Sputnik's Children

by Terri Favro

  Kendal sat up. “I brought something to show you.”

  I watched him pull a sheaf of comics out of his backpack. “Cressie smuggled more underground stuff out of the States. Crumb, mostly. Zapruder! and Homegroan.”

  In Zapruder!, a crewcutted teenage boy stood before a girl with ribboned pigtails. His hardened penis bobbed out of his fly, the tip curved like a helmet; it reminded me of a cannoli. Wordlessly he pointed down at himself and the teenage girl got to her hands and knees and took the cannoli-penis in her mouth. That’s right, keep going, pretend it’s candy, said the boy, holding the girl’s head to his crotch. Both boy and girl were thickly drawn, mountainous, grotesque — the girl in particular looked hideous to me.

  I had the feeling Kendal was trying to tell me something.

  “Has anyone ever done that to you?” I asked.

  “Well, sure. After all, I’m sixteen.”

  The legacy of Angie Petrone, again.

  “The drawings are so ugly,” I said. “Especially the girl. I feel like whoever drew her hates girls.”

  Kendal shook his head. “Come on, Debbie, they’re underground comix. No boundaries, no taboos.”

  “I guess so,” I said, flipping pages. The stories were funny and sexy and shocking sometimes, aggressive and violent, especially to the women who were there to hold up their giant cartoony breasts, or to suck or seize the men’s cocks, which had the look of weaponry. One had what looked like a bazooka hanging out of his pants. Another, a submarine. The exaggerated cocks made the men look powerful but the women’s breasts and bums were just heavy and ugly, sexy only in the eyes of the bloated cartoony men who drooled rabidly over a protruding behind or erect nipples. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to see Kendal and me drawn this way. I’ll bet Angie wouldn’t have much liked it either.

  We managed to spend an hour together in Postapocalyptica every day, going a little further each time. By the end of the week, I was letting Kendal slide an experimental finger between my legs, the spot I’d touch myself, but when he tried to enter me, I pushed his hand away.

  “If I let you do that, you won’t be able to stop,” I told him.

  “Yes, I will,” he said.

  “Stop anyway,” I told him. “Not yet.”

  “When, then?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking of what had happened to Linda. She never talked about the baby, and the one time I mentioned Billy’s name, she told me that the nuns at the Toronto Home for Girls had helped her forget he ever existed. Perhaps Linda underwent the same hypnosis-induced amnesia as Kendal. If there was one thing at which the psychiatry of Atomic Mean Time excelled, it was making us forget unhappy memories and dangerous truths. That way, we could move forward with our lives, unsullied by knowledge or experience.

  * * *

  I didn’t understand much about my own body, let alone birth control, having hopped out of middle school with a single sex-education class led by a heavily pregnant Mrs. DiPietro, who, on the last day of school, agreed to share her wealth of experience with the girls while Mr. Bonifaci the gym teacher talked, man-to-man, to the boys. All I got out of this talk was that losing one’s virginity was quick, painful and bloody unless you had previously deflowered yourself on the pummel of a bike saddle or interfered with yourself with Tampax. As to the act of love, she was evasive about everything except hygiene and the excellence of a particular brand of douche. About birth control, not a word, until Judy-Garland bravely waved her arm in the air to ask, “What about the Pill?”

  Mrs. D.P. folded her hands protectively over the gourd of her pregnancy. “The Pill is a Communist plot, girls. If the women behind the Iron Curtain are the only ones having babies, what do you think will happen to democracy?”

  She went on to predict that the few women who did give birth after being on the Pill would produce disgusting creatures called hermaphrodites.

  “Is that what you want?” demanded Mrs. D.P. “How are you going to decorate a nursery if you can’t even tell if your baby is a boy or a girl?”

  After sex ed, we were handed our Gestetnered middle school diplomas and went into the playground to pump the boys for everything they’d learned from the phys-ed teacher. They told us they had spent their class playing Capture the Flag, a game Mr. Bonifaci said would teach them everything they needed to know about sex. “Only the strong survive, gentlemen.”

