The Anything Box

AnythingBox. We had our talk together later, but she was so completely sealed off fromme by her misery that there was no communication between us. She sat quietly
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watching me as I talked, her hands trembling in her lap. It shakes the heart,
somehow, to see the hands of a little child quiver like that.
That afternoon I looked up from my reading group, startled, as though by a
cry, to catch Sue-lynn's frightened eyes. She looked around bewildered and
then down at her hands again—her empty hands. Then she darted to the Isolation
corner and reached under the chair. She went back to her seat slowly, her
hands squared to an unseen weight. For the first time, apparently, she had had
to go get the Anything Box. It troubled me with a vague unease for the rest of
the afternoon.
Through the days that followed while the trial hung fire, I had Sue-lynn in
attendance bodily, but that was all. She sank into her Anything Box at every
opportunity. And always, if she had put it away somewhere, she had to go back
for it. She roused more and more reluctantly from these waking dreams, and
there finally came a day when I had to shake her to waken her.
I went to her mother, but she couldn't or wouldn't understand me, and made
me feel like a frivolous gossipmonger taking her mind away from her husband,
despite the fact that I didn't even mention him—or maybe because I didn't
mention him.
'If she's being a bad girl, spank her,' she finally said, wearily shifting
the weight of a whining baby from one hip to another and pushing her tousled
hair off her forehead. 'Whatever you do is all right by me. My worrier is all
used up. I haven't got any left for the kids right now.'
Well, Sue-lynn's father was found guilty and sentenced to the State
Penitentiary and school was less than an hour old the next day when Davie came
up, clumsily a-tiptoe, braving my wrath for interrupting a reading group, and
whispered hoarsely, 'Sue-lynn's asleep with her eyes open again, Teacher.'
We went back to the table and Davie slid into his chair next to a
completely unaware Sue-lynn. He poked her with a warning finger. 'I told you
I'd tell on you.'
And before our horrified eyes, she toppled, as rigidly as a doll, sideways
off the chair. The thud of her landing relaxed her and she lay limp on the
green asphalt tile—a thin paper doll of a girl, one hand still clenched open
around something. I pried her fingers loose and almost wept to feel
enchantment dissolve under my heavy touch. I carried her down to the nurse's
room and we worked over her with wet towels and prayer and she finally opened
her eyes.
'Teacher,' she whispered weakly.
'Yes, Sue-lynn.' I took her cold hands in mine.
'Teacher, I almost got in my Anything Box.'
'No,' I answered. 'You couldn't. You're too big.'
'Daddy's there,' she said. 'And where we used to live.'
I took a long, long look at her wan face. I hope it was genuine concern for
her that prompted my next words. I hope it wasn't envy or the memory of the
niggling nagging of Alpha's voice that put firmness in my voice as I went on.
'That's playlike,' I said. 'Just for fun.'
Her hands jerked protestingly in mine. 'Your Anything Box is just for fun.
It's like Davie's cow pony that he keeps in his desk or Sojie's jet plane, or
when the big bear chases all of you at recess. It's fun-for-play, but it's not
for real. You mustn't think it's for real. It's only play.'
'No!' she denied. 'No!' she cried frantically, and hunching herself up on
the cot, peering through her tear-swollen eyes, she scrabbled under the pillow
and down beneath the rough blanket that covered her.
'Where is it?' she cried. 'Where is it? Give it back to me, Teacher!'
She flung herself toward me and pulled open both my clenched hands.
'Where did you put it? Where did you put it?'
'There is no Anything Box,' I said flatly, trying to hold her to me and
feeling my heart breaking along with hers.
'You took it!' she sobbed. 'You took it away from me! And she wrenched
herself out of my arms.
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'Can't you give it back to her?' whispered the nurse. 'If it makes her feel
so bad? Whatever it is—'
'It's just imagination,' I said, almost sullenly. 'I can't give her back
something that doesn't exist.'
Too young! I thought bitterly. Too young to learn that heart's desire is
only play-like.
Of course the doctor found nothing wrong. Her mother dismissed the matter
as a fainting spell and Sue-lynn came back to class next day, thin and
listless, staring blankly out the window, her hands palm down on the desk. I
swore by the pale hollow of her cheek that never, never again would I take any
belief from anyone without replacing it with something better. What had I
given Sue-lynn? What had she better than I had taken from her? How did I know
but that her Anything Box was on purpose to tide her over rough spots in her
life like this? And what now, now that I had taken it from her?
Well, after a time she began to work again, and later, to play. She came
back to smiles, but not to laughter. She puttered along quite satisfactorily
except that she was a candle blown out. The flame was gone wherever the
brightness of belief goes. And she had no more sharing smiles for me, no
overflowing love to bring to me. And her shoulder shrugged subtly away from my
touch.
Then one day I suddenly realized that Sue-lynn was searching our classroom.
Stealthily, casually, day by day she was searching, covering every inch of the
room. She went through every puzzle box, every lump of clay, every shelf and
cupboard, every box and bag. Methodically she checked behind every row of
books and in every child's desk until finally, after almost a week, she had
been through everything in the place except my desk. Then she began to
materialize suddenly at my elbow every time I opened a drawer. And her eyes
would probe quickly and sharply before I slid it shut again. But if I tried to
intercept her looks, they slid away and she had some legitimate errand that
had brought her up to the vicinity of the desk.
She believes it again, I thought hopefully. She won't accept the fact that
her Anything Box is gone. She wants it again.