by Bev Marshall
Wallace didn’t bother to say hello.“You’ve been parading around the pool in that skimpy suit?”
“It’s a one-piece. You should see the girls in bikinis. I look like a grandma compared to a lot of them.”
Wallace turned away and lifted a handful of greens from the sink where he was washing them. He threw them in the aluminum pot sitting on the countertop. “You are not to go out in that swimsuit ever again.”
“But Wallace, it’s all I have. I need to get out of this house and the pool is the only place there is to go during the day.” I hugged my towel closer and pulled my beach bag beneath my arm. All I needed was for Lolita to fall out onto the floor. I imagined the book burning a rectangle into the tile from the fire I saw in Wallace’s eyes as I tried to reason with him.
He grabbed more greens and pushed them down on top of the others. “There are better places, decent places. I never liked that you were going to that pool in the beginning. I only said you could because I didn’t want you arguing about it and upsetting Frieda.”
Tears welled up behind my eyes, and this time they were tears of rage. How I hated Wallace and his damned piousness. “Well, I’m about to upset her now when I tell her how unfair you are.Where is she?”
Wallace grabbed my wrist before I could get out of the kitchen. “She’s taking a nap.You leave her alone.” He was too close; his eyes were on my breasts, and I could smell the bitter greens on his fingers before he let go of me. He lowered his voice.“Go change your clothes and help me finish dinner for your mother.” When I backed a step away from him, he shook his head. “You’ve changed, Layla Jay. When we lived together before, I thought you were a good Christian girl. Now I’m not so sure about that.”
“I was never sure of you,” I said before I ran to my room and locked the door. Tossing my bag on my bed, I lay down beside it in my damp suit. If Wallace wanted to go to war with me, so be it. I could do battle with him, couldn’t I? I turned over onto my stomach, reached over and pulled Lolita out of my bag. When I had first seen the paperback in Mama’s nightstand cabinet, I remembered people talking about the movie, which a lot of kids’ parents had forbidden them to see. A couple of boys had seen it in Memphis, and June told me they said it was just about the sexiest, weirdest movie they’d ever gone to. I had seen photos of Sue Lyons in nearly all of the movie magazines and I knew that she was supposed to be only fourteen in the role of Lolita, but I thought she looked a lot older than that.
I got up, dropped my towel on the floor, and walked over to my dresser, where I stood staring at my reflection. I looked older than fourteen myself.While my breasts had been growing larger, my face had been losing its roundness so that now my cheekbones stood out, and my neck appeared longer. I had straight white teeth behind my full lips, and as I turned in profile, I decided I liked the way my nose curved up just a tiny bit on the end. Backing up I could see that my now tan legs were long enough, but my waistline was too low, which made the upper and lower halves of my torso disproportionate. I wasn’t going to be as beautiful as Mama, but I thought I might be pretty enough to turn a few heads.
My eyes fell on my flute case on the floor beneath the window. After football season ended, I had given up playing the flute; I was never going to be all that good. But I missed playing it, and now I took it out of its case and lifted it to my lips. I liked the feel of the cool silver against my lips, the slick cylinder that I wrapped my fingers around. I played a few notes. I had already forgotten most of the songs I had learned in band practice, but I tried to play “Greensleeves,” and had just about gotten the first bars right, when Wallace banged on my door.
“Layla Jay, stop that noise.You’ve woken your mother, and now she has a headache. Open this door.”
“I can’t. I’m not dressed,” I said.
“Well, get dressed and come help me with dinner.”
I pulled down my suit and fluffed the hairs I had recently grown on my mound of Venus and bounced my breasts before I strapped them in a bra. I was a woman in every sense of the word now, I told myself. And as a woman, I could handle Wallace, couldn’t I?
I didn’t stop going to the pool. I told Wallace I was spending the afternoons at the library, and began changing into my suit in the pool dressing room and drying my hair before I returned home. I stuffed books on top of my swimsuit in case Wallace peeked into my bag, but usually he wasn’t around when I left or returned. I checked Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield out of the library, and told Wallace I was really enjoying reading about poor David, who never knew his real father, just like me.“It’s very educational, too,” I said.“That Mr. Murdstone is so mean to David.”
