Sister Emily's Lightship (16 page)

The hush that followed her outcry was enormous. Without another word, Peter disappeared back into the dark. One by one, the Lost Boys followed him. Tink was the last to go, flickering out like a candle in the wind.

“Now,” said Madja with a pout, “we won't even get to hear about the fight. And it's the very best part of being a Wendy.”

Darla stared at the girls for a long moment. “What you all need,” she said grimly, “is a backbone transplant.” And when no one responded, she added, “It's clear the Wendys need to go out on strike.” Being the daughter of a labor lawyer had its advantages. She knew all about strikes.

“What the Wendy's
need,”
Wendy responded sternly, “is to give the cupboards a good shaking-out.” She patted her hair down and looked daggers at Darla. “But first, cups of tea all ‘round.” Turning on her heel, she started back toward the kitchen. Only four girls remained behind.

Little Lizzy crept over to Darla's side. “What's a strike?” she asked.

“Work stoppage,” Darla said. “Signs and lines.”

Nancy, Martha, and JoAnne, who had also stayed to listen, looked equally puzzled.

“Signs?” Nancy said.

“Lines?” Joanne said.

“Hello
…” Darla couldn't help the exasperation in her voice. “What year do you all live in? I mean, haven't you ever heard of strikes? Watched CNN? Endured social studies?”

“Nineteen fourteen,” said Martha.

“Nineteen thirty-three,” said Nancy.

“Nineteen seventy-two,” said Joanne.

“Do you mean to say that none of you are…” Darla couldn't think of what to call it, so added lamely, “new?”

Lizzy slipped her hand into Darla's. “You are the onliest new Wendy we've had in years.”

“Oh,” Darla said. “I guess that explains it.” But she wasn't sure.

“Explains what?” they asked. Before Darla could answer, Wendy called from the kitchen doorway, “Are you lot coming? Tea's on.” She did not sound as if she were including Darla in the invitation.

Martha scurried to Wendy's side, but Nancy and JoAnne hesitated a moment before joining her. That left only Lizzy with Darla.

“Can I help?” Lizzy asked. “For the signs. And the 'ines? I be a good worker. Even Wendy says so.”

“You're my only …” Darla said, smiling down at her and giving her little hand a squeeze. “My
on
liest worker. Still, as my mom always says, Start with one, you're halfway done.”

Lizzy repeated the rhyme. “Start with one, you're halfway done. Start with one …”

“Just remember it. No need to say it aloud,” Darla said.

Lizzy looked up at her, eyes like sky blue marbles. “But I 'ike the way that poem sounds.”

“Then 'ike it quietly. We have a long way to go yet before we're ready for any chants.” Darla went into the kitchen hand-in-hand with Lizzy, who skipped beside her, mouthing the words silently.

Fourteen Wendys stared at them. Not a one was smiling. Each had a teacup—unmatched, chipped, or cracked—in her hand.

“A long way to go where?” Wendy asked in a chilly voice.

“A long way before you can be free of this yoke of oppression,” said Darla.
Yoke of oppression
was a favorite expression of her mother's.

“We are not yoked,” Wendy said slowly. “And we are not oppressed.”

“What's o-oppressed?” asked Lizzy.

“Made to do what you don't want to do,” explained Darla, but she never took her eyes off of Wendy. “Treated harshly. Ruled unjustly. Governed with cruelty.” Those were the three definitions she'd had to memorize for her last social studies exam. She never thought she'd ever actually get to use them in the real world.
If,
she thought suddenly,
this world is real.

“No one treats us harshly or rules us unjustly. And the only cruel ones in Neverland are the pirates,” Wendy explained carefully, as if talking to someone feebleminded or slow.

None of the other Wendys said a word. Most of them stared into their cups,
a little
—Darla thought—
like the way I always stare down at my shoes when Mom or Dad wants to talk about something that hurts.

Lizzy pulled her hand from Darla's. “I think it harsh that we always have to clean up after the boys.” Her voice was tiny but still it carried.

