“He does not!” said Megan. “My folks would never do that.”
“How, then?” I asked.
“The woman goes to the doctor, that’s how,” said Megan.
“The doctor puts his penis in her?” I asked.
“No!” Megan cried, and we all shrieked again.
“It’s like Alice said,” Rosalind explained. “The father puts his penis inside the mother. Dogs do it. Cats do it. Elephants do it.”
“Well, people don’t! It’s gross!” said Megan.
We lay there in the dark thinking.
“Let’s ask somebody,” said Jody.
“Who’s going to ask?” said Dawn.
“Alice,” said Rosalind. “Alice will find out the answer and tell us Monday at recess.”
“Why me?” I protested.
“Well, I already asked my mom for A Girl Grows Up, so it’s somebody else’s turn,” said Rosalind.
“My mom doesn’t even know about stuff like this,” said Megan.
“Of course she does! She has children!” said Dawn. “I wouldn’t ask my mom, though. I’d be too embarrassed.”
“If I asked mine, she’d say, ‘Why do you want to know?’” said Jody.
They all looked at me again. I swallowed. “Okay. Monday at recess,” I said. That gave me exactly two days to find out.
Rosalind turned on the TV again, and we all pretended we were watching a video, but we weren’t. I could see Rosalind looking at me on one side and Jody looking at me on the other, and this got us giggling again.
“I’ll bet it’s messy,” said Jody.
“Maybe they do it in the bathtub,” said Dawn. We giggled some more.
“Maybe they do it over the toilet,” said Rosalind, and this time we laughed out loud.
Later, after the other girls had gone to sleep, I lay there thinking about sperms and eggs and Mr. Dooley’s baby, back in fourth grade. If Rosalind was right, that meant that Mr. and Mrs. Dooley did it. That my own mother and father had done it. Doctors did it, and dentists and teachers and lawyers and even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Everybody who ever lived had got to this earth in the very same way.
It was sort of a miracle. I didn’t think it was gross at all.
9
LOVE
BY THE TIME I GOT HOME SATURDAY from the sleepover, Dad had already left for work and Lester was getting on his bike to ride to his part-time job. It didn’t seem like a good time to ask him about sperms and eggs, so I just said, “See ya,” and he rode off down the driveway.
Oatmeal was waiting for me just inside the door. I think she misses me when I stay somewhere overnight, because she’s been sleeping with me ever since she was a little kitten.
I went to the closet and got the belt off Dad’s raincoat. I dragged it slowly across the floor. Oatmeal hunkered down the way she does when she’s stalking something, and I was glad to see her looking more frisky. She crouched even lower to the floor, and the pupils of her eyes got larger and larger. She went skidding across the floor, chasing the belt.
I ran faster and faster—through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the hallway and back—and suddenly Oatmeal just stopped, her sides heaving. She sat there panting a moment, then walked over to the rug and lay down.
“Oh, Oatmeal. Don’t grow old too soon!” I told her. She tipped back her head and let me stroke under her chin.
That night Lester browned the hamburger for chili, I cut up the green peppers and onions, and Dad made some corn bread. When we sat down to eat, I remembered what I was supposed to ask. But I didn’t want Dad and Lester to think I didn’t know anything.
“I know all about sex,” I began. I saw Lester roll his eyes.
Dad looked up. “What?”
“I mean, you don’t have to start at the beginning,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me everything.”
“That’s good,” said Lester, “because I sort of wanted to talk about basketball.”
I ignored him. “I know that it takes a man and a woman to make a baby, but I don’t know exactly how the man gets his sperm inside the woman,” I said.
“With a glue gun,” said Lester, and took a bite of corn bread.
“Les!” said Dad. And then he cleared his throat.
I don’t know why it is that I can’t get a simple answer to a simple question instead of a lot of throat clearing and the whole history of the human race.
“When a man and woman want to start a family… ,” Dad began.
“Please don’t start with buying a house,” I said.
“Yeah, Dad. Cut to the chase,” said Lester.
