Psyche (15 page)

“You think they look all right now?” Psyche asked eagerly.

“Good as new,” Mag told her.

“You want I should sharpen ‘em for you, kid?” Butch asked, anxious to make a contribution.

“You think they need it?”

Butch took the skates from her, ran a callused thumb over the edges, pursed his lips, and did his best to look wise. “Yeah, they could do with it.”

Finally, when there was nothing further that any of the three of them could think of doing to the skates, they were hung on a nail by the front door, and no Christmas stocking was ever hung up with higher hopes for the morrow.

The following morning Psyche was up and away while it was still dark. The stars, glittering, cold, immeasurably remote in a navyblue sky, drew a pale radiance from snow that crunched harshly beneath her boots, a sharp, dry tearing of a frozen silence broken by no other sound.

Her breath making small frosty clouds that crystallized along the edge of the parka-hood framing her face, she thought, “I'll have a whole hour before the others get there. I'll have learned to do it good by then.”

The beautiful, smooth coordination of muscle that was responsible for the way she walked and stood promised her a perfect balance in this new medium, gave her an instinctive certainty that she would be able to glide, and swoop, and circle as well, or better, than any of them.

She knew just how it would feel. She would fly like a bird, her red mittens brilliant wing-tips.

The school was still locked, the sky still dark, when she reached the rink. Even if she had wished she could not have gone in to change from boots to skates beside the stove. Warmed by her own excitement, trembling with anticipation, she did not think of such a thing. Putting down her lunch pail, she unhooked the skates from around her neck, and, sitting down in the snow, drew them on and carefully laced and tightened the strings, oblivious of frost that nipped at fingers momentarily bare.

If she had ever in her life had a pair of shoes that had fitted properly, or had had any understanding of the mechanics of skating, she would have known before she stood up that to attempt
to skate in boots not only sizes too wide for her, but also painfully short, would be to attempt the completely impossible.

While she was still on the snow, the blades cut into the surface, and, in effect, she walked on the soles of the boots. At the edge of the ice she paused, took a deep breath, raised her arms—her red-tipped wings—and launched herself fearlessly into flight. For an ecstatic instant she kept her balance, then her feet shot out from under her and she came down heavily on her back.

At first, although she fell, and fell, and fell again, she was not really discouraged. “It's like everythin' else,” she told herself. “You gotta learn. There ain't really nothin' to it, you just gotta learn.”

Even when she began to realize that neither the next effort, nor the one after that, was going to be any more successful than all the others which had preceded it, she refused to give up. Bruised and aching, her teeth biting into her lower lip, with terrible persistence she went on picking herself up, falling, and getting up to try again.

Her disappointment an agony far sharper than her physical aches and pains, she was unaware that at some time during her desperate, losing battle, morning had superseded night and brought with it an audience she did not know was there until she heard a hoarse boy's voice.

“Will you lookit Maggie! Jees, this is a scream! Hey, Jack, come on over an' see somethin' funnier than a dead cat!”

Sprawled on the ice, Psyche momentarily wished she were dead. Then anger, cold and hard as the glassy surface on which she lay, came to her rescue. Luck was with her, at least to the extent that she was close against the snow bank bordering the rink. Giving herself a sharp push with her hands, she reached the edge, and got to her feet clear of the treacherous ice. Her head up, her back straight, completely ignoring the small boy still watching her but no longer laughing, she picked up her boots and lunch pail and walked away toward the school.

The second small boy, joining the first, said, “I don't see nothin' funny.”

“It was Maggie. She was tryin' to skate, and she fell down.”

The second boy looked after Psyche's retreating figure. Maggie was not a person whom he could imagine falling down. “You sure?”

“Course I am! I seen her.”

“Well—gee, everyone falls down sometime, don't they?”

Psyche, their words carrying clearly to her on the still air, knew a sick relief that she had been caught by only such a negligible advance-guard of her enemies. Fighting against tears, she took off her skates on the steps of the school, and, finding the door now unlocked, carried them to the cloak-room where she hid them under her jacket.

