“That’s on the outside,” criticized Aggie Lou. “I got my germs on the inside, where it counts!”
Clarisse was finally impressed. “Inside?”
“They’re running around all over my machine, Dad says. Dad smiles funny when he says it. So does the doctor. They say I got them all over my lungs, having a regular picnic.”
Clarisse looked at her as if she were some black-braided saint glowing in holy repose upon crisp linen. “Lordy.”
“The doctor took some of my germs and put them under one of them seeing things and they ran around playing cops and robbers under his eyes. So there!”
Clarisse had to sit down. Her face was a little pale and flushed at the same time. It was easy to see that Aggie Lou’s triumph had made inroads upon her peace of mind. This particular triumph was much bigger than Clarisse’s Monarch butterfly which she had captured with a piggy squeal in her back yard last week and taunted Aggie Lou with. It was even the next size triumph over Clarisse’s party dress, which was all ruffles and pink roses and ribbons. It was a factor over and above Clarisse’s Uncle Peter who spat brown spit from a toothless mouth and had one wooden leg. Germs. Real germs, inside!
“So,” finished Aggie Lou, controlling her triumph with admirable calm, “I won’t go to school ever again. I won’t have to learn arithmetic or anything!”
Clarisse sat there, defeated.
“And that ain’t all,” said Aggie Lou, holding back the best thing for the last.
“What else?” demanded Clarisse harshly.
Aggie Lou looked about her bedroom quietly, settling back and worming into the blankets warm and nice. Then she said, “I’m going to die.”
Clarisse leaped from her chair, hair bouncing in blonde startlement. “What?”
“Yes. I’m going to die.” Aggie Lou smiled gravely. “So there, Smarty!”
“Oh, Aggie Lou, you’re lying! You’re a dirty fibber!”
“I’m not either! You just ask Mama or Papa or Doctor Nielson! They’ll tell you! I’m going to die. And I’m going to have the nicest coffin ever. Dad said so. You should see Dad when he talks to me. Sometimes he comes in late at night and sits here, where you’re sitting, and holds my hand. I can’t see him very well, except his eyes. They’re funny. He says lots of things. He says I’ll have a coffin plated with gold, and satin inside, a regular doll house. He says I’ll have dolls to play with. He says he’s buying me some land of my own for my doll house where I can play all by myself, Smarty. It’ll be on a hill where I can own the whole world just by looking at it, Dad said it, too. And, and, and I’ll just play with my dolls and look pretty. I’m going to have a green party dress like yours, and a Monarch butterfly, and better than your Uncle Peter I’ll have SAINT Peter for myself!”
Clarisse’s face was tense with keeping back the jealous rage in her. Tears stood bold on her cheeks, and she rose undecided from her perch to stare at Aggie Lou.
Then, screaming fitfully, she plunged from the room, ran down the stairs, and out into the spring day, and across the green lawn to her house, sobbing all the way.
Clarisse slammed the door in upon herself and the kitchen cooking odors. Clarisse’s mother was dissecting apples into a crust-lined tin and she declaimed against the door slamming.
“Oh, I don’t care!” snuffled the little girl, sliding her pink bloomered bottom upon the built-in table bench. “That old Aggie Lou next door!”
Clarisse’s mother looked up. “Have you two been at it again? How many times have I told you?—”
“Well, she’s going to die, and she sits there in bed smiling at me, smiling at me. Gee!”
The mother dropped her knife. “Will you say that again, young lady?”
“She’s going to die, and she sits there laughing at me! Oh, mother, what’ll I do?”
“What’ll you do? About it? Or what?” Bewilderment. The mother had to sit down, her fingers were jumping up and down on her apron.
“I’ve got to stop her, Mother! She can’t get away with it!”
“That’s awfully nice of you, Clarisse, being so thoughtful.”
“I’m not being nice, Mama. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.”
“But I don’t understand. If you hate her, why are you trying to help her?”
“I don’t want to help her!”
“But you just said—”
“Oh, Mama, you don’t help!” She cried bitterly and bit her lips.
“Honestly, you children. It’s so hard to figure you out. Do you or don’t you want to do something about Aggie Lou?”
“I do! I’ve got to stop her! She can’t do it. She’s so stuck up about her—germs!” Clarisse pounded the table top. “She keeps singing ‘I got something you ain’t got!’”
Her mother exhaled. “Oh, I think I’m beginning to see.”
“Mother, can I die? Let me die first. Let me get even with her, don’t let her do this!”
“Clarisse!” A heart whirled like the egg-beater beneath the calico apron. “Don’t you ever talk like that again! You don’t know what you’re saying! My land, oh, my land!”
“Why can’t I talk like this? I guess I can talk if Aggie Lou can.”
“Well, you don’t know anything about death, in the first place. It’s not like what you think it is.”
“What is it like?”
“Well, it’s—it’s—well. Goodness, Clarisse, what a silly question. There’s—nothing wrong with it. It’s quite natural really. Yes, it’s quite natural.”
Her mother felt herself caught between two philosophies. The philosophy of children, so unknowing, so one-dimensional, and her own full-blown beliefs which were too raw, dark and all-consuming to descend upon the sweet little ginghamed things who skirted through their ten year era with soprano laughter. It was a delicate subject. And, as with many mothers, she did not take the realist’s way out, she simply built upon the fantasy. Heaven knows it was easier to look on the bright side, and what little girls don’t know can’t hurt them. So she simply told Clarisse what Clarisse didn’t
Therefore she was dismayed when Clarisse broke into a new storm of rebellion. “That’s the trouble! I’ll never be able to talk to kids at school, after this. Aggie Lou’ll laugh at me!”
The mother suddenly got up. “Go up to your room, Clarisse, and don’t bother me. You can ask questions later, but for heavens sake leave me alone to think now! If Aggie Lou’s going to die, I have to see her mother right away!”
“Will you do something to stop Aggie Lou from dying?”
The mother looked down into the child’s face. There was no compassion or understanding there, just the bright ignorance and primitive jealousy and emotion of a child wanting something and not understanding what degree of something it wants.
“Yes,” said the mother strangely. “We’ll try to stop Aggie Lou from dying.”
“Oh, thank you, Mother!” cried Clarisse in triumph. “I guess we’ll show her!”
The mother smiled weakly, vaguely, closing her eyes. “Yes, I guess we will!”
MRS. SHEPHERD knocked at the back of the Partridge house. Mrs. Partridge answered. “Oh, hello, Helen.”
Mrs. Shepherd murmured something and stepped into the kitchen, thinking to herself. Then when she was seated in the kitchen eating nook she looked up at Mrs. Partridge and said, “I didn’t know about Aggie Lou.”
The carefully assembled smile on Mrs. Partridge’s face fell apart. She sat down, too, slowly. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“No, of course you don’t, but I’ve been wondering...”
“About what?”
“It seems silly. But somehow I think we’ve raised our children wrong. I think we’ve told them the wrong things, or else we haven’t told them enough.”
“I don’t see what you mean,” said Mrs. Partridge.
“It’s just that Clarisse is jealous of Aggie Lou.”
“But that seems so strange. Why should she be jealous?”
