Black Cat (Gemini 2)

When I returned to the house. I found Mama all dressed and ready to go. She had her hair brushed and styled beautifully. Two days earlier she had gone to a beauty salon for the first time in ten years and had it cut. When she came home that day, I almost didn't recognize her. However, it wasn't only the use of makeup now, the change in her hairstyle, and the updated wardrobe that surprised me. A new brightness was in her face, a new life in her eyes, that truly made her look younger and more vibrant. Did this come from being in love? Could she be in love?

I was actually a bit jealous. Despite all the pledges and vows I had made to myself. I

couldn't help but imagine what I would look like with longer hair, with makeup on my face, and with jewelry and new dresses and shoes. This

overwhelming fantasy revived feelings and emotions I had experienced years ago in the forest in my special place where I had gone to be alone, to explore my inner self and feel the freedom of being who I really was, even if only for a short while. These thoughts, my curiosity, was titillating, tantalizing, drawing me to the edge of some precipice, tempting me with simply leaping off and sailing into the wind of my driving desires.

I said nothing about it to Mama, of course. She remarked about the flushness in my face and thought it was a result of my hard work in the hot sun. She had packed a small bag and waited by the front window for signs of Dave Fletcher's approaching automobile. When he turned down our driveway, she kissed and hugged both me and Baby Celeste and made us promise we would behave and follow all her rules, the most important one still being to keep Baby Celeste from being seen and discovered.

"I'm sorry you have to stay inside all morning tomorrow. Noble." Mama said. but I'll try to get back as early as I can. Remember to clean up after dinner" she called back from the door, going out as soon as Dave. Fletcher drove up to the house.

I peered out through a curtain and saw him get out to take her little overnight bag and give her a kiss, this time smack on the lips and a little long, too, like a kiss in a movie full of passion and surrender, a kiss that lingered in sighs of contentment, a kiss I would never know. I heard her laughter and watched her hurry around to get into his car. He had opened the door for her, bowing like a gallant gentleman out of a romantic novel. After she got in, he came around and looked at our house. I pulled back from the window and waited until he was into his car, too. Then I watched them drive away.

Baby Celeste stood by watching me quietly. I shook my head when I turned to her.

"Mama's making a mistake." I said. "I don't understand what she is doing. How can this be good, be part of some wonderful plan for us?"

Baby Celeste smiled at me as if I were the one who didn't know what she was doing and not Mama, or as if she knew I was drawing my words mostly from a well of envy. Then she hurried out of the room.

"Kitchen. Noble." she cried. She knew we were going to work on our own dinner, and as Mama had predicted, she was excited about doing it all.

Before, during, and after dinner, I felt this trembling inside me. I told myself it was simply because I was worried so about Mama, but deep in my heart of hearts. I knew that wasn't the reason. It wasn't trembling born out of fear. It was from a tickling that began in my heart and emerged around my breasts, tingling at my nipples and warming through my body, down around my thighs.

Every once in a while. I would stop and think about Mama all dressed up and I would see her kissing Dave Fletcher and think about that kiss. I saw myself being kissed, not by Dave Fletcher, of course, but by someone young and handsome. and I could almost feel the touch of his warm lips on mine. I shifted and squirmed in my dining roam chair almost as much as Baby Celeste.

For a while she was a good distraction, filling my hours, demanding my attention, but finally, she grew tired and lay limply against me. I carried her upstairs and dressed her for bed. She hugged me around the neck and held on to me for a few moments longer than she had ever done, perhaps because she knew we were going to be alone for a long time. that Mama was far away from both of us. I put her doll in her arms and she closed her eyes and fell asleep almost immediately.

As I stood there looking down at her and admiring how beautiful she was. I realized

Mama hadn't been on top of dying her hair as she usually was. Her natural red color was climbing up through those soft strands. For as long as Baby Celeste had been alive. Mama was careful not to let the tiniest spot of red return. She couldn't have missed this, I thought.

Something new was about to happen, something important.

I left Baby Celestes bedroom and hesitated in the hallway. I should just go downstairs and read or go to bed myself, I thought. I should. I even started for the stairway, but stopped at the top. My heart was pounding. I closed my eyes and bit clown on my lower lip, hoping that the pain would drive the feelings and the urges out of me but it was too hard, too hard to fight it, to drive it away. I couldn't help myself

I turned and headed for Mama's bedroom, At the doorway I hesitated, battling with myself

one final time and losing. As soon as I entered the room, I knew I would not turn back. There was only one vanity table and one vanity table mirror and one full-length mirror outside the turret room, and they were here. I gazed at myself and then quickly took off my shirt and jeans. I unstrapped my bosom and lowered my underpants.

It was truly as if I were reemerging to the surface of my own body, maturing instantly into a young woman. I tingled all aver. My breath

quickened. I sat at the table and began to experiment with Mama's new makeup, trying on different shades of lipstick, eyeliner, facial powders. All I had to go by were pictures I had seen in the few magazines we had in the house. what I caught on television when Mama permitted it to be turned on, and of course. what I had recently seen her do.

I tried brushing my short hair so it took on some style like hers now had, and then I went to her closet and began to try on her skirts and blouses, her dresses and even her underthings. I had never worn a bra, and the way it shaped my breasts, especially under one of Mama's pretty pink or white sweaters, fascinated me. I tried on different earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. With every completed outfit. I imagined a different occasion: a date, a dance, attending a theater, or just going shopping in a mall. I strutted about and pretended boys were looking at me, smiling, flirting, beckoning with their eyes.

"Don't go too close," I warned myself as if I were with a far more sophisticated girlfriend. "Don't answer them. Don't look back. Don't smile."

But wasn't there always one to look back at, one handsome boy who held my attention and my imagination? I had to smile back. I closed my eyes and dreamed of our conversation, of our meeting and walking together. He would ask me on a date and I would agree to go.

As quickly as I dreamed of it. I returned to the closet and sorted through the garments for something appropriate. What do you wear on your first date with a boy you like? You can't be too obvious now, but you have to be attractive. Its not wrong to emphasize your attributes, is it? Just a little. Oh. how I wish I had a real girlfriend, someone with whom I could talk for hours and hours on the telephone, talk about the absolutely silliest, most insignificant things that so filled our lives and dress them up like balloons and crepe paper at a party.

I'm missing the party, I thought with some panic. I'm passing it by forever and ever. Shaking the sadness out of my head. I continued.

I found a light blue dress that could be worn off-shoulder. It had a deep V-neck collar that exposed the depth of my cleavage, and it fit me snugly around my waist. The sight of my feminine self took my breath away. I am pretty; I could be sexy. I thought,

"Stop giving me those reprimanding looks. Mama." I said to the face I imagined in the mirror. "You had the same thoughts and did the same things when Daddy came to take you out on your first date, didn't you? You fell in love with yourself, too. And don't try to tell me that was different because that was then and this is now. It's always different for you. Older people always say that."

I looked through the earrings for a pair that I thought fit my dress, and then I found the necklace Daddy had once given Mama a long time ago, a necklace of real diamonds. She never wore it anymore.. For me it was the most forbidden thing to wear. but I did anyway,