Remember how much you wished you knew if any other Groups besides yours had survived the Crossing? How you worried about them and wanted to find them if they had? Well, I've found a whole Group! But it's a sick unhappy group. Your heart would break to see them. If you could come and start them on the right path again…' I put my pen down. I looked at the lines I had written and then crumpled the paper slowly. This was my Group. I had found them. Sure, I'd tell Karen—but later. Later, after —well, after I had tried to start them on the right path—at least the children. After all I knew a little of their potentialities. Hadn't Karen briefed me in those unguarded magical hours in the old dorm, drawn to me as I was to her by some mutual sympathy that seemed stronger than the usual roommate attachment, telling me things no outsider had a right to hear? And if, when I finally told her and turned the Group over to her, if it could be a joyous gift, then I could feel that I had repaid her a little for the wonder world she had opened for me. 'Yes,' I thought ruefully, 'and there's nothing like a large portion of ignorance to give one a large portion of confidence.' But I did want to try—desperately. Maybe if I could break prison for someone else, then perhaps my own bars… I dropped the paper in the wastebasket. But it was several weeks before I could bring myself to let the children know I knew about them. It was such an impossible situation, even if it was true—and if it wasn't, what kind of lunacy would they suspect me of? When I finally set my teeth and swore a swear to myself that I'd do something definite, my hands shook and my breath was a flutter in my dry throat. 'Today—' I said with an effort, 'today is Friday.' Which gem of wisdom the children received with charitable silence. 'We've been working hard all week, so let's have fun today.' This stirred the children—half with pleasure, half with apprehension. They, poor kids, found my 'fun' much harder than any kind of work I could give them. But some of them were acquiring a taste for it. Martha had even learned to skip! 'First, monitors pass the composition paper.' Esther and Abie scuffled hurriedly around with the paper, and the pencil sharpener got a thorough workout. At least the kids didn't differ from others in their pleasure in grinding their pencils away at the slightest excuse. 'Now,' I gulped, 'we're going to write.' Which obvious asininity was passed over with forbearance, though Miriam looked at me wonderingly before she bent her head and let her hair shadow her face. 'Today I want you all to write about the same thing. Here is our subject.' Gratefully I turned my back on the children's waiting eyes and printed slowly: I REMEMBER THE HOME I heard the sudden intake of breath that worked itself downward from Miriam to Talitha and then the rapid whisper that informed Abie and Martha. I heard Esther's muffled cry and I turned slowly around and leaned against the desk. 'There are so many beautiful things to remember about the Home,' I said into the strained silence. 'So many wonderful things. And even the sad memories are better than forgetting, because the Home was good. Tell me what you remember about the Home.' 'We can't.' Joel and Matt were on their feet simultaneously. 'Why can't we?' Dorcas cried. 'Why can't we?' 'It's bad!' Esther cried. 'It's evil!' 'It ain't either!' Abie shrilled, astonishingly. 'It ain't either!' 'We shouldn't.' Miriam's trembling hands brushed her heavy hair upward. 'It's forbidden.' 'Sit down,' I said gently. 'The day I arrived at Bendo Mr. Diemus told me to teach you what I had to teach you. I have to teach you that remembering the Home is good.' 'Then why don't the grownups think so?' Matt asked slowly. 'They tell us not to talk about it. We shouldn't disobey our parents.' 'I know,' I admitted. 'And I would never ask your children to go against your parents' wishes, unless I felt that it is very important. If you'd rather they didn't know about it at first, keep it as our secret. Mr. Diemus told me not to bother them with explanations or reasons. I'll make it right with your parents when the time comes.' I paused to swallow and blink away a vision of me leaving town in a cloud of dust, barely ahead of a posse of irate parents. 'Now, everyone, busy,' I said briskly. 'I Remember the Home.' There was a moment heavy with decision and I held my breath, wondering which way the balance would dip. And then— surely it must have been because they wanted so to speak and affirm the wonder of what had been that they capitulated so easily. Heads bent and pencils scurried. And Martha sat, her head bowed on her desk with sorrow. 'I don't know enough words,' she mourned. 'How do you write toolas?' And Abie laboriously erased a hole through his paper and licked his pencil again. 'Why don't you and Abie make some pictures?' I suggested. 'Make a little story with pictures and we can staple them together like a real book.' I looked over the silent busy group and let myself relax, feeling weakness flood into my knees. I scrubbed the dampness from my palms with Kleenex and sat back in my chair. Slowly I became conscious of a new atmosphere in my classroom. An intolerable strain was gone, an unconscious holding back of the children, a wariness, a watchfulness, a guilty feeling of desiring what was forbidden. A prayer of thanksgiving began to well up inside me. It changed hastily to a plea for mercy as I began to visualize what might happen to me when the parents found out what I was doing. How long must this containment