Ian was always promising something like that, but not to get rid of me. I really believed he meant it and might even have made a note in his journal. I knew he kept one in which he made notations about things he observed and learned. No one was allowed to see it, not even Mama. He kept it locked up in his desk drawer.
"What exactly did the doctor or Mother tell you about your period?" he asked as we walked down the well-manicured lawn path that veered around the house and back toward the pool, the cabana, and the tennis court Daddy used with his friends from time to time.
"It will come every month," I recited, "but it won't kill me."
"Hardly. That's it? Nothing about female egg production in your body?"
"Eggs in my body? No," I said, grimacing.
"They are called eggs, but they don't look like the eggs we eat for breakfast, Jordan."
He looked back and then he took out his papers and pulled one out to show me a picture.
"Sit here," he said, nodding at one of the decorative iron benches on Grandmother Emma's front lawn. I did and he sat beside me. "See, this is a female egg. It's really just a cell called an ovum. Once a month your brain sends a message to your reproductive organs to release an egg to receive the sperm."
"What's that?"
He showed me another picture. "Looks like a..."
"Tadpole?"
"Yes," I said.
"It actually swims inside you, inside the female, trying to get to the egg. If it does and it's successful, conception or the creation of a baby starts inside the female. There are literally thousands of them at once."
"Babies?"
"No, Jordan. Sperm."
I looked at the two pictures and shook my head. I couldn't imagine how these two things could become a baby, but if Ian said they did. I was sure they did. And thousands of tadpoles? How did they all fit inside anyway? I was getting suspicious. Was this real or something Ian was creating like one of his science fiction stories?
"Where does this tadpole come from?" I asked.
"From the male, from out of his penis," he said. "He puts it into the female through her vagina," he added, and I popped up like toast in a toaster. What a horrible idea!
"You're lying to me, Ian. And you're being disgusting, too!" He shook his head. "Why do you say that?"
"Who would let someone pee into her? 1 don't know why you're lying, but it's not funny," I said, and walked away quickly. I headed toward the rear of the house. I felt like throwing up our dinner. The very thought of what Ian told me made me shiver.
Ian caught up with me quickly and tugged my arm. "I understand why you're upset," he said. "You're way too young for this, but your body is forcing you to learn it and you'd better," he warned.
I spun on him. "Mama never said anything terrible like that."
He sighed and shook his head. "Believe me, Jordan, she will. She's just overwhelmed,'" he said.
"Why do you know everything?"
"There's no point in getting mad at me, Jordan. You can't get rid of the message by killing the messenger."
"What's that mean? I don't know what you say most of the time."
He produced the rest of his sheets. "There's a lot more to explain and I have the illustrations to show you."
"I don't want to see it!" I cried. I did start to burst into tears. "Stop it!"
I ran this time and went all the way to the pool before stopping. From this position. I could see Grandmother Emma's bedroom. Her lights were on, but her curtains were drawn closed. That didn't mean she wasn't peering out at us. There were many times I caught her doing that.
Who cares? Let her, I thought, and flopped onto a pool lounge. I folded my arms tightly across my chest and stared defiantly at the house. It suddenly looked more like a fortress, a castle with a dungeon and a torture chamber just waiting for me.
Ian walked slowly toward me. "Do you want me to help you understand all this or don't you?" he asked.
"I don't want you to lie and frighten me or make me sick with ugly ideas."
"I'm not going to lie about anything. Jordan, and I don't need to frighten you. I don't need to play these childish games. You have a serious problem and the quicker you understand it all, the better it will be for you."
I looked up at him. I knew he wasn't lying about that. Everything that was happening to me was turning our world, or at least Mama's and my world, upside down.
"Well, then don't tell me silly things."
"It's not silly. You don't understand. ' He sat beside me on the lounge and we both looked at the house. "No one would let someone pee in them."
"Of course they wouldn't," he said.
"You said they did."
"Something else comes out of a male person besides urine. When he does sexual things, he--"
" I know. His penis grows and grows."
"You know that?"
I shrugged. I didn't know what it meant. I had heard some girls laughing about a boy when they were in the bathroom and I was there, too. I heard what they said about his bulge.
"But you don't know why or what happens next, right?"
"I don't want to know," I said suddenly. I was getting frightened and I didn't know why I should. All I knew was I was shivering
Ian looked at me without speaking for a long time. I could see his mind was turning thoughts over and studying each one carefully, as if each was a fine jewel too precious to display unless fully appreciated.
"Well, maybe you know enough for now," he decided. "The question is why what is happening to you is happening and whether or not Dr. Dell'Acqua can stop it until it's the right time for it. If she does that. I guess you're fine with what you know right now, but if you have any questions and you're too embarrassed to ask anyone else, ask me. Okay?"
"Okay," I said. It was easier for me to agree to putting it all off to some future date.
"Someday. I'm going to be a doctor myself," he told me. This was the first time he had told me his ambitions. I didn't think he had told Mama or Daddy yet. "I've just not decided on what kind, whether or not I want to deal directly with people or work in a research center."
