Stained

  I slip back into the house, my stomach in knots. Will Jay and Gabe antagonize me the way they did at the brook? I think about not going, but then I realize that Mom and Margo will be in the car. They wouldn’t dare.

  Later I slide in the backseat of the O’Neils’ station wagon with my mother. Gabe sprawls in the way back. I used to ride back there with him, but I’m clearly not invited. We pick up Jay, who joins Gabe in the back (without so much as a glance at me), and head to the University of New Hampshire for the game. Have they forgotten last summer?

  I sit next to my mother in the bleachers and glance around for other kids I know. Gabe and Jay are seated behind the basketball team, where they can feel like they’re part of the game plan, part of the action. We’re seated many rows up—parents, supportive spectators.

  Between the boys and the parents, I recognize some girls from my class. Anna is with them. For a moment I contemplate going and sitting on the edge of the group. I wonder if they’d be nice and talk to me. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried to be one of them. Somehow, with church and youth group and invitations behind the cemetery, they’ve created a whole world that I don’t belong to. When I’m around them in school, I feel like there is so much that I don’t know. And when I think about what I’ve done, there is so much that I don’t want them to know. I decide to stay where I am.

  Every three or four minutes Mike stands up and screams at the ref. His sentences are filled with halfcompleted words and groans so those around him can fill in the blanks. When he sits back down, he tells Margo and my mother what the coach should be doing to win the game. Margo spends the whole game asking him to calm down.

  My mother, on the other hand, has become more excited with every basket Weaver Falls scores. When the game is tied at the end of the first half, she begins jumping up with the other high school kids, shouting along with the cheerleaders.

  Cheerleaders: “Carl, Carl, he’s our man, if he can’t do it …”

  My mother: “Matthew can!” (My mother knows that the cheerleader whose turn it is to call out a name is Matthew’s girlfriend, so she joins in on the cheer.)

  I begin to feel warm and sticky. The other seventh graders, who really don’t care about the tournament, keep turning around to see who is shouting from the stands. Each time one of the girls in the group below looks directly at us, my stomach tightens. I contemplate crawling under the bleachers, where surely it would be cooler and less embarrassing.

  At the end of the third quarter I hear Samantha Siviski call my name. I look down, and she gestures for me to join the girls. I hesitate. Even though I’m sure she said “Jocelyn,” I don’t want to be mistaken. Perhaps there is someone behind me whom she’s calling.

  When two or three girls call my name, I thaw and begin to negotiate my way between laps, feet, and winter coats to the group below.

  Samantha moves to the side to make room for me to sit. “Courtney says that you came with Gabe O’Neil and his cousin,” she says, demanding to settle the bet.

  I nod.

  “What did they talk about in the car?”

  “Did they mention Anna’s name?” asks Courtney. Anna blushes.

  I’m dumbfounded. “I don’t know,” I admit. “They were in the way back of the station wagon. I really couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

  “Didn’t you talk with them at all? Even a little?”

  I shake my head no.

  “You’re useless,” says Samantha. “Go back to your seat. It’s too squishy here.”

  I make my way back up the bleachers.

  For the rest of the game I wonder what I should have said instead. Should I have made something up? Would it have been so hard to say, I think I did hear the name Anna? Would that little bit of information have made a place for me until the game ended? The heat, the humiliation, and the smell of my own perfume is beginning to make me nauseous.

  Weaver Falls wins the tournament by three points. Gabe and Jay are elated. About halfway home the two of them have exhausted their loud analysis of the game (no talk of Anna here). It’s suddenly dead quiet in the back. Then Jay sits up and turns toward the backseat, where my mother and I are sitting.

  “What did you think of the game, Jocelyn?”

  He sounds sincere. But I don’t trust him. “Great,” I say, my brain leaping for something, anything else to say that won’t provoke teasing. At the same time my stomach makes its final leap to my throat.

  “Stop the car please, Mike,” I squeak.

