by DarkMark

All characters in this story are property of Marvel Comics.  No money is being made from this story, no infringment is intended.

 *****

Maybe you've read the book I wrote about the Marvels.  Most likely, you just looked at the pictures.

If I'm lucky, you may have read the prose book I wrote some years after that, telling you all about myself and my more-or-less ankle-high interactions with them, over 30 years or so.  But there are a few stories I left out of the book.

This is one of them.

I'm going to do a recap for you of one incident, in case you missed the book.

It started back in 1965 when I caught our two little girls, Beth and Jenny, sneaking scraps off their dinner plates.  Well, not exactly caught.  I just noticed it, assumed they were stealing food to feed some stray dog or cat that wandered around, and pretended I never saw anything.  They pretended they didn't see me pretending.

They had found a stray.  I found out what kind a few weeks later.  It was during a Mutie Scare.  I was almost all the way home one evening when I saw a band of men, several of my neighbors among them.  They were armed with shotguns, clubs, knives, even, God help me, a pitchfork.  One of the men was Arthur Lindstrom, who lived on my block.  He told me to go get my shotgun and join them.  I asked him what was happening.  He told me in one word:

"Mutants."

That was all I needed.

I ran home as fast as my overworked photographer's legs would manage.

A month prior to that, I'd had my first encounter with the X-Men.  I didn't like them.  Neither did a lot of other people, and we all seemed to fear them for the same reason.  They were the next step after humanity.  They'd been born with their powers, and we'd been born without them.

We were the Edsel, they were the Ferrari.

They were going to supersede us.  We and our children would become obsolete, maybe slaves, maybe extinct.

Don't ask me if I analyzed them in that minute a fashion when I saw the five mutants.  All I know is that a brick found its way into my hand, and I threw it.  I flashed on a truly insane thing as I did it, Ignatz Mouse lobbing a brick at Krazy Kat in the old comic strips.

Only this brick hit the Iceman square in the head, and it hurt him.  I was lucky it didn't kill him.  I was even luckier it hadn't hit one of the others, or it might have really injured them.

He didn't look much like Krazy Kat after it hit him.

Instead, Iceman cried out in pain, and yelled something at us.  In the voice of a normal, teenaged boy.  I'd like to think there was a part of me that was horrified, then, by what I'd done.  But if I was more honest (as I will force myself to be here), I'd have to admit that my real reaction was just--surprise.

But the one with the glowing red visor, the one whom I later learned was Cyclops, held his partner back and said something that I never forgot:

"Forget about it.  They're not worth it."

Not.

Worth.

It.

The next thing I knew, Cyclops turned his head, put a hand to the side of his visor, and let loose a stream of red power that made the mass of us cry out and shrink back.  I thought of Gort in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and wondered if he was going to disintegrate us like that big, creepy robot.  But no, he just blasted a hole in a brick wall of a dead end, and the five of them, the X-Men, got away.

I was numb, or thought I was, but I felt a weight in one hand and I looked at it.

I'd picked up another brick.

After a second, I let it fall to the pavement.

That was replaying in my mind as I ran to my house to get my shotgun.  Muties in the suburbs. They didn't have any right being here.  A man had the right to arm himself, to defend himself against intruders, to defend himself especially against the next wave out to swamp humanity.

But as soon as I stepped in my door, Beth and Jenny ran up to me, their faces slate-blank with horror.  "Daddy, Daddy," Beth said, throwing her arms around me as I knelt down to pick her up.  "Don't let them hurt her, Daddy."

Jenny, who was a year older, came up to me but wasn't able to speak.  Her chest was just heaving, as if she either wanted to cry or was too far gone to attempt it.  I asked them who this "her" was, and who was the "them" trying to hurt her.

That was when my wife Doris walked in, and told me, "I think you'd better see this, Phil, down in the basement."

So she took me down, and I saw.

It wasn't a stray dog.

It was a stray mutant.

A little girl mutant.

A little girl, just about the size of a four-year-old, even though she was eight.  A little girl in a tattered blue dress and sweater, and white tie-up shoes that didn't seem to quite fit her.

A little girl, whose face resembled a skull with fleshtones painted over it, with huge globular eyes that seemed all pupil, with almost no hair on her head except two tufts at the sides, which were tied with pink bows.

A little girl who was sitting there, knees clasped to her chest, looking very scared, and crying.

Jenny finally found her voice.  "We found her in the park, Daddy.  After that big storm.  She was all wet and cold."

The little mutant girl spoke up.  She had a normal, eight-year-old voice, a little on the squeaky side.  "I was hungry, mister," she said.  "Or I'd have kept hiding."

She told me that her father had gotten fired from his job, that her mother cried all the time, that they claimed what had happened was all her fault, and that they had left her.  "They went away," she said, and she looked at me.  "Are you going to send me away?"

I didn't know what to say.  There were men out there, the men with knives and pitchforks and guns, and they would burn this house down like Klansmen if they thought it harbored a mutant.  I would die, and all my family with me.

Beth, who was sometimes the wisest of us, spoke.  "She's nice, Daddy.  She plays with us."

I looked at the little girl's eyes again.

I had another flashback, but it wasn't to a comic strip or a movie.

It was back when Patton had liberated a concentration camp, and he'd thrown up when he saw what was inside, and made the people of the town nearby march through it and see what they had hidden from their eyes for years.

I took pictures of the camp and its inmates.  I threw up, too.  But afterward I kept on clicking.

Something in the inmates' eyes, and this little girl's eyes, were similar.

So I looked at my wife's own eyes, which held a million questions, or one important one, and I said the only thing I knew to say.

"Dear God, Doris, she's just a little girl."

Beth and Jenny both grabbed hold of me and hugged me very hard and said something.  Doris stood apart, breathed, and said nothing.  And I looked at the little girl mutant, and she was still crying, but she snuffled and said, "Thank you, mister.  God bless you."

I was damned if I knew what to do.

 -M-

So, for awhile after that, a matter of a few weeks, Maggie (for that was the little girl's name) hid in our basement, slept on a cot and then on a small bed we'd bought for her, telling the man at the second-hand furniture store it was for our kids, fed her, and talked to her.  Doris tried to be nice to her.   God knows, she tried.  But she still held back, didn't like to touch her, and Maggie knew.

I didn't like touching her, either.

But Jenny and Beth were all over her, playing games with her, throwing a ball and chalking out a makeshift hopscotch grid in chalk on the concrete floor, pitching jacks, playing Old Maid, reading to her out of Little Women or one of their Fantastic Four comic books.  You'd think she'd have identified with the Thing, but she didn't.  When Beth and Jenny played super-heroes, as they always did, Maggie took the role of Sue Storm.

I think she was good at it.

But I didn't know what I was going to do with her.

Could I keep her down in our basement, for the rest of her life?  Could we keep on sneaking her in a closet when the gas man came to take his reading?  What could we do when we went on vacation, or even all had to leave the house at the same time?  Could we depend on Maggie not to be seen?

Should we?

What the hell was I supposed to do?  Sell her to whatever circus still had a freak show?  Get brave, take her to school, and demand the principal accept her in class?  Call the ACLU or the NAACP or the United Jewish Appeal or Johnny Carson?

I saw her, Beth, and Jenny bouncing a ball on the basement floor one night.  I went up to my office room and placed a call to the FBI.  I asked them, cautiously, if they had any pahmplets or such on what the general public should do when encountering a mutant.  The agent on the other end said that if I had a mutant sighting to report, they'd have a team of agents down there right away.

I told him no thanks, nothing had happened, and hung up.  I hoped--no, I prayed God--that they hadn't been tracing the call.  Thankfully, they hadn't.

Later on that week, I hung around in Greenwich Village on my free time.  I'd heard the X-Men had been sighted there a lot.  Maybe they'd know what to do.  Maybe I could ask them to give Maggie a home.   She couldn't fight Magneto or Unus or any of their villains, but she was a mutant.  She was one of them.

Not one of us.

A Cadillac that was really an Edsel.

I was lucky.  I saw two of them, one of them the Iceman, the other of whom was in civvies, but he had to be the Beast with the feet I saw on him.  They were bursting out of some coffee house like they were out to fight a fire.  I lifted my hand, and I think if I had yelled, they might have heard me.

But I heard the words of Cyclops come back to me:

"They're not worth it."

Not.  Worth.  It.

I let my hand drift down, and I didn't say anything, and the Beast and Iceman were long gone by that time.

There were other things that summer, like the Fantastic Four wedding that all the heroes and villains went to, and the new Avengers lineup, and the usual cape-basher stuff.  I took a lot of pictures.  You've seen some of them in my books.

But the thing that shook me most was the next wave of Mutie Scare.

It started the night Bolivar Trask and Professor Charles Xavier had the big debate on network TV.   It was all about--you guessed it--mutants.  Professor Xavier took the affirmative side, saying we didn't know what caused mutations, that your own kids could be mutants, or maybe even your next-door neighbors, and that they were humans despite the alterations in the gene fabric.  He sounded good, but he didn't make much headway with the crowd with whom I was watching it.

Then Trask got up, said he'd invented something to take care of the mutant problem, and had it come in.  It was a giant robot, looking a lot more dangerous than old Gort, and it grabbed Xavier by the arms and yanked him out of his chair.  Some say that proved he was a mutant.  Others say Trask was just getting tired of debating him.

The rest of the story, as far as the X-Men goes, you probably know.

What you may not know about is the Mutant Riot that started just afterward.

If you think you know what a riot is from reading about one or seeing a film clip on TV, you're wrong.  You don't have a clue.  A riot is probably the scariest experience you'll ever have.  Take it from me: I've been there.

A riot is worse than a mob of vigilantes with guns.  A riot is a bunch of people who don't know what they're hunting, who are just mad as hell, and who'll bash and crush and burn and kick and stomp and kill anyone or anything in their--in its--multitentacular path.  A riot is a demon with many heads.  A riot is something you can't contain, only hope that it burns itself out before it gets to you or anything you love.

I hadn't been to Watts that year, but I didn't have to.  Somebody threw a rock through the window of the place in which we had our party, and I knew.

The riot was out there.

The riot was busting windows and heads with clubs.  The riot was setting things on fire.  The riot was screaming "MUTIE!" at the top of its lungs, along with a lot of other words, none of which the Daily Globe would print.

I went out in the street and snapped photographs.  That was what I did.  That was my automatic response.  I'm a photographer.

The riot had apparently decided that a young black man, out on the town for something or other, was the Mutie.  The riot chased him down, cornered him in an alley, beat him down with beer bottles and sticks of wood and rocks, left him bleeding up against a trash can, and moved on.  It had a lot more people to beat up that night.

As it turned out, the young black man was named Willie Carmody and he was on his way back from a movie.  Willie lost the sight from his left eye and some of the mobility in his left arm.  He never showed any mutant tendencies, before, during, or after.

The riot had just designated him the Honorary Mutie, and had done its thing.

I learned a lesson from the riot.  A lesson of terror.  But among the burning and beating and screaming, I heard someone calling for help.  It was a lady pinned under a fallen beam.  It had fallen across her legs, and she thought one of them was broken.

I helped her up and it turned out she wasn't injured, just badly bruised, and could walk on her own.  But both of us interrupted our movement when we looked up and saw what was in the skies.

Sentinels.

Flying over us like they were the destroying angels from the book of Exodus, and all of us were caught without blood painted on our doors.  Or perhaps only the muties were the ones that couldn't celebrate Passover.  Tortured associations, I know, but that's what I was thinking of.

I wondered, wildly, if they would decide I was a mutant, grab me by the arms just as they had the man in the wheelchair, and cart me off to their version of Auschwitz.

Then I remembered who they probably would go after.

I caught the train from Penn Station and prayed, oh God I prayed, that Doris and Beth and Jenny were not home.  I even prayed that Maggie would be too small to find, but I doubted that could be managed.  My main prayers were for my family, and who can blame me for that?

I could.  I still do.

I ran from the station all the way home and saw the lights on and managed to get the keys in the door and throw it open and see my Beth and my Jenny hanging on tightly to their mother, my Doris, who was stooped down to hug them both.  I asked what had happened.

Doris freed one hand and picked up a note on the floor, held it out to me.

It was written in green crayon.  I still have it.

It read:

Dear Mrs. Sheldon
 Thank you for everything but I have to leave.  I do not want your family to get hurt because of me.  I took som food.  Thank you for the new clothes.
   Love,
   Maggie

She was out there.  Alone.  On this of all nights.

And I looked at my family, and thanked God, absently, for keeping them safe.

You know this from my book, Marvels.  You might know the next line:

"And we would never know what happened to her."

I'm sorry, but that's not really true.

 -M-

This is true:

Just on the cusp of the Galactus incident, the Fantastic Four got involved with a group who were, I think, very much like mutants, but who called themselves the Inhumans.  The Four had tried to hush things up.  But when you had things happening like a guy walking up the side of a building by kicking toeholds in it as he goes, or Dragon Man flying around with that 20-foot wingspan of his, or talk of a giant bulldog who can pick up a steel girder in his jaws like it was a Dog Yummy, it's hard to keep it on the q.t.