“And unjust,” someone put in.

“Who said that?” Wendy demanded, staring around the table. “Who
dares
to say that Peter is unjust?”

Darla pursued her lips, wondering how her mom would answer such a question. She was about to lean forward to say something when JoAnne stood in a rush.

“I said it. And it is unjust. I came to Neverland to get away from that sort of thing. Well…and to get away from my stepfather, too,” she said. “I mean, I don't mind cleaning up my own mess. And even someone else's, occasionally. But…” She sat down as quickly as she had stood, looking accusingly into her cup, as if the cup had spoken and not she.

“Well!”
Wendy said, sounding so much like Darla's home ec teacher that Darla had to laugh out loud.

As if the laugh freed them, the girls suddenly stood up one after another, voicing complaints. And as each one rose, little Lizzy clapped her hands and skipped around the table, chanting, “Start with one, you're halfway done! Start with one, you're halfway done!”

Darla didn't say a word more. She didn't have to. She just listened as the first trickle of angry voices became a stream and the stream turned into a flood. The girls spoke of the boys' mess and being under-appreciated and wanting a larger share of the food. They spoke about needing to go outside every once in a while. They spoke of longing for new stockings and a bathing room all to themselves, not one shared with the boys, who left rings around the tub and dirty underwear everywhere. They spoke of the long hours and the lack of fresh air, and Barbara said they really could use every other Saturday off, at least. It seemed once they started complaining they couldn't stop.

Darla's mom would have understood what had just happened, but Darla was clearly as stunned as Wendy by the rush of demands. They stared at one another, almost like comrades.

The other girls kept on for long minutes, each one stumbling over the next to be heard, until the room positively rocked with complaints. And then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped. Red-faced, they all sat down again, except for Lizzy, who still capered around the room, but now did it wordlessly.

Into the sudden silence, Wendy rose. “How
could
you…” she began. She leaned over the table, clutching the top, her entire body trembling. “After all Peter has done for you, taking you in when no one else wanted you, when you had been tossed aside by the world, when you'd been crushed and corrupted and canceled. How
could you?”

Lizzy stopped skipping in front of Darla. “Is it time for signs and 'ines now?” she asked, her marble-blue eyes wide.

Darla couldn't help it. She laughed again. Then she held out her arms to Lizzy, who cuddled right in. “Time indeed,” Darla said. She looked up at Wendy. “Like it or not, Miss Management, the Lost Girls are going out on strike.”

Wendy sat in her rocker, arms folded, a scowl on her face. She looked like a four-year-old having a temper tantrum. But of course it was something worse than that.

The girls ignored her. They threw themselves into making signs with a kind of manic energy and in about an hour they had a whole range of them, using the backs of their old signs, pages torn from cookbooks, and flattened flour bags.

WENDYS WON'T WORK
, one read.
EQUAL PLAY FOR EQUAL WORK
, went another.
MY NAME'S NOT WENDY!
said a third, and
FRESH AIR IS ONLY FAIR
a fourth. Lizzy's sign was decorated with stick figures carrying what Darla took to be swords, or maybe wands. Lizzy had spelled out—or rather misspelled out—what became the girls' marching words:
WE AIN'T LOST, WE'RE JUST MIZ-PLAYST.

It turned out that JoAnne was musical. She made up lyrics to the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and taught them to the others:

The girls argued for awhile over that last line, which Betsy said had too many syllables and the wrong sentiment, until Magda suggested, rather timidly, that if they actually wanted a chance to fight the pirates, maybe the boys should take a turn at cleaning the house. “Fair's fair,” she added.

That got a cheer. “Fair's fair,” they told one another, and Patsy scrawled that sentiment on yet another sign.

