stamping them out… if only the idiots would co-operate! Whereas there is no
chance, none whatever, of stamping out the so-called common cold. Yet people pass on
respiratory infections with utter carelessness and aren’t even apologetic about it.’
He was explosively profane.
I said, ‘Tut, tut! Ladies don’t talk that way.’
The screen was blinking and its alarm was sounding as I got home. I dropped my
handbag and answered it – Donald.
`Mama, what’s this all about?’
‘Secure phone?’ I could not see what was behind him – just a blank wall.
‘I’m in one of the round proof booths at the phone company.’
‘All right’ I know of no gentle way to tell a boy that his sister has big and little
casino, a full house. So I put it bluntly. ‘Priscilla is ill. She has gonorrhoea and
syphilis:
I thought he was going to faint. But he pulled himself together. ‘Mama, this is
awful. Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I was there when she was tested and I saw the test results.
That’s why you were tested. I was greatly relieved to learn that you are not the one
who gave them to her.’
‘I’ll be there at once. Uh, it’s about two hundred and forty miles. Coming up, it
took me -‘
‘Donald.’
‘Yes, Mama?’
`Stay where you are. We sent you to Grinnell to get you away from your sister.’
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‘But, Mama, these are special circumstances. She needs me -‘
‘She does not need you. You are the worst possible influence on her; can’t you get
that through your head? She doesn’t need sympathy; she needs antibiotics and that is
what she is getting. Now leave her alone and give her a chance to get well… and to
grow up. And you grow up, tool’
After enquiring about how he was doing with his studies, I shut him off. Then I did
something I avoid doing as a matter of principle but sometimes must do through
pragmatic necessity; I searched a child’s room.
I think a child has a right to privacy but that right is not absolute; his parents
have an overriding responsibility for everything under their roof. If the
circumstances require it, the child’s right to privacy may have to be temporarily
suspended.
I am aware that some libertarians (and all children) disagree with me. So be it.
Priscilla’s room was as untidy as her mind, but that was not what I was after. I
worked slowly through her bedroom and bathroom, trying to check every cubic inch,
while leaving her clothes and other possessions as much as possible the way I had
found them.
I found no liquor. I found a stash of what I thought was marijuana but I was not
sure how to tell ‘grass’ when I saw it. That it probably was ‘grass’ was made almost
certain in my mind by two things: two little packets of cigarette papers under the
bottom liner of another drawer, and a lack of any tobacco of any sort, loose or in
cigarettes. Are cigarette papers used for any purpose other than rolling cigarettes
of some sort?
The last odd thing I found was at the very bottom of a catch-all drawer in her
bathroom: a small rectangular mirror, and with it a Gem single-edge blade. She had a
big make-up mirror that I had given her, as well as a three-way that was part of her
dressing table; why had she bought this mirror? I stared at those two items, mirror
and razor blade, then looked elsewhere in her bathroom, and found, as my memory led
me to expect, a Gillette razor that required double-edged blades, and an opened
packet of double-edged blades – but no Gem razor. I then searched both bathroom and
bedroom a second time. I even searched the room and bath that had been Donald’s,
although I knew them to be as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard; I had cleaned after
he left. I did not find a stash of white powder having the appearance of powdered
sugar… which proves only that I did not find such a stash.