So Dad speeded it up. “People who love each other want to get their bodies as close together as possible, and when that happens, the man puts his penis inside the woman’s vagina.”
“And out comes the sperm?” I asked.
“Something like that,” said Dad.
“Like pee?” I asked.
“Not that much,” said Dad.
“For crying out loud, I’m eating,” Lester complained.
“Sounds messy to me,” I said. I thought about it a minute. “Where do they do it? In the bathtub? Over the toilet?”
Lester bolted back in his chair. “I don’t believe this!” he said. Then he hunched over his plate again. “They do it out in the backyard, Al, and hose themselves down afterward.”
“Lester!” Dad said again. “She’s asking some basic questions here. They do it in bed, Alice. People make love in bed.”
“Oh,” I said. “All over the sheets?”
“It’s not as messy as you think,” Dad said. “And what mess there is doesn’t matter.”
“Oh,” I said again. I wondered if there was anything else the girls wanted me to ask. “How long does it take?” I asked.
“Just a few minutes or as long as a couple wants it to last,” Dad said.
“Now, about those Boston Celtics… ,” Lester began, and then he and Dad talked basketball.
As soon as the bell rang for recess on Monday, Jody and Dawn and Megan and Rosalind followed me around the school and back to the teachers’ entrance, where we huddled together on the steps.
“Did you find out?” asked Jody.
I nodded and told them everything Dad had told me.
“I can’t believe it!” said Megan, thinking, I guess, of her parents. “Then that’s how they got my sister.”
“And you,” I said.
We sat in hushed silence.
“Let’s don’t tell anyone else,” said Dawn. “Let’s be the only girls in fifth grade who know.”
“I just can’t believe it!” Megan said again.
“It’s how everybody gets born, Megan,” I told her. “Mrs. Swick and Mr. Dooley, too. The principal! The president!”
“Moses, even!” said Jody.
“But not the pope,” said Megan.
“Even the pope,” I told her.
Dad told me later that sometimes when a woman has trouble getting pregnant, the doctor takes eggs from her and sperm from her husband and puts them together in a laboratory. And then, after an egg is fertilized, he puts it back in the woman and it grows just like any other baby. But I wouldn’t tell Megan that because she’d say she was sure that’s how she got born. Her sister, too.
Two days before Valentine’s Day, Donald Sheavers asked if I was going to give him a present.
“What for?” I said.
“Valentine’s Day. Because you’re my girlfriend.”
I had forgotten that I was supposed to be his girlfriend. Just because you’re somebody’s girlfriend one year, do you have to go on being it forever until you get a divorce or something?
“Oh,” I said.
I went inside my house and sat down in my beanbag chair to think. I didn’t want to be his girlfriend anymore, but it would seem rude to just tell him that. If I could find someone else to be his girlfriend, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Now, who should it be?
Rosalind needed a friend, maybe. I call
ed her up and asked if she wanted to be Donald Sheavers’s girlfriend.
“Sure,” she said. “About as much as I’d like to break a toe.”
I figured there was no point in asking the other girls about Donald. And I didn’t really need to. All I needed was for Donald to believe that somebody else liked him, and then he wouldn’t care if I was his girlfriend or not.
There was a pack of valentines beside my chair, ready to give out to the other girls in our class. I hadn’t planned to give any to boys. I looked through the bunch. There were all kinds of valentines, from silly to mushy. I found a big red heart with lace around the edge. On the inside it said, Crazy for You.
I decided that instead of writing a girl’s name underneath, I would put the first initial of three girls’ names, and then Donald would never know for sure who had given it to him. So I took a pen and wrote J for Jody, D for Dawn, and M for Megan. I found an envelope for the big red heart, put the valentine inside, and wrote Donald’s name on the front. At school, just before the party, I slipped it in Donald’s box.
But I hadn’t counted on Donald acting stupid. I hadn’t counted on Donald being Donald. Instead of blushing a little and glancing around the room when he opened the envelope, Donald waved the valentine in the air and yelled, “Hey, who’s JDM?”