I had no idea what kind of work he would do in a research center. I didn't even know what that was, but I was still very impressed.
"You'll be all right. I'm sure," he said, and stood up. He looked around with his hands on his hips like Daddy when he was thinking or deciding something. "I overheard Father tell Grandmother Emma that we were definitely going up to the lake next week, and I'll let you in on a little secret," he said, turning back to me.
"What?"
"Grandmother Emma suggested we stay up there all summer."
"She did?"
"Yes, because Mother won't permit us to be sent to sleepaway summer camp. Father thought it would be a good idea, only he won't be there with us all the time. Just on weekends. Maybe," Ian added. "Did Mother say anything about it to you?" I shook my head. He smirked. "Wouldn't surprise me if she doesn't even know yet," he said, and started back to the house.
If she doesn't even know yet? We knew, but Mama didn't? This house was big, but it was filling up with secrets. I thought, secrets not only in shut-up rooms and closets, but also inside everyone's hearts. One day they all might just blow off the roof and everyone will see who and what we really were inside this grand house people treated more like a national treasure. Then maybe so many people wouldn't be so envious of us and want to be us.
When it grew darker. I also went back into the house and decided to watch some television. Ian had already gone up to his room and Mama had locked herself away. Daddy was still not home from wherever he had gone instead of coming to dinner. The house was so quiet. I could hear water running in a pipe to Nancy's bathroom. When the house was like this, and everyone was in his or her own place. I felt very small and wanted to curl up in a ball like one of the caterpillars Ian had in a tray. As soon as they were touched, they tightened into a circle. Ian said that was just being protective. He called it hope. Maybe that
was what I was doing, too, hoping what frightened and bothered me would all just go away.
Grandmother Emma surprised me by looking in on me. I was alone in the study, where we had an entertainment center. Grandmother Emma was never very interested in watching television with us because her bedroom had an entirely separate area with settees and chairs and a big television set that my grandfather Blake had bought for himself two years before he had died.
Instantly. I lowered the volume on the television set because I anticipated her complaining. She looked at me, at the set, and shook her head.
"Now that school is over for you, I imagine you'll waste all your time in here watching nonsense," she said.
"I have lots of books to read, books my teacher told us to read," I said in my defense.
She looked skeptical. "Stand up," she ordered suddenly.
I did, my heart starting to race. I glanced back at the sofa. Did I do something to mess it up? She stepped farther into the room, and then with her eyes still fixed on me, started to circle me.
"You're growing quickly," she said. "Just as quickly as my sister did."
Grandmother Emma never, ever mentioned her sister, Francis Wilkins, to us. If her name came up in a conversation with Daddy, she quickly skated over it and went on to another topic. All I really knew about my great-aunt Francis was she lived alone on a failed farm my grandparents had bought a long, long time ago, primarily, it seemed, to give Francis a home. She had never married and had no children.
I once came across a picture of her when she was about twenty and I thought she was far prettier than Grandmother Emma. She had a wonderful, soft, childlike smile of delight. Her oval face with its high cheekbones was framed in rich, wavy light brown hair snipped smartly just at the base of her neck and brushed so it fell an inch or so below her jawbone. She was wearing what looked like a riding outfit and I could see she had a firm, shapely figure. I imagined the picture had been taken on the farm, but what struck me most about it was she was alone and looked like she had been surprised by the photographer. How could someone so pretty be unmarried and alone her whole life?
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask questions about her.
"Growing quickly is not an advantage, believe me," Grandmother Emma said. "It simply hastens life's little problems and drops them on your doorstep before you're ready for them. Francis is living proof of that," she added, and I held my breath. Would she say more, tell me more? Did she know about my problem? Had Great-aunt Francis suffered the same problem?
When she was silent again. I dared ask, "Why doesn't she ever visit us. Grandmother, or why don't we ever visit her on her farm?"
"It's not her farm. Never mind her," she snapped. "Your mother has to buy you more appropriate dresses. The one you're wearing is ridiculously too short now. I swear, sometimes it seems I'm the only one who realizes anything around here," she added.
She looked at me even closer and I wondered if she had noticed the buds on my chest.
"It's simply stupid to not have you mixing with young people your age in a camp or summer school. Loitering about here is out of the question," she said.
I thought she was going to tell me that we were to go to the cabin for the summer, but she concluded, turned, and left me confused. She was upset with me, but yet she seemed truly to care about my looks and welfare. Was that the way her mother treated her? Or her grandmother? Did she care for my benefit or for her own, afraid I would somehow embarrass her in front of her important friends?
All of a sudden. I wanted to know much more about Grandmother Emma, but I was afraid to ask anyone, especially Mama, who might think I wasn't on her side. I made up my mind that one of these days I would sneak into Grandmother Emma's room and look at her picture albums and other family
memorabilia that I knew she kept locked in closets, buried in boxes and drawers.
