Nobody's Family is Going to Change (8 page)

“Hi, Emma!” one of the girls called.

They had seen her! Were they going to the same place? Would they see the cookie box lying there, shamefully empty?

“You going to the warehouse?” One of them, a girl named Saunders, was standing in front of her, holding three boxes of cookies. The other two were standing there panting after running down the hill, each holding cookies.

“Yes,” said Emma, “I was—”

“Come on!” said Saunders. She looked at Emma's empty hands.

“Uh . . .” said Emma.

“Yes?” The girl turned back.

“Could I buy a box of those cookies? I forget to get—”

“Sure. Here, you don't have to buy it, take it.”

Oh, no, not on your life. “I have the money. Here,” said Emma rapidly. She handed it to Saunders, who looked indifferent as she handed her a box of Oreo cookies. Emma looked around. Two of them had Oreos. One, a small, frail person named Ketchum, held a box of Fig Newtons.

Something about this made Emma laugh, again silently. Ketchum looked terrified, but then Ketchum always looked terrified, never more so than when she stood to read one of her compositions, which were always considered brilliant. Whenever Ketchum was informed of this, she always looked as though the teacher had hit her in the face.

Emma stopped laughing before she gave Ketchum a heart attack, and smiled at her. Ketchum smiled back, exposing teeth so braced they looked like the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Let's go!” said Saunders, obviously the leader of this bunch.

The other girl was named Goldin. She looked totally unlike, but tried always to be exactly like, Saunders. She followed Saunders everywhere, dressed like her, smiled and laughed the same, even imitated Saunders' tic, which was unfortunate because Saunders had a tic and a half, a gruesome one which contorted her entire face for the length of its gyration and made her mouth look like a train going off its rails for a second, then back on again into an even stranger smile.

What a bunch, thought Emma, as she fell into step beside Ketchum. And yet look at me. What am I? I'm a fat black girl who hates the world, she thought relentlessly, and on the other hand, I am going to try to do something good.

They walked toward the river. At the bottom of Seventy-ninth Street, they turned. There was an alley. Down the alley they could see the warehouse. They all stopped.

“Did you see that guy on TV?” Saunders asked Emma.

“Yes. I called him.”

“Saunders called him for us!” said Goldin proudly.

“I thought we ought to look into this,” said Saunders importantly.

Ketchum said nothing, but looked more terrified than ever. Emma noted the “we” and felt she had invaded a gang. Now that she thought about it, she had seen these three together around school. She looked at Ketchum in wonder. What could this mouse get out of hanging around with the other two?

Saunders seemed nervous. She was looking at the warehouse, and Goldin was looking at her, waiting.

“Let's get on with it,” said Emma, and plowed ahead.

She felt the startled motion from Saunders as she followed, something she was not used to doing. Goldin ran ahead a little, as though to make up for Saunders' sudden inadequacy as a leader. Ketchum looked as if she wanted to run the other way, but she came, slowly, hugging her Fig Newtons like a life raft.

Emma got to the door. There, indeed, was the smallest sign in the world, and it said
HERE.
She pushed open the metal door. There was an empty room with another metal door. She could see a small sign on that one. She poked her head in. The room was totally empty, with high windows through which slanted a sooty sunlight.

She walked across to the other door. The sign said:
INSIDE THIS DOOR, PLEASE CLOSE FIRST DOOR
. Goldin read over her shoulder and ran back to close the first door. Emma waited, and when they were all standing in front of the door, she opened it.

An enormous welling-up of noise greeted her. The door opened onto the biggest room she had ever seen, and it was filled with kids. They were everywhere. Some were up on high benches that looked like bleachers at a parade. Most were standing or milling around. It looked like a political convention.

Emma looked at her companions. Saunders and Goldin stood there with their mouths hanging open. Ketchum looked as though she wanted to turn into a bat and fly away.

“Close the door and register over here,” said a voice out of the delirium.

Emma saw a girl sitting at a card table. In front of her was an open ledger.

Goldin closed the door. They went over to the table. The noise in the room was unbelievable.

