"You mustn't ever touch yourself down there again. It's a mortal sin."
Icy light darted from mother's light blue eyes. Joanne cringed but couldn't turn away. The words "mortal sin" burned inside her, and hot tears stung behind her eyeballs.
"You have to tell it in confession," mother added.
Confession! Saturday afternoon. Darkness. Panic. Standing in line, waiting. That empty feeling in her knees. Going into the black box and closing the door.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."
How she hated it! Every four weeks since she was seven - now she was almost nine, and still she dreaded it.
"What do I say?" she asked herself. There was no word for that dirty part of her body she was forbidden to look at or touch or talk about.
"How do I tell it?" she asked mother.
"Just say, 'I touched myself.' The priest will understand."
"I touched myself," she repeated silently. Would that be enough? Would Father know what she meant? Of course; mother had said so. Every night she remembered about confession and rehearsed it. "I touched myself."
On Saturday afternoon, she knelt on the worn leather pad at St. Theresa's. Dim light strained through the windows, tinged blue, yellow and green from the colored glass panels. In front of her, an old lady in a babushka dangled her rosary, clattering it against the pew when she moved to a new bead. The only other sounds were the shuffle of feet from the line that formed down the side aisle and the occasional click of the confessional door.
Mother was already in line. Joanne waited, her sweaty legs glued to the kneeler. Panic started in her legs and rose to her chest and throat, rose to terror. It pressed against her racing heart so that when she tried to take a deep breath, it stuck somewhere before it reached the bottom of her lungs. She coughed and almost gagged. It must be her soul, black and heavy somewhere inside her, that got in the way.
An image of her soul flashed before her. It was like a bird's egg, and had once been white and shiny. That was when she was baptized. It had stayed that way until she was seven and old enough to know right from wrong - "the age of reason," Sister called it. Then she had started to commit sins-just little ones, "venial sins," Sister said. They had put dirty marks on her soul; so it was like a speckled egg. But a mortal sin made it black, a rotten egg.
She felt sick thinking about the terrible odor. If she died with a stinking, rotten soul, she would burn forever in Hell. There was only one way to wash it clean and alive - to go to Confession and tell God she was sorry. Remembering this, she felt the numbness lift from her arms and legs. She pulled herself up and her bare knees made a sound like a Band-Aid being stripped from her skin.
"Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, I adore thee," she said silently as she genuflected. Taking her place at the end of the line, she locked her knees to steady their trembling.
Seven times the side doors of the confessional clicked open and shut, while she waited, rehearsing her speech. "I touched myself." Would Father Benton be shocked? Would his creaky old voice shout back the words, so that the person on the other side would hear them and be shocked, too? Would he give her a whole rosary for a penance, so she would have to kneel in the pew a long, long time and everyone in church would know she'd done something horrible? Whatever happened, she knew she had to say it.
The lady in a green babushka went into the far side of the confessional; then the old man in front of Joanne went into the other. When the babushka came out, Joanne caught the door quickly, before it could slam, and closed it gently. The box was so small that, even in blackness, she had no trouble finding the kneeler. She could see nor hear nothing until the priest's voice, rumbling the Latin absolution, told her that it was almost time for her to begin. The little screen crunched open and she could see Father Benton's profile, the outline of his glasses and the sag of his lip. She knew he couldn't see her.
She rattled off her usual litany: "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been four weeks since my last confession. I fought with my brother six times. I disobeyed my parents three times." She stopped, wanting to rush to the conclusion, "That's all I can think of right now, Father." But it wasn't all, and she was certainly still thinking. If she didn't tell the mortal sin now, she knew she never would. She swallowed and blurted it out. "And I touched myself" Oh, God, how many times? Every day? Yes, that was probably right. "Every day."
She was prepared for anger, for whatever harsh words Father Benton might hurl towards her. She had steeled herself, her hands gripping the top of the prie-dieu. The roar of his voice did not surprise her, but the words were unfathomable. "What do you mean, you touched yourself? How can you help that? Who told you that's a sin? Didn't anyone ever teach you how to go to confession? You're wasting my time, inventing sins! Now make a good act of contrition and get out of here!"
