HELPER12, Jack Blaine [reading in the dark .TXT] 📗

Beneath, there is a tablet of real drawing paper.  The label says 250 sheets of fine cotton blend sketch paper.  I lift the top cover and smooth my hand over the first sheet’s surface.  It’s almost like the sheets on my bed; fine and soft, cool to the touch.  I lift the tablet from the wrapping paper and something falls—a metal tin of some sort.  I pick it up and turn it over so I can see the top.  It’s sketching charcoal.  I’ve heard of this but I’ve never seen any.  I open the tin, and inside, nestled in translucent paper, there are five sticks of black, porous looking stuff.  When I touch them, my fingertip comes away sooty.

I’m stunned—literally.  I sit on the bed holding my gifts, feeling completely zapped.  Thomas has given me something that my heart has desired, but it’s also something that could land me in a labor camp.  If I were caught with these materials . . . I don’t even want to think about it.

It’s late.  I’m tired and I need to go to sleep.  I hide the tablet under the changing table pad, and the charcoals in one of my dresser drawers.  I don’t know why I think that two places are safer than one, but I do.

When I wake up, the sun is shining in the window.  I run to the changing table and lift up the pad.  The tablet is still there.  I check my dresser drawer, and there is the charcoal tin.

Jobee clucks from his crib.  I pick him up and give him a hug, and turn around and around like he likes me to do.  He laughs.  Today we’ll spend a lot of time in the courtyard.  Who knows how long the sun will last?

After we’re both dressed, I’m just getting ready to go downstairs when I hear a knock at the door.  It’s Thomas’s knock: three soft taps and one hard rap.  I open it, and there he is, standing in the hall with a new baby bag.

“He’s got a perfectly good bag for his things.”  I laugh.  Thomas wants Jobee to have everything.

“I know, but this one has some special qualities,” says Thomas.

“Like?”

He waits for me to indicate that he can come in, and then he sets the bag on the bed.

“See?”  He opens the main section of the bag, which is already filled with baby supplies and bottles.  “Lots of room for all Jobee’s things.”  Then he pulls open a side compartment and shows me how it’s reinforced.  “And, nothing would get bent if it were carried in here.  If you had, say, papers of some sort, that you wanted to keep nice, they would fit in here perfectly.  And there’s a place for your charcoals.”

“Shhh!”  I put my finger to my lips and look past him at the door.

“She’s downstairs.  I’m having her fix a breakfast for us to take away.  Because we’re going to spend the day in the country.”

“The country?”  I’ve heard about how the rich go for day-trips to the country.  There are supposed to be lakes and trees and wild meadows.  I’ve only ever seen those things in pictures.

“Yes.”  Thomas smiles at me.  “Who knows how long the sun will last?”

“I was just thinking that very same thing.”  I smile back, and then I feel shy.  “I want to thank you. For my presents.”

“Do you like them?”  He speaks softly, as though he is feeling shy, too.

“I love them.”  These words don’t convey how I feel.  I can’t tell him in words how the idea that he would know to give me these tools—that he wouldn’t care that the world says I shouldn’t have them—makes me feel inside.

“I thought we could bring them along,” he says.  “In this.”  He lifts the new baby bag.  “That way maybe you could try them out, while we’re away.”

“But we’ll be right out in the open, won’t we?”  I imagine the country as being exclusively outdoors.  “Out in a field, or something?”

Thomas chuckles.  “Yes, we will, but nobody there will know us.”

“But I’m a Baby Helper.  I’m not supposed to have any art materials.”

Thomas looks at me, standing in front of him.  He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me and Jobee around, to face the mirror in my room.

“What do you see there?”  He waits.

I look in the mirror.  Jobee does too, and he reaches out for our reflections, giggling.

“I see a very silly boy,” I say.

“And what else?”

I look at my reflection.  “I see me.”

“Exactly,” says Thomas.  “You.  Not a Helper, not anything but a girl out for a day in the country.”

I understand what he means, finally.  I have no uniform.  I’m wearing the clothes the Sloanes provided.  My hair is still in a skinner cut, but it’s longer than regulation—I haven’t clippered it since I’ve been here.  My designation tattoo is covered.  There’s nothing to give me away as a Helper, nothing to indicate that I’m not just a Society girl, out for a day trip.  Society girls can draw if they want; they can sing, and write and recite poetry if they want.

“Meet me downstairs?”  Thomas is grinning at the look of wonder that must be on my face.

“Yes!  I’ll be there in five minutes.”

When he leaves I turn back to the mirror for a moment.  I take in the image I see there, of a young woman.  She looks like a young woman who could do anything really, anything she wanted to do.  And for one day, I think, maybe, just maybe, she will.

Chapter Twenty Two

It takes us over an hour to get there.  Jobee is an easy baby, and he’s happy as long as he has a boggle or a view out the window.  Thomas is reading, the daily news or something, on his reader.  I’m content to watch him do it, as long as he doesn’t know I’m watching.  Whenever he looks up, I fuss with Jobee