Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 16:36:10 -0700 From: Tim Stillman Subject: The Very First Summer of Millicent Forday "The Very First Summer of Millicent Forday" by Timothy Stillman (for Joyce Carol Oates) The formerly pernicious girl was to be no longer squandered, for she had been finally re-born--hail glory!-- this afternoon. It had begun on the summery main street of town. In the world broken into shattered glowing crystals that she saw; in the multi eye effect it seemed her whole body was capable of now. A delegation in her. Seizure warnings perhaps? that she had never had before, not in her entire fifteen years of life.. This new winnowing fear, and the unaccustomed red blush odd and sudden femininity that she had pushed down into her ankle socks, as though a girl of much oddly younger years. The world before her seemed to be floating, misty, surreal. As seemed her bone structure which were made of myriad confusing fluctuation ladders her mind imagined, and into whatever was squirreled about in there, all very whispery, all very quiet. But then there was nothing of value, and she felt good to know that. If she had a fit, if her mind went into electric wire spasming, what of it? She felt good to feel something not real in her. A physical feeling, almost. One of right brushes of a newly justified sun smiling its beaming beard down on her as she stood, wavering just a little bit, she was sure, in front of the Ben Franklin Five and Dime Store. There with its yellowed orange sun glass glare in this terrible muggy heat that, in this moment, she would not bet a penny on existing for anyone but her. . And odds were not, after all, that she could be covered with sunshine in this Saturday afternoon of July where, though people passed her by, anyone could see her at all. Though they never had before. Not really. The clumsy chemistry of her had made her something of a false front, a fake being. But now that was over. Something had ended. Everything had ended. She wished she could take a deep breath, to show how brave she was. But she did not dare. The bone castles in her were far too fragile. There was the next step, something unending about her. It appeared in her shiny sweaty body, that she was finally and at long last mortal. And her mortality could be used as a weapon. Reality was a dream to her. Reality always had been. And it had entered her dream kingdom. She could accept anything that way, couldn't she? To douse with black grave dirt those jostling, eyeless, cruel persons passing by her, who could not see her. To the girl, who had surely once had a brain, they looked more like brain nodes walking by unheeding, silly and funny looking, though she had no notion what a brain node was. She stood, becoming, not frightened, but somehow more relaxed, like a flower at evening rest, knowing the warmth will stay in the earth, the rains will be gentle when they come soon, and the sun will shine tomorrow. Nothing planned. Nothing guaranteed. She was not falling off the Earth. And yet she might be. Which gave her a curious courage in all that fear she had always known. When she had used to be someone else. And all the blazing pain and horror that had been once her and the environs of everything she touched and believed had curled up in as though it had all been her dearest friend, and going away. She would most curiously miss it. For it was summer and she was a part of it, no smaller a part of it than anyone around her. In her own way. She was cloaked in what she was, and what she was made her appear to others this afternoon as colorless glass, something that the air allowed within itself, giving her an escape hatch or allusion, somewhere in the dark spaces of her mind. And now she remembered. The elusiveness pearl was found. And that was that once upon a time, her name which was Millicent Forday, and she had been a number and alone; the thought, long ago memory of her, made her feel as though she could not swallow. As though her throat was suddenly bunched up and there was a knife cut down the center inside of it. Oh, yes, that Millicent, was--had been-- a girl who had had the right amount of boyfriends, only boys who would allow her to be as chaste as she wanted to be, as she made quite clear she would never go beyond a certain border. And thinking these things in the warm balloon of summer oxygen, she breathed in her world. And it was her world, and it was a world she could be visible in any time she wished. For there was nothing self deprecating or self involving. She just did not wish it so. And she turned to her math teacher who had passed by her, like a calling wind, like a moment that had passed for the girl once, and not for the teacher. The girl still blushed. She did now. She felt mortally wounded by this woman in the crowd, and called her teacher's name. "Miss Hendricks", she said, softly, with a warm rolling kind of Southern accent, friendly, that was what she was, and she realized she had not been that before. She had always had an itchy voice, a voice that said time was wasting and what do you want. She was not balanced precariously between her world and the world out there which had become her inside world too. She could decide who would live. She was terribly thirsty. She wished she had a Coke right now. Her teacher, a tall thin woman with bifocals turned in surprise and quickly, for the woman had not seen her there until now, turned