So.  Just after Galactus came to town and left, I went on freelance assignment for Barney Bushkin of the Globe and tried to dig up what I could on the Inhumans.  A friend of a friend of mine in the police department put me onto news of a disturbance that had been reported some weeks back on the Lower East Side.  The disturbance, if local residents and a few winos could be believed, involved the Fantastic Four, several oddly-costumed people, and the aforementioned dog.

The latter had to be the Inhumans.

Nobody but the F.F. knew who the Inhumans were, up to this point.  The cops had cordoned off the area in which the mess had been made, which included a rotting building that had been given a cursory inspection.  They hadn't found anything the first time, and they would most likely be back to give it a better going over later on that week.

It was evening and there wasn't much going on in that section of town as I poked around a bit.  The old Leica was around my neck and I was taking chances.  It'd bring enough bucks in somebody's pawnshop to pay for another bottle of Muscatel, and there were probably a few characters in the neighborhood who'd considered parting me from it for such a reason.  I didn't carry a gun, and I didn't have a partner with me at the time.  Stupid.

But I got through the yellow cop tape okay and was finding approximately as much as they had.  Since I didn't think either Bushkin or Jameson would pay me for pictures of dying buildings, I was about to hang it up.  Then I saw something.

Something small.

It wasn't visible for very long, but it moved like a rabbit and didn't appear to be a lot bigger than one, from my viewpoint.

I only hesitated a second, no more than that, before curiosity was lowered into my driver's seat like the guy in the Hertz ad and I gave chase.

I ran past some concrete rubble and burned wood.  I stepped over a stewbum and threw back "Excuse me" over my shoulder, but he didn't appear to notice.  I could barely notice a small shadow cast on a building wall in an alleyway near me.  So, onward charged Phil Sheldon of the Light Brains Brigade.

Speaking of light, when I turned the corner, I saw some.

It was coming from a most unexpected source: what appeared to be the cab of something like a service elevator, which was going down while two doors hinged to the ground around it and camouflaged on top with rock, dirt, and crud were closing over it.  I had no idea how the little shadow had activated it.

All I knew was that I might have a chance for some photos that would make the cab trip there and back maybe worth it.  Provided this wasn't the underground lair of someone of Dr. Doom's caliber, of course.

I'd been there when the Torch and Sub-Mariner slugged it out over the city in ‘40, and lost an eye then from a flying brick.  I'd covered the action in Europe, when the Invaders and the regular army rolled back the Axis lines.  I'd managed to catch the tail end of Captain America's fight with the Red Skull at the UN in 1953, and as for all the early Sixties stuff, I'd seen more than I cared to remember.

None of that, of course, was going through my mind as I rolled into the descending cab just before the doors fully closed over it.  I tumbled down to the metal flooring of the cab on my back, yelped, wondered how badly I'd hurt my back, and kept my hands wrapped around my Leica.

My eyes were shut with the pain for a few seconds, and that was just how long it took for the cab to reach bottom.  I rolled over to get up, on the wrong side to see the cab's other occupant scurry out and run away.  By the time I pulled myself up and got out of it, the scurrier was nowhere to be seen.

But a lot of other stuff was.

The interior of that place was straight out of an Irwin Allen movie.  Designs and furnishings that didn't look, well, human.  A number of super-scientific gadgets, including one hooked up to a TV screen that probably picked up things other than UHF.  A big water tank, smashed to pieces, with the floor still stained all about it.  Dominating the whole area was a large bas-relief of an open-mouthed demon on the wall, whose open mouth was the large passage to the next room.

I heard something go thik-thak in the next room.

I had to be cautious.  There's nothing more dangerous than an animal when its cornered, unless it's a human being in the same predicament.  But I made sure I got some snaps of the scenery, just so I knew I'd have something to show for it.  Then I walked, very carefully, very slowly, into the adjoining room.

There was a large marble slab that had been split in half right down the middle, as if by a jeweler's chisel.

There were seats and scrolls and various other accoutrements of living.  Whoever had come here, had outfitted it as an apartment.

There was also the equivalent of a couch, and I was conscious of some muffled whimpering coming from behind it.  I stopped in the middle of the room.  No sense in making it feel any more threatened than I felt.

"I'm not here to hurt you," I said.  "I won't even take your picture if you don't want.  I can turn around and walk away if you'd like.  But I'd really like to see you, and see if I could help you."

I don't know how persuasive I was.  Or if it was just the sound of a recognized voice that was the convincer.

But I knew who I was going to see an instant before it sneaked part of its head and an eye around the edge of that couch.

My mouth was working, but my heart was too low for it to pump any will-power to my brain's speech centers.  All that was functional was my eye.

The little scurrier slowly edged more of her face from behind the couch.  She spoke.

"Is it you, Mr. Sheldon?  Is it really you?"

I sank to my knees.

"It's me, Maggie," I said.  "It's really, really me."
 
 

There I was, in the secret lair of the recently absconded Inhumans, faced by someone who was both my living guilt and my possible expiation.  She was probably about ten years old.

"Maggie," I said.

She was still behind the couch.

"Maggie, please," I said.  I held out my arms.

She whimpered.

"I know how you're feeling," I offered.

"No, you don't," she said.  "No, you don't!"

Damned if she wasn't right.  I admitted it.  "Okay, Maggie.  I don't know.  I can't.  I don't know how you got here, and I don't know how it's gone for you since, uh, since you left."

She was starting to cry.

"Don't leave, Maggie," I said.  "Whatever you do, don't leave.  I want...to talk to you.  I want to help.  I don't know how, but, my God, I've got to help."

Maggie was almost out from behind the couch, but she was holding onto it as if it were a raft.

"I won't...I won't move, Maggie.  Don't worry.  I'll leave that all up to you."

And then she was out from behind it and holding me and burying her little bony face in my chest and those big globular eyes of hers were making my tie and shirtfront wet and I really didn't give a damn, because I was holding her tiny body and resting my chin on the top of her barely-haired head and shaking and crying just about as much as she was.

I don't have any idea how long we spent like that, but I don't think it was nearly enough.

At the end of it, she sniveled and said, "Mr. Sheldon, I'm hungry."

I sighed and said, "Is there any food down here for you?  If there isn't, I'll...well, you're coming home with me.  That's all there is to it."

"Home," she said, holding me as hard as her small arms would manage.  They barely reached around me.  "This is my home, now."

"It can't be, Maggie," I said.  "There's nobody here for you."

"There hasn't hardly been anyone for me anytime, Mr. Sheldon."

"I know that, Maggie, I know it.  And I'm sorry.  But you know what?"

"What?"

"I'm sure there is a God somewhere, now, because he brought me back to you tonight.  Or maybe you to me.  I'm not sure.  But...Maggie...it's been hard for me.  Very hard."

"Why?  Did Mrs. Sheldon and Jenny and Beth move out on you?"

"No. You did."  I squeezed her a little harder.  "That hurt, too.  Because...well, you were family, too, Maggie."  She burrowed a little closer under my arm.  "Also, because I...well, I felt very bad about it, Maggie.  Very bad.  I'd gotten used to you being there.  You were a...a..."

"I was a mutie," she said, and sounded like she was going to cry again.

"Don't let me ever hear you say that word again!"

"Well, it's what I am," she said. "That's why the big robots were looking for me.  That's why I ran away.  So they wouldn't get you or Beth or Jenny or Mrs. Sheldon."

"I wouldn't have let them get you," I said, rubbing her back.  "I wouldn't have let them, Maggie."

"How would you've stopped ‘em?"

"Told them there were no mutants in this house and they should leave at once."

"What if they didn't believe you?"

"It's my house and they would've had no business being in it if I didn't want them," I said.  "I would've told ‘em that."

"Do you think they would've listened?  Mr. Sheldon, I'm hungry!"

"I would have made them listen," I said.  "I would have made them, Maggie."

I don't know how much of that was just to convince myself.  But at that moment, I think I would have said anything just to keep that wonderful, grotesque little girl in my arms just then.

I've no idea how the voice of God comes.  If Moses heard it through his ears when he stopped in front of that burning bush, or if Adam saw Him face to face when he was trying to hide out in the Garden of Eden, it was never repeated in my life nor in the lives of any people I ever knew.  I don't know how it is.  Sometimes I just get feelings.  Other times I hear a voice in my head that could be from my own brain, or another part of it.  I can't say God has any definite connection to that.

On the other hand, I've never been able to say He didn't, either.

So this voice insinuated itself into my forebrain and said the words I'd been pushing to the back of my mind:

Well? What are you going to do with her?  And how are you going to do it?

"Is there anything left in this place for you, Maggie?" I said.  "I don't know how I'm going to feed you before I get you home.  And I don't know how I'm going to get you home just yet, but you better believe it: I will."

"They had some food for themselves and some meat for Lockjaw, the dog," she said.  "Most of it's gone now.  But I'll take a look."

"Take me with you," I said.

So she disengaged herself from my arms and led me through the demon's-mouth room to a smaller room beyond.  It was what passed for the Inhumans' larder.  There were storage cabinets, some sort of freezer that didn't seem to be operating, a round, clear table, and low-slung seats, plus a meal preparation machine that was not unlike a microwave, only some years too early.  Maggie took hold of the top of a counter below the wall storage cabinets, pulled herself up onto it, stood, and opened the door of a cabinet.  There wasn't much in there besides a container of some floury substance.

"I can eat that," she said.  "I have to mix it up with the spit in my mouth, but it doesn't taste too yucky."  She reached in her hand and crammed some of the stuff in her mouth, and churned it thoroughly.  Well, at least it was something.  She sat on the edge of the countertop and dangled her legs over.

"Maggie, don't talk with your mouth full," I said.  "But how'd you like me to get you a hamburger?"

She nodded her big-eyed head, vigorously.

"A hamburger with everything on it but cheese?"  I'm not Orthodox, but my dad wouldn't eat cheeseburgers and he passed the prejudice on down to me.  She nodded again.

"Well, then, all we have to do is find a way to get you out of here, into a taxicab, and back to my house," I said.  "Without anybody seeing your face, of course."

"Because I'm a mu--", she started, trying not to spit out paste.

"Stop that!"

"Well, I am," she said.  "If I wasn't, I...I could be around people, and...and..."

"Maggie, listen to me," I said, stepping closer and taking her by the shoulders.  "A lot of people have said this, and maybe they don't always want to believe it.  But what's important is what's inside you, not what's outside of you.  And the inside of you is one of the most beautiful little girls I've ever seen.  Can you believe me when I say that?"

She didn't answer me.

"Well; all right," I said.  "But I tell you one thing: I believe it."

For the first time I'd seen that night, Maggie smiled.

"Maggie, listen," I said.  "The police are going to be here within a few days.  Maybe tomorrow, I don't know.  But I've got to find a way of getting you out of here, and back to my place.  So it's got to be tonight."

"They're coming after me?"

"They just want to find out about this place," I said.  "About the Inhumans.  You won't have a home, because they'll cart everything out of it and take it back downtown.  To a police lockup, or to the Baxter Building.  So...you won't have a place here to stay."

"They're always doing that," she whispered.  "Always chasing me out.  Always hurting me, making me run.  And I don't never do anything to them, Mr. Sheldon."

"I know, baby.  I know."

"How do you know?"  She looked at me almost defiantly.  "How do you know, Mr. Sheldon?"

I shook my head.  "Because I'm a Jew.  And because that's what they did to us, what they've done to us, for about 3,000 years.  And counting.  Maggie."

"What?"

I took my coat off.  "Let me put this around you."

I draped it around her to where her face and most of her body was shrouded.  It reached down to about her knees.  She still had shoes on, but they were showing her toes from wear.  I couldn't tell if they were the ones we bought her.

"Do you think they won't see me in this?" she said.

"I think we're going to have to try it," I told her.  "Now, let me do one more thing, Maggie, and we'll get out of here.  I have to take up this roll of film.  But I don't want any pictures of you.  Okay, Maggie?"

"Okay," she said.

"Hamburger afterward."

She grinned.

 -M-

Once I was done with the snapping, I took the roll out and put it in my pants pocket.  Then both of us got in the "service elevator" and she stepped on a certain section.  The lift rose, and pushed aside the two overhead doors.

Night outside, still.  Past midnight by a sight.  She wasn't tired.  Nighttime was her natural wake time, and had been since she left us...and before she came to us.  I was still up in the air, but I didn't know when I'd get the chance to sleep.  I'd planned to spend the night in a hotel, but that was out of the question now.  I had to get Maggie out of there, and back to my place.

The light of the chamber below was more pronounced, now, to abovegrounders.  I could only hope that not too many of them had seen us.  Hope usually wasn't worth a damn, so I hustled Maggie and myself off the platform as soon as possible.  It went down behind us, after a few more seconds.