Would I, like Pandora, unleash more pain and suffering than I could imagine? When Mama had told me the story. I had read it myself. Pandora opened the box because she was curious, but also because she heard whispers coming from it. Didn't I hear whispers in this house, whispers on the stairs, whispers in the shadows, whispers from the empty rooms and from the closets? They were drawing me to them just the way they drew Pandora to the box.
After she had opened it and released all the pain and suffering, sadness and disease, her husband. Epimetheus, and Pandora, who had been stung by the brown moths of sadness and illness, heard another voice urging them to let it out. They opened the box again, and hope emerged. Evil had entered the world, but hope followed closely on its footsteps, to help us.
Couldn't I let hope out? Or would I just unleash the evil that crouched in the darkness, waiting to spring into our lives?
Like Pandora, I was destined to find out.
6 Not a Freak
. Everything that had happened during the day made me tired much earlier than I had expected I would be. I turned off the set and went upstairs. I paused in the hallway and listened to see if Mama was crying again, but it was just very, very quiet. I closed my bedroom door and got undressed quickly.
Once again, I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I couldn't help but think of the things Ian had told me and tried to tell me. Little eggs were floating around inside me. If a boy put his tadpoles into me. I could have a baby grow in my stomach. The whole idea of it frightened me, but it also made me more curious about myself and what was happening now.
The feelings I had when I touched myself were so different from feelings I had before all this had begun. It made my head spin. My stomach bubbled and gurgled and even ached a bit. Was that because the eggs were bouncing around, waiting for the tadpoles? I did want to learn more and I was sorry now that I had been so angry and mean to Ian. After I got into my pajamas and brushed my teeth. I went out and knocked on his door.
"Who is it?" he called.
"Me. Can I come in?"
"Come in," he said. He was sitting at his desk,
writing in his journal. "What is it?" he asked, looking annoyed at being interrupted. "I don't want to wait to know about the tadpoles," I said, and he
"Call it sperm, Jordan. I just said tadpoles because they look like that under a microscope. Males have reproductive organs, too, of course, and when they reach puberty, they can manufacture the sperm."
"Once a month, too?"
"No, all the time, instantly when aroused," he said.
"What's aroused?"
"Stimulated, excited. When they get hard and bigger like you heard. Blood rushes down there and makes it that way and then, at a certain point, the sperm shoots out. Okay? Now remember, don't go telling Mother I told you all this," he added. "She might not like me doing it. If she tells you, pretend to be hearing it for the first time. Otherwise, she'll be angry at me and I'll never be able to tell you anything again."
"Does it shoot out of you yet?" I asked.
He stared at me for a long moment. "I think you know enough for right now," he said. Then he thought again and stood up. His eyes grew narrow and intense like Dr. DellAcquars were and he stepped up to me. "This is interesting,'" he said. "I wonder if it's instinctive for you to have these thoughts now."
"You mean like the birds coming back?"
"Yes, something like that." He looked back at the door I had left open and then he went to it and closed it softly. "Did you just start thinking about boys?" he asked. "I mean after this thing started happening to you, this precocious puberty?"
I shook my head, but not with conviction. I wasn't sure what he meant. I certainly thought about boys in my class, how this one was cute or that one was ugly. Some were so childish and silly. None looked like they would become as intelligent as Ian.
He started to talk like a teacher again, making a speech as if there were many people in his room and not just me.
"Our reproductive urges are built into us. It's not something we have to learn. I mean, we can learn more about it, understand what happens to u
s, but we don't have to be taught how to do it, just like we don't have to be taught how to go to the bathroom or eat or sleep. Our bodies need us to do it. The species needs us to do it."
"Needs us to do what?"
"Forget about that for a moment," he said with some irritation. Then he narrowed his eyes again. "Let's try one experiment," he said. "But don't ever tell anyone," he warned. "Remember," he reminded me, "how we swore in your bathroom to keep my research and investigation our secret, okay?"
"Yes."
He was spending so much time with me. I didn't want to upset him again. He reached out and carefully unbuttoned my pajama top. He opened it and looked at my buds. Had they grown bigger already? I stood there waiting to see what he had discovered when he surprised me by touching my nipple, only he didn't just touch it and pull away. He kept his finger there, moving it slightly.
"It doesn't just tickle, does it?" he asked.
It didn't. It was different, very different.
I shook my head and said, "No." but it came out like a whisper.
"You're actually getting stiffer. Holy schmoly," he said, and then, as if he realized what he was doing was not right, jerked his finger away,
"What's that mean, stiffer?"
"Button up," he said without answering me, and returned to his desk.
I waited. His fact was flushed. I thought he was upset at me again for some reason. He wrote something in his journal and then he looked up.
"Ok-ay,' he said. "That's enough for now. I'll teach you more and more, but let's go slowly so you don't get confused and frightened. You should never be frightened of knowledge anyway," he added. "Remember, don't tell anyone, especially Mother, or I'll never tell you anything again," he warned.
"I won't tell," I said.
"You'd better go to sleep," he said. "Go on," he nearly shouted.
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