around to see the girl beyond the group of walkers, in the moment she "came to light" to the woman; the girl being on a different planet perhaps, but still somehow at the very edge of the corner of the teacher's world. A woman of precision, a woman not given to surprises, or not allowing anyone to know she had been surprised or disconcerted. She might be seeing this girl in another galaxy, but it was just old hat Saturday in this sleepy little Southern town after all. And two can play the slightly amused game if they want. At least those were the vibrations the woman gave to the girl. Miss Hendricks, catching himself by not doing so, for it is never wise to let the students get the upper hand, even though they did from time to time, smiled professorially at her, her first line of defense, and unhurriedly walked back the few steps, passed through the sidewalk traffic, to her student. Though not a strict teacher and with kindness in her, still and all, the woman knew more than they, and made damn sure they knew it too. Miss Hendricks pinched her summer baked drifting brain to lead her voice to slightly superior tone and said, " "Millicent" and was proud of herself for remembering the nonessential, nondescript girl's name who somehow looked different now than Miss Hendricks remembered her. She smiled that teacher's smile, it did seem slightly genuine. As they chatted on a hot Saturday down town. Teacher of the usual moment. Child of the alien visage and the fear of seizures starting any moment. Indeed, the girl was disappointed they had not started yet. She looked forward to them. They would take her in the sky away, she fully believed. But right now, woman and girl pretending what they were not. As they asked how each other was. Teacher asked the girl if she was looking forward to next term, as they chatted pleasantries that bored both of them more than a little. Miss Hendricks said she had enjoyed the girl (already long in the fade out category) having been one of her students this past term, and told her she, Miss Hendricks, would be teaching senior geometry the next, and to, if the girl did not have her next term, drop by his class room every so often and say hello, to which the former girl, former human, said she would. Then the teacher, in her blue print summery dress, turned, after nodding politely, and went on her way. Millicent walked in the opposite direction. Miss Hendricks had walked maybe five paces when she turned, almost against her will, and looked back at that girl shadow, who was still looking in the woman's direction. Both of them seemed momentarily startled. The passersby between them. Miss Hendricks almost called her name, but something decided her against it. Felt there was something wrong, like a wise chill of a dead flower of perfect poise and regality suddenly bloomed in a garden of flowers that were not as pretty or as tall or as colorful or as regal, but which were also not dead either. Which, the teacher idly floated the idea, would be worse? Curious thing, and then the woman turned round and continued walking to her car parked in the town lot, dreading the heat and breathlessness and the pain that would be her lot in its interior in this greenhouse. . They saw her, the adults, the children, as Millie walked through the town, and she was greeted and chatted up from time to time. They appeared to know her. They appeared to. A bit startled, a bit shy, and looking after her. And Millie, no longer at odds with anything in the world, feeling light and empty and free inside, thought this was a nice town to live in and the persons in it were by and large good people. Millie walked toward Third Street and headed out of the business district and on toward home. She felt as though she were an arboreal bird which had been so surprisingly rescued. Not because she was ill, she no longer felt so, or taking the analogy further, that she had a broken wing, but something else, something so sad and unbearable that she didn't know what it could be. Or that she had been carrying that weight for so long. She had thought slightly in front of rescued, don't think of it that way at all, because it was important that she think of it that way. She was independent now, she could take care of herself, even if her parents died. There being really no other relatives she could live with. She could do all right, could get a second job, pay the house notes, have money for groceries and clothes and the like. The thing, though, the terribly curious thing was she was not perspiring now, and perhaps hadn't been for a bit. It was a very hot day. The sidewalk reflected heat shimmers and glare and seemed to be melting right in front of her. The cars kept their bumper to bumper creeping along in traffic. The sounds were the same sounds she had always heard. Yet everything was magnified somehow. Like a living moving museum all round her. The mowed lawns would still smell sickeningly of onions. Close, close and sticky air. Close, close and sticky she. But it was now all--different, all curiously unreal. And she felt a little fear at that unreality. She was becoming less brave. Just a little so. She thought it was in the mid nineties at least. And she felt hot and she felt drowsy, like a hollow gourd, and thought it would be nice to make it home so she could lie in a hammock strung between two elms in her yard, and sip pink lemonade and relax. Sleep would do her a world of