RHODA You chill me to the marrow when you tell me that your heart is small. You do love me, though, don’t you?
HARRIET You’re my sister, aren’t you?
RHODA Sisterly love is one of the few boons in this life.
HARRIET Now, that’s enough exaggerating. I could enumerate other things.
RHODA I suppose it’s wicked to squeeze love from a small heart. I suppose it’s a sin. I suppose God meant for small hearts to be busy with other things.
HARRIET Possibly. Let’s have our milk in my room. It’s so much more agreeable to sit in here. Partly because I’m a neater woman than you are.
RHODA Even though you have a small heart, I wish there were no one but you and me in the world. Then I would never feel that I had to go among the others.
HARRIET Well, I wish I could hand you my gift for contentment in a box. It would be so lovely if you were like me. Then we could have our milk in either room. One day in your room and the next day in mine.
RHODA I’m sure that’s the sort of thing that never happens.
HARRIET It happens in a million homes, seven days a week. I’m the type that’s in the majority.
RHODA Never, never, never …
HARRIET (Very firmly) It happens in a million homes.
RHODA Never, never, never!
HARRIET (Rising) Are you going to listen to me when I tell you that it happens in a million homes, or must I lose my temper?
RHODA You have already lost it. (HARRIET exits rapidly in a rage. RHODA goes to the chimes and sings)
My horse was frozen like a stone
A long, long time ago.
Frozen near the flower bed
In the wintry sun.
Or maybe in the night time
Or maybe not at all.
My horse runs across the fields
On many afternoons.
Black as dirt and filled with blood
I glimpse him fleeing toward the woods
And then not at all.
HARRIET (Offstage) I’m coming with your milk, and I hope the excitement is over for today. (Enters, carrying two small white glasses) Oh, why do I bring milk to a person who is dead-set on making my life a real hell?
RHODA (Clasping her hands with feeling) Yes, Why? Why? Why? Why? Oh, what a hideous riddle!
HARRIET You love to pretend that everything is a riddle. You think that’s the way to be intellectual. There is no riddle. I am simply keeping up my end of the bargain.
RHODA Oh, bargains, bargains, bargains!
HARRIET Will you let me finish, you excitable thing? I’m trying to explain that I’m behaving the way I was molded to behave. I happen to be appreciative of the mold I was cast in, and neither heaven, nor earth is going to make me damage it. Your high-strung emotions are not going to affect me. Here’s your milk.
(She enters RHODA’S side of the stage and hands her the milk, but RHODA punches the bottom of the glass with her closed fist and sends it flying out of HARRIET’S hand. HARRIET deals RHODA a terrific blow on the face and scurries back to her own room. There is silence for a moment. Then HARRIET buries her face in her hands and weeps. RHODA exits and HARRIET goes to the chimes and sings.)
HARRIET (Singing)
I dreamed I climbed upon a cliff,
My sister’s hand in mine.
Then searched the valley for my house
But only sunny fields could see
And the church spire shining.
I searched until my heart was cold
But only sunny fields could see
And the church spire shining.
A girl ran down the mountainside
With bluebells in her hat.
I asked the valley for her name
But only wind and rain could hear
And the church bell tolling.
I asked until my lips were cold
But wakened not yet knowing
If the name she bore was my sister’s name
Or if it was my own.
HARRIET Rhoda?
RHODA What do you want?
HARRIET Go away if you like.
RHODA The moment hasn’t come yet, and it won’t come today because the day is finished and the evening is here. Thank God!
HARRIET I know I should get some terrible disease and die if I thought I did not live in the right. It would break my heart.
RHODA You do live in the right, sweetie, so don’t think about it. (Pause) I’ll go and get your milk.
HARRIET I’ll go too. But let’s drink it in here because it really is much pleasanter in here, isn’t it? (They rise) Oh, I’m so glad the evening has come! I’m nervously exhausted. (They exit)
A Stick of Green Candy
The clay pit had been dug in the side of a long hill. By leaning back against the lower part of its wall, Mary could see the curved highway above her and the cars speeding past. On the other side of the highway the hill continued rising, but at a steeper angle. If she tilted her head farther back, she could glimpse the square house on the hill’s summit, with its flight of stone steps that led from the front door down to the curb, dividing the steep lawn in two.
She had been playing in the pit for a long time. Like many other children, she fancied herself at the head of a regiment; at the same time, she did not join in any neighborhood games, preferring to play all alone in the pit, which lay about a mile beyond the edge of town. She was a scrupulously clean child with a strong, immobile face and long, well-arranged curls. Sometimes when she went home toward evening there were traces of clay on her dark coat, even though she had worked diligently with the brush she carried along every afternoon. She despised untidiness, and she feared that the clay might betray her headquarters, which she suspected the other children of planning to invade.
One afternoon she stumbled and fell on the clay when it was still slippery and wet from a recent rainfall. She never failed to leave the pit before twilight, but this time she decided to wait until it was dark so that her sullied coat would attract less attention. Wisely she refrained from using her brush on the wet clay.
Having always left the pit at an earlier hour, she felt that an explanation was due to her soldiers; to announce simply that she had fallen down was out of the question. She knew that her men trusted her and would therefore accept in good faith any reason she chose to give them for this abrupt change in her day’s routine, but convincing herself was a more difficult task. She never told them anything until she really believed what she was going to say. After concentrating a few minutes, she summoned them with a bugle call.
“Men,” she began, once they were lined up at attention, “I’m staying an hour longer today than usual, so I can work on the mountain goat maneuvers. I explained mountain-goat fighting last week, but I’ll tell you what it is again. It’s a special technique used in the mountains around big cliffs. No machine can do mountain-goat fighting. We’re going to specialize.” She paused. “Even though I’m staying, I want you to go right ahead and have your recreation hour as usual, like you always do the minute I leave. I have total respect for your recreation, and I know you fight as hard as you play.”
She dismissed them and walked up to her own headquarters in the deepest part of the pit. At the end of the day the color of the red pit deepened; then, after the sun had sunk behind the hill, the clay lost its color. She began to feel cold and a little uneasy. She was so accustomed to leaving her men each day at the same hour, just before they thronged into the gymnasium, that now lingering on made her feel like an intruder.