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  I knew Natty knew the tricks. I knew she made boys glad to be with her. Kermit had told me a story, not so much to amuse me as warn me. (“You better not get yourself in trouble!”) He said, she gives head. Once some boys had given her a package of banana popsicles, and she’d laughed like crazy and passed them around to everybody standing near. And I knew something they were too dumb to see, even Kermit: she was using them to practice for the real world, when she would get out of here.

  The sun was glaring. We walked over the hills, carrying an ice chest and blankets and a portable radio. (“Come along and be my party doll!”) We stumbled, our bare feet sinking in the sand; our breath was coming hard.

  “Jesus Piss it’s hot,” Natty said, and the boys laughed. “We gotta be crazy coming to the goddamned sandhills in the middle of the goddamned day in the middle of the goddamned summer!” she shouted. “Like it is fucking HOT!” and at that the boys screamed with laughter, looking at her and at each other. I straggled behind with Chip, carrying the blankets.

  Someone said, “Hey, how about this tree!” (more hysterical laughter), and just like that, we plopped down and began to drink beer. I drank mine too fast and it made me belch, and when I looked around to see who’d heard me, everybody started laughing, and I laughed too. I stretched out and put my head in Chip’s lap. Natalie lay on a blanket between Hoot and Charlie. They told dirty jokes and sang with the radio (“My little ruuuunaway!”) and kept popping open beers. Charlie said something that made Natty pretend she was mad, and they wrestled and brawled and ended in a hot sandy embrace, the length of them, right in front of all the rest of us. She pulled away and stood up. “Christ, I am H-O-T!” she said. We all said, “Amen,” like in a church.

  “You know what let’s do?” she said. “Let’s take off all our clothes.” Nobody said anything. In a minute or two Charlie got up and took his jeans and shirt off, standing in his jockey shorts. “Oh no, macho,” Natty said. “Aaaall clothes!” she growled, leaping across Hoot and pulling Charlie’s shorts down around his ankles. “Off off off!” she cried, and in a flash she was naked, and then Hoot. The three of them began to dance around like Indians in a cowboy movie, their hands back and forth against their mouths, dancing around Chip and me, still lying on the blanket. “No fair! No fair!” Natty poked at us, and Charlie and Hoot joined in. They shouted, “No fair!” a dozen times or more, and then they stopped, still, spaced around the two of us on the ground.

  “Come on, Abby, take it off,” Natalie said in a soft sweet voice. The beer and the sun had made me dizzy. I saw Charlie and Hoot standing with their hands on their hips, their faces wet with sweat, their penises hanging crazily in the sun. I thought how much it would hurt to have a sunburned penis. “Off,” Natty said, quite firmly.

  “Come on, Natty, please,” I said. I looked at Chip. “You won’t let them make me, will you?” I asked.

  “Just hold on,” Chip said, but his voice was a boy’s voice, with no authority. It made the others grin. What was he going to do about it? I felt something knocking inside me, I couldn’t tell where the thumping was, I knew it had to be fear, and I thought: I can’t die of this. Then, simply, as if it had been rehearsed many times, Natty and Hoot and Charlie were a tableau in motion. Without frenzy, they moved in on us. Charlie and Hoot knelt beside Chip and put a hand, each of them, on his shoulder. Chip as good as disappeared before our eyes. He lifted his hand off of me, and moved away. Natty, making deep noises like cat’s purrs in the back of her voice, noises like a lover crooning, knelt in front of me. I couldn’t make a sound; my head went slowly back and forth, pleading. Natty moved carefully, the soft noises from her throat rising like froth, her tongue clicking faintly. She put her hands on me just above the knees, and I knew, as if it had been announced from a sky split open for this purpose, that there was nothing I would do to stop her. That, whatever she wanted, I would do. Our little scene had become a ritual. It was no longer a game; it was a force that made a new space in my world. I forgot about the naked boys, the male eyes fastened on me in horrified elation. Natty ran her hands in soothing strokes down the lengths of my legs, again and again, slowly, strength and tenderness mixed, and then she began to stroke harder, kneading my flesh. I remembered how she had touched me, on the floor of her tacky bathroom in Hadicol Camp, and I began to whine. Natty shushed me like a whining baby. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I love you, sweetie. Don’t you know I can make you feel good?”