good, in all the shadows. For she was for some reason very tired, as if she had run a very long arduous race. And perhaps she had. She also, though she tried hard, suddenly remembered she had no idea what she had been doing down town, how long she had been in the sun's beady overpowering glare, and its playing hide and seek with reality and sanity, Or where she had been before that. She hated that thought--reality and sanity--the opposites being delusion and insanity. The words which once had had a nice sound to them for her for some reason now smelled of dead flies and looked like huge thick steel doors and walls with a million unbreakable brackets in them and no hinges on the doors or walls at all, at all. She felt, if things would just rhyme, if she could live in a world of rhymes, she would feel better. Because she was not feeling well again. If she could just perspire. That would be something. A person could die being in all this heat and not being able to perspire. She stepped onto the sidewalk across the street, dodging traffic at a green light, with horns blowing at her. As she stumbled across in front of them. She felt lost, more than a little frightened, all the nice alienness of the recent past had deserted her. She did not know what had happened to her. She walked now by the housing project five blocks from town, she had walked that far without knowing it?, where some black kids were in the community yard, tossing around a baseball, and she felt the skin on her left arm, and her left arm alone, dry, hot, but dry, like the skin of a baked orange, as now was the skin on her forehead when she pushed her hand against it; she felt somewhat let down when she removed her hand and the forehead stayed as it was. She had thought it might fall off like old ceiling plaster. What had she been expecting otherwise? A door to open in it and her hand to be caught in it and cut off with the sharp door blade? Had she expected her head to open by a button she would push in the center of her forehead, the top of her skull springing over to lay next to the side of her face? The boys were noticing her. She wondered if she knew them. She was not comfortable in the presence of Negroes. Especially Negro boys. They frightened her by just being there. One of the boys called something to her, but she was unable to make out his patois. She had learned the word "patois" in school last year, and liked knowing it. It sounded so much better than some other words for it. That was what her mother had always told her, remember, they can't help it, if one of them says something you can't understand, just pretend you're deaf and go about your business, they can't help it, their big lips and all and their poor upbringing. So she walked on, her head down, and more than one boy yelled some not very kind things at her and she wanted to turn and apologize. The other boys were laughing and imitating her. Even so, she wanted to apologize for them, which made no sense. But how could she apologize for their being cinders in the way of her view of the sun? As though they owned it or something. She had a sudden desire to blame the whole thing of her life on them. She was hurt, blushing, and angry at herself. She had made her mind up from some time forward, when?, she would stop mollycoddling herself and stop thinking of herself as the Rose Princess. Rose Princess would never have breasts small as hers, far too small for a girl that age, another cause for heart ache and some derision. Of course, she knew the boys who were the cream of the crop would not date her at all, unless she put out, and she had put out to a point. Loneliness being a terrible thing. She might even put out for those boys back there playing baseball; indeed, had she noticed them at all, looked at them, she might have remembered one or two. A cock in the mouth was a cock in the mouth, regardless of color, after all. Boy, she thought, they must have been desperate to go out with me. She half laughed. She found nothing wrong with thinking it, that she had had sex with a lot of boys. But she hadn't. She didn't do that. Yet, the thought said, no guilt. And the thought patted the sidewalk along with her steps. She walked faster, the voices behind her were mean and shingled the air. They had no centrality to them. There was a great deal of angry pain and unaware divorcement in them, and she started running. Though she knew they would not follow and was somewhat sad about that. Their voices did keep up with her, at least in her claustrophobic mouse going round the merry go round brain--the voices sounded louder and deeper, as though they were ten years or more older than they really were. The voices like switchblades racing after her. Voices like old angers that were now to be taken up again, first time, personally, from them to her. And their laughter scalded her. She wished Miss Hendricks were with her here, wished the woman could have leaned all that tallness down to those boys, and tell them a thing or two about life, tell them that in the real world. That this kind of stuff just doesn't go, in the real world; we have to respect others before others can respect us. And they would probably knife her to death, but the girl creature would get away, she was untouchable, unblameable, now invisible again. She could not be expected to interfere or save Miss Hendricks' life or anything like that. She didn't want Miss Hendricks hurt or