February 28, 2002

Thursday, 7:08 a.m.

"Okay, people, it’s Thursday," Miss Pritchard announced. "So that means, free reading day." She said it like it was something special. There were groans from the back of the class where the boys congregated. Pru strained to look back at them, turning her head as little as possible to see them. They were the usual clicque of short-sleeved, thin armed bony boys. And him. He was back there. She could feel his presence without even seeing him. It was indicated by a sharp stabbing pain in her abdomen, something like liquid lightening.

"Just remember," Miss Pritchard continued undaunted. "We’ll spend this period quietly reading anything you brought. You did all bring something to read, didn’t you?" There were murmurs and she smiled that charming, model-perfect smile. "Okay," she clasped her hands together. "Go ahead and get them out." There was the sound of shuffling as the students bent down and pulled their books out of bags and satchels and put them. "You can divide up into groups and sit together, if you like," Miss Pritchard continued. "But remember, we’re talking about the books, not here to visit."

Pru pulled her book out of her attache case. War and Peace. She’d read it before, when she was about ten, but it never failed to make an impression. Just its size alone was enough to set heads nodding in admiration. She cut her eyes toward her neighbors. Nobody was looking at her though, and she opened the front cover, and stared, almost insentient, at the words on the page.

A boy behind her leaned up. His hair was still damp. The boys had gym the period right before English and they all came in damp and redolent with Right Guard, Mitchum, Vitalis Extra Hold. The boy had noticed. He was about to speak. In those seconds, she glowed inwardly and tried to maintain outward composure, while her pulse raced and her mouth went dry. "Hey, Pru. That your book?"

She nodded, afraid to say anything in the open classroom. She heard him turn, the sound of polyester pants scraping against the formed plastic of the bright orange chair. "Hey, guys, look at Pru," he hissed. "She’s gonna read the dictionary."

Miss Pritchard sighed indulgently. "I said it was quiet reading time," she said, mustering a smile. Miss Pritchard had begun teaching at Fort Frontenac Junior High School. in 1969, two years ago, but she was still fairly green. That is to say, she hadn’t yet lost that freshness, the sort of dewy approach to teaching that lovely young woman have. They are going to save the world, or their corner of it from the darkness of ignorance and replace it with the light of education and love. She was pretty, too, and Pru felt somehow oddly protective of her. She wasn’t like Mrs. Boschert, the social studies teacher, who had been a certified battleax since about 1947. Mrs. Boschert was a holy terror, but Miss Pritchard embodied everything good about youth. Beauty, charm, and a certain physical delicacy. She had gorgeous skin, only lightly tanned, and perfectly coifed blonde hair in a high page boy, hairsprayed to perfection as if it was a helmet, and yet, on her, somehow, it didn’t look bad. She dressed fashionably, too, in geometric print dresses that fell just above her knee, and nice shoes with clog soles that made her legs look even nicer. Pru ordinarily hated looking at women because she, at fourteen, knew that she wasn’t a contender in that arena. But still, Miss Pritchard was different, and she liked Pru, as well.

Pru settled back in her seat for a nice comfortable read. It was foolish, of course, for her to participate in a free reading period. Reading was all she ever did. It was her life. She wasn’t allowed to watch television, except Lucille Ball on Tuesday nights and The Flying Nun on Saturday. "One hour a week is more than enough stimulation," her mother, the Dragon Lady, would say. She wasn’t allowed to go out, either, not to the bowling alley or skating rink. It was difficult to make friends when everyone knew she wouldn’t be able to visit, or god forbid even the thought, have a sleepover at someone else’s house.

"If you have any questions about anything in the reading, be sure to ask," Miss Pritchard said. Free reading period, Pru scoffed. How silly. It seemed almost like a design to let the teacher have a day off a week from actually teaching. She sighed. Her eyes travelled across the lines, but within a few minutes she didn’t know what was going on. She could read the words singly, but somehow the whole scene eluded her. She began to skim, looking for key words, things like "lips" and "kiss", in the hopes of finding something romantic, or at least erotic. On the other hand, this was War and Peace. There probably wasn’t much in it. Still, anything Russian was bound to be impressive. She’d written a book report on it in fifth grade and gotten a hundred percent. Here, in the public schools, she didn’t even have to write a book report.

She glanced up. Miss Pritchard had seated herself behind the wooden desk and was shuffling through papers, making marks on them. Quizzes probably. Grading their quizzes from last Friday. Pru went back to the book. She hated free reading time. It made her nervous in a way, to be sitting there with nothing to do. She glanced out the window. The sun was lower in the western sky than it had been in math class. It would set soon. It was funny, because when she first came to this school, in January, it was completely dark by art class, and then, slowly, it had been worked backwards, so that by English class it was still fairly well up in the sky. The school district had grown so much in the last few years that they’d had to go to split shifts in school. The older kids went in the morning, the junior high ones in the afternoon.

There was more boy-shuffling in the back of the room. She stole a look back. There were about five boys. They’d pulled the desks together and three of them were sitting on them. Another boy was sitting with his feet up in the chair, bowed over his book, plucking the edges of the pages with his fingers. Miss Pritchard should stop him. That was a library book and he was going to bend the corners. She looked a few inches over from the book vandal to him. Lance was sitting on one of the blue plastic chairs, his long legs under the desk, his feet crossed at the ankles. His body always seemed somehow relaxed, not like the other boys who were a flurry of constant frenetic motion. He seemed so mature. She hadn’t dared to look directly at him today, but it was true, that she lived for this class because he was in it.

She looked back at her book. But in a moment, there was more noise back there, and she turned quickly. Something like a whispered argument was going on. Lance was craning up, his fingers reaching for the book of one of the boys, and the others were doing the adolescent male equivalent of giggling, sort of a barking, snorting hiccuping laugh. Finally, one of them, Matt Brinker, turned and raised his hand. She could see the outline of his ribs under his thin shirt. The others were whispering excitedly, and Lance had clasped his long fingers across his mouth, his pale skin coloring deeply on a diagonal that ran exactly the opposite direction of his cheekbones. He was so perfect. So much like Timothy Dalton in Wuthering Heights only narrower. In fact, he was so perfect, he made Timothy Dalton look big boned and horsish, and Timothy Dalton was so handsome it was hard to breathe looking at his pictures. She hadn’t seen the movie, of course. She’d only seen four movies in her life. She’d seen a story on the film in Life Magazine at the dentist’s office. Still Lance had dark curling hair that was wild in that same way, and a long pale, thin face. He was, in sum, perfect.

"Miss Pritchard," Matt said.

"Yes, Matt?"

"We have a question."

"Yes."

"There’s a word I don’t know here."

"Oh? Well, what is it?"

"Well, I don’t know it."

Miss Pritchard smiled. There was something almost palpably wonderful about the moment, and, by osmosis, Pru basked in it, as well. Here was a stupid boy, a person totally disinterested in education and literature, coming forward to ask a question. It was almost too delicious. But Miss Pritchard, Pru knew inwardly, would handle the situation and, if there was a God in heaven, Matt Brinker would end up looking totally stupid.

"Can you figure it out from context?"

He shook his head. Lance was silently laughing, his newly broadening shoulders shaking convulsively. Billy Bandefelter had clamped his lips together and was hissing with laugh. Matt Brinker looked down at the book resting on his bent knees, studied it with his back bowed over the page. The knotty protruberances of his spine cast tiny shadows on his checkered shirt under the incandescent lights that hung in three long rows down the classroom. He looked up balefully and shook his head.

"Did you look it up in the dictionary, Matt?"

"Couldn’t find it, Miss Pritchard."

He was a complete idiot.

"Well, Matt," Miss Pritchard said patiently, gesturing at him with a perfect hand, her fingernails a pale pink that matched her lips. It was a nice look, blonde hair, pale skin and pinkish cheeks and pale, pale lipstick. "Can you sound it out…"

He shrugged. The other boys were wriggling around him like worms in a tin can. What was wrong with them? Lance pulled at the corners of his gorgeous mouth, dragging it open a little, and her breath caught. He instantly leaned down and stared at the floor, cutting a look at Billy that made her blood run cold. His eyes were twinkling, literally twinkling. He raised them up above Billy’s head and looked across at her. For a moment, his deep brown eyes, not just eyes any longer by something far more, they seemed unnaturally large, somehow taking up everything in her field of view when they locked on hers. She felt that hot fluid sensation run through her abdomen, tracing a line from one hipbone, through her pelvis and up to the other hipbone. When she looked at him, she ceased being merely an animated brain. There was a body connected to that brain, and when it looked at Lance Witherby, something happened to it. He broke the gaze almost instantly. It had been a connection, though. His face hadn’t changed, he’d not done anything to recognize her. But then, maybe he was shy. Yes. Like her. He was just shy.

"Matt?"

"I think so, Miss Pritchard," he said humbly. Pru’s pulse was racing almost too much to actually think anything disparaging about Matt Brinker. "I’ll try…"

Miss Pritchard smiled gently at him.

"I think it’s…cunni…lingus…" There was a silence so intense that Pru looked back at Miss Pritchard. She sat stock still in the chair, her back suddenly very straight.

"What did you say?"

"Yeh," Matt rushed on. "I think that’s it…"

"Let me see that," she said faintly, rising from the chair and making her way quickly down the little islands of desks to the back of the room. She plucked the book off his lap while he pointed to a spot on the page.

"See? Right there?"

Lance was looking past her again, toward the door, biting his lip. Billy was laughing outright. "What is this book?" She turned the book over and looked at the cover.

"Well, Miss Pritchard. What does it mean?"

She handed him the book back with a flourish of disgust. "It’s…it means…"

The boys’ attention was riveted on Miss Pritchard.

"It’s a kind of…"

Pru searched through her entire memory. She had seen a word like that somewhere. But she couldn’t remember what it meant. She furrowed her brow. It was disturbing not to know something. It sounded medical, but she couldn’t remember. She looked up at Miss Pritchard.

"Miss Pritchard," Billy said innocently. "Is there a word you don’t know?"

"I know it," she said sharply. "It means a kind of thing that people do."

"What?" there was a little chorus from the back of the room. "Well, what does that mean?"

"It’s something some married people do. Perhaps you should talk to your parents about this, Matt. Your father may be able to explain it better than I could." She turned and walked quickly back to the front of the room, her wooden soles clicking against the asbestos tile floor. They were laughing outright now, the boys, and when Mrs. Pritchard turned to sit in her wooden straight backed chair behind the desk, her face was bright red. She looked up, her brilliant blue eyes flashing. "Boys, that’s enough. Go back to your reading."

The rest of the class was uneventful although something almost ominous hung in the air. Pru hurriedly put her books in her satchel and stood up, too quickly. Lance was still putting his pencils away, slipping them into his shirt pocket. He bent down to pick up his books and stack them neatly on the desk. He said something to a boy standing nearby and then, without looking to either side, stuck his books under his arm and headed for the door. She watched him, studied him, devoured him. When he passed, mindless of her, she breathed in deep, hoping to catch some whiff of him. What did he use? English Leather, she hoped. Or British Sterling. She’d never smelled either of them, but she’d seen the ads in the magazines. Just the names were enough to make her love them. Like White Shoulders. She’d never smelled that either, but when she grew up, that was what she was going to wear. Her signature perfume.

Matt came up behind Lance just as he was reaching the door, and pulled a wirebound blue notebook out of the stack of books, then raced past him as Lance stopped to see what had happened. She could run up, as the notebook lay open on the floor, loose papers, folded in half scattered across the floor. She could run up and pick up the papers, hand them to him. Maybe he would say something to her then. Hissing invectives, he scraped the papers up before she could move. She picked up her case, opened it and stared into the cavernousness of it, hoping to hide her embarrassment. When she looked back up, he was gone. She breathed, snapped the case closed and went out into the hallway. It was packed with students. They were all about the same height, give or take a few inches. The girls were made taller by their ratted hair, something absolutely forbidden at St. Faustus Elementary School where she’d come from. She made her way down the crowded dimly lit hallway, down the banks of beige painted metal lockers, consumed by the cacophany of voices, of lockers opening and snapping shut. There were kids of every description here.

In Florence, Missouri, there were basically two types of people. There were the old Florence types, whose ancestors had settled the town a hundred years ago, in the 1870s. After the Civil War, they blazed a railroad through the center of the state and dozens of small towns sprouted up almost instantly at the places where roads crossed them. Germans settled here, and set up a lumber business, hardware store, grain elevator. For almost a hundred years, it stayed small. By the early 1960s, there were only about 3,000 people there. But then, the second group came in. These were city people, from St. Louis, factory workers who were desperate to stretch their union dollars. The long drive twice a day was a small price for what they felt they were gaining. What in St. Louis would buy only a tumble down house with inadequate plumbing and roaches on a postage stamp lot, would, in Florence, buy a three bedroom ranch with a carport on an eighth of an acre. They made cars, these men, and bombers. They went through bombers pretty quickly now that the war had escalated.

A subset of those urbanites were a very few whitecollar workers, people who had come out to Florence as part of White Flight. They frequently cited the deteriorating schools in the city, but then came to country towns and complained bitterly about the schools there. In fact, what Pru had heard about Florence before they moved there was that snakes came up in the plumbing, and not to drink the water, as if they had been going to Mexico, not thirty miles outside the city.

So there they were, the old and the new. When Kipling said of India, "East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet" he could have been speaking of the social stratification of Florence. The country people played baseball at the diamond near the elementary school, camped on the river and fished a lot. They ate at the tiny dimly lit spaghetti joint on Main Street, or at Tiddley’s Tavern next door to the lumber yard. They bought their groceries from the Country Cousins I.G.A. on Vance Street. The city people went back to the city to watch major league ball games. They ate at the fast food restaurants. They flocked to the new Kroger on Main near the highway. The best of the best ate at the country club and went back into the city to buy their groceries. For many years, Pru’s mother would never condescend to shop at either the I.G.A. or the Kroger. "The I.G.A. just seems dirty," she said. As for the Kroger, there were too many country people there.

Pru waited while the other girls moved away from their lockers before she stepped up to hers. She shared it with a fat girl from Silex. There was something nearly contaminating about the girl. She had pasted pictures of the Partridges on the inside of the locker door. One day Pru was going to tear them down and replace them with pictures of Beethovan. It would just serve her right. She wished she had a picture of Lance. Maybe she could get a copy of last year’s yearbook from somewhere just to have one. Who in the world sold old yearbooks?

"Hey, Pru." She turned toward the voice.

"Hey, Sid," she said. Sid was the same age, also fat, but a nice girl. She had chopped off dark hair and big eyes. Her name was really Sue, but she hated it. She blew a bubble. "You had lunch yet?"