  * * *

  After our time together in Postapocalyptica, Kendal and I adjusted our clothes, crawled out of the wrecked store and went our separate ways with a kiss, Kendal to look for odd jobs in the half-assed businesses on Z Street, me to cover pages with monstrous half-men, half-animals and ravished, bosomy, wasp-waisted, bug-eyed women with laced corsets and wild tendrils of hair. I’d never stopped drawing, really, but the Famous Artists Correspondence School ad in the backs of my comic books had given me a new sense of urgency.

  “We’re looking for people who like to draw,” the self-portrait of Norman Rockwell assured me, his penciled-in eyes looking kind. “Send away for our free no-obligation Talent Test Booklet and find out if you have hidden talent. Then get ready for a future in the lucrative and creative fields of cartooning, fashion illustration, graphic design, commercial art, still life, children’s portraits . . .”

  I filled out the coupon in neat block letters, shortening my first and middle name to initials so they wouldn’t know I was a girl, found an envelope and stamp and walked to the mailbox, buoyed by twin senses of destiny and defeat. Maybe a famous artist was what I was meant to be. On the other hand, was there even a future to get ready for?

  As I dropped my envelope into the mailbox, I noticed a sign on a telephone pole reading, PICKERS WANTED: 6 A.M. PICK-UP HERE.

  Strawberry harvest had begun. It was time to close my sketchbooks and make some money. Sparkling Sparrow Wines wouldn’t need farmhands until the late August harvest; it was strawberries or nothing.

  nine

  Tender Fruit

  Kendal, Sandy and I arrived at the corner of Fermi and Lakeshore fifteen minutes early to make sure we got picked first. But the farmers weren’t choosy: if you had one hand and two legs, you were in. Most of the fieldwork was done by migrant workers from Trinidad and Tobago, all black men. They lived on the farms through the summer and fall, boarding in bunkhouses, making money to send home, then moving on to the next harvest — tobacco in Tillsonburg or tomatoes in Leamington, whatever came up. Those guys were the ones who really knew what they were doing. We were just supplemental labour, the cheapest of the cheap.

  All of us wore three layers of clothing. The top layer was to deal with the cool morning air. Once the sun burned off the dew, we could strip down to our second layer, and finally our third, around noon, when it was hot enough to work naked. But we wouldn’t, because the strawberry bushes, the herbicide sprays, the scorching sun and the bugs, not to mention any patches of stinging nettles we might blunder into, would have set our exposed skin on fire.

  We brought along paper sacks of sandwiches and as much liquid as we could carry. We knew the farmer would drive demijohns of well water into the middle of the field for us to drink, but it would be warm and metallic tasting. Sandy froze cans of Royal Crown Cola and carried them in a backpack. Kendal lugged a huge insulated jug of ice water.

  “You’re going to carry that thing around with you in the field?” said Sandy.

  “You’ll be begging me for water around one o’clock,” answered Kendal.

  To my surprise, the Donato twins were there, too, in terry cloth tracksuits and clean running shoes. They even carried matching purses.

  “Picking strawberries is a great way to work on our tans,” said Judy-Garland.

  “Our bikinis are under our clothes,” added Jayne-Mansfield and looked quickly at Kendal.

  By the time the meaty-faced farmer arrived in his pickup, there were so many of us gathered at the corn
er of Fermi and Lakeshore, we had to stand up in the truck bed clinging to one another. The farmer drove fast — when he made a sharp turn onto the concession road out to the farm, Sandy almost fell out. Kendal caught her by both arms to steady her.

  “I wonder if that asshole would stop if someone actually fell out of the truck,” one of the other boys said.

  “I doubt it,” said Kendal. “We’re expendable.”

  Once the truck had bumped its way into the field, we jumped out and the farmer drove off for more pickers. A field hand assigned us the rows we’d be picking and handed out wage cards. Twenty cents a basket. If you really wanted to make money, speed was essential; the faster you picked, the more you made. If you weakened, sat down on the job, passed out from the heat or started gobbling up the fruit you’d picked — as Sandy, in particular, had been known to do — you could come away at the end of the day with nothing to show for your work except a sunburn.

