Sharla pulled out a picture frame from the underwear drawer, shone the flashlight on it. It was a photograph of a boy, a teenager. He was brown-haired, blue-eyed, and very handsome, sitting on the steps of a huge porch and smiling. The fingers of his hands were loosely linked between his knees, his feet were bare. He wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Beside him, a cat lay sleeping.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“How should I know?” Sharla shoved the picture back into the drawer, opened another. Behind a stack of neatly folded nightgowns, she found something that made her gasp. She pulled out a yellow cellophane package, a small square.
“What is it?” I asked. Ah. I was awake. I felt as though shards of sleep were dropping around me like eggshell around a hatching bird.
“Don’t look!” She started to shove the thing back into the drawer.
I grabbed it from her, held it up to have a look. “A balloon?”
“It is not a balloon.” Sharla took the thing from me, put it back in the drawer. “Let’s go downstairs. I’ll tell you what it is.”
Sharla instructed me to sit on one end of the sofa, and she sat on the other. “Now,” she said, hands folded in her lap, legs crossed. She was speaking in the voice she used for playing teacher. I regretted the fact that she was not wearing a pair of high heels; everything worked better then. She leaned toward me, spoke quietly. “What exactly do you know about s-e-x?”
“Just where babies come from.”
“You do know that?”
“Yes. They come out of the mother’s belly button.”
Sharla stared at me, smiled. “Very well,” she said. “But how do the babies get in the mother’s stomach?”
“The fathers do it.”
“How?”
“I haven’t gotten that far.”
“All right. It’s time for you to know.”
I sat up straighter. I loved Sharla.
“The man has a penis, you know that, right?”
“A wiener.”
“It is called a penis.”
“A boinger,” I said, and laughed loudly.
“Well, Ginny, do you want to learn something or do you just want to fool around?”
I made my expression instantly serious. “I want to learn.”
“Fine. Then be quiet, and listen to me. The man has a penis which he puts inside the woman and sprays things out. The things are called semen. And that is seed that makes the baby grow.”
“Oh.”
“You have a hole in you for where the semens go.”
“I don’t think I have it yet,” I said. I inspected myself to the best of my ability with some regularity.
“Yes, you do; you are born with it, every girl baby is born right with it attached.”
“Oh.”
“Now. If a woman does not want semens in her, she makes the man wear a rubber. And that is what is in Jasmine’s drawer right now. A pile of them.”
“For what?” I was incredulous.
“What do you think? For when she has sex with men!” Sharla uncrossed her hands and her legs, fell out of her role.
“She doesn’t do that!”
“How do you know? You don’t know.”
“I have never seen one man at her house,” I said. I was absolutely sure of this.
“You are not with her all the time, are you? Anyway, she probably goes over to their houses. There are bachelor pads. They have round beds, and they have music that comes out of the wall.”
“But she has the rubbers here.”
“She puts one in her purse,” Sharla said.
I stopped breathing. I’d eaten gum from that purse.
“Oh yes,” Sharla said. “She has sex, all right. I’m not a bit surprised.”
“Me neither,” I said. But I was.
“I want to see it again,” I said.
“The rubber?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “Oh, all right.” She wanted to see it again too, obviously.
We went back to Jasmine’s bedroom. Sharla pulled out one of the rubbers, held it aloft between two fingers. I stared at it. It had a definite presence. I nearly expected it to introduce itself.
“Want to hold it?” Sharla asked.
I took the rubber from her, put it in the palm of my hand, pressed down on it gingerly. The hard, rolled edge of the thing made for an unpleasant little chill that rose up along my neck. My knees felt watery.
“She has about six million of them,” Sharla said. “Look.” I looked. There was indeed a pile of them, at least ten.
I put the rubber up next to my crotch. “Look, I’m the man.” I swayed my pelvis slowly back and forth. “Hey, baby, give me a smooch. Kiss me; kiss me, baby.” I closed my eyes, made wet smacking sounds, then began gyrating wildly. I had done this before, with the vacuum hose held to my crotch—but only alone.
“Don’t make me puke,” Sharla said.
I opened my eyes, handed her the rubber. “Here.”
“You put it back. I don’t want to touch it anymore.”
“Maybe I’ll keep it,” I said.
“Ha.”
I put the rubber in my robe pocket.
“Wait till Mom finds that,” Sharla said.
“She won’t.”
“Where will you hide it that she won’t know?”
“Same place I hide things that you don’t know about,” I said smugly.
“You don’t have a place like that.”
“Do, too.” It was an old jewelry box I kept in the back of our closet. I put it there soon after I had torn up my naked-woman drawing. I positioned a toothpick strategically up against the side of the box so that I would know if anyone went near it. So far, no one had. Inside the box were pictures from magazines of kissing couples, a ring I found on the classroom floor last year and did not report finding, and a silver dollar from Uncle Roy. Also a nylon stocking I’d found in the trash and liked to put on when no one was home.
“I have a hiding place, too,” Sharla said.
“I doubt it.”