A brisk early fall wind was blowing, and it was chilling my arms and chest.  "You feel alright?" I said, in a low voice.

"I'm okay," she said, and held my hand.  I wrapped my fingers around her.  We started forward, stepped over the aforementioned debris and burnt wood and junk and moved away from our starting point.

One of the bits of debris was human.

"Little girl," it said, in a 16 rpm voice.  "Gotta li'l girl."

I clutched her hand harder and pulled her away.  "Mr. Sheldon," she said.

"Come on, Maggie," I insisted.

"Should we help him?"

The "him" was the stewbum I'd almost tripped over a few hours earlier.  I looked at him and took in his old Army coat, the tattered and smelly jeans, the one eye still semi-open enough to regard us, and the bottle lying beside him, his hand tipping it up so the last precious drops didn't run out before he'd had a fighting chance at them.

"Can't," I said, and tugged her.

"Why not?" she said, coming with me reluctantly.  "I'd be scared of him if you weren't here, but now you're here."

I hesitated, then plowed on.  "Because there's too many people in the world need help, Maggie," I said.  "And there's just one of me."

I stepped on through the block, to the street, across it, glancing back every now and then to make sure Maggie was still holding the coat shut across her face.  The picture we presented to an onlooker's eyes surely couldn't have been a wholesome one.  I got us to the car I'd rented for the night and placed her on the seat beside me.  God was with me when I turned the ignition key; the car started up.

"Are we going home?"

"We are," I said.  "Got to make one stop first."

I hit a White Castle a few blocks away.  I'm not sure if it would've constituted cruel and unusual punishment, but I ordered some of their square, hole-punched burgers for myself and Maggie at the driveup window, together with some fries and a Coke, plus two coffees for me.  The kid working the window peered at us, mostly at Maggie, with some curiosity.  I didn't say anything about her.  I was just too blamed tired to make up any good lies.

But we got the stuff, and she ate it on the way back, and so did I.  It was going to be a long drive home.  Several hours.  I needed to crash, but I just didn't dare.

"Tell me about what happened, Maggie," I said.  "Tell me what happened after you left us."

"Tell you?"  She shrugged.  "I can't even tell myself."

"Then tell us both."

So she told me.

She told me about leaving the house in the dark of early morning (God, why didn't any of my scenes with Maggie replay with daytime as a backdrop?) and scurrying off over the back fence and down the alleys with what seemed like all the dogs in the world barking.  A few sandwiches and such in a laundry sack flung over her back, avoiding the streetlights, going as fast as her spindly legs would take her, gasping and panting and running away from the only folks who had given her a place of conditional warmth in the world.

A police car slowed down for her.  She darted back into the darkness.  Some latenight types yelled at her.  She ducked under places through which they could not go.  Her small size was a benefit, perhaps the only one she had.  Along the way, she ducked into the wrong yard and got dogbit.  She barely made it out of that one.  She rolled down her sock and showed me what still remained of the scars.

She worked her way down, out, and away.

And while she did, she kept looking up at the sky for the flying robots.

She told me she cried a lot, and even wished one would come and take her if it would take her someplace warm.   But they didn't.

She learned to conceal herself in places where even night watchmen did not poke, and lived off what she could grab from garbage cans, shut-down grocery stores, anyplace that had food she could acquire.  Sometimes she was almost caught.  They tried to catch her.  If a flashlight beam picked out her face long enough for them to see it, they yelled, "MONSTER!" or some such.

Not too many times did she get called "Mutie!"  Backhand benefit, I guess.

She was lucky.  She had avoided people of all kinds.  I couldn't blame her.  She didn't get caught, didn't get abused, didn't get picked up and sent to wherever they sent mutants.

She also didn't find any friends.

But she prayed every night, she told me, because she figured that God was still listening, and that He didn't hate her as much as humans did, or maybe at all.

Yeah.

It had been over a year since I'd seen her.  She had snuck a ride on an outbound truck full of furniture bound for a warehouse.  She'd hopped off it during a slowdown point, gotten seen, gotten chased, and huffed and puffed her way to the block where I had seen her.  She was about to settle down in the shadow of one of the structures that offered enough darkness and eat what she had found that night.  Then something pre-empted that thought.

She saw a girl and a giant dog riding something down into the ground.

Of course, it was the "service elevator".  Maggie was more frozen by the sight of the mammoth pooch, who I later learned was called Lockjaw for good reason, than by the brisk air around her.  But it planted an idea in her head.  What was down there?  And, if she could get to it, would it be safer than what she had up here?

So she waited till minutes after the elevator had gone down, then scampered over there, and clambered all over the spot.  It was almost impossible to tell where the doors covering it really were.  They were designed to be like that, and it was night, anyway.  She was trying to find whatever opened them, whatever switch you had to push, whatever rock you had to lift up, wherever you had to stand.  But she couldn't.

Then she was dislodged by the doors raising, and her foodbag spilled out, and she rolled over what bread she'd managed to cop earlier that night.

The redhaired girl in the white dress was back, with the big doggie beside her.  Maggie's first impulse was to run.  But the girl looked at her in curiosity and said, "Are you one of us?"

Then she did run.

But the big dog caught her before she could get very far, and brought her back to the girl.  Maggie started to scream.  Crystal put her hand on Maggie's mouth.  "If you are one of us, you must be silent and draw no attention to us.  We are on a secret mission.  Understood, little one?"

Maggie nodded.  But Crystal didn't take her hand away before the three of them were on the elevator again and down on the lower level.

When she saw what was below, Maggie couldn't have spoken even if she'd been forced to.  It was like Disneyland to her, with all the lights and baroque decor and gadgets. The two of them were alone at the time.  Maggie, open-mouthed, was barely able to get off the platform and touch some of the things which surrounded them.

Finally, she turned around to Crystal and said, "Are you Susan Storm?"

Crystal laughed and said, "No.  No, I'm not a storm.  My name is Crystal.  What's yours?"

"Maggie," she said.

"What is your power?" asked Crystal.  "Or have you been subjected to the Terrigen?"

She fidgeted and said, "I don't have any power.  What's a Terrigen?  And please don't let your dog bite me."

Crystal stroked Lockjaw's card-table ear and said, "He wouldn't hurt a fly unless I wanted him to.  Then he could tear blocks out of a building.  But I don't want you hurt, little Maggie."

At that, Maggie stepped a little closer, gathered her courage, and said, "Why aren't you ‘fraid of me?"

"Should I be?  You may look odder than these humans I've seen, but where I come from, there are a lot of people odder than you."

"There are?  Are you all muties?"

"I know not this ‘muties'," Crystal said.  "I am an Inhuman.  Are you one?"

"I don't know," Maggie said.  "I'm nine years old and my name is Maggie and they say I'm a mutie and that's why I ran away."

Crystal knelt down and looked in her eyes.  "I don't think you're an Inhuman."

"No," said Maggie, tentatively.

"That means I probably shouldn't have let you in here.  I could get in big trouble for it."

Maggie didn't say anything.

"But you don't have a home, do you?"

Maggie shook her head "no".

"If you promise to keep out of sight, stay in my room, and hide in my closet when somebody comes to the door, I may find a way to keep you.  That is, if you're a very good little girl.  Are you?"

Maggie shook her head emphatically, "yes".

"The others will be out for awhile longer," Crystal said.  "If we hurry up, we can get you fed and give you a bath."

 -M-

So they did, and it didn't last two days before their silent leader barged in and caught Crystal talking with Maggie.  Black Bolt stood there, arms folded, and turned a face of granite to both of them.  Maggie didn't know how, but he'd found out.

Crystal explained as best she could, and asked to be allowed to keep her, as long as she kept out of sight.  Black Bolt probably gave her a look that parents or older relatives reserve for a kid who's just told them, "He just followed me home, honest."  Then he turned around and left.  Crystal turned to Maggie and said, "He says you can stay."

I saw some reflected joy in Maggie's face as she repeated it.  It was easy to imagine what her reaction had been before Crystal.  But she didn't tell me that, and then her eyes went to her shoe-level.

I finally said, "Then what happened?"

"Something awful," she said.  "Somethin' horrible."

Not three days after that, the Inhumans had apparently brought back Madame Medusa, late a member of the Frightful Four, who turned out to be one of their family.  That precipitated contact with the Fantastic Four, apparently, and some other party from whom Crystal and her family unit had been hiding.

Crystal had burst into their room, carrying a bag of food, and taken Maggie to the elevator.  Maggie was all questions, but all Crystal would say was, "The Seeker is coming.  You must leave.  He mustn't find you here. Go."

"But I don't wanna go!  Why can't I go with you?"

Crystal had held her by the arms and said, "Because we are in great danger, little one.  We may not survive.  Can you keep safe for a week?"

"Yes," said Maggie, tentatively.

"Good," Crystal said.  "If you can, come back here in a week's time.  If we can...no, if I can...I will be back, then.  But you must leave.  You must go. The Seeker will not be as kind as I."

She sent Maggie out in the elevator, boarding it with her to make sure she went.  When Maggie hesitated, she pushed her off the platform, reluctantly, and said, "Go!"

Maggie left, and hid in the shadows, and watched the elevator go down.  She went several blocks down the street, found another hiding place, and did what she knew how to do best.

She cried herself to sleep.

I was fighting back the same impulse in myself because I wanted to cry and I wanted to sleep and I knew, crossing the big damn Brooklyn Bridge as we were, that I couldn't afford either.

Maggie told me that she'd heard noises and seen backwash of things happening on that block within the week, but didn't have the nerve to go see what it was.  Not quite.  Besides, most of it happened during the day.  She was asleep then, or tried to be.

She kept her word, almost, and went to the elevator only about 6 days later.  It opened for her. But the place had been darned near cleaned out.  No trace remained of Crystal or her family.  There was a little food left, but not a lot.  None of the fancy-shmancy gadgets worked anymore.

It was tolerably warm for sleeping.  But, by and large, Maggie was back where she'd been, where she always seemed to be.  Crystal didn't come back at the end of that week, or anytime thereafter.  I later learned that was because she and the other Inhumans were trapped behind some kind of barrier in their homeland.

That was pretty well the end of her tale.  Except for another long pause, at the end of which she said, "Mr. Sheldon?"

"Yeah, Maggie?"

"Do you think she and Lockjaw are dead?"

I tried to keep my eyes on the road and not her.  "I don't know, honeybunch.  I don't think anybody knows.   But one thing's for sure, no, two things.  I'm not dead yet, and neither are you.  Are we?"

"No," she said.  "Is that a good thing?"

"Of course it is," I said.  "And never forget how good a thing it is."

"I'll try," she said.

There's more or less a lull in my memory from that point on till the time when I finally pulled up in front of my house, feeling that I knew how Ulysses felt when he finally checked in with Penelope.  I got myself and my little charge out of the car, hoping none of the neighbors were there to see a little girl with a coat over her head, and fumbled with the keys until I finally got the right one to fit.

Doris opened the door before I could, and gaped.  I herded Maggie and myself across the doorstep.  Then I closed the door behind us.

"Doris, this is Maggie," I said.  "Again."

She peeked her big round eyes out of the coat opening.  "Hello, Mrs. Sheldon," she said.

"Fix her something and put her to bed," I said, and collapsed on the front room couch.  "Make sure the door's locked and the phone's off the hook."

At least, I think I managed to say all of that before I fell asleep.

-M-

I remember waking up to somebody, probably Beth, rubbing me under the chin with an old Deputy Dawg stuffed toy.  "Daddy, wake up.  Wake up, Daddy."

My glasses were still on my face and remarkably unbent.  What I could smell of myself assured me that the Right Guard had lost its valiant battle hours ago.  "What the hell is this," I said, and then said, "Sorry, Daddy doesn't need to say those words around you, kids."

Beth and Jenny were both on me then, Daddy as trampoline, giggling and sitting on top of me and shaking me and rubbing their hair in my face, saying over and over again, "Daddy brought us Maggie and we love him.  Daddy brought us Maggie and we love her."

"Okay, okay, so Daddy brought you Maggie, shut up already," I said, rousing myself off the couch.  "Don't say I never brought you nothing."

"Daddy brought us Maggie and we--" started Beth.  Jenny slapped a hand across her mouth to shut her up.

I got up and fumbled for my shoes.  By the time I looked up from them, Doris was in the doorway.  She was Mount St. Helens before we ever knew there was a whole bunch of lava inside it waiting to break out.  Her even gaze let me know just who would be getting the benefit of the flow, when it came.

"Mr. Bushkin called and wants to know how it went," she said.  "Needless to say--I do, too."

"Mommy, isn't it just great that we've got Maggie back with us?" gushed Beth, grabbing her wrists and jumping up and down.  "Isn't it just fantastic that Daddy went and found her?"

"Yes, dear," she said, looking straight at me.  "It's just fantastic."