  “You better stop, Mike,” says my mother. “Jocelyn looks horrible.”

  The car pulls over. I jump out and barf at the side of the road while Gabe and Jay snicker with repulsion from the back.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Benny’s waiting for me when I get off work in the afternoon.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “I thought you’d be happy to see me,” he says.

  Ha! So this is how it’s going to be. He doesn’t want to be with me, but he doesn’t want me to be with anyone else either. Thank you, Steve, I think. We banter our way back to the picnic tables. Then Benny’s quiet for a moment.

  “I think my mom is slipping, Joss. She’s sleeping so much more now, and when I talk to her, she just smiles weakly. Like it takes too much energy to talk.”

  “She’s storing her energy, Benny,” I say. “She’s a fighter. Just like you.”

  “Lately, I just seem to be losing all the battles.”

  “What have you lost?” Please say “you” so I can tell you that you’re way off.

  “My sense of fairness.”

  “Life isn’t fair, Benny,” I tell him. And I mean it. When I compare my life to the lives of the other girls (except Bernadette), I know that life isn’t fair. Not one bit.

  “Do you get angry at God, Jocelyn?”

  “I do, Benny. And I tell him so.”

  Benny laughs. Guess he thinks he and God have something in common.

  “And what does he say back?”

  “I’m not talking about God if you laugh at me.”

  I scoot up on the picnic table next to him and kick off my Keds. Benny places his fingertip on my leg, on my birthmark that’s oval and shaped like a fingerprint. Then he lifts his finger gently.

  “Look at the mark you made!” I say. It is an old game.

  I want to tell him what I think, but I can’t. How can I tell him that I thank God every day for bringing Benny to Weaver Falls? How can I tell him that what is open and genuine and vulnerable in him allows me to see some good in me? That when he loves me, I actually feel like God’s on my side. I can’t tell him because I can’t separate God’s feelings from my own feelings.

  I just sigh.

  Benny takes my hand and begins to play with my fingers. I look at him, hard. I want him to admit that he wants to be with me. Finally, he speaks.

  “Look at my eyes.” He turns his whole body toward me. “Have you noticed? Our eyes are identical, Jocelyn. We have the very same eyes.”

  I feel a tingle from my toes to the tip of my tongue. He has never told me that he loves me, but this is an even more wonderful thing to say. Closer to the feeling that I know. I kiss him. Quick. He kisses me back. Hard.

  Benny looks behind him and then turns back. “Want to go down to the river?”

  I nod my head. I do.

  “Just for ten minutes,” he says.

  I’m only worth ten minutes? But I follow.

  THIRTY-SIX

  On the last day of school seventh graders take over the Weaver Falls movie theater at 7:00 p.m. The theater plans for this event and has substituted Fiddler on the Roof (which has already come to town) for Ryan’s Daughter. I overheard Joanne and Courtney in homeroom saying that they wished they were seeing Ryan’s Daughter instead. Supposedly there’s an amazing love scene.

  I’m not sure why I asked my mother to drive me to the theater. I guess I want her to think that I’ll be meeting up with friends, joking and sharing secrets
like she did when she was in seventh grade. Every now and then she asks me what the girls are like in my class (it’s easy to describe them when you have so much time to watch) or who I sit with at lunch. I tell her Anna because she is the one friend I used to have, but in truth I sit in the middle of a table between two groups that ignore me.

  There are a lot of kids standing outside the theater. They are waiting for friends to arrive before going in. I quickly wave good-bye to my mom and stand near a group, hoping that she’ll think that I, too, have someone I’m waiting for. It’s a lot of work to not be someone’s disappointment.

  As soon as she’s left, I pay for a ticket and sit in the balcony of the theater—a place my mother would never choose. This is my one reward for coming.

  Apparently, everyone wants the balcony. Kids flock into the seats around me. Samantha and Courpiey are here. So is Joanne. So is Gabe. So is Anna. Anna hangs back and therefore has to take the one empty seat beside me.

