THE EDUCATION OF A QUEEN
677
I
haps
still a trifle groggy from the sedative. Then he went into
the parlor to watch for the patrol wagon.
t
When
it
still had not come at noon Mother telephoned the
police station. The sergeant was polite but brief: obviously he
f
had had his fill of this case. One of his men had thrown them
boxes in the incinerator, thinking they was just trash.
Sorry.
Mother
shut the kitchen door and phoned my father at his office. I don't
know what they agreed to say to Joshua, but whatever it was,
wasn't enough.
He listened calmly,
"only,"
Mother said, "tilting
his
head at
me a little and going rather paler,
if
possible .. ." Then he left
"without his coat." This fact correctly struck her as ominous, and
I
she waited for
him
in great apprehension the rest of the day, not
t
t even going out into the back yard for fear of missing the telephone.
When I came home from school at three-thirty, there still
I
hadn't been word from or about him. I wandered down to the
basement, regarded the dismal scrap-heap left behind by the in–
I
vading policemen, and then I recalled my new resolution to forget
,
it
all. I went across the street again to Aggie's, but she was being
punished by her mother, so I took a long walk up the railroad
tracks toward the country.
t
t
t
t
e
e
:i
At dusk I ambled home to find Mother and Jason crying in
the kitchen. Joshua, they said, was in the state hospital. At four
he had appeared with a form for Mother to sign, admitting him
for treatment. His family was dead; she must sign. In desperation
she telephoned my father, and together they stormed at, argued
and pleaded with Joshua. Finally, gravely, he rolls up his cuffs
to
show them the slightly twisted, delicate white twine scarring his
skinny wrists.
This
scene I have always found it impossible to visualize. My
father and mother are real: they cough and move. But there is
Joshua, displaying the emblems of his martyrdom as sedately as
a saint. Like a schoolteacher he points to the blackboard-no! I
can't see
him.
Once upon a time he had cut his wrists, that's all.
He
was my Joshua and I done
him
wrong deliberately and with
hatred
in my heart. Joshua, I summon you. I resurrect your flesh–
less
narrow delicate most beautiful blanched cutting bones! When
did you slash your wrists? Why?
You never told me.