“Put your cookies in there and sign your names here,” said the girl. She smiled. She spoke as though she had done this millions of times.

“New members?” she asked.

The four of them nodded dumbly.

“If you know your brigade name, put it down next to your name. If you don't know it, tell me where you live and I'll tell you which one you're in.”

Emma signed her name and wrote Anne Frank Brigade after it. The others were being told one after the other that they too were in the Anne Frank Brigade.

Emma gestured with the cookies.

“Put them in these baskets,” the girl said, and gestured toward a row of huge baskets, each with the name of a school on it.

“What does that mean?” asked Emma.

“We deliver these to the lunchrooms of various schools. The kids will get them for lunch tomorrow.”

Emma nodded. So far so good. Nothing wrong with feeding people.

“Now what?” she asked. I hope to God they don't give you a physical, she thought. She had visions of all the Gauloise-smoking, sickly-looking men in the French
Underground. God knows,
they
didn't have to be healthy. “Are there any requirements for joining this?” she asked. Better know them now.

“Children come first,” said the girl simply. “The only requirement is that you believe this with all your heart. This is the essence of the movement.”

“What does that mean?” asked Saunders. She pushed herself forward a bit, as though she felt Emma was taking over.

“We believe that if every decision made on this earth were first put to the test of one question, ‘Is this good for children?' and the decision makers were forced to make decisions that would be good for children, there would only be good decisions made.”

“Oh,” said Saunders.

“I'll have to think about that,” said Emma. I never thought of that, she said to herself. It'll take weeks for me to think that out, with all its ramifications. She felt profoundly irritated that these people had thought of something she hadn't. Not that it seemed like a bad idea—still, one had to be sure, and one could only be sure by thinking everything out carefully.

“Yes,” said Saunders hurriedly, “we'll have to examine that.” She wasn't letting Emma get ahead of her.

Goldin nodded, cowlike, and Ketchum suddenly, for some strange reason, looked radiant.

“See those signs?” asked the girl.

They all nodded. Signs were bobbing around just like the ones at conventions.

“One of them says Anne Frank Brigade. Go find that one and then stay with those people.”

Emma began to wade her way through the crowd. There were plenty of blacks, that's for sure. A dark boy suddenly gave her the power salute.

She raised her arm and gave it back, but tentatively, because she hadn't been ready. She turned just in time to see Saunders nervously doing the same thing, Goldin too, and Ketchum, looking bug-eyed. Emma began to laugh to herself. Scared, old honky scared. She looked around the whole room. There were a lot of blacks and it made her feel good. The majority seemed to be white, but there were enough black faces to make her feel they wouldn't be ignored.

There seemed to be only six people standing under the sign saying Anne Frank Brigade.

“Hello,” said Emma.

“Hello.” A bespectacled boy held the sign. He looked at her with dull eyes.

“We were told to come here and stand,” said Emma.

“Do you live in this section?” asked an eager-looking girl. She had long brown hair and looked friendly.

“Yes,” said Saunders. She pushed herself ahead as though she'd had about enough of Emma's leadership. “We all heard Harrison Carter on television and we've joined up.” She looked proud and stalwart.

“Terrific! My name's Cathy. This is Jim.” She pointed to the sign holder, who smiled. “This is Alice, Nancy, Lisa, and Pippy. We're glad you're here. We're the smallest group
in the whole thing. I don't know why. It seems like there are thousands of kids on East End. I don't know what's the matter with them. Maybe they didn't see the show, or maybe nobody has contacted them.”

“Has anyone gone around the apartment houses?” asked Saunders. Goldin's eyes gleamed with gladness that her leader had finally come up with something intelligent.

“We have to be careful. You see, if it gets out that there is such a thing as the Children's Army, adults wouldn't go for the whole idea. In fact, we think they'd hate it. They would put a stop to it immediately. So we can't just approach everyone, somebody might be a squealer.”

Emma nodded. Imagine anyone approaching Willie. He'd dance right in and tell his mother, who would tell his father, who would call the police.

