that society. Brooke grumbled all week prior about having her Saturday “totally destroyed” by the obligation to attend; and afterwards when asked “How’d it go?” growled “How do you think!” to no one in particular but to everyone in general, at least everyone in her parents’ world of social obligation and sacrifice, she being this moment’s sacrifice (and don’t you forget it!).
But later that evening, while dressing for a night out “with friends” (meaning, Danny, but don’t tell Momma and Father), she suddenly placed her Calculus I text on top of her head and started marching slowly around her room dressed only in her bell-bottom jeans and a bra. At first she moved with slow and self-conscious reverence, as if in a processional that gradually slowed to a funereal pace then pause, pace then pause. To emphasize her point, she gradually bent her knees as she walked, steadily lowering her body toward the floor, as if into the gates of Hades, or the Wicked Witch’s meltdown at the end of Oz. From where Leah watched lying on the bed, all but Brooke’s head disappeared from her line of sight, but the calculus text never tilted or wavered. Then suddenly Brooke leapt up like the clown of a jack-in-the-box and the book went sailing through the air. Leah deflected it just before it would’ve crashed into her stomach, and it landed on the side of the bed then fell to the floor. Leah glared at her sister who gave an “I’m sorry” pout then disappeared below the side of the bed. When she reemerged, the book was again atop her head. This time she hopped around on one leg, then the other, her arms extended straight out to the sides. The book bounced up and down in unison with her brown hair but somehow remained balanced atop her head. Then she suddenly tilted her head toward Leah on the bed. The book fell forward. Leah threw out her hands to catch it but Brooke threw her body forward and caught the book like a ball player extending her body to catch an errant throw. She pulled the book safely to her chest and let he body continue its fall till it crashed onto the bed alongside Leah. She smiled up at her annoyed sister, presented the text open to the chapter on fractals, and said “It’s all your fault for making me go.” She tilted her head, gave a self-satisfied smile, then jumped up to finish getting dressed for her night out.
After returning from her fourth (“And last—alleluia!”) class, Brooke came out onto the back deck where Leah was reading in the chaise in the warm spring sun. Momma was off doing the weekly grocery shopping and Father had been gone all day, picked up early for a golf outing with his boss and some prospective clients; so they were alone in the house. Leah noted Brooke’s arrival by the slamming of the side door and her heavy-footed stride down the hall and across the kitchen and out onto the deck. She immediately knew something was up from the glint in Brooke’s eyes as she came around in front of the lounge, one hand tucked behind her back.
“Mrs. Stafford sent you a present,” Brooke said with a sly smile. “Now close your eyes.”
Leah hated this childish ploy—closing her eyes took away her main access to the world—and she refused it of everyone except Brooke, and most times with her too. She frowned back to Brooke’s waiting stare.
“Come on, Leah,” Brooke said. “It’s from the deb class.” She didn’t have to say the implied “You know, the one you made me attend.”
Leah sighed and closed her eyes. She saw Brooke’s shadow cross in front of the sun through her eyelids and braced for something unpleasant. But all that happened was Brooke placed something light and dry and smooth on her nose. It had the slight fragrance of baby oil along with the smell of Brooke’s sweat. The shadow stepped back, leaving her face again in full sun.
Brooke shook the flip-flop dangling from Leah’s right foot—you can open your eyes now!
Leah kept her eyes closed a little longer, partly to try to guess what was resting on her nose but mainly to annoy her insistent sister.
Brooke waited a few seconds then lightly tickled the bottom of Leah’s foot.
Leah opened her eyes, sat up quickly, and pulled her foot back under her left leg. The surprise that was on her nose landed in her lap. She picked it up. It was a small flat square of blue foil with many words in white print, most of them too small to read at arm’s length. The only ones she could read spelled Trojan-enz. She looked closer at the package and saw the words one lubricated latex condom and a dotted line accompanied by the words tear here. Leah looked up at Brooke.
“It’s a condom!”
A what?
“A condom—for a penis. Mrs. Stafford asked me to give it to you!” Brooke waited for the full effect of her joke to settle around her sister.
Leah looked from Brooke to the square of foil then back again, adamant consternation clouding her hazel eyes.