“Good for you. Maybe now you’ll learn to appreciate having a stepfather like me,”Wallace said, looking pleased with me for a change.
At the pool my romance with Roland was going nowhere. Once in a while he’d come over and talk to me, but mostly he was busy giving lessons or blowing his whistle at boys running or horseplaying too rough. A lot of girls hung out by his chair, which was about four feet off the concrete and centered in the exact middle of the pool. Jehu and Lyn came to the pool almost as often as I did. Lyn never spoke to me again, but occasionally Jehu would pass by me on the way to the snack bar or the boys’ bathroom and say hi or how’s it going or hot, isn’t it? Each time he passed, I planned to think of something interesting to say, but words always failed me, and I usually wound up saying hi back or yeah, it’s a scorcher.
And then one Wednesday afternoon around two o’clock, June showed up. I didn’t see her at first because she walked behind the chairs instead of in front of them like most people. I’d gotten lucky and had a chair of my own that day, and when she came up behind me and called my name, I nearly fell out of it.
“Hey, Layla Jay. Mind if I put my stuff down beside you?”
“It’s a free country, public pool,” I said in what I hoped was a bored-sounding voice.
I didn’t watch as I listened to the squeaking sounds of her scuffing around her yellow beach towel in her thongs. She had brought a small transistor radio in her bag, which she held out over my stomach. “Mind if we listen to some music?”
What was this we like we were together? “Go ahead. I don’t care.” I turned over onto my stomach and laid my cheek on the cushion facing away from her. I thought about her hair. She’d finally gotten rid of the bubble hairdo and was letting her hair grow out into a flip, which was a better look for her. And she’d lost weight. When she was cheerleading, her calf muscles were plump-looking and her shoulders round with extra muscle. Now she looked frail. I had heard that she had been sick for a long time, but I couldn’t remember with what.
“I’m Leaving It Up to You” was playing on WXIL when June switched on her radio. “You decide what you wanna do,” she sang. She tapped my arm. “Kind of appropriate, huh? Deciding how to feel when someone leaves things up to you.”
I turned my head to lie on my left cheek.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
June uncapped her suntan lotion and smeared white cream on her arms and shoulders. “I’m talking about us,” she said. “I’m asking if you would decide to give me a second chance.”
I sat up and swung my legs off the chair so that I was facing her. “Why should I give you a second chance?” As soon as I said it, I heard Mama’s voice inside my head, telling me I should forgive her.
“Because I’m sorry and I understand now how you must’ve felt when I treated you so bad.” June capped the bottle of lotion and set it beside her.“You were right to be hurt and mad at me, and I was a stupid idiot.Those girls I wanted to be friends with aren’t nearly as nice as you. They’re backstabbers every one. I don’t like any of them.”
I sneered. “What’d they do to you?”
June’s eyes teared up, but she didn’t cry. She looked away and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Uh, nothing. Nothing to me. Really. I just s
aw how they gossip about one another. They’re mean and all they care about is money and boys and clothes. They don’t ever talk about anything important like you and I did. And they think it’s so cool to hate teachers and parents and really anybody over thirty. I loved your grandma. How could anyone dislike her? Or your grandfather? ”
“I knew all that about them a long time ago.That’s not news to me.”
“Yeah, but Layla Jay, I didn’t see it.You’re the best friend I ever had, and . . .” She swallowed a few times before she went on. “And I’m just miserable without you. I miss you so much.”
The cloud of her unhappiness ballooned out and enveloped me. I could feel her misery, and I admitted to myself that I was lonely, too. I had missed her as much as she missed me. Maybe Mama was right. It was better to forgive. I thought of how bad I felt when I got really mad. Thinking about the mean things June had said only made me feel worse. Two wrongs don’t make a right, Grandma had said. Was I being just as awful as she was by not forgiving her? I looked across the pool to the chain-link fence that enclosed us. As I watched the T-shirts and towels draped on the fence, flapping in the light breeze like laundry on a line, it occurred to me that maybe my anger was a fence, too, imprisoning me, keeping me from the freedom to forgive.