Pru shook her head. "I’m on a diet." She looked down at her stomach. It was so big, almost all the way out to her hipbones.

"Well, here. I got some extra." Sid rummaged in her purse. She pulled out a piece of bubble gum, in a green wrapper. Apple. "You want some?"

She stared at the gum in the girl’s plump palm. What would one time hurt? Her mother would kill her if she caught her chewing gum. She had only been allowed a half stick ever and then only once in a while. Maybe six times she’d had gum. "You’ll choke on it, sure as hell," she would say as she reluctantly parceled out the half sticks to Pru and her older sister. "Don’t choke on it. And don’t swallow it. It’ll kill you." There were additional admonitions about cavities and too much sugar. One time she had accidentally swallowed the piece and waited, miserably, to die, for hours.

Pru looked at the piece of gum. She could smell it. She reluctantly dragged it out of Sid’s hand. "Thanks," she said, unwrapping the little wad and popping it in her mouth. She chewed once, twice. The flavor was incredible, intense, it was that sort of artificial green apple flavor. There wasn’t an apple in the world that ever tasted like that. They started off down the hall together, Pru nearly intoxicated with the forbidden fruit in her mouth, and Sid happily babbling away about nothing. "Are you going to the pep rally tomorrow?"

"We have to," Pru said, chewing vigorously.

"Yeh, but we don’t have to like it." Sid laughed. "Maybe we can skip out and go across the street to the Dog ‘N’ Suds. There are these high school boys who hang out there almost all afternoon. If we were really lucky we could get dates for the dance."

"I can’t go to the dance." The sweetness of the gum had turned sharp and burned her throat. She wasn’t allowed to have any kind of sweet things, except when she was at the Catholic school and had to take her lunch, her mother would pack one Hostess Twinkie in her lunch each day. But now that she was at the public schools, and there wasn’t a specific lunch period since the day was shorter than the regular school day, her mother wouldn’t let her take any food to school. She used to get ice cream once a week, too, but in the last few years, her mother had put a stop to that too. "You’re going to get fat," she would say angrily. "Just like your father."

"Why not?" Sid whined. "I’ve already got my dress picked out for it. It’s pink with a dropped waist and a short…why not?"

"My mom won’t let me," Pru mouthed the words bitterly. She chewed on the gum again, renewing her earlier vigor. What if Lance saw her like this? Chewing her cud like a cow? He would think she was uncouth. She took a half piece of paper from her notebook and put it to her mouth, pushed the wad of gum into it and folded the paper neatly around it.

"Well, what about the game?"

"My mom won’t let me."

"It’s a home game, Pru," Sid stopped her with a hand on her forearm.

"I can’t do anything about that," Pru said stiffly. "I still can’t go."

"Well, did you ask her?"

‘What’s the point? She said at the public schools the kids ‘fornicate in the hallways.’"

"What’s fornicating?"

"You know…sex."

Sid moaned and slapped pile of books against her forehead. "I missed this?"

"Me too. I thought when I came here there would be like orgies all over the place." She shifted uncomfortably. The sooner the conversation got away from what she wasn’t allowed to do, the happier she’d be.

"Your mother’s crazy."

"Yeh?" She shrugged. "I can’t do anything about that either."

"Run away and go to the game with me. There’ll be boys there…"

"There are boys everywhere…" There was only one she wanted to see.

"Yeh, but they always have to be doing something at school. It’s really tough to get them when they’re relaxed and don’t have some teacher breathing down their necks. Ohhh, Pru, the last game was so much fun. There were these boys who got a bottle in and they were like…"

"This is the classroom," Pru said miserably, stopping at the door.

"Oh, yeh," Sid laughed. "I almost forgot." She stopped laughing and whines. "Oh, Pru. Come to the game."

"You know I hate sports." Lance surely never played sports. One day, right after she started at Fort Frontenac, the boys came in from gym class. Lance was perfectly groomed and they were still damp and ratty and Phil Boschert said that the Mr. Hansen, boys’ gym teacher, was in love with Lance. The boys laughed, and he colored, but all he did was shrug and say, "Yeh, well, I don’t have to dress out for gym and you clowns do, and I get to hang out in the sports department offices while you’re all sweating and grunting over that stupid horse in the gym. I mean really, guys…" He spread his hands. "Give me a break." He had such pale looks, thin limbs and delicate coloring, he probably had some awful, deadly disease, like consumption, or something, eating away at him. But guys didn’t fall in love with guys. That was just stupid.

"It’s not about sports, silly. How are you going to get a boyfriend? How are you ever going to get married?" Sid jostled her with her arm. They sat down at their table together and put their books on the floor.

"I don’t know," Pru scowled. "Maybe I’ll just live alone and keep cats."

"Oh, you, silly…" Sid said affectionately. "Did you do your homework?"

"I didn’t finish it," Pru said, pulling her notebook out. She looked quickly at the picture in the textbook and answered the questions at the end of the section. The structure was triangular, and it had two point perspective. Big deal. For most of these kids, this textbook was about their only exposure to real art. She had been to the Art Museum in St. Louis dozens of times. She knew real art. They had things like painted velvet pictures of clowns and small paintings of big-eyed waifs, things that could be bought from the five and dime and called that art.

Mrs. Parahja came into the room. She was another young teacher, and quite pretty, although she was a little plumper than Miss Pritchard. She was married too, and a scandalous marriage at that. To Mr. Parahja, the dark-skinned American Government teacher. Her mother said it wasn’t as bad as it could be because he was just that color, he wasn’t really one of those types. It was okay to marry dark-skinned foreign men, just not American ones. He was from somewhere in the Middle East. Teaching American Government, of all things. Plus they didn’t live like regular people. They lived closer to the city in a planned community, in an apartment. It was shocking, really. Teachers were supposed to be settled. If they were single they could live in an apartment, but married people were supposed to have houses. And they didn’t have any children and had been married for several years.

"Hello, everybody," Mrs. Parahja said. "How are you all this afternoon?"

There were mutters around the room. It was a stark contrast to the Catholic school. There, when a teacher walked into the room everyone stood up and said, "Good morning, Sister So-and-So" in unison. Here, nobody particularly cared.

"Well, we’re going to start sketching today. So, Janet, will you pass out the paper, here…one sheet to everyone. And let’s see…" She picked up a bundle of red drawing pencils out of a box and pulled the rubber band off them. "Pru…will you give everyone a pencil, and Sid, one eraser for each table, if you will?" Pru trembled a little. It was almost as bad as being asked to play the piano. Any sort of exposure was painful to her. She moved, as if hypnotized, up to the front of the room and took the pencils. Mrs. Parahja smiled at her. "I need to talk to you, Pru," she said softly. Pru’s face must have gone white as a sheet, because Mrs. Parahja smiled more broadly. "It’s good news…" Pru mechanically walked between the tables, setting down a pencil in front of each person. Most people didn’t pay attention to her. Some of them, though, looked up into her face and she instantly remembered that she was freckled and there had been an ominous red spot on her chin that morning. She recoiled from the looks.

When she returned to her seat, Mrs. Parahja was fussing with the items on the table. There were a number of things. A bowl, an apple, several hard rolls, and behind them, a bottle of Mateus. "Ohh, Sid…it’s a liquor bottle?" she whispered.

"I think so."

"Oh, that’s terrible."

‘I know. Do you think she should let us draw liquor bottles in school?

Pru shook her head, horrified and delighted at the same time. It was so inappropriate. They were only in seventh grade. Was Mrs. Parahja promoting the use of liquor among them? It was so avante garde, she could barely breathe.

"Hey, Mrs. Parahja. Did you drink all that for this class?" One of the boys yelled. She shook her head with patient disgust.

"Alright, now. I want you to take a few minutes and just relax. Breathe…" she said fluttering her hands and there was the sound of air rushing to the entire student body and then back out again. "Now, study this for a few minutes. Don’t start drawing yet. Just look at it. Feel the arrangement in your mind. Then I want you to draw it. If you have any questions or problems, just let me know."

She looked out the window for a moment or two. "Okay, well, any time you’re ready to begin, go ahead." Pru stared at the blank paper. She couldn’t draw from life. It seemed a disgrace to deface the pure white paper with her miserable efforts. Mrs. Parahja was circulating around the table, making comments. Pru studied the arrangement.

"Pru."

She jumped, knocking off book off onto the floor. She scurried to pick it up. "I’m so sorry," she said, terrified of the noise the book had made.

Mrs. Parahja merely smiled. "I have good news for you. You remember the painting you did of the tragic mask?"

Of course she remembered. It was a white mask coming out of a multiply colored wildly flowing curtain composed of reds, blues and the darkest purples, fading into an ebony background. The eyes weren’t like a regular mask of tragedy though, they curled upward, like crescent moons laying on their backs. It was an eerie painting, based on a nightmarish vision she’d had on waking in the middle of the night and staring at the woodgrain on her open door. She hated that door. There were demonic faces in the swirls of the wood and though they didn’t frighten her as much as they did when she was young, they still retained their ability to shock her at times.

"Yes." She’d brought the painting into school as part of her homework, and Mrs. Parahja had suggested entering it into the Tri-County Art League show. Her mother had forbidden it of course, but Mrs. Parahja hadn’t yet returned it though.

"You won first place." Mrs. Parahja’s face broke into a huge smile.

Pru stared blankly at her. "I’m sorry?’

"You won first place, and in the adult division. I was really delighted. They called this afternoon. I didn’t know your age, so I left the space on the entry card blank and so they entered it in the adult division. I wanted to tell you first."

"How…"

"Well, I had to take some of my work and some other student work down there, so I just took yours too. Pru, it’s very wonderful. It’s a fifty dollar gift certificate for the Art Supply store and a free dinner for four at the Villa Pasta. Will you be able to go to the awards ceremony? It’s Saturday."

"I don’t think so. My mother goes grocery shopping on Saturdays."

Mrs. Parahja laughed. "Well, for this, I’m sure she’ll put her shopping off to another time."

Mrs. Parahja didn’t know Pru’s mother. "I’m going to announce it to the class at the end of the period, but I wanted you to know first. Congratulations."

"Thank you," Pru’s dry lips mouthed the words. She looked at Sid. Sid’s mouth opened and she made delighted sounds.

"You are sooo good," Sid said. "I wish I had your talent."

"I don’t have any talent. Sid, my mother’s going to kill me. She told me I couldn’t enter that contest."

"You didn’t enter it. Mrs. Parahja did."

"Right," she could take some consolation in that. It wasn’t her fault. Oh, but Mrs. Parahja was going to announce it. In front of the class. She was going to be humiliated beyond compare.

The rest of the hour went slowly, grinding toward the inevitable announcement. Mrs. Parahja called back in the pencils and erasers, and collected up the drawings. "Okay, everybody…before we go, I have an announcement. Pru here entered her painting Masked Tragedy in the Tri-County Art League Show and I’m delighted to report that she has won first place in the adult division. Pru, stand up…"

Pru looked into Mrs. Parahja’s beaming face and waffled between adoration of her and complete loathing. She trembled under the eyes of the class.

"A big hand for Pru," Mrs. Parahja began the applause and the other students politely followed while Mrs. Parahja swept over and shook Pru’s sweaty hand. "Congratulations."

The other kids were gathering their things to leave while Sid was yelling, "Go, Pru." Alright, it did feel good. For just a moment, a thrill went through her that felt good. If only Lance was in that class. He would have thought of her differently then. Not just as another girl in the class. But something special. She was going to be a great artist. That or a great pianist. She and Sid went to their lockers and put their things away. She pulled out her coat and put it on.

"Listen, can I call you tonight?" Sid asked. "There’s something I need to talk to you about."

"I can’t get phone calls," Pru said sullenly.

"Ohhh, your mother again?" Sid rolled her eyes. "Listen, you know there’s only so much I can believe about her. I have my own phone in my own bedroom now, you know. They were supposed to put it in today. A pink princess phone, too. Oh, Pru. How come you won’t let me call you?"

Pru shook her head. The fact that Sid had a new phone wasn’t going to have any impact on the rules at her house. The phone was for emergencies. When the phone would ring in the evening, any time after dinner, her mother would sit straight up in the chair she always say in. For a moment she would be motionless, then get up and rush toward the table where the phone. Sometimes she would knock over the stack of paperback books, Jeanne Dixon and Eric Van Dannikan, but mostly Edgar Cayce. But she always said the same thing in the same grim voice. "Someone’s dead." There was a single variation to that. If the phone rang and her father wasn’t home, her mother would perform the same, nearly ritual motions. Only the words were different, "He’s had an accident."

The truth was, it had gotten to the point where Pru was just as happy not to have phone calls. After all, every time the phone rang, she was burned with that liquid terror that someone had died, that there had been an accident. It was true that, since they didn’t get any other calls, most of them did have to do with sickness or death. Pru’s grandmother had died in June of the year before, her aunt had killed herself this last July, only a month and a day beyond the first anniversary of Grandma’s death. Other old relatives died off, distant cousins, twice removed or something, and Pru was fairly used to going to funerals. It was the only thing they did socially together, going to wakes and sitting with old people in an artificially flower-scented funeral parlor. Before that, her mother’s brother had been shot in a fight in the city, and there were a flurry of calls back and forth about that.

"Pru, are you listening to me even?"

Pru looked at Sid. "Sorry. What did you say?"

"See what I mean? You don’t care. I don’t think anyone could have a mother as mean as you say yours is, so I think you just don’t want to talk to me. You don’t like me like I like you, Pru. You’re every bit as mean as you say your mother is." She turned angrily on her stubby heeled shoes. Pru shouldered her purse and held her book case heavily against her legs. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t have been true. She wanted to go after Sid, as she wended her way through the smiling and laughing kids lining up for rides home. She could run after her, tell her she cared a lot about her, and she was just trapped in this hell that nobody could even possibly understand.

A boy passed her, jostled her and she felt an almost electric pain as his body touched hers. Touching was so forbidden. She remembered a moment, when she was about five when she had reached out and touched her mother in the kitchen. "Don’t do that," her mother had shrieked. "You touch me again, and I’ll break your god damned arm."

She blinked. Why was everything her mother? She could run away. She could run away, go back to the city. Go back to St. Louis. Everybody said what a great pianist she could be. If she tried hard enough, she could impress someone down at the symphony hall, and maybe they would get her into Julliard. She would be one of the few girls to ever get through it. There were a few guys who had made it big in the world of piano performance. Maybe she would be the one to break it open for girls. She’d be a pianist and a conductor. There were no girl conductors. Not at all. She looked up, but couldn’t see Sid anymore. She walked slowly to the ugly yellow monstrosity at the curb and stepped on. She found a seat toward the back, avoiding the eyes of the kids she passed. The place to be was the back seat. It ran all the way across the back of the whole vehicle. Sandy Talbot was sitting in the catbird seat, the one right in the middle. She had big hair, dyed red and ratted up tall. She snapped her gum and lit a cigarette off the cigarette of the girl sitting next to her. She was a monumental strumpet, Sandy Talbot was. Fascinating. She had developed way earlier than most of the girls in school, and had a bold way about her.