All the kids turned around. I was sure glad I hadn’t written any girl’s name on that card. But Jody put down her cup of punch and said, “That’s me!”
I stared.
“Jody Dianne Merwin,” she said. “Why?”
Dianne? Her middle name was Dianne? I couldn’t believe it. Meanwhile Donald was smirking. “I didn’t know you were crazy for me,” he said.
Jody snatched the card out of his hand. “I didn’t write that!” she said.
I sank down lower in my seat until I almost disappeared.
“Who wrote my initials on this card?” Jody demanded, glaring around the room.
Saved by Mrs. Swick. “Let’s don’t make a fuss over this, Jody,” she said, taking the card and giving it back to Donald. “If you didn’t sign that card, that’s all we need to know. Now, who would like more cookies and punch?”
I hung around after school because I didn’t want to walk home with anybody. I didn’t want to show my face in the classroom again until everyone had forgotten the valentine party. Jody would be furious if she knew I had given Donald that card. I asked Mrs. Swick if I could help clean up the room.
“Why, thank you, Alice,” she said. “I’d appreciate that. Could you take a damp paper towel and wipe off the desks? Some of them are a little sticky.”
I wished I could do one nice thing on Valentine’s Day. I wished I could go home and say that I had made Mrs. Swick laugh. So while we were working, I told her all about Oatmeal and the way she would crouch down and tremble when she was about to pounce on something. I told her how my cat used to jump high in the air when I dangled a string. Mrs. Swick smiled, but she didn’t laugh.
When I went outside, though, Donald was still there, reading all his valentines on the steps. He got up and gave me a little bag of valentine candy, the kind that has words stamped on the hearts—HI, BABE and HOT STUFF and I DIG YOU.
I had to tell him: “I don’t have anything for you, Donald,” I said. “I don’t think I’m your girlfriend anymore. Sorry.”
He took the candy back and broke open a corner of the packet. He popped a piece in his mouth. “How come?” he asked.
“Because we’re not in love or anything,” I said. “I’d just rather be friends.”
“Okay,” said Donald, and he ate the rest of the candy.
Lester still had the same girlfriend, though. Last year at this time he got in a lot of trouble because he stayed out later than he was supposed to on Valentine’s Day. And I got in trouble because I turned off the alarm clock that Dad sets outside his room on the nights that Lester is out. It’s set for the time Lester’s supposed to be home. If he’s not home in time to turn it off, it wakes Dad up and then there’s trouble.
When Lester came home from school, I said, “I’m not going to turn off the alarm clock for you tonight, Lester.”
“So who asked you to?” he said. “Lisa and I celebrated early. I’m not going over there tonight.”
“Did you give her a present?” I asked.
“Naturally.”
“Did you kiss her?”
“Knock it off, Al.”
I climbed up on a stool in the kitchen and watched while Lester made himself a sandwich. “I’m not Donald Sheavers’s girlfriend anymore,” I said, “so I didn’t give him anything.” And then I asked, “Do you think Dad will ever get married again?”
“Hope so,” said Lester.
“Because I don’t think he’s going to marry Elaine. I asked him this morning if he was taking her out tonight, and he said no.”
“Well, some things take time,” said Lester.
“If I knew what kind of a wife he was looking for, maybe I could find someone for him,” I said.
“You can’t do that, Al. It doesn’t work that way,” Lester told me.
I thought about that for a minute. “What was Mom like? She must have been the kind of woman he was looking for.”
“She was funny. Natural. She didn’t dress up a lot. She liked music, same as Dad. She used to sing a lot, too.”
“She looks beautiful in her pictures,” I said.
“She was nice-looking. Pretty, maybe, but not beautiful.”
“Well, if I ever do find a woman like that, I can at least tell Dad about her, can’t I?”
“The surest way to ruin a romance is to set two people up,” said Lester. “People like to find each other on their own. They don’t want other people to do it for them.”
