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Pietà

[pic]

Wilson Powell

Dedication

I think the poets must be right and that you never forget your first love. So with that in mind, this one is for

Linda

A note on the title

The Pietà is a masterpiece of renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti housed now in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City. The word, in Italian, can be translated as ‘pity’ or ‘compassion’. One interpretation is the one suggested by Condivi: simply that "such freshness and flower of youth, besides being maintained in by natural means, were assisted by acts of God”

Table of contents

Preface 5

The New World 7

The Family 16

Melinda 26

A Sunday 29

The River 37

A Saturday 43

Melinda 48

A Secret 50

Mama 61

Melinda 69

A Haircut 70

The Pavilion 79

Clarissa 86

The Creamery 90

A Parade 96

A Joyful Noise 99

Chapel Hill 109

Harvest 115

Fight 120

Suicide 125

Melinda 130

Atonement 131

Redemption 138

Preface

I call this a fictional memoir. It is fictional to the extent that all of the major characters and their stories are drawn from my imagination. It is memoir to the extent that all the descriptions of the town and the times I grew up in are from memory. I did very little research, preferring my memories of that time and place, flawed as they may be, to researched facts. My memories are real for me, facts, not so much. And the memories are not fixed in time; there seems to be a blanket recollection, and therefore, things that I describe may not have occurred in the exact time that I place them. Although the narrative focuses on a few short months in the mid fifties, the memories are a wash of an entire youth which, taken together, make up that time for me and make that world real. People who were there, who lived it with me, may remember some things differently, and that is real for them. My intentions were to deal, not so much with specifics, as to paint an over-all picture of what life was like then and there.

And what was it like? In some ways it was a far more innocent time. Most of us did not smoke grass, take drugs, or engage in sex. We did drink beer and smoke cigarettes. We were the children of World War II, and the forerunners of the Baby Boom generation that began post-war. The majority of us lived comfortable lives helped by the economic prosperity of the times. Our parents, having grown up during the great depression, and having lived through the deprivations of the war, indulged us in ways that previous generations had not known. As the population demographics kept shifting to a lower and lower median age, almost every aspect of society shifted to accommodate it. We were there for the birth of Rock & Roll, as black Rhythm and Blues went mainstream, and it came to be the predominate form of popular music. There were movies and television shows aimed at us and the teenager took center stage.

We had a free-floating prejudice against black people. It was never really at the forefront and rarely acted out, but it was there in the backs of our minds. We were a product of our southern heritage and, sad to say, that was a part of it. Most of us outgrew it as we matured. We went to segregated schools and never came in touch with black people in any social context, so we remained ignorant. There was a deep prejudice against homosexuality, and, when we thought about it at all, we pictured those lonely, driven, men that roamed the streets in search of prey or hung out in public bathrooms, evil, leering men with looks of an insatiable hunger. There was no distinction made between homosexuals and the transgendered. It never occurred to us that they were all around us, living quiet, unobtrusive lives, hiding their true selves from others.

Our society has made great strides in its attitudes toward race and sexual orientation, but there is a ways to go yet. Racism has gone underground for the most part and is only practiced now by people awash in their own ignorance. It is no longer accepted in the mainstream. Homophobia still exists, but these attitudes are also fading as people realize that homosexuals are not limited to prowling predators, but are much like the rest of us. The only prejudice that has had limited reduction is that against transsexuals, and I attribute this to the continued dominance of a male oriented paradigm and the double standards that are still applied to gender. In most cases this double standard works against women but there are areas in which women are allowed more freedom. A woman can dress in jeans and t-shirts and is completely accepted, but a male in a dress is disgraceful. Why would a man want to be a woman? The inference is that the preferred gender is male. Girls who exhibit masculine tendencies at an early age are called tomboys and are considered to be cute. Boys that present feminine tendencies are “sissies” and are frowned upon and placed under great pressure to change. The prejudice against these people is demeaning to women as well as men. The implication is that the female is the inferior gender.

My purpose in writing this book is to describe what it was like to grow up different. I hope that my gay and transgendered brothers and sisters will like the book but I also hope it will appeal to a more general audience and perhaps, in doing so, inform them about a subject that they may not be familiar with. I believe that the root of all prejudice lies in a lack of understanding of the objects of the prejudice and only through education can they be overcome. With that in mind, I humbly offer the following:

The New World

So this was the boy’s world now: The house stood in a clearing surrounded by a forest of longleaf pine. In better times it had been the manor house of a large plantation owned by the boy’s family; now fallen into disrepair from neglect, it was mostly bare wood with patches of peeling paint, grey-white, like oyster shells. Wooden columns with rotting bases supported the sagging portico of the porch that ran the length of the house. Aunt Lucy said that someday it would fall and kill them all as they sat outside in the evening heat drinking cold sweating glasses of lemonade. Beyond the trees, on all sides, were fields of brown loamy soil, cut in furrows, straight as arrows, awaiting the transplantation of tobacco shoots from the covered beds beside the barns. The work was done by tenant farmers, sleek lean men, black and white, shirtless in the relentless sun, with streaks of silver sweat rolling down bare muscular chests and backs like the slime trails of snails the boy would find of a morning on the floor of the porch. The family had been rich and powerful in the past, but now the land beyond the house was owned by city folk who lived in Wilson. They would visit their fields daily and observe the work being done, but never would they venture out into them for fear of soiling their polished wing tipped shoes or the creased cuffs of white linen trousers. The blacks lived in foundation-less shacks of unpainted wood on the perimeter of the fields, poor, living on a small fraction of the proceeds of their harvest while the owners lived in white mansions on old oak lined streets in the town. In August the air would smell sticky sweet from tobacco curing in windowless barns and, frequently of an evening, an orange glow like a mistimed sunrise would taint the sky on the dark horizon: a barn burning, a portion of a crop lost. At night, lightening bugs would flash their other-worldly glow, faint greenish blue among the trees, brief and fragile for a moment only, and cicadas would fiddle their rasping songs to one another, intrusive of the quiet, unseen. Sometimes you could hear the soulful howl of coon dogs as men prowled the depths of the woods in the suffocating dark; the report of a shotgun would split the night as the hunters found their objective: the kill. Long days of boredom, the oppressive heat discouraging movement as even sitting would cover the body with a sheen of sweat and clothes would stick to you like wet rags. In town the ladies would sashay down the sidewalks with full skirts flowing around bare legs. Poor whites, tow headed children, pale as ghosts, holding the hands of mothers in thin rough dresses made from flour sacks, come to town for the weekly shopping, eyes cast downward in the shame of their poverty. Shirtless men in bib overalls would drive them in the beds of rusting pick-up trucks that clattered and banged and emitted jets of blue smoke into the clear air from their exhaust pipes. A world rich with sensations that seemed unreal to him. A lush and verdant world, heavy with humidity that wrapped you like a damp blanket, overflowing with life, far different from the cold city of asphalt and concrete that had been his home before the death of his father, before his mother had been carried away to Dix Hill, the state mental institution. He preferred that name to what it was commonly called: the insane asylum, the loony bin. He lived now with his father’s brother and sister, Aunt Lucy and Uncle Bobby, and his ancient grandmother, Adele, who, although constantly threatening to die, refused to do so, in fact, though a bit tottery, she seemed in excellent health.

He was sitting on the porch swing now with a loop of string trying to make a cat’s cradle like Aunt Lucy had shown him when he saw the girl walking toward him down the yellow dirt road. Her hair was blond and curly and she wore a white dress with a lace hem and, except for her bare brown feet, she looked like Sunday morning. She carried a china plate covered with waxed paper, held before her, chest high with both hands, like a priest consecrating the hosts before administering the sacrament. White strappy sandals dangled from her little finger. She walked up the steps, smart as you please, and sat primly on a white wicker rocker, facing the boy on the swing. She set the plate on a little glass table, and put on her sandals. For a time she studied him without speaking, which made the boy shift uncomfortably until finally:

“I’m Clarissa Conner.”

“My name is Stephen Howell,” the boy said.

“Mama told me there was a new boy living here and I decided I would make a cordial call and give you a neighborly welcome. Here.” She picked up the plate with its cover of waxed paper and handed it to him. “They’re brownies and I made them myself. You’re a yankee I heard tell. Not that I have anything against yankees, in fact, I think you’re the first one I’ve ever met. Some folks ‘round here don’t cotton with Yankees, but I’m not like that at all. How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” the boy answered, "I’ll be fifteen in March.”

“A mere child-- I’m already fifteen. But I don’t hold that against you neither. I’m rather broad-minded, myself. I’m told I’m quite precocious which means I’m real smart for my age. I make straight A’s and it’s not hard for me at all.” She crossed her legs smartly and the hem of her skirt rested just above her knee and it reminded the boy of the lace mantle that the Virgin Mary wore over her head as she cradled the baby Jesus in her arms. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. He’d learned that in catechism class. “I suppose you’ll be going to my school come fall, but I doubt we’ll be in the same grade. I skipped a grade because of my potential. I’ll be in the tenth grade and you’ll probably be in the ninth. But I don’t hold that against you.”

“Because you’re broad-minded.”

“Yes, I believe all men are created equally. That’s in the Declaration of Independence, you know, and that’s what Jesus taught. We’re Baptists, ourselves, what are you?”

“I was raised Catholic, but I don’t really know what I am now. We haven’t been to church since I’ve been here.”

“Well I wouldn’t spread it around that you’re Catholic. You got too much going against you already. Not that I don’t like Catholics...”

“Because you’re broad minded.”

“Quite. You certainly are an odd boy. It’s obvious you’re not from around here.”

“My family is though.”

“The Howells? Yes sir, the Howells are definitely from around here. Used to be a very prominent family but now they’ve fallen into sin and corruption. Why if my folks knew I came here they’d tan my hide good. Now personally I don’t care. I’m pure as the driven snow and washed in the blood of the lamb. I’ve been baptized and saved. Sin rolls off me like water off a duck’s back. Maybe if we become friends some of it will rub off on you. Why are you dressed like that, anyway?” The boy wore white shorts, a pale green shirt, white socks and sandals.

“What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”

“Why nothing at all if you want to look like a sissy. For one thing, nobody wears socks with sandals. Most boys wear dungarees and t-shirts and go barefoot. Why I bet your feet are as soft as a baby’s.”

The boy blushed with embarrassment. He was used to this. He was always being made to feel different, and it wasn’t the first time he’d been called a sissy.

“It must run in the family,” the girl said, “People say Bobby Joe was a sissy boy and never grew out of it.” Bobby Joe was what people called Uncle Bobby, and the boy had to admit that Uncle Bobby had peculiar ways about him what with his sing-song womanish way of talking, his manicured nails and his blond hair that he wore in a pompadour, swept back along his temples to a peak at the base of his neck. His movements were too fluid for a man, his hands ever fluttering about him like butterflies. The light complexion of his face had a chalky look from the powder that he patted on with a puff as he sat before his vanity in a silk dressing gown after his bath. Yes, Stephen could understand why people would think him odd. But Stephen liked Uncle Bobby and agreed with Aunt Lucy that he was a “sweet man”. He treated Stephen gently and kindly and he was really funny, more so as the day went on and his constant consumption of white liquor took hold of him. He was never without a glass from morning to night, but, except for a slight slurring of speech, he never acted drunk like some of the men Mama had brought home after dancing to the big bands at the Rainbow Room. Ida May said that, if nothing else, the man could “hold his likker”, which was about the only good thing she ever said about him. She thought he was ‘uppity’ and ‘put on airs’ but, being a maid, and black to boot, Aunt Lucy didn’t think Ida May had any call to be critical of her betters and should know her place.

“What are you reading?” Clarissa asked, pointing to the book that was splayed out beside the boy on the swing.

“Treasure Island.” The boy answered.

“Robert Louis Stevenson unless I’m sadly mistaken. That’s for children. I’m quite well read and I only read adult books now. I’m reading Carson McCullers’, Reflections in a Golden Eye. Very adult with themes you probably wouldn’t understand at your age.”

“I bet I would. I’m smarter than you seem to think.”

“That remains to be seen. I’ll let you read it when I’m through and we can discuss it. I’m so glad there is another member of the intelligentsia around here. I had become used to keeping my own counsel.” She stood. “Well I really must be going now. You must return the plate because it’s one of a set and my mother would be sorely vexed if it were lost. It’s customary to wash it first. Goodbye, Stephen Howell.” She reached down and removed the white sandals and dangled them from her pinkie.

“Bye,” Stephen said as she twirled around and descended the steps. He watched her walk sassily down the road, her feet raising little puffs of dust from the dry dirt of the road, her dress floating about her like willow fronds. Just before she made the turn into the pines, she spun around and waved and Stephen felt an inexplicable surge of joy sweep through him, a wave of warmth that seemed to originate in his heart and climb into his face, and he was sure that he was blushing. He had a friend. A girl. But then his friends had always been girls.

The spring on the screen door shrieked as the door opened and Aunt Lucy came out. She was careful at not letting it slam. Letting the screen door slam was one of the things that Granny Adele simply could not abide. Aunt Lucy carried a silver tray with two glasses of cold iced tea and a Japanese fan that her husband had brought home from the war. It was folded closed into a skinny rectangle of black lacquered wood. When open it revealed a hand painted picture of a twisted tree with pink cherry blossoms. Two Japanese ladies dressed in colorful kimonos with tall black hair stood beneath the tree, and in the background a misty snow capped mountain rose into a blue sky. She set the tray onto the table and handed Stephen a glass of tea then opened the fan and started moving it beneath her chin with quick flicks of her wrist. Stephen had tried the fan once and all it seemed to do was move the hot air around without offering much in the way of cooling, but Aunt Lucy was never without it and somehow it completed her, this colorful fan, this movement so full of grace and femininity.

“Lord, it’s hot,” she said in her breathless manner, soft, quiet, almost a sigh. “Was someone just here? I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

“Yes, ma’am, a girl named Clarissa. She brought brownies.” He offered her the plate.

“No, no, much too heavy in this heat. Why, it will harden into a wad in your stomach and give you the tummy ache. That must have been the Connor girl then. They live just down the road.”

“Yes, ma’am, Clarissa Connor.”

“A bright young girl, I’m told. Father runs the drug store downtown. Connor’s Pharmaceuticals. I always thought the name was a bit pretentious. Most folks call it a drug store and don’t even know the meaning of pharmaceuticals.”

Aunt Lucy spoke so softly that you really had to pay attention to hear her, and, even then, Stephen would miss a lot of what she said. At these times he would just smile and nod. At thirty-one years of age, Lucy Howell was still a beautiful woman with a full figure, its mountains and valleys enhanced by the scant summer dresses she wore, clinging to her curves like a second skin. Her face was soft and unblemished, framed by twin curtains of brown hair that fell to her shoulders, her eyes a deep blue, her lips full and painted into the shape of a valentine. She carried with her the scent of a flowery eau de cologne, which surrounded her body and trailed after her in sweet waves like honeysuckle on the evening breeze. Stephen loved to be near her and used to follow her everywhere she went until she said that he was always under foot. She had been joking, but Stephen, ever sensitive to the feelings of others, took her seriously and began keeping his distance. He had no wish to be obtrusive and, at times, wished that he could be invisible and just float around observing things without taking part. He was also conscious of the delicate situation he was in and did not wish to intrude upon the life of the house any more than was necessary.

“So, do you like this Clarissa?”

“Yes, I think I do. She’s a bit prissy, but I sort of like that.”

“Ah, maybe she’ll be your girlfriend,” she teased.

“I don’t think so. She said I was an odd boy.”

“You’re not odd, Stephen, just a bit different.”

“Like Uncle Bobby?”

“Not like Uncle Bobby. No one is like Uncle Bobby.” She laughed. “You just have an artistic temperament. A bit too sensitive perhaps.”

“She said I dressed like a sissy.”

“Well, how do you want to dress?”

“Dungarees and t-shirts. Barefoot.”

Aunt Lucy laughed again, took a sip of her iced tea, folded the fan and tapped it against her cheek. She was aware of the necessity of conformity at his age.

“Well, if you wish to go around like those ragamuffin boys in town, we shall have to buy you dungarees and t-shirts.”

“Oh, can we? I don’t want to look like a sissy.”

“Done and done. We’ll go into town this Saturday.”

Stephen felt a sting on his leg and looked down at the biggest horsefly he’d ever seen, there on his knee, translucent wings folded over an iridescent body of bluish green.

“Ow!” he yelped. Aunt Lucy swatted it with the edge of the folded fan, leaving a greasy mess of green goo and hairy legs smeared on his leg.

“Ewww,” he winced.

“Oh Stephen, don’t be so squeamish. Wipe it off.”

“I don’t want to touch it!”

“Here then.” She pulled a lace handkerchief out of her cleavage and wiped off the bug goo. Stephen was appalled.

“You’ve ruined your hanky.”

“I have others.” She folded the handkerchief so that the offending substance was within, out of sight, and Stephen felt better and eased back into the swing.

The sun was beginning to set just above the horizon, balanced on the pointed tops of the pines, and the light was becoming diffuse. The remnants of the day softened and the colors that had saturated the tableau, so sharp and so bright, faded to pastels that were easier on the eye. The birds took to the air for their evening flight before going home to roost, and the first locusts began to sing sporadically, tuning up before their grand performance. Tree frogs, their flute-like tones, were preparing to join in the nightly chorus. The old yellow dog that stayed around the house came back from wherever it was he went and settled into the sunken hollow of an abandoned horseshoe pit. The end of day. This day that would never come again, and the relief one felt at the coming of night, its promise of coolness, was tinged with a vague sadness with no discernible cause. Stephen tried to grasp and hold the moment, the beauty of it, the peacefulness, but he knew intuitively that it was a vain attempt, and instead he relaxed into its transience, and let it flow around him, unimpeded, into the stillness of the gathering dark. They sat in silence as the earth swallowed the sun and a full moon took its place.

“I was just thinking on evenings like this when I was a girl.” Lucy leaned forward in her chair and lifted her hair off her damp neck, twisted it up and tied it in a knot to keep it up. It was all done so unconsciously, and Stephen was taken by the beauty of the gesture, so feminine, so distinctly woman. “Dix and I used to sit on that swing and cuddle and kiss. We called it spooning.” She broke into song:

By the light,

Of the silvery moon,

I want to spoon,

With my baby in June…

She laughed.

“We had such a good time then. But if we got too quiet Mama would cough or clear her throat to let us know that she was just inside that open window.” She leaned back and fluttered the open top of her dress to allow the air to cool her. Stephen could see the swelling tops of her breasts, glistening in the moonlight. It seemed that everything about a woman, every gesture and movement, was imbued with a natural grace and loveliness. He studied them intently and wished he could be like them.

“What did your daddy think?” Stephen asked.

“Daddy didn’t care about nothing. And anyway, he was hardly ever here. Mama raised us all while he was out running around. We used to own all this land out here. Biggest farm in this part of the state. He sold it all so he could go gambling and whoring.”

“Clarissa said the family fell into sin and corruption.”

“She was talking about Daddy. He got quite a reputation and we all suffered for it. Folks around here aren’t quick to forget or forgive. The rest of us were okay. Your daddy was the best man I’ve ever known. I wish you could have known him.”

“Me too.”

Lucy swung her legs up onto the chair and turned toward Stephen so that her legs were together and running the length of the seat. She demurely tugged her skirt to just above her knees, a position that a man would never assume but for a woman, was easy and natural. She was like a cat whose supple body could flow like liquid to occupy any space. Stephen never tired of watching her. He swung his own legs up onto the swing and assumed the same posture. They sat in silence now, listening to the night, absorbing the darkness and the earthy smell of freshly turned earth in the surrounding fields.

