More Than Human

The door of her room was fastened with a hook-and-eye on the outside. She walked to the door and looked up at the corresponding spot inside. She heard the hook rise and fall. She opened the door and walked down the hall and out to the elevators. When the self-service car arrived, she got in and pressed the third-, second-, and first-floor buttons. One floor at a time the elevator descended, stopped, opened its gate, closed its gate, descended, stopped, opened its gate… it amused her, it was so stupid. At the bottom she pushed all of the buttons and slid out. Up the stupid elevator started. Janie clucked pityingly and went outdoors.

She crossed the street carefully, looking both ways. But when she got to the copse she was a little less ladylike. She climbed into the lower branches of the oak and across the multiple crotches to a branch she knew which overhung the hidden sanctuary. She thought she saw a movement in the bushes, but she was not sure. She hung from the branch, went hand over hand until it started to bend, waited until she had stopped swinging, and then let go.

It was an eight-inch drop to the earthen floor – usually. This time…

‘The very instant her fingers left the branch, her feet were caught and snatched violently backward. She struck the ground flat on her stomach. Her hands happened to be together, at her midriff; the impact turned them inward and drove her own fist into her solar plexus. For an unbearably long time she was nothing but one tangled knot of pain. She fought and fought and at long last sucked a tearing breath into her lungs. It would come out through her nostrils but she could get no more in. She fought again in a series of sucking sobs and blowing hisses, until the pain started to leave her.

She managed to get up on her elbows. She spat out dirt, part dusty, part muddy. She got her eyes open just enough to see one of the twins squatting before her, inches away. ‘Ho-ho,’ said the twin, grabbed her wrists, and pulled hard. Down she went on her face again. Reflexively she drew up her knees. She received a stinging blow on the rump. She looked down past her shoulder as she flung herself sideways and saw the other twin just in the midst of the follow-through with the stave from a nail keg which she held in her little hands. ‘He-hee,’ said the twin.

Janie did what she had done to the sallow, black-eyed man at the cocktail party. ‘Eeep,’ said the twin and disappeared, flickered out the way a squeezed appleseed disappears from between the fingers. The little cask stave clattered to the packed earth. Janie caught it up, whirled, and brought it down on the head of the twin who had pulled her arms. But the stave whooshed down to strike the ground; there was no one there.

Janie whimpered and got slowly to her feet. She was alone in the shadowed sanctuary. She turned and turned back. Nothing. No one.

Something plurped just on the centre part of her hair. She clapped her hand to it. Wet. She looked up and the other twin spit too. It hit her on the forehead. ‘Ho-ho,’ said one. ‘He-hee,’ said the other.

Janie’s upper lip curled away from her teeth, exactly the way her mother’s did. She still held the cask stave. She slung it upward with all her might. One twin did not even attempt to move. The other disappeared.

‘Ho-ho.’ There she was, on another branch. Both were gri

She hurled a bolt of hatred at them the like of which she had never even imagined before.

‘Ooop,’ said one. The other said ‘Eeep.’ Then they were both gone.

Clenching her teeth, she leapt for the branch and swarmed up into the tree.

‘Ho-ho.’

It was very distant. She looked up and around and down and back; and something made her look across the street.

Two little figures sat like gargoyles on top of the courtyard wall. They waved to her and were gone.

For a long time Janie clung to the tree and stared at the wall. Then she let herself slide down into the crotch, where she could put her back against the trunk and straddle a limb. She unbuttoned her pocket and got her handkerchief. She licked a fold of it good and wet and began wiping the dirt off her face with little feline dabs.

They’re only three years old, she told herself from the astonished altitude of her seniority. Then, They knew who it was all along, that moved those rompers.

She said aloud, in admiration, ‘Ho-ho…’ There was no anger left in her. Four days ago the twins couldn’t even reach a six-foot sill. They couldn’t even get away from a spanking. And now look.

She got down on the street side of the tree and stepped daintily across the street. In the vestibule, she stretched up and pressed the shiny brass button marked janitor. While waiting she stepped off the pattern of tiles in the floor, heel and toe.

‘Who push dat? You push dat?’ His voice filled the whole world.

She went and stood in front of him and pushed up her lips the way her mother did when she made her voice all croony, like sometimes on the telephone. ‘Mister Widde-combe, my mother says can I play with your little girls.’

‘She say dat? Well! ‘ The janitor took off his round hat and whacked it against his palm and put it on again. ‘Well. Dat’s mighty nice… little gal,’ he said sternly, ‘is yo’ mother to home?’

‘Oh yes’ said Janie, fairly radiating candour.

‘You wait raht cheer,’ he said, and pounded away down the cellar steps.

She had to wait more than ten minutes this time. When he came back with the twins he was fairly out of breath. They looked very solemn.

‘Now don’t you let ‘em get in any mischief. And see ef you cain’t keep them clo’es on ‘em. They ain’t got no more use for clo’es than a jungle monkey. Gwan, now, hole hands, chillun, an’ mine you don’t leave go tel you git there.’

The twins approached guardedly. She took their hands. They watched her face. She began to move towards the elevators, and they followed. The janitor beamed after them.

Janie’s whole life shaped itself from that afternoon. It was a time of belonging, of thinking alike, of transcendent sharing. For her age, Janie had what was probably a unique vocabulary, yet she spoke hardly a word. The twins had not yet learned to talk. Their private vocabulary of squeaks and whispers was incidental to another kind of communion. Janie got a sign of it, a touch of it, a sudden opening, growing rush of it. Her mother hated her and feared her; her father was a remote and angry entity, always away or shouting at mother or closed sulkily about himself. She was talked to, never spoken to.

But here was converse, detailed, fluent, fascinating, with no sound but laughter. They would be silent; they would all squat suddenly and paw through Janie’s beautiful books; then suddenly it was the dolls. Janie showed them how she could get chocolates from the box in the other room without going in there and how she could throw a pillow clear up to the ceiling without touching it. They liked that, though the paintbox and easel impressed them more.

It was a thing together, binding, immortal; it would always be new for them and it would never be repeated.

The afternoon slid by, as smooth and soft and lovely as a passing gull, and as swift. When the hall door banged open and Wima’s voice clanged out, the twins were still there.

‘All righty, all righty, come in for a drink then, who wants to stand out there all night.’ She pawed her hat off and her hair swung raggedly over her face. The man caught her roughly and pulled her close and bit her face. She howled. ‘You’re crazy, you old crazy you.’ Then she saw them, all three of them peering out. ‘Dear old Jesus be to God,’ she said, ‘she’s got the place filled with niggers.’

‘They’re going home,’ said Janie resolutely. ‘I’ll take ‘em home right now.’

‘Honest to God, Pete,’ she said to the man, ‘this is the God’s honest first time this ever happened. You got to believe that, Pete. What kind of a place you must think I run here, I hate to think how it looks to you. Well get them the hell out!’ she screamed at Janie. ‘Honest to God, Pete, so help me, never before – ‘