“But you know Frex is bound to notice sooner or later. These energetic afternoon naps you take—well, you always had an eye for the fellow with a decent helping of sausage and hard-boiled eggs—”
“Nanny, come, this is none of your affair.”
“More’s the pity,” said Nanny, sighing. “Isn’t aging a cruel hoax? I’d trade my hard-won pearls of wisdom for a good romp with Uncle Flagpole any day.”
Melena flipped a handful of water in Nanny’s face to shut her up. The older woman blinked and she said, “Well, it’s your garden, plant there what you choose and reap what you may. What I want to talk about is the child, anyway.”
The girl was now squatting behind the pear tree, eyes narrowed at something in the distance. She looked, thought Melena, like a sphinx, like a stone beast. A fly even landed on her face and walked across the bridge of her nose, and the child didn’t flinch or squirm. Then, suddenly, she leaped and pounced, a naked green kitten after an invisible butterfly.
“What about her?”
“Melena, she needs to get used to other children. She’ll start talking a little bit if she sees that other chicks are talking.”
“Talking among children is an overrated concept.”
“Don’t be glib. You know she needs to get used to people other than us. She’s not going to have an easy time of it anyhow, unless she sheds her greeny skin as she grows up. She needs the habits of conversation. Look, I give her chores to do, I warble nursery rhymes at her. Melena, why doesn’t she respond like other children?”
“She’s boring. Some children just are.”
“She ought to have other pups to play with. They would infect her with a sense of fun.”
“Frankly, Frex doesn’t expect a child of his to be interested in fun,” said Melena. “Fun is counted for overmuch in this world, Nanny. I agree with him on that.”
“So your dragon-snaking with Turtle Heart is what—devotional exercises?”
“I said don’t be catty, please!” Melena focused on the toweling, beating it with annoyance. Nanny would go on about this; she was up to something. And Nanny had hit the nail on the head. There crept Turtle Heart into the cool shadows of the cottage, when Melena was tired from a morning’s work in the vegetable garden. He covered her with a sense of holiness, and it was more than her undergarments that would drop away from her when they tumbled panting onto the bedclothes. She would lose her sense of shame.
She knew this did not follow conventional reason. Nevertheless, should a tribunal of unionist ministers call her to court for adultery, she would tell the truth. Somehow Turtle Heart had saved her and restored her sense of grace, of hope in the world. Her belief in the goodness of things had been dashed into bits when little green Elphaba crawled into being. The child was extravagant punishment for a sin so minor she didn’t even know if she had committed it.
It was not the sex that saved her, though the sex was mighty vigorous, even frightening. It was that Turtle Heart didn’t blush when Frex showed up, that he didn’t shrink from beastly little Elphaba. He set up shop in the side yard, blowing glass and grinding it, as if life had brought him here just to redeem Melena. Wherever else he might have been heading had been forgotten.
“Very well, you old interfering cow,” said Melena. “For the sake of argument, what do you propose?”
“We must take Elphie to Rush Margins and find some small children for her to play with.”
Melena sat back on her haunches. “But you have to be jesting!” she cried. “Slow and deliberate as Elphaba is, at least she’s unharmed here! I may not be able to summon much maternal warmth, but I feed her, Nanny, and I keep her from hurting herself! How cruel, to inflict the outside world on her! A green child will be an open invitation for scorn and abuse. And children are wickeder than adults, they have no sense of restraint. We might as well go throw her in the lake she’s so terrified of.”
“No no no,” said Nanny, putting her fat hands on her own knees; her voice was thick with determination. “Now I am going to argue with you about this, Melena, until you give in. Time in its wisdom will bring you around to my way of thinking. Listen to me. Listen to me. You are only a pampered little rich girl who flitted about from music lessons to dance lessons with neighborhood children equally rich and stupid as you. Of course there’s cruelty. But Elphaba must learn who she is and she must face down cruelty early. And there will be less of it than you expect.”
“Don’t play Nanny Goddess with me. I won’t have it.”
“Nanny is not giving up,” said Nanny, just as fiercely. “I have a long-range view of your happiness as well as hers, and believe me, if you don’t give her the weapons and armor with which she can defend herself against scorn, she’ll make your life miserable as hers will be miserable.”
“And the weapons and armor she’ll learn from the dirty urchins of Rush Margins?”
“Laughter. Fun. Teasing. Smiling.”
“Oh, please.”
“I’m not above blackmailing you about this, Melena,” said Nanny. “I can wander into Rush Margins this afternoon and find where Frex is trying to hold his revival meeting and whisper a few words to him. While Frex is busy cranking up the religious ardor of Rush Margins sluggards, would he be interested in knowing what his wife is up to with Turtle Heart?”
“You are a miserable old fiend! You are a foul, unethical bully!” cried Melena.
Nanny grinned with pride. “No later than tomorrow,” she said, “we’ll go in tomorrow and get her life started.”
In the morning a stiff, unforgiving wind galloped from the heights. It picked up old leaves and the remains of failed crops and kitchen gardens. Nanny pulled a shawl across her rounded shoulders and tugged a bonnet over her brow. Her eyes were full of marginal beasts; she kept turning to see a slinking cat-thing or a vixen dissolve into clots of skeleton leaves and debris.
Nanny found a blackthorn staff as if to aid her over stones and ruts, but she hoped to be ready to wield it against some hungry beast. “The land is dry and cold,” she observed, almost to herself. “And so little rain! Of course the big beasts would be driven from the hills. Let’s walk together, no running ahead, little green.”