“Order,” said a voice. Emma looked up and saw that a pile of crates had been made into a podium. Harrison Carter was sitting on the top crate banging two pieces of wood together. I wonder where you buy gavels, thought Emma. It would be terrific to get a gavel.

“We don't have much time, as you know, because we cannot all disappear for a long time without people noticing. The first thing today is a minute of silence in memory of two innocent victims, Clifford Glover and Claude Reese, shot down in the streets by policemen when they were only ten and fourteen.”

They all bowed their heads. There was silence in that there was no talking—a little rustling, but no talking.
During the minute, Emma kept her eyes closed. She bit her lip in mounting excitement. They're really doing it! Maybe we can really do something! He's hitting right where he should, right at the stupidity of adults, right at the fact that children have no rights at all, and not only that, can lose their lives because of stupid adults!

“We will never forget,” said Harrison Carter. They all looked up.

“Today,” said Harrison, “we are sending out three committees to talk to parents. One will discuss Helen Mason, six times admitted to six different hospitals for fractures of the arms, broken legs, bruises of the abdomen, and a smashed hand. Helen Mason is a battered child. Her parents have been getting away with this. She is six years old. A committee will approach the parents this week to inform them that the police will be notified if Helen has one more bruise. There will be ten in this committee. It will be larger than most committees because of the known violence of the father. If the parents do not respond in a satisfactory way, the committee will go to the police immediately. They will contact Martin Feininger, the father of one of our members, and a fine lawyer, who has prosecuted many parents of battered children. This violence will be stopped.

“The next committee will go to the home of Charles Tyson. Charles Tyson is being driven crazy by his mother. His father is dead. His mother will not let him out of the house except to go to school and come back. He has no freedom. He is thirteen years old and he is not even allowed
to close the door to his room. The committee will inform Mrs. Tyson that an appointment has been made for her to see a psychiatrist about this situation. If she does not agree to go voluntarily, three committee members will escort her personally to the doctor's office. If she says she will call the police, the committee will say go ahead. If she does call the police, the committee will say they are friends of Charles Tyson's and they will never, under any circumstances, divulge the fact of the existence of the Children's Army. At all times, whenever confronted, each member of this Army must and will say that he or she is only acting out of personal feeling and friendship for the child involved.

“The third committee will go to the house of Lois Babson. Lois is the two-year-old sister of one of our army. The parents of this two-year-old have bought a device which rings a terrible clanging bell every time the child wets the bed. Her sister feels and this committee concurs that this is no way to toilet-train somebody, that with sympathy and patience Lois will learn to be toilet-trained, and that this barbaric arrangement should stop immediately. The committee will approach Mr. and Mrs. Babson, tell them that they are confiscating the instrument, and why. They will inform the Babsons that they will take said instrument back to the store, get a refund, and return the money to the Babsons.

“Next Friday we will send out three new committees. Each brigade must get complaints from its members and submit them. All complaints are processed as fast as possible.
Anyone registering a complaint should understand that the committee acting on the complaint will use all restraint, so that the parents of the complainer do not turn against him or her. The committee members are never rude, never violent, always logical, always speak quietly, and always have a back-up adult who can be brought in at the last moment to embarrass the parents into listening. It will always appear that the committee is just a group of personal friends acting on the behalf of the complainer. We will have Report now on the three committees that went out last week.” He paused dramatically. “J. Colson reporting on Committee 1.”

J. Colson was a large, blond girl. Her hair kept getting in her eyes as she read the short report.

“Committee 1 went to the home of Jack Kelly, whose complaint was brought to us by his younger brother, Tom Kelly, a member. Complaint was as follows: that Jack Kelly, blind since an accident in the home when he was eight, now sixteen years old, was being kept home as a servant by his father, a drunkard. Jack Kelly is made to cook all the meals, do all the cleaning, and is not allowed to go to school. Jack Kelly wants to go to school. The committee was large because of the drunkenness of the father. They took with them an official of the Lighthouse for the blind, the mother of one of our members. Report of the committee is that Jack Kelly is now in a school for the blind, learning Braille, and he plans to attend college.