  No one is watching the movie. Everyone has seen it before. “Let’s play truth or dare,” says Samantha.

  Before long everyone is clustered together. Some kids are sitting two to a seat; others are actually sitting on the floor facing friends instead of the screen. I can’t believe my own bravery. “May I play?” I ask Anna.

  Anna pretends not to hear me at first, so I repeat my question.

  “Is it okay if Jocelyn plays?” asks Anna.

  No one says no, so she shrugs and backs up on her seat to make room for me in the circle.

  Paul goes first. He chooses truth.

  “Who do you like?” Samantha asks. The group titters.

  “My mother,” says Paul.

  “That’s sick,” says someone.

  “What? You don’t like your mother?” Paul asks. “What kind of son are you?”

  The game goes on for some time. I’m playing, but not really. No one calls on me to say truth or dare. Kids start to get bored and up the ante.

  It’s Gabe’s turn. He chooses dare. I could have told you that. Gabe will always take a dare.

  “Touch a girl’s booby,” says Mark.

  “Whose?” says Gabe, smiling.

  All of the girls look at Mark with an expression that says, If you choose me, I will make your our life a living hell.

  He realizes his error. “Jocelyn’s,” he says.

  Gabe doesn’t look at me. He just rolls his head back in a grimace of pain that even I can detect several seats away in this barely lit balcony. “No way,” says Gabe.

  I’m not sure if I feel rejected or protected. Maybe, I think, Gabe is trying not to hurt me again.

  “You have to, O’Neil. It’s a dare.”

  Anna talks to the girl next to her, pretending not to be a part of the game.

  “No, I don’t,” says Gabe.

  “Then you’re out of the game,” says Mark.

  “Chicken,” says another.

  “I don’t have to because I already did,” says Gabe.

  “What? When? No sir.”

  “Yes sir,” says Gabe.

  So this is how it will be told. I get up and head to the bathroom, no doubt making my final ruin even easier.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Green shadows have begun to fall across the river. It’s been longer than ten minutes.

  At first Benny is sweet and gentle, then he’s rough, consuming. I don’t know if he is loving me or eating me alive. I use my lips. I try to slow him down. I resist his pushing me this way and that, but it only makes him love me more forcefully.

  Look at me, Benny. Look at me. But he can’t. He has lost control and is angry that he has lost control.

  Finally, he is quiet. He rests his head on my shoulder. There are tears in his eyes.

  A dam has broken, I think, and grief for his mother flows through. I run my fingers through his hair. But he is annoyed by this gesture. He gets up and paces the riverbank.

  I feel guilty. I should have made things easier for him, not more difficult. I should have said no. I try to get him to talk to me. “What do the doctors say, Benny?”

  He stares at me as if he hasn’t heard a word of my question. “This is the last time we can be together, Jocelyn. The very last time.”

  I feel the punch, but I understand. “You feel like you’ve betrayed your mother?”

  “My mother? I’ve betrayed not only my mother, I’ve betrayed God.” He picks up a rock and flings it into the river. “I am so weak, Jocelyn, I’ve betrayed myself.”

  “And what about me?” I whisper. I know that this is amazingly selfish. Benny’s mother is dying, maybe his faith. How can I ask about me? But … Benny must feel something for me. He must. Doesn’t love count for anything?

  “What about you?” he asks. “Do you feel cheap?”

  “Cheap?”

  “Maybe you don’t. You don’t have Father Warren asking you every chance he gets: ‘What do you think when you’re with Jocelyn? Do you touch her? Where do you touch her?’”

  “He asks you where you touch me?”

  “Of course. He’s a priest. That’s his job.”

  “And what do you tell him?”

  “I tell him the truth. What do you think I tell him?”

  “And what does he say?”

  “He tells me that you are not of God. You are temptation. God has his angels and his demons, and you are a demon, Jocelyn. You are in partnership with the devil.”

