This cassette contains an experimental tape; do not use in conjunction with regular television programming.
(Great. Not even the blank tapes were usable.)
To activate, insert cassette and press BX REC MODE.
(Bx? Yes, there was a BII and a BIII and a BX. She pushed the latter.)
Give vocal command.
(Give vocal command? What vocal command? These instructions were even more confusing than the usual VCR instructions. Didn’t any of the people who wrote these things speak basic English?)
Be sure to indicate time as well as PLACE.
Time? Place? Feeling foolish she said, “Yesterday. One P.M. Uncle Willis’s house.” Expecting nothing, she activated PLAY.
A picture came on her television screen. The camera was focused on the exterior of Uncle Willis’s house; someone was coming up the walk. The someone was she. She saw herself open the door and go in, she saw herself walk through the rooms, end up with the Beta and the TV, pick up the tapes... she pushed the STOP button, thought a moment, rewound.
She said, “Uncle Willis’s house, July 4, 1963,” a date chosen completely at random. She pressed PLAY.
It was a hot day, there were high, thin clouds way up in the yellow-white sky. There was a long-legged girl-child wearing a short dress printed all over with strawberries, she was barefooted and she carried a brown paper sack. In the sack were firecrackers called ladyfingers because they were so small and two boxes of sparklers. She went into the house through the back door, into the kitchen. The kitchen was furnished with a refrigerator with a round white dome, a lineoleum-topped wooden table with chairs, and a stove held up by white legs more shapely than the girl’s at each of its corners. On top of the stove was a big box of matches. The girl stood on tiptoe, added the box to the collection in her sack.
A voice from another room called, “Is that you, Didi?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I’m going upstairs to clean the bathroom. After that we’ll have lunch.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So don’t go away.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I won’t be long.”
“No, ma’am.”
“What?”
“I said I’ll just be out in the back yard.”
“All right. But don’t go away. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
The girl hesitated, heard footsteps on the stairs, shook her head, and went outside. When she figured she was out of earshot, she took out a pack of the ladyfinger firecrackers; they were all strung together like tiny frankfurters. She held the package in her hand, had to put it down to get a match from the box, picked it up again, and struck the match on the box side. Bobby Griffin said only sissies shot off ladyfingers one at a time. The thing to do, he said, was let the whole pack go off in your hand. That proved you were no baby, that proved you knew the score.
She touched the lighted match to the mud-colored string that held the crackers together, smelled the char, saw the flame run, heard the sound, felt the explosion, and screamed.
From an upstairs window her mother called out. “Didi! Didi! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Mother. Nothing’s wrong.”
“Somebody’s shooting off firecrackers.”
“Yes, Mother. It’s the Fourth of July.” Her mother was a good mother. But dumb.
“You’re not shooting off firecrackers, are you, Didi?”
“No, Mother. I have sparklers.”
“Well... don’t light them yet. I’ll be down in just a little bit.”
“Yes, Mother. I’ll wait.”
When she’d left the window, the girl went into the house and slathered butter on her palm, thought she’d pay Bobby Griffin back but good when she ran into him tomorrow. Only sissies, huh? She’d show him sissies.
“That you in the kitchen, Didi?”
“Yes, Uncle Willis. I didn’t know you were here. When did you get home?”
“Oh, a little while ago.” He came into the room, a slight man of medium height with thinning reddish hair. His skin was very dark from the sun, and his eyes were small and very pale behind his glasses. Watching him on the Betamax, she realized she’d forgotten what he looked like. She’d forgotten this entire day, it seemed. (Or had she?) All she vaguely recalled was the firecrackers. She sat back. It was like watching a TV film with a familiar cast of characters, but somehow it made her nervous. Somebody strange was writing the script, that was it, maybe Steven Spielberg? and she had this strange feeling that something... bad?... was about to happen.
“Oh, Willis. There you are.” Mother came into the kitchen, too, her eyes were bright, over-bright, Didi thought, had she been crying? Mother crying? What had she got to be crying about? Maybe she’d gotten soap in her eyes while cleaning the bathroom — and what was wrong, not quite right, with her dress? It was hanging funny, it was buttoned wrong...
Uncle Willis went to her, put his hand on her shoulder. “Your mother wants to tell you something,” he said, smiling. He had one gold-filled tooth. Right in the middle.
Suddenly Didi’s hand stopped hurting, some other pain took its place, a pain near her heart. Maybe because her heart stopped beating? Like a clock that’s stopped ticking? Sudden silence?
“Uncle Willis has asked me to marry him,” said Mother. He kissed her hair. She stared at Didi, eyes pleading, eyes — frightened? Mother frightened? Of what? What did Mother have to be frightened about?
“No,” she shouted aloud at the television. “No, no! Never! Never, never, never! Ever! I’ll kill myself first!” She put the Betamax on PAUSE and they were frozen there, the three of them. Uncle Willis — was that a sneer of self-satisfaction on his face? Mother — some kind of fear? Yes, absolutely. Some kind of fear. And she... she’d never known she could look like that. Maybe now. When she knew how to keep score. But then?
Memory was returning. Full force.
Didi hadn’t screamed at Uncle Willis. Didi hadn’t said, “No, no! Never!” or any of the rest of it, Didi’d smiled. She could remember how hard it had been to smile. She punched PLAY, and the scene went on.
Didi went up to Uncle Willis and hugged him hard. She was tall for her age (how old had she been — ten? eleven?). She was almost as tall as he was, and in the hugging she managed to smear some of the butter across the back of his coat. Didi looked into his eyes and smiled some more. His sneer faded, was replaced by an expression that she now recognized as doubt followed by confusion, but then she’d told herself, I’ll play-act for you, Uncle Willis, but you’ll marry my mother over my dead body.
After that when he’d come home she’d go up to his room after supper while Mother was doing dishes and maybe mixing up a batch of bread dough (she made great homemade bread from scratch, her mother was a fabulous cook), and they’d have “evening chats.”
“You tell me about what you do during the day, and I’ll tell you what I do, Uncle Willis. I just go to school, that’s all, but what do you do when you’re away with the railroad? I just love railroads, Uncle Willis. I’d love to take a long trainride someday. Trains are so romantic. Don’t you think trains are romantic? Not like airplanes. Everybody rides on airplanes, but riding on a train is different, don’t you think? You get to see a new part of the country.” And she’d smile at him and lean her chin on her hand and listen to whatever he chose to tell her.
At first he seemed a little uncomfortable, but after a few nights he began to tell her a lot. About how his mother died when he was a baby and how he was raised by his father and two uncles and how he never graduated from high school but had worked from the time he was fourteen, worked always on the railroad working his way up on the maintenance crews until now he was foreman and had privileges and would one day be able to retire with a pension, he was, he told her, a self-made man of substance. To which she’d replied (spoken with wide eyes), “Isn’t that something! Isn’t that really something!” Not much in the way of brilliant repartee, but then she was only eleven. Or was it ten?