(which she thought it was not). Still, from the kids' point of view, it would be that one day they
were playing this game, the next day they were bored and irritable, and the third day they
were playing something new (which was not new at all). They withdrew into the hills and
woods and became their ex-kingdom's harried guerrilla fighters, its Resistance Movement. And
then that got boring-hadn't Cindy said they hadn't played much until now?-and then Barbara
came along.
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And then I came along, Barbara said. Something in the sentence attracted her. And then I
came along. It was all so bitterly clear. I am the fourth level of the game.
The parents were gone; they were to be gone for quite a while by children's standards. Now
the children could, now they could-what? Who knows? And the only thing to prevent it was silly
Barbara, dumb Teacher, who had come flouncing onto the scene in a blue summer dress and
not much else. How easily the children's impatient imaginings and the opportunity of
Barbara/target would come together with a bang. Now they could really play the game.
If they could. If they dared. And they dared.
But what was the fourth level of the game? Something chilly and dark passed just behind Bar-
bara's immediate attention and then waited somewhere in the out-of-reach part of her mind.
An intimation.
She thought.
OK, I am their new toy. Like Terry said. I walk, I talk when they let me. They can move my arms
and legs. They can even dress and undress me if they want. But how do they play with dolls?
One could imagine and find no harm in the imagined scene of a~ child like Cindy-in tantrum- -
hurling her doll across the room in fury. Tears would pass: if the doll was broken, someone
would fix it or buy her a new one. Cindy would thereby learn not to break things anymore. But
what if one were suddenly the doll itself? At the thought Cindy's face grew huge in Doll
Barbara's imagination; Cindy's clear, curious, simple eyes became as threatening as a cat's in
their uncaringness.
Again one could see and find little harm in Paul's marching his toy soldiers to the dungeon and
tieing them to twig stakes with string and shooting them on command. ·Paul was working out
his boy aggressions. Anyhow tomorrow morning, metal-smart and cast-to-attention, they would
be ready to fight and lose and be executed again. Real soldiers, real people, of course,
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are only executed once. Once. In Barbara's mind, Paul suddenly became even more a horrible
little boy.
And in the woods, in the disused tenant-house gathering place of Freedom Five, hadn't Cindy
said they took prisoners and hostages and tortured them for secrets? Even here, little enough
harm. Erotic play, discovery, a sorting out of values. The next day, the next raid, the prisoners
would be back intact, surly and unwilling to tell, and hence ready for torture again. But if the
prisoners, if the prisoner were real?
At this point the logical step was obvious. At the fourth level of the game five kids just-before-
teen or crossing through their teens, were going to torture Barbara to a slow death. Barbara
dismissed this out of hand. She wasn't a toy; they were not free to do as they wished, and the
world of spankings, punishment, and authority remained. It only troubled her that they might
think about it.
- She was also troubled as to why they should think about it
In play, children acted out life as they believed or wanted it to be--that had been back in
freshman year that she had learned that-but if what Teacher Barbara had been taught was
true, why did these children want to believe life to be this way? The rope, the adhesive tape,
and all the hurt went into the thought.
Children's materials are all the materials they can see and imagine and imitate. Their whole
world. N<r body says there isn't too much war and crime and trash for them to pick up, Barbara
said. Lord, they've even criticized fairy tales for being too violent, But there are other things
too, the total- environment of love and Warmth and fun and helping. These children have cer-
tainly had that, and money as well (I wish I had as much, Barbara said). So why, given the
everything of life, would these kids choose the darkest parts for their most interesting games?
Were they naturally bad? And if they were, who then wasn't a little naturally bad? What would
Terry say?
Terry said (without bothering to materialize completely), Maybe they don't like what they see
of what
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we think is the "pretty" world. Maybe it's too complicated or too dull or too hard or too
something. Maybe they feel they have to hold themselves in too much in order to be a part
of it. Maybe what we think of as rewards are only penances of different kinds to them.
Maybe they don't want to grow up at all. Maybe the world is closed off now, and there's no
place left to live.
Barbara said nothing.
Do you want to grow up, Barb? Again Barbara said nothing.
You think these kids are oddball and different and dirty, but how do you know they're all
that different from the rest? What did you think of them when you came here? You thought
they were pretty and fun. What did you think of them when you took them over to Sunday
school? You wished they were yours by some handsome, well-known man like your Dr.
Adams. What did you think of the way they obeyed and had fun when you took them
swimming? You were all over yourself with love, love, love, Terry said.
You make me sick, Terry said. A person's a package deal. Prime ministers probably go to
bed at night and play with themselves. What these kids are doing to you is the rest of their
playtime; it all goes together. What they're doing is natural enough.
Barbara shook her head silently. Again the logical airy step invited, and again she refused
to take it. I don't believe you, she said. All kids aren't this way. We
weren't.
·
Weren't we?
Barbara stopped. Something in imagined Terry's tone summoned to her mind the
remembered image of the parking-lot sniggerers of her own early teens. She saw them
clearly again, heard them clearly again. Their faces moved back and forth interchangeably
with those of John and Dianne and Paul, Cindy and Bobby.
No! They didn't do anything like this though.
No chutzpah, Terry shrugged.
.
Well, maybe, Barbara granted. What would they really have done? What would any person
do given entire power over another person? What-in particu-
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lar-wou1d inexperienced children do? Who knows what people think when they're children
and we haven't broken them yet?
It was high, shimmering, full day.
Barbara no longer doubted that the children would strip her naked. It wasn't that difficult;
the kids were getting more confident, and in final count, it would hardly be fatal.
I've been naked before, Barbara said, but as she waited, she continued uneasy-squeamish.
. On the swimming team, in dormitory life, with doctors and-by accident, of course-with the
family, she had certainly been seen without clothes on. These transactional occasions,