Miranda and Caliban(12)

It is not easy.

“One, two, three, four.” I point at a series of Xs. “Good, good, good, good. See?” I hold up four fingers. “For four days Caliban was good.” I point at an O. “Bad. Yesterday Caliban was bad.” I erase the chalk markings with the heel of my hand, dusting it on the folds of my robe.

Caliban sets his jaw. “No!” Although he has not altogether lost the habit of crouching, he stands straighter now than he did when Papa first summoned him, and is a head taller than me.

“Yes,” I say firmly. I draw an X. “Today Caliban was good. One day.” I hold up one finger, then all ten fingers thrice over. “Master says that if you are good this many days, you may have sun.”

He lets out a long, wistful sigh. “Sun!” It is one of the first words he learned, pointing to the sun when its bright rays streamed through the high windows on the upper story. I think it has come to stand for all that is good in the world outside his cell, all that is lost to him.

“Sun,” I agree sadly. Surely it would be easier to teach him were he allowed to leave his cell, for there are only so many things I can name within its confines. But I dare not defy Papa.

“Sun is good,” Caliban says. “Miranda is good.” He touches a lock of my hair with unexpected gentleness. “Miranda is sun.”

I laugh. “No!”

“Yes!” His dark eyes are intent with a desire to convey meaning. “Miranda is sun.”

It is a compliment, I think; the highest one he knows how to give. I do not know what to do other than return it. “Caliban is sun, too.”

“No.” He shakes his head, a shadow crossing his face. “Caliban is bad.”

“Do not say so!” I catch his rough-skinned hands in mine. “Yesterday, yes. But not today, and not tomorrow, not for a whole month of tomorrows! Oh, Caliban, you have to be good! If you’re not, Papa will bespell you and you’ll be like Oriana, not yourself at all, and I’ll be alone again!” I know it is far too many words for him to understand, but I cannot stop myself any more than I can hold back the tears that fill my eyes and spill down my cheeks. “I don’t want to be so alone!”

“No, Miranda, no!” Caliban makes his crooning sound and squats to pat my shoulders and my hair. His jaw hardens and his wide brow creases in a disapproving scowl. “Master is bad.”

“What? No!” Alarmed, I cover his mouth with one hand. “Never say such a thing!”

Though he continues to scowl, he quiets under my touch.

I take my hand away.

“Friend,” Caliban says. It is another word he has learned from me.

“Yes.” I nod. “Friend.”

It seems strange to me that I should know such words, and yet have no memory of learning them. Who taught me to speak? And why was it not such a difficult endeavor as it is with the wild boy?

When I lie abed at night, I try to remember. There is Papa, of course. When he speaks to me, he speaks to me at length. Sometimes I think that because Papa has no one else to speak to, he forgets I do not always understand what he is saying, even as I forget Caliban cannot understand the words I blurt out in a rush of feeling.

But what about before? Before the island?

Was there truly a before?

If there was, I understood the lullabies the ladies with their soft hands and soft cheeks sang to me. How?

I do not know.

And so I cease to cudgel my wits. I think about teaching Caliban to speak and be civilized as a very long walk that we are taking together, step by step by step. Sometimes we go backward, but mostly we go forward. I keep a tally of the good days on the wall of his cell. It stretches to ten days before a bad day comes and we must start the count anew, and then to seventeen days. It is hard to start over after seventeen days, but we do.

There are triumphs great and small along the way. Every new word mastered is a triumph.

But my greatest triumph is convincing Caliban to use the chamber-pot. In the early days, he is in the habit of squatting to relieve himself whenever the urge comes upon him with no more sense of modesty than Oriana or the hens. When he does so, I avert my gaze, point to the chamber-pot, and leave his cell. Because he does not like for me to leave so abruptly, in time he comes to understand that this is not something to be done in front of others.

The chamber-pot is another matter.

In fairness, there is no reason Caliban should have any inkling of its purpose or understand why I point at it when he relieves himself. If I were a boy, I think mayhap I would simply show him; but Papa has made it clear that a girl must never be immodest. At last I think to mime the action, sitting on the chamber-pot and using a pail of dirt clods from the garden and a wooden cup of water in place of urine and stools. I feel foolish doing it and I am not wholly sure that it is not immodest to do so, but after I go through the mime several times, I see Caliban’s eyes widen in surprised comprehension. After that, he begs for the pail and the cup so that he might sit upon the chamber-pot and imitate me, as though it is a cunning new game I have devised for us.

In fact, it is not until the next day when Caliban leads me proudly to the chamber-pot to view his waste that I am certain he understood.

“I am good?” he asks hopefully.

“Very good,” I assure him. Clapping my hands together, I make a song of it. “Caliban is good today, Caliban is good today! Today, yesterday, tomorrow, and every day, Caliban is good!”