Raising Demons (4 page)

After two or three more fruitless attempts to interest Laurie in wild flowers the Simpkins boy gave up, and became a regular participant in the doll games his sister and Jannie played, with Sally tagging along. Laurie and George and George's friends, who traveled in a pack like wild dogs, spent their long days at the ball field or at the riding stables or in the lake, displacing a hundred times their own weight in water. My husband and I told one another that the children had never seemed happier or healthier. My husband set up a horseshoe-pitching court at one end of our back yard, and in the cool evenings he and Laurie went out to pitch horseshoes while the girls and I sat on the grass and watched them and Barry slept, smiling, on the cool screened porch. After Laurie had won every game every night for four nights in a row my husband decided that he was going to teach me to pitch horseshoes, but it turned out to be almost impossible for me to learn, because the only way I could lift the horseshoes enough to throw was by using both hands. After the evening when I, throwing two-handed, put a horseshoe through the canvas back of one of our lawn chairs, my husband set up a badminton court, which was much more successful. For some reason Laurie could never learn to play badminton at all, and Jannie and I, who both liked the game, never were skillful enough to beat anybody except each other. My husband and I played a lot of badminton as the summer wore on. I refused, as I have been doing every summer since I can remember, to allow anyone to try to teach me to swim, and Sally and I made sand castles while Laurie tried to learn racing dives off the dam and Jannie learned from her father how to do the dead man's float. After weeks of effort Laurie succeeded in teaching Sally a kind of rudimentary dog paddle. Several times the three older children and their father rented a boat and went off on picnic trips; I was always left behind as a punishment for not learning to swim, since, as Laurie explained severely, he and his father would have enough trouble with Jannie and Sally if the boat tipped over without having to save
me
, too. While they were gone on their boat trips Barry and I lay out in the sun and took long, lovely naps.

Until mid-July, the possibility of entering actively into any demanding situation, much less the practical policies of the State Department of the United States, had not been anything we had considered extensively; although, as a family, we had always been reasonably dutiful citizens. We hung out a flag on Decoration Day, observed the Fourth of July with noisy cheer, paid our taxes with reluctance but on time, sent children to school with an eye to the truant officer, crossed the street with the green light, did not use the mails to defraud—we were sensible, citizenly folk, but not obtrusive. Our active participation in the operations of the government had been confined, not to put too fine a point on it, to voting. This complacent footing was inevitably blasted, abruptly, out from under us, and the slight Japanese accent which Sally retained from the experience lasted for several months.

It was on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, when I was sitting reading a mystery story on our own front porch. Through the still air I could hear the distant enraged shouts of nine-year-old boys discussing reasonably the accuracy of a batted ball; Sally and Jannie, shiny from their morning swim, were playing in the sandbox; Barry had awakened, cheerful, from his nap and was singing to himself in the playpen, watching the sunlight, and holding aloft one small foot. My husband was around on the side porch, slowly relaxing into that heavy-eyed state which hits him about the seventh inning of the baseball broadcast, and which slips imperceptibly into a nap before dinner. I had just showered and changed into a clean skirt and blouse, and was in the process of deciding that it was really too hot to fry the chicken for dinner, and I would make instead some nice cool salad (tunafish?) when Laurie shot down the road on the bike we had borrowed for the summer, and came to a shrieking halt half an inch from the porch steps. “Got to get ready,” he said gaspingly, vaulting the porch rail. “Hurry.”

“Laurie, it's just too
hot
to race around like that. You'll have sunstroke or something;
nothing
is important enough to—”

“Company,” Laurie said. “People coming over. Here.”

I rose abruptly. “Company?”

“Got to
hurry
, they'll be here in a minute.” Laurie started through the door and I followed after him, saying, “Wait, who—”

“Got to talking to them. Ball field. Said they'd be right over, we got to
hurry.
” He turned to the stairs. “Better put on a clean shirt,” he said.

