at least, love was in poor cartel. "It really isn't."
"You're a teacher, all right." Dianne had her back turned to Barbara. She appeared to be
buttoning her blouse. "You'd make a good one like all the rest and tell us lies about what
isn't so."
"Then what is so?" Barbara could not stand to look at the day she could not live, and she
shut her eyes. "What is so, Dianne?"
"Well .... " Dianne neatly tucked her blouse below the waistband of her shorts and zipped
up the side and buttoned the flap. "It's like on a beach when people go walking along and
pass each other and hate each other. You know? Paul and I were on the beach hunting for
shells last summer, and these kids came walking up from the other way, and when we
passed-without anybody ever saying anything-we were all looking around for something to
throw or a stick or a board or something. And I'd never seen them. Neither had Paul. I
mean, we just hated each other because it was right, and it was fun, and I was scared, and
some of the other kids were a little scared of Paul and me. That's the way I mean."
"Do you like it that way, Dianne?" Barbara rested and did not open her eyes.
"I don't like to use modem words.''
"Modem words?" Barbara did look up at her now.
"Groovy. That's just a word little kids use. It isn't real. But it was groovy."
"Dianne .... " By inflection and tone of voice, Barbara somewhat changed the subject. "If
this was all
265
the other way around and you were me and I was you, would you want me to kill you?"
"I wouldn't want you to .... " "Would you think I ought to?"
"You'd be winners. It'd be up to you." Dianne was fully dressed again and cooler again. "But
I wouldn't be worried." She faced around.
"Why?"
"Because I don't mope and groan and cry around like you do, and anyhow, you wouldn't do
it You're not good enough."
"Good enough!"
"Brave enough," Dianne said. "In the end, you'd let me go, and then rd win anyhow. Sooner
or later. All that stuff you believe in that isn't true-I'd win sooner or later even if you were
on top."
There was truth there. She's right, Barbara said. rd do it. rd let her go. And why? At the
enormity of the question Barbara became very nearly sorry that she had ever been
Barbara at all. In no way did she agree with Dianne, and yet in no way could she disagree
with the girl. There were more Diannes in the world than Barbaras, and the child was right;
the Diannes won every time. It was a matter of when and where and how. It had always
been going to happen, and now it was a matter of negotiating the way out, and Barbara
said, ''Kill me."
Dianne, having touched her hair, looked down
with clarity and alertness. She said nothing.
"Dianne, kill me. Now. Here. Please." "What?"
"Listen."
Dianne was still.
"Kill me."
Bound, Barbara looked up in helpless appeal.
"Kill me," Barbara said. "Kill me right here and now. There's the bottle of stuff over there
and a rag in it, and if I breathe enough of it, you'll kill me. You win. You can do it yourself
and win. And I ask you to do it. Please. If ever anybody ever asked anybody for anything, I
ask you, Dianne. Just do it for me now."
266
Dianne's pale smooth forehead wrinkled. "Please," Barbara said. "Be kind."
"I can't," Dianne said. "That won't be for an hour yet."
Words, words, words. Somebody said that, Barbara thought. They said, "Words, words,
words .... "It comes out of a poem or play. Maybe Shakespeare, Barbara thought. Probably
Shakespeare. Words, words, words.
Words.
If you think about the word that means "word," it all falls apart. It's an ugly sound that
doesn't do anything, and if it doesn't, then I can't tell her. Ever.
I'm going crazy, Barbara thought. I'm going insane because I'm so frightened and I'm going
to be killed and what is the word that means "help" so that she can understand it. Or the
word that means me not being any more. She looked up at Dianne standing above her and
knew there was none. I'll never understand her, Barbara thought, and she'll never under-
stand me. It wasn't right, and she didn't understand it, but it was so, and that left only the
matter of mercy.
Barbara lay her head back down on the pillow Bobby had provided; it was the only
kindness around her. What was the word for mercy? How could she die gracefully? How
could she hasten toward the vague, wavery god she both believed in and no longer
believed . ?
m.
"Dianne, kill me. Really," Barbara said again.
"You've got to."
Dianne's face was cool and white and curious. "No, you're wrong," Barbara said. "You think
I'm pretty, but I'm not. You think I'm grown-up and all with all the answers, but I'm not. You
think I go around being nice and kind because I want to do something to you-change your
mind or something-but I don't. You think it's right to kill me, but it's not. You're wrong,
wrong, wrong. I can't tell you bow wrong you are, but you're going to do it anyway," Bar-
bara said. "Anyway.
"So kill me now," Barbara said. "Do it the nice
267
way between us. You can, and I won't feel anything except what anyone feels." She
breathed deeply.
What more can I say? Barbara thought.
"I don't want them to cut me or burn me or whip me and laugh at it," she said. "You're a
woman, Dianne. You know that ... " And the day outside was in the act of becoming a
golden noon that filled the whole universe and shined in on the muddy floor of the tenant
house. "Do you understand?"
"Yes," Dianne said. She did. "I rea1ly do, but I 'just won't' do it. You won't get out of it just
by sniffing a funny bottle. That's that."
"I don't know.'' Barbara rolled her head and shoulders back so that she could look up and
see Dianne clearly, really clearly. Now that all the rest was over-had it bored Dianne?-now
that it was almost time, there was a rather subtle animation about Dianne's thin face. She
had begun to look forward to it, Barbara could see it in her whole attitude. So there was a
way to like hurting and killing people: there really was another kind of person in the world
after all. And how many other kinds after that? "I just don't know." She closed her eyes.
"How are you going to do it?"
"That would be telling." The child's phrase was not Dianne's. It was used with sarcasm.
"You know," Barbara said into the darkness behind her eyelids, "if anything happened so
that I'd live, I'd hate you the rest of my life. I'd bate it all. I'd hate and I'd hate and I'd bate."