our lawn was nine apple trees large. there were none in front, where only evergreens grew, and two silver lombardy poplars, heaven-tall. the apple trees began with the cooking-apple tree by the side porch. this was, of course, no true tree except in apple-blossom time, and at other times hardly counted. the length of twenty jumping ropes—they call them skipping ropes now, but we never called them so—laid one after another along the path would have brought one to the second tree, the eating-apple tree, whose fruit was red without and pink-white within. to this day i do not know what kind of apples those were, whether duchess, gilliflower, russet, sweet, or snow. but after all, these only name the body of the apple, as jasper or edith names the body of you. the soul of you, like the real sense of apple, lives nameless all its days. sometime we must play104 the game of giving us a secret name—the pathfinder, the lamplighter, the starseeker, and so on. but colours and flavours are harder to name and must wait longer than we.
... under this nameless tree, then, the swing hung, and to sit in the swing and have one’s head touch apple-blossoms, and mind, not touch them with one’s foot, was precisely like having one’s swing knotted to the sky, so that one might rise in rhythm, head and toe, up among the living stars. i can think of no difference worth the mentioning, so high it seemed. and if one does not know what rhythm is, one has only to say it over: spring, summer, apple-blossom, apple; new moon, old moon, running river, echo—and then one will know.
“i would pick some,” said mother, looking up at the apple-blossoms, “if i only knew which ones will never be apples.”
so some of the blossoms would never be apples! which ones? and why?
“why will some be apples and some others never be apples?” i inquired.
but mother was singing and swinging me, and she did not tell.
“why will you be apples and you not be105 apples, and me not know which, and you not know which?” i said to the apple-blossoms when next my head touched them. of course, you never really speak to things with your throat voice, but you think it at them with your head voice. perhaps that is the way they answer, and that is why one does not always hear what they say....
the apple-blossoms did not say anything that i could hear. the stillness of things never ceased to surprise me. it would have been far less wonderful to me if the apple-blossoms and the lombardy poplars and my new shoes had answered me sometimes than that they always kept their unfriendly silence. one’s new shoes look so friendly, with their winking button eyes and their placid noses! and yet they act as cross about answering as do some little boys who move into the neighbourhood.
... indeed, if one comes to think of it, one’s shoes are rather like the sturdy little boys among one’s clothes. one’s slippers are more like little girls, all straps and bows and tiptoes. then one’s aprons must be the babies, long and white and dainty. and one’s frocks and suits—that is to say, one’s new frocks and106 suits—are the ladies and gentlemen, important and elegant; and one’s everyday things are the men and women, neither important nor elegant, but best of all; and one’s oldest garments are the witches, shapeless and sad and haunted. this leaves ribbons and sashes and beads to be fairies—both good and bad.
the silence of the nameless tree was to lift a little that very day. when mother had gone in the house,—something seemed always to be pulling at mother to be back in the house as, in the house, something always pulled at me to be back out-of-doors,—i remember that i was twisting the rope and then lying back over the board, head down, for the untwisting. and while my head was whirling and my feet were guiding, i looked up at the tree and saw it as i had never seen it before: soft falling skirts of white with lacy edges and flowery patterns, drooping and billowing all about a pedestal, which was the tree trunk, and up-tapering at the top like a waist—why, the tree was a lady! leaning in the air there above the branches, surely i could see her beautiful shoulders and her white arms, her calm face and her bright hair against the blue. she had107 risen out of the trunk at the tree’s blossoming and was waiting for someone to greet her.
i struggled out of the swing and scrambled, breathless, back from the tree and looked where she should be. already i knew her. nearly, i knew the things that she would say to me—sometimes now i know the things that she would have said if we had not been interrupted.
the interruption came from four girls who lived, as i thought, outside my world,—for those were the little days when i did not yet know that this cannot be. they were the eversley sisters, in full-skirted, figured calico, and they all had large, chapped hands and wide teeth and stout shoes. for a year they had been wont to pass our house on the way to the public school, but they had spoken to me no more than if i had been invisible—until the day when i had first entered school. after that, it was as if i had been born into their air, or thrown in the same cage, or had somehow become one of them. and i was in terror of them.
“come ’ere once!” they commanded, their voices falling like sharp pebbles about the apple-blossom lady and me.
