Let's Go Play at the Adams'

went out and sat down beside him wordlessly. She watched the giants walking around in

the sky-now they were more distant-and waited for the police or the sheriff or the FBI to

come and get them for all that screaming .. When they did not, she surrendered to the

need to sleep and went off to hide under the covers.

95

Barbara awoke with sudden fear. The gag and tape were like the hand and rag on her

mouth. She couldn't breathe. She felt she was being suffocated again; the pillow was back

over her head. Jerking her eyes open wide in fear, she raised her head and strained as if

struggling to reach the top of the water after a deep dive, and then, of course,

remembered. There was the room; there was the ceiling; there was-she turned her head-

Bobby sleeping exhaustedly. There was the whole world again. This was only another day,

the third day like this. Everything else had been last night.

Lowering her head and closing her eyes again, she took in long slow breaths of air the way

she tried to do before a swimming event. She had a headache-oxygen was the answer-

because Bobby had forced her to breathe too much chloroform last night. Moreover. her

wrists and ankles hurt where she had scraped them raw in her struggles with him. Her

hands and feet were icy cold and numb; she was stiff and muscle-sore all over, and later

on, they were going to take off her nightie somehow. It all leapt back to mind:

Each day instead of beginning newly, as it did when you were normally free, seemed-to her

in helplessness-to begin with the weight of the previous days upon it, almost as if she

hadn't slept at all. Unconsciousness was merely unconsciousness; it didn't restore. When

she awoke, she was that many more steps down 96

a road, down a process, down a ladder whose bottom she could not see.

As the weight of this realization, this particular hour, resumed its place on her shoulders,

she was overcome by a peculiar sorrow and loneliness, something almost akin to the

feeling of being lost. Outside it was going to be another calm summer day. The lightning,

the threatened night squalls, had passed once more, and there was a soft light in the sky-

she could tell by its presence in the room-and the birds were singing around the house as

they did only at the very early morning. The river would be sparkly, and it would be so

pretty from the kitchen.

If I could just. ...

Barbara formed a thought of freedom so wide that no words could even suggest it. She saw

herself sitting up on the side of the bed, somehow miraculously released, rubbing her

wrists in disbelief. Then she was getting up, walking free, almost running to everywhere her

mind would imagine her to go. So simple a thing was freedom. The little scene, so

enchanting and unattainable, was also so sweet that she repeated it to herself several

times. Then, of course, it faded.

If someone would only just find me, Barbara said.

Help me. Please help me.

This was given a little in the tone of her childhood prayers. "God, please let me find my

new wristwatch that Daddy gave me." "God, please let me get [whatever] for Christmas."

"God, please .... "

In fact, and naturally €(Dough, Barbara had had poor service from God. Though her nature

required Him, she had long ago made the young's private conclusion that He was no short-

order solver of small problems. One might conclude (to save the respect) that He was too

busy or too remote there, at some higher level of management.

"God helps those who help themselves," her mother had said, and Barbara had always

tried to' help herself. Cheerful Barbara, busy Barbara: she had found, indeed, that God did

help them who helped

97

themselves. Good things happen. It was square, and it was also an article of faith with her.

No one was going to find her, no one was going to help her unless she helped the event to

occur herself. At this moment-if she were awake-Mother was probably thinking how nice it was

for Barbara to be down in the country for two weeks. The Adams were thinking how lucky they

were to have such a competent young baby-sitter. God was thinking his thoughts, and Barbara

must think hers.

Squirming around for the elusive comfort that was never there, Barbara said, OK, I'm part of a

game. It probably began a long time ago with dolls and toy soldiers and stories the kids made

up themselves out of what they saw and heard. Then when they got older and toys faded a

little, they moved outside to more freedom, but the game went on. That is, they moved into

the dolls' roles; they became the dolls-playing is practice living: this was rote for teachers-and

made themselves a bigger kingdom to rule over. And it was unsupervised-another teacherly

word-and completely outside the adult world. Barbara could understand this. Who has not had

a private kingdom at one time or another? She almost saw the way they would jealously keep