Page 86 - BraveNewWorld

86 IDPH

was nothing to eat except cold tortillas. He remembered the first time she found
those little animals in his hair, how she screamed and screamed.

The happiest times were when she told him ahout the Other Place. “And you
really can go flying, whenever you like?”
“Whenever you like.” And she would tell him about the lovely music that came
out of a box, and all the nice games you could play, and the delicious things to
eat and drink, and the light that came when you pressed a little thing in the
wall, asd the pictures that you could hear and feel and smell, as well as see,
and another box for making nice smells, and the pink and green and blue and
silver houses as high as mountains, and everybody happy and no one ever
sad or angry, and every one belonging to every one else, and the boxes where
you could see and hear what was happening at the other side of the world,
and babies in lovely clean bottles-everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no
dirt at all-and people never lonely, but living together and being so jolly and
happy, like the summer dances here in Malpais, but much happier, and the
happiness being there every day, every day.. He listened by the hour. And
sometimes, when he and the other children were tired with too much playing,
one of the old men of the pueblo would talk to them, in those other words, of
the great Transformer of the World, and of the long fight between Right Hand
and Left Hand, between Wet and Dry; of Awonawilona, who made a great fog
by thinking in the night, and then made the whole world out of the fog; of
Earth Mother and Sky Father; of Ahaiyuta and Marsailema, the twins of War
and Chance; of Jesus and Pookong; of Mary and Etsanatlehi, the woman who
makes herself young again; of the Black Stone at Laguna and the Great Eagle
and Our Lady of Acoma. Strange stories, all the more wonderful to him for
being told in the other words and so not fully understood. Lying in bed, he
would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and
rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the
great Director of World Hatcheries and Awonawilona.

Lots of men came to see Linda. The boys began to point their fingers at him.
In the strange other words they said that Linda was bad; they called her names
he did not understand, but that he knew were bad names. One day they sang a
song about her, again and again. He threw stones at them. They threw back; a
sharp stone cut his cheek. The blood woudn’t stop; he was covered with blood.

Linda taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drew pictures on the
wall-an animal sitting down, a baby inside a bottle; then she wrote letters. THE
CAT IS ON THE MAT. THE TOT IS IN THE POT. He learned quickly and easily.
When he knew how to read all the words she wrote on the wall, Linda opened
her big wooden box and pulled out from under those funny little red trousers
she never wore a thin little book. He had often seen it before. “When you’re
bigger,” she had said, “you can read it.” Well, now he was big enough. He was

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