  She took my shirt off over my head and undid the bra that sprang up and flapped softly over my breasts and then lay still. She kissed each nipple, and then she stretched out on top of me, her naked groin against my jeans, while she stroked my arms and hair and face, crooning and shushing and purring. I shut my eyes. I might have been dead as she unzipped my jeans and pulled them off and tossed them aside. Even with my eyes closed, the sun was a white fire; the sand, and the boys now kneeling in the sand, floated.

  How long did it take? Could any of us have said? When Natty had stroked me everywhere, had kissed me and reassured me, until I rose onto the cloud of heat under the bare white sky, she began to slide away from me. I felt the pressure of her body ease. And from someone—it was me of course, but I did not know how it could be from me—came a tiny moan, and the moan, and the easing of Natty’s weight on me, made me move a little, as if something stirred in my thighs. Then Natty was away, and there were no sounds except for breathing, no birds or animals in the sand. I heard Natty’s voice as she bent toward my face. “It’s going to be okay, honey,” she said. On a hot burst of breath she added, “Now, you guys.”

  One of them spoke, incredulous: “What!” and Natty said again, “Now.” She had moved so that she was above me. I felt her hands on my shoulders, pressing me hard. I still had not opened my eyes. “They won’t hurt you,” she lied. I opened my eyes and screamed. “Give in,” Natty said beneath my cry. “Give in!”

  “For God’s sake!” Chip said nearby. “For holy sweet Christ!” he uttered as Charlie Jamison climbed on top of me. In a moment Charlie slid away, sighing, and Hoot took his place. One of them put a hand on Natty’s breast. “Not me, sport,” she said in an ugly way. “I’m just directing this show.” I felt the heat more than the pain. I thought: I will die, after all, and it was such a sweet relief!

  They packed everything up and went back toward the car. Chip helped me dress, and I staggered after them. We took our same places in the car. Chip tried to hold my hand, but I pulled it away. The boys in the front looked shifty-eyed and scared. Charlie said, trying for a casual tone, though his voice cracked in the middle of his words, “Guess nobody is going to tell about this, huh?” Nobody said anything, and Charlie’s head swung around so that he could see me, and then he looked forward, like a door on a tight hinge. I knew Natty was disgusted with him for being dumb and vain and chicken-hearted. “Shut up!” she told him. “Just shut up!”

  I slid into the corner of the back seat. “Who would I tell?” I said. “Who would believe me?”

  Kermit and I went to the Miss West Texas pageant not long after. Natty placed second in the bathing suit competition. She sang a gritty blues song, and the audience loved it, but she didn’t impress the judges; she wasn’t even a finalist. When it was over, Kermit pulled me along to go and see her. She let him give her a hug, and didn’t look at me. “Tough luck, Nat,” he said. “You were the sexiest, that’s for sure. Don’t you think that was the trouble?” She pulled away and went back to picking up her things. “Screw Miss America in the ass,” she said.

  A few weeks later, we heard she’d run away to Las Vegas with the high school drama teacher. He was married, with kids. I thought, God, he’ll hate her, later.

  I went over it again and again. I tried to remember how I felt when there was still time to have stopped them. I knew I could have. Even with three of them, and Chip no more help than a rag, I knew they wouldn’t have done it if I had tried to stop them. But it was like trying
to remember a dream. I had lost all the details. What I remembered was loss washing through me, a dark flood, drowning out all other feelings. That flood took with it the last of my innocence (and who was I kidding? I thought), my pride (and what of that had I had?), my will to possess my own life. The way I stood in front of the mirror in the morning had changed. The way I felt when I lay on my cot at night had changed. The pain, the guilt—they had burned through me into the cavity inside; I ached to have them excised.