"I'll go talk to Bushkin," I said, putting on  my right shoe on the way to the phone.

 -M-

Maggie was sitting at the kitchen table eating a cheese sandwich and drinking milk.  The curtains were closed very thoroughly over the windows and Doris had placed some jelly jars at certain points to make sure they stayed that way.  Maggie smiled at me.

I waved at her, rubbed her head for good luck, and made her giggle.  That was nice to hear.  Then I called up the Daily Globe, got Bushkin the Bombastic, told him I'd got the pix, and was praised to the skies, emptily.  But it sounded a lot nicer than what I would've got from Jameson.  Arrangements were made to come up later tomorrow and bring him the photos, after I developed them.

Then I hung up and hovered over the table for a long moment.  "Just what you need, short stuff.  You like horseradish on cheddar?"

"Love it, Mr. Sheldon," said Maggie.  "‘Sides, it was what you had inna refrigerator."

"Hey, you can eat White Castle burgers, you can eat anything.  Now Uncle Phil's gotta go play in the darkroom and make some pictures to make some money.  Remember: if you hear the doorbell, do not answer it.  Go in the basement, and take your food with you."

"Mr. Sheldon?"

I looked at her.  She was a bit serious.  "If you want me to, I could leave again.  Because--"

"I do not want you should leave again.  Ever.  Is that clear, Maggie?"

"Yes, but--"

"Yes, with no buts.  Butt out those buts.  I did not drive you all the way from the Lower East Side to here with no sleep in between so you could play knight of the road again.  If you ever try to lam again, you are in big trouble.  With me.  Got that?"

"Got it, Mr. Sheldon."  She smiled, shyly.  Even with her little gargoyle face, it was touching to see how nice a little girl could smile.  "But I've gotta tell you, it might make things hard.  On you."

"On me, why?"

She leaned closer, glass still clutched firmly in her hand.  She whispered, "Because I don't think Mrs. Sheldon wants me to stay here."

A few seconds after paralysis wore off, I said, "And what gives you that idea?"

"‘Cause.  She doesn't like being around me.  I mean, I understand.  Not too many people ever did wanna be around me.  Like mommy and daddy."  Some other little girl might have been crying tears at that, but I guess she'd used up her supply for the duration.  "So if she doesn't want me around, I can leave.  I can go.  I mean, I'm used to looking after myself."

I knelt down so my face was on a level with Maggie's.  "Look.  Right here, in front of you, is the head of this household.  The man who pays the bills.  Mr. Breadwinner.  The Reed Richards of this here Baxter Building.  What I say here, goes, no matter who else says anything.  And what I say is, Maggie doesn't go. Maggie stays here, lives here, is part of the family, no matter who says any different.  Got it?"

"Thank you, Mr. Sheldon," she said, and hugged me.

I knew I shouldn't have bent down so low.  It took her a while to get herself loose from me.

 -M-

Later, in my darkroom, hovering over those firming-up shots of Inhuman interior decoration, I heard Doris on the intercom I'd rigged for there.  "Phil, we've got to talk."

"I'll be finishing up here in a few minutes, Doris," I said.  "Until I do, this door stays locked.  Sorry."

"All right. But I'll be waiting outside this door.  And we will talk, Phil."

"Absolutely, Doris.  Absolutely."

I can tell you I was in no hurry to dry off the last of those shots.  But they all came out like they should, and they sold a bunch of extra copies of Bushkin's rag when they ran in it.  Of course, the NYPD made us wait a couple of days till they could give the place a going over, and made me show them how to get inside it.  I did.  There wasn't anything there they shouldn't see, now.

But anyway, I came out of the darkroom drying my hands, and Doris was there, standing behind me, arms folded.  "Phil, we cannot make this work out," she said.

"Don't talk very loud, I don't want she should hear."

"Like I shouldn't hear when you were making your big ‘I am Reed Richards' speech in the kitchen?  As if you didn't know who was Susan Storm."

"I can feel your invisible force field all the way over here.  Don't worry, I'm not coming any closer."

"Phil, stop with the jokes!  This is serious.  Don't you know what we've got down there?  Don't you know what she is?"

I set the towel aside and pointed at her.  "Doris.  Don't try and convince me you don't have a shred of human compassion.  I know you better than that.  I knew you better when you were a nurse, way back when.  Even before."

"Phil, we are harboring a--a mutant."

"Uh huh. So? The X-Men are mutants.  So what?"

"She is not an X-Man.  Stop avoiding the issue, Phil."

"I am not avoiding the issue, Doris.  I stopped avoiding the issue when I saw Maggie's face in that Inhumans immigration place.  She is here, she is staying with us, end of story."

"No, Phil."

"What do you mean, no?"

"I mean, she is not one of the family.  Not one of our family."

"That is quite true, in one sense.  But we are family to her, and she has no other family than us right now."

"Phil, for crissake.  You men always want to be the big idealists.  You always want to be the heroes, the big benefactors, the ones who always, who always Do the Right Thing so they can, I don't know, so you can look in the mirror while you're shaving and smile and say, ‘Gee, what a good person I am.'  But who's the one who's got to do all the practical stuff to make all those Right Things of yours work?"

I waited.  I knew when Doris wanted to answer her own questions.

"The women, that's who.  We have to make sure the budget stretches for the groceries and gas, and forget about that new hat we wanted to buy, oh no, we'll do without this year, so Daddy can buy his expensive new camera and take us out to the Steel Pier or something, and run around all night chasing photos when he ought to be in bed and--"

"Doris, that's not fair--"

"--and he comes and picks up a stray mutant and says, ‘Come home with me, my house is your house,' without even considering what we're going to have to do once he does it.  Without even consulting any of the family, Phil.  Without even thinking about me.  Your wife.  Remember?  My name is Doris, Phil. We got married eighteen years ago.  I can show you the pictures, if you want."

"Doris, I know.  Please, honey, I know it's going to be hard on you."

"‘Oh, please honey, I know it's going to be hard on you!  But you'll find a way to make it work, old girl, ‘cause that's what you women are good at!  You're so much better at it than us men!'  And you know why we are, Phil?"

"Tell me."

"We are because men keep dumping it all in our laps and saying, ‘Do something about it,' and walking away.  So if we want to keep the household functional, and by gosh we do, because we're the only ones who think about stuff like that, we've got to figure out a way to do something about it.  Do you think we're wizards, Phil?  Sorry, witches.  Do you think every woman is like that twitchy-nosed shiksa broad on the television, Phil?  We're not. We don't know anything more than you do, Phil.  We just get in there and find a way to do it.  We're the Seabees Corps of life, Phil."

"I never denied it, honey."

"You never denied it, but you never deigned to notice it, Mr. Reed Richards of the Baxter Building!  ‘Get me up at 5:00, that means you've gotta be up at 4:00, but you can do it, old girl.  Make sure my suit is pressed and my shoes are shined and you put a funnel in my mouth and pour black coffee down it and then shove me out the door.'  Sure, no problem.  But when it comes down to something that impacts our lives, where are your minds, Phil?  Tell me, because I've never figured it out in all my life."

"Doris, let me--"

"No, Phil.  No.  Let me, first.  Let me point out a few things.  You found a little girl mutant down there on the Lower East.  She has no home.  She was ours, once, and I tolerated her.  But it was hard.  I remember what you said, Phil.   You said, ‘She's just a little girl, Doris.'  Oh?  Is she?  Like Beth and Jenny are little girls, Phil?  Like that?"

"It does not matter what she looks like!"
 

"If it didn't, why would she have been abandoned, Phil? Why did she have to live out in the streets, hiding out from people, so that the only place you could find her was some hideout for a super-freak show out on the Lower East Side?  Phil, Phil...she is not like us.  She does not look like a human being.  She is a...she is a mutant."

"She is a little girl, Doris.  Nothing more, nothing less."

"She is another hungry mouth to feed, Phil.  And you know how much it takes to feed just the four of us, every week."

"We can make it work, Doris."

"Doris can make it work!  Because Phil's going to drop it in her lap and say, ‘You can make it work, old girl.'  Well, what if the old girl doesn't want to make it work anymore?  What then, Phil?"

I was marshalling my arguments, but I let her go ahead.  I knew her too well to step in just then.

"On top of that, Phil, how are we going to raise her if she does stay here?  Can you take her out to Coney Island for a holiday?  Can you even take her to school?  For God's sake, Phil, can we even let anyone know she's here, that she exists?  Do you know what people do to mutants, Phil?  Do you know what they'd do to us, if they even suspected we were, were harboring a mutant?"

"I know," I said, quietly.  "I've seen what they do."

"They'll think we're mutants, Phil. They'd kill us.  Kill me and you and, and Beth and Jenny.  And Maggie, too.  Kill us and burn our house and, and that's everything we've worked for, lived for, all these years, Phil.  It would've been better if she'd stayed...stayed..."

"Doris, I am going to talk."

"...but we..."

"Doris.  I am GOING TO TALK."

Silence.

I leaned back against the wall.  "I am quite well aware of what you feel towards Maggie.  I am quite well aware that this is going to be a hardship and an extra burden on the family.  I know all this, Doris, because, no big surprise, I've been part of this family, too. I don't spend all my time with a camera in my hand.  But I know something about money, too, and how much it takes for the mortgage and the food and the bills and the gas for the car and the kids' teeth and clothes and all that.  Because, don't forget: I have to make the money.  That's not saying you couldn't, or that you can't, when you think the girls are grown enough.  But, Doris, remember: I make the money.  I know how much it takes.  And I know how hard it is to come by.  Believe it.

"Let me ask you something, Doris.  Are you hostile towards Maggie because of--"

"I didn't say I was hostile to her."

"Okay, let me rephrase that.  Are you cool towards her because she looks the way she does?"

She didn't answer.

"Is it because she looks that way, and if she stays in this house, she makes you think--maybe not consciously, but just under it--of a deformed child you might have borne?"

I don't think she had an ounce of blood left in her face a second after I said that.  I don't see how she still stood up.

"Well, all right.  Let's consider that idea.  Because if you had borne a child who was this--deformed, to put it that way--or special, to put it another--but was normal in every other respect, just had this looks problem--would you treat it as a foreigner?  As someone who was not your own?"

"I, you know she isn't my child, I don't feel that way, Phil--"

"Well, would you?"

She took a deep breath, then looked at a point somewhere a foot to the right of me.  "I would make myself do whatever I had to, to convince myself to treat such a child as my very own, because she would be.  But, Maggie, Phil...I didn't bear her."

"Uh huh.  So that makes the difference."

"It shouldn't. But it does."

"Let's just stop at the ‘It shouldn't.'  All right?  It shouldn't.  You're right about that.  Dorrie, let me tell you.  I have some qualms looking at her face, too.  But only for an instant.  You know why?  Because I'm only looking at the face that she's got on the surface for that long.  And after that, I'm looking at the face she's got underneath it.  And, Doris, that face that she's got underneath it is sheerest beauty.  The Queen of Sheba should have had such a face.  If she did, Solomon would never let her get away."

She made a noise that was like the least part of a laugh.  I went ahead.

"But there's more to it than that, all right?  Let me tell you about it.  You were a little cool towards Maggie when she first came to live with us, too.  I remember.  But you didn't kick her out.  You treated her as nicely as you could.  You were just a little hesitant about touching her and such.  And she didn't mind.  She understood.  She still does.  But I don't think you understand, Dorrie.  I really don't.

"Down there, hopefully sleeping peacefully for the first night since those Inhuman types left town, and God knows she deserves it, is Maggie.  Tonight, she does not have to sleep cold.  Tonight, she does not have to sleep with an empty belly, or one nearly empty, anyway.  Tonight, she does not have to worry about somebody coming upon her and maybe trying to see what she's got to take, or taking a look at her and hollering ‘Mutie!'.  And you know why, Dorrie?  Because we happened to her.  Because you--and I--and the kids gave her a place to stay.   Again.  We had her, then we lost her, then we got her again.  You really don't see anybody's hand in that?  If not, I think I had a better rabbi than you."

"Phil, don't tell me--"

"I'm talking.  Believe me, I'm talking.  There's a lot more to it than that, Dorrie.  She's more than just a little girl, that's true.  She's apparently a mutant...a ‘mutie'.  I don't know if she's got any powers, just those big eyes and that kind of bony face.  She obviously wasn't in the same line that the X-Men were standing in.  But there's been other kinds of lines, Dorrie, and other kinds of people had to stand in ‘em.  And sometimes..."

"Phil..."

"...Sometimes, those people had to wear uniforms and numbers around their neck.  And a little gold Star of David to make sure everybody knew what they were.  You forgotten that, Dorrie?  You forgotten?  I don't think so.  In the name of God, I don't think anybody will forget, not even a million years from now.

"And maybe it wasn't too different.  They could've called those guys ‘Mutie' instead of ‘Juden'.  What the hell difference would it have made?  Just another name.  Just another tag that says, ‘We can beat up on you and nobody'll care, even kill you and nobody'll care, ‘cause you're not one of us.'  I've seen it, Dorrie.  You've seen it, too."