“June,” I said and stopped. Her head was bowed. “June?” When she lifted her face to me, I saw ribbons of tears winding down her cheeks. Her white lips, pressed together so tightly, matched the knuckles of her folded hands. “I missed you, too,” I whispered.
“Oh, Layla Jay!” She scrambled across the concrete and fell on me. Her hug felt nearly as good as Grandma’s, and I kissed her cheek for the first time ever.
When I told Mama that June and I had made up, that I had forgiven her, she hugged me, too. “Honey, I’m so glad, and I know just how June felt when you told her all was forgiven because that’s how I felt when Wallace forgave me. And because of Wallace, God forgave me, too. I’m sure of it.”
Wallace again. Her true savior. Savior of the world! God could retire and just let Wallace take care of His business. I was about to say “Maybe I should start praying to Wallace” when I saw Mama’s shining eyes. I didn’t want to take away her joy. “Yeah, I’m glad everything has turned out the way it has,” I said looking down at my hands as I knew Mama would see that big lie written all over my face.
Lying to Wallace about the library wasn’t bothering me one bit. Every chance I got, I met June at the pool and within another week, I was as brown as an acorn and my hair had blond streaks that contrasted with the darker browns of my hair. Even my boobs liked the sun; they were growing into showpieces like Mama’s, and I thanked God every night for answering my prayer. I was also learning a lot from Lolita. I read slowly, often having to reread the long sentences this author Nabokov wrote, and there were quite a lot of words I didn’t know, but it was very clear to me how this Humbert Humbert was feeling about his “nymphet.” I hated Humbert, but I was fascinated by him, too. Lolita I couldn’t figure out, but I thought I would eventually understand what made her tick if I could get through the novel. June thought I was nuts to have to work so hard to read a stupid book. She had amassed a large collection of magazines and read about fashion and makeup and stories about girls who didn’t get invited to the prom. I thought reading should take you away from your regular life, but that’s just me.
One Wednesday afternoon, June and I had just laid out our towels when a dark cloud rolled over the sun and in a short time, a clap of thunder sounded overhead. “Everybody out of the pool,” Roland called, tweeting his whistle in consecutive short blasts.With a lot of “aw’s,” “no fair’s,” and “There’s no lightning,” kids began clambering out of the water looking like the seals at the zoo waddling up on their rocks.Then they poured over the sunbathers, stepping on our towels, knocking over bottles of suntan oil.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” June said. “It’s going to rain anyway.”
“Where?” I said, getting up and sliding into my thongs.
“My house. Nobody’s home.We can do our nails or something.”
I glanced around the pool. Jehu hadn’t come today, but Lyn was standing in a circle of girls, June’s former friends and fellow cheerleaders. June was looking at them, too. “Let’s get out of here before they do. I don’t want to have to speak to them if they’re leaving the same time as us,” she said.
Glory and Sarah Jane were staring at June, and the disgust I saw written on their faces puzzled me. When they whispered to each other and laughed, I was sure it was June, and not me, they were gossiping about. “Okay. Let’s hustle,” I said.
Still in our suits, we walked over to June’s cream-colored brick ranch house, where she lifted the potted mum beside the door and retrieved the key to the glass-paned door. “Mother thinks a burglar wouldn’t find the key here. Can you believe she’s that dumb?”
I didn’t answer. I admired June’s mother, had at times wished Mama was a little more conventional like her. June’s mother was the president of the PTA at Zebulon Junior High, belonged to Beta Sigma Phi, and helped her husband in the office at his plumbing company. And her house was spotless. June loved our messy house and Mama’s freewheeling life, and said she wished her mother was more like mine. I suppose Grandma was right about the grass is always greener.