Joanne had never imagined that her words might be misunderstood. Mother had told her what to say, had assured her that Father would know what she meant. She knew no other way to tell it. As Father Benton lifted his hand in a sweeping sign of the cross and began the words of absolution, she choked back sobs of rage and despair. She mouthed the empty words of the act of contrition and, back in the pew, obediently recited her three Hail Mary's of penance, but it made no difference. She was angry, angry with Mother for lying to her, with the priest for not understanding, with herself for not being able to explain. Anger was a sin, but what did that matter now?
CHAPTER II
Saturdays and Sundays came and went, came and went. Joanne was nine, then ten. Round swellings appeared on her chest. Mother came in and looked at her as she bathed in the downstairs bathroom on a summer evening. "You're getting kind of big up there," she commented, closing the toilet lid and sitting down. "I think I'd better tell you about something. I don't want you to mention it to the other girls, though. Their mothers might not have told them yet, and they might think it's dirty."
Joanne, her brown eyes round, stared at Mother. Joanne already knew about breasts. All women had them and babies got milk from them. What could be dirty about that? The year before, Joanne and Iris, her best friend had giggled together that Ginni Hauser was starting to "develop." But Joanne had hardly noticed the new little lumps on her own body. She hadn't expected them yet. She looked appraisingly at Mother, who was slender, with a frizzy blonde permanent, cold blue eyes, and tiny bulges under her light summer blouse. Joanne had seen her naked once or twice and knew that her breasts were small but firm and pointed.
Mother was telling her now, in a scientific voice, that someday, she, Joanne, was going to bleed. When it happened, she should tell Mother and she would give her something to wear a pad. Perhaps Joanne had seen the pads already.
She nodded, picturing the soft little foam things Mother stuffed in her bra.
"Now, you know where I mean, don't you?" Mother asked.
"Yes. Up here."
"No, not there. From your bottom."
Mother handed her a booklet. "Read this. If you have any questions, ask me."
Joanne wrapped her robe around her and took the pamphlet upstairs. It had come in the mail, from a company Joanne had seen advertised in Seventeen. She had supposed that they sold some kind of pill for women to take when they had the blues - "on those days" - the magazine always said.
You're a Young Lady Now proclaimed the title.
Joanne propped herself on her soft mattress and studied the pamphlet. Here were words she had never heard, and pictures, too. What was going to happen was called "menstruation" and that pear-shaped thing inside her was a uterus.
"I wonder it that's my soul," she mused. "No, men don't have one, and here's another name for it - the womb."
For the first time she fathomed the meaning of the words she had said every night since she could remember, "Blessed be the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.."
Joanne had known since she was five and Mother was pregnant with Timmy that babies grew inside their mother's bodies. The book explained how the baby grew and how it got out. It did not answer the big question, though.
"But how does the man plant the seed?" she asked herself. "I used to think it was by kissing. But people kiss when they're not married, and Mother says you have to be married to have a baby. How does the egg know whether you're married or not? There has to be something else."
Frustrated, she closed the booklet and stretched out on her back.
"It's got to have something to do with sleeping together," she decided. "Only married people sleep in the same bed. Mother won't even let me sleep in the boys' room when Aunt Vivian comes to visit. She says I'm too big."
She remembered something Iris had said once when she was spending the night. They had lain together in Joanne's double bed, drawing pictures with their fingers on each other's backs. It felt good, and it was fun to try to guess what the other had drawn. Then they pulled down their pajamas and examined each other. It was hard to see that part of your own body.
"You know what boys want to do when they pull your pants down in the orchard?" asked Iris.
"Yes, " whispered Joanne. She knew the word for it, but it was a filthy word. She would never say it.
"Well, I think it's romantic. I think it's what people do when they're in love."
Joanne gaped at her. "How can you say that? It's dirty! It's disgusting!"
"You don't know everything, Joanne."
"Well, I know that's wrong."