The Family

In 1955, the adult population of the town of Wilson, North Carolina, was predominately female; so many of the men had been killed in the war in far away, unimaginable places with strange names like Guadalcanal, Saipan, Tarawa. The boy’s father had died at a place called Iwo Jima. Now the men were fighting in a place called Korea, and Stephen wondered if war was the normal state of affairs. The older veterans who sat around the gas station on upturned Coca-Cola crates talked to the young men returning from Korea of “your war” and “our war” as if there was to be one for every generation. And sadly, as it turned out, there would be. Among the many things that Stephen was fearful of was “his war”. In what far away place with a strange name would he be forced to fight? Then there was the threat of the atomic bomb that could blow them all up in seconds. A boy didn’t even have to go to a far away place anymore for it to reach him. In school, in Philadelphia, they had “duck and cover” drills in the classrooms where the students would hide under their desks, folded up like omelettes, covering their heads with their hands. Stephen wondered at the wisdom of this because, supposedly, radiation would kill them all anyway. In a newsreel at the movie theater he had seen people in fallout shelters, and he wondered if he should dig one for him and his mother, but in the city there was nowhere to dig, so they would have to take their chances. He lived in fear of the bright light like a thousand suns that could melt your eyeballs and the mushroom cloud that rose and billowed like a cancer eating the sky and annihilated everything for miles around. He’d seen pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with steel beams twisted like pretzels and piles of concrete rubble where buildings had once stood. So the women and children, they would die as well, not just the soldiers in far away places. He tried not to think about it.

The rough town boys were a more immediate threat. When he and Clarissa went to the movies in town on Saturdays, he tried to steer away from where they loitered outside Wimpy’s Pool Hall, but Clarissa wasn’t scared of them and would walk through them. They wouldn’t beat her up because she was a girl, and Stephen thought about how much easier life appeared to be for girls. Even though he wore their uniform now, dungarees and t-shirts, they still singled him out and would circle him and taunt him, trying to get him to fight. Clarissa would step between them and chastise them for their bullying ways.

“Leave him alone. He’s sensitive.”

“He’s a yankee queer,” they would taunt, “Another queer Howell, just like his Uncle Bobby.” Stephen knew about “queers”, knew what they did and he was certainly not one of them. Uncle Bobby rarely came into town. He would take trips to Raleigh some weekends and sometimes to Atlanta, but he almost never came to Wilson.

“A backwater burg of no consequence,” he called it. “The people lack sophistication and intelligence. ‘Low brutish types’.” This was a term he attributed to Oscar Wilde, incorrectly as it turned out, for Stephen later learned it came from George Bernard Shaw. Stephen had seen a picture of Oscar Wilde on the flyleaf of one of Uncle Bobby’s books, standing there pretty as you please with his long curly hair, a haughty look on his face, wearing a purple velvet coat with a white ruffled ascot around his neck. It was apparent to Stephen that, if there was such a thing as a queer, here it was. Oscar Wilde had been put in prison for being a queer, so apparently, as well as being socially unacceptable, it was against the law. But Stephen didn’t wear purple velvet jackets and ruffled ascots, so what was it about him exactly that labeled him a queer? Clarissa said it was the way he walked, he was too “light footed”. So he practiced walking with heavy feet but it felt unnatural. When he threw a ball she said he “threw like a girl”. He asked her to show him how to throw like a boy and she said she couldn’t because she was a girl. But he didn’t know any other way to throw a ball so he didn’t throw balls. Maybe he could spend his life just sitting somewhere, motionless, but then he couldn’t talk either because he talked like a girl.

But he had Clarissa. Because she was so prissy she didn’t have many friends herself, so they fell naturally together and became best friends. The same prissy girly ways that bothered most of the kids appealed to Stephen, and he would catch himself imitating her unconsciously. Of the two of them, she was without doubt, and quite naturally, the leader. Whatever Clarissa wanted to do, they did, and Stephen never questioned it. They would play hopscotch or bob-jacks on the cement patio behind her house. In the afternoons, when the inevitable thunder storm came in with its billowing, rolling clouds, the wind up and the rains pouring down in thick curtains, they would retire to the shelter of her room and color with waxy Crayola crayons in her coloring books or he would write poetry while Clarissa painted with watercolors. She was a talented artist, capable of rendering her subjects to an astounding degree of accuracy, and with an ability to capture the subtle nuances that made her paintings come alive. Stephen had no talent for visual arts, but he knew that Clarissa’s work was good, and he encouraged her. Sometimes they read stories in movie magazines about their favorite stars. They adored Jean Simmons, Audrey Hepburn and Debbie Reynolds, the innocent ingénues, and hated Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Terry Moore, the steamy women who flaunted their sex on the covers of racy magazines, and especially Elizabeth Taylor who stole Eddie Fisher from Debbie.

The movies were their passion, especially the big musicals. They saw Carousel, South Pacific, Showboat, Oklahoma, and went to Robbins’ Music Store after the shows and bought the sound track LP’s, and by stopping the music after every line, carefully lifting the needle from the record, they would write down the lyrics and then reenact the scenes in Clarissa’s bedroom or on the wide front porch of the Howell house. Clarissa made him sing the parts of the leading man but at night, lying awake in his bed, he would relive the scenes in his mind and then he’d be Nellie Forbush singing “Some Enchanted Evening” in the arms of Emile on a veranda overlooking a blue lagoon, or Julie Jordan, sitting prettily on a park bench beneath a blossoming cherry tree, white petals falling like snow around her, singing “If I Loved You” with Billy Bigelow. And, oh, he was so certain that life would be like that in some mystical future where romance blossomed at every turn and love was forever.

There was no doubt that he was a boy but he recognized that his tastes were not boyish ones but decidedly girlish. He knew he should be rougher, tougher, but that was not what he wanted to be, and he was not inclined in that direction. Still, he tried. He watched the other boys, how they walked, how they talked, how they traded licks by punching one another in the arm, and he tried to imitate them but there was no way to overcome his innate softness. When they were living in Philadelphia, when he was five or six, he would sit on his mother’s bed and watch as she dressed to go out in the evening. She wore soft, silky panties, lacy brassieres, sheer stockings held up by straps suspended from garter belts, and he marveled at how, beneath their dresses, women were held together by hooks and straps. He watched her as she deftly applied make up, rouge on her cheeks, mascara and eyeliner for her eyes, and bright red lipstick on her lips. Once, for a lark, she painted his lips as well and made him pucker to spread it evenly. He looked at his reflection in the mirror: the lipstick made him look like a girl. His mother said that he should have been a girl because he was too pretty to be a boy. Occasionally they would sit on the sofa and listen to the radio, she with her feet in his lap as he painted her toenails. He felt that it was all so exquisite, and he asked his mother if he could wear panties instead of the rough cotton jockey shorts she bought for him. She had laughed and said, “No, boys don’t wear panties,” and he wondered why not. What could it possibly harm and why couldn’t he just be a girl anyway? He thought that females were just soft, lumpy males with long hair and didn’t understand that gender differences went much deeper than that. At that age, he thought that a person could be either by choice.

“Too late, darling, you’re stuck with what you’ve got,” she’d said when he told her he wanted to be a girl.

One day she painted his fingernails a bright red, and he was so proud of them that he went downstairs and showed them to the kids that hung around the stoop. They teased him and made him cry, and he ran back into the apartment and scraped the pretty colors off with a kitchen knife, cutting the nails and cuticles so badly that his mother had to put Band-Aids on his fingers. The humiliation of it caused him to turn inward after that, and he spent all of his time alone in the apartment. There was something horribly wrong with him and when his mother sank into her deep depression and spent the days locked in her room, crying and screaming, he was sure that he was the cause. He found her one afternoon sitting on a towel she had spread over the sofa, with her slip hiked up to her waist. She was cutting deep lines on her inner thighs with his father’s old straight razor. Blood was flowing down her legs and soaking the towel, and she acted as if he wasn’t even there and kept cutting herself until he grabbed the razor out of her hand. And then came the day he returned home from school and found her in the tub of cold pink water, bleeding profusely from cuts she had made into her wrists. She would have died if he had not walked in when he did. That’s when they took her away. That’s when he’d come to live here.

The Howell House, “den of sin and corruption” according to Clarissa. There was of course Uncle Bobby with his singular ways, and then Aunt Lucy who had the temerity to get a divorce from her husband and walk around town dressed like a hussy, and Granny Adele who was rumored to have poisoned her husband when she caught him fooling around, although there was never any proof of that. Granny Adele knew about the rumors and just laughed them off.

“If I’d have wanted to kill the son of a bitch I’d have used the shotgun,” she said. “And I shoulda done, too. Drinking and carousing around. Gambled away a fortune and left us with nothing but this old falling down house.”

Uncle Bobby laughed that high-pitched laugh of his and took another sip of the white liquor. The ice cubes tinkled like little bells as he tipped the glass up and poured liquid fire down his throat. He had let the boy taste it once, and Stephen could not understand how anyone could drink just a little bit, let alone glass after glass, all day.

“She’d have done it too,” he winked at the boy. “Mama was full of piss and vinegar in her day.”

“Still am, son. I might be on my last leg, but I still got some gumption in me yet. Pass them butter beans, Lucy.” They were sitting around the table eating a supper of fried pork chops, butter beans, collards and sweet corn-on-the-cob slathered in butter. Suppertime was always fun for Stephen. It was the only time in the day when everyone sat down together. The different personalities of the group came to the fore and the conversation was always lively, if a bit odd by most folks’ standards.

“Why, would you just look at that boy,” Granny Adele said, “Sittin’ there so prim and proper and straight? Got his napkin folded in his lap, too. Why I never seen such good manners in a boy before. ‘Cept maybe Bobby Joe when he was young, but he don’t count no way. Boy’s been a disappointment to me since he’s born. Now Stevie, you just watch your Uncle Bobby Joe, and whatever he does, don’t do it lessen you grow up like him.” Granny Adele was “old south” and she spoke that way. She couldn’t understand how her children had taken on such airs and talked in such a high-falutin’ way. Probably cause they went to college in Chapel Hill. “Franklin was a mess. Always getting into some trouble or ‘nother. Had to take a switch to him more times than I could count. Bobby Joe was never any problem. Always mindin’ and proper.”

“Yes,” Uncle Bobby said, “And you never forgave me for it.”

“Your daddy was the only real man I had, boy.”

“And if I recall correctly, your real man volunteered for the Marine Corps and subsequently got himself blown to bits on some god-forsaken island.”

“Watch your tongue, Bobby Joe,” Granny snapped, “Not in front of the boy. You talkin’ ‘bout his daddy.”

Bobby laughed. Abuse seemed to roll off of him like sin did Clarissa.

“You probably never even knew him, did you?” He asked Stephen.

“No sir,” the boy said, “Never met the man.”

“Even so,” Lucy put in, “You should show him some respect.”

“Did you go to the war, Uncle Bobby?” Stephen asked.

“They wouldn’t take me. Called me up and when I went for the induction, I flunked the psychological evaluation. I was too high strung. Couldn’t abide by all those rules.”

“It’s really because no self-respecting man would want to share a foxhole with him,” Lucy giggled.

“Whatever, little sister. But I’m still here which is more than can be said for the real man of the family.”

Ida May cleared the table and served rich apple pie à la mode and brought steaming cups of chicory coffee for the grown-ups in thin fragile china cups with handles too small to put a finger through. They required a delicate mincing touch to handle and reminded Stephen of the tea parties that he and Clarissa would have under the scuppernong arbor behind her house.

“Why, Mrs. Howell, how is that new baby doing?”

“Just fine, Mrs. Connor, and how is your husband? Is his gout any better?’

“Oh the poor man, he suffers so.”

The scene before him, however, lacked the decorum of the tea parties. Granny Adele was rougher than a cob and had no truck with airs and graces. She was raised the daughter of a tenant farmer and never progressed past the sixth grade in school. She’d also been the prettiest girl in five counties and was swept up by the dashing George Howell, much to his delight, and his family’s dismay. Later it became apparent that of the two of them, Adele was the strong one. Steady and faithful if for no other reason than her children.

“I swan, Bobby Joe, if you ain’t the sorriest white man on God’s green earth. No respect for nobody or nothing.”

“If I could find a single soul worthy of my respect, they would have it. As it is, I’m like a lost ship tossed on a sea of vulgarity and about to be swamped at any moment.”

Stephen was making mental notes so that he could use Uncle Bobby’s expressions later with Clarissa.

After dessert they retired to the front porch so they could take the evening air and the adults could smoke. The radio played “The Jack Benny Show” through the open window where white lace curtains danced in the breeze. The radio sat on an onyx topped table just inside, beside a Tiffany lamp that had little icicles of amber glass suspended from the fringe and a green globe that cast an otherworldly light that completely changed the colors in the room from what they were in daylight. Even objects as substantial as the furniture and the trappings of the room could be made to lie. Nothing was for certain. Things shifted and changed dramatically with the slightest influence. Outside, big gray moths with dusty wings orbited the naked light bulb that hung over the door, and lightning bugs flashed morse code signals to one another on the expanse of lawn. Stephen sat beside Aunt Lucy on the swing and they slowly rocked in rhythm with the cicadas; the chains that held the swing screeched in the eyebolts that secured them to the ceiling.

“Stephen, it’s time to take your bath,” Granny Adele said “You got to get up early in the morning.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Uncle Bobby said, “Why can’t he sleep in? I certainly intend to.”

“What’s new?” Aunt Lucy said. “You never show your face before noon.”

“I am a man of leisure,” he said, “I need my beauty sleep.”

“Pshaw!” Granny spat. “Man of leisure my sweet ass. A worthless do-nothing is more like it.”

“Stephen’s going to church with the Connor girl tomorrow.” Lucy announced.

“The Baptist Church,” Stephen said.

“My gracious Lord!” roared Uncle Bobby, “A Howell in the Baptist church! That tremor that you feel is several generations of Howells rolling in their graves. Oh, this is just too much!”

“I think it’s right nice,” Granny said. “It ain’t gone hurt him none. Long’s he don’t come preaching ‘round here.”

“Why don’t you come too,” Stephen prodded Uncle Bobby.

“The good Lord and I came to an agreement years ago,” Bobby said. “He doesn’t come in my house, and I don’t go in his.”

“Last time I checked, the house was mine,” Granny said.

“Yes, dear one, but with you fixing to decease at any moment, it will pass to me as the oldest living male.”

“You’re sure of that are you?”

The conversation stopped with that. The night sounds fell around them now. After a time, Lucy started singing ever so softly to herself. She put her arm around Stephen and pulled him to her and he rested his head on the softness of her breasts. Her lips gently brushed his ear as she sang her song. A lovely song without words, random syllables with a feminine essence that only a woman could sing. The heat of her body rose from her cleavage in scented waves, and the boy breathed it into himself and savored it like sweet ambrosia. He wanted to melt into her, become her in all her feminine perfection. She was like his mother in that respect, a vessel of pure sweetness like the simmering vats of apple butter that Ida May stirred up on a wood fire behind the house.

After his bath, as he lay in bed with a pale crescent of moon sailing through white clouds outside his open window, he thought of his mother. He pictured her behind the iron bars of a cell, slobbering and scratching the walls with broken and bleeding nails. Or shivering in a bathtub full of ice; or hooked up to an electric shock machine with a rubber ball in her mouth just like in that movie, The Snake Pit, where Olivia de Havilland went crazy and got committed to the state asylum. He remembered the scene where the patients sang “Going Home.” It was so sad it had made him cry. All those lost and confused people whose only wish was to go home. He wondered where home was now, or if he really had one. He was sure that his stay here was temporary. Where would he go from here? He had a strong sense that he was on the fulcrum of a pivotal point in his life and that unseen forces were gathering behind the curtains of his reality that would change him forever. He felt detached as if he were watching a movie of his life rather than living it, as an observer rather than a participant. There were so many things that he could not understand, and the foremost of these was himself. And then, as he drifted off, he pictured himself as Scarlett O’Hara. Pretty Scarlett pinching color into her cheeks and taking Ashley Wilkes’s arm as they strolled on the green lawns of Tara. She wore a lovely white dress with a red sash around her waist tied in a bow at the back. Her hair cascading from the crown of her head in twin waves that fell down her neck to her soft bare shoulders. Ashley was handsome in his Confederate Uniform and she leaned into him with her arm hooked in his. His powers of imagination were so strong that he became her, he was her, this day, this moment recreated in his mind from a movie he’d seen: a girl of exquisite loveliness strolling with her beau. He whispered, “fiddle dee dee”, and fell asleep in a dress made from the green velvet curtains of the ruined house.

Melinda

She was wearing a knee length plaid skirt, a white cotton blouse, a grey coat with padded shoulders, and a pillbox hat that sat slightly askew on her head. Her hair was pinned up on the crown of her head, but with errant tendrils raining down her neck. Her dress and her posture were quite proper and spoke of class and sophistication, but it was obvious that it was all coming undone. She had been drinking heavily since early morning, and she’d had to put herself back together in her cramped compartment after having sex with a salesman, a stranger, who was traveling to Charlotte. Melinda was a striking woman, a miniature woman, five feet tall and ninety pounds, and perfect in her proportions. She was 20 years old but looked to be in her mid teens. Her shoulder length hair was a light brown that hinted at pale red, her eyes green, hazel, or brown, changing with the colors she wore. She stood alone on the platform in tears, mascara running down her apple cheeks, frozen to the spot in absolute fear. She stood alone in the midst of a scurrying swarm of passengers, porters pushing baggage carts, and workers in greasy overalls tending the engine. A sudden chill prompted a slender hand to gather the collar of her coat close to her neck. Her inebriated state was only partially responsible for the feeling of unreality that she was experiencing, for it combined with the certainty that she was forever lost. She felt like lying on the wet concrete and pulling herself up into a fetal position, pulling inside herself in an attempt to hide from the menace of the actual. She had no idea what to do. In times like these, a man would usually appear to help her, and she would give herself into his care, regardless of his motives or the outcomes, thankful to have the burden of decision lifted from her. It was a cool night in mid November, still, with moisture in the air that wasn’t quite rain, more a heavy mist that seemed to hang midair rather than fall. She looked dazed, there beside the monstrous engine, cold iron sweating silver streaks from its riveted seams, hissing like snakes. It breathed like a thing alive, some menacing thing that had crossed over from her dreams.

Her husband was supposed to have met her but she had missed her connection in Washington and she was two hours late. William did not tolerate lateness. He had waited until the train she was supposed to have been on had unloaded and when she did not appear, he’d left. These things had happened before. Melinda was irresponsible. Now she was alone on the wet cement platform, cold and alone. The station was in a thick forest of pine and, in either direction, the tracks ran to their vanishing point in a furrow of trees. Only enough of them had been cleared to accommodate the tracks and the station. She felt like she was lost in the deep woods. The platform cleared and the engine belched clouds of black smoke. The driving wheels spun on the glistening steel tracks, and the train moved off down the line, down the tunnel of pines until it rounded a bend and was gone.

She was startled by a hand on her shoulder. A man had come up behind her.

“Are you in need of assistance, little lady?”

She recovered herself and looked at the man. He was tall and dressed like a gentleman but his face was covered with a days worth of stubble. There was the nub of a cigar in the corner of his mouth.

“I suppose I am,” she said, “There’s no one here to meet me.”

Her voice, light and airy, was girlishly lyrical and somewhat flirtatious. She put a hand to her throat and batted her eyes at him. The message was received.

“Well, can I drop you somewhere?”

“Do you know the Bannerman farm? Just outside town?”

“Of course. Everyone knows the place. Horse farm, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Is that where you’re going? I can take you.”

“Would you be a dear? Otherwise, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

He took her out to her father’s estate but they didn’t arrive until the next morning. They stayed overnight at the Paxton hotel. She was a woman who had never learned to say no and was not inclined to in any case.

A Sunday

Stephen had dreamed of the woman many times. This particular dream was one of his earliest memories, and it was always the same. It was so vivid, so actual, that it seemed more like a recollection than a dream, something that had happened to him. But in the dream he was a woman. And this was not the only dream that he had about her. In each one he was the same woman. After a night of dreaming of her, it took him some time to recover, some time to re-inhabit his own self and to leave hers. He felt strongly that at some time and in some place he had been that woman.

He had promised Clarissa that he would go to the Baptist Church with her that Sunday. He rose early so that he could shine his shoes and get dressed. He put on a white linen suit and Ida May helped him tie his bow tie.

