THE FEATHER

“Mo-ther! Mo-ther!” shrieked Jenny frantically, waving her tiny chubby arms in the air and jumping up and down.

“Why, that’s nothing but a chicken feather. It can’t hurt you.”

“Git it away from me!”

For there it lay on the floor near the kitchen range, a fat fuzzy feather that had probably clung to one of the eggs Mother had gathered the day before. A draft coming under the door caused it to rustle silently, but fearfully.

“Look. Mother will touch it. You touch it too. Come here and see.”

“No.” Jenny backed into a far corner of the room, eyeing the feather all the while. Of course Mother wasn’t scared of anything, not even the dark.

“But you picked one up yesterday when we were outside. Why are you so afraid of this one?”

But yesterday was a long time ago, and now was now. And when one is not yet three, though one can ask the question, “Why?” many times a day, one seldom has the vocabulary or the judgment to answer it. Jenny could not explain that yesterday’s feather had been a long stiff wing feather that didn’t rustle in the breeze and seemed small in the great outdoors. This morning the fat thing on the floor seemed monstrous within the confines of the kitchen. Many parts of it were moving at one time. It was alive and it was going to “git” Jenny.

“Oh all right. Here, I’ll sweep it into the dust pan and put it in the stove. I’ll bet Betty Ann isn’t afraid of a feather.”

As Mother shut the stove lid, Jenny dug Bingo, her pink terry cloth dog with the blue ears and nose, out of the wash box where she kept her toys and plopped him into the wash basin . She could control Bingo and gave him many baths.