The home-maker

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

“And once I thought of it, it made me shudder. So I just put it in the tub and washed it. You see it came out all right.”

She held up the dreadful remains, by one limp, lumpy arm, and both the mothers looked at it with interest and approval. Stephen’s horror had been unspeakable. If Mother did that to his Teddy ... his Teddy who was like a part of himself.... The fierce fighting look had come into Stephen’s eyes and under the soft curves of rounded baby flesh he set his jaw.

But he had said nothing to Mother as they tore back across town, Mother in a hurry about getting her supper on time. Mother prided herself on never yet having set a meal on the table a single minute late. He said nothing, partly because he had no breath left over from his wild leaps from curb to paving and from paving to curb; and partly because he had not the slightest idea how to express the alarm, the bleeding grief, within him. Stephen’s life so far had developed in him more capacity for screaming and kicking and biting than for analyzing and expressing his feelings in words.

That night Mother had taken Teddy away—treacherously, while Stephen was asleep. The next morning she announced that now she thought of the dirt and microbes on Teddy it made her shudder and as soon as she found time she would wash him and give him back to Stephen. Stephen had been filled with a silent frenzy every time he thought of it.

But now he had found Teddy, held him again in his arms that had ached for emptiness these three nights past. Stephen’s hot little warrior’s heart softened to love and quiet as he sat there; and presently there came to his calmer mind the plan to go to tell Mother about it. If he told her about it, maybe she wouldn’t take Teddy away and spoil him.

He went downstairs to find Mother, his lower lip trembling a little with his hope and fear, as Mother had not seen it since Stephen was a little tiny baby. Nor did she see it this time.

He went to the kitchen door and looked in, and instantly knew through a thousand familiar channels that it would do no good to tell Mother, then—or ever. The kitchen was full, full to suffocation with waves of revolt, and exasperation, and haste, and furious determination, which clashed together in the air above that quivering, energetic figure kneeling on the floor. They beat savagely on the anxious face of the little boy. He recognized them from the many times he had felt them and drew back from them, an instant reflection of revolt and determination lurid on his own face. How could he have thought, even for a moment, of telling Mother!

He turned away clutching Teddy and looked about him wildly. All around him was the inexorable prison of his warm, clean, well-ordered home. No escape. No appeal. No way to protect what was dear to him! There fell upon him that most sickening and poisonous of human emotions, the sensation of utter helplessness before physical violence. Mother would take Teddy away and do whatever she pleased with him because she was stronger than Stephen. The brute forces of jungle life yelled loud in Stephen’s ears and mocked at his helplessness.

But Stephen was no Henry or Helen to droop, to shrink and quail. He fled to his own refuge, the only one which left him a shred of human dignity: fierce, hopeless, endless resistance: the determination of every brave despairing heart confronted with hopeless odds, at least to sell his safety dear; to fight as long as his strength held out: never, never to surrender of his own accord. Over something priceless, over what made him Stephen, the little boy stood guard savagely with the only weapons he had.

First of all he would hide. He would hold Teddy in his arms as long as he could, and hide, and let Mother call to him all she wanted to, while he braced himself to endure with courage the tortures which would inevitably follow ... the scolding which Mother called “talking to him,” the beating invisible waves of fury flaming at him from all over Mother, which made Stephen suffer more than the physical blows which always ended things, for by the time they arrived he was usually so rigid with hysteria himself that he did not feel them much.