dead. After all, Miss Hendricks had been the first adult the girl creature had had sex with. To see Miss Hendricks defending her, all noble like, though. It would have been exciting, having her honor defended, and to think she was the soul and sanctity of rationality and sanity. Miss Hendricks had especially liked to put her tongue up the girl creature's vagina. To taste the juice. To feel the little "love penis." To stroke it with her womanly hand. To make the girl creature a sea creature stirring from the depths. Something no boy had accomplished with the girl formerly of this Earth. She had turned the corner, literally and figuratively, and the boys were out of her sight though she knew they were saying sexual things about her. She wished she had had the courage to have looked at them, to see if one or more of them had been with her at some time or other. She hadn't put out to them often however she reassured herself. She remembered she had somehow or other been dared to, had, yes, that was it, been a little woozy with drink at the time, though she didn't remember anything else about it, who put her up to it, if she had won something, and for that matter, she didn't remember any of the boys she had had sex with. Which was hardly fair. She did doubt however their penises were always that much bigger than white cock. The parabola of heat laced that crazy thought. Look at me, for God's sake, that's crazy. I don't even know how to do it. Miss Hendricks scared the hell out of me when she came on to me. When she said what she did. When she advanced. When she knew I wanted it. To make it with a woman. With her even. But I'm not experienced. They had sex with her because they could. No other reason. Miss Hendricks had sex with the girl because she could. Because it was daring and different and wrong. The girl knew that. She did not kid herself about it. With all of them, the ones she remembered, she had felt then apart from herself. She pushed these dangerous memories which were not hers at all, away. Think of the heat. Can't think of anything else. Perspire, dammit. Forget the woman who seemed to not remember the eager girl in bed with her. The eager girl who had had to tell the woman who was naked except for the curious fact she never took her white bra off and asked the girl, who did as asked, to suck her nipples through the lacy material which was so wrong for such a prim lady, the asking and the bra material and all of it, when you came right down to it. She was not perspiring on this very hot day and she had wished a teacher who had always been kind to her, who had made her cum, when no boy had, and to whom she had clung, dead, and she wished to have some pornographic films of her sex partners so she could review them at her leisure and remember them at least. It was so horribly unfair, she having sex with them, and not remembering it more than a vague hush puppy from a long time ago. The taste of it old and indifferent. A memory of a long series of memories really. When you came to it, she was not that kind of girl. When Miss Hendricks helped the girl creature, and what was she now that the world was scaring her to death with its darkness this long hot afternoon of Saturday?, sit on the woman's face, and the woman's tongue went up inside her and tickled the caves of her and the girl giggled, did she giggle because she wanted to? Or because it was expected of her? Did sexuality have to be a show? Did you have to do what they told you to do, even in that? Was anything pleasurable at all to her? Or to anyone? I'm tired, she thought, and hot, the heat has made me delirious. She mercifully began to perspire. She perspired like she did when one boy put it to her up the ass and another boy made her suck him off at the same time. Miss Hendricks had been curious what the girl did with boys. And asked her to tell her in great detail. Miss Hendricks found that especially fascinating, as she held the girl in her bed and stroked her butt crack and put her maidenly finger inside. The girl creature, now most sadly, most gladly, herself again, had entered one of the neighborhoods near her home. She walked past a man in hairy bare chest and red swim trunks, heavy belly, waxing his car; she walked past a stick bone woman in a swim suit, lying on a pink beach towel in her yard with overgrown grass, head to one side, sunglasses on. The woman lay on her front, with her top undone, catching sun rays as though she could become summer through the heat and the tan that was easing on the greasy Coppertone flesh of her, and through her. Millie dallied for a moment with the thought, I could tell her how women have sex and I could feel her hairy crotch and I could insert a penis like finger if she only knew what is passing her by and she dead out of luck, the summer grass sun worshipper. There were children going to the corner grocery store, running past her in giggles and sweat. One or two of them bumped into each other. One bumped into her as though she was not there. Millie felt for a moment that airy chance of being invisible again, but then knew she was not. Deflating again with it. She knew now she was just a summer fixture. The thoughts she was having, these mad thoughts, were just the results of the sweaty hot sun dancing in her brain. Mad--now there was another word that smelled like dead flies or lighting bugs in a Mason jar, insects that had been smothered to death by cruel