  Late in the fall Kermit went back to Sherry. She was bland and affectionate, as if the empty place in her history with my brother had been covered over like fill dirt on a dump. With no fuss, they married one weekend. Lenore bought them towels, a coffeepot, some mugs, as if they had been living at the Y. It touched me to see my mother taking love at face value. Kermit moved with Sherry to Lubbock, where her mother, a widow, had a house. He would go to school at last; Sherry would work. No one mentioned Kermit’s father.

  The boys I had dated the year before were gone; the boys from the sandhills were gone; my brother was gone, my father and Natty were gone. Even Mr. Morales left, halfway through the first semester. He told me after class, the day before he had to go. It was his mother, he said, in Mexico; a son had certain duties.

  “Will your family go too?” I asked. He looked confused. “Your wife, I mean,” I said awkwardly.

  He smiled. “I’m not married,” he said, and I felt a wave of pain that brought salt to my eyes, the taste of blood to my lips. “You must go on with your language study,” he said, blind to my anguish. “You have the aptitude for it.” We were standing by his desk with the door open, in view of anyone passing in the hall. In a day he would be gone. I touched his arm. “Oh no,” I said. He moved his arm away. “Remember that a language opens the heart and intellect of another people.” How I wanted him to embrace me! I knew if he kissed me he would taste the blood on my lips. I felt wicked and lost.

  During Christmas vacation I worked in the evenings at the store downtown. One night Farin came in, and when he saw me, he said, without asking anything, that he would be back at nine to pick me up.

  “’Where are we going?” I asked in the car. He answered smoothly.

  “To my house. I’m gonna show you my tree.”

  In his driveway, he leaned over and kissed me. Something between us had improved; a pleasant mild flush of sensation rose along my spine. I followed him into the dark and empty house. He flipped on the lights and said, “Folks out of town. Nice, huh?” He made drinks for us—vodka and 7-Up—and put on a Del Shannon record with the arm set aside so it would play over and over. A Christmas tree stood in a corner laden with ornaments and tinsel, below it a mound of gifts. I admired the tree, jiggled the ice in my drink, and sank onto the couch. Farin drained his glass and ran his hands over my shoulders and then under my sweater. He buried his face in my lap and then, kneeling on the floor, kissed my thighs. I watched this as if it were a film starring someone else. We went into his bedroom. Shannon’s whine curled around the hall toward us, Farin had an eerie blue bulb in his overhead light. As he undressed me, I looked at the light on my skin.

  “Listen,” he said, scooting me up to the middle and toward the head of his double bed. “Are you going to participate, or what?” His scolding made my eyes brim with tears and brought me out of my wandering. He was naked and blue, and the tree he had promised me stood like a purple mushroom sprouted after a rain. My heart was pounding; here I was, and I didn’t know how I got here. It was a lame excuse and I rejected it. I turned my body and pressed it down the length of Farin’s. He slid a leg between mine. “Are you ready?” he murmured gruffly. I was amazed when he touched me and made me aware of my milkiness, about which he exclaimed, “I knew it!” I was amazed that I felt nothing, floating in the blue light, the song, his groans and murmurs. When he moved into me, the vodka rose in the back of my throat, scalding. My hips clutched and cramped. Farin began to heave and grunt. He ordered me, “Hold my ass!” In a moment he fell off me with a monstrous sigh, and reached down to peel something off his penis. When he saw me looking at it, he said, “A rubber, dingbat, doncha know a rubber?” I fell back against the pillow, awash in remorse. It was so trivial, and I had only myself to blame. I had known where he was taking me. And I had wanted to go. But why?

  Farin got up and changed the record. He came back singing with Buddy Holly’s song. When he saw me with my arm thrown across my face—I must have looked ridiculous—he howled. “This is for fun!” he said, pulling my arm away. “Fun! S-E-X. You ain’t no virgin.” His face above me revealed at this new angle a tiny red scab left from shaving, and a pimple about to burst.

  “You on the pill?”

  I said I didn’t know anything about one.

