The pinkie swear. I had learned about it back in the mountain village, at a juncture in time when families were just beginning to decide I was safe enough to invite in to dinner, or to help with chores, or to tend their children. The name of Jester had started to spread here and there. It was becoming normal. I was becoming normal. Certainly the family I was with that day had been enlightened as to my new label.
The kids had off from classes today, but the parents were to be surprised by their neighbors with gifts of food, toys, and company in celebration of the mother’s occupied womb. The father was in on it only so far as he had come to me asking if I would keep the children out of trouble upstairs while the adults did their adult things downstairs. I had six children in that room with me. Six, with ages ranging from barely coherent to overly coherent. The neighbors figured I wouldn’t mind looking after their kids as well --and I didn’t.
Children, you see, have minds full of curiosity and wonder. They see. They notice. They have the boldness to ask why unabashedly. They smile at the purest of things: a colorful leaf on the road, a bug on the arm of their chair, the smell of farts. They don’t smile because that is what people do when they see a pretty flower. They smile because they are truly, soulfully delighted by it. Their actions hold a profound meaning, because they do what speaks to their soul, not what habit has ingrained into them. It is something that people lose as they grow older and more set in their ways.
Polite laughter carried from downstairs, while upstairs Ruby, Lee, Catra, and Violet nearly toppled over in their guffaws having balanced not one, not two, but three books and a wooden teacup atop my head. Cleo was fast asleep tucked into the farthest corner of his sister’s bed. Wesley was inspecting the tower dubiously, perhaps trying to fit the sight into his framework for how physics is supposed to work, or perhaps dreaming up what else they might balance on my head. It was a very easy game for me --all I had to do was sit straight and still, something I had plenty of practice with in the market square and at dinner tables. Honestly, I was impressed with their ability to get the balance right on so many items at once.
Violet ducked forward to beam directly into my face. “Are you comfortable, Jester~?” Then they all burst out laughing anew when I carefully shrugged my shoulders.
“Stay still! Stay still, Jester, stay still!” Lee crooned between giggling gasps. “I wanna see-- I wanna see how tall it can get!”
“Oh oh! I have more books.” Ruby dove over to the chest at the foot of her bed and rifled through it, pulling out a series of relatively thin books. The kind meant for children just learning to read. “Do you wanna try, Wesley? You gotta be really careful.”
“Pff, I can stack books better than all of you!” Wesley scoffed. He tapped a finger to his chin as he examined his options, then picked out a particular thin and wide book to bring over. “Sit very still, Jester, okay?”
“Don’t move! Don’t move!”
I had no intention of moving. I was curious to see the answer, myself, and wanted to give them the best shot at achieving their tower of glory. So I rested my hands neatly on my ankles --sitting criss-cross applesauce to provide the sturdiest foundation possible-- kept my shoulders squared, and tried really very hard not to laugh right along with them. Such laughter is incredibly contagious, after all, and even I am not immune no matter how much I pretended to be.
Wesley climbed up onto the bed beside me and reached up with utmost delicacy. The bedsprings creaked. The girls fell silent to watch with rounded eyes. Lee even cupped a hand over her mouth as if containing her excitement took real physical effort. I could imagine Wesley furrowing his brow with heroic levels of focus, mouth drawn tight to keep all the air in. The book lowered, lowered, and settled onto the stack, which creaked and threatened itself one way and then the other.
His hands lifted away.
The tower remained.
And remained.
And remained.
Lee and Catra’s eyes brightened over bright blooming smiles.
Ruby drew in a slow deep breath.
A wine bottle popped downstairs.
Then Wesley tottered back with a bellowing laugh. “Ha hah! I told you--” He broke off as the tower, having heard his gloating, promptly took cue to slip over. “No!” He bodily lunged at it, failing in his panic to comprehend that you can’t right a falling tower by crashing into it. As the books and teacup clattered to the floor, I did too, and Wesley climbed all over my shoulders and head until he could reach the carnage. “You moved! Jester, did you move?”
I carefully moved his foot from my face and elbowed upright to shake my head at him and point. Of course not! It was he who got arrogant.