"So I said to him," she took a big draw off her cigarette and blew the smoke toward the curved ceiling. "I said, ‘you give me another hickey, I’ll have to do something drastic, cause if my old man finds a hickey on me, he’s going to beat the shit out of me." She flourished her cigarette and glared at Pru. Pru turned back to the front and stared, motionless at the backs of the rest of the students and the driver.

"Whadhe say?"

"Who, the twerp? Oh, he was like, make me, and he like gave me this huge old hickey. See?" There was the sound of rustling and the girls around her oohed and ahhed. Pru tried to swivel her eyes so far back to the side that they hurt. She tossed her hair and pretended to be fascinated by something out the other window, but it wasn’t enough to actually see anything.

"So, like, what did your old man do?"

She laughed outright. "Oh, shit, man. He doesn’t give a shit. I just said that." More students were loading on. One big boy came down the corridor, his big letter jacket taking up more than the space allotted by the aisle. He passed Pru, who could barely breathe. He was built like a farm boy, probably one of the football players. His hands were huge, his shoulders broad and he had a firm chest that showed under his T-shirt and open jacket. But his stomach was soft looking. He looked down at Pru only for a second, like one might look at a piece of furniture or a fencepost. He was completely unaware that a person was there.

"Heeeeeyyyy," Sandy Talbot purred and there was more readjustment.

"Hey," the boy said. He threw himself in the seat beside her. Pru turned her knees into the aisle and sat as still as possible. She could finally see, peripherally, what they were doing. "Gimme a smoke," the boy said, pawing at her purse.

"Bastard," she said tartly. "Get your own. You’re always trying to hock ‘em off me."

"Give me a smoke, damn it." He reached down and grabbed her fringed suede purse. She squawked.

"Hey. Alright," she play whined, pulling out a pack of Marlboros.

"Better," he grumbled, good-naturedly. "Yeh, woman. Give it to me." He blustered. She glared at him wiltingly, her lips broad and pursed. Another thought crossed his synapses and he was off and running.. "Hey," he began enthusiastically. "So I was like in math class this afternoon and the homo teacher is like what’s the circumfrance of some shit, and I said to the guy sitting next to me…"

The rest of the story was drowned out by the engine noise and the rattle as they went over the speed bumps before turning onto Peabody Street. Sandy lit a second cigarette and offered it to the boy. He took a monumental draw off it, stretched himself and put his arm around her neck. His hand fell just below her ear and he caressed the skin of her throat. Pru stole another look at her. She didn’t have a pretty face. It was pudgy, her nose was too lumpy, her lips too big, and she had spots. She always had what seemed to be a sneer because the space between the bottom of her nose and the top of her lip seemed too short. She had crooked teeth, too. He wasn’t much of a prize either, in the face. He had short dark hair, only a little longer than a G.I. cut. But he looked like he had a sense of humor. Still, that wasn’t what she wanted. She turned toward the front and fidgeted with the edge of her book case.

She got off at her street and walked very slowly toward home. It was the biggest house on the block, or so her parents said. She thought the split foyer that was a few houses up was probably exactly the same size, but her mother assured her that it was smaller because they had finished the basement of theirs and the other people had just left it concrete walls and floor. Their house was only three lots up, but she tried to make it last as long as possible, swinging her case slowly back and forth.

What was Lance doing? What kind of a house did he live in? If she wasn’t so afraid she would die from excitement, she’d look up his last name in the phone book and see where they lived. They were probably rich. She thought he’d said something one time about living close to the country club. He certainly came from wealth. His clothes were a lot better than those of the other boys. But then they were just farm boys and trailer trash or the sons of men who stood all day on the assembly lines and shot screws into bombers. It sent a thrill of disgust through her to think that. Most of the town was supported on the bombing of Viet Nam villages. Men and women and children were dying so that these people could live in asbestos-sided ranch houses with carports. What if the war ended? What would they build in those huge factories? Her mind flashed on a picture of a napalmed child running naked through a dirt village, and she shuddered. It wasn’t right. She looked up into the dark sky, at the dots of stars and planets. God, why do you do this? When she was little, they would say to her, "What do you want for Christmas." Santa Claus had all the power. "I want peace on earth," she would say, and they all laughed. But really? She would have given up anything, everything for peace on earth. How come she was so powerless? She sighed and stared at the dark street that rolled under her as she walked.

There were advantages to going to school in the afternoon and evening. She came in the door prepared for the best one. There was a plate sitting on the table. The rest of the dishes had been cleared away, and nobody was in sight. Her mother came out of the kitchen. "What took you so long?" she said. "Were you dawdling?"

"I came right home," she said slowly.

"Sit down and eat."

She put her book bag down and slipped her coat off and started toward the coat closet. Maybe this time. "Don’t even think about it," her mother said, racing into the room. She took the coat from Pru’s hands with a jerk, jerked open the door and pulled a wooden hanger out. "You know better than that."

"Why can’t I hang up my own coat, Mom?"

"You’ll mess the closet up. Sit down and eat."

Pru walked slowly into the dining room and sat down.

"Did you wash your hands?"

Pru looked at her hands. "They’re clean."

"Get in the bathroom. Don’t touch anything."

Pru stood up and followed her mother into the bathroom. Her mother turned on the water and tested the temperature, then motioned her to wash her hands. "Hurry up." She stood, her arms across her chest, glaring at Pru. She could feel the eyes. "You’re so filthy. You always are."

She said nothing. Her mother handed her a towel and turned the water off. She wiped her hands slowly, and her mother took the towel from her abruptly, putting it into the hamper. "Go on, get out there and eat. You make so much work for me."

"I’m sorry."

"Just get out there." She walked back into the dining room, hearing the sound of her mother spraying Lysol in the air. She always did that. Always.

She looked at the dinner. It was almost identical to all the other dinners she’d had for years. There was a two-inch square piece of meat with a dime sized dollop of A-1 sauce next to it, a quarter cup of instant mashed potatoes and about twenty peas. She picked up her fork and pushed the meat a little. There were people having dinner on a table with a tablecloth, eating things like filet mignon by candlelight. What was Lance eating?

"Cut it up carefully or you’ll choke on it," her mother said, returning to the sink.

"Nobody could choke on a piece of food this small," she said wearily.

"People have drowned in a teacup of water. One sip and you can be dead," her mother answered sharply, holding up her hand and snapping her fingers. "Hurry up."

She was sick, not hungry. Her mother banged the dishes. "It’s cold," Pru said.

"Well, that’s not my fault. Take it up with the Reorganized Public School District Number Three. They’re the ones who decided you should go to school during dinner, not me."

She pushed the peas on the plate with the back of her fork.

"Turn your fork over. People who eat with their forks turned around just show their bad upbringing."

"Sorry." She took a bite and mashed it against the top of her mouth with her tongue.

"So, how was your day?" Her mother mouthed mechanically. The marriage counselor had said they should take a greater interest in what the others were doing and so, every day, without fail, they asked the same questions with the same intonation.

"I won that art contest."

"What art contest?" Her mother asked sharply.

"The Tri-County one."

Her mother crossed to the table and put her hands on it, leaning forward. "I told you specifically you were not to enter that."

"I know. I didn’t. The teacher did. And I won."

"Did she now? Well, we’ll see about that. Bill," she shouted down the stairs. "You better get up here now."

Her father’s muffled voice came from the basement. He coughed heavily a few times, and cleared his throat loudly. She heard, with dread, his feet on the steps.

"What do you want?" he said angrily.

"Well, do you know Prudence tells me?"

"What’d you do?" He demanded, lighting a cigarette. He put the match in the overflowing ashtray. She cringed.

"Well, it’s not what she did, apparently," Mom said, flailing her dishtowel dramatically on the word "she". "It’s this teacher of hers. She entered Prudence’s painting in the Tri-Country Art Contest."

"It won," Prudence volunteered. Her father had always said if she would grow up to be an artist he could forgive her for being a girl.

"Bill, I think I’m going to have to take it up with the school. Maybe you should go down to the P.T.A. meeting and talk about this."

"Talk about what?" Pru said, almost hysterically.

"The fact that these teachers are undermining the authority of the parents."

"I don’t think she meant to do that," Pru begged.

"Shut up," Mom barked. "You’ve done enough. Go to your room."

Pru slipped from the chair and walked gingerly past her father. "Well, it’s been twenty years since the Communists said they were going to take over the educational system," her father put in.

"Well, this is that art teacher that’s married to some foreigner. He’s a Moslem I think. They aren’t Communists."

"But obviously this is the Communist agenda," he argued, his voice becoming taut.

"Oh, you’re fill of shit," she said. "The Communists are undermining the math programs. This is different. This is something else. The next big war is going to be fought in the middle east with those people that woman is married to. I’m not putting up with this."

Pru slipped down the hall. Her sister’s door was closed, as always. She wanted to knock on it, but there wasn’t much point. She went in her room and started to close her door as well. "Don’t you close that door, Miss Prudence," her mother shouted. She sat down on the bed and listened to their voice raised in argument. What the hell were they fighting over? She couldn’t even tell. If they both agreed that the school system was undermining parents all they were fighting over then was why it was happening. The fight continued until her mother finished the dishes and then they went down stairs. The home office was right below Pru’s bedroom and every fight percolated up through the floor. They were constant, every day.

She laid back on the bed, exhausted, and stared at the ceiling. The fighting was escalating. They were fighting over what was going to happen in Viet Nam. How could anyone fight over what was going to happen in a situation over which nobody had any control? They moved on to something else. At 8:30 her mother stomped upstairs and told her to go to the bathroom. Mom turned on the water, checked the temperature and put a towel out. She was forbidden to go into the bathroom when she wasn’t authorized to. It was always too cold. "Don’t you touch that knob," Mom said pushing past her out of the bathroom. When she was old enough, she was going to live like one of those girls in the ads, a big hot bubblebath, a martini, a cigarette. She was going to spend whole days at a time in the bathroom, not just the ten minutes her mother timed on the little plastic timer. She put her clothes in the hamper and faced the lukewarm water. When she was done, she put on her nightgown and went to her room again. She laid down mechanically, because there was nothing else to do. Her mother was shuttling her sister to the bathroom. It must have been even more galling for her. She was five years older than Pru and still had her baths supervised. Plus Mom had this notebook in which she wrote everything down. Every time any of them went to the bathroom. She even wrote a word each time describing the bowel movements. "Balls" or "slightly loose."

"Time for your going to bed snack," her mother said flatly and she got up and went into the kitchen. On the table was a saucer with six thin slices of apple. They constituted only half of an actual apple. Her mother was opening the Xymenol bottle, and spooning up a tablespoon of the smooth white glop. "Come on," her mother snapped. "I don’t have all night." She accepted the blob of medicine and felt her mother pull the spoon up and out of her mouth. She put the spoon on the counter, picked up another one and turned to Betty and dosed her as well. "There. Get your food." The Xymenol was an odd combination of gaggingly awful and somehow wickedly delicious. It used to be Peragoric that they took every night, an opiate mixture with laxative qualities. Pru was sometimes afraid that without all this, her body wouldn’t know how to go to the bathroom, since it had, from the start, been artificially motivated. When the laxatives didn’t work on sluggish bowels, the terror of an enema would. She took three of the apple slices and ate them slowly. "Hurry up," her mother said. "Get in the bathroom and brush your teeth." She choked them down and then moved to the bathroom. She brushed her teeth, up and down, up and down and went back into her room. She scrubbed hard. Cavities were expensive. She looked at the light switch. Someday, she was going to turn it off by herself. But her mother said she would be electrocuted or that she’d get the switch dirty. She laid down and pulled the sheet and blanket up over her. With measured quick steps, her mother walked down the hall, turned off her sisters light and then hers. "Good night," she said, quickly. "Sleep tight."

"Good night," Pru mouthed. She turned and looked at her teddy bear, wrapped her arms around him. She had to give him up. Big girls, girls her age, didn’t sleep with teddy bears. Or if they did, they certainly didn’t talk about it. But he was hers. He wasn’t stylish. There were a lot of better-looking stuffed animals on the market and she yearned for them. The kind they had in magazines in toy-store ads. But he was Beary. There had been a Beary before him, but one day he had just vanished and this one was in his place. It had taken a long time, a lot of nights of crying before she realized that this Beary had incarnated the same comforting abilities as the original Beary, the only other one she remembered.

They were still fighting. She lay in the bed, her stomach drawing into a knot. They had moved on to more personal subjects. The words were muffled, but she could hear the intent. When their voices grew quiet, she was even more terrified, especially if there was any sort of a bang. He was going to kill her. One day, he was going to kill her. And then what would happen? She couldn’t even think beyond that moment.

When they flared up again, screaming at each other flat out, she was relieved. She clutched Beary to her chest, though, fingered the single plastic piece that made up his nose and slightly open mouth. She was going to run away. She was going to run away. Or die. She’d tried to die last year. She’d opened the windows and breathed the cold air in nothing but her nightgown, but even that hadn’t been enough to bring on deadly pneumonia. It was funny, all day at school, she waited to be home, miserable to be there. But when she got home, all she wanted to do was get back to school.

The next day dragged on until it was time for school. She thought about him all morning. What kinds of things did he do in the morning? She imagined running into him somewhere. They would talk. He would suddenly become aware of her. It would be wonderful. All she wanted to do was be close to him. She should switch seats. She should find some way to get closer to that corner. She sighed. That was silly. You could say, "Can I sit closer? I can’t read the board." But you couldn’t say, "Could I sit further back? I can read the board too well."

She dressed in shorts and hose with a white blouse. She probably looked okay. She wished she k new what his favorite color was. She hated wearing shorts everyday. There was something cheap looking about it, and yet it was daring too. But the real reason she wore them everyday was that at St. Faustus’ they’d all worn uniforms and so she had her two uniforms and a pair of slacks. But the pants were bought for her in fifth grade, and she was in seventh now. They didn’t fit. They did around, because she hadn’t gained much weight, thank God, but she’d gotten several inches taller. The shorts were all she had from her summer clothes that still fit. They were really tight. Her mother said she was going to have a big bottem. She also said that Pru’s top would develop in time, but Pru was still waiting.

It wasn’t that they were poor. They were "upper middle class", something that didn’t quite mean a lot, but Pru’s father liked to say it. There was something else going on. They bought the best food, name brands, but she wasn’t allowed to eat. They spent money on things but not clothing.

