Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (25 page)

By the time I was four, we had moved to an old frame house in the country,
and my father had taken a job teaching at a small junior college nearby,
turning down offers from Columbia and Chicago, knowing how impossible that
would be for Mother. We had a lot of elms and oaks and a huge weeping
willow that hovered sadly over the house. Our pond would be invaded in the
early spring and late fall by a few geese that would usually keep their
distance before flying on. ("You can tell those birds are Jewish," my
father would say, "they go to Miami in the winter," and Simon and I would
imagine them lying on a beach, coating their feathers with Coppertone and
ordering lemonades from the waitresses; we hadn't heard of Collinses yet.)

Even out in the country, there were often those times when we would see
our mother packing her clothes in a small suitcase, and she would tell us
that she was going away for a while, just a week, just to get away, to
find solitude. One time it was to an old camp in the Adirondacks that one
of my aunts owned, another time to a cabin that a friend of my father's
loaned her, always alone, always to an isolated place. Father would say
that it was nerves, although we wondered, since we were so isolated as it
was. Simon and I thought she didn't love us, that Mother was somehow using
this means to tell us that we were being rejected. I would try very hard
to behave; when Mother was resting, I would tiptoe and whisper. Simon
reacted more violently. He could contain himself for a while; but then, in
a desperate attempt at drawing attention to himself, would run through the
house, screaming horribly, and hurl himself headfirst at one of the
radiators. On one occasion, he threw himself through one of the large
living room windows, smashing the glass. Fortunately, he was uninjured,
except for cuts and bruises, but after that incident, my father put
chicken wire over the windows on the inside of the house. Mother was very
shaken by that incident, walking around for a couple of days, her body
aching all over, then going away to my aunt's place for three weeks this
time. Simon's head must have been strong; he never sustained any damage
from the radiators worse than a few bumps and a headache, but the
headaches would often keep Mother in bed for days.

(I pick up my binoculars to check the forest again from my tower, seeing
the small lakes like puddles below, using my glasses to focus on a couple
in a small boat near one of the islands, and then turn away from them, not
wanting to invade their privacy, envying the girl and boy who can so
freely, without fear of consequences, exchange and share their feelings,
and yet not share them, not at least in the way that would destroy a
person such as myself. I do not think anyone will risk climbing my
mountain today, as the sky is overcast, cirrocumulus clouds slowly chasing
each other, a large storm cloud in the west. I hope no one will come; the
family who picnicked beneath my observation tower yesterday bothered me;
one child had a headache and another indigestion, and I lay in my cabin
taking aspirins all afternoon and nursing the heaviness in my stomach. I
hope no one will come today.)

Mother and Father did not send us to school until we were as old as the
law would allow. We went to the small public school in town. An old yellow
bus would pick us up in front of the house. I was scared the first day and
was glad Simon and I were twins so that we could go together. The town had
built a new school; it was a small, square brick building, and there were
fifteen of us in the first grade. The high-school students went to classes
in the same building. I was afraid of them but soon discovered that their
classes were all on the second floor; so we rarely saw them during the day
except when they had gym classes outside. Sitting at my desk inside, I
would watch them, wincing every time someone got hit with a ball, or got
bruised. (Only three months in school, thank God, before my father got
permission to tutor me at home; three months were too much of the constant
pains, the turmoil of emotions; I am sweating now, and my hands shake when
I remember it all.)

The first day was boring to me for the most part; Simon and I had been
reading and doing arithmetic at home for as long as I could remember. I
played dumb and did as I was told; Simon was aggressive, showing off,
knowing it all. The other kids giggled, pointing at me, pointing at Simon,
whispering. I felt some of it, but not enough to bother me too much; I was
not then as I am now, not that first day.

Recess: kids yelling, running, climbing the jungle gym, swinging and
chinning themselves on bars, chasing a basketball. I was with two girls
and a piece of chalk on the blacktop; they taught me hopscotch, and I did
my best to ignore the bruises and bumps of the other students.

