Let's Go Play at the Adams'

"What?" Barbara suddenly lifted her head from the pillow and stared straight at the little

girl. You could almost hear the individual letters coming out of her mouth: W-h-a-t. "What?"

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"It's just like the 'nitiation," Cindy jumped back a little.

Cindy could enunciate as well as anyone else and even be prim and clipped about it if she was

angry. When she was just noodling along, however, she slurred childishly (and sometimes to be

cute). "Guerrilla" came out at "gorilla"; "initiation" came out as " 'nitiation."

"We've all done it," she said. "It isn't all that bad anyhow. Well-it's bad when it's you and

everybody's laughing and all, but when it's somebody else, it's funny. Boys look-"

"Where did you hear this?" Barbara didn't raise her voice, but she suddenly had that adult

sound of now-you're-going-to-get-it.

Cindy got up off the bed and backed away to safety. "Bobby said so at dinner. He'd been

crying. They beat him up and made him promise to help."

"Well, that's the end!" Barbara 'looked up at her wrists in turn and jerked on her ropes angrily.

"You get Bobby in here right now, and I mean now, or I'll start screaming."

"But you're not supposed to be ungagged," Cindy quailed, her heart suddenly thumping. She

was thinking trouble ... trouble ... trouble.

"I said now!"

Cindy sighed unhappily. This was unexpected, uncontrollable. The other kids would get her for

it.

"Bobby! Bob-bee-e-e!" Barbara shouted. "Bobby, get up!" Then she screamed. It was not a

completely abandoned shriek-she had little practice at screaming-but it was loud enough for

openers.

Badly scared now, Cindy ran out of the room for Bobby, followed by another scream this time a

little higher. In the hall she all but knocked him down.

White, rumpled, wide-eyed and only half seeing and understanding, he more or less danced

back and forth from one foot to the other, trying to get by her. "What is it?"

"Hurry-yup!" Cindy said.

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"Is she loose?" Bobby pulled back sharply, ready to run.

"No. No! She wants to talk to you. Come on!"

Cindy finally got him moving, and together they stumbled into Barbara's room.

She was still wrenching at her cords and shaking the whole bed. "Bobby, let me go right

now. I mean it. Untie me." ·

Caught by the terrible unanswerable tone of adult anger and command and yet unable to

obey-quite Bobby froze.

"I said untie me!"

"The bottle, the bottle!" Cindy was quick thinking in her terror. "Give her the bottle of

stuff."

Instead Bobby turned on her-for once, he had lost composure-and began yelling, too. "You

ungagged her. You did it. Now we're going to get it. We all are."

Then Barbara screamed again. This time it was right on; it was abandoned and shrill and

animal and prolonged. It galvanized Bobby.

He ran over, pulled the pillow out from beneath Barbara's head, and threw it down across

her face and held it there. "The bottle's on the dresser. The dresser, not the vanity!"

Cindy turned around twice before she saw it. Behind her was a frightening chaos she

preferred not to see. The bed was tossing like something in a high wind. On it Bobby rode a

pillow life raft, his face lip-bitten and determined.

"Bring it here," he yelled.

From beneath the pillow came muffled sounds of desperation.

"Now hold the pillow. You can't be afraid now!

Hold it."

Cindy did, but badly and weakly. Barbara was able to turn her head underneath it and

shout-it was now muffled-s- in a kind of terror of her own.

"Stop it. Stop it! You're going to smother me. I can't-stop it!" It was all ugly to Cindy.

With shaking hands her brother finally -got the

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bottle open and pulled out the reeking rag. "Keep holding her. I don't care what she says."

He bent over and pushed the rag under the pillow where the noise was coming from and

threw himself down beside Cindy to hold it there. After a while, the nightmare subsided and

Barbara went limp. Afterward, still shaking badly, Bobby threw the pillow off and let her get

some air. She was still breathing; in a little while, the breathing became more or less

regular. Even so, he sat by the bed and waited a long time more before replacing the gag

doubly secure.

By the door, ready to run if things got worse, Cindy said, "Is she all right?"

"You still there?" Bobby seemed to have forgotten her. "Yeah." He turned around still pale.

The high pink spots on his cheeks were scarlet. "She's out."

Cindy came back cautiously. "Look, she hurt herself."

In fact, she was right. Barbara's wrenching at her ropes had slid them down to her wrists,

leaving bare, scraped, red places on her arms and flaked, roughened skin. Bobby pulled

down the wrinkled sheet and saw that she had actually scraped down to blood on one an-.

Ide, but nothing looked serious. He sighed.

"She's OK enough"; and he went outside on the back steps and sat down.

After a little interval of not knowing what to do, Cindy-still frightened and now remorseful-