"I need new clothes," she whined. "It’s not like it was when I went to school and wore a uniform."

"We got two new outfits a year when I was coming up," her mother said tartly. "And a new pair of shoes once a year. You have a lot of clothes."

"They don’t fit me, Mom." There were clothes in her closet that had been there since first grade. Besides things were different now. That was the Depression. They lived out in the country and had to go into the city to buy clothes. There were a lot of differences. How was she ever going to meet a boy if she looked like hell all the time?

"Are you arguing with me?" Her mother menaced her. She prided herself on her self control, but threatened incessantly. "You aren’t abused," she would say. "I never hit you." But she did a great many other things. Still, if beating was the only criteria for abuse, Pru had to admit she wasn’t abused.

"I’m not arguing," she pleaded. "Everybody else wears a lot of different clothes."

"Well, we’ll see how they turn out. You aren’t everybody."

"But…"

"This discussion is terminated," her mother said.

Pru gasped. "You are so unfair," she cried. "You’re just being a bitch."

A coldness settled instantly over the house. When her mother spoke again her voice was crisp. "God," she said slowly. "Will forgive you for that." She spoke imperiously, as if she told God who to forgive and who not to forgive.

"What does God have to do with this?" It was futile to argue, and yet, in the same way as an animal might struggle in a trap, she continued.

"Get to your room now," her mother ordered and she knew, once again, she had lost.

She stood next to her locker and stared at the lock. One day she was going to forget everything. Her locker number, among these thousands of exactly identical lockers. The locker combination. Her lockermate’s name. Herself.

"Hey." It was Sid.

"Hi."

"Did you see Hawaii Five-O last night?"

"I went to bed." It was a stupid answer but Sid didn’t want to hear what she couldn’t do. The fact was that it made her look stupid. Obviously a mother is supposed to protect her children from things that would be bad for them. So it must be Pru that was off. She only half believed that, of course.

"You should watch it. I like it."

"It’s stupid," she sulked, relieved that Sid was talking to her again. "Did you get your new phone?"

"Oh, they canceled the order. They’re coming next week. Something about a trunk line. I don’t know." Sid put her books under her arm. "Come on. I’ve got Ho-Hos. You want one?"

"I can’t eat anything. I’m on a diet," she said faintly. But her stomach wrenched at the thought of food. It would mean breaking so many rules to say yes. She wasn’t to eat anything except food her mother gave her, because people might have poisoned it. And she wasn’t to eat chocolate, because when her sister was three, she’d had an allergic reaction to it. "You could die if you ate even one bite," her mother said. She knew that wasn’t true because at a fourth grade Christmas party, Mrs. Schneider had damned near insisted she eat a chocolate Santa, and she took a nibble or two off the side of his little head. Mrs. Shneider was very good natured. She didn’t have any idea how terrified poor Pru was. Neither was Mrs. Himmelgard when she teased Pru’s bangs for the fifth grade class picture, and Pru was terrified for three weeks until the pictures came in that her mother would punish her for teasing her hair. They all meant so well. But it was so impossible.

"You and your diets," Sid said, pulling a ho-ho out of the wrapper. "Come on. I hate to eat alone."

Pru’s stomach growled. "I can’t." Besides, if she got fat, Lance would never look twice at her.

"Oh, what, you’ll gain two ounces. How much do you weigh?"

"Um…ninety."

"Ninety? I’m like one twenty four. I should go on a diet. But you know what? I don’t want to. I used to think I would love like thirty pounds and get a boyfriend," Sid chewed meditatively and sort of swung along as they walked down the hall together. "Now, I think I’ll get the boyfriend and then lose the weight. You know why?"

"Why?"

"So I’ll know he loves me for me and not for my body." She licked the icing off her fingers and grinned triumphantly. She had it all worked out. "You like my earrings?" She flipped her hair back. They were large white metal hoops.

Sid nodded. "They’re great."

"My dad bought them for me last night. I asked him if I could buy them with my allowance money for the dance this weekend and he said I ought to have a pretty thing now and again. My mom said maybe I should wait and not wear them until Saturday. I said you couldn’t go to the dance and Mom said your Mom was nuts, but Daddy said, ‘Oh, let her go ahead and wear them today anyway and show her best friend.’ See…even Daddy knows you’re my best friend."

She smiled a little. She didn’t want to be Sid’s best friend. She didn’t want to be anyone’s best friend. "They look nice on you."

She didn’t even have pierced ears. How was she ever supposed to get a boyfriend if she didn’t have any clothes to speak of, and she didn’t have pierced ears and wasn’t allowed to wear fingernail polish. Even the littler girls, ones in grade school had pierced ears and polished their nails. But then, her nails were a disgrace. She bit them almost constantly. Why would any boy want her anyway?

"Well, what are you going to do this weekend."

"Maybe if I get lucky I can get hit by a truck."

"Oh, stop it," Sid said. "I think you make a lot of things up. I think you like going around like some weirdo."

"Oh, it’s great fun," she scoffed. "Okay. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do this weekend." She took a long, deep breath. "My parents have decided we’re going to start square dancing lessons."

There was a pause. "Okay. Pru Bishop. I know you’re lying. There isn’t any way on this green earth that could be the truth."

"Oh, but it is. Saturday night. Seven o’clock."

"Where at?"

"Some little town fifteen miles north of here. Winfield."

"Why?"

"Why. Well, because my parents go to this fruitcake marriage counselor who said we have to do things together as a group." She didn’t even dare say the "f" word, the one that was generally used to describe units of people living together. It didn’t apply here. "So I don’t know what happened. They fought a lot about it and then told us it was a joint decision."

Sid was laughing. "Oh, I can just see you square dancing."

"I’d rather chew my leg off," Pru said, her feelings almost rising to a tearful state. "Square dancing…"

"Oh, square dancing isn’t all that bad. We had a unit on it in gym class last year. It was fun."

"Maybe I can fall down and break my leg."

"Oh, you might have a good time. You might meet some old geezer who decides you’re his long lost granddaughter and gives you a million dollars."

"Right."

But by the next afternoon, she really was beginning to feel a little excited about it. It was something different. And square dancing had evolved from old English dances after all, so there was something historical and culturally important about it. It was an evening away from home. It was something different and that made it good.

The ride to Winfield was pleasant enough. From town it was a straight shot up Main Street to Old Highway 79 and from there a long straight flat drive through the bottoms to the little Mississippi River town. There might have been three hundred people in Winfield, but that could have been a great over estimation. Their city sign, the one with the population on it, had been shot full of holes. There wasn’t much in Winfield. There was a "locker", a place where Pru’s parents had gone several times to buy a half a cow. They’d bought a freezer at Sears, and by God, they were going to fill it. And they did, with plain white boxes of frozen vegetables and half a cow. Main Street ran along the train tracks and there wasn’t anything on the right side of the tracks. On the left side, a few streets went back toward the hills. Mom and Dad quarreled about what street to turn on and finally, he turned down one and found the little V.F.W. Hall. It was the first building on the block, it’s side facing the back of corner building. It was a low, one story, red brick building with storefront windows on either side of the door. They parked. It was the only New Yorker among all the other cars and trucks around. The 1960s hadn’t yet arrived in Winfield, at least not automotively. Mom snorted characteristically and looked at the shabby vehicles, the old rounded back sedans and pickup trucks. She looked at the girls with that dour expression. "Come on," she barked. "We don’t want to be late."

They went in the building. It was totally empty except for a table up in one of the windows and a few folding chairs against two of the walls. On the table in front there was a coffee pot set up and some cups. A man with a big belly in a checkered shirt and a string tie came forward and shook Dad’s hand.

"Howdy," he said.

"We’re the Bishops," Dad said. "I’m Jack Bishop. This is the little woman…" Pru blanched. Even without looking she could feel Mom tense up. There’d be words about that later. "Evie. And our daughters Betty and Prudence." The man turned to them and put out a rough hand. She shook his hand, humiliated.

"Well, good to see you all here. You done much square dancin’?"

"Well, Evie was born in the country," Dad said. "Barn dances and all that.’="

"We haven’t," Mom interjeted sharply, glaring at him. "Even in the country." Her voice was brimming with sarcasm. The man excused himself. "We left the country when I was nine," she said.

"Well, you were a country girl for nine years," he said, chidingly.

"And my relatives were all horse thieves," she answered with equal defiance. "To hear you talk."

"Well, weren’t they?" He shot her a look that would have daunted most women. Couldn’t she see that he was five or six inches taller than her and weighed twice as much?

God, why couldn’t they stop?

"Well. We’ll just have to tell Devereaux that this was a failure, won’t we, Jack? Along with everything else."

"You’re at fault for that failure, Evie." He blustered. "And you know it."

She laughed bitterly, recovering quickly. She put on her best smile and nodded at the group of three couples who came in. The men were all red-faced and portly, the women had bad dye jobs and tall hair. They took off their pastel colored chiffon scarves and smiled. "Remember, Jack, we’re here to have a good time."

He snorted. What were they doing here, Pru wondered? These were exactly the kind of people they desperately avoided at every turn. They were city people. They’d been to the symphony, the museums, Shaw’s Garden. Her sister went to a private girls’ school and played in recitals. They had lavished every one of the graces on her. She had dancing lessons, music lessons, even Latin lessons from a private tutor sixty miles away every Saturday. They were straightening her teeth. She said she was going to go to New York and be a model or an actress. She also said she was Hitler’s illegitimate daughter, never minding that he died ten years before she was born. Pru wasn’t sure about the modeling part. Anyone with such irregular and oily skin and such dreadfully gross habits and a putrid personality wasn’t going to make it as a model.

"We’re different than other people," she used to say. "We’re better than them. We’re like the Russian aristocracy thrown out on the world after the Revolution. They couldn’t do anything, but then, that was the mark of their superiority."

"But don’t you think we ought to be learning something about running houses and cooking?" Pru would ask.

"You want to be a drudge? I’m going to be rich. And have servants," Betty said with absolute confidence.

Just the same, Pru thought something wasn’t quite right. How could she learn anything when everything was so forbidden? She remembered a few months ago, she’d gotten up in the middle of the night, sick with hunger. She went to the refrigerator and opened the door. In an instant, her mother was there, wrapped in her twenty-year old terry cloth robe and a shabby nightgown. Under it, Pru could tell she was still wearing her conically padded bra. "Get your hands off that door," she said sharply. "Or I’ll break your arm. What the hell are you doing out of your room?"

"I was hungry."

"You didn’t eat anything did you?" She shook her head. She knew better. She’d eaten three shrimp off a plate one time. Her mother insisted they were poisoned, and had her father hold her while she put her finger down Pru’s throat and made her vomit. She didn’t eat without permission anymore. To add insult to injury, her father had eaten the rest of the shrimp and lived to tell the tale. She hadn’t even gotten a look into the refrigerator. There were leftovers, though. There always were. They were for her father’s midnight snacks.

"You’re just like your father. You’re going to end up fat. Get back to your room."

Tears welled up in her eyes. "I’m fourteen years old almost. Why can’t I get something out of the refrigerator? How come I’m not old enough?"

"When you’re old enough when you aren’t disobedient any more. Go to bed."

She walked past her mother, who stood, arms akimbo, in the doorway.

"I’m sorry," she said.

"You are, aren’t you," her mother intoned sarcastically.

She turned back tearfully.

"Oh, good. Cry. You are so unstable. That’s perfect."

"What do I have to do to please you?"

"Well," her mother snapped off the light. "If you have to ask, you can’t possibly do it."

"Just tell me," she begged, tears rolling down her face, humiliated at the triumphant look on her mother’s face.

"I’ll tell you. If you’re too stupid to figure it out, you will never be able to do anything. Why is pleasing me so important to you?"

"I don’t know." She spread her hands. She couldn’t win.

"It’s very late. Go on. I’ve told you several times now."

She went to her room, laid down and cried until the darkness was supplanted in the world of recurring nightmares. War and pestilence. Concentration camps, mostly, over and over. And the Bomb. The damned bomb. Viet Nam. Body bags. Napalmed children running naked, crying. Blubbering prisoners about to be shot in the head. Car wrecks. Mangled cars and mangled bodies. Oh, God…it was too much.

***

She shook herself back to reality. "Y’all want some coffee?" one of the ladies asked. "My what a pretty scarf," she said, pointing to the paisley cloth around Pru’s neck. "Nice color for you, honey. Now, you want that coffee?" she was looking back at Mom.

"Thank you, I won’t have any right now," her mother giggled. "Smells great, though."

"Well, you girls want a sodiepop?" One of the men bustled. "We ain’t got a machine in this building but there’s one over in front of the post office.

"They’re fine, thank you. We can’t let them have too much to drink, you know. It’s a long drive back home," Mom interjected. Pru died of humiliation on the spot, but Betty only simpered. There were musicians setting up at the rear of the room next to the red fire extinguisher. The fiddler was old. There was a guitarist who was probably in his thirties and a woman who played the upright bass. They made tuning up noises.

"Well, it’s much more difficult for Pru, who’s so much younger." She interjected, moving her head like some sort of high-brow English actress. She was thoroughly and completely sickening.

"Well, let’s all gather round and get started. Y’all know most of y’all. But we have the Bishops joining us for the first time. Jack and his lovely little wife, Evie and their two daughters." The caller was already tapping his foot in front of the three musicians. Someone gave a hoot and the ladies clapped politely and grinned great toothy grins. One of the ladies was still holding her chiffon scarf in one hand and it fluttered like a Victorian lady’s hankie.

"Well, alright. Here we go," the caller announced happily. "Now, you newcomers sit this one out and we’ll do one round and then show y’all how it’s done, alrighty?"

They nodded. Dad and Mom stood stiffly side-by-side and Betty arched her back and looked down her nose. Pru, on the other hand was ready to try to have a good time. This was, after all, an assignment. They might as well enjoy it.

The caller pattered away at an almost diablolical pace and said words that Pru hadn’t ever heard before. When they stopped the scarf woman fluttered her scarf at her partner. The men bowed and the ladies curtsied. The caller came down from the little riser he was standing on. "Okay, now, little lady," he said, addressing himself to Pru. "Think you can do that?"

She laughed despite herself. Betty would kill her later for that. She shook her head. "I don’t think so."

"Well, I’ll tell you what. We’ll just pair you up with some fellers who are mighty fine dancers, and we’ll just get y’all fixed right up, what say you?"

She nodded soberly and prayed to be consumed by the plank flooring. He motioned to one of the old fat men and he came over. He limped a little, which was odd for a dancer of any kind. "Okay, now, this is Silas Martin. He’ll show you how it’s done."

Pru didn’t have time to see how Betty was faring. The man was suddenly talking to her in a quick businesslike tone. "Alright. You know how to do-sa-do?"

She shook her head.