  Acres of strawberries stretched before us toward the horizon of Lake Ontario. In distant fields, the migrant workers moved up and down the rows with astonishing speed. They had probably been at it since daybreak.

  Sandy crouched at the start of the row in front of me, Kendal at the row behind me. Judy and Jayne stood a few rows away, awkwardly holding their baskets, trying to figure out what to do with their purses.

  “Well, this certainly sucks,” I heard Judy say.

  * * *

  By eight, Sandy, Kendal and I already had dropped our outer layers. The Donato twins were down to their bikini tops but kept their track pants on. They hadn’t advanced very far down their row. I suspected this would be their first and last day of picking.

  As we filled baskets, we placed them in the centre of the row, ganging them up, but from time to time, we had to stop picking and lug them back to where the field hand collected them in the back of a flat-bed truck. Going back and forth, laden with heavy baskets, took time, which, needless to say, we were not paid for.

  By noon, I was in a tank top and cut-off denim shorts, Kendal in track shorts and a T-shirt. We had just about reached a line of trees that formed a windbreak.

  “Let’s stop for lunch,” Kendal said.

  “We’re breaking, Sandy,” I called to her. She was on her way down the row with two full baskets in her hands.

  “I left my lunch at the top of the row,” she yelled. “I’m going to bring these to the field hand first.”

  “Guess it’s just you and me,” Kendal said, and brushed my hand with his.

  We found a spot in the shade, where the wind off the lake blew away the bugs. Sheltered in the trees of the windbreak, we were invisible to the other pickers. Kendal pulled off his T-shirt and spread it on the ground for me to sit on. I stared at the slick muscles of his chest and stomach. I never got tired of looking at him. Touching him.

  We drank some of his water. He tugged at the edge of my tank top. “Why don’t you lighten up a little? You must be hot.” When I hesitated, he said, “No one will see you here.”

  “You will.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “That’s okay. I’m your boyfriend, after all.”

  It was the first time he’d used that word, but he was, wasn’t he? And I was a woman now, wasn’t I? Maybe it was time to finally show myself to him.

  I crouched in the shelter of the high grass, pulled off my tank top and unclipped my bra, dropping them on the ground in front of Kendal. I liked the way his eyes grew wide as he watched me undress; I don’t think he really thought I would do it. I sat topless on Kendal’s shirt, the sun and wind caressing me like two strangers; my breasts hadn’t seen sunlight since I was four years old.

  Kendal pressed against me, the skin of his chest warm and slippery against my breasts. I could taste strawberry juice on his lips. He nuzzled my neck, my breasts, my shoulders, even my underarms.

  “Don’t kiss me there! I’m all sweaty,” I said, pulling away.

  “I like tasting your sweat. Like Napoleon with Josephine.”

  I turned my head to look at him. He was actually sniffing me.

  “That’s weird.” I laughed, pushing him. “Napoleon?”

  Kendal lay back. “Yeah. It was something I read about when I was doing research for a history essay I did last year. When old Boney had been off at a campaign for a long time, he would write sexy letters to Josephine. ‘Don’t wash,’ he’d tell her.”

  “Ugh. Is that the kind of stuff you learn in high school history class?”

  Kendal pulled himself overtop of me, his smooth chest resting against my breasts. “Oh, yeah, and we read all kinds of sexy stuff in English class, too.”

  With Kendal’s hands on my hips, he went back to kissing me, his tongue deep in my mouth. I felt a pleasant ache between my legs. I could hear the distant grumble of a tractor.

  He hooked a finger around the top of my shorts and tugged them down a little. I was just about to help him unzip my fly when Kendal levitated off me, shot back by an invisible force that turned out to be the farmer who had driven us to the field that morning. His meaty face was the colour of undercooked pork. He pressed his boot to Kendal’s chest, pinning him to the ground.

  “Get the hell away from her!” the farmer shouted at Kendal. “I told you coloured bastards to leave the town girls alone!”