“Now you carry dem shoes down to the blacktop so’s you don’t get ‘em all dusty, y’hear. Ain’t no sense shining ‘em up if yous jus gonna mess ‘em up on dat dirt road.”

“Yes’m.”

She licked her hand and tried to comb down the cowlick that sprouted obstinately on the crown of his head.

“You needs a haircut.”

“Yes’m”. Stephen was shuffling and squirming under her ministrations. He was eager to go.

“Git on widja den.” Ida May laughed and swatted him on the rear end as he burst through the screen door and, in his excitement, let it slam.

“Goddamn it!” He heard Granny Adele yell from her bedroom, but he was off in a cloud of dust down the yellow dirt road.

The Connors met him where the dirt road ran into the blacktop. Mr. Connor was driving his big Buick, and Mrs. Connor sat beside him on the bench front seat. He climbed into the back with Clarissa and her older brother. Larry was seventeen and though he ran with the boys that were always tormenting Stephen, he himself did not. He opted for just ignoring him.

“Why, don’t you look nice,” Clarissa said, “I sure do like a man who knows how to turn himself out. Mama, don’t you agree that Stephen looks nice?”

“Mmm, yes, Stephen looks nice. Now as I was saying…” She and Mr. Connor were conversing among themselves, or, to be more precise, Mrs. Connor was talking and Mr. Connor was uttering periodic acknowledgments to make her think he was listening.

“Hmm...” “Do tell...” “Yep...” “Is that so?”

Larry was dressed in a suit and was wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers ball cap. Clarissa was wearing a pretty dress of white lace with layers of crinolines that made her legs look like stamens protruding from the petals of a magnolia blossom. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail with a red satin bow, and she wore red patent leather Mary Janes and ruffled white socks. Stephen thought of Dorothy and her ruby slippers. They were off to see the wizard.

They rode through a cloudless morning, bright and golden, and the heat had not yet risen to intolerable levels. As the day went on, cumulus clouds would begin to form like white cotton balls, and they would grow and build all day until late afternoon when they would become towering gray masses with thunder and sharp lightning.

They passed a series of small white signs that Stephen and Clarissa read aloud together:

“If your peach...keeps out...of reach...better practice...what we preach...BURMA SHAVE!” They laughed uproariously.

“Do you know any others?” Clarissa asked.

“His cheek...was rough...his chick vamoosed...and now she won’t...come home to roost,” Stephen recited.

“BURMA SHAVE,” they shouted together.

“Where did you see that one?” Clarissa asked.

“On the bus coming down here,” he said, “I don’t know any others.”

“In this vale…of toil and sin…you’re head goes bald…but not your chin,” Clarissa chanted.

“BURMA SHAVE!”

“That’s the only two I know. I saw that one up near Raleigh. There’s supposed to be lots of them.”

They passed Silver Lake with its brown stone dam and drove up a slight rise through the little crossroads town of New Hope, just a handful of white clapboard houses and a service station. “No Hope,” Clarissa called it. As they entered the town of Wilson, Highway 58 became Nash Street. The limbs of old-growth oaks that lined the street formed a canopy over it that made you feel as if you had entered a tunnel. They passed the stoplight at the intersection with Raleigh Road and a few blocks further on they came to the First Baptist Church. It was an impressive brick building with a tall white steeple. The parishioners claimed it was the highest in town and therefore, the Baptists were closer to God. The front doors were open wide and groups of people were filing in. The men were all dressed in dull looking suits with white shirts and ties, but the ladies were a wash of colors in their bright summer hats and dresses. Mr. Connor parked the Buick in the parking lot of his drug store, right across the street, and they walked together over to the church. Clarissa surprised Stephen by taking his arm as Mrs. Conner did her husband’s, and Larry shuffled sullenly along behind. Just inside the doors was a wooden table with stacks of hymnals bound in faux- leather covers and a box that contained paper fans printed with Bible scenes that were stapled onto wooden sticks that looked like the things the doctor stuck in your mouth when he made you say “Ahhh”. Two ushers stood on either side of the aisle and issued programs. The organ played solemn music; children squirmed in their seats, and the ladies tried to cool themselves with their fans waving like flags in the wind.

The service itself was unlike what Stephen was accustomed to. For one thing, it was in English. Stephen had thought that God only understood Latin, but apparently that was not the case. He supposed that God must be multi-lingual. The hymns were lighter and more lyrical, not at all like the solemn chanting of the Catholic Church. One thing, however, was the same: the passing of the plate. Stephen had a nickel that Ida May had given him for the purpose, and he dutifully put it in the plate as it came by. The sermon was on First Corinthians, Chapter 13, which Stephen had read before:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

This passage had always resonated with Stephen as it offered promise that someday his confusion would end and things would become clear to him. The unsettling thing about it was the implication that “he was known”, presumably by God, and he didn’t like the fact that God could see into him and knew his thoughts and feelings. What must He think of him? Did He have the same disdain for him that others seemed to have? Did God condemn him, and if so, why did God make him the way he was? He had certainly not chosen to be this way. Who would choose to be an object of derision? Had God made a mistake with him? And it was becoming clearer as he grew older that he was powerless to be different. God must know that he had tried but there was something in the very core of him that was fixed and immutable.

He thought about his strange family. Granny Adele took the Lord’s name in vain; Aunt Lucy was a fallen woman because of her divorce, and he was sure that Uncle Bobby had a list of sins longer than your arm. Would they all burn in everlasting hellfire? The ways of God were a mystery to him. In the Old Testament, he was wrathful and mean. He flooded the whole world and killed everyone but Noah and his family. He pulled that cruel joke on Abraham where He told him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and then relented, “Just joking Abe, do a ram instead.” He had the Israelites slaughter the people of Canaan, men, women and children, and take their land. And what about poor Job who was righteous in every way? God let the devil do horrible things to him on a bet. By the New Testament He had softened somewhat and promised redemption for all, but how could you trust Him. He could turn mean again. So Stephen hedged his bets. He tried to do right and live by the golden rule and honor the ten commandments, but he watched his back for fear that God was sneaking up on him. He felt himself condemned, not for his actions, but for what he was. Life was precarious. It was like walking in a minefield, one false step, and you get blown to bits like his daddy had in Iwo Jima.

His problem was that he thought too much. That’s what Mama had said. Rather than just accepting things as they were, he dissected them and tried to discover the root causes that drove people and events to behave in the manner that they did. He reduced everything down to core components, analyzed their structure. He tried to understand the clockwork rather than just reading the time and he had never been successful. The world and everything in it continued to baffle him. He spent most of his time in his head, and even the workings of his own mind were strange to him. His thoughts would dart from one subject to another with little or no connection between them. Sometimes he would try to trace the path of them and understand how they linked together, one to another, but they seemed to be random and unconnected, neurons firing indiscriminately, with no particular pattern or order, and it made him wonder if it was he that was thinking or someone outside himself thinking him. If the latter were true, how could he be held responsible for his feelings? Now, as he sat in a pew in the First Baptist Church, he tried to focus on the preacher’s words, but his mind kept flying away like a restless bird, like the barn swallows in the evening sky flying so erratically with no seeming destination.

After the sermon they all stood and sang a final hymn. He and Clarissa shared a hymnal, he holding the book with his right hand, she with her left:

Amazing Grace,

How sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

That’s what he needed. Some of that amazing grace. What did it sound like? Could it save even him? He prayed for it every night but it did not come. He would awaken in the morning and be the same. God had not chosen to intervene. Perhaps he was damned from the start.

As the people filed out down the carpeted aisle, they talked softly among themselves. Everyone agreed that the sermon was a good one, if a bit long. The preacher himself greeted everyone at the door, smiling pleasantly, shaking the hands of the men, tousling the hair of young boys, and when Stephan came before him he said:

“So you’re the Howell boy, I hear?”

“Yes, sir.” It seemed the whole town knew who he was, and he wondered at his notoriety.

“Well I hope you come again. You may be interested in our vacation bible school.”

“He’s a Catholic,” Larry said with a smirk.

“Well, even Catholics need to know Jesus,” the preacher said smugly.

After the service they drove out the other side of town to Parker’s Barbeque. It was a Conner family tradition to eat at Parker’s after church, and judging from the fullness of the parking lot, it seemed as if it were the whole town’s. It was a long, low, white wooden building with hardwood floors, formica topped tables, and wooden chairs. The customers talked loudly as they ate, and the twin kitchen doors made slamming noises as they swung to and fro with the passage of the waiters. The doors between the dining room and the kitchen were labeled “In” and “Out” to facilitate some semblance of traffic control. Waiters in white aprons and paper hats were literally running back and forth, holding metal trays with plates of steaming food and pitchers of tea on their shoulders. At first, it appeared to be total chaos but Stephen soon recognized an underlying order to it all. The service was quick and efficient, taking only a matter of minutes. They were served brown bakelite sectioned plates of shredded pork barbeque sopped in vinegar, fried chicken, boiled potatoes, and brunswick stew. There were cornbread sticks, and spicy coleslaw made with mustard and pepper that Stephen didn’t particularly care for. The iced tea was the sweetest that he had ever had and unless a person specifically ordered it unsweetened, that’s what they got. And it was all good, and you could tell that it was so by the way the people ate. Table manners seemed to be dispensed with, and the food was being wolfed down not unlike the farm dogs that would gobble up the entrails that were thrown to them when a hog was slaughtered. The “coloreds” were not allowed inside. They ordered from a window in the back door and squatted by the smoke house to eat. The restaurant was owned by the Parker brothers, Graham and Ralph, who worked in the kitchen and rarely appeared on the floor. The front man was a cousin, Henry Parker Brewer, a small portly man with a voice like a frog. He knew all of his patrons by name, knew the children, the wives, the family dog. He would go from table to table, straddling a chair, and talking to them like they were all long lost friends.

After dinner, Stephen and Clarissa were dropped off at the Wilson Theater where they saw East of Eden with James Dean, and they both cried when Cal’s father rejected his birthday gift, and they were horrified when Cal dragged his brother, Aaron, to see their mother. She was some kind of evil woman but neither of them was exactly sure what made her so. After the movie they went next door to the Theater Soda Shop for strawberry milkshakes, and they talked about the movie in quick voices with animated gestures. Both had fallen in love with the brooding James Dean, and they talked mostly about him.

In the evening after supper, Stephen sat with his family on the front porch and recounted his day to them. When he told them about eating at Parker’s Barbeque, Granny Adele told him that the Parker brothers were his second cousins. They had started the business after the war and were making a killing. They had their own airplane.

“I’m glad you had the opportunity to experience some southern culture,” Uncle Bobby said.

“I swear, Bobby Joe, you’re just always so negative about everything.”

“If I expect the worse I am never disappointed.” He laughed and rocked back in his rocker. He was smoking the foulest smelling cigar ever. He said it came from Cuba, and Stephen wondered if he couldn’t get one just as good without going so far afield.

He sat, as usual, beside Aunt Lucy, trying to absorb the essence of her. He always experienced a vague anxiety in her presence, an inexplicable longing for something he didn’t understand. At times he would notice a stirring in his pants, a swelling of the thing he had down there that he thought, although he didn’t know why, was a reaffirmation of his badness. When the conversation died, and they were absorbed by the night sounds, Aunt Lucy once again began to sing her strange song. It floated softly on the air, as light as the air itself, sounding like water in a pebbled brook. It sounded like an angel singing.

The River

The Tar River winds through eastern North Carolina like a crooked brown snake. It twists and turns so much that, although the distance by road between Rocky Mount and Tarboro is fifteen miles, by the river it is over one hundred. It passes north of Wilson not far from where the Connor family lived in a renovated farmhouse off of Highway 58. They kept two horses in a small stable behind their house. Beauty belonged to Clarissa, and Blaze was her mother’s horse. Clarissa was the only one in the family that rode regularly, and Blaze was rarely used, so she taught Stephen to ride, and often of an afternoon they would ride the trails that ran through the pinewoods around the house. One day they decided to ride to the river and have a picnic on the banks and fish for catfish. They made sandwiches with fresh tomatoes from Mrs. Connor’s garden, thick red slices on white bread with mayonnaise, and they packed them along with potato chips and a thermos of iced tea into saddlebags. They strapped cane poles on the flanks of the horses. They’d dig for worms on the muddy banks of the river. Neither one knew anything about fishing, but they assumed that worms on a hook suspended from little red bobbers were all that was required, and it really didn’t matter if they caught anything or not; it was something to do that sounded like fun.

They rode along the edge of a tobacco field and watched the field hands sucker the leafy green stalks. Even though the heat was oppressive, the hands wore long sleeved shirts and long pants to protect them from the sticky tobacco gum that rubbed off on anything that came in contact with the leaves. On bare skin, it became intolerable in the heat, and it itched unbearably. On the far side of the field, they entered the woods and rode down a shady path that was covered with pine straw. When fallen, the needles were brown, the earthy color of death and decay. The needles on the trees were bright green with life. At the end of the path was a swimming hole where someone years ago had tied a thick rope to the limb of an oak tree that extended over the water. Normally the river was sluggish, barely moving, but after heavy rains it would swell to the edge of the banks, and the current would be quite swift. There had been several drownings there when people, usually drunk, tried to swim at such times. The banks were steep and slippery with mud, and it was easier to get in than out. Beneath the rope swing, someone had cut notches in the dirt and inserted planks to serve as a makeshift stairway to allow for easier egress.

Stephen and Clarissa were the only ones there. They tied the horses to a tree and spread their blanket out beneath the oak and readied their fishing gear. They turned up several large earthworms from the mud, ugly slimy things, that neither of them was eager to touch and even after they overcame their squeamishness, they couldn’t bring themselves to put them on the hook. So much for fishing.

“Let’s swim,” Clarissa suggested.

“We didn’t bring our suits.”

“Haven’t you ever been skinny dipping, silly?”

“What in the world is skinny dipping?”

“We take off our clothes and swim naked.”

“I don’t know…”

“Oh don’t be a prude,” she said, “Folks do it all the time.”

“I don’t.”

“Well I don’t suppose Yankees do,” she teased. “Come on.”

Clarissa started removing her clothes, and Stephen reluctantly followed suit. She removed her shirt and her bra and then her jeans and panties and there she was, naked as the day she was born. At the sight of her, Stephen was speechless. He knew about the differences between boys and girls but this was the first time he witnessed it. Her belly ran smoothly downward in an unbroken line and curved between her legs where there was a little slit, nothing more, and Stephen thought she looked beautiful. He felt the heat climb into his face in embarrassment because in comparison with her perfection, he had these horrible ugly growths hanging from the same part of his anatomy. He quickly jumped in the water to conceal himself from her. Clarissa acted as natural and unashamed as if she were fully clothed. Her new young breasts danced gaily on her chest as she moved.

“Don’t you want to use the rope?” she asked. She went to where the rope was tied to the tree, untied it, and used it to swing high over the water where she let go and fell to the surface in a graceful arc. She surfaced, laughing, and swam over to where Stephen was dog paddling, took a mouthful of water and squirted it in his face. A splashing war ensued with both of them squealing and giggling and Stephen lost enough of his self-consciousness that, after a time, he climbed out and used the rope to swing back in. Clarissa didn’t seem to notice his nakedness. It all seemed so natural to her as if they were Adam and Eve in the garden before they ate the apple. When they tired of swimming, they came out of the water and lay on the blanket, side-by-side, and quickly dried in the heat of the sun. For a time, they didn’t speak. A psychic bond had formed between them that made speech unnecessary.

“What is that?” Stephen said after a while.

“What is what?”

“That brown thing on the bottom of that leaf.”

It took some time for her to see what he was talking about, but when he pointed up into the branches of the oak she saw it.

“It’s a cocoon, silly,” she said. “Haven’t you ever seen a cocoon?”

“No. Just in pictures.”

“Silly city boy. Well see, there’s these ugly caterpillars, and they crawl around on the ground, and they’re very unhappy crawling around in the dirt, so one day they build a cocoon and go inside and wrap themselves up in silk. And after a time they turn into beautiful butterflies, and they break out and spend the rest of their lives flying around and eating nectar from flowers.”

“Go on!”

“No, I’m serious. I’ll show you in the encyclopedia when we get home.”

Again they fell silent. Stephen thought about the caterpillar changing into a butterfly. How was such a thing possible? How could something change from an ugly earth crawler into a beautiful butterfly? He wished that he could perform such a miracle on himself, and if he could, there was no doubt what he would change into. He looked again at Clarissa and thought that her beauty could easily match that of a butterfly.

They ate their tomato sandwiches. Drank their iced tea straight from the thermos, passing it between them. Sharing. Dragonflies like miniature helicopters darted over the surface of the river. Something broke in the water, and concentric circles of little waves radiated out from the spot. They heard a rustling in the underbrush, and a doe with a little speckled fawn emerged, froze at the sight of them, and stared at them with big brown deereyes until they broke and fled into the trees in graceful leaps.

“Did you see that?” Stephen whispered.

“Oh they’re everywhere. Mama hates them because she can’t keep them out of the garden. Long’s we don’t see a bear, we’re alright.

“There are bears?”

“Oh yes, and lions and tigers and bandicoots.” She giggled and rolled over onto him and started playfully wrestling with him. They rolled and tumbled in the pine straw, two naked giggling children, and it was innocent, and it was beautiful, and it was good.

Tired out, they lay back on the blanket. Clarissa took a sketchpad out of the saddlebag and began to draw the scene: two naked children on the banks of a river. Stephen got his notebook out and composed a poem about a young girl sketching on the banks of a river.

“Don’t you think it’s beautiful here?” Clarissa asked.

“It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.” The wind had quickened a bit, and the sky was darkening in the west. Ripples appeared on the water, and the tops of the pines on the far bank were swaying like dancers.

“It’s going to storm,” Clarissa said. “We’d better go.”

They dressed and packed the remnants of the picnic into the saddlebags, untied and mounted their horses, and rode home singing their favorite songs together. Clarissa guided her horse next to Stephen’s so that they were flank to flank, and they reached out and took one another’s hands.

“I love you, Clarissa.”

“I love you, too, Stephen.”

The horses rolled along at a walk. Sweat glistened on their flanks, the musky smell of them.

“Do you want to go steady with me?” Stephen asked.

“No,” Clarissa answered. “You don’t love me like that. You love me as a friend.”

“I do too love you like that.”

“No you don’t. Why didn’t you try to kiss me or feel me up?”

“Would you have let me?”

“Yes.”

“I guess I didn’t think about it.”

“You didn’t think about it because you don’t love me like that.”

They rode in silence after that. The rain started falling as they reached the stable. They unsaddled the horses and brushed and curried them. Stephen gently pushed Clarissa against the wall of the stall, kissed her, and placed his hand on her breast, but Clarissa wrestled free.

“No!” She said.

She bolted out the door of the stable in tears and ran through the rain to the house.

A Saturday

Tears and rain. Stephen walked the two miles back to the Howell House in the driving storm. The wind was blowing the rain sideways, and the heavy drops striking his face felt like bee stings. The lightning was sharp and frequent, the thunder like cannons. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a bolt split a pine tree across the road from him. He could hear it hiss and sizzle, and the smell of ozone heavy in the air. When he recovered, he stood in the middle of the road, and, screaming into the boiling sky, he challenged God to strike him. But apparently God had other plans for him, or else His aim was not all that good. He continued on his way, and when he reached the house, Ida May toweled him off and fussed at him for being so stupid.

“Now you go git outta dem wet clothes and bring ‘em here so’s I can wash ‘em. Dey smells like horse sweat. Oh yes, you’re little girlfriend called on de telephone. Said to call her back.”

Stephen went straight to the telephone and called Clarissa.

“Stephen! Oh gracious me, I was so worried about you. You should have come in the house until the storm was over.”

“I thought you were mad. I thought you didn’t like me anymore.” He choked back a sob and his eyes grew wet with tears.

“Of course I like you, silly. Why, you’re my best friend. I just didn’t want you to kiss me as an afterthought. You didn’t want to anyway.”

“I did want to. I just didn’t think about it down at the river.”

“But that’s the point, dear. You didn’t even think about it. Another boy would have been all over me.”

“I respect you too much for that.”