I sighed.  She was sitting on the floor, her hands in her lap.  Her eyes didn't stray from my face.  I had to go on.

"So.  You know, all the goyim didn't act like that?  Only a few, a very few, but God knows, every one of them, we remember.  Like that, what was her name, Corrie something--"

"Ten Boom."

"Right, Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch woman, the one who had the secret places built in her house, and she wasn't the only one, and she used ‘em to hide Jews, and the Nazis found her out and sent her to prison.  Not as bad as ours, but a hell of a prison.  You know, Dorrie.  Don't you?"

"I know, Phil.  I know."

"And Raoul Wallenberg.  And Schindler.  And the ones who hid Anne Frank. And all those other names that won't come to me now, maybe some that I don't even know about.  In fact, I'm sure of it.  The people that made sure a few of us were safe, in the midst of all that.  A safe house in the middle of Hell.  The ones who knew they had a responsibility, Dorrie. The ones who went and did it."

I sighed.  I had to sit down, cross-legged, on the floor, facing her.  "I don't know how to make speeches like I ought to, Dorrie.  But I've been taught enough in Temple, and on my own, to know that we're probably only in a lull.  We have it easy.  For now.  In America.  But we are...but we have...responsibilities.  We have to...face up to them, somehow.  Even when it's not convienient.  Even when it puts somebody at our dinner table whose face you'd rather not look at.  Because if we don't...well, if I don't, Maggie...then I am not a Jew.  Because if we can have gone through all that, and have so little empathy...so little sympathy...then who deserves to call themselves a Jew?"

She was silent. But I thought I saw something reflecting back, and maybe shimmering, in the corner of her eye.

"Your own daughters, Dorrie.  Your own daughters love Maggie, loved her before we did, because they could see what she was, not what she looked like.  We could've gotten somebody a lot worse than Maggie, Dorrie.  I think we really lucked out with her.  I know I did.   And I know something else."

I made her say it.  "What?" she said, very quietly.

"I know that you're not going to turn her out.  Because I know that's not the kind of woman you are."

She broke down, then, and I had to hold her, and I was very glad to.  At the end of it, she finally managed to sniffle and chuckle and said, "Dear God, I must look like a mess.  I'll bet my eye makeup looks like a Hershey bar you leave on the front seat."

"You look just fine, Dorrie.  Just whamo.  I'll show you.  Ready for some sheet overtime?"

"Oh...almost."  She wiped her eyes with one hand, then stood up, went to the door, and called.  "Maggie?  Are you there?"

No answer.

"Maggie? This is Doris.  I want you to come up here, please."

A little rustling at the stairs.  A little gargoyle face poking around the bannister.  She looked up at us.

"I see you, Maggie," she said, playfully.

Maggie made her way up the stairs, not saying anything, but watching both of us, wondering what she was in for, hoping and not daring to hope.

She finally got to the top of the stairs and stood there, at their edge.  "Come here, Maggie.  Now," Dorrie said.

"Yes, Mrs. Sheldon," Maggie said, and was lifted up off her tiny feet a second later and crushed gently against Doris's neck.

She might have been a bit hesitant at first, but she made herself hug Maggie all the stronger, and then didn't have to make herself do a doggoned thing.  "Welcome to the family," she said.  "Welcome to your home."

Maggie didn't say a thing, but I think they broke a record for hugging that night.  I just sat near the newel post and let them go at it, and took a look over the bannister, and saw Beth and Jenny whispering, pointing, all smiles, and then backing up quickly as they saw me looking.

It's still one helluva memory, all backed in gold foil with diamonds visible here and there around the edges.

It almost makes up for the one that followed.

Almost.
 
 

It would be a lie to say everything was easy between us and Maggie from that point onward.  All of us tried, I think, including her.  But she was a human being, as were we all, and human beings are never angels.

Her table manners were, at the start and often afterwards, atrocious.  She had been accustomed to snatching food wherever she could find it, eating it as fast as she could, often on the run, and dealing with the digestive problems afterward.  When my wife put a large bowl of creamed corn on the table, Maggie's instincts kicked in and she dragged the whole thing over to her plate and dug in like a madwoman.  About as much corn was on her face as was in her body.  The girls were aghast.  Dorrie hollered, "Maggie, no!" and I got up from my chair.

Maggie froze like a scared rabbit.  A little corn dribbled down her spoon and splatted on her dress.  Dorrie saw it, transferred a percentage of her shock and anger to fear, and lay a reassuring hand on Maggie's shoulder while I went behind her and replaced the corn bowl in the center of the table.  The kids told me I looked like a new-painted fireplug at that moment.  I could believe it.  I was resisting my automatic Daddy Impulse to grab the offender and put her over my knee.

But I knew she had to regain the training we'd given her during our earlier stay, and Doris did too.

"Maggie, that's bad manners," she was saying.  "I know you're hungry, but you have to wait till you're served.  And only take the food that's offered you.  Okay?"

"O-okay, Mrs. Sheldon," said Maggie, the spoon in her hand at half-mast.  "You aren't gonna, uh..."

"We're not going to kick you out, Maggie," I said, taking her napkin and wiping off her dress.  "But you are gonna learn how to eat like a little girl, not like Mowgli."

"What's a Mowgli?", she asked.

Beth said, "He's a little boy that grew up in the jungle.  I read about him in The Jungle Book and it's good."

"Sure enough," I said.  "Now.  Maggie.  You do remember we had this problem when you first came here, right?"

"Right," she said, looking at her lap.

"And you do remember we had to train you out of it?"

"Right," she repeated.

"Are we gonna have to do it again?"

"No, Mr. Sheldon."

"Well, try to watch yourself," I said.  "If you live with us, you have to live by our rules.  And one of our rules is: good manners.  You understand?"

"I understand, Mr. Sheldon."

Doris said, "I'll see about some more corn, Phil."

"The corn is fine, Doris.  We can all have some.  Now.  Think you're ready for some gefilte fish, Maggie?  Like your mom never used to make?"

"Yes, Mr. Sheldon."

"What do you say?"

"Please?"

"Say it to Doris.  She's the one in charge here."

"Please, Mrs. Sheldon, may I have some fish?"

"Certainly, Maggie," said Doris, and ladled out some on her plate.  Maggie sat there, hands in her lap, till Doris said, "You can eat it, dear."

She devoured it inside of thirty seconds.  "May I have some more, ma'am?" she said, and burped.

Beth and Jenny were giggling.  Doris looked at me.  I said, "You may, if you eat slower.  But wait till the rest of us are served.  And Maggie?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Don't be in such a hurry.  You've got all the rest of your life in front of you.  A lot more than I've got of mine."

I think she may have nodded, slightly, but I don't recall her saying anything.  In that, she was smarter than me.

Of course, compared to some other things, the early mealtimes were a paradise.  There were the times in which, for example, we went to movies.  How the hell could we even take her to a drive-in?  So one of the girls would have to babysit with her and miss the show.  Or Doris would heroically volunteer to stay behind.  I could tell from the look in those large globular eyes that Maggie knew she was missing something, an experience of communal fun that the rest of us could have at will, but from which she was shut out.  It hurt her and it hurt me a bit, too.  But I was determined the family was going to go on as normally as possible.

Finally she just said she didn't need anybody to sit with her and that we could all go.  So, reluctantly, we did.  It was a spy picture and Beth and Jenny both came back breathless, recounting the heroic deeds of the good-guy agent, the wacko secret weaponry, and the fiendish bad-guys who made HYDRA look like the Welcome Wagon.  She liked hearing about it, but you could tell that she was wistful about never getting to see it, or any other movie.  True, she had the TV, and watched it assiduously.  But it wasn't quite the same.

Worse yet was when the girls started talking about the women in the movie.  The regulation for most spy movies was that no female between the ages of 16 and 40 could be seen without exposing their navel, and a bikini was as much a prerequisite for them in these films as a suit and tie were to get into a good restaurant.  Hey, I'm not complaining, even though Dorrie noodged me when I became a little too observant of Ursula Andress.

"Dahliah Lavi, she's Jewish, too, and she looked great," enthused Beth.  "I wanna look like that when I grow up.  Or get to high school.  Whatever."

"Gotta get out of your training bra first, sis," said Jenny, and Beth grabbed her neck and started shaking her vigorously in mock-strangle.  Then they split up and faced each other, arms wide.

"We're gonna do it just like James Bond's gypsies!" hollered Beth, and made for Jenny.

"Yeah!" agreed Jenny, and correspondingly made for her.  I stepped in just in time to grab both in a hand apiece and play gypsy chieftain.

"Break it up, both of you, and don't play rough in your good clothes," I said.  "Get in your jammes and get to bed, both of you.  Or I'll smack your little tuchises.  Go."

"Okay, Daddy," said Jenny.

"All right, Daddy," said Beth.  "Good night, Maggie."

"Good night," said Maggie, sitting in front of the TV and watching the start of the 10:00 news.  Then she said, "Jenny.  What's a bikini?"

Jenny paused, then grinned and said, "You mean, ‘What isn't a bikini!'"

Beth co-giggled and said, "Yeah, what isn't?  Like everything!"

"Girls," I said.  "Maggie, a bikini is a bathing suit.  Very small, in two pieces.  Girls who wear it have to be awfully built, or awfully daring.  Or both."

Maggie said, "Gee.  Do you think I could wear one, when I get older?"

Silence.

Doris, who had come on the scene late, said, in a grand attempt at a save, "Don't worry about that, dear.  The only girls who look good in a bikini are in the movies."

"Oh."

More silence.

"Put the girls to bed, Dorrie," I said.  "I'll be up in a moment."

"Okay," she said.  Beth and Jenny looked back as their mother shooed them upstairs.

I stood and massaged my forehead, not looking at her or the TV as the announcer's shpiel went on.  "Got anything you want to talk about, Maggie?"

"No," she said.  "That's okay."

"Sorry if the girls made you feel bad," I said.

"I feel all right," she told me.

"Okay," I said.  "All right.  If you're sure of that, I'm going to bed.  I--" I turned on my heel and looked at her.  "Listen, Maggie, if it makes you feel better, I'm not the kind of guy who could parade around in a pair of trunks on Muscle Beach, either.  Like Doris said, that's all for the movies."

"I understand," she said.

I sat down beside her.  "I don't...Maggie, I don't have all the answers.  I can't cheer you up all the time.  I can't even cheer me up all the time.  Understand?"

"Mr. Sheldon, I'm not worried.  I know what I look like, and I don't even look as good as Herman Munster on TV."

"That's not true.  Herman is uglier than both of us put together.  But he's nice."

"And I know I'm not going to go out and have boyfriends like Jenny and Beth will.  But that's all right."

I reached out and squeezed her little hand.  "You've got us, you've got a roof over your head, and you've got three square meals a day plus what you sneak out of the icebox when we're not looking.  That's not everything, Maggie, but that's something."

"Yeah," she said.  "But I wish for one day I could look good in a bikini like a movie girl.  I wish I could even look as good as a Barbie.  Or as Beth, or Jenny."

"You look just fine, dear."

"No, I don't.  No, I don't," she whispered.

"Well, what do you expect me to do?"  I stood up, before I even intended to.  "It's what God gave you, Maggie.  Just like he gave me what I've got.  I can't do anything about it.  I'm doing the best that I can.  Can't you?  Well, can't you?"

She looked up at me and I felt like apologizing.  But I didn't.  God help me, sometimes you just get sick of walking on eggshells.  But you still feel like a crud when they break.

"I can, Mr. Sheldon," she said.  "And thank you for everything you've done for me.  I really, really appreciate it."

"Uh, thanks," I said.  "You're very welcome.  We still love you very much."

"But why did God give me this?  Is He that...that..."

"No," I said.  "No.  You can't go around blaming God for things like this.  Like I can't go around blaming him for, I don't know, Hitler and all.  I'm very tired, Maggie, and I gotta get up in the morning.  Good night."

"Good night, Mr. Sheldon," she said.  "Can I ask you something else?"

I looked at her.  "I guess."

"Why do you only have half a Bible?"

I wonder if I did a double-take, figuring that one out.  "Oh.  You mean, why is ours just one Testament, instead of two?"

She nodded.  "You don't have the stories about Jesus in yours."

"Well," I said, "there's a really good reason for that, Maggie.  You see, Christians believe in Jesus.  But we believe in God."

"Christians believe in God, too," she said.  "They've got his name all over the place in their Bible.  Don't you love Jesus, too, Mr. Sheldon?"

I exhaled.  Phil Sheldon, Boy Rabbi.  "Listen, Maggie.  If you'll stop asking questions like these, I'll get you a Bible with both halves.  Just don't talk about it to Beth and Jenny, okay?"

"Okay. Why not?"

"Because I said so!"

