"I have lots of books to read, books my teacher told us to read," I said in my defense.
She looked skeptical. "Stand up," she ordered suddenly.
I did, my heart starting to race. I glanced back at the sofa. Did I do something to mess it up? She stepped farther into the room, and then with her eyes still fixed on me, started to circle me.
"You're growing quickly," she said. "Just as quickly as my sister did."
Grandmother Emma never, ever mentioned her sister, Francis Wilkins, to us. If her name came up in a conversation with Daddy, she quickly skated over it and went on to another topic. All I really knew about my great-aunt Francis was she lived alone on a failed farm my grandparents had bought a long, long time ago, primarily, it seemed, to give Francis a home. She had never married and had no children.
I once came across a picture of her when she was about twenty and I thought she was far prettier than Grandmother Emma. She had a wonderful, soft, childlike smile of delight. Her oval face with its high cheekbones was framed in rich, wavy light brown hair snipped smartly just at the base of her neck and brushed so it fell an inch or so below her jawbone. She was wearing what looked like a riding outfit and I could see she had a firm, shapely figure. I imagined the picture had been taken on the farm, but what struck me most about it was she was alone and looked like she had been surprised by the photographer. How could someone so pretty be unmarried and alone her whole life?
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask questions about her.
"Growing quickly is not an advantage, believe me," Grandmother Emma said. "It simply hastens life's little problems and drops them on your doorstep before you're ready for them. Francis is living proof of that," she added, and I held my breath. Would she say more, tell me more? Did she know about my problem? Had Great-aunt Francis suffered the same problem?
When she was silent again. I dared ask, "Why doesn't she ever visit us. Grandmother, or why don't we ever visit her on her farm?"
"It's not her farm. Never mind her," she snapped. "Your mother has to buy you more appropriate dresses. The one you're wearing is ridiculously too short now. I swear, sometimes it seems I'm the only one who realizes anything around here," she added.
She looked at me even closer and I wondered if she had noticed the buds on my chest.
"It's simply stupid to not have you mixing with young people your age in a camp or summer school. Loitering about here is out of the question," she said.
I thought she was going to tell me that we were to go to the cabin for the summer, but she concluded, turned, and left me confused. She was upset with me, but yet she seemed truly to care about my looks and welfare. Was that the way her mother treated her? Or her grandmother? Did she care for my benefit or for her own, afraid I would somehow embarrass her in front of her important friends?
All of a sudden. I wanted to know much more about Grandmother Emma, but I was afraid to ask anyone, especially Mama, who might think I wasn't on her side. I made up my mind that one of these days I would sneak into Grandmother Emma's room and look at her picture albums and other family
memorabilia that I knew she kept locked in closets, buried in boxes and drawers.
Would I, like Pandora, unleash more pain and suffering than I could imagine? When Mama had told me the story. I had read it myself. Pandora opened the box because she was curious, but also because she heard whispers coming from it. Didn't I hear whispers in this house, whispers on the stairs, whispers in the shadows, whispers from the empty rooms and from the closets? They were drawing me to them just the way they drew Pandora to the box.
After she had opened it and released all the pain and suffering, sadness and disease, her husband. Epimetheus, and Pandora, who had been stung by the brown moths of sadness and illness, heard another voice urging them to let it out. They opened the box again, and hope emerged. Evil had entered the world, but hope followed closely on its footsteps, to help us.
Couldn't I let hope out? Or would I just unleash the evil that crouched in the darkness, waiting to spring into our lives?
Like Pandora, I was destined to find out.
6 Not a Freak
. Everything that had happened during the day made me tired much earlier than I had expected I would be. I turned off the set and went upstairs. I paused in the hallway and listened to see if Mama was crying again, but it was just very, very quiet. I closed my bedroom door and got undressed quickly.
Once again, I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I couldn't help but think of the things Ian had told me and tried to tell me. Little eggs were floating around inside me. If a boy put his tadpoles into me. I could have a baby grow in my stomach. The whole idea of it frightened me, but it also made me more curious about myself and what was happening now.
The feelings I had when I touched myself were so different from feelings I had before all this had begun. It made my head spin. My stomach bubbled and gurgled and even ached a bit. Was that because the eggs were bouncing around, waiting for the tadpoles? I did want to learn more and I was sorry now that I had been so angry and mean to Ian. After I got into my pajamas and brushed my teeth. I went out and knocked on his door.
"Who is it?" he called.
"Me. Can I come in?"
"Come in," he said. He was sitting at his desk,
writing in his journal. "What is it?" he asked, looking annoyed at being interrupted. "I don't want to wait to know about the tadpoles," I said, and he
"Call it sperm, Jordan. I just said tadpoles because they look like that under a microscope. Males have reproductive organs, too, of course, and when they reach puberty, they can manufacture the sperm."
"Once a month, too?"
"No, all the time, instantly when aroused," he said.