  I staggered to my feet, trying to cover my breasts with my tank top. “Sir, it’s okay, he’s my boyfriend.”

  The farmer looked back and forth between Kendal and me distastefully. “This ain’t a whorehouse. You come back with me in the truck, girl. I’m calling your parents. As for you,” he said, turning on Kendal, “if it were twenty years ago, I’d be getting out the horsewhip, but you’re not worth the trouble that’d cause me. Get off my farm and stay off. Vamoose.”

  Kendal looked back and forth between the farmer and me. “I don’t . . . have a way back to town.”

  “You think I give a damn?” the farmer shouted. “Get the hell out of here — now!”

  I got back in my clothes as quickly as I could, sensing the farmer’s eyes on my body. In the distance, Sandy and the Donato twins and some of the other pickers stood in a little knot, staring at us. The farmer’s truck was at the edge of the field, so I had to walk the whole way back with him, hot with embarrassment. I turned to look at Kendal — he stood with hands hanging at his sides, not knowing what to do. When I started to walk away from the farmer and back to Kendal, he shook his head at me and motioned with his hand: no, don’t come back, keeping going. Finally, Kendal started walking toward the concession road.

  The farmer drove me back to his house, fury radiating off him like heat waves off a freshly tarred road. He said nothing until we reached his driveway; then he turned to me.

  “That’s what I get for hiring Z Street sluts. I’m going to give you a piece of advice that you should heed, girl. I’ve known a lot of coloureds over the years. That boy is not your people. Understand?”

  I just stared at him. I wanted to spit in his face but I was frozen by my own embarrassment and an upbringing that made it almost impossible for me to be rude to an adult. When he demanded my phone number, I gave him the one for Nonna Peppy’s house, a tiny act of rebellion. I would rather this news went first to my grandmother than to my mother.

  He went into the farmhouse and returned a few minutes later, climbing back into the driver’s seat of his truck. “Your father is on his way,” he said.

  “My father?” I was astonished. Nonna Peppy made Dad leave work to come get me? I was in even more trouble than I thought.

  “I didn’t have the stomach to tell the guy what happened, so I’ll leave that up to you.” The farmer reached toward me — to open my door, I thought. Instead, he grabbed my breasts and kissed me so fast and hard that I barely had time to jam down the door handle. I almost fell out of the truck.

  The farmer laughed as I hopped out and backed away towar
d the farmhouse. “You’re too plug ugly for a Snugglegirl, anyways.”

  He threw the truck into gear and tore off toward the fields. I sat down on the stoop to wait. About twenty minutes later, a car turned in, kicking up dust at the end of the long driveway. It wasn’t Dad’s Country Squire, but Duff’s Cutlass. He pulled up next to me and looked at me sternly.

  “Fraternizing with the enemy, I hear? Get in, little sister. Your grandma wanted to send in the marines, but I convinced her to settle for me.”

  We didn’t see the farmer as we drove back to the concession road, gravel crunching and popping under the wheels.

  “I guess Nonna told you what happened,” I said miserably. “Was she mad?”

  Duff waggled his hand back and forth; he was starting to pick up Nonna Peppy’s mannerisms. “Not mad enough to tell your folks. And what’s she going to say to you? Don’t kiss boys?”

  I curled into the corner of the front seat, my arms crossed over my guilty breasts.

  “Duff, in the future, is there still prejudice?”

  He snorted. “That’s eternal. What’ll change is that a black guy and a white girl getting it on, or vice versa, will be no big deal.”

  “Everyone says it’d be hard on their kids because there’d be so much prejudice against them, they’d never have the chance to amount to anything.”

  Duff laughed. “Wait and see,” he said, but wouldn’t explain further.

  I looked over at him, driving with one hand out the window, bobbing his head and singing along with the radio. I was beginning to understand why he looked so young and why his middle finger had reappeared. Duff wasn’t really the Trespasser: at least, not yet. I wondered what would happen if his older and wiser self ever caught up with him, and me.