I waited till I was upstairs before I looked towards the ceiling and said, "Forgive me."

I also prayed for the strength to resist embarrassment when I went to the bookstore and asked for a Christian Bible.

I hope the first part of my prayer worked a lot better than the last.

 -M-

So.  Was Maggie always a little darling, the kind of kid with an ugly face but a heart as big as the little girl in Sorrowful Jones with Bob Hope?  She was not.

As time went on, she sometimes became a whiny little pain in the ass.  Sorry, but it is true.  At first she was willing to share Beth's and Jenny's toys, their Barbie dolls and Mystery Date game and the cowgirl clothes that fit her--usually just the hat and the vest, and I had to stride into my darkroom and bust down laughing when I saw her in that; you would have too, believe me--and all the rest of their stuff.

But all people are possessive, and Maggie was a person.

"Why can't I have a Robot Commando?" she'd whine at the breakfast table.

"Because a Robot Commando costs over twenty simoleons and I am not shellin' out that kind of cash for a kid's toy.  Period," I said, finding the sports page as advantageous to hide behind as my old man had.

"But I bet all the kids have one," she pleaded.  "Please?"

"I know three kids that don't," said Doris, "and they all live in this house.  And I know one kid who's gonna finish breakfast in the basement and skip lunch if she doesn't straighten up."

"Oh," said Maggie, and sniffled some.

"Maggie," warned Jenny, her hand clenching and unclenching on her milk glass.

Beth remained silent, which was the best thing she could do.

"Young lady," I said, pulling down the paper enough to where I could look at her, "you are part of this family, and being part of this family means accepting the authority of the man in charge.  Which, come to think of it, happens to be me.  You have toys, do you not?"

"Well, yes, but--"

"And you are allowed to share the toys of Beth and Jenny, are you not?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Sheldon. But--"

"‘But' is an annoying word and I wish to hear no more of it at this table.  Or I promise I will cause you to remember another butt, the kind which is spelled with two t's.  Do I make myself clear, young lady?"

She was still sniveling.

"Do I make myself clear?"

Beth and Jenny knew what I was doing.  I'd been firm with them in similar situations, and you damned well have to.  If Maggie was going to be part of the family, she had to learn the rules.  Doris stayed out.

"Yes, sir," she finally said.

"Good," I said.  "Now let's have no talk about Robot Commandos, unless it's some newfangled gimmick Moshe Dayan is using against the Arabs."

"That'll be the day," said Jenny, smiling.

Paper came down, glare went out, Jenny shut up, paper went back up again.

Then came the time in which Beth and Jenny came to me, which I knew would happen sooner or later, and asked me why they weren't getting as much attention as Maggie.  Actually, what happened was they both came up to me and Jenny said, "Daddy, why don't you love us as much as Maggie?"

I stopped in the middle of my typing a letter to Jameson and said, "That's ridiculous, Jen.  Both of you are my daughters and I love you like no other.  You ought to know that.  What's the problem?  Really?"

Beth spoke this time.  "Because you and Mom hardly spend as much time with us as you do with her."

I ran my hand through what was left of my hair to give me time to think.  "You know why we're spending time with her, darlings.  Think.  Has Maggie received the schooling you have?"

"No, but--" said Jenny.

"And therefore, Mom has had to put aside a certain section of the day in which she teaches Maggie things, right?"

"We know that, Daddy," said Beth.  "It's just...it isn't like it used to be anymore."

I paused, sighed, and showed them my open hands.  "How could it be, honeys?  Really?  Are you really feeling neglected?  If so, I apologize, believe me.  Or is it jealousy?  If so, I think I can understand."

"It's a little of both, Dad," said Jenny.

"But how can you understand?", said Beth.

"Because Daddy, as you well know, came from a home which had five kids in it, and two were born after him.  You think I didn't get jealous of the little intruders?  The ones who got fussed over by the folks who just got done making him?  Or her?  You bet I was jealous.  And I won't say I got over it, quite.  But I learned to live with it.  And it was great, when the last one came along and the one before him had to live with it, too."

"We don't want her out, Daddy," said Beth.  "We just want to know you love us more."

"More than what?  More than her?  Is that what you're wanting me to say?"

No answer.

I looked around to see that Little Orphan Annie wasn't lurking about, though she could be awfully hard to find when she wanted.

"First off, please note this: that there is a love between father and daughter that nothing comes between.  Absolutely--nothing.  We made you, you are our flesh and blood, despite the mess you leave in the bathroom, Bethie, which you are going to clean up, please, and despite you leaving your underwear on the floor of your room, Jenny, which you are going to pick up directly, we love you both unconditionally.   Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Dad," said Jenny.

"I understand, Daddy," said Beth.  I hoped they did, as I was in no way competition for Robert Young on Father Knows Best.

"You also must understand that daddies and mommies can't go around saying, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you' all the time.  Not even to each other.  In family, this is usualy a given.  Even when we bust your tuchis for something.  Understand?"

Beth nodded, and Jenny followed suit.

"The message is that love is always there, as part of the landscape.  Sometimes, like the landscape or the wallpaper, we ignore it.  If it does its job well, perhaps we're entitled to.  But take it away...and you will know about it immediately.  Because something will be perceptibly not there.  If I suddenly tomorrow had the wallpaper torn away before you got back from school, you would notice this, right?"

"Right, Dad," said Jenny, playing her part.

"But normally you would pay no attention to the wallpaper, other than your usual, ‘This is yucky, Dad, why don't we get some cool wallpaper?'" Giggles.  Good sign.  "So if I withdrew love, I believe you would notice it immediately.  I am right, no?"

"You're right, I think, Daddy," said Beth, tentatively.

"I'm right, you know, Beth.  So I do not think you are perceiving a lack of love.  Most likely, you are perceiving a lack of attention.  Think this is the case?"

"Well, it could be, Dad," Jenny offered.  "Maybe, like."

"You used to read stuff to us and play Monopoly with us and talk about getting to see World War II and the heroes and everything," said Beth. "And all that other stuff."

I mused.  It was true, I hadn't been haunting Park Place or Boardwalk very often lately.  "So you want more Monopoly?  It can be arranged, sport."

"It'd be nice, Daddy."

"And you want more war stories?  I can tell you about the time I charged up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders.  I was pushing a scooter at the time."  More giggles.  "But I have a feeling that what we have here is just a modified little-brother syndrome.  Little Brother is here.  He gets the attention.  Why don't I?  Wah!

"And I guess the real answer is that little brother needs the attention to help integrate him into the family.  Even somebody like Maggie, who is, what, ten years old now?"

"Since July 15th," said Jenny.  "I asked her."

"Good.  Well, understand this.  Though Maggie is a nice little girl, a really nice one, what did she have for a family?  A dad who lost his job, a mother who was not, let's say, affectionate, and a school system that kicked her out because she looked the way she did.  But I've been in the War, little girls, and I've seen people who had lot worse face jobs than Maggie.  Bullets and shrapnel or even flying wood fragments'll do that to you.  Believe me.  And they had to go back to the real world and try to find a way of fitting into it, too."

"Could Maggie have plastic surgery, Dad?", asked Beth.

"There's only so much plastic surgery can do, honey.  Maggie's eyes, and face structure...well, they could be modified.   But there's no way she's ever going to look like you, or you.  So she just has to live with it.  Just like Benny Bates, a PFC I knew.  He got the end of his nose knocked off by a bullet.  Don't ask me how such a shot can be fired, but I've seen it.  Now he wears a kind of bandanna thing around his schnozz, and they call him the Bandit, especially when he wears a hat.  But a kinder guy I never knew.

"But now, I want you to do something for me."

"What would that be, Daddy?" said Jenny.

"I want you both to tell me what you think of Maggie.  Honestly."

"Honestly?"

"Yeah."

"Well, she still eats too much," said Beth.

"Mm-hmm."

"She whines too much, too.  She's got kind of a whiny voice," Jenny opined.

"In this, I assure you, she is not alone in this household.  What else?"

"We wish she could get out with us, Daddy.  If we went someplace that nobody saw us--"

"No, no, and no.  Period.  You know why.  What else?"

Beth said, "We wish she could go to school with us.  And meet all of our friends.  She's like a--a prisoner here."

I was silent for a long time.  Beth was absolutely, completely, one hundred percent right.

I finally said, "It's how it has to be, kids.  Someday, maybe, things will change.  But for right now--it's how it has to be."  Pause.  "What else?"

"I wish she was my sister," said Jenny.  She pointed at Beth.  "‘Cause she's bound to be better than this one!"  She was laughing before she got to the end of the sentence.

"Oh, yeah?" said Beth, grabbing her shoulders.  "I think she is my sister!  And you're the mutie!  Mutie, mutie, MUTIE!"  They were both shaking each other in mock-fun, but I cut it down, much as I hated.

"Beth.  You don't ever say that word here, okay?"

"Which one, Daddy?"

"The one that starts with ‘M'.  I love seeing you both having fun, but the M-word is like the N-word, or the K-word, or even, God help us, ‘Christer.'  So there are some words we do not say in this house.  Right?"

"Absolutely right," said Beth.

Jenny smiled smugly.

"She's not an M-word, she's just a dope!"  Beth finished.

Both started trying to brawl like Marlene Dietrich and what's-her-name in DESTRY, and instead of pulling them apart, I called out, "And you come in here, little miss busybody."

Obediently, Maggie poked her head around the doorframe.  "How'd you know where I was, Mr. Sheldon?"

"My super-secret daddy sense," I said.  "You want to listen in on a conversation, you do it inside the room.  Okay?"

"Okay," she said.  She was smiling.  Beth and Jenny, rolling around on the rug, waved hi to her and went back to trying to mash each other's face into the deep piling.  I contemplated them, then turned to Maggie.

"Well, Maggie, looks like we'll be the only ones wanting to play Monopoly around here.  You know where the board is?"

Both Jenny and Beth stopped and raised a hand apiece.  "I do," they chorused.

"You think we should let those desperate she-cats sit down and play with us at the same table?" I asked.

"Well, I don't know," said Maggie.  "If you say so, I guess.  I wouldn't doubt you."

It was as close as she'd gotten to a joke in a long time.  I smiled, picked her up by the armpits, and smooched her on the forehead.  "We're a bad influence on you," I said.  "Before long, you'll be making your living as a comedy writer on TV."

She hugged me.  I put her down, disengaged her, and turned her around to face the door.  "The Monopoly board. Go."  I gave her a pat between the shoulders, and she ran off to find it in the hall closet.  Beth and Jenny were right behind her.

I sighed again, and looked at myself in the reflection of a glass that covered an award-winning pic I'd taken of Captain America and Bucky with some Italian prisoners in 1943.

"Hello, warden," I told myself, very softly.

My reflection did not smile back.
 
 

I must write the next part.

I think I want to about as much as did the guy who wrote about David and Bathsheba in the Bible.  But he had to do it because it was part of the story.  So I have to, as well.

Afterward you may know why I have waited this long to write the rest of the story of Maggie.  Having gotten this far, it has taken me about two weeks to get up the courage to write the rest.  If there is a prophet coming to my door later with a parable that ends with the words, "You are the man", I can't say I didn't have warning.

Let me put it off a little by telling you about what I was thinking, having spent four months with the lovely little gargoyle-girl who fell into my life twice.  No, better yet, let me tell you what my wife was saying to me one night in bed, which was the one place we were fairly sure Maggie could not hear us.

"We can't keep her in the house forever, Phil," she said.

I didn't want to say anything.

"Someday, sometime, somebody is going to find out about her," she continued.  "Or she'll get out on her own. What then?"

"I don't know," I said.  Honest, and it was a good all-purpose answer.

"That's not good enough, Phil," she said, tracing a line on my chest with her finger.  "You know it isn't."

"It means I don't want to talk about it and I'd like some sleep, Dorrie dearest.  It means I've got no good answer for you right now."

"She's growing up, Phil.  She's going to want to be around other people besides us.  She'll get to be a teenager, and then--"

"And then she'll want to find out about malt shops, sock hops, and rock ‘n' roll.  No, thank you.  We have enough trouble with Beth and Jenny, and Maggie will just have to learn to..."  I didn't want to say it, but I had to.  "Do without," I finished.

Now it was Dorrie who didn't say anything.  She just lay beside me.

"I'm sorry if it sounds cruel," I said.  "I suppose Anne Frank felt the same way.  You know what they had to keep her safe from."

Dorrie snuggled a little closer.  She does that when she wants to get something through to me.  "What are we keeping her safe from, Phil?"

"The real world, Doris. The world that's full of mutie-haters and people who'll scream at her or make fun of her or chase her."

"Should we keep her safe from it, Phil?"

"You want we should bring her home dead some night?  Is that what you want, Doris?"

"We'll be taking almost those same risks with Beth and Jenny in a few years."

"Oh. Right.  Like they're..."