108 obediently i ran to the front fence, though my throat felt sick when i saw them coming. “have an apple core? give us some of them flowers. shut your eyes so’s you’ll look just like you was dead.” these were the things that they always said. something kept telling me that i ought not to tell them about my lady, but i was always wanting to win their approval and to let them know that i was really more one of them than they thought. so i disobeyed, and i told them. mysteriously, breathlessly i led them back to the tree; and feeling all the time that i was not keeping faith, i pointed her out to them. i showed them just where to look, beginning with the skirts, which surely anybody could see.... i used often to dream that a crowd of apish, impish little folk was making fun of me, and that afternoon i lived it, standing out alone against those four who fell to instant jeering. if they had stooped and put their hands on their knees and hopped about making faces, it would have been no more horrible to me than their laughter. it held for me all the sense of bad dreams, and then of waking alone, in the middle of the night. the worst was that i could find no words to make them know. i109 could only keep saying, “she is there, she is there, she is there.” by some means i managed not to cry, not even when they each broke a great branch of blossoms from the eating-apple tree and ran away, flat-footed, down the path; not indeed until the gate had slammed and i turned back to the tree and saw that my lady had gone.
there was no doubt about it. here were no longer soft skirts, but only flowery branches where the sunlight thickened and the bees drowsed. my lady was gone. try as i might, i could not bring her back. so she had been mocking me too! otherwise, why had she let me see her so that i should be laughed at, and then herself vanished? yet, even then, i remember that i did not doubt her, or for a moment cease to believe that she was really there; only i felt a kind of shame that i could see her, and that the others could not see her. i had felt the same kind of shame before, never when i was alone, but always when i was with people. we played together well enough,—pom, pom, pullaway, minny-minny motion, crack-the-whip, london bridge, and the rest, save that i could not run as fast as nearly everybody. but110 the minute we stopped playing and talked, then i was always saying something so that the same kind of shame came over me.
i saw delia crossing the street. in one hand she held two cookies which she was biting down sandwich-wise, and in the other hand two cookies, as yet unbitten. the latter she shook at me.
“i knew i’d see you,” she called resentfully. “i says i’d give ’em to you if i saw you, and if i didn’t see you—”
she left it unfinished at a point which gave no doubt as to whose cookies they might have been had i not been offensively about. but the cookies were fresh, and i felt no false delicacy. however, after deliberation, i ate my own, one at a time, rejecting the sandwich method.
“it lasts them longest,” i explained.
“the other way they bite thicker,” delia contended.
“your teeth don’t taste,” i objected scientifically.
delia opened her eyes. “why, they do too!” she cried.
i considered. i had always had great respect for the strange chorus of my teeth, and i was111 perfectly ready to regard them as having independent powers.
“oh, not when you eat tipsy-toes like that,” said delia, scornfully. “lemme show you....” she leaned for my cooky, her own being gone. i ran shamelessly down the path toward the swing, and by the time the swing was reached i had frankly abandoned serial bites.
i sat on the grass, giving delia the swing as a peace-offering. she took it, as a matter of course, and did not scruple to press her advantage.
“don’t you want to swing me?” she said.
i particularly disliked being asked in that way to do things. grown-ups were always doing it, and what could be more absurd: “don’t you want to pick up your things now?” “don’t you want to let auntie have that chair?” “don’t you want to take this over to mrs. rodman?” the form of the query always struck me as quite shameless. i truthfully shook my head.
“i’m company,” delia intimated.
“when you’re over to my house, i have to let you swing because you’re company,” i said speculatively, “and when i’m over to your112 house, i have to let you swing because it’s your swing.”
“i don’t care about being company,” said delia, loftily, and started home.
“i’ll swing you. i was only fooling!” i said, scrambling up.
it worked—as delia knew it would and always did work. all the same, as i pushed delia, with my eyes on the blue-check gingham strap buttoned across the back of her apron, i reflected on the truth and its parallels: how, when delia came to see me, i had to “pick up” the playthings and set in order store or ship or den or cave or county fair or whatnot because delia had to go home early; and when i was over to delia’s, i had to help put things away because they were hers and she had got them out.
low-swing, high-swing, now-i’m-going-to-run-under-swing—i gave them all to delia and sank on the grass to watch the old cat die. as it died, delia suddenly twisted the rope and then dropped back and lay across the board and loosed her hands. i never dared “let go,” as we said, but delia did and lay whirling, her hair falling out like a sun’s rays, and her eyes shut.