“It’s not a matter of respect. It’s a matter of passion. But that’s ok. Let’s just leave things as they are.”

The next day she came over just as she always did, and everything was back to normal. On Saturday mornings, they sat on the floor in front of the Philco radio and listened to Big John and Sparkie from WPTF in Raleigh. The station was so far away that they had to listen through a background of hiss and static. Some days they couldn’t get it at all, and then they would listen to Smiling Ed And His Gang and Froggy the Gremlin on WGMT.

Pluck your magic twanger, Froggy!

They didn’t know what a magic twanger was, but it sounded vaguely naughty. Smiling Ed was sponsored by Buster Brown shoes:

I’m Buster Brown

I live in a shoe

That’s my dog Tide

He lives in there too.

But today the reception was clear and when Big John and Sparkie came on they sang along with the theme song:

If you go out in the woods today

You're sure of a big surprise.

If you go out in the woods today

You'd better go in disguise.

For every bear that ever there was

Will gather there for certain, because

Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

They were on the cusp of some momentous change, still children but wrestling with adult feelings that they didn’t know how to handle. So it was a comfort to retreat into the safety of childhood.

Ida May served them hot cups of Ovaltine and glazed doughnuts that made their hands sticky with frosted sugar.

In the afternoon Aunt Lucy dropped them at the swimming pool at Recreation Park and arranged to pick them up at ten. They swam until the lifeguard cleared the pool at the onset of the daily thunderstorm. As the sun was setting and the dark was falling, the clouds dispersed and the park attendant opened up the little cinder block house that housed the jukebox. There was a cement slab in front of it that was used for dancing, and high school couples would come and do the bop. An offshoot of the jitterbug, the bop was a singular dance that was done only in the south and consisted of smooth, shuffling movements with the couples holding hands, the boy’s left, the girl’s right. Later, with the onset of beach music, it would be called the shag, but in these early years it was known as the bop. There were only two dances: the bop and what was simply labeled “slow dance” that had no discernable pattern to it but consisted of holding one another tight and rocking to and fro in slow circles. The boy would twirl the girl, holding her hand over her head, and the bolder boys would dip her backward. Dancing there in the night, beneath the stars, in the cool summer breeze. It closed at ten o’clock, and by that time some of the boys would be drunk on beer, and it was not uncommon for a fistfight to break out, invariably over a girl. The boys would punch one another bloody, and the girls would stand on the periphery and cry.

Clarissa taught Stephen how to bop, and with his natural grace, he learned quickly. Someone played “Maybe” by the Chantels, and they slow danced under the moonlit sky with Stephen holding her lightly in his arms as if she were fragile and easily broken. It was all so romantic. Stephen wanted to love her, did love her, but not in the way she wished.

Stephen wanted to be her.

Behind the dance floor were lighted tennis courts and, over the music, he could hear the ‘fwop fwop’ of tennis balls being batted back and forth. The pool was lit with underwater lights, and the water was luminescent, green and glowing. There was not a breath of wind. The pine trees stood straight and tall and still.

Aunt Lucy picked them up when the park closed, and they drove home listening to Our Best to You, a program of romantic music that came on every night at eleven. The host was a DJ named Jimmy Capps who read dedications before each song in a smooth mellifluous voice. “This is for Sally at Meredith from John at UNC. Thank you for a lovely weekend and I hope to see you soon. I love you.” The program ended every night with the playing of “Theme From a Summer Place” by Percy Faith. Unless one were completely unfeeling, one couldn’t resist getting caught up in the romantic mood of the show. All of that love. All those lovely couples. Stephen pictured Sally in her nightgown, sitting on her bed doing her nails, listening to the song that John had sent her, and dreaming of the next time she would see him.

They dropped Clarissa off at her house, and Stephen walked her to the door.

“I had such fun,” she said. She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek and Stephen felt his face flush.

“Good Night.” And then she was gone. He stood on the porch a moment looking at the moon. He felt a deep longing that he had never felt before, something indescribable that seemed to originate in his soul and radiate through his entire being. Was he “in love”? He did love her. There was no doubt of that. But what type of love was it, and how should he express it? And how did these other feelings that he had coexist with the feeling he had for Clarissa. What he felt for her was stronger than he had felt for anyone, but was it the love of a man for a woman or something different, and if it was different, in what way was it different? How exactly did boys feel for girls? He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to caress her. But was it desire for her, or an inexplicable longing to become her? He wondered, if he were she and a boy held him, would it be different? Yes. He thought that it would. If he were Clarissa in the arms of a boy, kissing him, letting him touch her, he was sure that he would respond, as his body was involuntarily responding with just the thought of it.

They drove home in the evening air, the windows of the Chrysler rolled down and the cool air brushing his cheek.

“I think she has a crush on you,” Aunt Lucy said.

“No, not really,” he responded. “We’re just friends.”

“Maybe you feel that way, but she feels something more. I’m a woman and I can tell. Tread lightly Stephen; don’t break her heart.”

The last thing Stephen wanted was to break Clarissa’s heart. The idea of hurting her was intolerable to him.

Melinda

She was happy about her pregnancy, but, at the same time, she was concerned about the situation the baby would be born into. Her relationship with her husband had deteriorated to the point that it had become intolerable, and in addition, she was in no way certain that the child was his. Her promiscuity was not based on desire but seemed to be something that she was compelled to do. During these acts, she felt wanted, and if, after the climax, the man walked out of the room and left her lying in the wetness of their sex, she felt justifiably shamed. She felt herself used, and she liked the feeling. She considered herself to be a thing of no value, incapable of anything but this. She could do this.

All her life she had been made to feel inferior because of her sex. Her father and her brothers treated her like she was little more than a servant: a mere girl, there to do their bidding. Her mother had drowned herself in the lake after a wild night of debauchery at one of her father’s house parties. Melinda had found her on the shore the next morning, a silk peignoir twisted grotesquely around her body like a shroud, an empty wine glass still in her hand. She was taken out of school to mind the house and cook the men’s meals. When she met William she married him even though she didn’t like him all that much and found herself in the same situation. When she wanted to go back to school, he refused. A woman didn’t need an education. She was there to clean his house, give him sex, and have his babies. She felt strongly drawn to join the women’s suffrage movement but after attending one meeting, William beat her and put her firmly back in her place. The only good thing about the marriage was that he traveled quite a bit which left her free for her extracurricular activities. She had stopped after she found out she was pregnant.

She sat on the couch in the parlor, drinking scotch and smoking, and she felt the baby kick. A thing alive there in her stomach. Her thing. Her baby. She placed her hands on her belly and thought about it, there in its little sac, thumb in its mouth, kicking her from the inside with its little feet. Her breasts were swollen with milk and often painfully tender. William would suck from her when they had sex. She didn’t know how William thought about the child. He seemed to be ambivalent. As long as it was a boy she knew he would accept it, but she feared that it would be a girl and that he would ignore it. She prayed for a boy. But what if it were black? She had had encounters with black men because it seemed more decadent and it was more dangerous. If caught, they were both liable to get lynched.

She went to the bar and poured herself more scotch. She was already tipsy and well on her way to drunk. She thought about going out to a speakeasy but decided against it. It would be too tempting. So she sat there listening to the radio and thumbing through a women’s magazine.

A Secret

Clarissa’s father bought a Sylvania Halo Screen television set. Only two stations could be picked up with any regularity, WNCT in Greenville, and WTVD in Durham, and even those were snowy. There was a directional antenna on the roof and a little brown box on top of the set that was used to turn the antenna to the direction that provided the best reception. Its big knob would go “Kadok, Kadok, Kadok” as it ratcheted around. Mr. Connor would set a mirror on a kitchen chair and get behind the set and mess with the controls for hours. He was always sure that he could make the picture better if he could just find the proper settings. Steven and Clarissa would watch ‘The Mickey Mouse Club”, “Howdy Doody”, and “Winky Dink” during the day, and Stephen would join the family on Sunday nights for ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.” Programming ended at ten o’clock with the playing of the National Anthem and the screen showing an American flag waving in the wind. Then the test pattern came on, and the set would whistle with an irritating tone until they turned it off.

Clarissa’s parents were going away for the weekend and Clarissa asked them if Stephen could stay over on Saturday night and watch “The Jackie Gleason Show” which ended at ten o’clock, too late for Stephen to walk back home. Stephen was in the next room and overheard the conversation.

“Clarissa, he’s a boy,” her mother protested.

“Honey, I don’t think we have to worry about that boy,” Mr. Connor put in, laughing.

“Anyway Larry will be here,” Clarissa said.

“I don’t know…”

“With Stephen we might have to worry about Larry more than Clarissa.” Mr. Connor obviously thought it all very amusing. “I don’t see the harm.”

So Mrs. Connor reluctantly agreed. Stephen knew what Mr. Conner meant by “that boy”, but he wondered what kind of threat he posed for Larry. Larry was twice his size. His relationship with Clarissa’s parents was tenuous at best. He tried to be polite and cheerful with them, but they mostly ignored him. When he spoke to them they responded with one-word answers. He could not understand why they didn’t like him and why Larry treated him as if he did not exist.

Saturday night, Larry was out running with his buddies, and the two were left home alone. They lay on the rug in front of the set and watched Jackie as Reginald Van Gleason, Joe the Bartender, and in a faux commercial as Stanley R. Sogg pitching “Mother Fletcher’s Low-Cal Chicken Fat.” The June Taylor dancers did a number dressed in skimpy costumes that resembled bathing suits with feathers trailing behind. Their numbers always ended with the girls high-kicking in perfect unison in a line that stretched all the way across the stage. Vivian Blaine, dressed in a sequined turquoise gown, sang “Adelaide’s Lament” from Guys and Dolls backed by Ray Bloch and the CBS orchestra. Stephen commented on how pretty the dress was, and Clarissa said:

“You sure notice women’s clothes more than any boy I’ve ever known.”

“That’s because they’re so pretty. Men’s clothes are just drab and they’re all the same. Women’s clothes come in all different styles and colors. They can wear anything. Maybe I’ll be a fashion designer when I grow up.”

“Steven Howell. Fashion designer for the stars,” she laughed.

“Sure, why not? There are lots of men fashion designers.”

“They’re all French though. You’d have to change your name. Stefan Houwelle, fashion designer for the stars.”

“I could do that.”

“Did you ever dress up, Stephen?” She asked cautiously.

“How do you mean?”

“You know, dress up as a girl.”

“No,” he said emphatically as if the idea had never occurred to him.

“Let’s do it. We’re about the same size.”

Clarissa was getting excited at the idea. She was also curious as to how he would respond to it. She had her suspicions. “Let’s do it,” she repeated.

“What if Larry comes home?”

“He won’t. Whenever Mama and Daddy leave, he stays out all night.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

She noticed that his protest was not that strong, and she could tell he wanted to do it. She stood up and grabbed him by the hand and pulled him toward her room.

“Really, no.”

“Stephen don’t try to tell me you don’t want to do it. You’ll make such a pretty girl. Come on.”

He followed her into her room, secretly thrilled at the prospect of dressing up like a girl. He dared not show just how much he wanted to do it, but Clarissa seemed to know. She sensed things about him that even he didn’t know.

“Take your clothes off,” she said.

“Not in front of you.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve seen everything you’ve got. Remember the river?”

“I don’t know--that was different somehow.”

“Well, go in the bathroom then. I’ll pick some things out.”

Stephen went into the bathroom and removed all of his clothes except his underwear. A few seconds later the door cracked open and Clarissa’s hand reached in dangling a pair of white nylon panties with borders of intricate lace around the waistband and legs. She’d picked the girliest pair she had.

“Ta-da,” she said.

“No, not that. I’ll wear my own, thank you.” Even though this is what he wanted more than anything, he felt the need to deny it. Wearing a little girl’s panties was just too intimate. Taboo.

“Oh come on Stephen, we have to go all the way.” She repeated her declaration: “Don’t try to tell me you don’t want to do it.”

He took the panties from her. Just touching the softness of them gave him a thrill. He took off his jockey shorts, took a deep breath, stepped into them, slid them up his legs and nestled them into place. The feeling of the slick soft nylon against his skin was astonishing, and he felt his breath quicken involuntarily. He looked at himself in the mirror and thought he looked ridiculous: a bulge there in the panties that had never been there before and was never meant to have been. But the taboo aspect of it just added to his excitement.

“Ta-da,” she said, and she was holding a lacey white bra through the door. He took it and slipped his arms through the straps, but he got it backwards. He tried again and got it right but had no idea how to fasten it.

“I can’t fasten this thing.”

“It’s not a thing, it’s a bra. Come out and I’ll do it for you.”

“I can’t come out. You can see through this underwear.”

“They’re panties. I don’t know why boys have trouble with that word. They’re just clothes. Just back out.” She was laughing at him. Stephen backed out the door and Clarissa fastened the bra and then he thought, what the hell, and he turned and faced her. She examined him with a critical eye. “So far so good,” she said. “Now this.” A petticoat with layers of crinolines was laid out on the bed and she picked it up and handed it to him. Stephen, resigned to his fate, but even more excited, decided to just go with it. He stepped into the petticoats and pulled them up to his waist.

“Now which dress do you want to wear?” She pointed to several dresses she had laid out on the bed, and his eye was immediately drawn to a pink satin dress with a full skirt and curlicues of white embroidery on the scalloped neckline.

“That one.” He pointed.

“Oh, I just knew you’d choose pink,” she giggled, “You’re a girl, Stephen. No doubt about it.”

She helped him into the dress and then zipped it up the back. She stepped back and looked him over.

“This is such fun,” she said, “Let’s do make up.”

She had him sit on the stool before her vanity and expertly applied lipstick and rouge, eye shadow and mascara, and combed his longish hair into a pageboy. When she was done, she looked at him in astonishment.

“Oh, Stephen, look.”

He turned around and looked at himself in the mirror and there was a girl looking back at him. Not just a girl, a pretty girl. Oh I wish, he thought. He smiled at himself and tossed his head. He put on her nylon socks with the ruffles and her Mary Jane slippers and stood up to get a full view.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Clarissa was jumping up and down and clapping her hands. “Presenting Miss Stephanie Howell, debutante of the year.”

Stephen twirled around and his skirt flared around his legs. He felt good. He felt--natural.

“Just a minute,” Clarissa said, and she ducked in the bathroom. A few minutes later she came out wearing his clothes.

“You better have put on my underwear,” Stephan laughed. “What’s good for the goose,…” She lowered the waist of the pants to reveal the Jockey logo.

“But of course,” she said. “Now for the rest of the night I’m the boy and you’re the girl.”

“You’re…um, Carl,” he replied.

“Carl wants a coke, woman.”

They went into the kitchen. Clarissa sat down and crossed her legs like a man, an ankle resting on a knee, and leaned back in her chair, pretending to smoke a cigarette. Stephen went to the cabinet and retrieved two glasses and filled them with ice. He bent down to get two bottles of Coke from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator and poured the contents into the glasses.

“You should be careful bending over, darling. I see England, I see France, I see a little girl’s underpants.”

“Whoops. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it was a nice view.” They laughed.

Stephen sat down and tried to cross his legs high up like Clarissa did, but he realized that his anatomy did not allow for it without some critical adjustments that he made as discreetly as possible.

“So how was your day sweetheart?” Clarissa tried to lower her voice to a baritone.

“Oh you know,” Stephen answered in a high falsetto, “Taking care of the kids and doing housework. How was yours?”

“Busy. Had to take a client to lunch and fire my secretary for being late.”

“I never liked her anyway. She was always flirting with you.”

“She’s not my type, baby doll. I only have eyes for you.”

“Oh you’re sweet.”

They carried on like this, sipping their Cokes and playing with their reversed roles. Clarissa suggested they dance so they went into the den and put on a stack of 45’s and danced the bop to “Stay” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. Clarissa reminded him to use his right hand and to let her lead. And then they slow danced to “Sixteen Candles” by the Crests, her arm around his waist and his hand lightly caressing the back of her neck. She twirled him and attempted to dip him, but she wasn’t quite strong enough, and they fell on the floor in a heap of white petticoats, laughing like crazy.

When they grew tired, they went into Clarissa’s bedroom, and he changed into one of her baby doll nighties. She wore his shirt and underwear, and they climbed into bed.

“Not tonight, dear, I have a headache,” he said.

“Again?” she complained. She reached over to the nightstand and switched the light off.

There in the dark, Clarissa and Stephen, Carl and Stephanie.

“Good night, Carl,” he whispered.

“Good night, Stephanie,” she returned.

“Clarissa?”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“I knew you’d like it.” She leaned her head over toward his, found his lips, and kissed him lightly, just a brush.

The rolled away from one another and slept.

A pounding on the bedroom door awakened them the next morning.

“Clarissa, make me some breakfast.” It was Larry.

“Oh my God,” Clarissa said.

“What if he comes in,” Stephen whispered.

“He won’t. My room is off limits. Quick get dressed.” Then she said to the door, “I’m coming.”

They jumped out of bed and scurried to get dressed. When Stephen began to take the panties off, Clarissa touched him gently on the hand.

“No,” she said, “I want you to have them.”

“But…”

She smiled at him. “Keep them.”

He put on his jeans and shirt over the panties while Clarissa unhooked the screen of the open window, and as he clambered out she whispered: “Our secret.”

“Our secret,” he affirmed.

“Stay out fifteen minutes and come in the back door,” she instructed him.

She dressed and went into the kitchen where Larry was sitting at the table smoking.

“Where’s Stephen?” he asked.

“He went out to feed the horses.” She made coffee and went about frying eggs and bacon. She was a girl again and according to family rules, household chores were her responsibility. Larry looked tired and spent and it was apparent that he’d had a rough night.

“Are we going to church?” She asked.

“Not me,” he said, “I’m going to bed.”

The back door opened and Stephen walked in.

“Are they ok?” Clarissa asked.

“Is who ok?”

“The horses, silly.”

“Oh yeah, the horses are ok.”

Larry ignored him. Stephen went to the fridge, and when he bent over to retrieve the orange juice, his t-shirt rode up his back and revealed a band of white lace just above the beltline of his pants.

“I see England… “ Clarissa said anxiously.

“What?” Larry asked.

“What?” Stephen asked.

“Just something Stephen and I talked about last night. Remember?” She said emphatically and winked at him.

“Oh!” Stephen said.

“Some silliness, no doubt,” Larry smirked.

Stephen helped Clarissa make the meal and served Larry his coffee. Rather than being shy and self-conscious, the feel of the panties against his skin and the thrill of his secret made him feel sassy. Clarissa sensed it, and sharing in his secret, she smiled to herself and started humming a song. Stephen joined in.

“You two are acting right strange,” Larry said, “What have you been up to?”

“Oh, nothing,” Clarissa said.

“Nothing,” Stephen repeated and they both broke into giggles.

“Children!” Larry snorted, “Grow up!”

“Would you like coffee?” Clarissa asked Stephen.

“But of course.” He answered.

“One lump or two, kind sir?”

“Two I think.”

“We don’t have lumps-- we have spoons.” Larry said.

Stephen tasted coffee for the first time and discovered that he liked it. Sweet and rich and it warmed your belly when it went down.

After breakfast, Stephen walked home. As he walked he could feel the thin fabric of his panties brushing around on his bare skin, caressing his body ever so softly. He took short mincing steps and started swaying his hips like a girl. There was no lightning flashing, no rain stinging his face. God seemed to be content this morning or else He was sleeping in. The sky was clear and he heard a crow cawing and spotted it sitting on a power pole. The crow eyed him suspiciously.

“I’ve got a secret,” he told the crow.

A pick up truck came up behind him and idled along beside him. A man with a grizzled face and a tobacco juice stain in the corner of his mouth leered at him with a hungry look.

“Want a ride, son?”

“No, thank you, I’d rather walk.”

“You, sure?”

“I’m sure.”

