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I guess you could say that what happened then was to be expected; that is at least as far as Mrs. Candle was concerned. I mean, she knew the color of the sewing room wasn’t white like most rooms would be. Uhh, uhh, nope, I kind’a came up short and stopped dead in my tracks when we hit the doorway to where I’d be sleeping. I wasn’t expecting anything great. I mean, I was expecting the paint to be peeling off the walls, like I was used too, but it shook me up when I looked around and saw that the walls were still in good shape but painted some kind’a color blue, which Mrs. McCandle straight of the bat told me “You may as well know, the walls are powdered blue above and below the pasted chair rail border. As you can see the border has been there for some time…we…I…well…let’s just say I’ve grown accustomed to it and find it hard to see myself removing it just to paint over. In any event, this will be your room for the next two weeks: closet is right over there” she pointed, “to the left and we’ll make some room to hang what clothes may be suitable for you to wear in it. On the opposite wall is the Singer and next to it is the bureau; and except for the top center drawer where I’ve stored some of my sewing needs the rest are empty; so when I get through changing you, you can set about placing what diapers and plastic panties your mother left for you in them. Now then, up with you, go on, up on the bed and be quick about it; the sooner we get you changed and up about the sooner it is you can begin to get yourself straightened out; then, you and the girls will have some acquainting to do.”
None of what she said really sank in. I mean, I couldn’t believe it. The room looked like it was all made up for some little kid who might have really liked looking at pictures pasted on some white strip of paper who I knew were Bambi, a rabbit named Thumper and the skunk who was named Flower. Oh yea there were a couple of bigger deer that I guessed had something to do with the story which I’d heard about but never seen and, well, actually, while I did read the most of some picture story book real quick about it I couldn’t remember their names: of Bambi’s mom or dad that is. All I remembered about it was that what happened to them both wasn’t really good and for some reason reading it kind’a made even angrier at just about everything; especially of him being left all alone. To me, it wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. And really, it was after the fire and when he got left all alone is when I stopped reading the book. I mean, why bother reading something that’d make me cry. It kinda made me felt like that’s not on the top of my list of what I’d ever want to have happened to me: cept’n now I really understood about how he must’ve felt.
Anyhow, while I’m taking all of that in I can’t help but notice that the bed she kind’s nudges me over to and wants me to set my keester on is all made up. I mean, first off, this bed was way bigger than the old, fold out, wooden army cot with the brown pee stained canvas that I was used to sleeping on. I mean it had the works: pillows, and a real cover. I mean, it looked like a real, honest to goodness bed. Right then and there, the only problem was everything that I saw had some kind of pink on it; and the stupid girls doll, that one of the idiots put on the bed up against the center of the two pillows, well, it didn’t add that much more to making me want to claim any part of this. The problem was what choice did I have: none; and I knew it and all I could do was to mumble to myself about “It’s not fair. None of this is fair. I hate, god how I hate…”which was interrupted by Mrs. McCandle asking me “Jo, if you’re of a mind to, it would help to speak louder. I can’t understand a word you’ve been muttering and if it is me that you’re upset with just speak up and we’ll have it out. No secrets now, shall we?” As she pointed to the bed which I knew meant that she wanted me to get on. Well, I did tell her “Yea, no secrets like you should know everything. It’s just not fair. I don’t want‘a or haft’a wear diapers or pee in them because you say you can’t trust her, I mean Becky, when for some reason it’s really me. I’m grown up and old enough not to haft’a wear diapers. I don’t need them, really, and you’re just trying to make me wear them just the same as my … no…I won’t ever say that name again for her ever. I hate her and hope she dies. God don’t I wish that she’d...”
“Stop! No, you can’t mean that” she shot back at me along with “don’t say that or dare wish it. While I agree there are many things you can be angry about with her, wishing that is wrong. So…”
“Wrong? How can you stand there and tell me it’s wrong?” I shot back “You can’t be serious. You have no idea. I don’t care what you think what I should wish for. There’s nothing you can say that can make me change my mind about it, nothing, nothing, nothing. So there!” I made sure to look at her straight in the face when I said it with what I thought was a gritty I’m not budging look.
