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 want to hear. She told her, “Death is a long sweet sleep, with maybe different kinds of nice dreams. That’s all it is.”
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.