"Alamande left?"

She shook her head again. "Well," he took her in with his gaze and then grabbed her hands.. "You’re just a little drink of water, aren’t you?’

She practically fainted. His hands were big, sweaty, rough. Oh, please, God, let me die, she thought. The music started again and he stopped talking. She hadn’t comprehended a word. Left. Right. She didn’t know one from the other. He crossed his hands and held hers, nudging her to stand beside him.

"Ladies on the inside, gents on the out." The caller said, taking of his white hat and swinging it in time with the music. "Alright and here we go…" The fiddler bowed into the music and the caller’s voice came over the rude loud speaker. "Alamande left with your left hand, switch your partner and right and left grand, Do-sa-do and away we go, Promenade and take her on home." Something like that. Pru hardly had time to listen to it. Her partner was more or less pushing her through the steps. When they came to Alamande Left, they were all walking along, taking the hand of the person in front while letting the person behind trail off. It was all too confusing, and besides, she really didn’t know left from right and never had been able to learn it. She was nearing tears when the tune stopped. "You did real good for the first time, honey," the man said sympathetically. "You just stick around and you’ll be a good little dancer in two shakes of a lamb’s tail." She didn’t want to stick around. She as exhausted. She’d spent half the night up the night before worrying about this, and then was so excited throughout the day it expended an awful lot of energy. And now, this. It was almost 9:30 and she was almost never up past 8:30.

The end of the evening finally came and they trooped out into the cold air to the car. They piled in, Pru in her assigned place behind the driver’s seat and Dad put it in gear and started away from the curb. Only then was the tension broken.

"Well," Mom began in her most syrupy tone. "Did we all have fun?"

"Well, did you?" Dad asked, his voice thickened with sarcasm.

Betty leaned over to Pru. "It was sick. Did you see the way they looked at us? Those old men, undressing us with their eyes."

Pru hadn’t noticed, and if they had, they surely must have been sorely disappointed. She sat back against the seat. Her body was sore, not so much from the exertion but from the tension.

"Well, Jack, do you think Devereaux will be happy?" Mom asked.

"Well, how the hell would I know? You want to make Devereaux happy? Is that what you’re up to? Is that why you’re doing this?"

"You certainly seemed to like that woman with the scarf."

"Oh, Evie, you going to start crap again? What about you making eyes at that caller?"

"I wasn’t making eyes at the caller. He spoke to me. I spoke back."

Pru covered her head with her arms.

"Put your hands down, Prudence. You’ll keep your father from being able to see out the rear view window and he’ll have a wreck and we’ll all be killed." She put her hands down, wondering if Lance had ever square danced. Maybe he hated it. She would have to hate it to, of course.

"You’re just trying to change the subject, Evie." She could hear the anger rising in his voice. She looked up fearfully over the seat at the lighted control panel. It glowed an eerie green and the needle soared up and over the fifty-mile-an hour curve and then up to sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five. It settled there. He was shouting, though, and Mom was yelling back. It seemed like a hopelessly dangerous situation. He lit another cigarette and the smoke came swirling around toward Pru. She tried to hold her breath, but it was impossible. It made her nauseous, that and the speed and the fighting.

"You want to screw him don’t you?" he shouted, puffing at the cigarette furiously. She stared out the window, putting her face against the cold glass. "You want him to…"

"That’s enough," Mom said coldly. "Oh my God, Jack, look out." Up ahead there was a car approaching. It was close, if not a little over the center line. Dad pulled the car over swerving onto the thin gravel margin by the side of the road. "Did you see him? We could have all been killed. Must have been drunk. Or on drugs. You weren’t paying any attention at all, were you?"

He slammed his hands against the steering wheel. "You just can’t quit, can you?"

The glass was cool. Outside toward the river, it was all dark. Only every so often would a light appear. Maybe it was a house on the Illinois side of the river, or a boat. It was impossible to tell. The car rocked a little every time it went over the expansion joints in the road that were positioned every twenty feet or so. It was a nice, constant motion with just enough variation to make it even more hypnotic. She began to nod off. Did people who died in car wrecks stay and haunt the sections of road where they died? She sat up, suddenly afire with anxiety. There was nothing to do about it. If she was going to die, she was going to die. She went through, almost instantaneously, a long list of wrecks she’d heard about, photographs she’d seen on the front pages of the newspapers emblazoned with headlines like, "Three Killed at Railroad Crossing" or "Car Hits Tree, Kills Newlyweds." It was true, she desperately wanted to be dead. But she didn’t want to be hurt. It didn’t really make sense, but there it was. She began to doze off again, and finally, lulled by the motion of the car, fell into a deep and surprisingly peaceful sleep.

**

Monday morning she found Sid at the snack bar. She had an unerring ability to find that girl just about anywhere on campus. Consider that there were almost 3,000 students in the school, that was some pretty good work.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," Sid looked up. "I got some moon pies. Want one?"

Did she? Did she ever. "I’m not hungry," she said nervously. "How was the game?"

"Ohhh," Sid said rapturously. "It was wonderful. Well, not the game. Oh, we did win, though."

"Yay, rah," Pru said dully.

"Oh, but I met this boy. Ohhh, Pru. He’s adorable. He’s so cute. He’s fifteen and he goes here . Well, of course. But he plays football. And he’s really nice." She rattled on and on until it was time to go to class. "We sat under the bleachers with his buddies and drank Peppermint Schnapps and Mateus. You know, that wine from the bottle we were drawing in art class? I can’t wait for you to meet him," she hugged her books. "Promise me you’ll like him, okay?"

"Okay."

"But not too much, cause he’s mine," she added smugly. "His name is Buster."

"Okay." That didn’t seem like too difficult a promise. He wasn’t likely to be anything she’d be interested in anyway. She thought fleetingly of Lance. He was the only one she could love, the only one she wanted to love. She tried, in English class to imagine him walking over to her desk, putting his hands on hers and drawing her up, embracing her and kissing her but it was impossible. She couldn’t even think the thought. She had to get him to talk to her, to see her as she really was. She remembered the first time she’d come into the classroom, and the boys yelled, "Hey, Frizzie" at her, and he shushed them. He recognized something in her, something of her inward beauty.. If only he would talk to her, though.

"How was your weekend?" Sid asked suddenly.

"Fine."

"Just fine?"

"Just fine." Naturally Sid wouldn’t remember anything about the square dancing and she wasn’t going to bring it up. Just better to let well enough alone.

Her parents went to the marriage counselor at two on Fridays. She’d met him once. He was a walrus-shaped man with white, flabby hands with an office twenty miles away. They couldn’t go to one in town, of course. People might talk.

They fought like cats and dogs all Friday night and into Saturday. In the afternoon, he went out and Mom got Betty up from bed and they talked about reincarnation. Their own. She tried to listen in, but they were snide and uninviting. They fought a lot too, but again, mostly about details. The day dragged on so much that she could only yearn for the time when they would get in the car and drag themselves to Winfield. Dad had to stop for cigarettes.

"We’re going to be late," Mom said. "I know it."

"So we’re a few minutes late," he scoffed. "God damn it, Evie. You gotta be God all the time?"

"I’m just saying…"

"So I’ll drive a little faster…"

She got a smug look on her face. "Just exceed the speed limit. You don’t care about anything, do you?"

"Shit," he said. She closed her eyes, nauseated. What if Lance square danced? She imagined him dressed in dark trousers, a white shirt and courderoy jacket, holding onto her hands, stepping and turning, smiling at her. She drew a long breath and sighed.

But by the time the Winfield grain elevator came into view, she was nervous again. Her mother sat up straight. "It’s 7:02."

"So what?" he said.

"We’re late. We might just as well turn around and go home."

They got out of the car anyway and went into the little building. The caller greeted them cheerfully. There were more people there. About ten more. Her mother walked up to the caller. "I’m so sorry we’re late," she said importantly. "We were unavoidably detained."

He nodded. "Well, we’re just glad you folks could make it."

Pru was suddenly terribly afraid again. It wasn’t going to be any fun at all. She remembered, almost viscerally, the feelings of the sweating palms, of being pushed through the steps. "Alright, everyone. Take your places. Make up your squares," the caller said and there was an enthusiastic hoot. She looked over in the direction from whence it had come. The hooter was a lanky boy, not much taller than her, with dark red hair and freckles. He was wearing a short sleeved polyester blend checkered shirt, blue jeans with a wide belt and a huge silver belt buckle and boots. He jumped over to the circle next to hers and grabbed the hand of the scarf lady, who tittered. The caller started and Pru was once again swept up in the misery of not knowing what to do. Still, she managed to stay upright, and, at this point, that seemed to be half the battle.

When that set had finished, and everyone had faced the music, clapping, the caller stepped forward. "Think we’ll make some changes here," he said. "Milton."

The red-haired boy’s head shot up. "Yes, sir?"

"You come on over here and partner up with Sue here." Pru looked at her shoes. At least they were putting him with someone else. But the boy suddenly appeared at her side. "Yeh. Good. Okay…and we’ll put Fred Dartmouth with Mrs. Mulliver and Mr. Mulliver with Evie and then we’ll switch George and Jack and that’ll be just fine." While the caller was still speaking, the boy picked up her hand from where it was at her side, and then, to her horror, reached across her and took her other hand in his hot one.

"Howdy, Sue," he said. "Nice to meet you."

"It not Sue," she said faintly, miserable to wriggle her fingers out of his hand. "It’s Pru."

"Pru. Oh. Howdy, Pru," he began again. "Nice to meet you. I’m Milton."

"Nice to meet you," she whispered. If only he would let her go. What in the world was this. Ever since she could remember, she’d been allowed to touch nobody and nobody was allowed to touch her. And now the same woman who had demanded that, who had threatened to break her arm if she touched her own mother, had put her in a position where she had to suffer this. She felt dirty. She took a deep breath. On the other hand, how was she ever going to get married or get a boyfriend if someone didn’t touch her? But him? This red-headed hick?

"What school you go to?" he asked, trying to peer around into her downturned face.

"Um. Fort Frontenac Junior High?"

"Really?" his hands moved up and down in unison with his head. "Me too." Well, it wasn’t so remarkable. It was the only Junior High in the district. "What grade are you in?"

"Seventh."

"Me too," he said gregariously. "Who’ve you got?"

She quickly ran through list of teachers. He had some of the same ones, but at different hours.

"You musta just started last week," he said wisely.

"Yes."

"Cause if you’da been here before, I’da seen you."

She nodded. He fell silent, having apparently spent his conversational abilities. Mercifully, the music started. He was a good dancer, she thought, but then she blanched. That is to say, he seemed to know a lot about square dancing. Real dancing was like Nuryev.

Still, by the time they broke for coffee and cookies, she was glancing at him a little, even admiring him. Something about just being in that kind of contact, and the fact that he was less pushy than the older men during the dance. He moved her where she needed to be, but he seemed more patient. "It takes a while to get it," he said.

"How long have you been square dancing?" she asked, appalled at how stiff her voice sounded.

"’Bout two years. Want a soda?"

She shook her head. She did. But it would get awkward.

"Okay. Well, I’m going to go across the street and get one. I’ll get you one. Orange pop maybe?"

She shook her head. "Really. I’m fine."

"I’m sweatin’ like a mule," he laughed, pulling his shirt out and away from his body repeatedly. "Okay. Well, talk at ya in a bit," he grinned and sprinted over to one of the taller boys, and picked up a ten-gallon hat off one of the chairs. They went out together. The taller one pulled on a jacket, but Milton just went as he was, except for putting on the oversized hat. She watched him walk from one pool of streetlamp light to the next. Brisk steps. His jeans were tight across his buttocks, and the tail of his shirt was tucked neatly into it, his hands stuffed in the front pockets. He was the very picture of what a country boy was supposed to be. She glowed a little inwardly. He was nothing like any boy she’d ever wanted, or could imagine wanting. He came back in a few minutes, walking with a slight swagger. He took a long swig off the soda bottle in the middle of the graveled street. They came in the door with a gush of cold wind. He came alongside her, pinched the hat in the middle and doffed it. "Like my hat?" he said.

"Um…" she could feel herself blush. "It’s very…" Farmish? Country? Hick? "Nice."

"Yeh, it is, isn’t it. I give two dollars fifty cents for it. You want to sit?"

"I’m fine." She wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

"You oughta meet my friends over here. Come on." He had ahold of her elbow and she moved mechanically along with him. She glanced over at Betty, who was standing, one shoulder against the wall, the back of her hand resting against her hip. She couldn’t get Betty’s glance.

"This is my brother Mitchell. This is Pru. Not Sue. Pru," he said almost proudly. The tall lanky boy he’d gone for the soda with nodded. "And this here’s…" she missed the name, but smiled anyway. They stood there for a few minutes, the boys talking about the flooding on local streams and whether or not the Mississippi would rise above flood stage before or after March 1. She crossed her arms over her chest and stood quietly. He seemed perfectly relaxed, perfectly comfortable. But then, this was his mileau. He didn’t say another word to her until it was time to dance again and then he just took her by the hand and dragged her back to the circle. Strangely, though, it started to feel comfortable, even natural. By the end of the evening, she was smiling at him, watching him curiously. He had knotty protruberances at the ends of his jaw, just under his ears, and a lot of freckles. His Adam’s apple was just beginning to stick out, in that awkward transition between boyhood and manhood. His thin arms glistened with reddish blonde hair, still smooth like a boy’s. There was a bucking bronco on his huge belt buckle.

When the evening was over, they put on their coats to leave. He was standing in the window, wrestling with his jacket when a pickup truck pulled down the street. He gave a low whistle. "Ouuueeee," he intoned. "Next summer when I turn sixteen, I’m gonna get me one of them. Ford pickup. Nineteen sixty two or so. Damn good trucks. Take it down on the bottoms and drink all night." He looked at her. "See you in school, maybe, huh?"

She nodded. They were coming. She put her knit cap on her head. "Bye."

"I’ll look for you," he swaggered.

"Okay," she said shyly, following them out of the building to the car. She sat in her customary place in the back seat and fastened her seatbelt.

"Ohhhh, look," Betty said, precisely. "He’s waving." She looked up and he was. Standing on the street, on the narrow sidewalk, he was waving. She waved back.

"Ohhh, isn’t that darling," Mom said. "Pru has a young man admirerer."

She shrank back into the seat.

"He’s awfully ugly," Betty said.

"Well, you can’t expect much," Mom said wearily.

"She likes him though." Betty’s hand slid across the seat and pinched her leg. "Doesn’t she? You liked the way he was looking at you, didn’t you?"

"Well," Dad said. "I think we’ve all known for a long time that we’re going to have to keep an eye on Prudence."

"You certainly danced a lot with that boy," Mom interjected.