“O.K.” she tells me, “Stop a moment and listen. I agree, Jo, by the look on your face, there is nothing I can tell you that will change your mind and for the life of me I won’t try; but what I will do straight off is to tell you something; that you will listen to, and on that mind you, you will listen. Now” she went on with a hushed “please, just sit on the bed and listen? O.K.?”
That last part, the way she said it, surprised me and my “Yea sure, I’ll listen but just because you’re telling me something I don’t have to like what I hear do I?” I waited a sec and after she shook her head I went on with “I mean, you said I’d have to listen and I will… so…go ahead…tell me…what is it? Look. See?” I said as I clambered up on to the bed which, when I plopped my butt down made some kind’a crinkly noise. “I’m sittin’ right here on the bed just like you asked me to. O.K.?” which for some reason only made her smile and it was just after she broke that smile that she turned around, reached out and then closed the door then turned the skeleton key to lock it. Damn, I thought, she’s gonna go and beat the hell out of me and no one will be able to stop her so I closed my eyes, tensed up and waited for her to take the first poke which I figured would send me either heels overhead backwards or flat out right up against the headboard. Instead I heard the springs to the bed give way as the place where she decided to sit made some scrunching noise too when she sat and then felt the mattress just to my right push down and give way with her sitting next to me; her being the closest to the pillow and doll.
I guess it took a good thirty seconds or so before she said anything to me and even that wasn’t like I expected her to do. I mean, I expected a lecture about something that was supposed to make me believe every word she said was the truth like it came from the Bible or something like that. Something that would make me a goody two shoes right off the bat. I mean every scolding, lecture or getting told-off I’d ever had normally began with “You.” You shouldn’t have done that…blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Or, you should have done this…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or the one that went “You little…blah, blah, blah, blah…which of course were the words that normally would get my mouth washed out with soap for saying…which I guess for me a history of could’ve been a case of Ivory Snow. Nope, instead the first thing I heard was “I’m sorry. Forgive me? Please? How can I ever ….” and with that she just stopped talking and just started crying. That was it. She just sat there and cried a river with me sitting right next to her. It was strange. For some reason I felt like a real heel. I mean, I knew that I didn’t say anything to her to make her cry, I mean, how could I make her cry. It was dumb. It couldn’t be and that was that; except she was. It felt like years just sitting there and even the knocking on the door or hearing Becky ask “Mother? Are you all right? You’re crying? Uhh, do you know that the doors locked? Can I come in?” didn’t stop her from either answering or crying some more.
It was strange just sitting there not knowing what to do: and as for answering Becky back, well, if her mom didn’t answer then I sure wasn’t going to. Besides, honestly, I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to but because I felt terrible. It was like I had somehow hurt her; but that I knew was impossible. Well, I can’t say for sure how long it was after that that she managed to stop crying enough to up and tell Becky, who was still on the other side of the door and with Sam just a jabbering away between the two of them a shaky “Rebecca, I’m fine…and no…you can’t come in. We’ll…we’ll be out soon. I promise. Now…please…go and play or… or…better yet, just turn on the television maybe you can watch Arthur Godfrey and His Friends or The Guiding Light.”
“Mother, Arthur Godfrey was over two hours ago and The Guiding Light doesn’t come on for another hour and a half: at three.” Why can’t I come in?” was a question she asked that I was thinking of too. Really. It made me feel kind’a strange sitting there for a change, and no, with me wet I’m not making a joke, and me not knowing what it is that I either said or done to make her cry. So, I sorta, kinda like, just reached out and patted her left hand which was down right beside her. It was after that that she goes on and tells Becky “Sweetheart, as I said before you can’t come in.”
“But why?” was the same thing I was thinking that Becky asked and it was kind’a odd just sitting there waiting just like Becky for some kind of answer that would make sense which after a deep breath Mrs. McCandle tells her “Rebecca, it is a private conversation. You know the one which we had several months ago? The one which I explained about the foggy foggy dew and how things worked between…”
“Mother, you’re not serious! Are you?”
“Oh, more serious than ever; now, if you please, find something to do and we’ll both be out shortly. O.K?”
To which all I heard was a huffy “Yes Mother.” After that it was stone cold quiet for a minute with me and her just sitting there like two bumps on a log and with me clueless. So, there we sat until she twists herself around to take a look at me and the just up and tells me “Jo, no secrets, all I ask is that you listen. After that think what you will, alright?” Well, at least she gave the chance to nod a “Yes” before she tells me “Good. Now then...”as she kept wiping her eyes off “…it begins like this, with me explaining to you the facts of life.”
