5. The Playground (cont.)

“Come on, Marion!” they all called. “Come and play!”

So I climbed out of the crib and into the wagon with all the happy children, and that was when it happened.

Clucking gently, the farmer turned his big horses around and drove straight into the wall, my black wall. Straight and straight into the dark until we arrived at a playground I never knew was hidden there. And all the children—me, too—tumbled out of the wagon and onto the playground.

All through the night, we played. Every kind of playground equipment waited there in the wall, and every single child was friendly. No boys running past kicking up dust and calling names. No girls whispering among themselves, giving me considering looks over their shoulders. They all wanted me to play with them on the swings, on the merry-go-round, on the teeter totters, on the long glider that Will and I called a choo-choo.

No careful mother watched over us. My superior, always slightly mocking older brother wasn’t there, either. Through the night, we all played and played, and the gray farmer and the gray wagon and the gray horses waited.