June offered me a Coke from their refrigerator, which held oranges, neatly stacked Tupperware, several varieties of cheese, fresh asparagus and carrots along with the usual stuff. I thought of the limp carrots in our refrigerator. “Can I have one?” I said, pointing to the crisper.
“Yuck! If you want one, go ahead.” June grabbed two Cokes and an opener from the drawer beside the sink, where their silverware gleamed in separated bins. I thought of how our utensils were all jumbled up so that we always had to fish around in the drawer to find a spoon or fork.
I followed June to her bedroom and dropped my bag on the floor. While June shrugged off her cover-up and hung it in her closet, I looked out the bank of windows that stretched across the back of her bedroom wall and saw the first drops of rain splattering on their brick patio. “Raining,” I said. “We got here just in time.”
June walked to the mirror and flicked the bottom of her bikini higher on her leg. “I’m blistered again,” she said. “I wish I could tan as good as you.” The fair skin of June’s stomach had turned a bright red, and there were stripes of pink down her legs.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little,” she said. “I’ll put some cream on it. Maybe it won’t peel.”
After June left to get the cream out of the bathroom, I pulled my suit down and admired the line just above my nipples where the top of my suit came to. I smiled, thinking that Wallace was so dumb. Did he believe I was getting a tan beneath the fluorescent lights in the library?
“Wow! Look at your tan line,” June said, holding up a jar of Noxzema. She set the jar on her dresser and walked over to me. I pulled the top of my suit back up and was reaching for my Coke and carrot when she said, “Can I see your line again?”
I hooked my thumbs in the straps and wiggled the suit down nearly to my nipples.
“Oh, you’ve got such beautiful boobs,” June said, with envy in her voice. In her bikini top, hers looked to be about the size of Papaw’s fists. “Are they hard like mine? Can I feel them?”
“I guess,” I said, uncertain that I really wanted her to touch me.
June’s hands, soft and cool, reached inside my suit, lifting my breasts into her palms. As she exhaled, puffs of air warmed my skin. Her thumbs brushed across my nipples, and when I felt them stiffening, I held my breath, heat rising up from below. I backed away. “No, June. Don’t. I feel funny all over.”
June’s palms were flat on her yellow top. “I know. Me too. It’s kind of nice though.” She pulled her top off. “Feel mine.”
I stared at the small pink-and-white mounds that she
cupped in her hands. “No. I don’t think we should ...”
“Come on, Layla Jay, I’m not going to get you pregnant.” June laughed, breaking the tension that was nearly tangible in the space between us.
I giggled. “I guess not,” I said.
“Let’s smush them together. See how that feels.” She stepped over the fallen bikini top on the floor and pushed her boobs against mine. “Maybe rubbing against yours will encourage mine to grow.” She looked down at our chests, talking to her breasts. “See what you’re supposed to look like?”
“You’re goofy,” I said, and just then, a loud clap of thunder made us both jump, and immediately lightning flickered in the room and sheets of rain pelted the windowpanes. June ran across the room to the four windows, raised the far left one, and knelt in front of it.The blowing rain hit her chest and face and water cascaded down her stomach.“Come on. Do this. It feels terrific,” she called over the roar of the rain drumming on the tin roof.
She was right. The stinging pellets of cold water felt good on my breasts and I lifted my face with closed eyes to the refreshing spray. In minutes, we were getting soaked, and I slammed my window down at the same time as June. Before I could rise to my feet, June leaned over and licked the water that dripped from my nipples. I felt her tongue and the circle of her soft lips on my skin. “No,” I said, but I didn’t move away. This was wrong, maybe a sin, but my body ignored my thoughts, and my arms reached out and pulled her close.
Chapter 13
KNOWING THAT IGNORANCE IS OFTEN THE SOURCE OF OUR fears, I left June’s house and walked straight over to the library, hoping to get smarter about what June and I had done. I had heard kids at school call Mr. Collier and Mr. Banks, who lived together in a big house on Delaware, a word that I couldn’t remember, and I was afraid that June and I had become the female counterparts to whatever Mr. Collier and Mr. Banks were. I hoped to find that word in a book among the ones in the reference section.