The Age of Reason

Meanwhile Glory Bee continues to grow in wisdom, knowledge, and grace.

Of course, she hears all the latest of what’s going on at the meetings. The women talk loudly and openly about their beloved Monkey King, and all the other little voices. They curse Reichmann and boast about how, when they get home, they are going to give their husbands or boyfriends a lesson in how to keep love alive in a world gone mad.

Sarah even comes up to Gloria’s room and speaks to her directly. “Mummy wants to tell you that the Furor has evil magicians working on his side. But not to worry because we have Mother Goose and Father Fife on ours.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. Maybe the Holy Peter can sit in his Eternal Palace, rock-tight, count his blessings, and do nothing about this Furor, but we hisssers—that’s what Father Fife calls us—are fighting fire with fire. The alliance of the Church of Inkland and the witches is a powerful one. Maybe you would like to come to the meeting next Friday night. Perhaps the Lord will come and tell you how you can help our side win this war.

“We fight evil with good and evil. When we have good feelings, and experience the joy of friendship, we believe this weakens Reichmann and what he stands for. And when we’re feeling wicked we use that too …”

As a natural born musician will hear the difference in keys without its being explained to her, the muse is internally knowledgeable about sex. Going on twelve, Gloria has a gut feeling what her mother means by “good feelings.” Never having heard the word “orgasm” doesn’t stop her from imagining women getting a big bang out of their private parts. She is fascinated by her own. Every night when she goes to bed she thinks of nice things, fine clothing, music, and men being madly in love with her. Plugging herself with her long fingers, she experiences a pleasant, full feeling of being warm as toast.

Gloria listens to her mother and nods, “unh-huh, unh-huh”, smiling non-committally. She considers her mother’s metaphysical beliefs absurd. Not that Gloria doesn’t believe in the power of thought. She knows that force can be marshalled over lighter-than-air waves. But she follows her stepfather’s lead that common sense is the mark of a rational human being, and humors her mother, as one would a child talking about her imaginary friends. She grunts with disbelief when Sarah gets to the bottom of things, describing the group’s use of doggerel as a weapon, and the dirty tricks and mind games they play on the Furor and his rotten nuts.

As a confirmed, self-centered, only child, an order of one, Gloria has little interest in the potentials of sisterhood. The monist has no girlfriends, and doesn’t want any. She is repelled by the idea of being present at the beer blast in her mother’s bedroom. The sole company she seeks, other than herself, is her stepfather. And with Sarah getting fruitier by the month, more and more the child finds herself assuming the role of a responsible adult in the house. Already well past the age of reason, at the age of twelve her reasons have reasons.

On the stroke of seven in the morning, dawn of the Eve of All Hollows, Laudette pokes her nose into Gloria’s room in the children’s wing to be the first with the best wishes for her birthday.

“Happy birthday, dear Gloria, happy birthday to you. How does it feel to be twelve years old, Baby? My, my how the years do fly!”

Gloria knows what Laudette will tell her next, what she tells her every day of the week, not to ask for whom the alarm rings.

“And speaking of time, guess what time it is again! School time! That’s right. So get up, get dressed and get out of here! Be a good girl!”

Gloria draws the covers up and sets in for a battle against other people telling her what to do. “Lawdy, I’m not going to school today. It’s my birthday. Call old Tinkler and tell her I’ve got the bug.”

“Baby, when you grow up, you give the orders. Now I say where you go and where you don’t. Get out from under there. That’s Mrs Twinkler, and she called me and said you’ve been late for school every day this week.”

“That’s because Pearly stops and smokes a cigarette with a funny man in a yellow jacket. They talk and trade newspapers.”

“None of your lies! I doubt Pearly Gates wants to be seen with the type of bozo who wears yellow jackets.”

“Well he’s doing it,” the Bee maintains, and tries to come up with some arguments in her own favor. “Lawdy, didn’t you once tell me that good girls go to heaven and bad girls go everywhere?”

Laudette suffers from the age of reason: the twelve year old is a bug for technicalities. “Yes, Baby,” she sighs, “I said that. But school isn’t everywhere.”

“Well don’t you always say Emanual said the kingdom of heaven is right here and now, that you don’t go there, either you are there, I mean here, or you’re not?”

“Yes, Baby, I do say so, but I don’t think that by ‘here’ Emanual meant staying in bed all day.”

“But didn’t Daddy-o buy me all these fine things to show me that I can lie around and count sheep my whole life if I so choose.”

The Bee drives the point home that as long as she lives she will never have to win bread and influence people to be comfortable. In fact Laudette happens to know that doting Sir Harry wrote an addition in his will to make doubly sure that Gloria inherits a fortune. She heard the playboy talking to his lawyer, saying that if he dies and the peach gets too fruity, then Gloria, before her mother finds a way of losing it, gets it all. “Yes,” Laudette says, “the day may come when you can have everything you want. Too bad, but it could happen. Sometimes good luck is the toughest of all,” she adds ominously. “It can leave you at a disadvantage.”

“What sense does that make, Lawdy, if good luck is bad, and bad luck is good, then I’ll just be back to where I started, whatever luck that is. A day off is never going to matter in my life, is it? It surely won’t hurt the school. So why do I have to go today?”

“Because I say so!” For a moment Laudette loses her patience and tries to evict Gloria from her sleeping den by force. The big sitter pokes at this side and that looking for an opening, but the long agile girl inside all that satin flap and flutter skirts her every time, like a quick young fox easily managing to keep herself from a very old dog.

The nanny won’t be made the seventh grader’s goat. Once upon a time Laudette would have put her foot down and talked tough. But the professional baby-sitter mellows with age. She knows how to compromise and when to use a bribe. “All right, Baby, I had a surprise planned for this evening but I don’t want to see you spoil it by acting wise, and forcing me to ground you. You probably don’t remember your uncles Early and Bones. They were the boys I took care of before I started taking care of you. They were in the hottest band in the Bay area. When you were just a little bitsy baby, your Uncle Early used to sit you on his lap at the piano in Kane’s Top Hat Club. Well, last week I got a letter from him. You know what? Tonight they’re both going to be right here in the Empire City. They got jobs playing in Apollo Cotton’s Orchestra, uptown at the Cootie Club, an eighteen-piece band on stage, live! And it just so happens we have some friends in high places willing to let us in the back stage door …”

“Is this a promise, Lawdy?”

Laudette promises. “Just don’t give me any more trouble over school, all right?”

“Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” The bribed Bee buzzes out of cover in a flash. She washes the midnight blue water color from her hair, chest, and stomach, brushes her teeth, and is impeccably dressed in her SCUBA gear, gone with Pearly before Laudette gets a chance to grab him and say, “Pearly Wheatstraw Gates, what the heck is this I hear about you acting funny, smoking cigarettes and passing newspapers with some joker in a yellow jacket?”

With all the excitement, the expectation of being reunited with her friends in her thoughts, the next time she sees Pearly that question has slipped her mind entirely.