The pick up went on down the road in a cloud of smoke. Stephen knew about men like him. Now that was a queer! And Stephen was certainly not like that. The thought of two men doing things to one another had no appeal for him. But if one were a girl? No, not like that, not with a man like that. A girl would have to be in love, and then it would be beautiful. He and Clarissa were in love. He was sure of it now. But no, his mind did not turn in that direction. He loved her, true, but he didn’t want to do things to her. And she knew that. But what if he were Stephanie and she were Carl? If she were the boy and he were the girl, could he then? He left it there. He was afraid to answer that question and, in any case, it was impossible. That’s not the way things were. She was not his girlfriend; she was his girl friend. She had said so, and she was right. That’s all it could ever be. She seemed to understand things so much better than he did. She saw the truth of things rather than the fantasy. But where was one to find truth in a world as baffling as this? She could see things the way they were and accept them even if she didn’t like them. He could only see his dreams and reach for them in his imagination, but they remained ever out of reach.

When he came to the house, Aunt Lucy and Ida May were sitting on the porch shelling butterbeans.

“Well, the prodigal son returneth,” Aunt Lucy said. “Did you have a good time?”

“A wonderful time,” he answered.

“Do you want me to make you some Ovaltine?” Ida May asked.

“Is there coffee? I’d rather have coffee.”

“Oh coffee now, is it? There should be some left in the percolator.”

Stephan went in the house being careful not to let the screen door slam. He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. It had been simmering there since early morning and it was very strong and very hot. He sat down, poured it into the saucer like Uncle Bobby did, to let it cool, and then back in the cup. He took a sip, added sugar, and crossed his legs up high like a girl. He spoke very softly to himself, only a whisper:

I’ve got a secret.

Mama

Frank Howell met Emily Cooper in Washington State in November of 1941. He was working in Seattle at Boeing Aircraft as an aeronautical engineer, and she was a barmaid at a local tavern. She was the prettiest thing he had ever seen, and they married three weeks after their first date. He was a big, strapping, North Carolina farm boy, and she was a local high school homecoming queen, a tiny thing with a pin-up girl figure, brown hair, blue eyes and the sweet face of an angel. Or so he thought. She had eccentric ways about her and would occasionally do things that were somewhat bizarre. She liked to go out dancing to big band swing music, and she liked to take a drink. This didn’t bother Frank at first because he liked his good times as well, but he began to notice that, in Emily’s case, the drinking sometimes bordered on the extreme. In August she announced that she was pregnant, and a child was born in March of 1943, on the sixteenth, sandwiched between the Ides of March and St. Patrick’s’ Day. No wonder the child would grow up confused. The boy was named Stephen after his paternal grandfather.

The country was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor on December seventh, and war was declared on December eighth. Franklin Howell was exempt from service because his job was considered to be defense related. He felt guilty for staying home, and he’d been raised not to back down from a fight, so in January of 1943 he enlisted in the Marine Corps. Emily was incensed that he was leaving her alone while she was pregnant and wouldn’t even be present at the birth, but he felt his country needed him more than she did, and he felt an obligation to make the world safe for his child. He shipped out for the Pacific Theater a month before Stephen was born. He was hit by a mortar round and died on the island of Iwo Jima on his son’s second birthday, March 16, 1945.

Emily was devastated. They’d been scraping by on his pay and she received death benefits, but it wasn’t enough, so she went back to work bartending. Soon she was bringing men back home with her after closing time. In the next few years, she experienced a steady decline into alcoholism and madness. She lost her job because of her irregular behavior and moved with a man to Philadelphia. Soon after, he left her, and she and her son ended up in a cheap hotel room with her earning money entertaining men. She would bring them back to her room, and make a pallet for Stephen on the floor, and his earliest memories consisted of hearing the bedsprings squeak and the labored grunting of drunken men as they mauled his mother. He would keep his eyes turned to the wall, not daring to look at what they were doing. When the men left, they would throw a wad of money on the bedspread, and Emily would say, “thank you”. She loved Stephen, though, and pampered him as much as she was able, and she breast-fed him until he was seven years old. He seemed to like it so much, and she was convinced that it made her bosom bigger, so what harm was there in it? Stephen, for his part, idolized his mother even though there were nights that she didn’t come home at all, and there was one time when he was left alone, hungry and crying, for three days without knowing where she was or if she would ever return. But she did come back, and she brought him a big teddy bear to assuage his grief and try to make up for her truancy. She would send him by bus every summer to spend a week with his grandmother and his Uncle Bobby. Aunt Lucy was married and living in Charlotte.

After her suicide attempt, Granny Adele agreed to take the boy in and arranged for Emily to be transferred to Dix Hill to bring her closer to the family. He once again took the bus to North Carolina. He rode alone, in silence, staring out the windows of the bus and wondering at the lives of the people that lived in the farmhouses and small towns they passed through. What were they doing? What thinking? For him thinking was synonymous with being and whatever a person thought, so they were. So many people, so many lives that would never intersect with his, that he would never know, and yet each had a life, a story, and he wondered at all these untold stories. He wanted to write them. He felt strongly that any one of them could provide a story as interesting as the biographies of the greatest men. He narrowed his focus to his fellow travelers: The grizzled, unkempt man, two rows up that no one would sit with. He alternated between taking sips from a flask and nodding off into unconsciousness. The smell of him was so heavy in the air that it seemed like a material thing, solid and suffocating, a noxious wave of foul matter that engulfed everything in its presence. What was his story? By what road had he traveled to reach the condition he was in? There was the young mother in a threadbare dress holding a baby in her lap, a look of profound sadness in her face, cuddling and looking at it as is if it were her only link to life itself; the old man spitting tobacco juice into a paper cup and coughing up blood into a white handkerchief. Life trajectories intersecting momentarily on a bus to North Carolina and then veering off again into separate orbits. He recognized them as random encounters, but consequential in the fact that they unknowingly influenced one another simply by their proximity and the subtle intermingling of vibrations. The one thing he noticed about traveling by bus was how down and out the passengers seemed to be. They had been pummeled by life and submerged by its unmerciful tides, and now they were on this bus. And what was their destination? Would they reach a haven of rescue or would it be more of the same? It seemed to him that there were some people who were destined for this: to wander the earth aimlessly, constantly seeking refuge, never finding it, making one bad decision after another. He wanted to write it. He wanted to rub it in people’s faces: Here, here is what it’s like. Here are the people who have been left behind and never thought of unless you ride on a bus or venture into the back alleys of teeming cities. Here, the soft vulnerable underbelly of a society that refused to acknowledge their existance and turned a blind eye. Out of sight, out of mind.

The bus stopped at a roadside station in a small Virginia town, and Stephen went into the bathroom. There was a man leaning against the wall with his pants down around his ankles. Another man was kneeling before him, feeding hungrily, his face buried in the other man’s groin. When he finished, he stood and wiped his mouth and leered at Stephen. He wanted more. Stephen zipped himself up and fled the room. His feelings about such men were a mixture of disgust and pity. What drove them? What was it in them that was so powerful that they could not stop themselves from such degrading acts? Or was it the degradation itself that they craved? The entire spectrum of people, their actions, their motivations, baffled him and he wanted to understand them, and he felt he could do that by writing about them.

Now they were visiting his mother at Dix Hill. Aunt Lucy drove him up in the Chrysler. The institute consisted of a series of large brick buildings situated on over two thousand acres on a hill outside of Raleigh. Ironically, it was just down the road from the state prison. They were told they would find her in the dayroom, and they were ushered down the hall by a tottering old nurse in a starched white dress and cap. Before they even reached the room they could hear, echoing down the hall, the screaming of a woman. When they entered the room they saw its source. A toothless old woman with stringy hair was sitting in a wheelchair before a window and screaming obscenities toward the skyline of the city. She was cursing everyone in it in the foulest language imaginable.

“That’s Mrs. Lemmon,” the nurse told them, “She keeps that up all day. Don’t worry, she’s harmless.” It was no wonder to Stephen that she was considered harmless because she was in a straight jacket and bound to the chair with leather straps. Beneath the chair was a yellow puddle.

“Here’s Emily. Emily, you have visitors.”

Emily Howell was sitting at a card table in a corner of the room playing Parcheesi with two other women. She saw Stephen and stood, came to him, and took him in her arms.

“Oh Stephen, you came.”

“Mama,” Stephen cried.

“Girls, I’m going to have to quit the game. My son is here.”

“That means I win,” said one of the women.

“Why does that mean you win?” asked the other.

“Because Emily always wins and I always come in second and if Emily quits I win by default.”

“Bullshit!” said the other and raked the board and the pieces off the table and onto the floor.

They found a small table in another corner of the room and sat down. Stephen and his mother held hands across the table.

“I’m Lucy Howell,” Lucy introduced herself.

“One of those Howells. I suppose I’m pleased to meet you. You taking care of Stephen?”

“Yes, ma’am. As best we can.”

“Well I thank you for that.”

“It’s not necessary. He’s my brother’s child and he’s been a joy to us.”

“Stephen is a joy. Stephan is the sweetest boy in the world. I raised him like that to be the sweetest boy in the world. Doted on him and gave him nothing but the best. It was hard without his daddy but I sacrificed for him, yes I did. Got me a job as an airline stewardess. Just got back from Paris the day before yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll be flying to Rome.”

“I see.”

Aunt Lucy and Stephen exchanged looks across the table.

“You know how it is with airline stewardesses, always being chased by men. Why I could have anyone I wanted. Take my pick. But I’m very choosey. Only the best. Some of them are married, but if they don’t care, I don’t care. What the little missus don’t know won’t hurt her. Got me a Jaguar car. A little two seater. Man I know in England bought it for me. I’ll take you for a drive this afternoon, Stephen.”

“That’ll be nice, Mama.”

“I was never a bank teller. Wasn’t for me. I need adventure in my life. I bet you’re a bank teller,” she said to Aunt Lucy.

“No ma’am, I’m not a bank teller.”

“Not for me. Counting that filthy money all day. Don’t know where it’s been. And if you come up short, they take it out of your pay. You ever come up short?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Lucky you because they take it out of your pay if you do.”

She ran on and on, talking so fast she had to gasp for breath between words, and she was only matched by the screaming woman at the window.

“You sorry motherfuckers. You bunch of goddamn hypocrites. I hope you all rot in hell.” The screaming lady continued her tirade at the people of Raleigh.

“Stephen, are you going to school? Nowadays you have to get an education if you’re going to amount to anything.”

“It’s summertime, Mama.”

“Well of course it is. Don’t you think I know it’s summertime? I go out to the park in the afternoons and feed the ducks. I know its summertime. My beau and I go out on the paddleboats. He does the paddling, and I lay back with a little parasol to keep the sun from burning my face. Don’t you think my face is pretty? People always said so.”

In fact her face had become all blotchy and pimply. The medications had taken a toll on her former beauty.

“I was the homecoming queen in high school. Prettiest girl in school. The boys were always sniffing around me like a pack of hounds. But I was choosey. Nothing but the best. Nobody touched me lest they were top drawer. Had my pick of the lot, but I chose your daddy, and he left me and went off and got himself killed. Foolish man! He didn’t have to go at all. Stephen, are they treating you alright?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your daddy was a good man, I’ll give him that. Treated me like a princess. Never gave me a Jaguar though. We had a Plymouth, but it was a new one. He taught me how to drive it, and I drove it all over Seattle, up to Port Townsend. But it was foggy, and I almost ran off the road. Couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. It was eerie, those tall firs standing still there in the fog looking like ghosts. I got pulled over by a state trooper for going too fast for conditions, but I offered him a blowjob if he let me go. He let me go but didn’t take me up on the blowjob.”

“Stephen, I guess we’d better be going.” Aunt Lucy said, “We’ve got a long drive back.” She had noticed the tears in Stephen’s eyes and knew it was time.

“Yes, ma’am.” He went to his mother and hugged her. “Bye-bye, Mama. Take care of yourself.”

Emily held him tight and almost squeezed the air out of him. Then she eased him back with her hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eyes. A brief moment of lucidity came into her face.

“I did the best I could, son.”

“I know you did, Mama.” They were both crying now.

“I just never knew how to handle it, and I messed it up good, didn’t I?”

“You did good, Mama. You did just fine.”

Stephen was quiet on the ride back home, and Aunt Lucy let him have his time. What could she say? He wondered if it was hereditary, this thing his mother had. Would he go crazy some day? Was he crazy now and just didn’t know it? He felt a heavy weight pressing him down into the seat as if the force of gravity had somehow intensified. His mother was right. She had done the best she could. But she’d always had the same problem he had, this total confusion, this inability to make any sense out of the world. It was as if God gathers all the souls together before sending them down in the world and gives them instructions, and Stephen and his mother were late for the meeting and missed it. Everyone else around him seemed to just glide through life effortlessly. They knew the rules. Stephen did not.

They came to the little town of Zebulon.

“You want to stop at the drugstore for a milkshake?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, “A milkshake would be nice.”

They turned off the main road into the town and stopped at the drugstore on Arendell Ave. The store’s interior had hardwood floors and a ceiling made of tin that had been pressed into decorative geometric patterns. The place smelled like old wood, polish and pine sol. There were shelves of sundries in neat rows gathering dust and in the back, behind a high window, was the pharmacy. To the left was the soda fountain, a long bar and silver stools with green vinyl tops that were anchored to the floor. Behind the counter were several milkshake mixers and taps that dispensed soft drinks and soda water. A soda jerk in a white paper hat took their order. As they stood there, all the men at the counter turned and stared at Lucy, undressing her with their eyes. Stephen thought they looked like vultures. There was a low wolf whistle. Lucy ignored them and ordered two strawberry milkshakes. When she went to the resister to pay, the clerk handed her the change and winked at her. Back on the road they rolled along drinking their milkshakes.

“I don’t like the way those men looked at you,” Stephen said.

“Oh, I’m used to it. They’re harmless.”

“It seems like women are always having to put up with that, the pretty ones anyway,” Stephen said. “Men are predators and women are prey. I can’t understand why men can’t appreciate women without wanting to do nasty things to them.”

“But it’s not nasty, Stephen. It’s natural. That’s the way things are. And if they don’t go too far, a woman kind of likes it. It’s nice to be admired.”

“It’s not admiration, it’s lust.”

“And lust is natural as well. That’s what keeps the population growing,” she laughed.

“Do women lust?”

“Well, we’re not as open about it, but, yes, we do sometimes if we meet an attractive man. You seem to put women up on pedestals, to idolize them, and that’s not realistic. We’re just people, Stephen, with all the flaws that that implies. We’re not goddesses.”

“But you’re nicer than men. Gentler.”

“I guess we’re raised to be that way. Way back a very long time ago, the men were hunters because they were stronger, the women took care of the babies and the men. And it has continued to this day. I don’t know if it’s innate in us or if we are just a product of the way civilization developed but most of us like our role. And women can be bad, too, don’t you kid yourself.”

“Bad like my mother?”

“You’re mother is not bad, Stephen. She’s sick. And the things she talked about, the sexual things, are not unnatural. Every woman feels them and deals with them although most are not so vocal about it. She just doesn’t seem to know what is appropriate to talk about. Especially in front of her son. You must try to think of her as a person rather than as a mother, and then you can start to forgive her.”

“But I don’t condemn her.”

“Oh, but you do. You resent her for not being the perfect mother, and guess what? There are no perfect mothers. It’s like she said, we’re all doing the best we can. That we fall short of the ideal only means we’re human. You’ve had a hard time, Stephen, and you carry the scars. But those scars can be healed. It will take some work, but they can be healed. You’re a good boy, and you have a heart as big as this world. You just have to find your place in it.”

Stephen pondered what she said. Where was his place in the world? Where was a place for a boy as flawed as he was? And Aunt Lucy didn’t know the full extent of his aberrations. Aunt Lucy didn’t know, for example, that at this very moment he was wearing a pair of girl’s panties beneath his jeans.

Melinda

She sat on the veranda nursing her child. It was a girl and it was white. She named her Amanda. She had William’s nose and William’s eyes and people said she looked like him, so her fears had been unfounded, except for the fact that William had nothing to do with her, just as she’d thought. He had told her that it was her child, and he didn’t think it was necessary to curtail his activities to accommodate a daughter. Amanda was her whole world. Her life felt justified when she became a mother. Maybe the men were right. Maybe a woman’s role consisted of being a sex toy and a mother. If so, her life should have been fulfilled. Then why didn’t she feel like it? She felt that there should be something more but what more was there available for a woman? And what would life be like for Amanda? More of the same?

She went inside and placed the baby in her bassinet, then to the bar where she poured herself a generous glass of scotch. She sat down on the couch, lit a cigarette and french-inhaled it, breathing the smoke out of her mouth up into her nose. It burned her nose and she liked that. Perhaps later she would leave Amanda in the care of her nanny and go riding. They were living in the grounds keeper’s cottage at her father’s horse farm and the stables were a short walk away down a path through the pinewoods. It was a good day to ride and she needed to brush up so that she wouldn’t embarrass herself at the hunts. But for now, she was content with warming her belly with the scotch and daydreaming.

A Haircut

The dreams were becoming more frequent and still had the feeling of reality. Perhaps he had lived before and this had been his life. Perhaps he had been a woman and was meant to be a woman, but he was being punished for degrading his femininity. Could this be possible? Uncle Bobby professed to be a Buddhist and he believed in karma and reincarnation. Was reincarnation actual? Was he paying a karmic debt? Was this the cause of his feeling like a female?

He wore the panties every day now under his jeans. He would hand wash them every night when he took his bath and put them behind the curtains on the windowsill to dry overnight. He’d tell himself it was silly and somehow wrong and he would not do it again, but in the mornings when he dressed, he couldn’t resist. They had become a symbol of the femininity that he so much desired to express, and they were hidden from view, and no one except Clarissa knew the secret. Clarissa suggested they go shopping, so they went to Belk-Tylers where as usual, he stood aside while she looked at different pairs of panties. She would hold up a pair as if to examine them, and he would nod to indicate his approval or shake his head if he didn’t like them. She would then buy them with money he had given her beforehand, and they would run out of the store giggling as if they had just pulled a heist. Soon he had a pair for each day of the week. He kept them under his mattress until the day that Aunt Lucy helped Ida May turn the mattresses. That night she took him aside.

“Why don’t you keep your panties in the drawer, dear,” she suggested with a wink, and thereafter he did.

Uncle Bobby gave him one of his silk dressing gowns, and he took to wearing it around the house. It was as close to a dress as he could get. The first time Granny Adele saw him in it she just shook her head.

“Another Bobby Joe. What the hell is wrong with the men in this family? Why I could whup both your asses without breaking a sweat.” Bobby Joe, of course, approved and he knew that Aunt Lucy was going to love him no matter what.

Aunt Lucy accepted whatever came with a graceful equanimity. Somewhere she had learned a way of living that seemed to keep her in harmony with most things. She didn’t go to church, none of them did, but she seemed to have a contentment that only comes with an abiding spirituality. Stephen thought it had something to do with the meetings she went to. On Monday and Wednesday nights, when the family gathered on the porch after supper, Lucy would come sweeping out the door, say goodbye to them, and then drive off to town. She’d come home about ten o’clock, and she always seemed to be in a happy mood. Stephen asked Uncle Bobby Joe where she went and he gave a one-word answer:

“Meetings.”

He did not elaborate and the manner in which the answer was given did not encourage further inquiry.

One morning while Stephen was drinking coffee with Ida May in the kitchen, Uncle Bobby came in already dressed. “C’mon boy, we’re going to see Boatwright.”

“What’s a Boatwright?”

“You mean who’s a Boatwright. He’s a barber. Mama says you need a haircut.”

“I thought you didn’t go into town.”

“I must make an exception in this case. Mama says she can’t stand to see us strutting around the house looking like we do. She said people will think she’s running a whorehouse. We both have to get one.”

They drove to town in the Chrysler. Aunt Lucy went with them so she could do a little shopping at Effrid’s Department Store, right across the street. The barbershop was just off the lobby in the Briggs Hotel, on Nash Street right beside the post office.

“How many ahead of us, Boatwright?” Uncle Bobby asked when they walked in. Boatwright was the biggest black man that Stephen had ever seen. He was just putting the finishing touches on a customer, dusting talc around his neck with a badger hair brush.

“Just one, Mr. Bobby. It’s a little slow today.”

