456
PARTISAN REVIEW
and roaring on the long express run from 96th to 72nd to 59th and
Columbus Circle. Isabel was a Catholic girl and she always promised
to tell him secrets of the church and then when she got what she
wanted-candy or a toy-she would refuse to tell him because she
said it was not really a promise, she had taken it back under her
breath.
Isabel would say it was a dumb idea to ask God for a present
when he was in the subway but it was like God opening up the Red
Sea and dividing it in half so that his chosen people could get away
from the Egyptians who were chasing them in chariots, the Sunday
School teacher said, but lots of the boys in Sunday School said it
was just a fairy tale.
It was easy to get mixed up about God and about the things
the Sunday School teacher told the class and once it started an argu–
ment when he came home from Sunday School for the first time and
Uncle Robert who was a banker and Aunt Anne were here from
Chicago and they asked him what they had taught him in Sunday
School. He told them that he did not remember very much but
Uncle Robert kept asking him just as everyone began on the soup,
so he said that the teacher told him all about what God does, God
protects everyone who is weak and helpless and poor. Uncle Robert
looked disgusted and Father began to choke on his soup and Mother
said, "Toby!" which meant "shut up." That was when he was six
years old and just a baby, he would know better now. But how
could he know that he was saying something peculiar which one
ought not to say to a banker? Uncle Robert kept after him and be–
came angry and asked him whether the teacher had taught him that
God made the earth and waters. Then Mother said, "Robert!" and
she was angry at Uncle Robert and Father laughed so much that he
thought it was like when Father took him to the pictures where they
saw Charlie.
God was like being born, it was very hard to understand any–
thing about God. When he was a baby still and went to kindergarten
he thought it was the stork that brought the baby and he looked out
at night to see if storks were flying in the sky over where Dr. Young
lived. Vera had been born on a farm and she said babies grow like
the trees from the earth and then there are flowers in May and the
bees come and then there are fruits
in
August and September. But
this was not the way that city babies were born because they were