If Laurie intended, uncoerced, to put on a clean shirt, immediate and violent action of some kind was called for from me. I moved swiftly to the window which opened onto the side porch, said, “Company,” and heard my husband groan. I then passed through the house to the back door, from which I shouted, “Jannie, Sally,” and was rewarded by a distant answering voice. “Clean shirt,” I said thoughtfully, and went up the stairs two at a time and into the girls' room where I found two nearly clean dresses, skidded into the boys' room where Laurie was buttoning his best Hawaiian print shirt, snatched a sunsuit for Barry, called downstairs, “Porch chairs,” and stopped long enough to run a comb through my hair. “Who
are
these people?” I shouted to Laurie, and he shouted back from his room, “Visiting America. One's named Yashamoto, I
think.
”

Remotely I recalled rumors I had heard of a group of foreign students visiting our town for a brief vacation and orientation course in this country before going on to study in various colleges and universities all over the country. “How many are there?” I shouted across to Laurie, but he had gone downstairs. Serve them coffee, I thought frantically, or perhaps something typically American—hot dogs? No, no, not in the middle of a hot afternoon. Iced coffee; iced coffee, and there was a box of doughnuts in the breadbox if the children hadn't gotten to it; cookies? I wish I had some ice cream, I thought; can't serve company popsicles from the deep freeze, and I took the three bottom steps in one leap. I was plugging in the electric coffeepot when Jannie and Sally came through the back door; I threw their dresses at them and said, “Company, wash your faces.” They disappeared, murmuring, and I moved swiftly in to Barry, who was amused at the idea of wearing the sunsuit, since it was the first article of formal attire he had seen since summer's start. I tied Sally's sash, took a swipe at each head with the hairbrush, heard voices outside, emptied an ashtray on my way to the door, ducked my mystery out of sight, and opened the door. “Good afternoon,” I said, only slightly out of breath.

There were six of them. “Good afternoon,” said a gentleman in a red, white, and blue striped tie, who was, it turned out, the spokesman. “My name has been Horogai Yashamoto. Thank you very much for invitation to your home.”

“We are delighted that you have come,” I said, trapped without thinking into a kind of stilted formality. “Will you come in?”

I held the door open and they filed solemnly in past me, and then lined up inside. Each of them was wearing an identification button, and as Mr. Yashamoto introduced them one by one I kept trying to look sideways at the names on the identification buttons, hoping that they would forgive mispronunciation. The two Japanese men were Mr. Yashamoto and Mr. Masamitsu, there were three people from Argentina, Mr. and Mrs. Fernandez and Mr. Lopez, and a tall gentleman with a black beard, who was from Ceylon and whose name I never learned, because I got it first as Babar and no amount of correction, after that, could make me change it. “How do you do,” I kept saying, “how do you do.”

For one hideous minute we all stood just inside the front door, smiling eagerly at one another and all obviously trying helplessly to find some civil, neat, appropriate comment for the situation; then, blessedly, the side porch door opened and my husband, inadequately briefed by Laurie, came in with his mouth open. “Good afternoon,” Mr. Yashamoto said, with his little bow, “thank you very much for invitation to this home. We are pleased to have met you. We are pleased at seeing family life here.”

My husband took a deep breath. “Glad you could come,” he said manfully. “Hi,” said Laurie, appearing behind him. “Hi, fellas.”

Mr. Yashamoto bowed again to Laurie. “Our small friend Lorri,” he said, pleased. “We are meeting your parents now.”

“And my sisters,” Laurie said, waving at Jannie and Sally, who were standing shyly in the kitchen doorway. “This big one's Jannie. The little one's Sally.”

Mr. Yashamoto approached formally, and bowed to each of them. “Jonni;” he said. “Salli.” “H'lo,” said Jannie almost inaudibly, and Sally giggled and crossed her feet.

“
And
my brother Barry,” said Laurie.

Mr. Yashamoto, following Laurie's pointing finger, bowed again, to the playpen. “Balli,” he said.

“Well,” said Laurie, who seemed at the moment to be in entire control of the situation, “let's all siddown, then.”