Lee and Catra were clutching at each other in an attempt to stay upright as they laughed. Ruby looked suddenly ghastly with worry as she crept closer to look at her fallen books. “Those were presents, Wesley! You shoulda been more careful!”
“I was! They were gonna fall eventually!”
Beyond that initial proclamation, they didn’t think to accuse me any further. Children were curious like that. Whenever something went wrong, they were so very quick to point fingers at one another, but I was the forever innocent pet. Like a dog, I could only have the purest of intentions, or else I otherwise couldn’t have possibly known better. That was the extent of their understanding about who I was. Adults occasionally shared that sentiment, but they more often suspected me, or at best expected better of me.
While they argued and laughed, I sat up the rest of the way to gather up the books. A couple had bent pages, which I did my best to smooth out before stacking them neatly to one side with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top. As Ruby started to raise her voice and Wesley started to raise his voice back, I picked up the teacup and turned it over in my hands, examining the fine woodwork with the bright colors painted on and lacquered over to last whatever travails children may throw at it.
“You said you would be careful! You can’t play if you aren’t going to be careful!”
“The whole point of the game was to see how big we could build it without it falling. It was gonna fall eventually!”
“No, because we were going to stop before it fell! You were supposed to stop! And now my books are ruined and you’re stupid and--” She cut off abruptly on finding the teacup held up in front of her face. She was so flummoxed by the interruption that she blinked wildly from the cup to me, to the cup, to Wesley, to the cup. Hesitantly, she took it. “Thank you, Jester.”
I bobbed my head cheerily, cupped one hand at the air to make a tea-plate, and stuck up a pinkie finger to make a show of drinking from an invisible cup.
She hesitated another moment more, before smiling. “It’s Elderberry tea. It’s very rare this time of year, so you have to be careful not to spill it.”
I was about to nod and pledge to be very careful indeed with my cup of tea when commotion broke out downstairs. There was a pained cry, and a few shouts of alarm, shuffling sounds, urgent voices. The children all froze and looked from the door to me. When afraid, even a pet can become a source of reassurance. But I admit I wasn’t certain what was happening either.
I patted the air for them to stay put and rose to my feet to trot over the door and peek out. The door nearly crashed into my face.
“Catra, Wesley, Violet. It’s time to go.” It was one of the parents. She didn’t look particularly panicked, but she did look urgent. Time was of the essence, but at least the world wasn’t crashing down. Probably.
“But mommy, what’s going on? Who shouted?”
She gave me a distracted smile as she stepped past me into the room --again, that reflexive courtesy. “Mrs. Every is having her baby now. We need to give their family some space, love.”
“But I wanna stay and meet the baby!”
“You can meet the baby another time, dear.” The woman flashed another smile at me as she herded the three children from the room.
“They’re going outside!” Lee announced from the window, and Ruby ran over to look out with her. Cleo, the precious child, was still dead asleep. But Lee was right-- the footsteps and voices downstairs were withdrawing. The crowd was thinning out rapidly, and then emptying. I hovered near the door, caught between staying and leaving. They had charged me with looking after their children, after all, and they would need reassuring company now more than ever.
Another cry from downstairs, and Lee broke from the window with a cry of, “Mommy!”
I caught her shoulder as she started to run past, and shook my head. I closed the door and sat down next to one of the beds, crossing my ankles once more to resume that solid foundation. Then I held out my arms and beckoned to them.
Lee stood where I had left her and shuffled her feet with anxious glances from me to the door. Her eyes were welling up with distress. “Is… Is she gonna be alright?”
In truth, I didn’t know all that much about childbirth. It was a dangerous thing. The mother had to endure excruciating amounts of pain and, I had heard, sometimes didn’t stop bleeding even after the infant was out and wailing at the shock of cold air. So no, I wasn’t sure she was going to be okay, and I had no inclination to lie about it, even to a child. Lying would benefit no one.
So instead of answering, I cupped my hand into a tea-plate once more and sipped from an invisible cup. We could pretend here --children are very good at that. With a collective imagination between the three of us, we could create a space within a space that was one step removed from the scary uncertainties of whatever was going on downstairs. I lowered my not-cup and tilted my head at her, an invitation.
