Jethra's Gone Off with the Chickens

by Lida Broadhurst

     Usually only vacuum cleaners see what’s happening underneath a table. And they speak with a strange buzzing language for which no one has yet discovered a Rosetta Stone. Actually, I don’t even think anyone is looking for one.

     Perhaps I will begin searching, since our granddaughter Jethra likes to push aside the heavy crimson velvet cloth that broods over her parents’ dining table and hide underneath. She has said to me, “I hiding and nothing knows.”

     The four of us play this simple game. We call “Jethra, are you there?”, as if we have joined an operatic chorus, but she rarely answers. Sometimes she just giggles.

     My son said once, “Her giggle doesn't sound like her normal voice.”

     I asked, “Does that worry you?”

     He said, “Not really. My wife and I hope she will be interested in acting. And look, already she can speak in another voice.”

     Perhaps they are right. She is only three, but so adorable with huge eyes and a drooping willful mouth; already she could pass as the childhood portrait of several silent screen beauties.

     Her brown hair is bobbed -- well, sort of an uneven one, as she wiggles too much as it is being cut. Of course, when she finally creeps out from under the table, it is messier than usual.

     Once I peeked in at her and found her rubbing her head against the rug which also spends time under the table. Perhaps she is being affectionate, trying to make a friend, although she has several human ones.

     Well anyway, I can see that we will all have to begin talking in several foreign tongues -- the language of the psychologists, the buzz of the vacuum cleaner as I mentioned above, and then of course, perhaps even the carpet threads rustle in meaningful syllables.

     All because the other day we waited and waited and the child did not come crawling out. We called and called. When she did not answer, we started singing, “Jethra’s gone off with the chickens,” pretending that she had run off to live with the neighbor’s chickens.

     That’s another story, but they are real enough and she used to love to watch them through the wire fence. I cannot say they took much interest in her scrutiny unless the neighbor gave her a handful of seed to throw.

     Anyway, we pretended further that we were going to the neighbor’s to look for her and my husband says he heard a giggle. My son and daughter-in-law said that was not her, but really we weren’t laughing.

     The only beings in the house were their three cats, and everyone knows cats do not giggle. But they do purr, and perhaps that is close to the sound of the vacuum cleaner so maybe the cats know what is going on.

     I certainly hope so, because no one has come out from under the table in the last few days. Any minute one of us will lift the cloth and see if she is still there. “Still” is the important word, as it is all very quiet.

     But as my husband said, “The cloth flaps around the table like the wings of a territorial bird, so perhaps we should not disturb it.”

     Well, we all agree that children of three are difficult to understand, and refuse to share secrets. But now a week has gone by, and we are afraid to turn on the vacuum cleaner, fearing what it might tell us. Otherwise life is normal, right down to the cats’ purring.