Yea, sure, I know, there I sat just wondering what in the hell she was leading up to and then when she started to explain about what she, with a laugh, called “the foggy foggy dew” and what it was, I mean the real name for it and all about how babies where made I just sat there with me listening to her explain to me about how things worked between boys and girls. I guess being dumb as dirt had its advantages or maybe it was just the fact that she was taking time to explain some of the stuff that I’d heard about out on the street but I can tell ya for a fact that she definitely had my attention; at least for this part of what she was telling me. And, when she asked me if I understood everything she told me and I nodded “yes” well, she up and asks me “Good. Then try and explain it back to me.”
“What?” I said with my jaw dropping wide open.
“You heard me. In your own words what did I just tell you. Explain it back to me.”
“You can’t be serious…you’re not are you?”
“Oh yes. What’s more is that we are not about to do another thing until you, in your own words, tell me what I just told you. Now then, I’m waiting.”
“Yea, so am I” I quipped back “I mean, you, your, well, you’re older so you know more about stuff and that sort’a thing, I don’t, well, at least I didn’t. And now you want me to tell you back stuff that’s sort’a icky?”
“Yes, explain it and you may include the icky and the reason is simple, Jo, when I bathed you, I couldn’t help but notice that your developing, actually, your sprouting a hair or two in the appropriate area, which means that sooner or later you and the foggy foggy dew will be a pair. Now then, in your own words explain how it works.”
Sure, there I sat, wondering, how in the hell do I remember all the different words she used to describe what she told me. I remember the part where she started off with “the anatomy of a female and a male are …..” but after that I was numb and I know that every time she lifted my chin up off the floor for some reason she’d smile at me, but, I mean, I was stumped. Her little prodding question like “Must I explain it all again?” got me to tell her “No, once was enough, I think. I mean….”
“You mean” she said “that for the moment you are at a loss for words. Is that right?” Which gave me the opening I thought I needed so my “Oh boy, yes, am I ever.” I thought that that would be the end of it when she smiled when I said it, except, she was quicker than what I’d given her credit for because all she did was tell me “Good, then the explanation will be worth the wait. Take your time” which is what I did.
Seventy ump-teen seconds later it was me trying to gag and choke out what she told me without making any sense at all. The grown-up words she’d used didn’t sound right when I said them and it all seemed like a mish-mash of gobbly gook make up crap that some bone head would use. It was after the third try that it finally came to me on how to tell her I got it. “Well, if I can’t use the right words right now, I promise that if you ask me later I can. But if you want I can give you an example of how it works, I can, if that’s o.k.?” A “Yes, an example would be fine. I’ll wait.”
I pointed and spoke “O.K. Look. Mrs. McCandle, look, see, over there at the door?” Her “Yes” was almost laughing but I didn’t take it the wrong way instead I just went on with “Good. Then see, there’s the lock and key. Well, if the key is like the boy part all stiff and stuff and the lock is like the girl part, it’s the part the key fits into, well, when you put it in and turn it you expect something to happen. So, it’s like that when a boy and a girl get together they have parts that fit and supposed to work together; ‘cept the foggy dew part you were telling me about from the boy gets into the girls lock part and might make a baby. Well?” “Well” she said “we’ll have us another talk later when you’re able.”
It was after that bit of news which I was pretty eager to test out to see if I ever got the chance in private to do something else that she told me about. But it was then that she told me something else which wasn’t so great and it was about her and Mr. McCandle and of how they “met just a year before Rebecca was born, something happened. "At first" she said "I thought it was just wonderful, until, for some reason, I thought I had changed my mind.” I guess to her it made sense. To me, well, mud was clearer than what she’d just told me. Of course, she had to stop, wipe some more tears away from her eyes and then just started in again but all of a sudden like back tracked on what she told me first by saying “Jo, let me begin again. At the beginning of WWII I met a wonderful man, an army lieutenant, my Colin S. McCandle. It was love at first sight and being young lovers we, well, let’s say we were passionate: just like I explained to you. Several weeks later we eloped. He deployed and nineteen weeks later, after a fall, I started to bleed and to make a long story short, after a stay in the hospital I went home alone. It was not the best of beginnings.”
