Cursed Be the Child (20 page)

“We have to play what I want to,” Amy Lynn said, with a possessive wave of her hand, “because this is my playhouse. And if you don’t like it, you can go home, Dorothy Morgan.”

Maybe Dorothy didn’t like it, but she did like the playhouse. It was ten by ten with a pitched shingled roof and windows all the way around and a battery operated doorbell that really rang. It was excellent! Amy Lynn had just about everything in the world in it, too—toy kitchen appliances, a table and chair set, and a canvas camp cot in the corner for a bedroom.

“Missy,” Dorothy appealed to her friend, “you don’t want to play school, do you?”

Sitting on the cot, Missy shrugged.

“Come on, Missy.”

“Maybe we could do The Cosby Show,” Missy suggested.

“That is really ignorant!” Amy Lynn declared. “I want to play school and we’ve got all the stuff, and it is my playhouse, so there!”

“Okay, okay.” Dorothy sighed, then she brightened. “Come here, Missy,” she said, and when Missy came over to her, Dorothy whispered in her ear.

“It’s not nice to have secrets,” Amy Lynn whined. “You guys stop it or I’ll go tell my mom right now!”

“It was not either a secret,” Dorothy said. It was only something I wanted to tell Missy.”

“Well…”

“Come on, let’s play school!” Dorothy said.

School began, but not the way Amy Lynn had planned. Not more than ten seconds after the morning bell—a long ring of the playhouse doorbell—started the pretend day, an outraged Amy Lynn Elliot was being taken to the principal’s office by her teacher, Miss Barringer.

“She was bad,” Miss Barringer announced.

“I see, I see,” the principal, Miss Dorothy Morgan, said. Looking stern, she folded her hands on her desk, the playhouse table. “What did she do?”

“She didn’t do her homework.”

“I always do my homework. And I always get it all right. And I always get a gold star!”

Dorothy wagged a threatening finger at Amy Lynn. “Don’t you dare interrupt your teacher, little girl!”

“You guys aren’t playing right!”

“That does it!” Dorothy pushed back the chair and rose. She glowered. “Now you’re going to get punished.”

“You’re dumb and mean!”

Dorothy came round the table and gripped Amy Lynn’s elbow. “You need a good spanking, young lady!’’

“No!” Amy Lynn jerked free and backed away from the advancing Dorothy. “Principals can’t spank kids. It’s against the law!”

Shooting Missy a look, Dorothy said, “Let’s get her and spank her!”

“I’ll tell!” Amy Lynn squealed, blinking back tears. “I’ll tell my mom and then you’ll be sorry.”

“I…I was only kidding.” Dorothy retreated from the potent ‘I’ll tell’ threat. “We were only teasing you, weren’t we, Missy?”

“Yeah, we were just kidding. That’s all. Don’t tell. Okay, Amy Lynn?”

“Well, will you guys play school right?”

“Sure we will,” Dorothy said.

“Uh-huh.”

For the next ten minutes, the children played school Amy Lynn’s way. Amy Lynn was the teacher. Missy and Dorothy were the pupils. According to the teacher, the pupils passed notes when they should have been working on their arithmetic. They shouted out answers without raising their hands. They were naughty and had to be punished—the right way. The misbehaving students had to write “I will attempt to improve my shameful conduct” 20 times.

Placated, Amy Lynn agreed when Dorothy asked, “Could we play something else now?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Missy said quietly. “I know a special game.”

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s like a secret game, just for us and nobody else. Do you promise you won’t tell anyone about it?”

“Sure!” Dorothy’s eyes sparkled with enthusiastic curiosity; she was ready to try anything once—and most things twice.

“I guess so,” Amy Lynn said.

“Okay.” Missy dipped her head and sucked at her lower lip as though having second thoughts.

“Come on,” Dorothy said. “How does it go?”

“You’re the little girl, Amy Lynn, and Dorothy, you’re her mama.”

“What’s my name?” Amy Lynn asked.

Dorothy giggled at the silly way Amy Lynn pronounced the name Missy gave her: “Lithette.”

“What about you, Missy?”

“I’m the uncle, see, and Lisette comes to my house to live.”

“So what do I get to do?” Dorothy demanded.

“You just go over there”—Missy gestured at the corner—“and that’s all you have to do. And if Lisette calls you, you never come for her. Not ever.” Missy’s voice was dreamy and faraway.

Dorothy sneered. “Wow! Some fun for me!”

“It’s the way we have to do it,” Missy said. “This is the real way. Later, you can be the uncle.”

“And you’ll be Lisette?”

“Yes,” Missy said, and she held the final hissing sound of the word a long time. “That is who I will be.”

“Okay,” Dorothy said, “just as long as I get to really play later, too.” She took up her position in the corner as the mama who could not come to her daughter.

Missy sat down on the chair. “Come here, Lisette,” she called, making her voice so deep she had to whisper. “Sit on your uncle’s lap.”