113 i watched her, fascinated. if she opened her eyes, i knew how the picket fence would swim for her, no longer a line but a circle. then i remembered what i had seen in the tree when i was twisting, and i looked back....
there she was! quite as i had fleetingly seen her, with lacy skirts and vague, sweeping sleeves and bending line of shoulder, my lady of the tree was there again. i looked at her breathlessly, unsurprised at the gracious movement of her, so skilfully concealed by the disguises of the wind. oh, was she there all the time, or only in apple-blossom time? would she be there not only in white spring but in green summer and yellow fall—why, perhaps all those times came only because she changed her gown. perhaps night came only because she put on something dusky, made of veils. maybe the stars that i had thought looked to be caught in the branches were the jewels in her hair. and the wind might be her voice! i listened with all my might. what if she should tell me her name ... and know my name!...
“seventeen un-twists,” announced delia. “did you ever get that many out of such a little stingy swing as you gave me?”
114 i did not question the desirability of telling delia. the four eversley girls had been barbarians (so i thought). delia i had known always. to be sure, she had sometimes failed me, but these times were not real. my eyes were on the tree, and delia came curiously toward me.
“bird?” she whispered.
i shook my head and beckoned her. still looking at my lady, i drew delia down beside me, brought her head close to mine.
“look,” i said, “her skirt is all branches—and her face is turned the other way. see her?”
delia looked faithfully. she scanned the tree long and impartially.
“see her? see her?” i insisted, under the impression that i was defining her. “it’s a lady,” i breathed it finally.
“oh,” said delia, “you mean that side of the tree is the shape of one. yes, it is—kind of. i’m going home. we got chocolate layer cake for supper. good-bye. last tag.”
i turned to delia for a second. when she went, i looked back for my lady—but she had gone. only—now i did not try to bring her back. neither did i doubt her, even then.115 but there came back a certain loneliness that i had felt before, only never so much as now. why was it that the others could not see?
i lay face downward in the grass under the tree. there were other things like this lady that i had been conscious of, which nobody else seemed to care about. sometimes i had tried to tell. more often i had instinctively kept still. now slowly i thought that i understood: i was different. different from the whole world. did i not remember how, when i walked on the street, groups of children would sometimes whisper: “there she is—there she is!” or, “here she comes!” i had thought, poor child, that this would be because my hair was long, like little eva’s in the only play that most of us had seen. but now i thought i knew what they had known and i had not known: that i was different.
i dropped my face in the crook of my arm and cried—silently, because to cry aloud seemed always to have about it a kind of nakedness; but i cried sorely, pantingly, with aching throat, and tried to think it out.
what was this difference? i had heard them say in the house that my head was large, my116 hair too long to let me be healthy; and the four eversleys always wanted me to shut my eyes so that i should look dead. but it was something other than these. maybe—i shall never forget the grip of that fear—maybe i was not human. maybe i was adopted. i had no clear idea what adopted meant, but my impression was that it meant not to have been born at all. that was it. i was like the apple-blossoms that would never be apples. i was just a pretend little girl, a kind of secret one, somebody who could never, never be the same as the rest.
i turned from that deep afternoon and ran for the wood-pile where i had a hiding-place. down the path i met mother and clung to her.
“mother, mother!” i sobbed. “am i adopted?”
“no, dear,” she said seriously. “you are mine. what is it?”
“promise me i’m not!” i begged.
“i promise,” she said. “who has been talking to you? you little lamb, come in the house,” she added. “you’re tired out, playing.”
i went with her. but the moment had entered me. i was not like the rest. i said it over, and every time it hurt. there is no117 more passionate believer in democracy than a child.
across the street delia was sitting on the gate-post, ostentatiously eating chocolate layer cake, and with her free hand twisting into a curl the end of her short braid. between us there seemed to have revealed itself a gulf, life-wide. had delia always known about me? did the rodman girls know? and calista? the four eversleys must know—this was why they laughed so.... but i remember how, most of all, i hoped that mary elizabeth did not know—yet.
from that day i faced the truth: i was different. i was somehow not really-truly. and it seemed to me that nothing could ever be done about it.