The shop had a tile floor with little one-inch square tiles of alternating black and white that made it look like a giant checkerboard. The facing walls had continuous mirrors that were about four feet off the floor and ran from corner to corner such that the scene was repeated an infinite number of times. There and there and there and there, getting smaller and smaller with each repetition but you knew that it went on forever. Stephen thought that if he spent much time in here, like Boatwright did, he’d run the chance of losing himself in a different dimension. Am I here or trapped in one of the mirrors? Or am I in all the mirrors and living a different life in each? They sat on red vinyl covered chairs with curved tubular silver armrests. Uncle Bobby picked up a Saturday Evening Post from a stack of magazines on a table and began to thumb through it. Other barbers sat in their barber chairs and chatted among themselves. They didn’t get much business because everyone wanted Boatwright, and they were willing to wait for him. The others would get the occasional hotel guest that didn’t know better, and that was about it. Stephen asked about the restroom and was directed into the lobby, to the left, first door on the left. He’d know it because there’s a sign on the door that says “Men”. He went to the bathroom and all the stalls had metal devices on them that required a nickel to unlock. He thought about crawling under a door, but the floor was wet, and he was pretty sure what it was that was down there. He went back inside and whispered to Uncle Bobby that he needed a nickel.

“What do you need a nickel for?” Uncle Bobby said in a voice that could be heard throughout the shop.

He felt like shouting I need to take a shit, but instead he leaned over and whispered, “bathroom.” Everyone else was laughing and Stephen was blushing cherry red as Uncle Bobby fished in his pocket, but all he had was a dime.

“Get change at the desk,” he said.

He asked the lady at the front desk for two nickels and she asked:

“Do you need to use two of them?”

“No just one, but I don’t have a nickel.”

“They’ve been deactivated anyway. Just push the door open.”

“Oh, ok.”

“Still need two nickels?”

“Yes, I need them for the parking meter.” He was trying to extricate himself from an embarrassing situation that was getting out of control.

“You only get five minutes for a nickel. Better use a dime,” she said as she handed him two nickels.

Stephen went back in the bathroom and did his business, and when he came out the desk lady was watching him, so he went out the door to make her think he was going to feed a parking meter. He waited about five minutes and walked back in.

“I took care of it,” he said to the lady.

“You don’t know how relieved I am,” she said sarcastically.

When he got back in the shop, Boatwright was ready for him. Uncle Bobby let him go first because he was reading an article in National Geographic about boar hunting in Indonesia, and he wanted to finish it.

“How do you want it?” Boatwright asked him.

“Cut,” Stephen said.

“Cut how? What style?”

“I don’t know. Just trim it up.”

“That hair’s mighty long, son.”

Boatwright looked at Uncle Bobby.

“Give him what he wants, Boat.”

“The customer is always right,” Boatwright laughed. He took a big white sheet and popped it in the air to shake the hair off and tied it around Stephen’s neck with a strip of tissue paper that felt like it was choking him to death, and then the barber started snip, snip, snipping the ends of his hair with a pair of silver scissors, turning the chair as he worked. For every snip of a hair, he did two or three snips in the air. For such a big man, he had the lightest touch Stephen had ever experienced, but he still became anxious when the barber cut around his ears. It took him about ten minutes, and he removed the sheet, and Stephen could breath again. Boatwright covered his shoulders with a warm towel and lathered up his neck. Stephen had not had good experiences with straight razors so he got a bit uneasy when Boatwright flipped one open. There was a leather strop hanging from the side of the chair, and the razor went falop, falop, falop as he stropped it, and then he approached Stephen’s neck with what seemed like a menacing leer. Stephen braced himself for the coup de gràce, but Boatwright shaved his neck with a touch again as light as a feather. He wiped up the excess lather with the towel, and Stephen started to get out of the chair.

“Not yet,” Boatwright said and commenced massaging his shoulders. His huge strong hands prodded and kneaded and it hurt, but it hurt good. When he was done, Stephen started to get out of the chair.

“Not yet,” Boatwright said. He picked up a bottle of witch hazel with a curved silver spout and sloshed it all over his cheeks and neck and then dabbed it dry with a towel. Stephen made another move to stand.

“Not yet,” Boatwright said. He retrieved a jar of talc from the counter behind the chair and dusted him down with the badger brush in a white cloud that made Stephen sneeze. He replaced the talc. And waited.

“Now?” Stephen asked.

“Now,” Boatwright said, and Stephen leaped up out of the chair and ran for the door.

He crossed the street and went into Effrid’s to find Aunt Lucy. He was in desperate need of coddling. She was standing at a counter with several shopping bags.

“Stephen, what’s the matter dear?”

“I’ve just had the most horrible experience of my life, Aunt Lucy.”

“There, there.” She pulled him to her. “It’s alright. You didn’t get much of a haircut.”

“I like it long.”

“Hm, we’ll see what your granny thinks.”

She paid the clerk, and the clerk took the money and put it in a clear plastic tube and put the tube into a clear plastic pipe, and it went swoosh and the tube went flying though the pipe and up through the ceiling. A few minutes later, swoosh, it came back again with the receipt and the change, which the clerk handed to Aunt Lucy. Stephen looked up and saw there were clear plastic pipes running all over the ceiling, and tubes swooshing around, back and forth, up and down.

“Thank you, ma’am, please come back,” the clerk said. Aunt Lucy and the clerk started talking about an upcoming sale, and Stephen snuck behind the counter and took one of the tubes and inserted it into the pipe and swoosh, there it went. But then, swoosh, it came back again. So he did it again and it took a little while longer this time but, swoosh, it returned and inside was a piece of paper. He unfolded it and written there in pencil was, “Quit fooling around, kid.” He looked up on the back wall where there was a row of windows overlooking the sales floor and saw a woman shaking her finger at him. Stephen ran for the door and waited for Aunt Lucy on the sidewalk.

Aunt Lucy and Uncle Bobby met him at the same time and Aunt Lucy said, “I need to go to the dime store.”

“Oh my God, I just knew it,” Uncle Bobby protested. “I knew it couldn’t be that simple. You said you only had to go to Effrid’s.”

“Yes, but we’re already here, so we may as well pick up a few things.”

Whenever Uncle Bobby had chores to accomplish, he meticulously planned out the procedures in his head so he could accomplish things as quickly as possible, and any deviation unsettled him.

“Stephen, never go shopping with a woman. They are deceitful and devious beings. They are incapable of establishing and executing a single objective. You’ll get caught up in their madness and be unable to disentangle yourself.”

Stephen couldn’t agree. He remembered panty shopping with Clarissa and how much fun it had been. But then he guessed that it depended entirely on what you were shopping for.

“I’ll go check the mail. Hurry up.”

There were two dime stores on opposite ends of the same block, Woolworth’s and McClellens, and Stephen accompanied Aunt Lucy to Woolworths. The smell of fresh popcorn enveloped him as soon as he walked in the door, and Stephen, responding like one of Pavlov’s dogs, had to have a bag. He still had the dime that he had not put in a parking meter, so he bought himself a tall bag of super salty popcorn. He caught up with Aunt Lucy and followed her around trailing popcorn in his wake. She bought a few feminine items, barrettes for her hair, lotion for her face, and sanitary napkins for he knew what, and they left and met Uncle Bobby at the car.

“Now we just need to stop at A&P and buy some groceries,” she said.

“No, no, no!” Uncle Bobby ranted, “Not only no, but hell no! I’m going home to take a nap. I cannot bear this town a minute longer.” Aunt Lucy winked at Stephen.

They did prevail upon him to stop at Dick’s Hot Dog Stand on the way home for a couple of dogs with the best chili in the whole wide world. The little restaurant was owned and operated by a Greek named Socrates Gliarmis (nick-named Dick--go figure), and his son Lee. The walls were covered with signed pictures of football players and famous people who had eaten there. It was a Wilson institution, and if a one sat there long enough, one would eventually see everybody, such as Miss Wilson. She lived about a block away, and she had her magnificent self ensconced in the booth across from theirs. Stephen’s heart did somersaults, and he fell instantly in love with her.

Later that night as they sat on the porch, Uncle Bobby went on about what an excruciating experience it had all been, how the town was populated with heathens and completely lacking in even the most minute vestiges of civilization.

Granny Adele looked at Stephen and said: “I thought you were going to get a haircut.”

“I did,” he responded.

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

“Well, you’ll just have to go get another.”

“No, no, no!” he said, “Not only no, but hell no!”

“Well, I swan, looks like the boy’s gettin’ some backbone to him. But you don’t sass your granny, boy. Next time I’ll take a switch to you.”

“Now there’s an experience I would not recommend,” Uncle Bobby said.

“I’m sure he learned that from you, Bobby Joe. Sounds like sumpin’ you’d say. I oughta take the switch to you.”

“I can outrun you now. You wouldn’t get ten feet before you croaked.”

“You can’t wait for that, can you? Well, I s’pose you ain’t got long to wait. I’m on my last leg.”

“Bull pucky! You’re too mean to die. Not even the devil wants you.”

“I’m going to the sweet by and by. Gonna meet up with my Franklin and we’re gonna sit on a cloud and play harps all day.”

“What you can find of him. And I can’t think of anything more excruciatingly boring than an eternity of harp playing.”

“Better’n burning in hell.”

“I will be reincarnated as an Indian Raja with a harem full of women.”

“And what you gone do with them? You couldn’t handle one.”

“If I wished to handle them, I would. My proclivities just happen to run counter to that particular activity.”

Oh it was getting good! Every night they went at it with a vengeance. Stephen was never exactly sure if they meant the things they said or not. He suspected it was all in jest, but, like most humor, it had an element of truth to it. Aunt Lucy rarely took part, and he wasn’t sure what her relationship with Granny was all about. His father was the only one of her children Granny ever mentioned in a good light. She sparred with Uncle Bobby Joe, but there didn’t seem to be much that went on between her and her daughter. He wondered if that was just the way things were between mothers and daughters, or if there was some underlying trouble between them. They didn’t say anything bad about one another; they just didn’t say anything at all.

The talk dried up. They had reached their limit. Stephen waited for Aunt Lucy to begin her song, and he wasn’t disappointed. There it was, so soft you could barely hear it. It was like a lullaby, a taste of soma that was a vehicle to sleep, and he felt himself getting drowsy. His head fell to his chest for a moment as he nodded off, and Aunt Lucy nudged him awake and said, “Time for beddy-bye, sleepy-head.”

The Pavilion

Morehead City was the summer place for Wilsonians, and the more affluent of them maintained an enclave of cottages on the shore of Bogue Sound. There was a swing bridge that connected Morehead to Atlantic Beach on the barrier island just off shore. The bridge was only two lanes and opened on demand for the passage of boats traversing the Intracoastal Waterway, which made traffic horrendous, especially on Sunday afternoons when weekenders were leaving the beach and returning to their homes. Windblown and sunburned, they were in a foul mood as they inched along in traffic, cursing and moaning. They’d had their day at the beach and were returning to their humdrum lives in the sweltering inland towns that did not offer the diversions of sun and sand and salty water. Their spirits were at an ebb both with the anticipation of the resumption of their boredom and not a little because their time at the beach had not lived up to their expectations. But, after all, nothing ever does. The most negatively affected were the hordes of teenagers who had come with dreams of summer love and romantic walks along the ocean with newfound mates. Either they had found one and were lamenting the separation, or they had not found one and felt cheated. The affairs were brief and passionate, their intensity enhanced by the underlying knowledge that they were ephemeral. The lovers swore to write, to visit one another, but they never did, and later, as they reminisced, it would all seem so perfect because their time had been too brief for all but the romance to remain.

It was traditional for the Connors to rent a cottage the last week of June, and when the time came, Clarissa begged and pleaded until her parents agreed to let Stephen accompany them. They spent the days lying on the beach, splashing in the surf, or walking in the sea grass through the dunes to explore the ruins of old World War II lookout towers. Pretty Clarissa in her one-piece bathing suit (bikini’s had not arrived yet) looked like a beauty queen to Stephen who was envious of everything about her. He noticed other boys looking at her, and he felt proud to be the one that was with her. He was conscious that the pride he felt was not centered in who he was but in who he was with, but still he felt that a boy who was with such a ravishing creature must be assumed to be special in his own right, so he walked taller, acted more confident.

Atlantic Beach featured a large circle of road with a small amusement park in the center, offering a Ferris Wheel, bumper cars, go-karts. On the exterior were various shops that sold beach gear, ice cream parlors and snow cone stands, the Idle Hour pin-ball arcade, and on the ocean, the Mecca of the bop, the Pavilion. In later years, when the dance was renamed “The Shag”, people would claim that it had originated in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but they were mistaken. The Pavilion was the birthplace of the dance as jitterbuggers began experimenting there with the bluesy rhythms of early rock & roll, and the dance took on a life of its own. The dance consisted of simple basic steps that anyone could do, but there were literally thousands of variations. It was the smoothest dance ever invented, and it was considered a boy’s dance as the men were more inventive and athletic and the girls just followed along. The leading practitioners enjoyed legendary status and were treated like royalty: The Pavilion was where they came to perform their art. The girls were equal partners with them, and all the moves were choreographed during hours of practice, and all the steps in all their intricacy were performed in unison. As these stars took the floor, their names were whispered among the crowd, and impromptu competitions sprang up between the couples until everyone else left the floor to watch.

The Pavilion served beer, and Clarissa and Stephen were told they were not allowed to go there. Larry was under no such restriction.

After dinner one night Clarissa and Stephen descended the dune that overlooked the Circle and went to the Idle Hour to play pinball, and when they tired of that, they rode the Ferris Wheel and the bumper cars. The Pavilion stood like a magnet, the open windows glowing with yellow lights and the sound of the music, carried on the ocean breeze, drew them with a power so intense that they could not resist. It was a long rectangular building, nothing ornate, surrounded by screenless windows with big wooden storm shutters that were propped open with two by fours. Inside it was nothing but dance floor, brown hard wood, scuffed with the scars of years of shuffling shoes. At one end was a Wurlitzer jukebox, glowing and blinking its multi-colored lights. The music never stopped, and people waited in line to feed it dimes and quarters to hear, again and again, their favorite records. Early in the evening the music was upbeat bop music, but as the night matured, and couples began to pair off, it eased back into slow and romantic ballads. At the opposite end of the dance floor was a long counter where attendants slammed open cans of Budweiser in an endless stream, foam flying in the air and the counter wet with puddles of beer. Larry approached them with a beer in his hand.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said to Clarissa.

“You’re not supposed to be drinking beer,” she responded.

He laughed.

“I suppose we should make a deal,” he said.

“Deal,” They shook hands on it.

The place was magical, a palace of dreams, where the potential for romance was heavy in the air and young lovers could not, did not try, to resist its pull. Hearts were bonded and hearts were broken as the laws of attraction pulled at them with a soft velvet force that was no less powerful for its gentleness.

Young marines from nearby Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune congregated in boisterous groups, drinking beer and sizing up the girls. The teenaged girls had been instructed by their mothers to avoid them, and the marines were easily distinguishable by their closely cropped hair. Over the whole scene hovered the biggest cop Stephen had ever seen, a beach legend named Dave Lee who, unless provoked, was an affable and friendly man, easily given to smiles and laughter. Big Dave quickly quelled the inevitable fights that broke out, and if you fought him back, you found yourself in jail.

The nightly onshore breezes swept in from the sea unhindered and wafted across the dance floor, caressing the couples with sweet salt air. Stephen and Clarissa danced until they were tired. Clarissa was glowing with a sheen of moisture, and Stephen was sweating openly in the night heat. They retired to the open deck on the oceanside of the building where they could hear a live band playing at the place next door. They went over and took a table and watched the band. The cutest boy Stephen had ever seen was playing the drums, and they both talked about how cute he was, and Stephen could not keep his eyes off of him. He wondered at the fact that he was sitting there with the prettiest girl in the room while he was mesmerized by the “little drummer boy”, as they had named him. Suddenly he stood, took Clarissa’s hand, and pulled her up.

“Let’s walk on the beach,” he said. He had become very uncomfortable with his feelings and needed to get away. They took their shoes off and carried them in their hands as they waded through the deep sand down to the tide line where the wet sand was packed, so easier to negotiate. Gentle waves rolled in on the sea, and the foam at its edge looked like white lace on the hem of a party dress. A full moon, hanging over the sea, painted a swath of golden light on the surface that began at the horizon and ended at their feet, and there, bathed in moonlight, Stephen took Clarissa in his arms and kissed her. Their lips parted and he felt her tongue slip gently by his lips and into his mouth, and he met it with his own. He felt the swelling in his shorts and in embarrassment he tried to pull away, but Clarissa pressed herself into him down there and he knew she must feel it, she had to feel it. He reached inside her top and cupped her bare breast, the softness of her flesh. She responded by deepening the kiss and pressing herself harder into him. And then, without warning, Stephen thought about the little drummer boy, and as if reading his mind, she broke from him and ran down the beach.

“Clarissa!” He called to her.

“Just leave me alone, Stephen,” she shouted over her shoulder as she ran, and then she was gone into the night.

Stephen continued down the beach until he passed the last of the cottages and it was just the ocean, the dunes, and the sea grass swaying in the wind. He climbed a dune and sat looking out at the water. To his left, he could see the sweep of light from the lighthouse on Cape Lookout. Far offshore, dull flashes of a diffuse orange, soundless, illuminated the tall clouds that housed them, as thunderstorms swept the horizon. The lights of fishing boats trawling in the dark, red, green, white. Stephen wrestled with his feelings. What was wrong with him? Why was everything so confusing? He knew that Clarissa loved him. He knew that he loved Clarissa. He loved holding her, kissing her, touching her, but he had to face the fact that his mind had strayed to the “little drummer boy” as he kissed her. And had she sensed that? Is that why she ran? He wondered why he was unable to love her the way he should, the way a boy loves a girl. He wanted to love her like that. Any boy in the world would die to have a girl like Clarissa, and Stephen had her, if only he could respond to her, and the fact that he could not tortured him. Was he a “queer” like the boys teased him? He simply could not be. He did not prowl the roads with an irresistible lust for young boys. He was not like the forlorn men that haunted bus station bathrooms, their hunger visible on their leering faces. No, he could not be a queer. He knew he was young. Perhaps his feelings for girls had not yet developed into its fullest potential. So maybe some day they would and he would be overcome with lust for her, and he would sweep her off her feet. But would she still be there or would she have tired of his bumbling incompetence. He sat there long into the night, trying to part the curtains that concealed the reality.

He entered the house as quietly as possible. There was a light on in the kitchen and he went in to get a Coke. Mr. Conner was sitting at the table in his bathrobe smoking his pipe.

“Can’t sleep,” he said, “This damn insomnia.”

“Sorry,” Stephen said.

“You’re up mighty late. Clarissa came home hours ago.”

“I went for a walk on the beach.”

It was the longest conversation they had ever had.

“How was the Pavilion? Don’t make up a story, now. We knew you would go.”

“How did you know?”

“Lord, Stephen, we were young once, too. By placing it off limits we hoped to instill a sense of caution in you.”

Stephen was not only amazed at the fact that they were talking, but also at the familiarity of the conversation. There was a long pause and Mr. Connor looked at him with a serious expression.

“Stephen, I love my daughter more than anything in the world. And I know that you’re a good boy. I know I will never be able to protect her the way I’d like to, but I don’t want to see her heart broken. I don’t like to see her coming home in tears.”

“Yes, sir. I don’t either.”

“I know you don’t. You two have gotten very close and you’re still so young. Just go slow, son. Remember that she’s a lady.”

“Believe me, I never forget that.”

Mr. Connor nodded. He stood up from the table and as he passed, he patted Stephen on the shoulder.

“Good night, son. I’m going to try to sleep.”

“Good night, Mr. Connor.”

