The People

"Oh, my!" said Mrs. Wardlow. "Both at once?"
"No," I said, warming to my task. "She was weakened by the typhoid and went into a brain fever. She lost her hair from all the fever. We thought we were going to lose her, too." It didn't take play acting to shiver, as, unbidden into my mind, came the vision of the smoke pluming slowly up-"My sister sent her with us, hoping that the climate out here will keep Marnie from developing a consumption. She hopes, too, that I can help the child learn to talk again."
"I've heard of people having to learn to walk again after typhoid, but not to talk-"
"The technical name for the affliction is aphasia," I said glibly. "Remember the brain fever. She had just begun to make some progress in talking, but the trip has set her back."
"She-she isn't-unbalanced, is she?" whispered Mrs. Wardlow piercingly.
"Of course not!" I said indignantly. "And, please! She can hear perfectly."
"Oh," said Mrs. Wardlow, reddening, "of course. I didn't mean to offend. When she is recovered enough, Mr. Wardlow would be pleased to set her lessons for her until she can come to school."
"Thank you," I said, "that would be very kind of him." Then I changed the subject by introducing tea.
After she left, I sat down by Marnie, whose eyes brightened for my solitary presence.
"Marnie," I said, "I don't know how much you understand of what I say, but you are my niece. You must call me Aunt Gail and Nils, Uncle Nils. You have been sick. You are having to learn to speak all over again." Her eyes had been watching me attentively, but not one flick of understanding answered me. I sighed heavily and turned away. Marnie's hand caught my arm. She held me, as she lay, eyes closed. Finally I made a movement as if to free myself, and she opened her eyes and smiled.
"Aunt Gail, I have been sick. My hair is gone. I want bread!" she recited carefully.
"Oh, Marnie!" I cried, hugging her to me in delight. "Bless you! You are learning to talk!'" I hugged my face into the top of her curls, then I let her go. "As to bread, I mixed a batch this morning. It'll be in the oven as soon
as it rises again. There's nothing like the smell of baking bread to make a place seem like home."
As soon as Marnie was strong enough, I began teaching her the necessary household skills and found it most disconcerting to see her holding a broom gingerly, not knowing, literally, which end to use, or what to do with it. Anybody knows what a needle and thread are for! But Marnie looked upon them as if they were baffling wonders from another world. She watched the needle swing back and forth sliding down the thread until it fell to the floor because she didn't know enough to put a knot in the end.
She learned to talk, but very slowly at first. She had to struggle and wait for words. I asked her about it one day. Her slow answer came. "I don't know your language," she said. "I have to change the words to my language to see what they say, then change them again to be in your language." She sighed. "It's so slow! But soon I will be able to take words from your mind and not have to change them."
I blinked, not quite sure I wanted anything taken from my mind by anyone!
The people of Margin had sort of adopted Marnie and were very pleased with her progress. Even the young ones learned to wait for her slow responses. She found it more comfortable to play with the younger children because they didn't require such a high performance in the matter of words, and because their play was with fundamental things of the house and the community, translated into the simplest forms and acted out in endless repetition.
I found out, to my discomfort, a little of how Marnie was able to get along so well with the small ones-the day Merwin Wardlow came roaring to me in seven-year-old indignation.
"Marnie and that old sister of mine won't let me play!" he tattled wrathfully.
"Oh, I'm sure they will, if you play nicely," I said, shifting my crochet hook as I hurried with the edging of Marnie's new petticoat.
"They won't neither!" And he prepared to bellow again. His bellow rivaled the six o'clock closing whistle at the mine, so I sighed, and laying my work down, took him out to the children's play place under the aspens.
Marnie was playing with five-year-old Tessie Wardlow. They were engrossed in building a playhouse. They had already outlined the various rooms with rocks and were now furnishing them with sticks and stones, shingles, old cans and bottles, and remnants of broken dishes. Marnie was arranging flowers in a broken vase she had propped between two rocks. Tessie was busily bringing her flowers and sprays of leaves. And not one single word was being exchanged! Tessie watched Marnie, then trotted off to get another flower. Before she could pick the one she intended, she stopped, her hand actually on the flower, glanced at Marnie's busy back, left that flower and, picking another, trotted happily back with it. "Marnie," I called, and blinked to feel a wisp of something say Yes? inside my mind. Marnie!" I called again. Marnie jumped and turned her face to me. "Yes, Aunt Gail," she said carefully.
"Merwin says you won't let him play."
"Oh, he's telling stories!" cried Tessie indignantly. "He won't do anything Marnie says and she's the boss today."
"She don't tell me nothing to do!" yelled Merwin, betraying in his indignation, his father's careful grammar.
"She does so!" Tessie stamped her foot. "She tells you just as much as she tells me! And you don't do it."
I was saved from having to arbitrate between the warring two by Mrs. Wardlow's calling them in to supper. Relieved, I sank down on the southwest corner of the parlor-a sizable moss-grown rock. Marnie sat down on the ground beside me.
"Marnie," I said. "How did Tessie know what flowers to bring you?"
"I told her," said Marnie, surprised. "They said I was boss today. Merwin just wouldn't play."
"Did you tell him things to do?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," said Marnie. "But he didn't do nothing."
"Did nothing," I corrected.
"Did nothing," she echoed.
"The last flower Tessie brought," I went on. "Did you ask for that special one?"
"Yes," said Marnie. "She started to pick the one with bad petals on one side."
"Marnie," I said patiently, "I was here and I didn't hear a word. Did you talk to Tessie?"
"Oh, yes," said Marnie.
"With words? Out loud?" I pursued.
"I think-" Marnie started, then she sighed and sagged against my knees, tracing a curve in the dirt with her forefinger. "I guess not. It is so much more easy ("Easier," I corrected.) easier to catch her thoughts before they are words. I can tell Tessie without words. But Merwin-I guess he needs words."
"Marnie," I said, taking reluctant steps into the wilderness of my ignorance of what to do with a child who found "no words more easy," "you must always use words. It might seem easier to you-the other way, but you must speak. You see, most people don't understand not using words. When people don't understand, they get frightened. When they are frightened, they get angry. And when they get angry, they-they have to hurt." I sat quietly watching Marnie manipulate my words, frame a reply, and make it into words for her stricken, unhappy lips.
"Then it was because they didn't understand, that they killed us," she said. "They made the fire."
"Yes," I said, "exactly.
"Marnie," I went on, feeling that I was prying, but needing to know. "You have never cried for the people who died in the fire. You were sad, but-weren't they your own people?"
"Yes," said Marnie, after an interval. "My father, my mother, and my brother-" She firmed her lips and swallowed. "And a neighbor of ours. One brother was Called in the skies when our ship broke and my little sister's life-slip didn't come with ours."
And I saw them! Vividly, I saw them all as she named them. The father, I noticed before his living, smiling image faded from my mind, had thick dark curls like Marnie's. The neighbor was a plump little woman.