Hesitantly, edging and backing and bowing and countering, they found chairs. I sat briefly until I was positive that our visiting gentlemen were firmly set into position, and then said, “Excuse me,” and raced back into the kitchen, where I took down glasses and set them on a tray, got out ice, spread the doughnuts thinly on a plate, and padded the spaces between them with gingersnaps. Give the coffee another five minutes, I thought, sugar and milk, spoons. When I came back into the living room I found our guests sitting, each with hands folded in lap, and all turned intently to Laurie, who was saying, “And the thing is, when you're playing second and there's a man on first, see, you wanna—” Everyone stood up again when I came to the doorway, and I said, “No, no, sit down, please,” and finally sat myself, abruptly, onto the telephone table chair so that Mr. Yashamoto and Mr. Masamitsu and Mr. Fernandez and Mr. Lopez and Mr. Babar would also sit down. Hastily, I noted that Mrs. Fernandez was giving Laurie that gaze of hypnotized attention which usually means a state of utter bewilderment, that my husband was eying Mr. Yashamoto in the manner of a monomaniac who intends shortly to enter upon his exclusive field of interest—in this case, of course, coins—and that Jannie and Sally between them had cornered Mr. Fernandez. Laurie gave every impression of being about to describe, in detail, the several innings of his latest game, and Mr. Babar had a small notebook in which he was writing busily, pausing occasionally to glance curiously at the books on the shelves, or the children's bare feet, or the rug, or the table lamps, and then returning to his notebook to write again. I thought of telling him that the house was not ours, and that we claimed almost nothing in it, and then reflected that the furniture was of rather better quality than what we had left in the grasp of Mr. Cobb, so I was quiet.

“Trouble with
most
longball hitters, you got to—” Laurie was continuing purposefully, and I turned to Mr. Lopez, who was on my left, and I smiled at him politely and he smiled back. I strongly suppressed a basic superstition which came unbidden to my mind (if you talk
loud
enough you can
make
them understand) and said, very softly, “And how long have
you
been here, Mr. Lopez?”

He looked surprised, and thought. “Ten minute?” he said at last, tentatively.

“No, no. How long have you been in this country?”

Again he thought. “Juan,” he said hesitantly. “Juan Lopez.”

I smiled largely, and nodded. “And do you like it?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said, pondering. “Very much,” he said finally, and we both smiled, and nodded, and repeated “very much,” and smiled again.

“This is fine country,” Mr. Yashamoto said. “Very eatable food in this country.”

“We especially,” Mr. Masamitsu said suddenly, “we
especially
enjoy hot dog. And mustard,” he added wistfully. “And spaghetti.”

“Boy,” Laurie said, and sighed. “And relish. And pickles.”

“Peeckle?” Mr. Masamitsu turned wonderingly to Laurie. “Peeckle?”

“Peeckle,” said Sally, enchanted into speech, “peeckle, peeckle, domineeckle.”

“Anyway,” Laurie said, loudly overriding his sister, “I suppose you know what
rice
is, I guess? I guess you eat a lot of rice at home, don't you?”

Mr. Masamitsu shuddered delicately. “Indeed no,” he said with eagerness, “indeed I do not; me, I eat no rice. Indigestion,” he said widely, and everyone smiled, and nodded.

Mr. Babar for a minute raised his head from his notebook, regarded Mr. Masamitsu intently, obviously debated making a note, and then reluctantly refrained; instead he leaned toward Sally and touched her hair gingerly and Sally turned, giggled, and said “Hey!”

“You are most kind,” Mr. Yashamoto said suddenly to my husband, “to allow us to come into this country of yours.”

It was at this moment that, as I say, the United States government, flags flying, walked into our living room and sat down. I could see my husband's eyes widen and knew that without warning the same realization had come to us both; here we were, unprepared, in a sort of ambassadorial role, forced to stand or fall by our reasonably representative way of life; we spoke simultaneously—was that “Yankee Doodle” sounding in the distance?—“Nice of you to come,” my husband said largely, and I said with a great heartiness, “I hope you enjoy it here.” Then everyone smiled and nodded again to each other, and I muttered, “Coffee?” and fled to the kitchen.

Jannie and Sally, with great plans for passing cookies, followed me into the kitchen, and I gave Jannie the sugar and milk to carry, and Sally the plate of doughnuts, and came after them with the tray of iced coffee. Each of our guests solemnly accepted a glass of iced coffee and—I believe most of them thought this a ceremonial to be followed precisely—a spoonful of sugar and a little milk, and then, finally, one doughnut. Food, no matter how ceremonial, had its usual gracious effect, and I felt my position as international hostess relax slightly as, glasses and doughnuts in hand, our guests stirred, and rose, and spoke to one another, and moved around.