  My arms are gone. So are my legs. I am barely a wisp of a soul floating along, listening to these words. “And you believe him?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.” He lowers his shoulders and touches one hand to his chin. “You give it away, Jocelyn.”

  I give it away. Benny wouldn’t sin if I didn’t give it away.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The restroom of the movie theater is a filthy, dismal place. I splash cold water on my face and try to decide what to do. I could wait outside for my mother to pick me up, but the movie is a long one and I’d be out on the sidewalk for over an hour. I could beg the box-office attendant to let me call her, but I’m too upset to fake sickness and I can’t possibly handle her questions.

  I decide to go into the main part of the theater in hopes of an empty seat. I find one in the back, next to a girl my age. I glance over as I sit down. The girl has long hair and is wearing moccasins. I know, because she is sitting cross-legged. She isn’t watching the movie. She’s reading Wuthering Heights.

  For the second time today I can’t stop myself from doing a bold thing.

  “I love that book,” I say. It’s true. I have read about a gazillion books this year: Little Women, The Exorcist, Joy in the Morning, but my favorite is Wuthering Heights.

  “Don’t you feel so sorry for Heathcliff?” the girl asks.

  “Yes. And I wish Cathy had chosen him instead.”

  “Except that it would be so typical—”

  “Shhh!” The older couple behind us are probably the only ones in this noisy theater actually watching the movie.

  I wait a few minutes, lean over, and whisper, “How can you read in the dark?”

  “I’ve already read it,” she says. “I’m just sort of skimming when the light gets brighter.”

  I sit back, fascinated by this girl. Where have I seen her before?

  She looks up to find me staring at her. “I’m new to the seventh grade,” she says. “And I’ve already seen this movie twice. Do you want to go outside and talk?”

  When my mother comes, Theresa and I are sitting on the sidewalk talking about characters in books as if they were our true friends and acquaintances. If Gabe and the others left the theater, I didn’t see them.

  When I tell my mother about Theresa, she asks, “What about Anna?”

  “Oh, Theresa is so much deeper,” I say.

  “Don’t be mean,” says my mother.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I call in sick the next day. Joe flips out on the phone, reminding me that Gabe is gone and that I can’t take a day
off.

  I figure it’s Joe’s restaurant. He could close the Grill a day in honor of Gabe. Besides, it’s Sunday. The Grill is only open a few hours. “I’m sorry” I tell Joe. “I’m sick. I’m not coming in.”

  Mom heads out to a prayer circle. I pour myself a glass of orange juice and go back up to bed. I lay there, curled up in a ball, frozen for a long time. After what seems like hours, I don’t feel agitated. I don’t feel anything.

  I listen for my breath. I can’t hear it, but I can feel it flowing in and out. Gently I think of the word gently, and it makes me cry.

  That’s how the tears start. Gently. But then they come faster and faster, and I can’t keep my breath even. I scream. I gulp. I sob.

  I get up and walk circles on my braided rug. I think of calling Benny I think of telling him that he has to meet me—that he has to help me sort this out. But I’m so afraid of hearing more. All I can think of is Father Warren’s words: She is not of God.

  Am I of God? Or is there something about me that others instinctively know is not good or worthy? What makes me so contemptible? Am I truly Evil Girl?

  It was only a few days ago that I talked with Father Warren on the street. (I cringe now when I think of Benny telling this man where he’s touched me.) Does this priest, the very one who told me to come to him if I had any thoughts about Gabe, really think that I’m Satan?

  There is only one person who can give me a direct answer. I get up and throw on some clothes. I try to run a brush through my tangled hair. I wait until I’m certain that church is over, then I hop on my bike and head to St. Mary’s rectory.

  My knees are shaking as I knock on Father Warren’s door, but I have no choice. All these years I’ve circled around people like a stray dog wanting to find its way into the pack. At some point even the sorriest dog is going to do something that gives him his admission—or not. So here I am. He can call me the devil, or he can welcome me in. Either way, he’s got to do it to my face. Then I will know.