Amy Lynn did, even though she commented, “This is kinda silly.”

“Do you like your old uncle?”

“I guess.”

“I know you like me, sweet baby girl. You like all the men, don’t you?”

“I don’t either like boys!”

“Shh, play our game, Lisette.”

“Huh, some game!” called Dorothy from her corner exile. “For me, it’s boring!”

“You have to be nice to Uncle, Lisette.”

“Hey, you’re tickling me. Quit it.”

“You like when I tickle you, Lisette. Sure you do. You want me to touch you, touch you all over.”

Amy Lynn tried to squirm away, but Missy’s arms tightly held her. “I don’t like this. This is…funny. It’s creepy.”

“You do like it,” Missy whispered, her mouth brushing Amy Lynn’s cheek. “You’re a whore, a whore the way your mama was a whore. And this is what whores like.”

Amy Lynn was afraid in a way she had never before been afraid. She sagged against Missy. She couldn’t move or do anything but whimper.

Then Amy Lynn felt Missy’s hand inside her clothes, beneath her undershirt, resting on her stomach.

“Don’t…” Amy Lynn bleated thinly.

“Hey, what are you guys doing?” Dorothy left the comer and came nearer, just as Missy kissed Amy Lynn on the lips.

Amy Lynn catapulted off Missy’s lap as though she’d been propelled by a trampoline. She hit the floor on her knees and scrambled to her feet, gasping.

“That’s sick! That’s dirty! You stuck your tongue…in my mouth! You…You queer!”

With each word, Amy Lynn backed up a step. “I’m telling my mom!” she vowed. “I’m telling her right now!”

Then she burst into tears and ran into her house.

— | — | —

Twenty-Three

“Mom!”

Missy raced into the kitchen. Vicki wasn’t expecting her back so soon. Uh-oh, Vicki thought, setting down the pen that still had not managed to write a full line to Carol Grace. One look at Missy’s flushed face and Vicki intuitively decided there’d been some sort of falling out between the little girls at Amy Lynn’s house.

Just as Vicki was about to ask what was wrong, the telephone rang, and she got an answer—more or less.

A furious Willa Elliot informed her, “I do not care at all for your daughter’s dirty games.” Mrs. Elliot proceeded to briefly describe those games, based on what her none too coherent daughter had told her. And Mrs. Barringer had better keep an eye on that child of hers. There was something wrong with her, something positively sick.

“Mom!” Missy protested, shaking her head, in regard to Vicki’s worried look, “I didn’t do anything bad! I didn’t. We were only playing.”

Pressing the yammering phone between shoulder and ear, Vicki put a silencing finger to her lips.

“…and in the future, Missy Barringer and her…lesbian tendencies had better stay away from my Amy Lynn, who is a nice, normal, little girl...”

Willa Elliot declared it would be a good idea for the Barringers to consult a psychiatrist about their child’s deep-seated, serious mental problems. And then she hung up.

Vicki put down the receiver. Striving for a reasonable tone of voice, she asked, “What did you do to Amy Lynn?”

“Nothing!” Missy shook her head. “We played school in Amy Lynn’s playhouse. She got mad ’cause she didn’t want Dorothy to be principal…”

Vicki interrupted, “I am not talking about that and you know it.”

“Then I don’t know what you are talking about,” Missy said, eyes down as though her shoes were suddenly fascinating.

“Go to your room, Missy,” Vicki said. “We’ll talk about this…soon.”

Without looking up, Missy said, “Are you angry at me, Mom?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know if I should be.”

“Are you going to punish me?”

“I don’t know that, either,” Vicki said.

“Mom…”

“Your room. Now!”

Missy slunk out of the kitchen.

Vicki picked up the telephone and dialed Blossom Time. The line was busy. She could bet Willa Elliot was talking to Laura Morgan, giving her an earful.

More likely than not, Vicki thought, this was one of those “much ado about nothing” episodes, innocent childish foolishness that gets magnified, amplified, and blown totally out of proportion by greater adult foolishness. It was the kind of thing that served as the shaky premise for so many situation comedies in the early days of TV, the parents making utter nincompoops of themselves and the kids settling everything with a shared ice cream cone!

But why did she feel so nervous, so downright twitchy, if she truly thought this wasn’t anything worth getting all worked up over?

She had to calm down.

The telephone rang. It was Laura Morgan who had indeed heard from Willa Elliot. But Laura was not she assured Vicki, terribly worried, and she thought Willa would cool off once she had time to think about it.

“But what did Missy do?” Vicki asked. “I’m still not clear on that.”

“She kissed Amy Lynn,” Laura said. “That’s pretty much what I got from Willa’s ranting and raving. I guess it was kind of a French kiss or something…”

“Oh,” Vicki said. “Oh, my.”

“Hey,” Laura said, “don’t make more of it than it is.”