insensitive little boys. Millie was the school whore. Face it. The word "whore" was red and enflamed and went down her throat hard like the bone of summer that she never felt alive unless it was invading some aperture of her body. It was just suddenly there like scalding water had been thrown on every inch of her body, three times over. There was nothing else of her. Just her sex. There was nothing else in her, but all those boys whom she could not remember. And the teacher who had had her one time and never wanted her again. She was a pin cushion of summer and everything came to her and through her like she was a railway tunnel and the passengers--when she had her first, of course, she had no memory--were racing through her, like darning her together for their little pleasures and then off into the darkness and distance of night, with the train whistle lost and forlorn coming back to ache her already scratched and tender skin down there. She stopped moving, bent over, gagging, arms around her waist, for a moment, before she moved on. No. Stop. Get in control. You will not act a fool in public. It was imperative she move on. I don't want to go mad, like a mad dog, she thought, perhaps said, as she realized she was not walking toward home anymore, not running, but walking fast, far away from home, because she knew she could never go back there again. The birds in trees prepped her somehow with their chatter. There was the cacophony of the day, with kids shouting as they biked past her. people sitting on front porches of houses, listening to the ball games on radio, and laughing, and ice in summer tea glasses crystallizing around Millie, as she thought, for the first time consciously, that was how it had been when she had "come to." She had been crystallized. Not the world around her. She. She had been put together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and she was the completed puzzle but at the same time, she was in far more pieces than she had been before. And more pieces were tumbling out of her, and off her, even now. She was Humpty Dumpty deconstructing. She was breathing hard. The sidewalk was bouncing under her as she walked faster. She was not sweating again. Under her arms, at her waist line, on her palms, she was dry as a desert. As though she were made as if without pores. She had been born standing in front of the dime store--a fast blip back to that--with whatever had happened between then and now, lost-- and she was looking for someone to care for her, to take her in, and without awareness, she was heading in the direction of Miss. Hendrick's house. Realizing she was not far from there now. And she was very frightened of all the things and people around her, things and people she had been around all her life. And now she did fit in, in some awful alien puzzling way, with them. A woman, sweeping her porch, wearing a floppy green house coat and mules, a red kerchief round her pulled up hair, a woman Millie did not recognize, sun glare or not, heat infraction or not, seemed to be wearing a tiny rainbow nebulae around her, and called out to her and told Millie to give her regards to Millie's mother. Millie paid no attention, while desperately trying to remember who the woman was. Millie would have no dealings with the past anymore. Only cowards live in the past, especially cowards who have no past in which to live, not a past that was ever real. Nothing is hope for the future. Future wishing is just trying to make the past different and an attempt to sling it over your shoulder in the future, which really is impossible, Millie thought. She would have none of that anymore. She had lived totally in the past, even when the past was the present, and she wasn't even 16 yet. She knew her age, her name, she recognized certain things and people; she knew how to get home; and now that she stood in front of Miss Hendrick's little brick and wood home, she realized what was to happen. She found the fear of all of it gone. She took to it, like a baby in warm water bath. She knew what to do. Some things. Some things though. She thought of protractors and slide rules and equations written with chalk of blackboards; the dusty sneezy smell of the chalk; the clogging smell of the chalk on the blackboard. These things she held to tightly as she knew how. Angels to protect her, as though she had entered some undefined country with new olfactory senses, she or it, and she felt a red welt goring her, growing to two and three welts on her groin, no, "down there," her mother had always called it. She remembered things her mother said, but not the woman per se, not what she looked like, nothing. All out of Millie's head. And she was a part of the sun glare, now that the cinders were no longer in it. She was a part of the heft and feel of it. The sounds around her, mowers and cars and kids skating past almost knocking her over, one of the kids, turning round to her, saying a sex thing, laughing, begging, please, she not responding, knowing it drove him crazy, then with put upon masculinity, he turned forward again and went with his friends. Forgetting her immediately. "Millicent" Miss. Hendricks said, opening the door to the girl's desperate palsied knock. Millicent, vaguely thinking, I've such an ugly name, it's a TV comedy character's name. It's square and bloated and foolish looking and wanting to please everybody all the time and constantly denigrating itself, even