Brooke roared in laughter. She delighted to still have a few pieces of knowledge on her sister. Then she looked about suddenly, worried that maybe someone had overheard her. But there was no one there. Momma still wasn’t home; and Mrs. Bentley, the only neighbor visible from the deck, wasn’t in her backyard. Still, Brooke wasn’t going to take any chances. She waved for Leah to follow her into the kitchen, then closed and locked the patio door behind them.
She took the condom from Leah’s hand and held it up between them, a few inches from Leah’s face. “This is a condom. It’s a form of birth control,” she said deliberately straight at Leah’s eyes. “You slide it over the man’s erect penis and it catches the sperm and keeps it from entering the woman’s vagina.”
Leah understood the words but had no idea what they meant.
“If the sperm doesn’t get into the vagina, the woman can’t get pregnant. Understand?”
Leah shook her head.
“The sperm!” Brooke said, her voice rising in volume and her tone in frustration. “The condom catches the sperm!”
Leah stared at her uncomprehending. She played catch with a baseball (was actually quite accomplished at that game, her hand-to-eye coordination uncanny), but how could whatever was inside this foil wrapper “catch” sperm, which she understood as the males component of reproduction but had never seen and didn’t know what it looked like or exactly how it was delivered from the penis.
Brooke huffed. With her joke past, it was now time to inform her sister further on the details of human reproduction using this surprise benefit of deb class—Mrs. Stafford had handed them out at the end of class without a word of explanation, leading to numerous giggles and guffaws and a surprising number of blank stares not unlike Leah’s just now—as a teaching tool and prop.
Her eyes lit up. Prop! That’s it! She ran over to the fruit bowl, but there were no bananas remaining (this being shopping day), just an orange and an overripe peach. She frowned then remembered the display of hand-painted wooden fruit in the lead-crystal bowl on the dining room table. She ran and grabbed the wooden banana out of the bowl (it and all the fruit in there looked so realistic Uncle Bob had actually grabbed an apple and tried to polish it on his shirt sleeve before discovering the mistake—in the family legend it was said he actually tried to take a bite and almost broke a tooth, but that wasn’t true as Brooke herself could attest, having seen the incident when she was eight).
Back in the kitchen Leah was seated at the breakfast table trying to find the spot in her book—Fancy Strut, a new novel by a local writer—where she’d been interrupted.
Brooke sat down opposite her holding the wooden banana in one hand and the foil packet in the other. She held out the banana. “This is an erect penis.”
Leah looked at her with wide eyes. She’d about concluded that the deb classes had succeeded in driving her sister insane. How could a banana, a wooden one at that, be an erect penis?
“Think, Lee!” Brooke said impatiently. “Like on the Jack of Hearts—the man’s penis gets big and hard, like a banana. That’s how come it can go into the vagina.”
Leah recalled the photo on the playing card in her mind. It was the color that had thrown her—the penis wasn’t yellow. But it was shaped like a banana.
“The condom goes on the penis when it gets hard, like this.” She set the banana
on the table and tore the foil of the packet. She pulled a pale white ring of what looked to be rubber out of the foil. “This is a condom,” Brooke said, holding the ring up.
Leah could see that there was a thin sheath of rubber between the thicker rim.
“The condom slips over the penis like this.” She placed the ring over the bottom end of the banana then slowly unrolled it till the rubber sheath covered the banana almost to the stem. She held the sheathed banana across the table for Leah’s closer inspection.
Leah looked at the rubber sheath. It looked like a large deflated balloon except that it was cloudy not clear and glistened and had a small pucker at the end.
“Go ahead. It won’t bite.” She laughed as Leah took the banana and added, “At least this one won’t.”
Leah held the wooden banana by its wooden stem and looked more closely. She ran the index finger of her other hand over the rubber sheath. It was slippery but not greasy.
“Lubricant,” Brooke said. “So it doesn’t hurt when it goes in.”
Leah wasn’t looking at Brooke and didn’t see what she said. While the rubber sheath and its non-greasy coating intrigued her, it made no sense placed over the banana, a wooden one at that. She couldn’t imagine something that hard protruding from a boy or where it would go if it