Nobody's Family is Going to Change. Louise Fitzhugh

a horse and looked like a pig, so much so that everybody called her Piggy. At first she hadn’t minded. There was a friendly sound to the name. As she got fatter and fatter, however, she realized that there wasn’t anything friendly about it. It was merely a descriptive term for that most shameful of all things, a FATGIRL.

      Emma gave a little shudder. Rounding the corner, she saw Willie up the block dancing around the garbage men.

      How my father ever thinks he can make a lawyer out of that dancing faggot, I can’t imagine. Here I am, with one of the best legal minds in the state . . . She drifted toward another courtroom scene but was stopped by her rage as she stood like a lump watching Willie shuffle around with the garbage men.

      As she watched, Emma was remembering the conversation with her father that had taken place the night before. Mr. Sheridan had been sitting in the living room reading the paper. Mrs. Sheridan was knitting and watching television, with the sound turned so low that Emma could barely hear it even when she was in the room, standing in front of her father’s chair.

      “May I discuss something with you?” she asked abruptly. Emma had a fairly deep voice. It made almost everything she said abrupt.

      Mr. Sheridan put down the newspaper. “Certainly, certainly,” he said jovially. He folded the paper, took his feet off the ottoman, and indicated that she sit down. “What have you got there? History? Algebra?” He was smiling.

      “Torts.”

      He stopped smiling. He didn’t look angry, just paler.

      “Have you finished your homework?” he asked quietly.

      “Yes.”

      “Where did you get this book?”

      “From the library.”

      “What is your question?”

      “In New York State, do you feel there is adequate legal protection of women in cases of rape?”

      “Emma!” Mrs. Sheridan put down her knitting.

      Mr. Sheridan ignored his wife. “What are you asking?” He looked at Emma.

      “The burden of proof seems to be on the woman. She has to have a witness. How many people are going to rape somebody when witnesses are around?”

      “That law has been repealed.”

      “Oh?”

      “Didn’t know that, did you?” Mr. Sheridan looked immensely satisfied. “At any rate, there was a good reason for that law. The accusation of rape is very grave. A man is being accused of a heinous crime. It cannot be done lightly.”

      “But he’d have to do it in broad daylight in the middle of the street to get enough witnesses to say—Anyway, rape is very grave.”

      “As I said before, that law has been repealed. Any other questions?” His voice was cold.

      “Yes. If a woman is raped by an FBI man, does it come under federal law?”

      “I don’t believe the question has ever come up. You would have to look up the law on that.”

      “Thank you.” Emma had said this politely, had picked up her book and thumped away. She had heard her parents’ short exchange as she went down the hall to her room.

      “Why are you so cold with her?” asked Mrs. Sheridan. “Her questions seem reasonable enough.”

      “You don’t understand. Her questions are those of a law-school student. I sometimes get the strange idea that she could pass the bar exam right now—”

      “But aren’t you proud?” It was one of her mother’s rare interruptions.

      “—and she thinks she’d get a better mark than I did.” Her father finished on a note of despair.

      Afraid of me, is he, thought Emma, progressing down the street toward her apartment house, having decided that the best thing to do about Willie was ignore him. Anybody who worked that hard for applause ought to be shook up not getting any.

      “But if your daughter is bright and will be a fine lawyer someday, I should think that would make you very happy.”

      “Women lawyers!” her father had answered with a sneer. “Why couldn’t it have been Willie?”

      Emma let her mind sift around the pain this had caused and, like a forty-niner panning for gold, came up with a familiar stab. She let herself give way to the stab for a fleeting second as she walked into the elevator, but with the change of light and the motion of ascension she let this turn, as it always did, into the just as familiar but far more comfortable feeling of determined anger.

      As the elevator rose from floor to floor, she felt her resolve mount too. I will show him. I will make it clear to him that he has made a mistake.

      I will bring it all out into the open, she said to herself, as the elevator stopped at her floor, and as the door rolled back, I will do it tonight. I will tell him that I want to go to law school and that, if he won’t send me, I will get a scholarship and how will that make him look to his fat friends in the Bar Association?

      After the vision of his father looking ashamed, Willie stopped dancing. He collapsed on the bed, chewing thoughtfully. He felt terrible. He felt unfaithful to his father. He didn’t want to be with his father at all. He wanted to be with Dipsey, or Nick, or anybody who liked dancing. He would have gone off, at that moment, with a perfect stranger. If only a perfect stranger would come to the door, would knock, would enter, would say, “You have a job. Come with me. We can use a dancer like you. These people don’t understand. These people are not your kind of people. Come with us,” and take him by the hand and lead him away.

      There would never be any perfect stranger at the door. He would never come. Dipsey was the only hope he had, and this morning that hope had been pushed right out the window.

      He squirmed around on the bed, put his feet up against the wall. He started tapping a little. His mother hated him to do that. There were little black marks where one time he had gotten carried away and tapped like crazy. He did it softly now. It helped him to think.

      He hated school with his whole body. He didn’t see any point in it at all. He was bad at everything.

      When he thought about summer stock, everything made sense. He understood everything about that kind of life. You did your best, your very best, and you worked hard, harder than anybody. Dipsey said that theater people worked harder than anybody else. Dipsey said all those people working in offices didn’t know what work was. I’m not afraid of work, he thought. Work was just doing it over and over again until you had it just right. He wanted to work, so it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair when that stupid teacher said that he was just lazy and didn’t want to work. He did want to work. What did she know? Dumb broad. He got madder and madder. His feet tapped faster and faster.

      “Cut that out or I’ll come in there and cut your feet off!” Emma’s voice came through the wall.

      Jerk. He swung his feet down. Rats. Between his father and Emma, there was no place to go. Only his mother gave him a little smile now and then as though she knew what he was about, and even she this morning, even she had turned out a fink, just working for his father.

      He remembered the guy in the hall at school. He’d been running, dancing and running, tapping a little and running from one class to the other, and this guy had minced past him saying “Get you, Mary,” and wig-waggled his ass on by like a dame. Willie lost his temper altogether and tackled the guy, downing him, punching him a good one right in the nose. A teacher had come by and picked them up off the floor. She had threatened to send them to the principal if it happened again.

      Thinking about everything, Willie got madder and madder. He never got mad. This wasn’t like him, and he realized that, as he continued, nevertheless, to get madder. He got so mad he stood up.