though it knows the fault is not it's, but please don't anyone be mad at me or forget me, because it's so scary being the other kind of mad; it's so scary being locked up with only me in thick metal rooms with no keys at all, and scraping on the walls with my fingernails until little blisters of blood flow from underneath them and stripe my skin with death. Miss Hendricks put her hand on the trembling girl's shoulders and brought her inside, closing the screen door. Miss Hendricks of middle class. Miss Hendricks of normal. Representative of a world where everyone went to movie theaters and some restaurants, the right kind, and the larger churches. And this representative of all that was sane and decent stood in front of Millie now; in front of this terrible defenseless little girl and the woman put her hands on both the girl's shoulder, delicately, for she was a delicate little girl, and she was pretty. To Miss Hendricks at least. School had been over for only a month and a half, and though this was certainly Millie, and their tryst had been over longer than that. But Miss Hendricks remembered it and her with great fondness. The girl must have been on an excellent diet that worked so quickly, because she had a willowy figure now, she had remembered her as being a bit on the chunky side, and her mousy hair of then cut short, was now longer and seemed better groomed. Have I caused this change? Miss Hendricks wondered. Having forgotten all about seeing the girl downtown earlier. Here, in the woman's house, the memories of the girl returned. But she wasn't corners or skeletal or emaciated, this girl. I have saved her, Miss Hendricks thought. I have given her that intangible that had gone to make her up, that makes her far more than she used to be. These thoughts darted in those few seconds before the girl looked up and really noticed the woman for the first time. Miss Hendricks brought her to the couch, and sat with her, holding the girl's clammy cold hands, noting the girl was not perspiring, and concerned now about that, the woman was. The air conditioning was on and the house was cold. The girl did not shiver. As Miss Hendricks did when she went from the blazing outside to the cool air of the house. "Are you all right, my dear?" Teacher voice, slightly superior, but reachable, she made sure of the inflection. The girl was looking down at the carpeting. My, the woman thought, this child is in a great well of thought. Miss Hendricks' mind drifted. Comparing her own large full busted figure to the girl's small breasts. What a pity for her, the woman patted her hand. Miss Hendricks was not a Lesbian. This girl was the first one she had. The first one she had wanted. And she began to feel sexual. Began to want to grab the girl's hands and put them on her womanly breasts. To make her squeeze them, the breasts that poked out her blouse most fetchingly, if Miss Hendricks was so immodest to believe. She stroked the girl's hands that were lying in the girl's lap. She felt herself getting warm looking at them, at her body, her crotch. The girl had grown surely an inch or two or more taller than it had been at the end of school, in a body that was now so pretty and popular and so strikingly immature and younger now in its robust sudden maturity, save for those little breasts. The hips were nicely flared. She had nicely countered legs now that the baby fat was finally gone. How Miss Hendricks envied her. This girl could get the best boys in town for a song. What could the girl have to feel so sad about? To now make herself cry? Miss Hendricks pulled the girl to her shoulder and let her weep there. She patted the girl's back. She felt the girl's sweat begin again. Making her damp to the touch. I want her again, the woman thought. Here on this hot July summer Saturday. I want her in bed with me and close and I want her fingers exploring me. This time, she knew, she would take off her bra before she had the girl suck her like a little baby at her mother's tits. Millie was a hefty tall girl who now seemed like a tiny girl rambling around in a large lonely house that was a showplace, in which she was refracted by mirror into mirror, making her smaller and smaller, until there was no her there at all, just this shell. In this supposition. I am her lover, Miss Hendricks thought, as she pressed the girl into her breasts. As she felt a flair of heat at her vagina. In this, Miss Hendricks was wrong. She was not the girl's lover. She was the girl's keeper. This was what they had bought themselves and each other, though they would never know it as such. "I can be bought," the girl thing against the woman now said. Her voice muffled. The teacher pushed her from her, asked her to say it again. So Millie girl creature of some new species said it again.. Her voice still had the honey toned accent of the old Millicent, yet the words--how dare this girl say such a thing to Miss Hendricks. The goddam nerve! And yet, Miss Hendricks was attracted to it and to her, put off, yes, but the aggressiveness of the girl, the power the woman now held in her hands of Millie, yes, the boys will be quite surprised from now on. If they hadn't been surprised already. What a good teacher am I; no more bookish little slob of a girl in brownish hand me down dresses. No, this time a head cheerleader, and president of clubs, this time the boys would not make practical jokes of her, as Millie had confided