390
PARTISAN REVIEW
school they are taught to express themselves freely. Little Marcia,
when she does so-she takes after her mother-is delightful!
Marcia has a fight in school today with one of the little gen–
tlemen her contemporaries. He breaks her photographic plate.
The fight is about the nature of chickens' eggs. She stamps on his
foot. Being a girl, she still has an advantage in mental age and
more words to say; she says a sentence in French. He can't punch
her in the nose because it is ungentlemanly. He is inhibited from
drawing on his best knowledge because it is dirty; but worse, it is
gloomily indistinct, and even on these matters she seems to have
more definite information, is about to mention it.
"Shut up!" he argues, "shut up! you're just an old-time
Jew."
This perplexing observation, of which she understands
neither head nor tail, brings her to a momentary pause; for up to
now, at least with Harry-tho certainly not with Terry or Larry–
she has maintained a queenly advantage. But he has brought her
to a pause by drawing on absolutely new information.
Now she does a reckless thing: she dismisses his remark from
her mind and launches into a tirade which devastatingly combines
contempt and the ability to form complete sentences, till Harry
goes away in order not to cry. A reckless, a dangerous thing:
because what we thus dismiss enters the regions of anxiety, of loss
and unfulfilled desire, and there makes strange friends. This is
the prologue to fanatic interests and to failing in love. How new
and otherwise real is this observation on its next appearance!
Marcia calls her mother sometimes Momsy and sometimes
Martha.
"What did Harry mean," she asks her, "when he called me
an old-time shoe?"
"Jew?"
"Yes, he stated I was just an old-time J oo."
Across the woman's face passes, for ever so many reasons, the
least perceptible tightening. "Oh oh!" feels Marcia along her ears
and scalp; and now she is confirmed and doubly confirmed in the
suspicions she did not know she had. When she now has to express
herself with colored chalks, new and curious objects will swim into