It was right there she gulped in a big breathe and sort’a mumbled something to herself which I guess was o.k. I mean, for me, I had no clue about what she was talking to me about except for the fact that something happened to her first kid which rang a bell to me with me thinking then that Becky had to be either her second or third; which meant that whatever it was that happened was bad. Anyhow, after her taking another deep breath she goes on an tells me “Jo, at first I thought that having a child would be wonderful until I realized that I would be all alone to care for it and for the life of me the though ran through my mind that I would better off without it. I mean, Colin was deployed overseas and here I was and I’ll admit it…I was scared and miserable, felt sorry for myself and wished for about a week that there was some way to just start all over again without being pregnant; without being burdened. Jo, the gist of matter was I fell, by right it was an accident, I got my wish and have regretted it ever since. Your wishing reminded me of the one I made. That’s it. No secrets. Now then, to end the story, like you, it was a boy.”
And with that bit of information she just sat there for a couple’a minutes more. Mrs. McCandle all but ignored the knock on the door and the voice which asked again “Mom? Can I come in now?” Except for the “No” she said just loud enough to hear, it seemed right to just sit there and be quiet except for the fact that somehow, it wasn’t right: me sitting there, odd man out thinking about what she’d said, Becky asking for something and not getting the answer she expected and Mrs. McCandle all quiet still wondering about what she’d wished for and got and still regretted.
Not too long after that is when Mrs. McCandle got the gumption up to flat out tell me “Jo, after I change you, take your diaper and pants down the hall to the left and put them both in the diaper pail that’s already in the bathroom. Then come back here and we’ll find something for you to wear…together. Oh, and while Samantha may have some items which may or may not fit, regardless, the lot will have to be washed before anything is worn. We can go through each and determine what will or won’t after she’s gone home. Now then, lie back and wait for me. I’ll need to get a hot and wet wash cloth to wipe you off before I put you back together.”
“There were a lot of things I could’ve told her before she up and left me but didn’t. The fact of the matter was that for some reason I felt a whole lot more comfortable than before. Of course, that feeling sort’a skipped out on me when after she’d left than both Becky and Sam eased their way back into the room and started playing twenty questions with me about what me and Mrs. McCandle’d been talking about. Yea, I knew what they were doing was stalling for time to see if they could get to stay and get a good look at my dink which made me worry that as soon as the diaper was peeled away that it be standing straight up. That part made me nervous. Long story short, just as expected, after whining about how sooner or later they’d not only see me but do the changing Mrs. McCandle gave in which sort’a made my stomach jump right up to into my throat and when Mrs. McCandle suggested “Jo, it may be easier for you to close your eyes and think of something else?” that’ exactly what I did. Of course, when the wash cloth ran over every bit of what was there to see and the girls started to giggle at what was happening it didn’t feel like I was anywhere else but here and on display. Minutes later, after I’d gone and dropped the diaper in the pail like she’d asked me to I reported back to the room and with no girls there except for Mrs. McCandle, I not only got to choose something to wear but also saw myself for the first time at what I looked like as a tomboy.
A couple of minutes later Mrs. McCandle led me back down the hallway to the kitchen where Sam and Becky were waiting to take a gander. It may have been ten seconds or twenty or fifty, I don’t know, but, neither of the two said a word to me about looking like a dork or anything like that; no, it was worse when both of them each took one of my hands and started to walk me out of the kitchen and out into the hallway with Becky whispering “You look beautiful” in my left ear while Sam was telling me “I wish I looked as good as you” in my right.” After that, we, well, we did what Mrs. McCandle’d asked them to do, begin to teach me how to get by with what girls would first do in a hallway which was to first stand and talk about how to talk; how to talk and what to do with your head and shoulders when you did and from there it was on to how to walk and the way to hold your hands and move your hips when you did and to make sure that the steps you took were just the right steps and then when you stopped walking what you did with your knees and toes; how to position them, bend them or rotate them and then, when just right, hold still. Of course, at every step of the way, it was impressed that wrists for the most were always limp if not upturned. Jeez.
� Betty Pearl's Sissy Stories 20.1
Topic: A Bully in d'Bronx (Read 29834 times)