that they did. They would want her, really want her, no more the town pump, Millie, and fall all over themselves in competition for her. What else has this girl suckled at my breast, the teacher thought, smiling at the tearful girl, drying the tears with a handkerchief? My god, if anyone just knew what a great teacher I am, Ha! And she said, knowing she did not mean to offend her by offering herself so guilelessly, so normal as rain, there in the summer afternoon sun; and outside, people around, on porches, leaning on car hoods, talking, passing the time of day; did the teacher, without any apologies, without any hesitation or embarrassment, "Yes, Millie, how much do you charge?" And Millie looked so beautiful and quiet and impossibly real, and her face directed at the woman, their eyes meeting, unashamed, no longer shy even with each other, as the sun through the lace curtains, over her shoulder was so yellow and sentimental and friendly hued, like a beautiful sunflower guarding, this was a most erotic tableau. It was like love. "I want you to talk to some black boys in the project." Millie said. "They made fun of me earlier. Said I wanted their 'big black cocks in my mouth and up my butthole and in my fuck hole.'" And Mr. Hendricks, outraged. First at the girl for saying such things. But then a fury arose in the woman that black boys talked to a white girl like that. The idea! The sheer animal African gall of the bastards. God hell yes I will give them a talking to, you had better believe I will. And said as much to the girl. The woman's ire raised. So in the cool dark of the living room with the shades drawn, the woman dropped the act, and became a stupid desperate greedy little girl, put her arms around Millie--we have got to do something about that name-- and took off the girl's blouse. And momentarily, the woman knew there were no divisions between inner and outer, between the Millie then and the Millie now that she had gotten some smarts, some self reliance. Miss Hendricks remembered her now, crystalline pieces of her when they first had sex, as one remembers a movie seen a long time ago, swimmy and distant and hazy. She had been afraid of knowing them, this prim and proper woman. Before. Knowing what men and boys wanted. Knowing what girls and women wanted too. But now everything was opened up to her. Who had been the teacher, after all? Knowing it was the only thing, the sex, that counted and somehow, it didn't matter to her anymore how it had occurred, that it had made her one of them. Miss Hendrick's parents had honeycombed her insides with the easy over in seconds paint job of self justification and blindness that was 20/20, that the woman now saw as total blindness. That had been inculcated in her by churches very real and very large and very important, without any real need for depth of thinking or complexity of character, only the voicing of the words. Love is hate. Hate is love. Indifference is passion. Rejection is loyalty. Down is up. Up is down. Just say it. That makes it what it is. But not now. And the woman vowed as she took Millie's bra off and put her mouth on each firm nipple, gone for all time, that nonsense of before. Simply the unhindered obvious naked hiding in front of everyone. It didn't matter, the words used, as she had once thought it did. Feelings she had had for boys who of course never gave her the time of day, the wonder at the girls who had these boys and the complexities she saw in those relationships, because she had once seen them through her own shimmery wonderment, which had never been theirs, complexities she did not want for herself either, now made her laugh. It was hooking, unhooking, coupling, uncoupling, using bodies as devices, but before this had happened to her, before Miss Hendricks was now undressing this child, how good it was a child, in her small musty bedroom, slowly and with awe, and she smiling kindly at the now naked girl. Knowing, yes, that Millie had been a device in her own way, to all those boys. Her books, her stolid sad self, all of this was to languish her with the indecisions, the confusions, to sluff off humanity on her as a stalking horse, so they didn't have to bother with it.. Her presence gave ascendancy to a boy or girl who sometimes was vaguely somewhere or other in her direction kind to her. And this spreading of a momentary greeting was infused into all the other boys and girls and teachers and parents as if by osmosis. They had done their duty. Their charity work was over. Now was the fun part. Everyone lived for the fun part. Everyone lived for the senses. Feelings were made and broken in an instant. Persons were used, rejected and instantly forgotten. And she lay naked with this vibrant lusting hot writhing girl, on that too large, too alone bed, and they did everything their hearts desired. She would never speak to the woman again. She must not. When she passed by Miss Hendricks at school, she would not say hello or notice her at all. She would not take senior geometry from her. Make it, move on. And don't ever fall in love, for that would be the old Millie, who had been a frumpy love lorn toy for boys. But now, yes, as woman and girl finger fucked each other; now it was-- love 'em and leave 'em and they still wanting her so badly, which of course would be half the fun for the girl. Miss Hendricks knew neither Millie nor she had ever truly wanted integrity and dignity and