The cheer caused Wendy to get up grumpily from her chair and leave the kitchen in a snit. She must have called for the boys then, because no sooner had the girls decided on an amended line (which still had too many syllables but felt right otherwise)—

—then the boys could be heard coming back noisily into the dining room. They shouted and whistled and banged their fists on the table, calling out for the girls and for food. Tink's high-pitched cry overrode the noise, piercing the air. The girls managed to ignore it all until Peter suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“What's this I hear?” he said, smiling slightly to show he was more amused than angry. Somehow that only made his face seem both sinister and untrustworthy.

But his appearance in the doorway was electrifying. For a moment not one of the girls could speak. It was as if they had all taken a collective breath and were waiting to see which of them had the courage to breathe out first.

Then Lizzy held up her sign. “We're going on strike,” she said brightly.

“And what, little Wendy, is that?” Peter asked, leaning forward and speaking in the kind of voice grown-ups use with children. He pointed at her sign. “Is it…” he said slyly, “like a thimble?”

“Silly Peter,” said Lizzy, “it's signs and 'ines.”

“I see the signs, all right,” said Peter. “But what do they mean?
WENDYS WON'T WORK.
Why, Neverland counts on Wendys working. And I count on it, too. You Wendys are the most important of what we have made here.”

“Oh,” said Lizzy, turning to Darla, her face shining with pleasure.
“We're
the mostest important…”

Darla sighed heavily. “If you are so important, Lizzy, why can't he remember your name? If you're so important, why do you have all the work and none of the fun?”

“Right!” cried JoAnne suddenly, and immediately burst into her song. It was picked up at once by the other girls. Lizzy, caught up in the music, began to march in time all around the table with her sign. The others, still singing, fell in line behind her. They marched once around the kitchen and then right out into the dining room. Darla was at the rear.

At first the Lost Boys were stunned at the sight of the girls and their signs. Then they, too, got caught up in the song and began to pound their hands on the table in rhythm.

Tink flew around and around Wendy's head, flickering on and off and on angrily, looking for all the world like an electric hair-cutting machine. Peter glared at them all until he suddenly seemed to come to some conclusion. Then he leaped onto the dining room table, threw back his head, and crowed loudly.

At that everyone went dead silent. Even Tink.

Peter let the silence prolong itself until it was almost painful. At last he turned and addressed Darla and, through her, all the girls. “What is it you want?” he asked. “What is it you truly want? Because you'd better be careful what you ask for. In Neverland wishes are granted in very strange ways.”

“It's not,” Darla said carefully, “what I want. It's what
they
want.

In a tight voice, Wendy cried out. “They never wanted for anything until
she
came, Peter. They never needed or asked…”

“What we want…”JoAnne interrupted, “is to be equals.”

Peter wheeled about on the table and stared down at Joanne and she, poor thing, turned gray under his gaze. “No one is asking you,” he said pointedly.

“We want to be equals!” Lizzy shouted. “To the boys. To Peter!”

The dam burst again, and the girls began shouting and singing and crying and laughing all together. “Equal…equal…equal…”

Even the boys took it up.

Tink flickered frantically, then took off up one of the bolt-holes, emerging almost immediately down another, her piercing alarm signal so loud that everyone stopped chanting, except for Lizzy, whose little voice only trailed off after a bit.

“So,” said Peter, “you want equal share in the fighting? Then here's your chance.”

Tink's light was sputtering with excitement and she whistled nonstop.

“Tink says Hook's entire crew is out there, waiting. And, boy! are they angry. You want to fight them? Then go ahead.” He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his face away from the girls. “I won't stop you.”

No longer gray but now pink with excitement, JoAnne grabbed up a knife from the nearest Lost Boy. “I'm not afraid!” she said. She headed up one of the bolt-holes.

Weaponless, Barbara, Pansy, and Betsy followed right after.

“But that's not what I meant them to do,” Darla said. “I mean, weren't we supposed to work out some sort of compromise?”

Peter turned back slowly and looked at Darla, his face stern and unforgiving. “I'm Peter Pan. I don't have to compromise in Neverland.” Wendy reached up to help him off the tabletop.

The other girls had already scattered up the holes, and only Lizzy was left. And Darla.