(I need the peace, the retreat from easily communicated pain. How strange,
I think objectively, that our lives are such that discomfort, pain,
sadness, and hatred are so easily conveyed and so frequently felt. Love
and contentment are only soft veils which do not protect me from
bludgeons; and with the strongest loves, one can still sense the more
violent undercurrents of fear, hate, and jealousy.)

It was at the end of the second week that the fight occurred during
recess. I was again playing hopscotch, and Simon had come over to look at
what we were doing before joining some other boys. Five older kids came
over, I guess they were in third or fourth grade, and they began their
taunts.

"
Greeeenbaum,
" at Simon and me. We both turned toward them, I
balancing on one foot on the hopscotch squares we had drawn, Simon
clenching his fists.

"
Greeeenbaum,
Esther
Greeeenbaum,
Simon
Greeeenbaum,
"
whinnying the
green,
thundering the
baum.

"My father says you're Yids."

"He says you're the Yids' kids." One boy hooted and yelled. "Hey, they're
Yid kids." Some giggled, and then they chanted, "Yid kid, Yid kid," as one
of them pushed me off my square.

"You leave my sister alone," Simon yelled and went for the boy, fists
flying, and knocked him over. The boy sat down suddenly, and I felt pain
in my lower back. Another boy ran over and punched Simon. Simon whacked
him back, and the boy hit him in the nose, hard. It hurt, and I started
crying from the pain, holding my nose; I pulled away my hand and saw
blood. Simon's nose was bleeding, and then the other kids started in,
trying to pummel my brother, one boy holding him, another boy punching.
"Stop it," I screamed, "stop it," as I curled on the ground, hurting,
seeing the teachers run over to pull them apart. Then I fainted,
mercifully, and came to in the nurse's office. They kept me there until it
was time to go home that day.

Simon was proud of himself, boasting, offering self-congratulations.
"Don't tell Mother," I said when we got off the bus, "don't, Simon, she'll
get upset and go away again, please. Don't make her sad."

(When I was fourteen, during one of the times Mother was away, my father
got drunk downstairs in the kitchen with Mr. Arnstead, and I could hear
them talking, as I hid in my room with my books and records, Father
speaking softly, Mr. Arnstead bellowing.

"No one, no one, should ever have to go through what Anna did. We're
beasts anyway, all of us, Germans, Americans, what's the difference?"

Slamming of a glass on the table and a bellow: "God dammit, Sam, you Jews
seem to think you have a monopoly on suffering. What about the guy in
Harlem? What about some starving guy in Mexico? You think things are any
better for them?"

"It was worse for Anna."

"No, not worse, no worse than the guy in some street in Calcutta. Anna
could at least hope she would be liberated, but who's gonna free that
guy?"

"No one," softly, "no one is ever freed from Anna's kind of suffering."

I listened, hiding in my room, but Mr. Arnstead left after that; and when
I came downstairs, Father was just sitting there, staring at his glass;
and I felt his sadness softly drape itself around me as I stood there, and
then the soft veil of love over the sadness, making it bearable.)

I began to miss school at least twice a week, hurting, unable to speak to
Mother, wanting to say something to Father but not having the words.
Mother was away a lot then, and this made me more depressed (I'm doing it,
I'm sending her away), the depression endurable only because of the
blanket of comfort that I felt resting over the house.

They had been worried, of course, but did not have their worst fears
confirmed until Thanksgiving was over and December arrived (snow drifting
down from a gray sky, Father bringing in wood for the fireplace, Mother
polishing the menorah, Simon and me counting up our saved allowances,
plotting what to buy for them when Father drove us to town). I had been
absent from school for a week by then, vomiting every morning at the
thought that I might have to return. Father was reading and Simon was
outside trying to climb one of our trees. I was in the kitchen, cutting
cookies and decorating them while Mother rolled the dough, humming, white
flour on her apron, looking away and smiling when I sneaked small pieces
of dough and put them in my mouth.

