More Than Human

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 grinning widely.

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.