I decided right then that if I ever met a woman I thought Dad might like to marry, I would secretly arrange for them to meet, and I’d never, ever, let them know I’d planned it. I especially wouldn’t tell Lester.
The phone rang, and I thought for sure Lester would pick it up, but he said, “Go answer, will you? And if it’s Mickey, tell her I’m not here.”
“I’m not going to lie, Lester,” I said.
He grabbed up his sandwich and went down the hall to the bathroom. “Okay, then. If it’s Mickey, tell her I’m indisposed,” he said. He went inside and shut the door.
I picked up the phone. It was Mickey. “Is Les there?” she asked.
“He’s indisposed,” I told her.
“Meaning… ?” said Mickey.
I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant either. “He’s in the bathroom,” I said.
“Oh. I’ll wait,” she said.
Now what was I supposed to do? “It might be a long time,” I said.
“He’s taking a shower?”
Showers only lasted so long, I thought, and she was willing to wait. She’d never hang up.
“I think he’s on the toilet,” I said. “He may be there a long time.”
Mickey giggled. She always giggles when she finds out personal things about Lester. “Is he sick, or is it something he ate?” she asked.
Now I’d really done it. If I said he was sick, she’d ask him if he was better. “No, it just takes Lester a really long time,” I said.
“Well, when he comes out, if he comes out, tell him his devoted valentine is sending hot burning wishes his way.”
No wonder Lester doesn’t like Mickey, I thought. After I hung up, Lester came out of the bathroom.
“Mickey said that when you come out, if you come out, I should tell you that…” And then I wasn’t sure. “. . . that your burning hot valentine sends devoted wishes your way… or something.”
Lester rolled his eyes. “How’d you get her to hang up? That’s usually a twenty-minute job.”
“I said you take a really long time.”
“You said I was in the shower?”
“I said you were on the toilet.”
“Al!” he bellowed, grabbing up a newspaper and charging at
me. He chased me down the hall to the bathroom, and I ducked in and locked the door. Then I stayed for a very long time.
10
BIG MISTAKE
THE FIRST DAY OF MARCH, I FELL ON THE playground. The day was warm, and we’d all taken off our jackets and coats and left them in a heap on the concrete steps.
Donald Sheavers and the other boys were teasing the girls. They named each girl and said what boy she was in love with, and Donald said that once I asked him to come over and kiss me, which was a big fat lie. Sort of. I had asked him to come over and play a scene from Tarzan, which had a kiss in it. But we never actually did.
And then Ollie said he wanted to play Tarzan with me, and I jumped up and started to run across the playground, and then Rosalind was running with me, and then there was a whole pack of boys chasing us, all thumping their chests and making Tarzan yells.
I hated Donald Sheavers just then for telling them about that. I hated that I was running and that Ollie Harris and Cory Schwartz and all the other boys were chasing us. I hated that it looked like we wanted to be chased and kissed. Lester told me once that when a boy tries to kiss me, I should just turn around and chase him and that would scare him to death. But when it’s a whole bunch of boys, then what do you do?
This was third-grade stuff! I shouldn’t have run at all. When Ollie said he wanted to play Tarzan with me, I should have just given him a look and said, Yeah, right! But it was too late now. The only thing left to do was duck in the teachers’ entrance and escape, but then I realized I had run right by it.
I skidded around to go back, but one foot went out from under me on the gravel and I fell right there in the parking lot, sliding along on my right arm.
Everyone stopped running then, including the tribe of girls who were running after the pack of boys who were running after Rosalind and me. There was a big raw place on my right arm.
“Oh!” Rosalind said when she saw it.
“Euuuw!” cried Megan and Dawn, and the next thing I knew all my solemn-faced girlfriends were ushering me through the forbidden teachers’ entrance, and the boys hung back, looking sheepish.
Down the hall we went to the office, girls hanging on to me on both sides. They turned me over to the school secretary, each one giving her account of how the boys had chased me and I fell. Then they went out, looking back at me sorrowfully, and I was alone with Miss Otis.