  “S’aright, I got Trojans. You oughta get on the pill, though, you gonna fuck around.”

  “I don’t!” I cried.

  Farin snorted. “My ass.”

  I thought he would call, that that would be my reward, though he had told me that he had a girlfriend. He’d asked, “When did you do it?” and I’d said, “Last summer,” two words for all of that. When I spoke of it, the experience in the sand receded, became smaller. “Like girls say,” I had improvised,” he got what he wanted and didn’t want it any more.” Farin had said, “Poor kid.”

  A month later, though, someone did call. He said he was Farin’s friend, and Farin had given him my number.

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  “I graduated Permian in ‘58,” he said. That was the other high school. “Listen, I’m having a little party Thursday night. Thought you could come.”

  “I go to school, and I work.” What kind of party does anybody have on Thursday? I thought.

  “It’s gotta be Thursday,” he insisted. “I’ll pick you up at nine. You won’t be out late.”

  “Listen,” I said. “I don’t know you.”

  “Richard. I told you, I’m a friend of Farin’s.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That you’re a good kid, haven’t been here too long. You know, I thought you’d be friendlier—”

  “Okay,” I said. Maybe Farin did feel bad that he couldn’t call. “I have to be home by eleven.”

  Richard’s answer seemed to slither out of the phone and down my arm. “It doesn’t take that long, honey,” he said. Before I could reply, he had hung up.

  I’ve stumbled into a bad crowd, I told myself. It was a mistake. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t halfway down a slide; I could get off.

  I rode my bike to the Texaco station where Eddie worked. It was cold and sunny, perfect for a hard, fast ride. I asked the attendant if Eddie was around. I wanted to tell Eddie that I would go out with him, that I was one Anglo girl with no hangups. I thought he looked gentle, and manly, too. I thought he would have asked me out already, but he didn’t want trouble. It was up to me to let him know it was okay.

  “He’s gone,” the attendant said. He made a gesture across his front. “That girl of his got herself a bambino,” he laughed. I felt sick. I couldn’t believe how stupid the attendant was.

  “Oh that,” I said, as if I knew all about it. “I thought he’d be here, though.”

  “Gone to Del Rio.” The attendant was looking me over in a way I didn’t like. “Those spies have more relatives down there. Hell, they have relatives all over!” He was staring at me at about crotch level. “I’d be glad to help,” he said.

  “You’re full of shit,” I said, and rode away.

  In the flesh, Richard was only another arrogant young man, almost handsome in his dark sullen way. I let him in the door and we stood there for several moments, looking at one another. I knew I was going to go with him. I knew I wanted what he wanted, that it was in my nature, that it was who I was. I could thank Farin for making me see that.

  “Farin didn’t say you had red hair,” Richard said. “He didn
’t say you were so pretty.”

  I stood dumb as wood. From my head down, a tingle passed along my body. From my feet up came a leaden numbness. The sensations crossed somewhere in my middle and confused me.

  “I can’t go!” I said. I added, in a murmur, “Sorry.”

  He moved a step closer and put his hands on my waist. “Your folks here?”

  The house was absolutely quiet. “It’s my mom and me,” I said. “She works at the Rotunda.” Richard ran his hands up under my breasts. With one breath I let go. It was all so inevitable. It settled something, letting go.

  I said: “She’s not home till midnight.”

  I hated him, at least part of the time, but it was with Richard that I learned to love the night sky. He talked about the sky as a wonderful conjunction of motion and space; he had once hoped to study astronomy. He said the sky and the sea had a very real connection; like breathing, the sea rose and fell beneath the tug of the sky. I said that if you thought of it like that, of our place in a celestial sphere, then all of us fit, had a home, so to speak. Rich and poor, old and young, maybe even dead and alive, we all mattered so little. I didn’t know what I was talking about, or care. It was the first time I’d known the delicious balm of talk. I felt myself drawn up, like the sea, toward blackness; and in it, whorls of new light, young planets, dead stars fought for me, sought to suck me in. Richard said he understood. He touched me so gently. Like a lover.