"No.  They don't have Maggie's face, that's true.  But we'll be sitting up, worrying why either of them is a little bit late coming back from a date.  We'll be wondering if they're going too far, or what they're drinking, or if they're experimenting with other stuff."

"Not my kids!"

"I tend to agree, Phil.  Beth and Jenny, I think we can trust them.  But you know what teenage is like.  Your whole world shifts perspective."

"I know.  Dirty jokes you're just starting to understand, football players and cheerleaders you're starting to hate, zits popping up like ragweed on your face--"

"Sex."

"That a statement or a request?"

"A comedy writer you are not.  You will disgrace the whole tribe."

"I did that regularly when I was 14 to 18.  My dad told me every week."

"Well, I take care of that now."  She smiled.

"You do."

"You've changed the subject, Phil."

"I have.  Talented, aren't I?"

She didn't say anything for awhile.  Then, when I was convinced I could go to sleep, she said, "We won't be around forever, Phil."

"Uh huh."

"Beth and Jenny will leave in a few years."

"I suppose they will."

"What about Maggie?"

"Dorrie.  I really, really don't know."

Pause.

"Then you'd better find out."

I had no answer to that.
I was relieved that she turned over then, and went to sleep.  Or at least faked it enough that I could.

I managed it after about an hour, I think.
 

 -M-

It wasn't long after that I found something else out when I checked on little miss Maggie down in the basement one night.  Didn't exactly make me Mr. Solomon Holmes when I did it, either.  It was just that time, she must've been too tired to hide it.

Maggie's hours were sometimes different than the rest of ours, though we'd gotten her mostly out of her stay-up-all-night-and-spend-the-day-sleeping routine.  Often Doris had to get her out of bed in the morning to get breakfast with the rest of us, because family breakfast is a ritual that we were by-damn not gonna break.  No matter what kind of doghouse my brothers and I were in during our early years, my dad insisted every one of us, plus Mom and the sisters and Aunt Estelle, were down at the breakfast table every morning to be together.  If you tried to sleep in, he went up and grabbed you by the earlobe if you were a son, or just banged on the bedroom door if you were a daughter or aunt.  Miss dinner or lunch?  Not to worry.  But breakfast?  You missed that, you better run down to the temple and see if they still did sanctuary.

Anyway, she'd do breakfast and if she was still sleepy, she'd head back to the basement and check out for as long as it took.  It was Sunday morning and I didn't have to go to work or worship.  I'd been doing one of my infrequent helpings of Doris with the dishes.  She'd never let me near a glass, which was wise.  Anyway, it had been an hour or so since noshing, and Beth and Jenny were outside doing whatever 12-year-old girls do when parents aren't looking over their shoulders.  What they did back in the mid-Sixties, that is.  So I decided to look in on Maggie.

Not that anything was supposed to be wrong with her.  I just liked checking in on her.  You know?

Maggie was lying asleep in bed.  A real bed, one that we'd bought for her, not a cot.  With blue blankets and a pink pillow in a basement which was fixed up like a real girl's room, which we told the meter readers and occasional guests was used as an auxiliary bedroom whenever Beth or Jenny felt like it.  We would've said it was there for their sleepover guests.  Except that they didn't have any of those for the last few months, though they went over to other kids' slumber parties.

I am stalling.

Maggie was asleep.  Lids over those huge eyes, her hair actually grown long enough to cover most of the places which would be covered on a girl's head.  She still tied bows in it.  That made me smile.  She kept her hands under the covers and didn't snore much.  I knew she had trained herself--or maybe she didn't have to train herself--to sleep light, because she might have needed to light out of wherever she was if she heard a suspicious sound in times past.

But those times were past.  She didn't seem to need to wake up when I was down in the basement.

I liked that.

She had several pairs of shoes now.  We had to buy them for her without her being there, so it was a blessing the darn things fit.  You wouldn't believe how grateful the kid was for them, or maybe you would if you knew how long she'd had to wear the same pair of white-top laceups between the time we lost her and got her back.

Looking at her down there, sleeping on her back underneath a blue blanket, with a Nancy Drew book flopped down by her bedside and a kiddie record player with a Vogues 45 on the spindle (she always liked "5 O'Clock World" and did that "hep" thing in perfect rhythm), I had to admit that she was coming to occupy a place in my heart just under that of Beth and Jenny.

I liked that, too.

Did I mention shoes?

Well, the pair that she had been wearing the night before were red Keds and the front edge of one of them was just poking out from under the edge of the blanket.  Maggie was a fairly neat child and liked to line up her shoes along one edge of the wall, as if invisible soldiers were standing at attention in them.  Yet, her Keds were under the bed.

On a whim, Daddy reached down and picked at the shoe, figuring the other one was down there beside it (it was), and was going to line it up against the wall with her other three pair.

I picked it up and was about to go after the other one and froze.

I couldn't tell how long I froze, but I was sitting on the floor beside the bed holding the shoe in both hands when I came back to myself, and the shoe was facing sole-up and I didn't want to believe what I was looking at, but it was in living color, 3-D, and maybe even Todd-AO.

"Jesus Christ," I said.  Then I said it louder: "Jesus CHRRRIIIIST!"

Hey, it might be the wrong religion.  But I'm American.  I figure I was entitled.  And even if I wasn't, we were both Jewish, so maybe I could be pardoned.

Funny.  I still want to insulate myself with jokes.

Maggie was sitting upright, staring at me, breathing heavy, her eyes as wide as they physically ever got, saying nothing.  Doris had heard me and was coming downstairs as fast as her high heels would allow, making creditable time, actually.

Maggie looked like she wanted to bolt, but it was light enough in there for her not to hide, I was between her and the door, and I was who I was and not somebody she didn't know.  So maybe that was why she didn't try to run.  But she looked about as scared of me as I ever saw her, and she had damn good reason to be.

"Phil," said Doris, from the stairs.  "Phil!  What's wrong!"

I was looking at Maggie, holding out the shoe.  "Maggie," I said.  "Maggie.  Can you explain this?"

She looked at me, her mouth open, not trying to say anything.

"The shoe, Maggie," I said.  "Look at the shoe, not me.  Explain that."

She looked at the shoe.

It had mud on the sole.

Doris had caught sight of it too.  She drew in a heavy breath, kneeling beside the bed, and expelled it.  "Oh, Maggie," she said.  "Oh, dear."

Maggie was almost too scared to speak.  I didn't like the feeling that I was standing in her long-lost daddy's place by what I had to do.  But I went ahead.  "Maggie.  You've been getting out at night, haven't you?"

She slowly nodded.  "Yes, sir," she said, squeakily.

"How many times, Maggie?"

"I don't know," she said.

"Four?  Five?  More, even?"

"I don't know."

Doris clutched at Maggie's arm.  "Maggie, don't you know what you've been doing?  Don't you know what you're risking, what they could, what they could do to you?"

"I'll tell you what they could do to her," I said.  "They could do just what I saw them do to a guy who they only thought was a mutant, the night I first found out about her.  They beat him so hard it was a week before he walked without a wheelchair, and he can't see out of his left eye now.  And you, Maggie, you--"

"I'm sorry!" she squealed.

"--You chanced bringing all that down on yourself, and on us!"

Doris didn't say a thing.  She knew when to let me carry the ball, and this, little as I liked it, was one of those times.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Sheldon, I'm really, really sorry," Maggie said, close to tears.  "All I wanted to do was go out and see what it was like outside again and all.  Do some walking around.  I'm, I'm good at hiding."

"Oh, you're good at that, all right.  So good I just found out about it when you didn't clean your shoe off before I could see it.  Maggie, this is your haven.  There are people out there who would hate you.  Not just because of the way you look, but because they might think you are what you are.  A mutant.  There are people out there who could kill you.  And if they saw you coming back here, they could kill us, too."

She breathed heavily, but didn't say anything.

"My God, Maggie, my God," I said.  "I've been trying to keep you safe, to keep the family together, to keep you secret so that you won't have to, to live like an orphan hobo, and you--"

"Phil," Doris said, more or less to let me know she was there.

"--You go over the wall!  What the hell were you thinking?  Were you thinking at all, Maggie?  Were you thinking at all?"

She started bawling then, and I didn't blame her.  But part of being Daddy is knowing when not to ease up, even in the face of tears, when you have to stay hard.

"Maggie, I am just about at the point of putting you over my knee," I said.  "This is about the absolute equivalent of walking around with a yarmulke on the streets of Hitler's Berlin.  Where did you go?"

"Not far," she said, still sobbing.  "I'm sorry."

"How far?  How far, Maggie?"

"Only a few blocks.  I kept, I kept in the alleys for a lot of it.  I didn't, let ‘em, see me, hear me."

"But you don't know if they saw or heard you," I said.

"Nobody came after me!"

"You still don't know."

She was burying her face in her hands.  "Maggie, come here," I said.  "Get up from bed, and let me show you something."

"Phil, what are you going to do?"  Doris was looking motherly-apprehensive, and had a right to.

"You can come along, too," I said.

I grasped Maggie by the wrist once she was into her slippers and trundled her up the basement steps.  I showed her every room in the house--mine, the kids', Doris's, the bedroom, the darkroom, the den, the bathrooms, the kitchen, the dining room, everything.  Suburban splendor.  Then I took her to a back window, the one which looked out upon our fenced yard.  Nobody could see her looking out from this vantage point, since the fence was higher than the window.

"What do you see, Maggie?" I said.

"Beth and Jenny," she said. "Playin'."

Beth and Jenny were out there indeed, playing with a set of Jarts.  They saw us and stuck their tongues out.  When they saw I was not amused, they quit mugging and gave us curious looks.  I spoke to Maggie.

"Now you've seen everything I have," I said.  "Everything I stand to lose.  Including myself.  My wife.  My two daughters.  If anybody had seen you, Maggie, or better yet, if anybody has seen you--that's what I will lose.  Because there are lots of good people out there, Maggie, make no mistake about that.  But there are evil people as well, and they like to hurt, and sometimes kill, things that make them frightened.  Or just things they think don't fit into the norm.  I've seen it."

"I'm sorry," she said.  "It's just that--"

"Sorry!" I flat-out yelled it.  "Sorry?  This isn't real enough to you yet, Maggie?  If somebody bashes you over the head with a club and you're lying there expelling your brains into the gutter, if they say ‘Sorry', will it automatically make your brains go up into your head again?  Will it, Maggie?"

"No," she said, still crying.  "But I feel like I'm in jail!"

Dead silence.

Doris finally broke it.  "You aren't in jail, Maggie.  This is your sanctuary.  Your hiding place.  But if you go out there, and get seen--there'll be no place to hide.  For any of us."

"What do you think they'd do to us, if they found out we'd been harboring you this long, Maggie?" I said.  "No, don't even think about running out on us again.  I don't want that, Doris doesn't want that, and you know you don't want that, either.  And you know it wouldn't solve anything.  But we haven't been sending you to school, we haven't declared you as a tax exemption, the real world doesn't even know you exist."

Maggie said, quietly, "I'm glad."

"Oh, that's nice.  So you tempt fate every time you go out there in your little red Keds, any time some galoot hears a barking dog by the fence and decides to go see what's making Rover go crazy, and he looks over, and he sees--" I sighed.  "Maggie, Maggie.  What in the hell am I going to do with you?"

She looked at me and, after a time, said, "I could leave again."

"You can NOT!  Do you think I've gone to all this trouble to make you a runaway again?" I said.

Doris said, "Don't you know we love you, Maggie?  Don't you realize, after all this time, that we really, truly, love you?"

"I know that, Mrs. Sheldon," she said, her tremendous eyes holding more sadness than, God help us, any kid her age should have to know, and all of whom seem to.  "And I love you back.  You, too, Mr. Sheldon.  I don't want to leave here.  I really don't.  But I...I miss feeling the cold wind out there at night.  I used to feel it lots of times.  It almost froze me, sometimes.  Didn't think I'd ever miss it.  But you know what?  I do."

"Mm-hmm," I said, my arms folded.

"And I, oh, I just miss being able to look up and see what stars you can in the sky.  And hearing all the night noises, and being able to, well, just walk or run anywhere I can get to, if I'm not seen.  Just being able to take a walk.  I'm sorry if I..."  She faltered, then hung her head.  "I just don't know.  I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it."

The washing machine in my head had the agitator going at full blast.  Why me?  Why not some wealthy guy like Rockefeller or Tony Stark, who could have kept her on a big island or estate somewhere, waited on by a bunch of servants who were sworn to secrecy, and taken her places, protected by money and privelage from the mutant-hating nuts?

She had a point, and I knew it.  How well was she developing in this hot-house environiment?  Sure, it was better for her than scrabbling for what food she could steal, seeking out some hidey-hole to sleep in every night, keeping away from people who would chase the monster.  But wasn't it, in the end, every bit as much a prison?

But sometimes, a prison is all you've got.

