I lay still for a moment waiting for the rumbling outside to settle then spoke softly with words in a question he couldn't possibly answer, "Did I miss my period?" Just as a loud crack snapped the air and the wind driven rain began slamming leaves and debris against the window glass in disharmony with the boom of thunder. Then for a few moments, a hush filled the air teasing me with another sudden disturbance to follow.
The resulting silence was deadening as I waited for the next rumbling, not from the storm outside but rather from the beautiful man behind me. When there was no response I turned my head to encourage Danny to say something then it hit me, what does a God fearing man say when his lover and not his bride suggests she's pregnant with his child. I really didn't know.
I had no way to turn except sideways, hold his hand on my breast and wait for the violence on the other side of thin glass behind cotton cloth to start, and it did, with even more veracity. Thinking Danny couldn't hear my question over nature's loud noises outside I took the time to ponder the noises of my life trusting they were far meeker than what nature was offering outside, but I needed the dream.
As far back as I could remember my mother always encouraged my curiosity and fascination with the chaos of natural order and all things growing offering life as a celebration of the chaos. When I was five, my father handed a different life's noise to my heart. I was told my mother would never be coming home again.
As she had done several times over the last year, I thought her lost again and she would figure out a way home to hug me and tell me she was fine and calm my fear in her arms, but it wasn't the case that time. It took me awhile to understand some people hide much of their feelings so deep they change everything around them to shield their inner desire until they can't handle the guilt or the shame anymore. Some keep pretending, some act on their feelings and emotions, and some lose their minds, ultimately taking a more permanent route, one way or another.
Four years later, I was with my friend Carol and her mom at the grocer. By chance, I saw my mother with a pretty lady I had never seen before. I wanted to confront the woman and ask her in anger why she never came home to comfort me, but I quickly realized the lady touched and kissed my mother like my father would when they didn't know I was adoring them. I hid behind a gondola shelf with cans of baked beans stacked high to shield my shocked emotions and the zillion questions flying through my mind.
As a child I had many questions to ask of my father and the one question troubling me most was the question about my mother and her lady friend and why the lady played with my mother and kissed her like he would sometimes. I can still recall his simple answer as he held my chin gently in his fingertips and looked deep into my eyes. The answer had to be deciphered for another two years until I came to grips with the fact I was told by my father my mother was a whore.
When we were ten, Carol encouraged me to journey deeper into the woods in search of the mysterious clearing all the boys told us existed, but never revealed the path to get there. It took us nearly the entire morning to find the near perfect circle of pure white sand and when we pushed the underbrush aside and saw the holy place we were so excited we stood in the middle of the circle of warm sand and hugged each other while jumping and giggling in celebration not realizing we were lost deep in the woods, and being watched by four boys sitting in the surrounding trees.
A few moments later was the first time in my life I feared the unknown more then I feared death and I cried in front of my best friend until I nearly couldn't breathe as she calmly stood in front of me with her shorts and panties around her ankles, pleading with them, "just show us the way out, she won't do it." That night I lay in solitude wondering how long it would take my heart to see boys as human beings again.
It took Carol's persistent encouragement to get me to eradicate my negative view of the opposite sex but I used caution and much more cunning resistance when dealing with boys after that day in the woods. Carol would point out a few boys now and then and whisper how cute they were but I had come to realize I wasn't attracted to boys who were only interested in what was inside my underpants. I began cultivating an attraction to how boys respected my appreciation for life, but somehow I sensed those types of boys didn't exist. I began praying every day for a real man to show up in my life and Carol became my best friend forever by accepting my approach even though she thought my way to seek attention through respect was a really stupid idea.
Dating just to have fun was fun especially when Carol was there, which was every date. That was our first rule of safety. However, our second rule dissolved after an hour, and often less, and I always felt like a hopeless referee as I watched her kiss her favorite boyfriend of the month while her blouse ended up somewhere other than on her upper torso while I was busy defending my integrity from a guy I didn't know just minutes before.
The night in the cemetery with a bunch of kids trying to scare each other was the most fun I had in a long time but it ended suddenly when I found Carol innocently straddling and tickling a boy lying on his back on the grass before a headstone, our so I thought. The epitaph read; 'As you are now, I once was thee, fear not death, then follow me'. The boy's name was Bob, but I accepted my best friend's carnal approach to meeting boys.
One night after the cemetery romp, Carol and I snuck out to have fun with twin brothers at an all-night carnival. The time was funny to us both because we kept insisting one or the other was our date, driving the boys crazy until Carol picked one, leaving me the one with groping hands. That night was the first time I was called the only iceberg on the planet with a platinum cap. I started wearing bras with more hooks and wondered why nobody sold metal panties with a lock, but I was told by Carol chastity panties were an ancient myth.
I tried masturbation and didn't enjoy it because it gave me a sense of feeling dirty, never thinking the feeling of reaching orgasm could be as beautiful as the orgasm itself, or being sexually stimulated by the touch of another would be ultimate carnality. But strangely I never thought that place important and concluded self-gratification was merely a clitoral exercise and something girls were supposed to try at least once, while watching their bodies morph into the form of a woman they were either forced to love or did love.
When the menstrual cycles started I felt my world had turned a sour shade of crimson with unbearable hatred for all around me every twenty-seven days. My father was no help. He hated buying sanitary pads for me, but worse I was watching him become frightened as I began looking and acting more and more like the woman who walked out on him, rather than his precious little girl.
