Characters in Suffer the Little Children

• • • Buddy Jenkins was his name, psychiatry was his game. He sat behind a one-way glass with a clipboard, looking into a room which had been outfitted as a nursery. On the far wall, the cow was jumping over the moon and the mouse ran up the clock.

“Edward, please use the word vacation in a sentence.” “I went on a vacation to New York City,” Edward piped. Then, as Miss Sidley had taught, he repeated the word carefully. “Vay-cay-shun.” “Very good, Edward.” She began on the next word.

“A patch of wetness.” “This is awful,” Mr. Hanning said. “Terrible. Are you—” “Did the fall hurt your back, Emily?” Mrs. Crossen interrupted. Mr. Hanning looked at her gratefully. Miss Sidley got up, her spine screaming in her body. “No,” she said.

She applied the principle constantly in the classroom, and it never failed. “Jane,” she said quietly. Jane, who had been furtively perusing her Reader, looked up guiltily. “Close that book right now, please.” The book shut; Jane looked with pale, hating eyes at Miss Sidley’s back.

• • • Miss Sidley brought the gun to school in her handbag. It had been her brother’s. He had taken it from a dead German shortly after the Battle of the Bulge. Jim had been gone ten years now.

She began to scream and she was still screaming when Miss Sidley reached her and put a hand on her shoulder. “It had to be done, Margaret,” she told the screaming Mrs. Crossen. “It’s terrible, but it had to. They are all monsters.”

Mr. Hanning looked at her sympathetically. Save it, she thought. The old maid is not amused. Or even interested. She brushed by Mr. Hanning and started down the hall to the girls’ lavatory.

Robert—the other Robert—he liked Show and Tell. He’s still hiding way, way down in my head.” The smile curled at the corners of his mouth like charring paper. “Sometimes he runs around . . . it itches. He wants me to let him out.”