Clarissa

When she got back to the cottage, she was crying and her father asked her what was wrong, but she just shook her head and went out on the screen porch and sat and looked at the sea. What was it about Stephen? He told her time and again that she was the only person that could understand him, but she did not. Or perhaps she understood him more than she realized and preferred to just gloss over some of the things about him. She didn’t mind his effeminacy, in fact she much preferred Stephen to many other boys she had met. She considered the others to be crass and self-absorbed boys who had only one thing on their minds. They were boring and Stephen was interesting, intelligent, artistic, and she appreciated these qualities above all things. She found Stephen receptive and encouraging of her art and in turn, she supported him in his writing. She thought his poetry was exquisite. He was so sensitive to feelings and seemed to be able to penetrate to the depths of them and express them so accurately that she experienced them herself. She thought the sun rose and set in Stephen Howell. The thing that continually bothered her was his seeming lack of interest in her as a girl. She was not a prude. She had had long talks with her mother who had openly discussed all things sexual with her. Her mother had gotten pregnant with Larry before she and Mr. Connor were married, and she was determined that her daughter avoided unplanned pregnancy and not be innocent in the ways of men. As a result, Clarissa knew much more about such things than her peers. She had the same desires as all adolescent girls and wanted to explore them, and Stephen, gentle Stephen, seemed the ideal partner, not only because she loved him, but because she knew that he would respect her wishes and stop if she thought they were going too far. But the problem turned out to be just the opposite. Unless she initiated it, Stephen didn’t seem to think about it at all. At the times when they had played around together, she felt that he was acting out of obligation rather than desire. He was doing it because he thought he should, rather than because he wanted to. And it seemed that even at those times, his interest was more clinical than sexual. It was as if her body was a specimen under a microscope, and he was more interested in discovering the manner in which it was made and the cycles and workings of it than in using it for its intended purpose. He was examining her. He seemed to be content with just looking at her, and when he did look at her, he seemed to be in awe of her, and, although it was nice to have him feel that way, it would have been nicer if he had shown some desire for her as a sexual being. She knew that girls matured at a younger age than boys, and she wondered if this part of him had just not developed yet. But then there was the matter of his attraction to women’s clothes. She didn’t mind their dress-up games, in fact she enjoyed them; he made such a pretty girl, and he seemed less self-conscious and more confident of himself as a girl. Her playing the male role was just that: play. But Stephen didn’t seem to be playing a role; he seemed actually to become a girl. And he did it so easily and so naturally. He seemed to become female and as soon as the games were over he reverted back to his shyness and insecurity. Her mother had counseled her. Stephan was a wonderful friend but he would never be what she wanted him to be and in her heart she realized the truth of it. But, oh, she loved him. He was the most wonderful person she had ever met.

She knew that he was as confused as she. He wanted to please her, indeed, that seemed to be his sole desire. He thought she was perfection itself, a goddess, and she knew that, but she wanted to be thought of at a more fundamental level: as a human being, a girl. There, on the beach in the moonlight, she had wanted him so much. Romance was almost palpable in the air. She had felt that he was responding to her, but then--something--she could not name it, but something had made her feel that his mind was elsewhere and it hurt her deeply.

The next morning she acted as if nothing had happened, but Stephen sensed a difference in Clarissa. She was still animated and playful, but some very subtle thing in her had been withdrawn from him. They went to the beach and lay out on beach towels. The day before, Clarissa had asked him to cover her with suntan lotion, but today, she did it herself. As boys walked by and admired her, instead of not even noticing, he realized that she was posing for them, actively trying to attract their attention.

“I’m going for a swim,” he said and jumped up and left her on the towel.

As he splashed in the surf, putting on a show of having fun, he saw a boy standing over Clarissa and talking to her. It was one of the marines, and he was flexing his muscles trying to impress her. Clarissa was smiling at him and talking back to him. Stephen came out of the water and back to the towel.

“You’re dripping all over me,” Clarissa complained.

“Sorry.”

“Does this belong to you?” The marine asked him, referring to Clarissa.

“No, no, we’re just friends,” he said. He resented her being referred to as a thing rather than a person.

The marine reached for her and pulled her up.

“Let’s go for a swim,” he said.

“Alright.”

They ran hand in hand into the water.

Stephen’s heart sank. He stood and put on his shirt and walked over to the Idle Hour. He played pinball and pool, but his imagination was tormenting him with images of Clarissa with the marine. What were they doing? He went back to the cottage, and Clarissa was sitting on a glider on the screened porch. She was reading The Sun Also Rises. Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes are in love but Jake has been injured in the war and the injury has resulted in rendering him impotent. The unfulfillable longing between them made for a sad and poignant story and Clarissa could not only commiserate, she could identify.

“You’re back,” he said.

“Yes, where did you go?”

“What happened to your marine?”

“He was not ‘my’ marine. And anyway he was too forward. And he was a yankee.”

“You said I was a yankee.”

“Yes, but you have southern blood in you and the manners of a gentleman.”

Stephen went inside and got his book and came back out. He sat beside her on the glider, and they read. The silence between them had the comfortable air that it always had. The subtle vibrations between them once again resonated in harmony. Clarissa leaned into him so that their shoulders were touching and they read the afternoon away.

The Creamery

On the outskirts of Wilson, at the intersection of Ward Boulevard and Goldsboro Street, stood The Creamery, a circular white block building that had begun life as an ice cream parlor, and was then transformed into a drive-in restaurant. There was a circular drive around the building with parking slots on the inner and outer sides. It was a favorite hang-out for local teenagers with access to cars, and it was not unusual for them to park there all night because eventually everyone was sure to make an appearance. Even though it was always crowded, it was hard to understand how they did enough business to survive because the average patron would usually purchase only a soft drink, or if they splurged, a fifteen-cent order of french fries with a dollop of ketchup. Cars from all over the county driven by country boys with duck tail haircuts and packs of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeves of t-shirts, their arms hanging out of the open windows, would drive slowly through the circle, showing off their hot cars and revving their engines so their glass-pack mufflers would attract the attention of the carloads of girls parked on the outer loop. There were town boys and country boys, who usually didn’t mix, but the country boys always seemed to have the cooler cars. It was at the opposite end of Ward Boulevard from the new teen club at the recreation center, and on Friday and Saturday nights there was a steady stream of cars, packed with teenagers, cruising back and forth between the two, honking their horns, and waving at one another. When you saw a car with someone you wanted to see going in the opposite direction, you’d do a quick turn around, and then likely pass them again for they’d have done the same thing. Just before the Creamery, you’d pass the county prison where prisoners made wallets, handbags, and leather goods and on weekends they’d hang them on the chain link fence by the highway for sale.

On a Saturday evening when Clarissa’s parents were out of town, Larry was given the responsibility of delivering the kids to and from the movies. He and his date picked them up at nine o’clock, and, not wanting to make the trip all the way home, he took them with them to The Creamery. Of course, he and Becky felt tremendously imposed upon because, by now, they should have been parked on the shoulder of the airport road fogging up the windows. They found a spot on the outer row and backed into it to watch the parade of cars. Larry honked the horn for the curb boy, and Arthur Mae, the slowest black man alive, got up from where he sat beside the building and shuffled out to the car to take their order: four cokes. It was said that Arthur Mae moved so slowly you had to drive stakes in the ground to see if he was moving at all. A white Chevrolet Bel Air came through driven by a tall lanky country boy with a blond pompadour. He would alternate quick jabs of accelerator and brake that made the car bounce up and down on the suspension. He thought it was cool. Everyone else laughed at him. ‘Tex’ Muse came through in his souped-up Chevy, and a blacked out customized Ford, known as ‘The Black Demon’, purportedly the fastest car around, jerked through, it’s wild cam making the engine lope in erratic rumbles. Everyone was curious to know what was in ‘The Demon’, but the owner never let anyone see under the hood.

Arthur Mae was finally sighted on the horizon, headed their way with their order, and they plotted each labored step across the parking lot, joking about how much they had all aged since he’d gone. They drank their cokes through paper straws. Doug Henly and Billy Morgan came over and leaned in the window on Becky’s side and started talking about a house party that was going on in town. There was a keg of beer and everyone would be there.

“But I see you’re baby-sitting,” Henly teased. He looked into the back seat at Clarissa and Stephen. “Hello, faggot,” he said to Stephen.

“Ain’t too particular about the company you keep, are you Larry?” Billy said.

“Aw, Lay off the kid,” Larry answered, “The parents are out of town and I got stuck with ‘em.”

“Too bad. Barbara always has great parties. Her parents are out of town and things might get wild.”

“Oh, let’s go,” Becky said.

“Take us home first,” Clarissa demanded. She did not like wild parties even though she’d never been to one. Though sin rolled off her like water off a duck’s back, a party without a birthday cake and ice cream was not her style. She looked at Stephen for assent and he nodded emphatically.

“Let me take the brats home, and we’ll meet you there.”

But on the drive home, their raging hormones got the best of them, and Larry pulled off onto a dirt road and parked the car. In an instant he and Becky were all over each other. They exchanged sloppy kisses and Larry lowered her top and pushed her bra up to release her breasts and began fondling her. Stephen and Clarissa sat there, too embarrassed to speak. The blatant display in the front seat caused them to inch away from one another, and they looked straight ahead not daring to make eye contact. Larry took Becky’s bare breast into his mouth and sucked on it, but when his hand went down between her legs, she waited a long moment, and issued an emphatic “NO! Nothing below the belt.” She was safe in any case because all the girls wore impenetrable girdles that couldn’t be breeched with a cold chisel and a mallet. A boy could probe around down there for days and never attain that inner sanctum, the mere thought of which drove them insane. Stephen felt himself become aroused but he was not motivated toward Clarissa. He was picturing himself as Becky.

“Please, Larry!” Clarissa finally spoke up.

“Don’t be such a prude,” Becky said, “ya’ll can do it too.”

Larry realized the impossibility of that and eased away from her.

“Later,” he said to Becky.

He dropped Stephen off at the intersection with the dirt road that led to the Howell house. He had to walk through a short stretch that was heavily forested, and with the lack of a moon, the dark was total and pressed upon him on all sides like something evil, menacing, and he became terribly frightened. Something rustled through the underbrush and he froze in place. The fear swept up his spine in cold waves, and he felt himself grow wet as the tension in his body forced a trickle of urine to escape. Slowly, one agonizing step at a time, he continued on his way. He wanted to run, but he couldn't see that well, and was scared of what he would run into. At last, as he rounded the final bend and out of the trees, the lights of the house came into view, and he ran as fast as he could to safety. The family was sitting on the front porch and Stephen was never happier to see them than now.

"Well my God," Uncle Bobby said, "Look what has emerged from the night."

"Hello, ya'll," Stephen panted.

"Why Stephen, you're out of breath." Aunt Lucy observed.

"I've been running."

She got up from her place on the swing and entered the house.

"Ain't skeered of the dark, are ya boy?" Granny Adele chuckled. "You're daddy used to go out coon huntin' by hisself in the darkest of nights."

"No, ma'am, I just felt like running."

"I know the feeling. I get it sometime myself."

"Why you couldn't run ten feet, you decrepit old shrew." Uncle Bobby said.

"Can probably out run you, Bobby Joe. Just don't feel like it. At my age there ain't no hurry no more."

Aunt Lucy came back out of the house with a tall glass of cold lemonade and handed it to Stephen. He took his place on the swing beside her and took several large gulps. Never had it tasted so good.

"How was the movie, darling?"

"It was good. Imitation of Life. It was about a light skinned negro girl trying to pass as white. Sandra Dee was in it." Stephen loved Sandra Dee. To him she was an icon of virtuous virginal girlhood. She had blonde curls and the sweet face of a cherub. He was sure that she would never have allowed a boy to do to her what Larry had done with Becky.

Later in bed, he pleasured himself against his pillow. In his mind he was offering his supple breast to the hungry sucking of a boy's mouth. When it was over he felt guilty. A good girl would not do that. Sandra Dee would never do that.

Most of the time when he fantasized about being a girl there was no sexual component to it. He just delighted in being in a female body and wearing pretty underwear and cute dresses. But occasionally, like tonight, he dreamed of doing things with a boy and this excited him. Although he didn’t know the exact manner in which it was accomplished, he knew that the boy stuck his thing inside the girl’s slit and worked it until he shot off inside her. The idea of it, the girl accepting the boy’s semen, excited him beyond measure and he could think of nothing more intimate than this submission, this acceptance, and when he was overcome with passion he longed to be a girl and experience it, but as soon as the passion was spent, he felt that it was something dirty, and that good girls would not do it until they were married. He realized that for a female, sex was internal, whereas to the male it was all external. He had read that the male sperm could live inside a woman’s body for as long as five days, and he wondered what it must feel like walking around with the realization that your lover was still alive, swimming around, inside you. What could be more intimate than that? He wondered if girls even thought about it. They seemed to take it all for granted, these bodies with their lunar cycles and their ability to give birth, which he considered nothing short of miraculous. Did they have the same mixed feelings that he had about the sexual act? It was obvious that they enjoyed their role as much as the boys. Becky, he felt, would have loved for Larry to have that access to her, but good girls didn’t do that, did they? How was one to reconcile these conflicting feelings? And then the larger question arose before him like an insurmountable precipice: why does he, a boy, have these feelings to begin with? He knew that other boys fantasized about girls, but did they fantasize about being a girl? He thought not. And then there were his dreams of being Melinda. What was that all about? He finally fell asleep with his mind grinding away on unanswerable questions.

A Parade

“I simply must get away from here,” Uncle Bobby said, “I am drained of my essence, and I need to be replenished.”

“Replenished with what?” Granny Adele asked.

“Some of us need extracurricular activity, you old crone. A flower such as myself needs fertilizer to bloom to its fullest potential.”

“I can imagine.”

“I certainly hope that you cannot,” Uncle Bobby exclaimed.

The mosquitoes had come up out of Hominy Swamp, and they had doused themselves in repellent and smelled like kerosene. It was greasy and uncomfortable, but it was far more bearable than being attacked by the mosquitoes. There was a bug light in the yard that would “zap” with each kill, but it didn’t seem to help all that much. Hoppy frogs had gathered under the light and would catch the fallen bugs with their outstretched tongues. Stephen was impressed with their ingenuity. They didn’t have to search for a meal; it was dropped right into their mouths like manna from heaven. Heaven for a frog is a bug lamp.

“I’m going to Atlanta. Lucy can drive me to the airport.” The only airport with commercial flights was between Raleigh and Durham and was appropriately named Raleigh-Durham Airport.

“It would be nice if you asked,” Aunt Lucy said.

“Lucy, dear heart, would you drive me to the airport?”

“Yes, Bobby, I would be glad to. Maybe Stephen can come with me and we can spend the night in Chapel Hill. Would you like that Stephen?

“Sure. Can Clarissa come?”

“If her parents approve, I don’t see why not.”

But it would have to wait because that weekend was the Fourth of July parade, and they had made plans to attend.

The Wilson County Courthouse was erected in 1924 and was in the National Registry of Historic Places. The building was constructed with stone blocks and had a set of marble steps leading up to a recessed porch. Six Corinthian columns supported the portico and there was a big clock with black iron hands above it that tolled the hours and could be heard throughout the town. There was a marble floor in the alcove with brass spittoons placed strategically along the walls. One didn’t have to go far to spit. Stephen had looked into one, and he would never do it again. The contents were unbelievably disgusting, brown and stringy strands, and he could not imagine them originating from someone’s mouth. He tried to get Clarissa to look but she had wisely refused. The courthouse sat back from the line of other buildings, and there was a cement common area between it and the street. The reviewing stand, parked on the common area, was set up on the trailer of a flat bed truck and was festooned with patriotic bunting and crepe paper curtains in an attempt to disguise its utilitarian nature. To its right was a small Confederate memorial flanked by two public water fountains labeled “White” and “Colored.”

On the reviewing stand, the mayor and other public dignitaries sweated in suits and ties, and only the lovely Miss Wilson, in gown and crown, looked cool and collected. Stephen felt some kind of connection with her because, after all, hadn’t he sat opposite her at Dick’s Hot Dog Stand? He fantasized about her standing and waving at him, Oh hi Stephen, and everyone envying him their closeness. Lines of people stood on the curb waving little American flags, and he and Clarissa joined them when they heard the parade approach. The pride of Charles L. Coon High School led the way in blue and gold uniforms playing “Stars and Stripes Forever.” At point was a high stepping drum major, all in white, wearing a white kepi with a golden feather on the top. He was pumping a long silver baton with golden braids spiraling around its shaft, and he was bent so far backward, it looked as if he would fall over at any moment. Behind him were the majorettes in decorative white leotards and cute little boots, white, with gold puffballs on the insteps. They were performing a routine, twirling batons, doing pirouettes, and high kicking with their lovely legs. Stephen thought they were magnificent. He thought it would be such fun to be a majorette, to wear the little white boots with the gold puffballs. The band itself was over a hundred strong, marching in straight lines and in perfect step. When the march ended, the drums continued their steady cadence until, further down the street, they struck up another march.

The band was followed by a series of makeshift floats and convertible cars with the tops down and cloth banners on the doors advertising the businesses and civic clubs that sponsored them. Pretty girls in gowns sat on the folded tops, and, with glistening smiles bordered by red lips, they waved to the crowd. Shriners in red velvet fezzes zipped around erratically in tiny little cars. Interspersed among them and spaced so that they would not interfere with one another were a number of bands, smaller units from Elm City, Rock Ridge, Tarboro. What the teenagers in the crowd were waiting for came at the very end of the Parade, the band from Darden High, the black school. The make up of the band was similar to the others, but the majorettes performed wild gyrating routines, and the music was not traditional marches, but more like frenzied rock & roll. After they passed, the kids fell in behind them, and clapping and dancing in uninhibited abandon, they followed them the rest of the route.

A Joyful Noise

Sometimes Aunt Lucy would get restless, and she and Stephen would go out in the night and drive aimlessly down the country roads, the back roads that passed through farmlands and stands of longleaf pine. They would talk together or ride in silence for long hours, sometimes until the sky grew light in the east and they were on the cusp of a new day. Stephen had learned that when you’re with someone that you are exceptionally close with, constant talk is unnecessary and there is a comfort in just the closeness. The tendency toward compulsive chatter is an indication of uneasiness between people and a reluctance to just be; and most of this kind of talk is superfluous. Nothing substantial is taken from these conversations and if asked later what you had talked about one would be hard pressed to recall. Stephen had two remarkable women in his life that he could be completely himself with, and he treasured them immensely. Around others, he felt he had to maintain a façade, and keeping it propped up required a great deal of concentration and effort. Aunt Lucy and Clarissa were effortless. He was, however, concerned about Clarissa, and he was ever mindful of hurting her feelings. He had come to realize that Clarissa needed something from him, and the times when he had tried to provide it had ended in disaster. With Aunt Lucy, there was no such caution. She did not need anything from him except his company, which she seemed to enjoy, and he loved to provide. She did seem to lapse into a lingering melancholia at times, the source of which was unknown to him. She didn’t exactly brood; she just seemed to go off somewhere and he could sense that she was reliving something that was painful to her. Such were the times they drove through the silent nights. There was never a destination, there was only the drive, as if motion itself was the objective.

A temperature inversion was causing the smoke from the tobacco barns to rise a short distance and flatten out across the sky, and patches of ground fog were forming over the fields and roads, and it felt like they were inside a sandwich between wispy slices of bread. A possum waddled lazily across the road in front of them, its eyes shining red in the headlights, and Aunt Lucy tooted the horn to scare it away.

“How are things with Clarissa?” She asked.

“Okay, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“No, things are Okay.”

There was a short silence.

“Aunt Lucy, how do you know if you’re in love?”

“Gee, that’s a hard one. If you are, I think you know it. I don’t think you need to ask. Are you in love with Clarissa?”

“I must not be because I had to ask.”

“Well, how do you feel about her?

“I know I love her--I just don’t know how I love her.”

“I see. Well, its obvious that she loves you.”

“Yes, I know. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“Well, boys are supposed to want to do things to girls and even if they don’t, they want to.”

“Yes, I know the “things” you’re talking about,” she laughed, “and you don’t want to?”

“No, I want to. Or, I want to want to. It’s just all so confusing.”

“Tell me about it! You’re going through a very confusing age, Stephen. It throws everybody for a loop. And even when you think you’ve got it figured out, something will happen that proves you don’t.”

