Raising Demons

We started out making men in about the state of mind which I suppose created them in the first place -- we had run out of kinds of women, and had to think of something else.

In the study she nodded to my husband, turned completely around once, and then remarked that we seemed to be making no practical use of the space in our house. “This room would be much larger,” she said, “if you took out all those books.” Mrs. Ferrier thought the master bedroom should have faced west, and she barely put her head inside the smaller bedrooms. “They would be much larger,” I told her, “if we took out the beds.” Mrs. Ferrier fixed me with her cold eye. “If you took out the beds where would you sleep?” she wanted to know, and I followed her meekly downstairs.

I decided that I was going to fewer student parties after I ripped part of the sleeve out of my black dress helping a freshman climb a fence. By the end of the first semester, what I wanted to do most in the world was invite a few of my husband’s students over for tea and drop them down the well.

Well,” she said, “when I decided to put together the land of Oz and the country of the hobbits and Rootabaga and Mother Goose Land, because they were all scattered all over and I kept forgetting which book I had to take to get to each country—well, anyway, I decided to put them all together. Fairyland, too, of course. So it’s all called Gunnywapitat now, and Ozma lives there, and all the hobbits, and the Cowardly Lion and the old woman in the shoe, and Peter Pan, and Oberon and the rest, all there where I can get to them easy. Gunnywapitat.

She announced at dinner one night that when she grew up she was going to be a mean mean old lady who lived in a forest and people came to her for advice and spells, except, she added, turning to look directly at her father, except wicked trolls.

And of course you do make a nice home for your husband. Someplace to come back to, and everything so neat.” “My spinning lacks finesse,” I said. “But I yield to no one on my stone-ground meal.

My husband had by then been teaching for several months, and I was slowly becoming aware of a wholly new element in the usual uneasy tenor of our days; I was a faculty wife. A faculty wife is a person who is married to a faculty. She has frequently read at least one good book lately, she has one “nice” black dress to wear to student parties, and she is always just the teensiest bit in the way, particularly in a girls’ college such as the one where my husband taught. She is presumed to have pressing and wholly absorbing interests at home, to which, when out, she is always anxious to return and, when at home, reluctant to leave. It is considered probable that ten years or so ago she had a face and a personality of her own, but if she has it still, she is expected to keep it decently to herself. She will ask students questions like “And what did you do during vacation?” and answer in return questions like “How old is your little boy now?” Her little pastimes, conducted in a respectably anonymous and furtive manner, are presumed to include such activities as knitting, hemming dish towels, and perhaps sketching wild flowers or doing water colors of her children.

During the long summer when I was fourteen years old, I made, with the collaboration of my friend Dorothy, four hundred and thirty-one clothespin dolls. I know that never before or since have I made so many of anything, or with so much enthusiasm, and I feel increasingly, now, that there is not enough time left in the world to make four hundred and thirty-one things; perhaps some quality of adolescent fervor has disappeared.

I was playing on the woodpile with Laura and Laura’s brother Johnnie and we were playing pirate ship and Laura was the captain and Johnnie was the first mate and I was the shrew—" “Crew.” “Shrew. And I was the shrew, and I said I was going to dive overboard looking for fish….

…I heard Mr. Lopez saying, “People from different countries seem different, my Jonni, but cats—never. Cats are always much alike.

And the Christmas when Laurie was covered with spots,” Jannie said. “That was before you were born,” she told Sally. “But I know it was because they gave him a paintbox and they thought that was why he was spotty,” Sally said.

You’re crying like a fish,

I took Sally and Barry to the zoo, and Barry and Dikidiki stood and looked silently at the polar bear and the polar bear stood and looked silently at Barry and Dikidiki. Sally was perplexed because the animals were not in cages when so many of the people in the city were.

Barry was head down in the toy box, feet waving cheerfully.

In another few weeks, I thought, the leaves would be coming down again. School, birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the long spring days, and then another summer. I could hear cheering from the ball field. The years go by so quickly, I thought, rising; he used to be so small.

Sally took over from Jannie an enormous accumulation of fairy tales, Uncle Wiggly stories, Bobbsey Twins books, and Barnaby.

My husband, who used to read at night when he was a boy with a flashlight under the covers, said that inadequate light was harmful to the eyes. I, who used to read at night when I was a girl by the street light outside my window, said that little girls who stayed awake reading at night were very apt to be sleepy in school the next day. Sally agreed soberly, as befitted one newly admitted to an esoteric society, and went back upstairs with Ozma of Oz.

It was brightly wrapped, and the card on it read, “To Daddy from Jannie.” “It’s fine,” I said. “What is it?” “Not so loud,” Jannie said, whispering. “It’s a potholder.” “A potholder?” “Yes, we learned how to make potholders in Starlight 4-H Club. And this is for Sally.” “A potholder?” “Yes, and this is for Laurie, and this is for Barry.” “A potholder for Barry?” “Yes, because in the mornings when his cereal’s too hot. Oh, golly.” Hastily she snatched the bottom package from the box and put it under her pillow. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” she said. “I didn’t see it,” I told her. “I never even noticed it.” “Good,” she said, “because that’s a secret, that one. I won’t even tell you who it’s for.

I took all the overshoes and skates and football helmets out of the hall closet and put them into a carton and put the carton in the hall by the front door. I took all the things off the stairs and put them into another carton, which I stacked in the hall next to the first carton. I was wondering what to put in the third carton when I was interrupted by Jannie to say that Ninki had just had her kittens on one of the comfortable chairs in the study and that my husband was sitting in the other comfortable chair and wanted to know what to do.

We bought the big white house, at last, by merely signing our names on a piece of paper. Mr. Gore and Mr. Andrews down at the bank arranged the financial transference with an almost invisible maneuver of figures on a card. When my husband asked if we could borrow our money right back again and use the house as security, everybody laughed.