Until I Find You

"Why, hello, Emma--my, how you've grown!" Lottie managed to say.

"We've got no time to chat, Lottie," Emma said. "Jack is having trouble understanding a few important things. I'm here to help him."

"My goodness," Lottie said, limping after them. Emma, with her long strides, led Jack to the door.

"I trust The Wickweed is napping, Jack," Emma whispered. "We'll have to be quiet--there's no need to wake her up."

Jack had not heard Mrs. Wicksteed called The Wickweed before, but Emma Oastler's authority was unquestionable. She even knew the back staircase from the kitchen, leading to Jack's and Alice's rooms.

Later it was easy enough to understand: Emma Oastler's man-hating monster of a divorced mother was a friend of Mrs. Wicksteed's divorced daughter--hence their shared perception of Jack and his mom as Mrs. Wicksteed's rent-free boarders. Emma's mom and Mrs. Wicksteed's daughter were Old Girls, too; they had graduated from St. Hilda's in the same class. (They were not much older than Alice.)

Calling downstairs to Lottie, who was aimlessly limping around in the kitchen, Emma said: "If we need anything, like tea or something, we'll come get it. Don't trouble yourself to climb the stairs, Lottie. Try giving your limp a rest!"

In Jack's room, Emma began by pulling back his bedcovers and examining his sheets. Seemingly disappointed, she put the covers loosely back in place. "Listen to me, Jack--here's what'll happen, but not for a while. One morning, you're gonna wake up and find a mess in your sheets."

"What mess?"

"You'll know."

"Oh."

Emma had moved on--through the bathroom, to his mother's room--leaving him to reflect upon the mystery mess.

Alice's room smelled like pot, although Jack never saw her smoke a joint in there; in all likelihood, the marijuana clung to her clothes. He knew she took a toke or two at the Chinaman's, because he could occasionally smell it in her hair.

Emma Oastler inhaled appreciatively, giving Jack a secretive look. She seemed to be conducting a survey of the clothes in his mom's closet. She held up a sweater and examined herself in the closet-door mirror, imagining how the sweater might fit her; she held one of Alice's skirts at her hips.

"She's kind of a hippie, your mom--isn't she, Jack?"

Jack had not thought of his mom as a hippie before, but she was kind of a hippie. At that time, especially to the uniformed girls at St. Hilda's and the ever-increasing legion of their divorced mothers, Alice was most certainly a hippie. (A hippie was probably the best you could say about an unwed mother who was also a tattoo artist.)

Jack Burns would learn later that it was no big deal--how a woman could look at an unfamiliar chest of drawers and know, at a glance, which drawer another woman would use for her underwear. Emma was only thirteen, but she knew. She opened Alice's underwear drawer on her first try. Emma held up a bra to her developing breasts; the bra was too big, but even Jack could tell that one day it wouldn't be. For no reason that he could discern, his penis was as stiff as a pencil--but it was only about the size of his mother's pinkie, and his mom had small hands.

"Show me your hard-on, honey pie," Emma said; she was still holding up Alice's bra.

"My what?"

"You've got a boner, Jack--for Christ's sake, lemme see it."

He knew what a boner was. His mom, that old hippie, called it a woody. Whatever you called it, Jack showed Emma Oastler his penis in his mother's bedroom. What probably made it worse was that Lottie was limping around in the kitchen below them, just as old Mrs. Wicksteed was waking up from her afternoon nap, and Emma gave his hard-on a close but disappointed look. "Jeez, Jack--I don't think you'll be ready for quite a while."

"Ready for what?"

"You'll know," she said again.

"The kettle's boiling!" Lottie cried from the kitchen.

"Then shut it off!" Emma hollered downstairs. "Jeez," Emma said again, to Jack, "you better keep an eye on that thing, and tell me when it squirts."

"When I pee?"

"You're gonna know when it's not pee, Jack."

"Oh."

"The point is, tell me everything," Emma said. She took his penis in her hand. He was anxious, remembering how she'd bent his index finger. "Don't tell your mom--you'll just freak her out. And don't tell Lottie--you'll make her limp worse."

"Why does Lottie limp?" Jack asked. Emma Oastler was such an authority, he assumed she would know. Alas, she did.