The Stolen Child(30)

hours between Saturdays, anxious to see her.

Thank goodness she took the initiative. While we were necking in the dark balcony of the Penn

Theater, she grabbed my hand and placed it on her breast, and her whole body fluttered at my touch.

She was the one who sug-gested everything, who thought to nibble ears, who rubbed the first thigh. We

rarely spoke when we were together anymore, and I did not know what Sally was scheming or, for that

matter, if she was thinking at all. No wonder I loved the girl, whatever her name was, and when she

suggested that I feign an illness to get out of Mr. Martin's class, I gladly complied.

We rode the streetcar to her parents' home on the South Side. Climbing the hill to her house in the

bright sunshine, I started to sweat, but Sally, who was used to the hike, skipped up the sidewalk, teasing

that I could not keep up. Her home was a tiny perch, clinging to the side of a rock. Her parents were

gone, she assured me, for the whole day on a drive out to the country.

"We have the place to ourselves. Would you like a lemonade?"

She might as well have been wearing an apron, and I smoking a pipe. She brought the drinks and

sat on the couch. I drank mine in a single swig and sat on her father's easy chair. We sat; we waited. I

heard a crash of cymbals in my mind's ear.

"Why don't you come sit beside me, Henry?"

Obedient pup, I trotted over with a wagging tail and lolling tongue. Our fingers interlocked. I

smiled. She smiled. A long kiss—how long can you kiss? My hand on her bare stomach beneath her

blouse triggered a pent-up primal urge. I circled my way north. She grabbed my wrist.

"Henry, Henry. This is all too much." Sally panted and fanned herself with her fluttering hands. I

rolled away, pursed my lips, and blew. How could I have misinterpreted her signals?

Sally undressed so quickly that I almost failed to notice the transition. As if pushing a button, off

came her blouse and bra, her skirt, slip, socks, and un-derwear. Through the whole act, she brazenly

faced me, smiling beatifically. I did love her. Of course, I had seen pictures in the museum, Bettie Page

pinups and French postcards, but images lack breadth and depth, and art isn't life. Part of me pulled

forward, desperate to lay my hands upon her skin, but the mere possibility held me back. I took a step in

her direction.

"No, no, no. I've showed you mine; now you have to show me yours."

Not since a young boy at the swimming hole had I taken off my clothes in front of anyone else,

much less a stranger, and I was embarrassed at the prospect. But it is hard to refuse when a naked girl

makes the request. So I stripped, the whole time watching her watching me. I had progressed as far as

my boxers when I noticed that she had a small triangle of hair at the notch of her, and I was completely

bare. Hoping that this condition was peculiar to the female species, I pulled down my shorts, and a look

of horror and dismay crossed her face. She gasped and put her hand in front of her mouth. I looked

down and then looked back up at her, deeply perplexed.

"Oh my God, Henry," she said, "you look like a little boy."

I covered up.

"That's the smallest one I've ever seen."

I angrily retrieved my clothes from the floor.

"I'm sorry but you look like my eight-year-old cousin." Sally began to pick up her clothes off the

floor. "Henry, don't be mad."

But I was mad, not so much at her as at myself. I knew from the moment she spoke what I had

forgotten. In most respects, I appeared all of fifteen, but I had neglected one of the more important

parts. As I dressed, humiliated, I thought of all the pain and suffering of the past few years. The baby

teeth I wrenched out of my mouth, the stretching and pulling and pushing of bones and muscle and skin

to grow into adolescence. But I had forgotten about puberty. She pleaded with me to stay, apologized

for laughing at me, even say-ing at one point that size didn't matter, that it was actually kind of cute, but

nothing she could have said or done would have relieved my shame. I never spoke to her again, except

for the most basic greetings. She disappeared from my life, as if stolen away, and I wonder now if she

ever forgave me or forgot that afternoon.

Stretching remedied my situation, but the exercise pained me and caused unexpected

consequences. The first was the curious sensation that typically ended in the same messy way, but, more

interestingly, I found that by imagin-ing Sally or any other alluring thing, the results were a foregone

conclusion. But thinking on unpleasant things—the forest, baseball, arpeggios—I could postpone, or

avoid altogether, the denouement. The second outcome is some-what more disconcerting to report.

Maybe because the squeaking bedsprings were beginning to annoy him, my father burst into my room