There was a moment of hesitation. Downstairs had gone quiet, but I knew that the mother and father were down there. The father was probably making the mother as comfortable as he could manage, praying that the doctor would arrive soon, please, soon. This being his forth child, he was surely no stranger to this process, but there was still pain and risks and therefore a need for urgency.
Then Lee quietly sat down in front of me, picked up the teacup, and sipped from it. “Ruby, come sit with us.”
Ruby tore her eyes from the window to look between the two of us. Being the oldest of the three, she, too, had been through this twice before and likely remembered at least one of them. “No thank you. I’m gonna stay here.”
Lee huffed a pout, but channeled her nervous energy into pouring herself another cupful of invisible tea, and doing the same for me. We shared in the tea together as we heard the knock on the front door, and listened to the soothing voice of the doctor as she stepped inside and took control of the situation downstairs. The father’s voice was urgent and nervous. The mother, when she spoke, sounded tight with pain, but otherwise calm.
“Jester,” Lee rested her cup on her feet to look imploringly, “why is the baby hurting her?”
I shrugged. Courtesy or no, I had no interest in going into the finer details of childbirth.
“Do-- Do you think it’s gonna be another boy?”
I shrugged again and reached forward with my tea-plate hand to waggle my fingers in ambiguous fashion at her. It’s a mystery! And not a bad mystery, at that. Some things are all the better for having had to wait for the answer. Anticipation is like a sort of seasoning.
Even so, I watched as Ruby sat by the window, pretending to look out even though she was clearly straining to hear what was going on downstairs. Cleo mumbled softly in his sleep. Lee forgot that she had just refilled her teacup and was turning it over and over in her hands, looking at the colorful patterns as I had just minutes ago.
At length, she dipped her head in defeat and look up at me with glassy eyes. Her lower lip trembled. “I’m scared, Jester.”
My heart ached in the face of her distress, but the only way to truly placate such worry was to see the final outcome --and that likely wouldn’t be for several hours yet. I reached out to touch her foot, then held up my invisible teacup once more, pinkie out for emphasis. Focus on this. Focus on the space within a space for just a little while.
She watched me for a long moment, painfully torn. She wanted so desperately to find comfort in our imaginary game, but she also wanted her mother, wanted her father, wanted to know that everything would be okay. And then she compressed her lips and reached out to hook her pinkie finger with mine. Tears leaked from those little eyes, but she stared at me with was much resolve as she could muster. It was a look of such profound trust that it was all I could do not to shrink back and withdraw. She asked me, “Can you stay? Please?”
I still wanted to shrink back and withdraw, but she had me by the finger, beseeching. I knew with an uncomfortable certainty that if I broke away, she would fall to despair. That’s the thing about children: they act from the soul, and if they look you in the eyes and ask if they can trust you, that is a soul-deep thing. So I met her gaze, tightened my finger, and nodded. I really did mean it, too. Even if their father came and told me to leave, I would find a way to be there for her, to reassure her until the scary unknowns were gone.
Even Ruby seemed to register the profundity of the moment, the borderline sacredness of our twined pinkies. She turned away from the window and came to sit with us. Holding her hands to shape an invisible plate and teacup, she looked between the two of us. “Can I play with you now?”
I looked at Lee, and Lee nodded. She sat up straight, drew her shoulders back all prim and regal, and picked up an invisible pitcher to fill up all of our cups once more. “We need-- We need to make sure we don’t spill it. Elderberry’s very expensive.”
It was about ten minutes later when the door flung open, and their father snapped an urgent look around the room. He saw Cleo sleeping. He saw his two daughters sitting down to imaginary tea with a cluster of dolls and plush toys, as well as myself with pinkie dutifully extended as I froze mid-sip to look up at him.
There was a moment that was distinctly caught between one thought and the next.
Then the man’s expression relaxed with immense relief. Even his hand seemed to sag from the doorknob. “Thank you, Jester. Can you maybe stick around? We can provide you with food.”
I held up my teacup to him with a nod. I had made a solemn pledge, after all. It would take fire and brimstone for me to break it. And there was a tea party to finish.
Comments (1)
See all