The Lottery Rose: Chapters 1–3

He bent over the book on his desk, hunching his shoulder blades together so that the partially healed cuts on his back would not be stretched apart, carefully keeping his shirt away from the raw wounds underneath, where even the slightest friction caused a burning pain.

Then when the kids saw him blush, they giggled the way they always did when he couldn’t read the primer stories or say the words Miss Cressman wrote on the board.

It was then that Georgie was apt to be half-starved after being tied in a closet without food, sometimes for a day, sometimes for two or even three days.

There were deeper cuts and welts hidden underneath his shirt.

Then she and Georgie glared at one another until, somehow, Georgie was the winner, because Miss Cressman finally looked away from him and seemed to study her hands before going back to her desk.

At the entrance he was no longer the impudent boy who had glared at Miss Cressman or yelled back at the woman in the alley; he was suddenly wary and frightened like a little animal that senses a return of danger.

At the entrance he was no longer the impudent boy who had glared at Miss Cressman or yelled back at the woman in the alley; he was suddenly wary and frightened like a little animal that senses a return of danger.

The beating he had taken from Steve the week before had been very close to a killing; another one might be more than he could endure.

There was always the dread, however, that Steve might have returned while Georgie was in school, and so it was necessary to climb the steps stealthily and to listen at the door for a while before he turned the knob.

He thought suddenly and wistfully of the pictures in his flower book, the quiet places and the cool, sweet smells he was sure would be there.

Rennie Burgess continued her blubbering promises to Georgie even after he pulled himself away from her.

Georgie, however, made no reply to the manager’s friendly greeting. Instead, he glowered and scuttled down another aisle out of the man’s sight.

Georgie, however, made no reply to the manager’s friendly greeting. Instead, he glowered and scuttled down another aisle out of the man’s sight.

Actually the manager had a rather mild-looking face, but he was tall and dark, and his height, his age, his dark complexion were, for Georgie, too much like Steve for comfort.

He lost himself after a while in the wonder those numbers were going to create for him, repeating them over and over, making them into a little crooning song.

A prize could be anything. Winning it with numbers that were his, numbers from his own particular scrap of cardboard, numbers that nobody else in the entire city could claim—that was a prospect that made his dream as bright as the sunlit pages in his flower book.

To win a prize and then to have Steve take it from him would be unbearable.

Look, Georgie, my old man flogged me when I was a kid your age. Plenty of times I got beat up ’til I was raw. You ain’t the only one that’s had leather laid on you.

You start to scream as soon as you look at Steve and that irks him.

When she was certain she sat down weakly on a chair near her station and beckoned the boy to her.

Next there was an aluminum saucepan which a pretty girl pushed resentfully aside when it was awarded to her number, and then a glass salad bowl with a wooden fork and spoon for a young woman who tried to pick it up and at the same time collect three small children who were racing around the store.

After that there was a short blue kitchen apron decorated with tulips around the hem for a huge man who grinned sheepishly as he folded his prize and placed it in the pocket of his jacket.

“The best prize in the world,” he whispered to Mrs. Sims who closed her eyes as her mind raced through all the difficulties Georgie was bound to encounter in caring for this best prize in the world.

The hot street was lined with shabby apartment houses, filling stations and decrepit-looking stores; there was hardly a stretch of grass to be seen, much less a garden where a rosebush could be planted.

And so he trudged on without a plan, without a hope of finding a suitable place for his plant where he could still be able to see it daily and to call it his own.

He got up wearily but full of a new determination to go back and find Mrs. Sims.

Realizing now that his heedless rushing during the earlier part of the day had been foolish, he resolved to be wiser about the return trip.

It was a fiercely noisy storm, crackling with crooked streaks of lightning across the sky and roaring with peal after peal of thunder.

Water from the flooded streets gurgled as it ran down through the sewers; the walls of apartment houses were checkered with lighted and darkened windows.

Georgie could see his mother, sprawled as usual on the sofa fast asleep, and Steve moving uncertainly as he got out of the only armchair in the room.

Two men came in from a group of neighboring tenants who stood in the kitchen.

Them two ought to be held li’ble for the damage they done around here tonight—half-killin’ the kid and breakin’ up ever’thing in the place when they started fightin’ us because we come in.

“Where’s my rosebush?” He turned from the nurse to the police officer, his eyes imploring each of them to help him.

“That kid’s out of his head,” the janitor said sullenly. “I’m not goin’ through all that junk for no bunch of trash he’s dragged home from the grocery store.”

He was reassured—he would be safe from Steve, he wouldn’t have to be hungry or sleep in the alley; best of all, the rosebush would have a home. But in spite of that he felt an emptiness, a bewilderment about what was happening to him.

“I want to know what the place is like—I want to see the people he’ll be with,” she explained earnestly.

The social worker thought the green lawn with the white statue of a lady and her child under the shade trees made a lovely picture; the building itself, however, she thought was very ugly—a monstrosity, she said, and Mrs. Sims agreed with her.

“I am well acquainted with the ways and words of little boys from city streets, Mrs. Sims. I don’t go into shock easily—”

He was accustomed to names being yelled at him.

Sister Mary Angela stared over at the garden and her face grew sober, as if she had many thoughts in her mind.