"She talked with him a lot too. And did you see how she went over there to that group of other people with him? Have you set a date yet?" Betty was smugly triumphant.

Pru felt tears burn in her eyes, and pulled at the buttons on her coat. Nobody looked twice at Betty. It wasn’t Pru’s fault.

"We used to have a saying," Dad said slowly. "There are two kinds of girls. The kind you marry and the kind you don’t. Pru’s got a good start on being the kind you don’t."

"I didn’t do anything," she said bitterly. "I did what I was supposed to do. We were supposed to dance. Well, I did it."

"See that’s all you do," Mom said in a brittle voice.

"I didn’t do anything," she begged. But it wasn’t true. She did things. She had thoughts and she did things. They didn’t have a name, but they made her feel dread guilt. But she couldn’t stop. Every day she swore she wouldn’t do it again. Every night she prayed for God to forgive her, and to relieve her of that need to do that thing. But that didn’t have anything to do with this. It had to do with the fact that she was terribly, horribly, inately flawed, perverse. She would have been better off dead. She put her face against the glass and tried to forget there was a place called Winfield.

She went to school, dreading the possibility of seeing him. By Thursday, she was actually able to walk in the hall without absolute terror. If he hadn’t caught up with her by that time, he probably wouldn’t. Mingled with her relief, though, was a certain disappointment. She went to the library on Study Hour and looked through the books. Sid came up behind her. "Hey, you," she said cheerfully. Pru jumped, whirled around and squawked. Sid laughed, but it was a short, tense laugh..

"You’re just wound up like a top," she said. "I’ve got to talk to you."

"What about?" Sid motioned her to the radiator under the long window at the end of the bank of bookshelves. They sat down on it.

"I’ve got a problem."

"What?"

"I don’t think he likes me."

"What do you mean? Buster?"

"Chip. I met him sometime last week. Didn’t I tell you? Well, I want him to go out with me. And we kind of are, but he won’t….well…I told him my parents wouldn’t let me date him. They don’t want me to date until I turn fifteen."

"It’s sixteen for me," Pru said sadly.

"Well, but there’s other things we can do besides date. But he just doesn’t pay attention. I mean. I talk and he doesn’t seem to care, and then he starts talking about something else. Like what happened in shop class. It isn’t like it is when we talk, you know?"

She nodded. But she knew she was a hypocrit. She hadn’t ever talked to a boy like that.

"Well. I’m going to tell him that when I told my parents I wanted to go out with him, they beat me."

"Why?"

"So he’ll feel sorry for me, silly. But you’re so clever. How am I going to make something that looks like bruises so I can show him?"

"I don’t know." She felt suddenly like a goldfish out of its bowl. "That’s not true, though."

"Well, I bet if I told my parents what I want him to do, they’d beat me," she said eagerly.

"Oh, but Sid. You’d be saying something bad about your parents that wasn’t true, and lying to him, too."

"Don’t be such a goody two shoes," Sid sulked. "I could have asked my other girl friends, you know. I only asked you because you’re so intelligent."

It was balm to her soul. "Well," Pru began, hating herself for saying anything. "You could put some blusher on a place and then put some lipstick in a smaller area, like a streak or something."

"Yes," Sid jumped up. "Ohhh, you’re wonderful. I’ll do that."

"You do that," Pru thought. "Let me know what happens…" She said aloud.

"Oh, I could hug you. I will." Sid jumped up and sped down between the shelves of books. Pru sat staring at her wake in silent horror. What had she done? A few minutes later, she saw Sid amidst a gaggle of other talking girls, and her soul went into the bottom of her feet. Not only had she done something wrong, but Sid had talked her into it by complimenting her, and then was quick to rejoin her real friends. Serves you right, Pru thought. You trying to do something bad like that. You should be punished.

She turned and looked out the frosted window. How could she? How could Sid. She looked up again. It was the red-headed boy. He was walking up to the reference desk just inside the front door of the library, slipping some books into the return slot. She trembled a little. She should get up and leave. But what if he saw her? She waited. A few minutes passed. He wasn’t in sight anymore. She got up and started to walk as quietly and demurely as possible toward the front door, her books clamped against her chest.

"Hey," she heard a loud whisper. "Hey. Pru."

She kept walking, too terrified to turn. He was coming up behind her. She went through the little turnstile and out into the hallway. "Oh," she turned. "Hello."

"Hey. Didn’t you hear me?"

She shook her head. "Sorry. I was…"

"It’s okay. Hi."

"Hello." She looked down at the floor.

"Hi." He repeated. This was going nowhere fast. They were both silent. She couldn’t take her eyes off the floor. "You like to read?"

She nodded.

"Not me. I hate it. I only do it when I have to. You know what I’m good at?"

She shook her head.

"Math. I’m real good at math."

"Oh." She looked up at the ceiling. From the floor to the ceiling. She managed to avoid looking directly at him in the passage. "I don’t like math."

"Girls aren’t any good at it," he laughed a little shortly. "But I’m even better than most of the boys."

She nodded, biting her lower lip. There was a long awkward silence. "Well," she said finally. "I have to…"

"You going to the game Friday night?" He put his thumbs behind his belt buckle.

She shook her head. Her legs began to tremble.

"My cousin Tiff Monahan plays on the basketball team," he said eagerly. He didn’t sound confident. Driven, yes. But not confident "If you went we could go over and get a coney dog or something afterwards with him and my brother and some of the other kids. He’s like six foot one and he’s only sixteen."

"I can’t go," she said stiffly.

"How come?" he said in a voice that was almost too rational.

"I just can’t. I hate basketball." She hugged her books tighter. Coney dog. Oh, God…a greasy fried hot dog with dark stripes down it, chili, cheese, tiny, sweet bits of onion. Her eyes rolled upward inadvertantly, and she blinked quickly to resume her former expression. Mom said onions would kill her if she ate them. Her Dad ate them constantly, on everything, raw sliced onion. "Men are different," she sniffed. "But I’ll tell you, they’ll kill you." But she wanted them. Suicide by coney dog.

"Well, will you be there on Saturday?"

She looked up with relief. "I think so. I guess so."

"Well, then," he said, a little stiffly. "I’ll see you then."

She nodded but could say nothing and stared at the floor again. "Okay," he said finally. "Bye."

"Bye."

For a few minutes she stood stock still, terrified that if she moved her books, she would find the heat that she’d felt had left a huge splotch of perspiration on her nearly completely flat chest. It hadn’t ever happened before. But there was always a first time. Her knee stopped trembling and she finally ventured to take a few unsteady steps toward the classroom. It was okay. She could walk. Ohh, God. How could you be so cruel? There wasn’t any way she could be decent to him on Saturday. How could she show him she liked him even a little, under the watchful eyes of her mother and sister. They’d still been ridiculing her on Tuesday, three days after it happened. And Dad. That was just sick.

When she got home, she pushed the dark overcooked meat around on her plate. "Mom, can I go to the basketball game on Friday night?"

There was a long pause. "Why would you even think of a thing like that?" her mother said, the ligaments of her neck showing. "Hmmm? Answer me."

"I just thought it was worth asking."

"Just why do you want to go to this…basketball game?"

"I just did."

"They drink at those games," she said imperiously. "And I am told by reliable sources that they fornicate under the stands."

Good for them, Pru thought. "Is that what you’re thinking of doing?"

She shook her head. "I just thought I would ask. We’re supposed to show support for the school."

"Well, don’t ask. If you want to show support for that school, get better grades," Her mother wiped the table beside her with a damp dishcloth. "Get to your room now."

She went into her room and laid down. It was impossible. She was dying. She felt nothing anymore. Nothing. Her mother was going back downstairs, calling "Jack, Jack. Get up. We have to talk. Do you know what Prudence just said?" She could hear her mother’s voice and her father’s more muffled one. Mom was probably standing out in the hallway and Dad was laying on his bed in his room across from the laundry room. He had that section of the house entirely to himself. She was never allowed down there. She could, once in a while, go into the office, because there was a television set there and the record player. But she was only allowed an hour of television a week.

She stood up numbly, and crossed to the door. Mom was downstairs. She wouldn’t know. She closed the door, cringing as the brass fitting clinked into the depression on the door jamb. But it was closed. She snapped the light off. Two forbidden acts. She opened the curtains, for a third. Light from the streetlamp brought enough of a glow to the room that she could see what she was doing. She opened the thin stationary drawer and examined the contents. It was all perfectly organized. There was a pack of matches under the little white plastic divider tray. She’d stolen the matches from her father’s dresser on one of her rare forays downstairs. She took a paperclip, straightened it out and lit the end of a candle bit that she’d gotten from the kitchen. They never used candles, except when the lights went out, and Mom never threw anything away, so there were a few nibs. She hoped to hell Mom didn’t inventory them like she did everything else. She lit it with a shaking hand, watched the flame dance above the braided wick. She put the end of the paperclip in it, heated it until it glowed and then laid it on the inside of her arm, just below her elbow. It seared. She heard the sound. She smelled the flesh burn. But she felt nothing. When it cooled, she reheated it and reapplied it again and again until the flesh was punctuated by long swollen lines rimmed in red. She stared at the wounds in the dim light, and remembered cigarette burns on the palm of her hand. She wasn’t more than three, four, maybe five, but she remembered them. They said she was just careless, just clumsy. That was how they always explained it. Only then, staring at the wounds, did she begin to feel something. Pain. It hurt. But somehow not enough. She did it again, going back over the same places. Finally, she dropped the paperclip. She furrowed her brow. She hugged her arms around herself and felt the pure, clean pain. Why couldn’t she die? Why was it so difficult? She blew out the candle and laid back down on the bed, waiting. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt so much she couldn’t think of anything else. Thank God.

She followed her parents in to the V.F.W. hall. There was a gaggle of kids in the back of the room. There was another girl. A fat blonde girl. She had huge breasts. Milton was standing with his back to her. He danced with the fat girl for the first set, and then went and took a break with his friends. He hadn’t even looked at her. She sat on one of the folding chairs, holding onto the sides of it for dear life. "Well, my uncle said he come up on that wreck that was at 79 by Dardenne." He announced in a voice far too loud to be necessary for communicating to that small a group. She sucked in her breath. She didn’t want to hear this story. It was going to end badly.

"Did he?" one of the other boys asked.

"Yeh, he said. "There was this one guy on the ground. Cut the car clean in half."

She felt instant sick. There were whistles of admiration. "Yeh, it was a truck that like hit this older car. I think it was a Dodge sedan or somethin’. But cut…"

She put her hands over her ears and hummed softly. She couldn’t stand to hear it again. How could he? How could he? She took her hands slowly from her ears. "Yeh, that driver, was dead drunk. And he was on the wrong side of the road to boot." There were more whispered, hushed voices, and then his came streaming over the rest. "Man, he said they had to put it in …" There was something ghastly and triumphant in his voice. Was he trying to torture her or just showing off?

She stood up unsteadily and walked toward the front window and put her hands on the glass, resting her hot forehead against it’s hard cold surface. The caller summoned them to dance and she turned back toward the group. She looked at the floor and moved toward her place. He was there, grabbing her hand in his freckled ones. "Got a date?"

She shook her head, nauseated. Why did he have to touch her? She could have died.

He was jovial, spirited. He pulled her around the floor, whirled her happily. She was numb. She wanted to cry. If she did anything they would all be on her neck. If she did anything, he would think she liked that kind of thing. That she liked loud, brazen boys who told horrible stories. "You shoulda gone to the game last night," he said significantly. "We had a real good time. And then we went to the bowling alley and had burgers and fries and root beer."

"I hate basketball."

"Well, what about bowling? You hate bowling, too?"

"Yes."

"So don’t ask you to go bowling?" Her mother wouldn’t let her go to the bowling alley. Someone said somebody had put drugs in somebody’s drink at the bowling alley.

She didn’t say anything. "Ice skating? Field hockey? Tiddley Winks? Mumbly Peg? Ummm…what do you do?"

She pulled her hand out of his. "I can’t go out with you," she said stiffly.

There was a long pause. "I didn’t ask you to go out," he said tersely. "I just asked you to go a basketball game."

She bit her lip. "I’m sorry," she said. "I can’t go out with you." It would have been easy enough, surely, to say, "My mother won’t let me", but then he’d think she was a little kid. She glanced up into his face. It was dark, cloudy. "I’m sorry," she repeated. "I’m…I’ve got a…there’s someone else," she finished with a toss of her head.

"Really? Someone else? You mean like you have a boyfriend?"

She bit her lower lip and thought of Lance. Well, it was true, she couldn’t exactly be in love with one boy and going out with another. "Well…sort of."

He stared at her incredulously. "Either you do or you don’t."

She looked away.

He blew out his breath angrily. "Well, maybe by next Saturday you can figure it out, huh?"

"Maybe," she moved away and put her coat on. When they got in the car, Betty hissed at her.

"Ohhh, your boyfriend is looking at you again."

"Shut up," she snapped, but she didn’t dare look.

All the way home all she could think of was the grisly story he’d told. Why did he do that? Why do boys do that? Don’t they have any idea that this was the end of a person’s only life? Unless one believed in reincarnation like her mother did. She said that people suffered things in their lives now that were payback for the things they’d done in past lives. So if someone had a sore neck all the time, it was probably that he had hanged someone in a former life or something. It was all so rational, so fair. "Well, then," she said once. "What about me?"

"You were obviously very evil in a former life." Her mother said. Betty, sitting on the piano bench, smiled smugly.

"Well, what do you think I did?" she asked miserably.

"Something…I don’t know. Probably to your sister or me. You were probably a man."

"I think so," Betty said. "You have fingernails like a man’s…"

She curled her fingers up. She had little hands. It didn’t make any sense. "Well," she said "When you were Leda and Helen, who was I?"

The laughed bitterly. "Clytemnestra," Betty said precisely.

"Who’s she?" Pru’s voice betrayed a certain eagerness. Betty scoffed. "She’s retarded," she said, turning to Mom.

"Well," Mom said, picking up and refolding this week’s Enquirer and replacing it on the top of the stack of tabloids and astrology magazines. "We always knew she wasn’t very bright."

"Clytemnestra, for your information," Betty began. "Was Helen’s sister."

"What did she do?"

"Nothing. She got married and had a bunch of kids and died."

"That’s all?" She didn’t have a face that launched even five hundred ships? Fifty? One would be good enough. A skiff. A dingy.

"She was just the stupid younger sister," Betty said.

"Why don’t I ever get anything good?" Pru stormed.

"Get to your room," Mom said affecting weariness.

