Keith Donohue_The Stolen Child

The girls, in their own way, suffered worse indignities. They, too, dis-played many of the same disappointing personal habits and lack of general hygiene. They laughed too loudly or not at all. They competed viciously among themselves and with their opposites, or they faded into the woodwork like mice. The worst of them, by the name of Hines, routinely tore apart the shyest girls with her taunts and shunning. She would humiliate her victims without mercy if, for instance, they wet their pants in class, as happened right before recess on the first day to the unprepared Tess Wodehouse. She flushed as if on fire, and for the very first time, I felt something close to sympathy for another's misfortune. The poor thing was teased about the episode until Val-entine's Day. In their plaid jumpers and white blouses, the girls relied upon words rather than their bodies to win their battles. In that sense, they paled next to the female hobgoblins, who were both as cunning as crows and as fierce as bobcats.

These human children were altogether inferior. Sometimes at night, I wished I could be back prowling the forest, spooking sleeping birds from their roosts, stealing clothes from clotheslines, and making merry, rather than en-during page after page of homework and fretting about my peers. But for all its faults, the real world shone, and I set my mind to forgetting the past and becoming a real boy again.

Intolerable as school was, my home life more than compensated. Mom would be waiting for me every afternoon, pretending to be dusting or cooking when I strode triumphantly through the front door.

"There's my boy," she would say, and whisk me to the kitchen for a snack of jam and bread and a cup of Ovaltine. "How was your day today, Henry?"

I would make up one or two pleasant lies for her benefit.

"Did you learn anything new?"

I would recite all that had been rehearsed on the way home. She seemed inordinately curious and pleased, but would leave me at last to the dreadful homework, which I usually managed to finish right before suppertime. In the few moments before my father came home from work, she would fix our meal, my company at tableside. In the background, the radio played her favorite ballads, and I learned them all upon first hearing and could sing along when the records were invariably repeated. By accident or ignorance, I mimicked the balladeers' voices perfectly and could sing tone for tone, measure for measure, phrase for phrase, exactly like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney or Jo Stafford. Mom took my musical ability as a natural extension of my general wonderfulness, charm, and native intellect. She loved to hear me, often switching off the radio to beg me to sing it one more time.

"Be a dear boy and give us 'There's a Train Out for Dreamland' again."

When my father first heard my act, he didn't respond as kindly. "Where did you pick that up? One day you can't carry a tune, now you sing like a lark."

"I dunno. Maybe I wasn't listening before."

"You're kidding me? She has that racket on day and night with your Nat Cole King and all that jazz, and 'Can you take me dancin' sometime?' As if a mother of twins .. .What do you mean, you weren't listening?"

"Concentrating, I mean."

"You should be concentrating on your homework and helping your mother with the chores."

"If you pay attention and listen instead of merely hearing the song, you can pick up the tune in no time."

He shook his head and lit another Camel. "Mind your elders, if you please, Caruso."