And then I fell off my chair onto the floor, holding my leg, moaning,
"Mother, it hurts," blood running from my nose. She picked me up,
clutching me to her, and put me on the chair, blotted my nose with a
tissue. Then we heard Simon yelling outside, and then his banging on the
back door. Mother went and pulled him inside, his nose bleeding. "I fell
outa the tree," and, as she picked him up, she looked back at me; and I
knew that she understood, and felt her fear and her sorrow as she realized
that she and I were the same, that I would always feel the knife thrusts
of other people's pain, draw their agonies into myself and, perhaps, be
shattered by them.

(Remembering: Father and Mother outside after a summer storm, standing
under the willow, Father putting his arm around her, brushing her black
hair back and kissing her gently on the forehead. Not for me, too much
shared anguish with love for me. I am always alone, with my mountain, my
forest, my lakes like puddles. The young couple's boat is moored at the
island.)

I hear them downstairs.

"Anna, the poor child, what can we do?"

"It is worse for her, Samuel," sighing, the sadness reaching me and
becoming a shroud, "it will be worse with her, I think, than it was for
me."

The End

© "Gather Blue Roses," first published in
The Magazine of Fantasy
& Science Fiction
, February 1972.

James Tiptree, Jr.

Hobie's parents might have seen the first signs if they had been watching
about eight-thirty on Friday nights. But Hobie was the youngest of five
active bright-normal kids. Who was to notice one more uproar around the
TV?

A couple of years later, Hobie's Friday-night battles shifted to ten
PM
, and then his sisters got their own set.
Hobie was growing fast then. In public he featured chiefly as a tanned
streak on the tennis courts and a ninety-ninth percentile series of math
grades. To his parents, Hobie featured as the one without problems. This
was hard to avoid in a family that included a diabetic, a girl with an IQ
of 185 and another with controllable petit mal, and a would-be ski star
who spent most of his time in a cast. Hobie's own IQ was in the fortunate
140s, the range where you're superior enough to lead but not too superior
to be followed. He seemed perfectly satisfied with his communications with
his parents, but he didn't use them much.

Not that he was in any way neglected when the need arose. The time he got
staph in a corneal scratch, for instance, his parents did a great job of
supporting him through the pain bit and the hospital bit and so on. But
they couldn't know all the little incidents. Like the night when Hobie
called so fiercely for Dr. McCoy that a young intern named McCoy went in
and joked for half an hour with the feverish boy in his dark room.

To the end, his parents probably never understood that there was anything
to understand about Hobie. And what was to see? His tennis and his model
rocket collection made him look almost too normal for the small honors
school he went to first.

Then his family moved to an executive bedroom suburb where the school
system had a bigger budget than Monaco and a soccer team loaded with
National Merit Science finalists. Here Hobie blended right in with the
scenery. One more healthy, friendly, polite kid with bright gray eyes
under a blond bowl-cut and very fast with any sort of ball game.

The brightest eyes around him were reading
The Double Helix
to find
out how to make it in research, or marking up the Dun & Bradstreet
flyers. If Hobie stood out at all, it was only that he didn't seem to be
worried about making it in research or any other way, particularly. But
that fitted in too. Those days a lot of boys were standing around looking
as if they couldn't believe what went on, as if they were waiting for—who
knows?—a better world, their glands, something. Hobie's faintly
aghast expression was not unique. Events like the installation of an armed
patrol around the school enclave were bound to have a disturbing effect on
the more sensitive kids.

People got the idea that Hobie
was
sensitive in some indefinite
way. His usual manner was open but quiet, tolerant of a put-on that didn't
end.

His advisor did fret over his failure to settle on a major field in time
for the oncoming threat of college. First his math interest seemed to
evaporate after the special calculus course, although he never blew an
exam. Then he switched to the precollege anthropology panel the school was
trying. Here he made good grades and acted very motivated, until the
semester when the visiting research team began pounding on sampling
techniques and statistical significance. Hobie had no trouble with things
like chi-square, of course. But after making his A in the final, he gave
them his sweet, unbelieving smile and faded. His advisor found him
spending a lot of hours polishing a six-inch telescope lens in the school
shop.