Talking Pillows
Judy had noticed a change in Clarissa’s appearance. The shampoo had made
her hair fluffy and bright.
“It’s like mine,” Honey said. “You sounded so strange over the
telephone, Judy, when you asked me not to change the color of my hair.
Why were you so afraid?”
“I like it the way it is. I guess that’s why.”
“Don’t you like mine?” Clarissa asked plaintively. “I didn’t use much of
the shampoo. It hardly changed the color at all. It just brought out the
golden highlights.”
“It’s lovely,” Judy had to admit. “It isn’t the product. It’s the way
they advertise it that’s wrong. Peter calls ‘hidden sell’ advertisers
thieves of the mind,” she continued, “but he says mind control can be
used in another way.”
“This is interesting,” Horace said. “What is this other way our minds
can be manipulated?”
“I—I’m not sure. Peter said something about talking pillows, but he may
have been joking. I never heard of a pillow that talked.”
“Maybe it works like a Mamma doll,” Holly suggested, and everybody
laughed.
“You tell us, Peter,” urged Judy.
“The pillows I spoke of,” Peter said, “are supposed to change a
prisoner’s outlook on life by what is called sleep teaching. They
contain taped messages that are fed into his subconscious mind while he
sleeps. ‘You are filled with love and compassion’ is one. For all I know
Lawson’s ‘Do good and gain good’ may be another. I don’t know how well
they work. A study is being made.”
“What sort of a study?” asked Judy. “I wouldn’t want anybody
sleep-teaching me. I want to know what I’m learning.”
Everybody agreed with Judy except Clarissa. She said she thought she’d
like such a pillow if it would make her stop dreaming.
“I’ve had a terrible time,” she confessed. “I haven’t been able to draw
a peaceful breath. I found out right away that this couple had planned
to kidnap Francine Dow. They were so angry when they found out I’d
substituted for her that I knew my only chance was pretending I cared
for them and wanted them to be my mother and father. They thought they
had my mind controlled, I guess, but they didn’t. All the time I was
awake I was making plans. The nights were the worst because I did have
nightmares. Maybe they’ll stop now that I know what caused them. I
thought fear did. I was never so afraid.”
“You aren’t afraid any more, are you?” Honey asked anxiously.
“No,” Clarissa replied with a deep sigh. “I’m with friends now—real
friends. It’s all over—all the fear and the pretending. I know I can act
now, and I think I can take things a lot better, too. I mean little
things like my brother’s teasing.”
“I used to find my brother’s teasing pretty hard to take, but I teased
him right back, and I guess there were times when it was harder on him
than it was on me,” Judy said with a glance toward Horace.
“I’ll bet your brother wouldn’t remove the glass from a silver mirror on
purpose to make you think you didn’t show. They tell lots of witch tales
at home, and one of them is that if you look in a mirror and don’t see
your reflection, a witch has stolen the real you and you’re a
changeling. But now that I’ve really been stolen by a witch—That’s what
she is, Judy! That Mrs. Lawson or whatever her name is. She looks like
somebody’s mother, but she’s nothing but an ugly old witch.”
“There aren’t any such things as witches,” Judy laughed.
“I’ll never believe it,” Clarissa continued, “but I do know I’m no
changeling. My brother was just trying to play a joke on me when he took
out the glass and then put it back to prove he could see himself in the
mirror all right. I’m going to tell him I know, and then he’ll confess
to it. I thought it all out, but I still can’t understand why I didn’t
show on television. Everybody could see me when I took Francine Dow’s
place on Irene’s show.”
“A picture tube blew out,” Judy started to explain. “That makes the
picture close in—”
“Lawsy me!” exclaimed Clarissa, reverting to her mountain slang. “I let
a little thing like that scare me into a faint?”
“You didn’t let the big things scare you. Now that you know how brave
you can be, I guess the little things won’t bother you so much, will
they?” Judy asked.
“They sure won’t. I’ll write to you all and tell you how I’m doing and
I’ll see you—I mean, maybe you’ll see me on television one of these
days.”
The party had been a little tiring, Judy realized, after her guests had
gone home. She picked up Blackberry and laid her head against his
velvety black fur.
“Those prisoners can have their talking pillows,” she said to Peter. “I
prefer a pillow that purrs. For the rest of the evening we can just
relax and watch television. Oh, how I wish we could watch Irene!”
Judy’s wish came true a few weeks later. A postcard came with the good
news. Or was it good? The card didn’t say who Irene’s sponsor would be.
Surely Irene hadn’t gone back on her decision! Would it be golden hair
wash? Judy was almost afraid to watch.
Peter tuned in the set just in time for her to hear: “... bring you our
own Golden Girl, Irene Meredith.” And suddenly there was Irene as
natural as though she had just stepped into the living room. And Irene
was not alone on the stage. Little Judy was peeking out from behind her
skirt like a small pixie. Judy couldn’t believe it when she heard what
they were about to sing.
“Oh, no! Irene can’t sing that!” she exclaimed, turning to Peter.
“Listen!” Peter motioned for silence as the song began. Little Judy’s
small, piping voice could be heard on the second line. By the third line
she was singing all by herself:
“_I might sing and play like Mommy on TV or radio,
But I wouldn’t do commercials,
No, I wouldn’t do commercials,
No, I_ wouldn’t _do commercials
And innerup the show—_”
It was Irene who interrupted, laughing.
“We just couldn’t get that one word right. Judy Irene is only two and a
half. I wouldn’t interrupt the show either. But I do want to introduce a
very good friend of ours, Clarissa Valentine! She will appear on this
show regularly and will star again in _Sleeping Beauty_ two weeks from
tonight. Right now she has a message from our new sponsor.”
The message was brief and in good taste. The sponsor turned out to be a
nationally known manufacturer of cereal. Clarissa opened a box and
poured out two servings of what she called crispy, crunchy nuggets of
golden corn.
“That’s how they’re going to work it. Clarissa won’t mind doing the
commercial,” Judy began, but again Peter held up his hand for silence.
And suddenly, right there on the TV screen, was Judy’s own little
namesake doing a commercial and not even knowing it. For she sat down at
a table opposite her mother and began eating the golden nuggets as if
they were the tastiest things in the world.
“They’re good, Mommy!” she said between mouthfuls.
“I like them, too. Why don’t you try them?” Irene asked the TV audience
as the commercial ended.
“I think I will,” Judy answered as if Irene could hear her. Then she
turned to Peter with shining eyes. “It was a joke!” she exclaimed. “They
sang the song just for fun, and the studio audience enjoyed it. Did you
hear the laughter? But it does prove truth can win if we stand up for
what we believe. Oh, I’m so glad Irene talked to Mr. Lenz that day. She
almost made the wrong decision.”
“She didn’t if those golden nuggets really are as good as the sponsor
would have us believe,” Peter said.
“Well, I’m sold on them,” Judy declared, laughing. “And it didn’t take
any ‘hidden sell’ to do it. Just watching little Judy sitting there
gobbling them up was enough. I’m going to buy a box tomorrow.”
Transcriber’s Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public
domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the
HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)