Charles
The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he
renounced
corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing
blue jeans
with a belt; I watched him go off the first
morning with the
older girl next door, seeing clearly that an
era of my life was
ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot
replaced by a longtrousered,
swaggering character who forgot to stop at
the corner
and wave good-bye to me.
He came home the same way, the front door
slamming
open, his cap on the floor, and the voice
suddenly become raucous
shouting, “ Isn’t anybody here?”
At lunch he spoke insolently to his father,
spilled his baby
sister’s milk, and remarked that his teacher
said we were not to
take the name of the Lord in vain.
“How was
school today?” I asked, elaborately casual.
“All right,” he said.
“Did you learn anything?” his father asked.
Laurie regarded his father coldly. “I didn’t
learn nothing,”
he said.
“Anything,” I said. “ Didn’t learn anything”
“The teacher spanked a boy, though,” Laurie
said, ad -
dressing his bread and butter. “For being
fresh,” he added,
with his mouth full.
“What did he do?” I asked. “Who was it?”
Laurie thought. “It was Charles,” he said. “He
was fresh.
The teacher spanked him and made him stand in
a corner. He
was awfully fresh.”
“What did he do?” I asked again, but Laurie
slid off his
chair, took a cookie, and left, while his
father was still saying,
“See here, young man.”
The next day Laurie remarked at lunch, as
soon as he sat
down, “Well, Charles was bad again today.” He
grinned enormously
and said, “Today Charles hit the teacher.”
“Good heavens,” I said, mindful of the Lord’s
name, “I
suppose he got spanked again?”
“He sure did,” Laurie said. “Look up,” he
said to his father.
“What?” his father said, looking up.
The Library of
America • Story of the Week
Excerpt from Shirley Jackson:
Novels and Stories (The Library of America,
2010), pages 73–77. Originally appeared in Mademoiselle (July 1948). Reprinted
in The
Lottery; or, The Adventures of James Harris (1949).
© Copyright 1949 by Shirley
Jackson. Copyright renewed 1976 by Laurence Hyman,
Barry Hyman, Sarah Webster, and Joanne
Schnurer. Reprinted by arrangement with
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights
reserved.
“Look down,” Laurie said. “Look at my thumb.
Gee,
you’re dumb.” He began to laugh insanely.
“Why did Charles hit the teacher?” I asked
quickly.
“ Because she tried to make him color with
red crayons,”
Laurie said. “Charles wanted to color with
green crayons so he
hit the teacher and she spanked him and said
nobody play with
Charles but everybody did.”
The third day— it was Wednesday of the first
week— Charles
bounced a see-saw on to the head of a little
girl and made
her bleed, and the teacher made him stay
inside all during recess.
Thursday Charles had to stand in a corner
during storytime
because he kept pounding his feet on the
floor. Friday
Charles was deprived of blackboard privileges
because he threw
chalk.
On Saturday I remarked to my husband, “Do you
think
kindergarten is too unsettling for Laurie?
All this toughness,
and bad grammar, and this Charles boy sounds
like such a bad
influence.”
“It’ll be all right,” my husband said
reassuringly. “Bound to
be people like Charles in the world. Might as
well meet them
now as later.”
On Monday Laurie came home late, full of
news. “Charles,”
he shouted as he came up the hill; I was
waiting anxiously on
the front steps. “Charles,” Laurie yelled all
the way up the hill,
“Charles was bad again.”
“Come right in,” I said, as soon as he came
close enough.
“Lunch is waiting.”
“You know what Charles did?” he demanded,
following me
through the door. “Charles yelled so in
school they sent a boy
in from first grade to tell the teacher she
had to make Charles
keep quiet, and so Charles had to stay after
school. And so all
the children stayed to watch him.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He just sat there,” Laurie said, climbing
into his chair at
the table. “Hi, Pop, y’old dust mop.”
“Charles had to stay after school today,” I
told my husband.
“Everyone stayed with him.”
“What does this Charles look like?” my
husband asked
Laurie. “What’s his other name?”
74 the lottery
“He’s bigger than me,” Laurie said. “And he
doesn’t have
any rubbers and he doesn’t ever wear a
jacket.”
Monday night was the first Parent-Teachers
meeting, and
only the fact that the baby had a cold kept
me from going; I
wanted passionately to meet Charles’s mother.
On Tuesday
Laurie remarked suddenly, “Our teacher had a
friend come to
see her in school today.”
“Charles’s mother?”my husband and I asked
simultaneously.
“Naaah,” Laurie said scornfully. “It was a
man who came
and made us do exercises, we had to touch our
toes. Look.”
He climbed down from his chair and squatted
down and
touched his toes. “Like this,” he said. He
got solemnly back
into his chair and said, picking up his fork,
“Charles didn’t
even do
exercises.”