worth. The loners get that. The losers. The square pegs never fitting in round holes. Neither of them had wanted to be truthful and loyal to persons who barely knew they were here. Miss Hendricks rode Millie and felt every square inch of her and their mouths met and their tongues entered each other's mouths, and they stroked on their womanly furred crotches and they were as hot as blazes. Sweating as if the sun was inside each of them, never to be set free again. She had been mad with this, mad that they could not see what prevaricators and frauds they were, how could they be so blind? They were correct now. This was truly real. The words, spoken and unspoken, said so. That was enough. They had spilled into each other. Had become each other. Now as Miss Hendricks rubbed her tongue all over Millie's clit, she knew the girl vibrated with the same raw immediacy, the same joy and relief there was only funny rubbery emptiness before all of this. She was free. For the first time. Take her pleasure and hit the road. Just like everybody else. Both of them. There was no love happening here and no love happening anywhere. And later, on thinking through all of this, Millie thought she should have known that earlier today when she felt momentarily that her body was composed of eyes which were seeing all the faces, all the smiling smirking self righteous faces of boys and men who now came to memory, a memory of the future. Fake as hell, and a cheat, she becoming just another run of the mill girl who threw the past into tomorrow and called new and first time. And once upon a time, having been giggly enough to actually believe it. And this woman who was having sex with her was a desperate woman, a stupid and blind blockhead of a woman, filled with her own self importance, filled with a self righteousness. Wanting Millie only for woman fuck and nothing else. Using her like all the boys used her body. All the time. She had come here for completeness. She was just being had one more time. She would hold Miss Hendricks to her promise though. She would see to that. Miss Hendricks seeing her as all the others had seen her, as all those boys and men she had seen looking at her, reflected in her body eyes, all millions of them. And using them as community mirrors. Sharing was fine, in order to reflect themselves and be sure there was nothing in her or them, nothing that would need past the moment, nothing that would grow dependent on her or some other girl, only nascent anger in these past and future boys and men, anger they cultivated like bees around honey. Fuck 'em and forget 'em. And a big amen to that. Because honey can't sting, but it can trap a bee, trap them but good, and the anger and rejection and killing inducing words were always at the ready, for pushing themselves out of the trap. It was damn time Millicent did some of that her own self. Miss Hendricks coming, gasping, "I love you, baby" and Millicent felt overjoyed in the fact she herself did not feel a damn thing. And that felt pretty great. Not feeling was like a feeling in itself. . Nobody felt love for Millie. No one ever would. It was bed Olympics And she was teaching the old bat now. No soul topography explorations. Such ideas, such expectations, even on the most minimal level could get a person ditched before anything like contact of any sort was even made. People sensed that. She sensed it of this foolish woman. Like a bad aroma and it sent them running fast and hard. She knew about cowards and fools and stupid little whiny boys who could be broken so very very easily. Especially the grown up kind. The ones so unaware of themselves. She knew them very well.. From the inside out. Confection in a chaotic world. And she was desperately happy that she didn't give a damn about the teacher or anyone else, anymore than anyone had ever given a damn about her. It tasted shockingly sweet. And Millie felt ice cold, as this woman cooed and kissed her and said the things Millie was ashamed to admit she had said to all those boys. And Millie felt the thirsty need for vengeance, knowing it's built into all of this; it's one of the major kicks of the whole thing. Dancing round the sharp butcher knife edge and skewering just before being skewered needs no self justification at all. Just timing and talent. It's the first commandment. And would she take pity on those who were as she once was? She would not give them the time of day. And she told the teach it was time to exact the payment. Miss Hendricks, besotted of the girl, did not hear her for a time. Then she begged off till later. She could talk to the nigger boys any time at all. No, Millie said, you said you would pay for me fucking you; I now demand payment.. It took some time for Millie to get Miss Hendricks around to believing that the girl was as serious as hell. The woman sighing, leaving the girl's body most reluctantly, finally agreeing to get dressed, to go with Millie, to talk to the boys. Miss Hendricks had never talked to nigger boys from the projects. Miss Hendricks thought she could handle them like she could handle the white boy bullies she had dealt with in the past. Miss Hendricks was about to get the surprise of her little life. Millie smiled as she and the woman dressed, the woman having Millie kiss her flabby old tits first for good measure. Millie thought, after this little event is over, she would just exact payment from everybody else in cold hard cash.