Was Madame Senetsky right? Virgins had a different way of looking at things, feeling things, knowing things? She was certainly true to her promise. I thought. She was involving herself in our lives far more than other teachers would. Even my own mother hadn't had such a conversation with me, warning me that once I gave up my virginity, my way of viewing the world would change and that would change how I approached my music. For now there was something important in me that Madame Senetsky did not want me to lose along with my innocence-- not that I had plans to do so in the immediate future.
But was that something you actually planned? Everything I had read or seen in movies made it seem like something that had to be spontaneous. If it wasn't. it lost its essence, its loving purpose. It became something almost scientific, an experiment. I had overheard many girls at school talk about it that way. Some made love specifically to see what it was all about and couldn't care less with whom they had experienced it. What sort of a memory was that to carry into adulthood? Was I old- fashioned to think like this? Would the others eventually ridicule me? Where did I belong? Maybe I should have been the one to live in Cinnamon's home and be pretending I was a young girl during the Civil War, and not her.
Then a little voice inside me asked. "What makes you think girls were really all that different then?"
All these questions buzzed about my head like a maddened hive of bees, and just when I had so much more upon which my concentration had to be fully directed. I felt like I was standing on a top, spinning and desperately trying not to fall off.
We had an hour or so after lunch before our next session began. This one was with Mr. Masters, our speech instructor. After that we were all to report to Mr. Littleton to get vocal instruction. Ms. Fairchild continued to emphasize that it was Madame Senetsky's philosophy that, even though we all weren't talented in these various areas, exposure to them would make us far more rounded and help us in our own fields.
After lunch. Rose. Cinnamon. Ice, and I went for a walk to see the grounds. Steven had gone up to his room and Howard was looking over the little theater like an athlete checking out the playing field. All of us agreed he was the most obsessive and intense about his career.
It was a nearly perfect day, with just a dab of a cloud here and there against the light turquoise sky. Although it was in the low eighties, a breeze stirred the air around us. The lawns had just been cut that morning, so the redolent scent of fresh grass was all about us. That, along with the distinct aroma of freshly turned earth, made me somewhat homesick. I planned on writing a letter to Uncle Simon this evening, and thought I would describe the grounds with the sprawling old maples and hickory trees, the rock gardens, and fountains. I'd catalogue all the flowers that had been planted here. He would be so surprised to read that I was living and going to school in such a beautiful place.
"Did Madame Senetsky stop by to see all of you?" I asked the others.
&n
bsp; Cinnamon said she had paused to listen to Howard and her read some lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but didn't stay around to speak to them afterward. Ice said she had come by and listened to her doing scales with Mr. Littleton.
"The way she was looking at me. I thought she was handing me a bus ticket home, but she nodded and spoke to Mr. Littleton, telling him she thought he had a rich field to mine. He agreed. I don't like it when people talk about you right in front of you as if you're not there," she added with a touch of fury in her beautiful ebony eyes.
"She did the same to me, talking to Mr. Demeterius, praising my graceful moves aloud," Rose said.
"Why did you ask?" Cinnamon asked me with those narrow suspicious eyes of hers fixing on my face. 'Did she say something to you directly?"
"Yes,"
"So? What? You look like you swallowed a mouse or something."
I didn't want to tell Cinnamon what Madame Senetsky had said about virginity. I wasn't sure how she would take it in light of what she had openly confessed the night before.
We paused at one of the stone benches and I sat. The others gathered around me. waiting.
"This must be something good or bad!" Rose declared. "She didn't tell you to leave, did she?"
I shook my head.
"What do we have to do to get it out of you?" Cinnamon asked. "Sacrifice a virgin?"
I looked up so sharply, she stepped back her eyes full of confusion.
"What made you say that?"
"It's just an expression. You know, primitive tribes... sacrifices and virgins... why?"
"She said she knew I was a virgin. She could look at me andknow."
"What?"
"That's amazing," Ice said. "Most boys look at me and think otherwise,"
"What made her say such a thing?" Cinnamon followed. I shook my head.
"She must have had some reason."
"She said I reminded her of her daughter."
"Daughter?" Rose asked.