Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [16]
“Why do you like it so much?” I asked my sister and Leonie. I still took some interest in the head: it was, after all, my creature, though I’d been so young – it seemed to me now – when I’d made it. I regarded it critically: the thing was really unconvincing. The nose and chin were way too small, the skull too square, the hair too black. I should have done a better job.
They gazed up at me with distrust. “We don’t like him,” said my sister.
“We’re taking care of him,” said Leonie.
“He’s sick,” said my sister. “We’re the nurses.”
“We’re making him feel better,” said Leonie.
“Does he have a name?” I asked.
The two little girls looked at each other. “His name is Bob,” said Leonie.
This struck me as funny. I tried not to laugh: my sister was affronted when I laughed at anything to do with her. “Bob the Head?” I said. “That’s his name?”
“You’re not supposed to laugh at him,” said my sister in an injured tone.
“Why not?” I said.
“Because it’s not his fault,” she said.
“What’s not?”
“That he’s got no, got no …”
“Got no body?” I said.
“Yes,” said my sister in a stricken voice. “It’s not his fault! It’s only the way he is!” By this time the tears were trickling down her cheeks.
Leonie gave me an indignant stare; she picked up the head and hugged it. “You shouldn’t be so mean,” she told me.
“I know,” I said. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be so mean.” But I had to go into my room and close the door, because I had to either laugh or choke.
Yet at other times the two of them demanded meanness from me. They’d pester me ceaselessly because they wanted me to play a game called Monster. I was supposed to be the monster – stalking around the house and out into the yard, legs and arms stiff like a zombie’s, calling in a toneless voice, “Where are you? Where are you?” while they held hands and ran away from me, and hid behind the shrubs or the furniture, twittering with fright. When I got home from school they’d be waiting; they’d turn their delicate little pansy-eyed faces up to me and plead, “Be a monster! Be a monster!” Their appetite for my monstrousness was boundless; as long as the two of them were together, holding hands, they could tough it out, they could escape, they could defy me.
Sometimes my sister would be alone when I got home. By “alone,” I mean without Leonie, for of course my mother would be there. Not for long, however: she’d grab the opening provided by my arrival and be off like a shot, heading for the grocery store or some other equally spurious destination, leaving me as impromptu babysitter. Really she wanted the open road; she wanted speed and exercise, and her own thoughts. She wanted to be free of us – all of us – if only for an hour. But I didn’t recognize that then.
“Okay,” I’d say. “I have to do my homework. You can play over there. Why don’t you have a dolly tea party?” But no sooner would I have settled myself with my books than my sister would start up.
“Be a monster! Be a monster!” she would say.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Leonie isn’t here. You’ll cry.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Yes, you will. You always do.”
“I won’t this time. Please! Please!”
“All right,” I’d say, though I was quite sure how it would end. “I’ll count to ten. Then I’m coming to get you.” I said this last in my flat monster voice. By the time I’d reached ten, my sister would already have shut herself into the front hall closet with the winter coats and the vacuum cleaner, and would be calling in a muffled voice, “The game’s over! The game’s over!”
“All right,” I would say in a reasonable but still eerie tone. “The game’s over. You can come out now.”
“No! You’re still being a monster!”
“I’m not a monster. I’m only your sister. It’s safe to come out.”
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop the game!”
“Stop what? There isn’t any game.”
“Stop it! Stop it!”
I shouldn’t have done that. A sister pretending to be a monster, or a monster pretending to be a sister? It was too much for her to decipher. Small children have trouble with ill-defined borders, and my sister had more trouble than most. I knew perfectly