The Velveteen Daughter
Laurel Davis Huber
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. . . . “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stickout handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. . . .”
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From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco
part one
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September 1, 1944
9 Livingston Place, Stuyvesant Square
New York City
(Late Morning)
margery
It’s a lost day, I’m afraid. Pamela’s here. I hadn’t counted on that.
Just one look at her this morning and despair flew into my heart. She had the look I dread, her eyes overbright, shining with that queer mix of euphoria and terror. And she talked incessantly, a very bad sign. She was going to start painting again, she said, and went on and on about the large canvasses she seems to have had in her head for so long. I encouraged her, naturally, but I knew by the way she was acting that it was only talk, that she wasn’t near ready. If she really meant it, we wouldn’t see her at all, she’d disappear. She’d be too busy painting.
When she stopped talking it was midsentence, her thoughts trailing off into a dramatic yawn. She was awfully tired, she said. Did I mind if she just lay down for a while? I didn’t need to answer, though of course I said, “Certainly, darling!”
She gave my shoulder a squeeze as she passed by. But I didn’t look up. I find every way to avoid it, but the truth will look me right in the face: there is madness in my daughter’s eyes.
This heat’s unbearable.
The fan blowing back and forth across the ice hypnotizes me with its jerky rhythm—the faint scriiitch as it hesitates at every rotation, the cool breath of air across my face. My manuscript sits in front of me on the kitchen table, but I know I won’t touch it. The desire to work has fled, it ran off down the hallway along with Pamela. Worry occupies me now, and the same questions roil in my brain: Will it be a bad one? Will it go away of its own accord? Or—God forbid—will we have to bring her to the hospital again?
When Francesco left for the printer’s studio at dawn, saying he’d be back by suppertime, I was quite glad to have the day to myself, all the time in the world, I thought, to do a final reading of Forward, Commandos! A nice, long stretch of solitude. . . .
I suppose you could say I’m alone now, here in the kitchen, but somehow it’s not the same, not with Pamela just a few feet away, asleep in her old room. We heaved a sigh of relief when she moved into an apartment of her own a few years ago, but her “independence” has been tenuous at best. Little has changed. Her place is only a stone’s throw away. Inevitably, she shows up on our doorstep when she is feeling not quite herself.
She’ll sleep the day away, I can count on that. Another bad sign. There’s trouble ahead when the little genius takes to bed.
The little genius. Why on earth did that pop into my head? We haven’t called her that in years. . . . I suppose it was Pamela’s attempt to discuss the past, her childhood. I had to cut her off.
Thank God there aren’t any of those minefields to navigate with Lorenzo. Still, I should have realized that my hopes for a day alone would be futile when he appeared first thing this morning— I should have known that it was only a matter of time before his mother showed up.
Lorenzo burst into the apartment, vibrating with that matchless energy of youth, and planted himself in my kitchen. A bright pinwheel, spinning even when sitting still. His mother didn’t feel like cooking, he said, she’d told him he could help himself to some Wheaties. He looked at me sheepishly then, not wanting to ask. “Scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast sound okay?” I said, and he grinned. While I fixed his breakfast, he chattered about his great plans. It’s the start of Labor Day weekend today—naturally, he’s determined to cram in all the last-minute adventure he can before school begins.
It’s a miracle that Pamela produced such a solid, uncomplicated child. He shows none of the fragile jumpiness of his parents. Not that I ever knew Robert very well, but he was a type. And Lorenzo is not at all that type. He’s blessedly normal. He likes the sorts of things most boys his age like, sports and model airplanes and listening to Boston Blackie on the radio. And roller-skating. “It’s swell, Grams, you should try it!” he tells me. Well, I’m tempted. With the gas rationing going on, the streets aren’t nearly so busy these days as they used to be. Lorenzo goes down to the financial district on weekends, when it’s all but abandoned. He and his friends can skate right in the middle of the road all the way from Wall Street and Broadway, past the New York Stock Exchange and Broad Street, and never have to dodge an automobile!
Lorenzo finished his breakfast and ran off to meet his friends for a swimming party at McCarren Park. He seems to have a great many friends. They all call him Larry, or sometimes “Red,” which irritates Pamela no end. But what twelve-year-old boy—what boy at all—wants to be called Lorenzo?
When Pamela showed up a few hours later, I sighed inwardly as I told her, all cheerful, that I’d make us some tea, thinking, How does this happen? She’s seemed so much better in the last year or so. I was sure it had to do with the fact she was out in the world for a change—doing her bit in the war effort, volunteering at the Department of Censorship. It’s the perfect job for her, translating letters in the Italian Division. Francesco and I’ve often talked about how good it’s been for her, for her confidence, to see that she’s needed, that she has skills to offer that have nothing to do with art.