"But…"

"Get out of here or I’ll slap you until your teeth rattle," she raged through her own clenched teeth, starting to rise from the dark red blocky easy chair. Pru turned quickly and waveringly walked down the hall, her fists clenched. She threw herself on the bed and laid there, staring up at the sanded swirls in the plaster for a few minutes. She dragged the sleeve of her blouse up and stared at the burn wounds. They were healing, the bright pink skin replaced slowly by a thin, protective crust over a pale purple splotch. She studied them silently, without blinking.

In a moment, without conscious thought, she took her nails and raked at the burns until the skin came off and blood welled up. She laid back then, her head against Beary and the pillow, her arm raised over her face, staring at the blood. It felt good. It felt good to hurt. It felt alive.

She rolled over onto her stomach and stared at her arm. The blood came enough now that it began to trickle downwards. Only then did she realize how much trouble she was in. If the blood reached the bed, if it stained her sheets or the blouse, she was in real trouble. There was always an inquisition whenever there was any blood that ended with recriminations, like "How could you have been so stupid", or careless. Whatever, it didn’t matter.

When she was about eight, she’d been playing under the porch, a very forbidden place, but her mother was napping. The pills did a good job. She’d taken a gardening tool, a little three tined fork and tapped it against the ground. She angled it wrong though, and sent one of the tined into her leg just above the ankle. It didn’t bleed much. She wanted to go in, to wash it up and put a bandaid on it, but she’d have to ask for the bandaid and then Mom would know she’d been under the porch and scream, and threaten, or push her, rake her with her nails as she shoved her toward her room. It was better to keep quiet.

But it got infected, terribly infected, and made her limp. Mom demanded to know what had happened and she told her. "Damn you," Mom screamed. "You probably got tetanus. Do you know what that is?"

It was something that killed people and killed them horridly. Her mouth, already dry burned. "But I had a shot for it." She felt like there was a fist clenching and unclenching rapidly in her chest, and shooting pains all through her stomach.

Mom stared down at her and shook her head. "Well, then we can just pray it works," she’d said with an air of superiority. "It’s a good thing we bought those plots."

Damn good thing.

**

Monday couldn’t come too soon. She moved mechanically down the hallway, looking for Lance or Sid. Maybe Milton. She wasn’t sure. If she saw him, she’d be embarrassed. She went to home room and sat quietly in her seat. Sid blew in and threw herself beside Pru.

"Ohhh, Pru, you like my new hairdo?" Sid turned her head this way and that. They’d trimmed about three inches off the bottom and made it feathery. It looked like something out of a magazine. But Sid’s face was still Sid’s face. She had a woman’s hair and a girl’s face. "You should go to the Pink Palace Beauty Parlor. There’s this girl there, Charisse. She’ll do yours like mine. And look," she held out her stubby fingers. The nails were neatly manicured, filed into little lozenge shapes, perfectly rounded at the ends, and painted a seashell pink. "Nice, huh? Oooh, remind me to tell you about Earl. He’s the greatest. I met him yesterday at this church dinner. He is soooo cute."

The home room teacher, Mr. Loftis, came in, followed by a young woman they hadn’t seen before. "People, we have a guest today," he said flatly. "I’ll just sit back here and you can take it from there." Without looking at the woman he moved toward the back of the classroom.

She had the same sort of short cropped hair style that Sid had just gotten, and a tight, tailored jacket over slacks. Slacks. Sid and Pru exchanged looks. Women didn’t wear slacks. Not in a school setting. For gardening or fishing, maybe. Capri pants were for women who hung around swimming pools, but these were slacks like a guy would wear. She turned and looked toward the window, her eye falling on Sid first and then Pru. She smiled broadly at them. She smiled at Pru.

"Hey, people," she said, setting down her notebook on the desk. She came around the front of the desk and, putting her hands behind her, boosted herself onto the edge of the desk. Sid poked her pencil into Pru’s thigh and rolled her eyes. "Settle down now. Let’s get started. I’m Filippa Josephson. You can call me Phil."

Pru found Sid’s eyes again and they both widened. Phil opened the buttons of her jacket and slipped it off. She was wearing a dark purple silky blouse with huge sleeves and a ton of long, thin gold chains of graduated lengths. Just like a model. She pushed her hair aside and crossed her arms in a businesslike fashion over her chest. There was something odd about her chest. It was lower then most women’s, and softer. It moved a lot. "I’m the new seventh grade guidance counselor," she said in an offhand manner. "Just started last week, in fact. You wore the last one out," she said, leaning forward, her breasts swinging freely. When she sat back, basking in the laughter of the students, Pru could see small knots under her blouse. Nipples. Oh, migod, Pru thought. Nipples. Pru’s hand went to her mouth. She’d seen nipples before, and breasts of course, on women in the magazines her father kept hidden in the bottom drawer of his dresser, along with a box of condoms and a bottle of Seagrams. But she wasn’t a woman like that. She was a guidance counselor. "I’m hoping to get to talk to all of you individually before the end of the semester, but I wanted to introduce myself. You girls, especially, be sure to come on by my office. I’ve got a great collection of books you might be interested in." The girls all sat forward eagerly. She flipped her short hair again and swaggered a little. "Well, I have to make the rounds to all the home rooms this morning, so I’ll say ta ta for now. Don’t forget, my office is in East A42, if you ever need to talk about anything or anything. See you all later." She picked up her notebook and thrust it under her arm. "Thanks, Mr. Luffkiss…"

"Loftis," he said precisely, but she was already out the door with a quick wave of the hand. Repressed laughter rippled through the class. "Loftis," he repeated, and several of the boys laughed outright. He smiled and shook his head.

"Gosh, I’m surprised she’s not the girls’ gym teacher," Sid whispered. Pru’s brow furrowed. Phil didn’t really look very athletic. She was curious about the woman, though. She’d never seen a woman quite like that.

"Do you think she’s liberated?" Pru whispered.

"Oh, Pru," Sid scoffed. "In Florence? Are you kidding? They’d have her tarred and feathered inside ten minutes." Pru shuddered a little at the thought of tar and feathers. She’d seen a picture, a drawing, one time of a man they’d done that to, and her mother said it wasn’t the tarring that was so bad, but yanking if off afterwards. And the feathers were just for humiliation, she said. Pru felt dizzy. There’d been a picture too, of two men being hanged, their hands tied behind their backs, their heads forward, their bodies limp. She lost her breath for a moment. Why did God let these things happen? She closed her eyes. It was a rotten way to start the day.

Tuesday, Milton found her near the snack bar. "You doing anything tonight?" he asked, glaring a little at her. She walked toward the library. He followed her. They stopped just outside the door, in front of the bulletin board.

"I don’t know," she said, avoiding his bright green eyes.

"Well, I thought maybe after school, we could go get a soda."

"I can’t."

"You could call your mom from the office," he said. "To see if it’s okay."

She hugged her books. "I can’t do that," she said.

"Why," he said sarcastically. "Your boyfriend? Pru, I don’t think you have a boyfriend."

She bit her lip. She couldn’t go to the office. She couldn’t stand in front of them and ask to use the phone. She couldn’t call her mother. She knew what her mother would say and she would yell it into the phone and everyone would know.

"Just tell you mom you’re going out with a girlfriend," he wheedled. "Pru," he moved his head so that he could look up into her downturned face. She closed her eyes but couldn’t move. "I never get to talk to you."

She stared at the floor. "What do you want to talk about?" she asked flatly.

He was angry. "Anything," he blustered. "Just God damned anything. What do you want to talk about?"

"Nothing," she felt her nose begin to tingle and her eyes smarted. He scoffed, and grabbed at the edge of her books, trying to wrestle them away from her chest.

"You’re always holding those damned books in front of you. Why don’t you loosen up a little bit?" His voice was angry, hurt. She didn’t want him to be angry. But he would look at her. She didn’t have a chest, and even if she did, she would have died if he’d looked at it. "Pru, come on. What’s wrong with you anyway?" She said nothing and he turned and stormed away. When she ventured to look up, he was still shaking his head, swinging his arms as he walked down the long hall. She bit her lip and turned toward the library again.

She looked up. Lance. He was standing there, in the corner alongside the glass door of the library. He was leaning with his shoulders against the wall, one foot flat against it. He looked at her quizzically from those eyes like highly polished brown agate, that perfect, English face. His lips began to curl into a long slow smile. A smile from hell. She should say something, but it felt like a drum in her chest while her guts churned. Another boy came out of the library. "Hey, Lance old boy. They’re gonna fine me for that stupid book." Lance pushed away from the wall. He moved toward her and, like a deer in the headlights, she could only stare at him.

"Hi," she croaked as he passed. He turned back and looked at her, grinned, burst out laughing and threw his bookbag over his shoulder. He turned again and followed the other boy down the hall. Oh God. She’d spoken to him. And he’d only laughed. And he’d heard her. He’d heard that whole, awful thing with Milton. Damn Milton. Damn hick. Damn him. Maybe he’d die. She stopped short. What an evil thing to think. She felt weak. The wall was only a few steps away, but she didn’t know if she could make it. She threw herself against it and burst into tears. Crying. She would have been punished at home. And crying in public. Who knew what the penalty was for that. She would have to die.

She slipped down the wall and squatted on the floor, dropping her books to cover her face with her hands. English was next. She would have to see him in English.

"Hey," she heard a voice above her. She opened her eyes and looked into a pair of legs swathed in perfectly creased trousers and dark, highly polished loafers. "Hey," the guidance counselor knelt down next to her. "Are you okay?"

She nodded, humiliated.

"Really, do you need to see the nurse?" Phil’s hand was on her elbow. She shook her head dumbly. "Well, come on. Get up. Come on to my office." She pulled Pru gently up. "I’m Phil. You’re a seventh grader, aren’t you?"

Pru nodded. "I thought so. You’re in Mr. Forkness’s room, right?"

"Mr. Loftis."

"Yeh. Right. That’s him. Come on." Pru followed her dumbly to the administrative offices and down the narrow hallway to a small office at the end of the long row of offices. The room was crowded, busy. There were a lot of books and posters on the wall. There were so many posters, that they overlapped in places. They were full of sayings. "Live your dreams." "Aim high". "Soar like an eagle". And there were things about women, too. "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle". And "Women hold up half the sky." Phil pointed a chair. "Sit down. I’m going to get a soda. You want one?"

She shook her head.

"Come on," Phil leaned forward and flicked Pru’s arm with the back of her fingertips. "My treat."

"I can’t," she said faintly.

"Okay," Phil stepped out of the room and came back with a sweaty bottle of Pepsi and two Dixie cups. She pushed the door closed with her foot, went to the desk and poured the soda into both cups and pushed one over toward Pru. "So what’s up?"

"Nothing," Pru said quietly.

"Oh, I find girls collapsed in tears in the halls all the time. "What’s going on?"

Pru stared at her hands. What could she say?
"Everything okay at home?"

Pru nodded. "So you’re just having a bad day?"

Pru nodded again. "Happens sometimes." There was a long silence. "Well, what are you going to do when you get out of school? After you graduate? Have you thought about it?"

"I want to be a pianist."

"Really?" Phil leaned forward. "You play the piano?"

"Yes. Since I was five."

"Wow. I’m impressed. Where do you want to go?"

"Julliard."

"Wow again. That’s the big music school in New York, isn’t it?"

She nodded. "There’s a Van Cliborn scholarship. I want to win it. It’s a very expensive school."

"You practice a lot?"

She nodded. "An hour a night. Two hours each on Saturday and Sunday."

"How are your grades?"

"Okay, I guess."

"What’s okay."

"I got a B in gym."

"What else? In the other classes."

"They were all A’s."

Phil laughed outright. "Well, you can’t do any better than that."

Pru shrugged. She’d missed four points on the last English test, though. When the paper went home there was going to be hell. She should’ve done them all write, but she filled in the wrong blanks for those questions.

"A pianist."

"I want to be a conductor, too."

"Wow," Phil leaned forward. "You know there aren’t any women symphony conductors and damned few pianists. There’s um…what’s her name. The cellist."

"Jacqueline Depre."

"Yeah. That’s her. Pru, I’m really impressed. You can do it, you know. You can be the first woman symphony conductor in the U.S. if you want."

"I want to start at the St. Louis Symphony. I’ve been there a few times. I don’t like modern music though."

"Why not? It’s free. Exuberant." Phil sat back, throwing her arms open, her breasts swinging and her face raised toward the ceiling.

Pru nodded. It was undisciplined, loose, terrifying in its disorder. Like everything else, falling apart. Riots, and what they called unrest which was really just violence waiting to happen.

Phil was studying her closely. "You have dreams," she said softly. "You have good dreams. Don’t let anyone take them away from you, Pru. Keep it in focus." There was another long silence. "Here. I’m going to lend you a book. It’s about taking care of yourself as a woman. She turned and pulled a book off the shelf. "I have three copies," she laughed. "One for me, one for the office, and one to lend out." She slipped it into Pru’s hand. It was a thick book. "Our Bodies Ourselves…" Phil said, tapping her finger on the cover. "You ever read it?"

Pru shook her head. It was a women’s liberation book. There was a photo on the cover of braless women holding up a plackard. "This is the way of the future, Pru. This is what’s going to make the world a place where a girl like you can grow up to be a symphony conductor. This is how you learn what you need and what you don’t need."

Pru leafed through the pages. There were photographs of women. Women. They looked completely different from Florence women or St. Louis women. "You read it and see what you think." Pru looked up at the posters on the wall. "A woman without a man…" "Pru. Don’t let anything or anyone, stand in the way of your dreams. You’re an attractive girl."

Pru stared at her blankly. Why would she think that?

"Listen, all girls have trouble with boys. You just remember, you not different from them. You’re equal. In every way. Pru, there are going to be guys that want to go out with you, want to date you and marry you. Don’t settle. You’re worth so much more."

How did she know? Was she, like Mom, some sort of clairvoyant? Apparently there were a lot of them in the world, people who could read minds and look into the future. It was a little frightening to think they were there, all the time, ready to get into your mind. How did Phil, who had just met her, know what she was worth. She looked up slowly. "Do you think so?" she asked, realizing instantly how stupid it sounded.

"I know so." Phil smiled that odd smile, one where the corners of her mouth pulled down but her eyes twinkled. "I know so." Pru looked up at the walls. "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." She could do this. She picked up the Dixie cup and drained it. It was sharp, bubbly, syrupy sweet. She felt wicked, proud. She put the book with the rest of her books. "I’ll get this back to you as soon as I can."

"Take your time," Phil said. She made a few notes on a piece of paper and handed it to Pru. Pru looked at it quickly. It was a pass to get her back into class. Phil rose and opening the door for Pru. "Come back anytime, Pru."