“Doubt it, then; I do.”
“So? I don’t care.” And I didn’t care, exactly, but I was a little hurt. Surprised that I had not known this. Where was her place? I wondered. And then it came to me that probably everyone had a place. Everyone.
Sharla and I left Jasmine’s house different people. It seemed to me we were simultaneously disappointed in and more respectful of each other—such was the mixed effect of unearthing long-held secrets.
I heard the cellophane package in my pocket making small noises all the way home. When we got to our bedroom, I put the rubber under my mattress—it would stay there until I could be alone to hide it. I had no idea why I wanted it. It made me feel sick. But there was a thrill to the sickness, a jazzy edge that made what felt like an internal eyeball jerk open. Therefore it was worth it.
I closed my eyes, settled in for sleep. An image came to me: Jasmine’s face, her red mouth smiling. She was looking away from me; then she looked right at me, and she knew everything. Everything. She kept smiling. I felt an enormous sense of relief. Then guilt.
Sharla woke me up a few nights later calling my name. “What do you want?” I asked, my voice croaky, my mouth stuck to itself. I tried to open my eyes, but I was dizzy with fatigue, and so I shut them again. I hoped Sharla wasn’t sick; I didn’t feel like helping her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I remained silent; the answer was obvious.
“Ginny?” she whispered.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Are you awake now?”
“Yes, I’m talking to you.” I was not whispering any longer.
“Well, I have to be sure. You could be talking in your sleep, you know.”
“You don’t have conversations in your sleep!”
“Yes you do. I learned it in science that you can have an actual conversation and yet still be sleeping. Mr. Weaver told us.”
I consider
ed this, yawned, scratched my knee. “Well, then how do we ever know the difference?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, how do we know we’re not asleep all the time?”
Sharla sighed loudly. “You don’t ever stay on the real subject!”
“Well, what is the subject? You never even said. Plus why are you waking me up? I’m tired! It’s late!”
“You never said that before, when we used to sneak out.”
“Yes, because there was a reason, then, to wake up. Now you are just talking. And you aren’t even making any sense.”
The door opened, and our mother stood before us. “What’s going on in here?” she asked. “What are you doing?”
“Sharla is going crazy, that’s what, smack in the middle of the night.” I flipped my pillow, punched it, flung myself back down onto it, sighed loudly.
“She’s so stupid,” Sharla said. “I woke her up to tell her one thing, and she starts a fight.”
“I did not!” I sat up in bed, yanked my T-shirt strap up over my shoulder. I wished I were in pajamas, which were more dignified.
“Stop your yelling,” my mother said. “You’ll wake up your father.”
“Did we wake you up?” I asked.
She sat down at the foot of Sharla’s bed. “No. I was up.”
I looked at our bedside clock: four-fifteen. I had a rush of misplaced excitement; this was like a sudden slumber party.
“How come you were up?” Sharla asked my mother.
“I was downstairs, reading.”
“Now?” I strained to see her face. She was smiling, it appeared.
“Yes, now,” she said. “It’s nice, sometimes, to read in the middle of the night. The sky is so dark and soft-looking outside the window, all the stars out. You have just one light on, you know, and it seems to pour onto the page. Makes the book seem better. You are this little island, just up alone with a book. And you hear the night sounds of the house. You hear … water sounds, and things—well, turning on and off, I guess. You hear little creaks and groans, it’s as though the whole house is sighing and moving in its sleep. Just like we do. And you know how we never notice the grandfather clock during the day? At night, you hear every little tick. It’s so interesting to me, that sound. Time. The measure of it.”
I lay still in my bed, eyes wide. I had never heard my mother go on in this way. I had never known she got up to read in the middle of the night. It was something I never would have done. Going out in the dark with Sharla was fine adventure; being in it alone terrified me, even in the confines of my own familiar bedroom. I believed that when you turned the lights out, cloaked figures materialized and lurked in the corners. They waited. They pointed at you with long, bony fingers, breathed long, ragged breaths, desired you with a terrible desire. I was safe so long as there was another person present, or a light; they would not touch me then. But to walk downstairs alone, voluntarily, in the dark!
My mother’s voice sounded as though she were reading to us, as though she were present but also removed. She seemed peculiarly unavailable. I wanted to look at Sharla, to see what she thought about all this, but I was afraid if I moved my mother would stop talking. I was somewhat distressed by what she was saying, yet I wanted to hear more.
But then Sharla said, “I had a bad dream.”
“Did you?” My mother turned toward her, yanked out of her reverie.
“Yes.”
“What was it?” Her voice was low and level now, silky; her tone once again that of competent caretaker. Never mind the dream; no matter what it was, she would take it away.
“I dreamed …” Sharla said.
We waited.
“You had a third eye,” she told my mother, and shuddered on “eye” as though she were swallowing something raw. “It was on the side of your head. It blinked and looked around and everything, all like a real eye.”
“I had that?” my mother asked.
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said. “Was it pretty? Was it green? I always wanted green eyes. Did it wink at you?”