She couldn't tell Iris what had happened under Wayne Allbright's porch when she was only six. They had crawled through the broken place in the trellis, she and Wayne and the Yost brothers, Kerry and Malcolm. Wayne and Kerry had been nine then, and Malcolm eight. They had hidden there one afternoon, giggling because no one could find them. After they tired of playing "The Shadow" in the filtered light, the boys told her to pull down her pants.
"No!" cried Joanne. I'm going home."
But before she could crawl back through the narrow hole, they grabbed her and pushed her down. Wayne pinned her shoulders to the damp earth while the other two pulled down her pants, unzipped their flies, and lay on top of her. Joanne cried, but she was too scared and ashamed to scream. She couldn't remember what it felt like, but she knew it was a horrid thing by the way they smirked and then ran away. Even now, alone in her room, she blushed at the memory.
"But what if Iris is right? What if that is what married people do? Surely babies don't start that way!"
The suspicion gnawed at her. In her bare feet, she tiptoed downstairs. Mother was in the sun porch, watering her flowers. Joanne slipped past the door, removed the dictionary from the bookshelf in the living room, and crept back upstairs. At her dressing table, she opened the book to "F." That dirty word was there, but none of the words in the definition were familiar. She looked up the new words. "Intercourse" led to "coitus" to "copulation" and back to "intercourse." There was nothing about having babies. Would she ever know?
She closed the dictionary and looked at herself in the mirror. "I wish Mother would let me wear lipstick," she scowled. She brushed her hair until it crackled and stood out from her scalp, then smoothed it with her hands. It was straight; she had refused another permanent, even though she loved the way it tingled when the beautician combed her hair. She wondered why it felt so good when someone else touched it. When she was little, Mother had been able to hypnotize her to sleep by rubbing her head. When she touched it herself, she couldn't get the shivery sensation.
"At least it's getting long," she thought. Her thick eyebrows were a nuisance, though, threatening to grow right across her nose. She picked up the tweezers and plucked them until her eyes watered and she sneezed. Then she wet her lips, but there was no need to pinch her cheeks. They were always red.
Loosening her robe, she let it slide down her long arms, thin and brown against the white of her soft, new breasts. When she stood up, the robe fell to a pink pool around her feet. She stared at her slightly rounded stomach, trying to gauge where her uterus was. She wasn't sure she wanted to grow up and have blood come out of her and learn things she'd rather not know.
The summer wore on. In August, a carnival came to town. Joanne and Iris sat on the concrete steps of Joanne's porch, frantic with boredom and the urgency of the last days of vacation.
Last summer had been different. They had roamed the neighborhood in a gang, she and Iris and Kathy and Jean, Rick and Wayne and Kerry and Malcolm. Over the unfenced stretch of lawns, through the woods, back in the orchard, they had invented their games. With their penknives, they had carved pea-shooters and sharpened twigs for flinging crabapples. They had reaped wild strawberries, elderberries and choke cherries; crushed pokeberries into ink for secret messages; swung by their legs from apple trees; and clambered through the new house going up on the corner. In the long evenings, they had played Stoop Tag, Ring Around the Ice Box, and games they improvised themselves, like a raging dramatization of the end of the world, or First Communion, using Necco wafers for hosts, or sometimes white flakes of fish food for greater realism. Joanne and Rick had had their tonsils out the winter before, and they had played doctor using nail polish remover as ether.
This year, Joanne and the other girls had dropped out of the games. Her penknife with its pearly handle was in the bottom of a dresser drawer. They spent the sultry days on blankets in the back yard, rubbing each other with baby oil and iodine, making initials with grass on their arms for the sun to develop.
"I think I'll go up and see the horses," yawned Iris.
"What horses?"
"Up at the carnival."
"They don't have horses, silly. It's not a circus."
"They do, too. I was up there yesterday, watching them set up, and a man told me they were going to have horses today."
"What man?"
"Just a man. He works there."
"Well, let's go see, then."
"I don't know," demurred Iris. "He said maybe he'd show me."
The screen door slammed and Rick emerged, holding an ice cube wrapped in a paper towel.
"Here comes Old Baldy," jeered Iris.