"Thank you," Pru said and slipped out the door. Thank God they had managed to talk about so many things that she’d missed all of English. She wouldn’t have to see him. She weaved a little as she went back down the narrow hallway and into the wider lobby where the secretaries sat behind the counter and collected hall passes and sick notes. There were only a few students there, sitting in the plastic chairs against the plate glass windows. Three boys, their knees apart, forearms or elbows resting on their thighs or knees, hunched over waiting to see the principal. Only one looked up at her, and she didn’t recognize him. She walked down the long, locker lined corridor to the classroom. She hestitated only a moment and then went in, and proudly handed her note to Mrs. Parajhi, who took it and smiled. Pru sat at the table.

"Where were you?" Sid hissed.

"Phil, the guidance counselor’s office. She lent me a book."

"What book?"

Pru moved the top books off the stack and showed Sid the cover of the book. She looked at the new drawing ensemble on the table. More fruit, more bread. A vase of flowers.

"That’s like a dirty book."

"It’s got naked pictures of women in it." Pru made a few quick thumbnail sketches on her scratch paper before approaching the pristine white sheet.

"Why’d she give it to you?"

"I don’t know," Pru whispered.

"I think she should’ve been a gym teacher." Sid whispered.

"I don’t know," Pru shrugged. Live your dreams. Live your dreams.

She devoured the book in secret at home. If her mother had seen it there would have been real trouble. Things became clear. What she did alone. The wicked evil thing. They were talking about it openly. Like it was something good. And the things that couldn’t stand in a woman’s way. They were men and kids. But Pru knew that. Her mother had always said she wasn’t raising her girls to be mothers. "I pray to God you never have children," she would scream bitterly. And her sister said that they were a parasite on the system. And everyone said the world was overpopulated. Just look at Biafra. There were so many children dying of starvation there. It was hell. She read over and over the parts on birth control, on masturbation. This wasn’t her mother preaching. In the long run, it got to the same place. Men aren’t necessary in a woman’s life, and neither are children. Take care of yourself.

She began to feel a new sense of freedom. There was a sense of exhilaration. She had something else now. Something the other girls didn’t have. Sandy Talbot sure didn’t have it. Neither did Sid, chasing after one boy after another in the pursuit of a weekly round of true love.

Saturday arrived. They’d finished off the week in hell. She had been defiant, mouthy. It felt good. Her mother blustered but never really hit her. She threatened a lot. She had made it through the rest of the week at school without even looking at Lance once in class. They went to Winfield, to the dancing. She hadn’t talked to Milton since Tuesday. He might not even dance with her. When they arrived, she walked in almost armed for whatever was to happened. He wasn’t there. But then, they were twenty minutes early. He came in just a few mintues before seven with his cousin. He came up to her. She didn’t look at the floor this time. She looked into his face.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

"Sorry about the other day."

She tossed her head. "It’s okay." The music started, mercifully enough, and they danced every set together. When the break came, he motioned to her. "I’m going to buy a soda. Come on with me?"

"Sure," she said, fingering the change in her pocket that she’d taken out of Mom’s stamp drawer when she was napping.

"Really?" he asked incredulously. "Come on, then." He walked out the door. The others, Mom, Dad and Betty, were all engaged in other things. She slipped quickly out and closed her coat. He had longer legs and walked faster and she had to trot to keep up with him. "So you’re going to talk to me now?"

"I’m going to buy a soda," she said.

"Ohhh," he said, grinning a little. "Okay."

The post office was up on Main Street. They turned from Walnut onto Main and walked up four or five storefronts. She looked through the narrow door with its clouded glass at the bottles of soda inside. He opened the little door and put his money in the slot. He pulled a Coke out and another bottle fell into place with a chink. He deftly pulled the lid off in the little built in slot and put the bottle on top of the machine. "What kind you want?" He was leaning close to her, his arm still up on top of the edge of the machine.

She leaned over and looked. "I guess I’ll have a Coke, too." He pulled away from the machine and stuck his fingers in the front pocket of his tight jeans. She had her hand on her change before he could wriggle his fingers out. "I’ve got it."

"Awww. Let me…"

"I don’t need anyone to buy me a soda. I can do it myself," she said.

"You can, huh."

"Yes." She slipped the money in the slot and pulled on the soda. It wouldn’t come. He stood for a moment watching her and then pushed his hand into the machine. "I can do it," she protested.

"Okay," he scoffed. "Fine."

She yanked the bottle hard and it came out. She looked at the hole he’d stuck the bottle in to take the cap off and put the head of the bottle in. She moved it around, but nothing happened. She felt herself grow unnaturally hot. He laughed and pulled the bottle away from her, put the rim of the cap under the little metal piece and flipped it off. "There," he said. "Come up this way."

"Why?" she said, sipping the soda.

"I wanna smoke." He motioned to the curve back slatted bench in front of the hardware store. "Sit down." He pulled a pack of Chesterfields out of his pocket and tamped one out. He lit it and offered it to her with two fingers. "Want one?"

She shook her head. He exhaled long and she caught the scent of it, the feel of it in the back of her throat. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs, the soda bottle on the sidewalk between his feet. He looked out into the blackness toward the river. He didn’t say anything. She sat quietly, too, sipping the soda. He wiped his mouth with the back of his index finger, and looked at her. She stared forward, toward the river.

"During the day from here, you can see my uncle’s fishing cabin on the river," he said finally. "And over there," he pointed past her. "There’s this place where the ferry comes in and last year one time when it was all frozen, we took my Dad’s pickup truck and drove it out on the ice."

"You did?"

"Uh huh." He took another long draw. "Yeah. We did." There was another long pause. "Me and my cousins. My brother was…I can’t remember where my brother was, but we like peeled out on this ice. Man, right before we got back on the land, we could like hear it creaking and all, and I thought, shit, we’re going in for sure."

He paused. "But we didn’t. My brother’s going to Nam next year. If it’s still going on. It’s going to be so neat. I mean he’s going to do, like explosives and crap like that." He dropped the cigarette between his boots and stepped on it. He hesitated a moment, and then turned and put his hand under hers. "Your hand’s cold."

"It’s okay," she said faintly.

"Well, it’s cold." He closed his warm fingers around it. She pulled back a little. "What’s the matter."

"Nothing," she said. "You’re just…trying to hold my hand."

"Shit," he said in a voice almost too reasonable. "I’ve been holding your hand all night. For the last three weeks."

"That’s for dancing," she said. "There’s a difference."

"It’s your hand. In my hand. That’s the same."

"It’s not the same. It means something different." She turned to face him squarely. He didn’t say anything. She saw a flicker cross his lips, a furtive look come into his eyes. He leaned forward, jerkily, almost like a chicken going for a grain of corn. His eyes closed and she felt his breath, cigarette smoke and Coke. She leaned back, but there wasn’t any place to go. His hand was on her jaw, his lips on hers. They were dry, chapped. They stuck to her lips. She clenched her hands a little. He scooted closer. This was her first kiss. Her first kiss. It was supposed to be wonderful. Special. He was a chapped lip hick. He readjusted himself, moving his foot underneath himself and raising up so he was taller than her. He kissed her lightly again, three, maybe four times. She sat stock still, frozen. What if Mom sent Betty out looking for her? There would be hell to pay.

"Oh, baby," he said, panting. "Oh, baby." His hand was moving quickly, down her throat, under her coat. She caught it on her chest before it fell far below her collarbone, and pressed it hard. He was kissing her more, her lips moved without her doing anything. She was kissing him back, but it wasn’t like in a movie or something. It was just something sort of mechanical. He pressed and she pressed back not in response, but because physically that was what happened. He had his right arm around her back, his hand up on her shoulder, his left hand imprisoned by hers. He was breathing quickly. He kissed her again and again and by the time she was beginning to think it wasn’t so bad after all, something else happened. He touched her lip with his tongue, and then pushed his whole tongue into her mouth. It was hot, and wet and slick. It was his tongue, for God’s sake. She made a noise, and he groaned and pushed against her with his leg, trying to pry his hand out from under hers. She was going to gag, going to throw up. He was pushing her down further against the back of the bench, his tongue in her mouth. He pulled off suddenly, panting wildly, his green eyes dark. "Pru. Pru, I love you. I want to go steady with you. I think….oh God, it’s crazy. I think about you all the time. I want to marry you. When we turn sixteen, I can get my old man to sign for me. We’ll get married. There’s this trailer on our farm. We can live there and I’ll work for my old man. We’ve got 550 acres. Oh, baby," he gasped in his breath. "You feel so good. Kiss me again." He leaned over and pushed his tongue back into her mouth. She wriggled up, pressing her hand against his chest.

"I can’t marry you," she said frantically.

"I’ll get you knocked up. You’ll have to," he said quickly. "It’ll be okay then." She struggled out of his grasp.

"I can’t do that," she said, suddenly remembering the book.

"What do you mean?" he leaned back against the bench, as if exhausted. His chest heaved, and he fingered the sleeve of her coat. "What do you mean?" His lips were loose, darker, swollen looking. Her own lips felt puffy. His eyes narrowed. "Oh, baby," he groaned again. "Do you know what you do to me?"

"I have dreams," she said hoarsely.

"Dreams?" He struggled to sit upright, still holding her tightly. "What kind of dreams? You mean like bad dreams?"

"I have dreams. I want to be somebody."

"You will be. You’ll be Mrs. Milton Schneider. You’ll be my wife. I might join up, go into service. We could live on the base for however long. It’s good. They pay good benefits." He stroked his hand up under her hair and pulled her face toward his.

She yanked back. "I mean a real somebody. I want to be a concert pianist."

"A what?" He pulled back and stared at her.

"A concert pianist. And the first woman conductor in the U.S."

"Conductor. You mean like trains?"

She shook her head. "The symphony," she said archly.

"Kiss me again, baby," he breathed.

"Don’t call me baby," she snapped. "I have dreams." She stared off into the dark velvety sky.

He sat back. "Do you know what a dream is?" he asked slowly.

"Yes."

"So do I. It’s something that doesn’t exist. It’s something you wake up from. You aren’t going to be symphony conductor. Or a concert pianist. You’re out here in the middle of nowhere. Nobody can hear you play the piano. You play concerts now?"

She shook her head. "Well, the concert pianists of ten years from now are playing concerts in little places now. You can’t do that. You aren’t going to be anything like that. Play the piano at home. Play it for me. Play it for our kids. But wake up."

"I don’t need a man to make me complete," she said archly. "Or a bunch of kids."

"You need a man and a bunch of kids to make you complete," he said. "You aren’t going to kiss me again, are you?"

She shook her head. "I just wanted a soda." She slid the empty bottle head first in the wire rack on the side of the machine. It slid down the diagonal chute and rested with a clink against the red metal wall of the machine.

"Yeh." He paused. "You did. Well, you got it." He picked up the bottle and hurled it against the brick wall between the plate glass windows of the hardware store. It blew into a million pieces. He turned to her. "Dreams are shit, Pru," he said, glaring at her. His eyes were shining, watery. She stared at him. What was wrong with his eyes?

**

She opened the can of cat food and dumped into the bowl while Horace methodically pressed the entire right side of his body against her legs and rubbed hard, from neck to buttocks.

"Enough," she said. "Horace, why are you always so impatient?"

He looked up, raising his front feet off the ground while she leaned down to put the bowl on the floor. He squatted next to it, closed his eyes and ate without any delicacy or catlike grace.

She folded her thin arms across her chest and watched him for a minute, then walked to the window. She opened the curtain a little and stared into the parking lot of the apartment complex. The dumpster was overflowing and there was a formica dinette table next to it with only three metal legs. She turned away. She should eat. She went to the sink and washed her hands, turning off the water. A minute later, uneasy, she returned, and washed them again. Then again. Stop, she thought. Just stop. Why do you have to do this? Her shoulders sank. Maybe three times, maybe five, maybe it would be ten. Sometimes she didn’t know how to stop. Six. She stopped at six. This time.

There was a ritual for everything. There had to be. It was like the world would blow apart if there wasn’t. Oddly enough, only a few people outside knew there was anything different about her. She did data entry for an insurance company a few blocks from her house, close enough that she could walk, and wouldn’t have to drive a car or rely on anyone else. Sometimes they teased her because she wore the same thing so often. But most people just figured her for an eccentric cat lady. Which, she had to admit, she was.

If this was life, what the hell was death? For a moment, she sat quietly, strangely at peace, even in the midst of the swirling chaos. She pressed her face against her hands. If only she could wake up. Wake up. Was this the dream?

She unwrapped a slice of cheese and put it between two pieces of bread. She laid it carefully on a saucer and went back to the window, staring out of it. Nothing was moving outside. It was as if the entire human world had disappeared. She sat down and lifted the edge of the piece of bread and looked at the placid cheerfully yellow cheese. How long had it been like this? She shook her head. If only she could turn the clock back, but to where? Every event that she looked at, the failed love affairs, the lost jobs, the emotional problems, the institutions, the addictions, there was something that had come before, link by link, like Morley’s chain. If there hadn’t been so many men, one failure after another, she wouldn’t have tried to kill herself. If she hadn’t tried to kill herself, she wouldn’t have been institutionalized. If she hadn’t gotten addicted she wouldn’t have tried to kill herself. If she hadn’t dropped out of school, she wouldn’t have gotten addicted. If she hadn’t been so utterly broken in spirit, she wouldn’t have dropped out of school. If her mother…it all came back to that. To her. Irrespective of how far back one ran the tape, ultimately there were those early days. When she was too small to be culpable for anything. When things were done to her. She covered her face with her hands again and let loose a groan.

Milton. Milton What-the-Hell was his name? She couldn’t remember. Something panged her deep. She never thought of those things, of those years, if she could avoid it. Just remembering the name was painful. He was her first kiss. Oh, what an ugly little bastard he was, too. And clumsy. What an idiot she’d been. She didn’t settle. She didn’t give up her dreams. He was probably somewhere now in the Winfield Bottoms, driving a tractor in the spring or a combine in the fall, his kids riding on the back of it. He probably lived in that trailer with some quiet, uncomplicated woman.

He told her dreams were shit. But only her dreams. If he was there, living on that farm, working like a regular person, raising his kids, he’d gotten his dream. Don’t settle. She hadn’t settled, had she? Not her. Never. She grabbed at the brass ring, whatever that is, and missed.

She got up, threw the sandwich in the disposal and dropped the plate in the sink. Horace had finished his food and done a few obligatory swipes with his tongue on his shoulders. He jumped onto the table and stared out the window intently. Here she was, forty-five years old, and just a life support system for a maladjusted cat. She sighed. Ten minutes until she had to leave for work. Everything was planned in the day, almost to the minute. Nothing left to chance. And yet, she was completely somehow at the mercy of everything, from the elements to the malice of neighbors and coworkers.

Ten minutes. She closed her eyes and imagined herself again, fourteen years old, on a slatted bench outside the hardware store in Winfield, Missouri. Only this time, she said "yes".