"Young lady, I do not want you to do this ever, ever again," I said, leaning against the basement wall.  "If you do, I swear, I really mean this, I will put you over my knee and wear you out.  You will eat your next twelve meals standing up, and you will sleep on your stomach because you have to.  Clear?"

"Yessir," she said.

"If I can...IF I can...maybe, just maybe, I will try to find a way to take you somewhere," I said.  Her eyes lit up like the Truman Library picture of the A-bomb test.  Doris drew in a breath.  "This is a very big if, young lady.  I do not know how I will accomplish it, and your old major domo is getting awfully tired of all the hats he has to juggle lately.  Most likely, it will be only you and me.  At most, some of the rest of the family."

"Can Beth and Jenny come too?", she said, excitedly.

"It depends.  It will most likely be at night, and you can be darn sure that it will not be to a place where you can be easily seen, if at all.  I'll be lucky if the neighbors just think I'm a Commie spy.  But your smiling face does not please me, young lady, because this is a serious matter.  The guys with the guns and torches could have come for us, just because of what you did.  You understand that?"

"Yessir," she said, a bit more subdued.

"No more uncle Phil, or aunt Dorrie, or Beth and Jenny.  That could have happened.  Because of what you did.  You understand that?"

"Yessir, uncle Phil," she said.  I had to admit, I liked that a lot more than "Mr. Sheldon".

"Therefore you are gonna get penalized, and it is only because of my withholding good judgment that I am not laying upon you the 39 Whacks.  For the next week, no TV.  No radio.  No records.  You can have your Nancy Drew, your other books, and your comics.  But none of the other.  Any infringement, and I shall paddle your backside.  Understand?"

"Yes, uncle Phil."

Doris put in, "And if he forgets it, darling--I won't."

I sat down beside her on the bed.  "Maggie.  Uncle Phil is tired.  Uncle Phil has to hustle a living as a photographer, and keep the bills paid, and try to take care of everything with the good right arm of my Dorrie here to rely on.  It is not easy, even with things running well.  So do you understand that uncle Phil needs you to be a good girl from now on, and not to gum up the works by doing things that could get you killed?"

"I'll try," she said, trying to smile and sniffle at the same time.

"That's good," I said.  "Because you--"

Coincidence.  It's the mark of bad writers and Charles Dickens.  But it happens.  If this makes God a bad writer, I don't know.  You should take it up with Him, okay?  It happens.

"MOM!"

The voice of Jenny, amplified to the nth by terror.  The sobbing of Beth, as an undertone to it.  It came from upstairs, in the living room.  Neither Doris nor I could see our daughters at that moment, and it seemed as though that howl of Jenny's must have taken twenty seconds at least.

Nonetheless, we were in the basement one instant, and in the living room the next, grabbing at our daughters, and I can swear to no interval in between.  If you said we teleported, I would not disagree with you.

The damage was there and obvious in Beth's red, dripping hand.  She'd been holding one of the Jarts, which are a kind of lawn dart, with the tip pressed against her palm while she was coming inside.  She trips on the front step, boom, down she goes.

The damn Jart, blunt tip and all, pierced her palm.  Jenny, not even knowing what she was doing, pulled it out, which made the bleeding even worse.

I cannot reproduce any of our dialogue with a degree of accuracy.  I know I took off my belt and wrapped it about Beth's upper arm as a tourniquet.  I know Doris grabbed part of the tablecloth off the table and was trying to wrap it around Beth's palm.  I think I yelled at Jenny to call the ambulance, and she asked what to dial, and I yelled at her to dial the operator and told Doris to get some ice and tried with one arm to keep my Beth's face away from looking at her hand while we tried in our stupid way to wring lesser chaos out of greater chaos.

I can't even tell you that Maggie said, "Let me."  But I think she did.

She had materialized somehow on the top step, ran over, pulled the gory piece of tablecloth away from Bethie's gushing palm, and, taking Beth's larger hand in both of hers, spit up on it.

The stuff she spit wasn't from her stomach.

It was some clear, glistening, gluelike gumstuff that she was careful to spread thickly all over the wound.  And even though it didn't stop the pain, it did stop the bleeding.  A natural spray-on Band-Aid, ages before such stuff was even conceived, outside of maybe NASA.

Maggie spit some more on Beth's hand, and wiped her mouth carefully, and dripped what she could from her hand on my baby's wounded palm.

Doris and I must have been looking at her with some kind of stunned-ox expressions.  Actually, we probably looked as though we had witnessed some shock bit from a horror movie, which, though terrifying, was beneficial--and all the more frightening for that.

Beth managed to say it, looking at the glistening and hardening gum on her hand.

"Maggie, my hand," she gasped.  "My hand.  That stuff.  It's your mutant power!"

Maggie looked up at us in astonishment.  "You mean, you can't do that, too?"

I looked at my wife.  "Doris.  Call the ambulance."

"Phil, she might--"

"Call the ambulance!  NOW!"

Bethie was still sobbing, as she had a right to.  But, as I held her there on my lap, I could see she was fascinated by what strange gift Maggie had been able to tender.  And that, perhaps, there was an upside to the thing that had made her a gargoyle, whatever that was.

I looked at her.  "Maggie.  Thank you.  Thank you very much."

"You're welcome, Mr. Sheldon," she said.

"The record player.  But no TV or radio, still.  Understand?"

"Yes, uncle Phil."

I had a brand new set of things to worry about, now, superseding the old ones.

It made me almost glad.
 
 

So now Maggie had a talent.  A gift, if you will.  To say the least, we were pleased.  Which made her pleased, in turn.  After all, she didn't know it wasn't something the rest of us couldn't do.

That solved a few mysteries from the past, like how she'd gotten dogbit and had healed so well in such a short time.  The gumstuff, which must have been produced from a sac in her throat or somewhere near it, was kind of like spiderwebs used for old poultices.  Only it was much stronger.  The guys at the emergency room gave us some funny looks when they had to cut it off Beth's hand.  I don't know if they analyzed it or not, later.  But she recovered, in only half the time it would normally take such a wound to heal.

I brought Maggie a Chinese takeout dinner on one of our TV trays the night afterward.  I held her hand and thanked her very, very much.  Bethie came in behind me and, before I knew it, had wrapped her arms about Maggie, one of them ending in a bandaged hand, and kissed her on the cheek.  They didn't say anything while I was there, but I gave them both a squeeze and could tell they were just waiting till I left to turn on the tear ducts and start whispering.  So I left.

She still didn't get her TV privelages until a week was over.

So.  You want me to tell you more?  Assuming there is a hypothetical "you" out there, assuming I submit this for publication, assuming it ever gets out of my desk drawer on hard copy or floppy, assuming an editor does not delete this.  A lot of assumptions, there.

We did take Maggie out, all four of us, one night, to a hill convieniently far away from our neighborhood and away from houses and cars and such.  We had our coats with us, since it was either late October or early November by that time, and we kept Maggie covered up with one of them in the back seat between Jenny and Beth.  We also had a big picnic lunch with us and a volleyball net and ball stashed in the trunk.  And we had our family outing out there at 8 P.M. with a couple of Eveready lanterns, spread the picnic cloth out, set the food out on it, ate same after saying grace, and set up the net so our besweatered kids could play.

It took Maggie awhile to get the hang of it.  But even with the kids cutting her a little slack, she was having a hell of a fun time.  Dorrie looked at me, challenged me to a match, and had us both get up there and bat it across the net.  I lost my glasses at least once and she beat me handily.

We had to make sure we listened and looked for any approaching lights, any approaching man-sounds, as if we were a family of deer.  Twice, the girls said "Shhhhh" and looked around in an attempt to track a suspicious something they'd heard, and we shut up and doused the lights.  But it proved to be nothing.

On the way back to the car, Maggie hugged my right arm, said, "Thank you, Uncle Phil," and wouldn't let go until she had to.  And on the way back, all three of the kids were laughing and girl-talking, wrestling all over the seat till their mom had to tell them to break it up and pipe down, and then they resorted to giggle-whispers till we got home.

We almost forgot to close the garage door after we got in.  Beth had gotten out, but Maggie wouldn't.  "You forgot the door, Uncle Phil," she said, quietly.

"Oh.  So I did, Maggie," I said, and went to pull it down.  I was glad we'd still had presence of mind to cover her with the coat once we got into town.  Beth and Jenny told Doris that they wanted to sleep with Maggie tonight.  She told them, "Nothing doing. Tomorrow you have school.  Up to your rooms."

"Aw, Mom," said Jenny.  But her patented waif look didn't ever work on her mom the way it did sometimes on me.  The two of them headed up the stairs.  Doris was on her way to the kitchen.  Maggie had a wistful look on her face.  You wouldn't think it possible to discern different emotions on her huge-eyed, strangely-constructed little phiz when you first met her.  But live a little with her, and you could read her face like the Yellow Pages.

"Uncle Phil," she said.

"Mmhmm?" I responded, loosening my tie.

"Do you think I'll ever get to go to school?"

I sighed, stopped in mid-knot.  "Believe you've been there some already, Maggie.  And you told me what happened."

"I know, Uncle Phil.  But this time it might be different.  I've got Beth and Jenny, and it might be."

I sighed, sat down beside her bed, upon which she was sitting.  "Maggie," I said.  "Before you ever go to school, we would have to declare you to the world.  And you know what will happen then?"

She blinked, which was quite a trick for her.  "People will be mad?"

"Well, some will," I said, smoothing the top of her hair, which was thickening quite a bit from its state some months earlier.  "Some will be very, very surprised.  Uncle Phil's family will be in the news all over when that happens.  We'll be lucky to get a moment's peace once it happens.  There'll be reporters from Jonah Jameson's paper, and Barney Bushkin's paper, and the TV and radio stations, and maybe even CBS and NBC."

"ABC too?"

"Maybe."

She brightened.  "Then we'd be famous.  They wouldn't dare hurt us then, Uncle Phil."

I shook my head, placing one arm about her shoulders.  "Wish I could say that was true, Maggie.  But you've heard about President Kennedy?"

She hesitated, then shook her head up and down.

"And he was a lot more famous than we could ever be," I continued.  "I've also told you about what happened to my people, twenty years ago.  And you know about the riots."

"The ones where they burn things and all?"

"Yep," I said.  The Long Hot Summer had taken place over a lot of the country, and we hadn't even seen a lot of the hell that was to come down.  Such as the 1968 assassinations, and the bank bombings, and the Black Panthers, and Kent State, and all of those good vibes that followed soon after the Summer of Love.  Black kids had been physically resisted from entering newly-integrated schools in many communities.  That was happening in that wonderful year, 1966.  So was the beginning of black resistance and counterattack.

As for mutant kids, the politicians didn't even want to bring that one up.

How do you mention all of that in a single breath to a kid?

"So," she said.  "I might never get to school after all.  I might have to stay with you and Aunt Doris all the time."

I didn't say anything.  I was conscious of Doris's presence in the room.  She was standing at the other end of it, waiting to hear what I had to say.

"Well," said Maggie, "that'll be all right, I guess."  She started to get out of her shoes and socks.

"Maggie," I said, before I could kickstart my superego with its "No, you don't!" warnings.

She looked at me, halted, and then said, "Yes, uncle Phil?"

I had to take a deep breath, hesitate for another good long moment, and know that I was getting hip-deep into a lava pit with the very next thing I would say.  But, sometimes, there are no other things one can say.  Or at least, no other things that one knows to say.

"Maggie," I said, quietly.  "Someday, somehow, some way, sometime we will see about getting you in school.  I don't know how.  I don't know when.  So don't pester me about it.  But..."

Doris was looking at me with real horror.  I like to think I saw some hope in there, too.  But I'd have to dig to see it.

"...but someday, we will...we will try.  That's all I can promise.  That may be...it may be too much to promise, already, Maggie.  But I will promise, I will promise to try."

Hell should have opened wide underneath my feet right then.  I would have gladly done a free-fall into it just to get away from Doris, at that moment.

"Oh, thank you, Uncle Phil!"  The kid, one sock off and one sock on, grabbed me and nuzzled me around the neck, getting her face in my five o' clock shadow.  "You're the best uncle-daddy I ever had!  You want me to help Aunt Doris with the dishes, right?"

"That would be nice, dear," I said.  I was facing Doris and she was shooting death rays at me from her eyes.

"And help her with the laundry and everything?"

"That would also be nice, dear, and I'm sure she'll have a long list of things for you to do.  But what I mainly want you to do right now is to get to bed.  Capeesh?"

"Capeesh," she said.  She let go of me and smiled at me.  "You're a good uncle.  And you're a good aunt, too, Aunt Dorrie."

"Thanks, Maggie," said Doris, modifying her forty-yard stare to a smile when Maggie turned her head towards her.

"Get your butt in bed.  Now," I said, and followed Doris up the basement stairs, turning out the light as I went.

Once we were up in the bedroom with the door closed, she turned to me and on me with both fists on her hips.  "Phil Sheldon, you have really done it.  I mean, this time, you have really done it."