Baby Is Three Read Free Page B

dull light reflected from the sparkly black shed roof, and he couldn’t make any shadow country people at all, so he made them in his head until he felt sleepy. He lay down then and hummed softly to himself until he fell asleep. Andthrough the long afternoon the thing in the wall flickered and shifted and lived.
    At dusk Mommy Gwen came back. Bobby may have heard her on the stairs; anyway, when the door opened on the dim room he was sitting up in bed, thumbing his eyes.
    The ceiling blazed. “What have you been doing?”
    “Was asleep, I guess. Is it night time?”
    “Very nearly. I suppose you’re hungry.” She had a covered dish.
    “Mmm.”
    “What kind of an answer is that?” she snapped.
    “Yes ma’am I’m hungry Mommy Gwen,” he said rapidly.
    “That’s a little better. Here.” She thrust the dish at him. He took it, removed the top plate and put it under the bowl. Oatmeal. He looked at it, at her.
    “Well?”
    “Thank you, Mommy Gwen.” He began to eat with the teaspoon he had found hilt-deep in the grey-brown mess. There was no sugar on it.
    “I suppose you expect me to fetch you some sugar,” she said after a time.
    “No’m,” he said truthfully, and then wondered why her face went all angry and disappointed.
    “What have you been doing all day?”
    “Nothing. Playin’. Then I was asleep.”
    “Little sluggard.” Suddenly she shouted at him, “What’s the matter with you? Are you too stupid to be afraid? Are you too stupid to ask me to let you come downstairs? Are you too stupid to cry? Why don’t you cry?”
    He stared at her, round-eyed. “You wouldn’t let me come down if I ast you,” he said wonderingly. “So I didn’t ast.” He scooped up some oatmeal. “I don’t feel like cryin’, Mommy Gwen, I don’t hurt.”
    “You’re bad and you’re being punished and it should hurt,” she said furiously. She turned off the light with a vicious swipe of her hard straight hand, and went out, slamming the door.
    Bobby sat still in the dark and wished he could go into the shadow country, the way he always dreamed he could. He’d go there and play with the butterflies and the fuzz-edged, blunt-toothed dogs and giraffes, and they’d stay and he’d stay and Mommy Gwen would never be able to get in, ever. Except that Daddy wouldn’t be able to come with him, or Jerry either, and that would be a shame.
    He scrambled quietly out of bed and stood for a moment looking at the wall by the door. He could almost for-sure see the flickering thing that lived there, even in the dark. When there was light on the wall, it flickered a shade darker than the light. At night it flickered a shade lighter than the black. It was always there, and Bobby knew it was alive. He knew it without question, like “my name is Bobby” and “Mommy Gwen doesn’t want me.”
    Quietly, quietly, he tiptoed to the other side of the room where there was a small table lamp. He took it down and laid it carefully on the floor. He pulled the plug out and brought it down under the lower rung of the table so it led straight across the floor to the wall-receptacle, and plugged it in again. Now he could move the lamp quite far out into the room, almost to the middle.
    The lamp had a round shade that was open at the top. Lying on its side, the shade pointed its open top at the blank wall by the door. Bobby, with the sureness of long practice, moved in the darkness to his closet and got his dark-red flannel bathrobe from a low hook. He folded it once and draped it over the large lower end of the lamp shade. He pushed the button.
    On the shadow country wall appeared a brilliant disk of light, crossed by just the hints of the four wires that held the shade in place. There was a dark spot in the middle where they met.
    Bobby looked at it critically. Then, squatting between the lamp and the wall, he put out his hand.
    A duck. “Quackle-ackle,” he whispered.
    An eagle. “Eagle—eagle—eagle—eagle,” he said softly.
    An