“That’s fine,” I said heartily. “ Didn’t
Charles want to do exercises?”
“Naaah,” Laurie said. “Charles was so fresh
to the teacher’s
friend he wasn’t let do exercises.”
“Fresh again?” I said.
“He kicked the teacher’s friend,” Laurie
said. “The
teacher’s friend told Charles to touch his
toes like I just did
and Charles kicked him.”
“What are they going to do about Charles, do
you suppose?”
Laurie’s father asked him.
Laurie shrugged elaborately. “Throw him out
of school, I
guess,” he said.
Wednesday and Thursday were routine; Charles
yelled during
story hour and hit a boy in the stomach and
made him cry.
On Friday Charles stayed after school again
and so did all the
other children.
With the third week of kindergarten Charles
was an institution
in our family; the baby was being a Charles
when she
cried all afternoon; Laurie did a Charles
when he filled his
wagon full of mud and pulled it through the
kitchen; even my
husband, when he caught his elbow in the
telephone cord and
pulled telephone, ashtray, and a bowl of
flowers off the table,
said, after the first minute, “Looks like
Charles.”
During the third and fourth weeks it looked
like a reformation
in Charles; Laurie reported grimly at lunch
on Thursday
charles 75
of the third week, “Charles was so good today
the teacher gave
him an apple.”
“What?” I said, and my husband added warily, “You
mean
Charles?”
“Charles,” Laurie said. “He gave the crayons
around and he
picked up the books afterward and the teacher
said he was her
helper.”
“What happened?” I asked incredulously.
“He was her helper, that’s all,” Laurie said,
and shrugged.
“Can this be true, about Charles?” I asked my
husband that
night. “Can something like this happen?”
“Wait and see,” my husband said cynically. “When
you’ve
got a Charles to deal with, this may mean he’s
only plotting.”
He seemed to be wrong. For over a week
Charles was the
teacher’s helper; each day he handed things
out and he picked
things up; no one had to stay after school.
“The P.T.A. meeting’s next week again,” I
told my husband
one evening. “I’m going to find Charles’s
mother there.”
“Ask her what happened to Charles,” my
husband said. “I’d
like to know.”
“I’d like to know myself,” I said.
On Friday of that week things were back to
normal. “You
know what Charles did today?” Laurie demanded
at the lunch
table, in a voice slightly awed. “He told a
little girl to say a
word and she said it and the teacher washed
her mouth out
with soap and Charles laughed.”
“What word?” his father asked unwisely, and
Laurie said,
“I’ll have to whisper it to you, it’s so bad.”
He got down off
his chair and went around to his father. His
father bent his
head down and Laurie whispered joyfully. His
father’s eyes
widened.
“Did Charles tell the little girl to say that?” he asked respectfully.
“She said it twice,” Laurie said. “Charles told her to say it
twice.”
“What happened to Charles?” my husband asked.
“Nothing,” Laurie said. “He was passing out
the crayons.”
Monday morning Charles abandoned the little
girl and said
the evil word himself three or four times,
getting his mouth
washed out with soap each time. He also threw
chalk.
76 the lottery
My husband came to the door with me that
evening as I set
out for the P.T.A. meeting. “Invite her over
for a cup of tea
after the meeting,” he said. “I want to get a
look at her.”
“If only she’s there,” I said prayerfully.
“She’ll be there,” my husband said. “I don’t
see how they
could hold a P.T.A. meeting without Charles’s
mother.”
At the meeting I sat restlessly, scanning
each comfortable
matronly face, trying to determine which one
hid the secret of
Charles. None of them looked to me haggard
enough. No one
stood up in the meeting and apologized for
the way her son
had been acting. No one mentioned Charles.
After the meeting I identified and sought out
Laurie’s
kindergarten teacher. She had a plate with a
cup of tea and a
piece of chocolate cake; I had a plate with a
cup of tea and
a piece of marshmallow cake. We maneuvered up
to one an -
other cautiously, and smiled.
“I’ve been so anxious to meet you,” I said. “I’m
Laurie’s
mother.”
“We’re all so interested in Laurie,” she
said.
“Well, he certainly likes kindergarten,” I
said. “He talks
about it all the time.”
“We had a little trouble adjusting, the first
week or so,” she
said primly, “but now he’s a fine little
helper. With occasional
lapses, of course.”
“Laurie usually adjusts very quickly,” I
said. “I suppose this
time it’s Charles’s influence.”
“Charles?”
“Yes,” I said, laughing, “you must have your
hands full in
that kindergarten, with Charles.”
“Charles?” she said. “We don’t have any
Charles in the
kindergarten.”
charles 77
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