“This is not funny,” Sharla said. “It was scary. You’d had it all along, and you never even told us. And then we were outside and your hair blew up and there was another eyeball in your head. It was scary!”
“I’m sorry,” my mother said.
“It was a dream,” I said. Why did she feel she needed to apologize?
“Well,” my mother said, “you know what I mean. I’m sorry she had a bad dream.” Then, to Sharla, “I don’t have a third eye.”
Sharla said nothing.
“You want to look?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, and turned on the light, pulled her hair back. Then, “See? I’m just me.”
Sharla yawned. “I know.”
“All right then.” My mother turned out the light. She pulled the sheet up over Sharla, kissed her forehead. “Go back to sleep.”
She started out the door, then headed over to me, kissed my forehead, too. I smelled perfume on her; I had never smelled it on her late at night before. She said she was herself, but she wasn’t. For instance, she smelled like Ivory soap at night, not perfume. Ivory soap.
After a few minutes, I said, “… Sharla?”
“What?” she whispered.
“Was that what you wanted to tell me, your dream?”
“Yes. But also that it was so real.”
“I know,” I said. And I believed I did. I turned onto my back, put my hands one over the other across my chest. Sometimes I liked to pretend I was dead.
As if somehow picking up on my thoughts, I hear the boy Glen’s voice floating back to me. “If there’s a crash,” he says, “would we all die?”
Silence.
“Dad?”
“There won’t be a crash,” his father says quietly.
“Glen!” his sister says, not quietly. “You shouldn’t try to hex us!”
“I’m not trying to hex us! I’m just asking. I can ask whatever I want. There is no such thing as a stupid question, stupid.”
“That’s only true sometimes,” his sister says. “They just tell you that sometimes, when it’s okay to ask anything right then.”
“Well, now is okay, too. Isn’t it, Dad?”
“Yes, it is, Glen,” the father says, and I hear a certain tightening in his voice. He is getting ready.
“So, would we all die?”
“Well. As I said, there is not going to be a crash. But if there were, the truth is I don’t know if anyone would die at all. Maybe there would just be some damage to the plane.”
“But maybe also we could all die, right?”
I see the older couple across from me look at each other, smile ruefully.
Finally, “It’s theoretically possible; yes,” the father says.
“Told you,” Glen says.
“Why don’t we get another Coke?” his sister asks. “We can have all the Cokes we want, they have to give them to you whenever you ask.”
Over Glen’s seat, the call button goes on. Give me a Coke; I could be ready to die over here.
One night after dinner my father asked who wanted to go to Dairy Queen. This was a silly question; all of us always wanted to go to Dairy Queen. But not on this night. On this night, my mother said, “Why don’t you all go ahead? I’m not much in the mood for ice cream.” We all stared at her. “Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “I just … I don’t feel quite right.”
“Is it—?” my father began, but she interrupted him, her hand over his, saying, “It’s nothing, I’m sure. I just feel a little off. You go ahead, I’ll stay here and watch television. I’ll be fine.” She stood up and began clearing the dishes.
“That’s our job,” I said. “We do that. You shouldn’t do it if you’re sick, anyway.”
“I can clear the table,” she said. “I just don’t feel like eating ice cream.”
“We’ll bring you back a sundae; you can keep it in the
freezer,” my father said.
“That would be nice. Thank you.” She smiled at him.
Something that had started tightening in my chest now relaxed. I went to change shorts; I wanted to wear the loosest waistband I had.
After we were out of sight of the house, my father pulled the car over. “Who wants to help drive?” he asked.
“I do!” both Sharla and I said. I loved it when we got to do this, and it was rare. You had to be in the car with just my father—my mother wouldn’t permit us to “drive;” and we were hardly ever in the car without her. What happened was, whoever was “helping” sat by my father and steered. He would take his hands off the wheel completely, saying, “I trust you, go ahead.” And then, “I trust you, I trust you now. Okay. Okay.” Finally he would shout “OKAY! THANK YOU!” and grab the wheel away from you, just in the nick of time, it seemed to me. After a moment during which he quietly regained his composure, he would say, “Good job. You did just fine.”
My father let Sharla help first, saying I could have a turn on the way home. “Age has its privileges,” he told me.
I said nothing, sat sulking by the window. I knew age had its privileges; I was witness to that fact practically every day of my life, courtesy of Sharla. But soon I lost myself looking in other people’s windows. I liked pretending I lived in every house we passed. But I liked even better coming back to the knowledge that I lived where I did. I was happy; I knew this.
At Dairy Queen, we found one of the tiny picnic tables empty and claimed it. We sat eating our cones and watching the lines of people stepping up to the window and walking away with their prizes. I liked best seeing what the fat people got.
One very tall man came away from the window with a chili dog, which I had always wanted to try; but we never went to Dairy Queen for dinner. Occasionally it occurred to me to request a chili dog instead of ice cream, but that would have felt uncomfortable, improper. Dairy Queen was for ice cream and dessert, that was all. It was a rule in our family, and therefore law in the world.