When school was over that afternoon, she stayed at her desk until all the others had left the building. Then, slipping into the cloak-room, she put on her things, and again hung the skates around her neck as she had when starting out from the shack that morning. Hugging them close to her sides with her elbows in order to hide them, she went out, and turned toward the highway without even a glance at the rink where laughing figures glided, and swooped, and circled.

Trudging miserably homeward, she wondered how she was to tell Butch and Mag. Their disappointment on top of her own would be more than she could stand.

“I can't do it,” she said under her breath. “I just can't. They was so happy.”

Would God strike her down, she wondered, if she were to lie to them? It wouldn't be a bad kind of lie. She could put the skates under the step outside the shack, and later, when nobody was looking, bring them in and replace them at the bottom of the trunk. Mag would think they were at the school and that she was using them, and in that way both she and Butch could go on being pleased about it.

Mag heard her stamping the snow from her feet, and opened the door for her.

“Come on in quick, kid, so's not to let the cold in.”

Psyche, pretending to look at the clear, thin red of an early, winter sunset, replied with her face averted. “I'm comin' quick's I can.”

When the door was closed behind her, she immediately became very busy taking off her gloves and parka.

“Well, kid, how did it go?” Mag's hearty voice said plainly that the question was no more than a formality.

Holding her cold hands over the stove, keeping her back turned, Psyche said steadily, “It went good, Mag. I—I was like a bird.”

The second event occurred in the late spring not long before the end of the school year. In itself it was an outstanding triumph for Psyche in a place where she had never dreamed of achieving an open victory of any kind. Its result, however, was to turn her hours in the crowded class-room for a time from passive to active misery.

The announcement, made by the teacher one morning after the roll had been called, that the school inspector was coming in a week's time, meant nothing to Psyche. She did not know what an inspector was, and she did not care. Nothing that happened in the school ever had anything directly to do with her, and she had long since given up paying any attention to announcements. The rest of the class, however, were galvanized into a feverish and quite unnatural activity. Even the most apathetic cleaned out their desks, scraping out old wads of gum, spitballs, and other bits of equally unsavoury garbage.

Psyche, whose almost empty desk was always scrupulously neat, divided her time between watching this miracle with cool curiosity, and staring out of the open window beside her. Although the slag knew no blooming in the spring, it was still the pleasantest season of the year. The sky was a soft, pale blue when the sun shone, and the air, washed by frequent rains, was at once fresh and warm. Looking at gossamer clouds drifting gently across the serene face of heaven, she could, and did, escape into idle daydreams undisturbed by the inspector's impending visit. It was not until the day before he was due to arrive that any of the general fever communicated itself to her, and this was only because a dictum was issued which, for once, apparently included her.

When she got home, she told Mag, “I gotta wash my hair tonight,
an' have a bath, an' wear a dress tomorrow mornin'. None of the girls is allowed to wear pants.”

Mag frowned. This was a tall order. “Who says you gotta?”

“Teacher.”

“It ain't none of her damn business to say when you washes.”

Psyche shrugged. “A inspector is comin'. What's a inspector, Mag?”

“He's a guy what comes to see that the school is run right, and that the kids is learnin' their books the way they oughtta.”

Psyche ran slender fingers through a mane of hair that was more than a little sticky to the touch. “Then the way I sees it, it's Teacher who is gonna be inspected more'n anyone else. Why ain't it enough if she washes?”

Mag's attitude had undergone a complete reversal now that she knew the reason behind what had at first appeared to be an unreasonable demand, and she was not in sympathy with what was, actually, a very acute observation.

“That ain't no proper way for you to be talkin',” she said severely. “You better get on out to the well an' start drawin' a heap of water.”

“Oh, hell!” said Psyche pleasantly, and, kicking off her shoes, went out to do as she was told.