"I dare you to say that again," fumed Rick.
He stood directly behind Iris, the toe of his sneaker just grazing her back, the ice cube dripping on her hair. He was small for a nine-year-old, but had gained a reputation for meanness when he was riled up. His white-blond hair had been clipped in a GI cut.
Iris turned to face him, flicking a drop of ice water from her wheat-colored hair, but the glint in his violet-blue eyes signaled her to back off.
"Oh, Ricky, I was only teasing. I'd like to get my hair shaved off. It must be cool."
"It's not shaved off!"
"Okay, okay, clipped, then.
Joanne ignored the exchange. "I wish a house would burn down," she sighed. "Nothing ever happens around here."
"Something's going to happen to Iris if she doesn't watch her big mouth," snarled Rick.
"All right, all right!" Iris bowed and grinned.
Rick stomped down the steps. "Where are you going?" asked Joanne.
"Nowhere. Up to the carnival, maybe."
"Oh, let's go, too, Iris. Maybe they do have horses."
"Horses?" sneered Rick.
"Your stupid sister doesn't know the difference between a carnival and a circus," explained Iris.
Joanne started to protest, but Iris caught her eye and whispered, "The man told me not to tell anyone, dummy. Do you have to blab everything?"
The two girls followed Rick up the road toward the highway. Across it they could see the firehouse, its empty lot sprouting booths and rides. Rick waited until a car approached, then darted in front of it. The driver hollered and Rick delightedly stuck out his tongue. Hie feat had been a favorite sport of all of them last summer.
Iris led them to a booth where a short, greasy-haired man was hammering.
"I see you brought some friends," he said, talking to Iris but grinning at Joanne. "What's under there?" He pointed to her jeans.
"Under where?"
Rick howled with glee. "Underwear, underwear!"
"You kids want to help?" asked the man.
"Sure."
"Okay. Could you go over there and get me some nails?" He looked at Rick and Iris and pointed to another booth.
"You can help me her for a minute," he said to Joanne. "Stand there and keep the sun out of my eyes. Over that way a little. That's it."
When Rick and Iris had gone about halfway, he turned and walked to a trailer behind the booth. "Come on up here," he said. "I want to show you something."
"Where are the horses?" asked Joanne, stalling.
"That's what I want to show you. Come up here a minute."
He couldn't have a horse in the trailer, but maybe he had pictures. Maybe she would find out something about them before Iris did.
"Come on," coaxed the carnival man. "It'll only take a minute. I'm not supposed to tell anyone about the horses, but you're a nice girl. I know you can keep a secret.
Joanne raised her foot tentatively to the step. He reached down to help her.
"Come on, I won't bite you. You're such a pretty girl. You're not afraid of me, are you?"
He pointed to a stool and placed his hands on her shoulders. She squirmed, but he pressed her down. "There," he purred. "Sit down. Make yourself at home. It's so good to get out of that sun."
Standing behind her, he continued to rest his hands on her shoulders. His calm voice droned on. "I like you. You're still and quiet, not like that other girl - the flitty one."
His bony hand slid down in front of her, inserted itself under the waist of her jeans, through the elastic of her pants. She knew she had to bolt, but she was frozen to the stool. She sat rigidly, numbing herself, trying not to feel his fingers between her legs.
"I'm not supposed to show you the horses, but you're such a nice, pretty girl. If you come up tomorrow, by yourself, I'll show you. But you can't tell anyone."
He heard Rick and Iris approaching and casually removed his hand. As he started down the steps, Joanne shot past him. "I'm going home," she called to Iris.
That night she mentioned to Mother that a man at the carnival had promised to show her some horses. Mother's face hardened into a look that was both stern and frightened.
"I don't want you to go near there," she warned. "I don't believe he has any horses. There are bad men who will do horrible things to little girls. Sometimes they kidnap them, even kill them. You promise me you'll stay away from there."
"I will." Joanne could not admit what the man had already done. Nor could she understand why people wanted to do dirty, evil things to her.
Note: There are links at the top of the page to subsequent chapters.