That evening the round iron tub, which was both laundry and bath tub, was filled and emptied three times. Psyche, although she was almost as tall as Mag, could still, by jack-knifing her long legs, get right into the tub. It was not a performance she enjoyed, for the corrugated surface was decidedly uncomfortable and the water was always either too hot or too cold. It was very hard water, making soap almost as difficult to remove as dirt; and rinsing her thick hair was an onerous task, but she would not let Mag cut it shorter than shoulder length.

In the morning Mag looked her over more critically than she had ever done before, straightening the blue bow which partially controlled hair transformed into an unmanageable golden aureole, pulling the short skirt of a faded blue cotton dress, and completely overlooking ragged finger-nails and a high-water mark just visible beneath a pointed chin.

“I ain't goin' to no party,” Psyche said plaintively. “Leave me be.”

“Like Butch said last night, Teacher always asks the best kids to answer questions, an' you gotta look right.”

Calm in the knowledge that she would be the last one to be brought to the inspector's attention on this account, Psyche made no comment. She was pleased with her own appearance, and that was enough. Nobody else was going to notice her.

The inspector noticed her as soon as he came into the classroom. He thought she looked like a highly intelligent young Valkyrie, and had difficulty in keeping his eyes off her.

He was a young man, new to his job, conscientious, and still not so disillusioned as to believe that he could not, single-handed if necessary, remould a school system which he regarded as little short of criminal. Almost as poorly paid as the teachers within his jurisdiction, he was not prepared to accept low salaries as an excuse for laxity or inefficiency. Believing, as he did, that proper education was the answer to nearly all the country's ills, and that most children, given the opportunity, wanted to learn, his sympathies at this stage in his career were with the students rather than the teachers.

Having been introduced to the class, he seated himself at a table placed beside the teacher's desk, and, provided with a chart of the class-room that showed names and grades, proceeded to observe and make notes.

The morning wore on with the teacher, whose angular form had blossomed out in bright silk print, asking questions on all the subjects which had supposedly been covered during the year, and picking, apparently at random, boys and girls across the various grades to give the required answers.

Psyche, a cynical witness to a performance she had seen rehearsed word for word on the previous day, began to think that the inspector, although he did not look it, was a fool.

It was after the morning break that the pattern changed.

The inspector held a low-voiced colloquy with a teacher whose thin, acid face turned bright red as she found herself relegated to the table while the inspector appropriated the desk.

His voice was deep, his diction clear and forceful, and his rapid cross-fire of questions fell around the room like buckshot, leaving devastation in their wake.

Jimmy Grant, who had earlier been asked the date of the Fall of Quebec, and had glibly supplied it, was proved never to have heard of either Wolfe or Montcalm. Helga Tapper, who had known what twenty-three times twenty-three made, failed to get beyond six times six with a repetition of the multiplication table. Rosie Hall, who had named the capital of Finland without hesitation, stated that New York was the capital of the United States. And so it went. A few, but only a very few, managed to make a reasonable showing, and even they, entirely unprepared for an uncoached quiz, were flustered and uncertain.

Finished with this part of his program, the inspector turned his attention to those who had not been previously questioned at all, and settled down to a quiet but methodical plumbing of the depths of their ignorance.

Psyche, entrenched behind an invisible wall in her accustomed role of spectator, was taken completely by surprise when her name was called.

Slowly she slid out from behind her desk, and stood up. Shaking her hair from her shoulders, she moved backwards until her hands were flat against the north and east walls where they met at the back of the room.

The others had said “Yes, sir” when called. Psyche said nothing.

The inspector's curiosity about her had been rising steadily all morning. He had expected that she would play a prominent part in the wholesale bluff to which he had been exposed. When the hours had passed without her being called even once, he had wondered why, had asked himself if the intelligence he saw in her wide-spaced blue eyes, and pure, broad sweep of forehead, was no more than an illusion compounded of beauty and an honesty he could not doubt. The others had quailed before his unexpected attack. This girl was braced, ready to fight back. Why?