“Were you in love with your husband?”

“Very much. I’m not sure that I don’t still love him.”

“What happened?”

“Oh Stephen, I don’t know how to tell you. Sometimes people can love each other, and yet not be able to stay together.”

“Why not?”

“A lot of reasons.” She paused, reluctant to continue. “I got pregnant and he did not want a child.”

“Did you?”

“It seems like that’s all I ever wanted. From the time I was a little girl and playing with my doll babies, I’ve wanted a real one of my own. But he was adamant, no children. He wanted me to get an abortion so in a moment of weakness, I did.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah, wow. It was the worst decision of my life. Mother never forgave me. And I never forgave myself. He took me to some negro woman in Elm City, and she did it. It was the most humiliating experience I’ve ever had. After that, our relationship was never the same. I just couldn’t let him touch me. It would literally make me sick. The guilt and shame of what I’d done overwhelmed me, and it was like this impenetrable wall grew up between us. It finally became so intolerable that I had to leave.”

“Where is he now?”

“Still in Charlotte, I guess. We decided it was better if we didn’t communicate.”

“Maybe you can find someone else.” Stephen’s eyes were brimming with tears. He felt her sadness and wanted to wipe it away.”

“I’m not interested. Maybe someday. But not now.”

“Someday you will. Someday you’ll fall in love again, and then you’ll have your baby.”

“If I could find a man like you, dear, I just might.” She reached over and patted him on the knee.

They rode along in silence. Stephen could not bear to see girls in distress. He thought they should have lives full of beauty and happiness. He thought they should be cherished for what they were and treated like princesses, and, when they were sad, he felt compelled to help them. But he also knew that it was beyond his power to do so, and it frustrated him that he could not. He wanted to do something to take Aunt Lucy’s pain away. And Clarissa. He wanted more than anything for her to be happy, but he realized that it wasn’t within his power to do that either. If he could not make her happy, maybe he could provide an atmosphere for happiness to happen. When it came to others, he realized his powerlessness over them, and he detested this weakness in himself. He was not God. So the best he could do was to pray for them and hope that God granted his wishes.

Aunt Lucy wanted to help Stephen as well. She suspected his problem, but it was a delicate subject, and she was reluctant to broach it. To someone a little worldlier, it was obvious, but Stephen couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

“Stephen, people can’t change what they are. They can change what they appear to be, but not what they are.” She paused, trying to find the words. “And they’re never going to be happy unless they take a close look at themselves and accept what they find. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

“I think so. But what if you don’t like what you are? What if you want to be different?”

“There are some things that cannot be changed, dear. Like a cat can never become a dog. It might learn to roll over and beg and things like that, but it will still be a cat acting like a dog. And nobody will be fooled. Everyone will know that it’s a cat. And the cat itself will be unhappy because it will know as well.”

“But what if it were bad to be a cat? What if everyone hated cats?”

“Then he should find people that like cats. Or just associate with other cats. The world isn’t perfect, Stephen. And there are narrow-minded and shallow people out there that are prejudiced by their ignorance. You cannot allow people like that to influence you. If you do, you will be forced down to their level. Sometimes it takes great courage to just be yourself. I’m just going to say it, Stephen: do you like boys?”

“Boys are okay. But they don’t like me.”

“You know what I mean. Do you “like” boys?”

He thought about the little drummer boy. He thought about kissing the most beautiful girl in the world and thinking about the little drummer boy. He thought about James Dean. And he had to admit that he was attracted to some boys. But he had never thought about doing anything with them. But then he had never thought about doing anything with girls either. He loved kissing Clarissa but what was his motivation? The time in the stable had been because she had all but asked for it, and the time on the beach had been a reaction to his feelings for the drummer boy and his attempt to deny them. Never had he initiated anything out of a compelling desire for her; he had done it because he thought he should. Thinking about the alternative, though, was horrendous. It was not natural, it was dirty, reprehensible. He remembered the man in the pick up truck and he was not like that, never like that. No. Whatever he was, he was not that.

Stephen was crying now and Aunt Lucy parked the car on the shoulder of the road and pulled him to her.

“Sweet baby. Sweet, sweet boy. If only you knew how precious you were. I’m going to share something with you I learned that has helped me enormously”:

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

“After my divorce I kind of went off the deep end and started drinking far too much. I didn’t really care if I lived or died. A wonderful woman I met helped me to find a group of people that had the same problem and together they helped themselves recover. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I still get down at times, but now I know that I can go on. And you can go on, too, Stephen. Just remember that prayer and say it whenever things seem to hard to bear.”

They stayed there for a while, wrapped in the fog, under the layer of smoke, in the stillness and stickiness of the southern night. From far away they could hear music, just barely detectable, a singing like Stephen had never heard before. It sounded like a thousand voices in perfect harmony. Could it be angels singing? Was it a sign of some sort?

Aunt Lucy started the car and they drove off down the road. A little farther on they came upon a small white church. It was just off the road and the windows were lit with a golden light. They were wide open to the night and from within they discovered the source of the music, pouring out in waves of joy.

“Oh let’s stop,” Stephen said.

Aunt Lucy parked the car and they walked up the steps and through the open door. The church was filled with black people and they were clapping their hands, dancing around, and singing to the heavens:

In dat great gettin’ up mornin’,

Fare ye well, fare ye well,

In dat great gettin’ up mornin’

Lord fare ye well,

Dressed in robes white as snow,

Fare ye well, fare ye well,

Dressed in robes white as snow,

Lord fare ye well.

Stephen had never heard anything like it. These people were not somber or solemn; they were celebrating. Poor black tenant farmers that still worked like the slaves they used to be, at the bottom of society and looked down upon in disdain, they were celebrating their life and their Lord.

An old man in a wheelchair rolled over to them with a big grin on his face.

“Why come on in here, chirrun,” he said.

“Are we welcome here?” Aunt Lucy asked.

“Ever-body welcome in de house of de Lord, honey. Come on in.”

“Why are ya’ll here so late?” Stephen asked the little man.

“Ain’t late,” he said, “It’s early.” It was about two o’clock in the morning. “Havin’ us a revival. Been goin’ all day and all night and we’ll go all day tomorry. Never too late to get saved, chirrun.”

Singing, oh I been redeemed,

Fare ye well, fare ye well,

Singing, oh I been redeemed,

Lord fare ye well.

They entered the church and slid into the back pew. The atmosphere was infectious and it wasn't long before they were clapping and singing:

Go on an’ wake de chirrun,

Fare ye well, fare ye well,

Go on an’ wake de chirrun,

Lord, fare ye well.

Some people fell on the floor and lay there in convulsions, but nobody seemed to worry about them. A lady in the pew in front of them began jabbering away in a language that Stephen could not understand. When the song ended, the preacher stood up in the pulpit and began a sermon, but instead of just listening, the people in the congregation would punctuate almost every sentence with a comment.

“And de chirrin o' Israel faced de Philistines ah.”

“Hep de chirrun Lord.”

“And dere was dis big giant ah.”

“Big ol Giant.”

“Name of Goliath ah. And he gone crush de chirrun o' Israel ah.”

“Lord hep de chirrun.”

“In de valley of Elah ah, fo forty days, ah.”

“Forty days, Lord, forty days.”

“He challenge de chirrun o’Israel ah.”

“Ain’t no takers.”

“An’ den lil David, ah.”

“Sweet lil David.”

“He slay de giant ah.”

“Praise de Lord.”

“And cut de head off ah.”

“Hallaluyah he cut de head off.”

“And save de chirrun o’ Israel ah.”

“Thank you Lord, he done save de chirrun.”

And on it went, the preacher preaching and the people responding. And at the end of it they cranked up another song.

I’m kinda homesick for a country,

Where I never been befo,

No sad good byes will dere be spoke,

Fo time won’t matter anymo,

Beulah Land I long fo you.,

And someday on thee I’ll stand,

Dere my home shall be eternal,

Beulah Land—Sweet Beulah Land.

Eventually they took a break. There were tables of doughnuts and sweet rolls and good hot coffee in the common room, fluffy biscuits, light as clouds, with salty country ham and spicy sausage. They joined the perspiring throng and were greeted by a lot of the people. The preacher shook their hands.

“Gotta take a break,” he said, “It sometime get too much for de folks and dey start to faintin’ and fallin’ out,” and he told them to come back anytime.

As they drove off into the foggy night, Stephen thought about what he had witnessed. If he were God, he thought, he’d like that kind of worship best of all. It was without sham or pretense--completely genuine. The spirit had moved among them, and they had welcomed it and responded to it. He wanted to come back. As they road along, he began to sing “In That Great Getting Up Morning”, and Aunt Lucy joined in.

“Are you feeling better now?” She asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Much better.”

“That was something, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am, really something. You think we can go back?”

“If you want to.”

“And bring Clarissa?”

“If her parents don’t object.”

“Why would her parents object?”

“Some folks around here are prejudiced against negroes, Stephen.”

“Why?”

“Remember me telling you about ignorant people? Some folks just have to have somebody to look down on. They are so unsure of their own worth that they find it comforting to condemn folks that are different from them. It’s all based on fear, darling.”

“What are they afraid of?”

“That’s the point. There’s nothing to be afraid of except what’s in your own head.”

Stephen pondered that: fear that is not based in reality but only in one’s perception of reality. There’s a world that one perceives and a world that really is. How does one get them to coalesce? How do you know if what you think is what is? How do you rid yourself of the fears of things that aren’t real? He made a decision to live in reality and act according to it. No more childish fantasies: he would adopt a policy of strict pragmatism.

When they got home Uncle Bobby was still sitting in the rocker on the porch. Granny Adele had long since gone to bed.

“Out carousing around, I see,” he said as they walked up the steps. “Find any action?”

“Oh yes,” Stephen answered, “Plenty of action.”

“I sincerely hope you didn’t do anything that I wouldn’t do.”

“That leaves the field pretty open,” Aunt Lucy laughed.

“I’ve got my flight booked. We have to leave here Friday morning about ten.”

“Ten on Friday. I’ll make reservations for us in Chapel Hill for Friday night. Is Clarissa coming?”

“I was going to ask her tomorrow.”

“Let me know. Now get yourself to bed.”

“Aren’t you going to sing to me?”

“Not tonight, dear. I’m sung out.”

As he drifted off to sleep, Stephen thought about the black church and the singing. He pictured God in his white robes and his long white beard clapping his hands and dancing on a cloud.

Chapel Hill

Stephen called Clarissa the next afternoon and asked her about going to Chapel Hill.

“Friday night?” she asked.

“Yeah, we’ll have a great time.”

“There’s a dance at the teen club Friday night, Stephen.”

“Oh. Would you rather go there?”

“Stephen--Sammy Turner asked me,” she said timidly.

“Oh.”

“I don’t have to go,” she said anxiously.

Stephen was stung. His heart plunged into his belly. There was a pregnant pause that seemed like hours but in reality was only a few seconds.

“You should go,” Stephen said. Tears were welling up in his eyes and he tried not to sob.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Stephen Howell, you are impossible!”

“Why? What do you mean? He asked you to go, so if you want to go with him, then go.”

“I hate you, Stephen, and I never want to see you again!” She hung up the phone.

Stephen was stunned. Why was she angry with him? He had tried to act like a gentleman and give her her freedom. If she had not wanted to go with Sammy Turner, she would have just turned him down and not told him about it at all. Or she would have told him that Sammy had asked and she had said no. Leaving it open ended as she had done could only mean that she wanted to go. He was completely baffled by her. What did she want from him? Should he have gotten angry and forbidden her to go? Did he have that right? Of course he did not. She had said herself that they were only friends, and being just friends meant that she was free to go out with anyone she wished. He passed Aunt Lucy in the hallway as he ran up the stairs to his room. She saw that he was crying and called to him, but he just kept going.

After supper as he sat on the porch with Granny Adele and Uncle Bobby going at it, he was lost in his head. It was no longer amusing to him. Aunt Lucy picked up on his mood.

“Is Clarissa going with us?”

“No, ma’am”

“She have other plans?”

“She’s going to a dance with Sammy Turner.”

“Oh.”

Aunt Lucy let it rest. What could she say? She knew that he was terribly hurt and she wanted to do something to help him, but she also knew there was nothing to be done. At his age, bliss and heartache were boon companions. She remembered the love games that she had played when she was young. But do they ever end? Don’t adults still play the same games, but at higher stakes? Look at her own life, divorced from a man she loves after playing his game. She was sure that they still loved one another, but they had erected an impenetrable wall between themselves by an irresponsible act. Two people never really become one. That’s a myth. No matter how close you become you are still two people with two minds. The things that you have in common take care of themselves; it’s how you deal with the differences that are crucial.

Granny and Bobby Joe finally ran out of steam, and Lucy started her song. She reached for Stephen and held him in her arms while she sang and he cried.

The Lockheed L-1049 Constellation was the most beautiful airplane Stephen had ever seen. Nicknamed “Super Connie”, the plane was long and slender with a wide tail and triple vertical stabilizers. The body of the plane curved gently downward to a pointed nose, and it had four massive radial engines. As they waited on the tarmac, attendants rolled a mobile stairway up to the door, and passengers began to deplane.

“Well, at least we have a decent airplane and not one of those damned “puddle jumpers”.” Uncle Bobby said. “Last time I had a DC-3 that shook us to death. I looked out the window and saw rivets popping out of the wings. I was expecting to crash at anytime. They tell you to put your hands behind your head and bend over in an emergency. You know why they tell you that, Stephen?”

“Why?” Stephen asked.

“So you can kiss your sweet ass goodbye,” he said. He knew that Stephen was depressed and he tried to make him laugh but to no avail. He boarded the plane, and they stood on the ramp and waved though they could not see him. When the plane taxied off, they left.

Chapel Hill was the home of the University of North Carolina, and to Stephen it was one of the most beautiful places in the world. Aunt Lucy, Uncle Bobby, and his own father had gone to school there, and it had become part of the family heritage. Aunt Lucy told Stephen that he would go there someday if he worked hard and kept his grades up. The little town was dwarfed by the sprawling university and consisted of only two main streets that were lined with trees. Franklin Street was the main thoroughfare and consisted of shops, cafes and bookstores. They ate supper at the Ram’s Head Rathskeller in the basement of a building on Franklin Street. The entrance was in an alley through a thick wooden door and down a narrow flight of stairs. The interior was like a catacombs sectioned off into multiple rooms with vaulted ceilings that each had a different theme. An Austrian Jew named Denziger, who was a survivor of the holocaust, opened it in 1946, and, it had already become a Carolina tradition and a favorite watering hole for students. “The Rat”, as it was called, was Carolina’s equivalent of Mory’s Temple Bar at Yale. If Stephen had not been in such a funk, he would have loved it; as it was, he hardly took notice. Aunt Lucy tried to make conversation but soon gave it up as useless so, they sat and ate in silence. After supper they walked down to the quad and strolled along the paths beneath ancient oak trees, and Aunt Lucy reminisced about her days as a coed, how in the spring they would spread blankets on the lawn and sunbathe in their bathing suits. A bronze statue of a confederate soldier stood in the center of the quad, and legend had it that he fired his gun whenever a virgin walked by. His nickname was “Silent Sam”. Stephen did not even respond to this. He walked sullenly, oblivious to the beauty that surrounded him, locked in his own head. Normally, he would have been bubbling with excitement. At the south end of the quad stood an old stone building called “Old South”, and to either side stood “Old East” and “Old West”. In between the latter buildings was the “Old Well”, a spring fed fountain that was covered with a small dome supported by eight fluted columns. The structure was modeled after the Temple of Love in the Gardens of Versailles, and at one time it had been the sole water supply for the campus. The campus was everything one pictured a college campus to be, with ivy covered buildings and quiet walkways connecting them through hardwood trees and flowerbeds. It was a place that touched one deeply and almost all former students considered their experience here as the best times of their lives. Aunt Lucy tried in vain to instill some of the magic of the place in Stephen but he was not receptive.

They had a room at the Carolina Inn and discovered that there was only one bed. No problem. Aunt Lucy had no qualms about their sleeping in the same bed. She thought that her close proximity would comfort Stephen, and at any other time he would have been thrilled, but tonight, he changed into his pajamas, got into bed and rolled over and faced the wall. Aunt Lucy got into bed beside him and turned off the light.

“Stephen, do you want to talk?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Talk to me, Stephen.”

With tears in his eyes he related the conversation that he had had with Clarissa, almost verbatim.

“Oh, Stephen, I thought you understood girls better than that. She wanted you to ask her not to go.”

“Then why didn’t she just say no to begin with?”

“She wanted you to show that you cared.”

“I do care. But I have no right to care.”

“Of course you have a right to care. You don’t have a right to forbid her anything, but you have a right to care.”

“She said that she didn’t want to see me again.”

“That’s just talk.”

“I just don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. Not just with Clarissa, I don’t understand anything at all.”

“Call her.”

“I can’t call her.”

“Why not.”

“It’s too late.”

“Call her anyway. It will show her you’re thinking about her.”

“She won’t talk to me.”

“She will.”

“It’s long distance.”

“All the better. Here--I’ll get her on the line.”

She turned on the light and picked up the phone on the bed stand and dialed zero. When the operator came on she placed the call and billed it to the room and then handed the phone to Stephen. Clarissa’s dad answered the phone, and after protesting about the lateness of the hour, he put Clarissa on the line.

“Hello?”

“It’s Stephen.”

“Hello Stephen.” A pause. “How’s Chapel Hill.”

“Fine.” Pause… “How was the dance?”

“I didn’t go.”

“Why not?”

“I started my period, and I had cramps.”

“I’m glad.”

“Glad that I had cramps?”

“No! Glad you didn’t go.”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“I cared.” He started crying. “I just didn’t think I had the right to say so.”

“I really didn’t have cramps. I just didn’t want to go.” Now she was crying. “Stephen I don’t care about anyone else.”

“I don’t either. I just don’t know how to go about this. You said we were just friends.”

“I hope we’re more than just friends.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Gosh, Clarissa, I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Stephen.”

“I’ll call you when I get home.”

“You’d better.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

“Told you so,” said Aunt Lucy as she switched the light off.

Harvest

The summer rolled on into August, and the heat intensified, if that were possible, as the dog days engulfed the town like a steam bath. The daily afternoon thunderstorms that had come like clockwork ceased making their appearance, and a muggy stillness ensued that was unrelenting. The nights offered scant relief with their black heat supporting the white heat of the days. The ladies stayed at home under swiveling electric fans and drank gallons of iced tea. It was especially hard for the elderly, and there was the occasional death from heat stroke or simple exhaustion. Granny Adele threatened to pass on to the sweet by and by, but she didn’t.

The tobacco ripened from bottom to top as the green leaves turned yellow and the first of the harvest began. High school students from the town were recruited to harvest the crop and were paid a dollar an hour. The first pass down the rows was to pull the bottommost leaves, the sand lugs, and was the most brutal as it required walking with backs bent double for hours at a time. On either end of the rows stood wooden tables with corrugated cans of cold water sweating in the sun and cylindrical tubes that dispensed thin conical cups to keep the workers hydrated. When the sand lugs were all in, the next layer had ripened, and they would make additional passes until all that was left were naked white stalks with only the little white flowers that grew at their tops. The boys pulled the leaves that were hauled by wagon to a lean-to beside the barn where the girls worked in the shade. They were considered to be too delicate for the fields. They would tie bunches of leaves into “hands” that were suspended from long tobacco sticks and hung in the barns where they were cured overnight to a brittle golden brown. The next morning, they were layered onto pallets to be carried to market. As the day moved on, the girls would begin to shine with a light patina of moisture, and they would unbutton one, then maybe two, buttons of their shirts, revealing the tops of lacey white bras. The most coveted job for a boy during harvest was driving one of the tractors that pulled the wagons because then the lucky boy would have periodic contact with the girls. It was years before the throngs of Mexican workers descended on them to do the job, and it was a tradition for it to be done by students, and if the crop was late getting in, the start of school would be delayed. Stephen had bravely tried the fields but after one pass, he was assigned to girl’s work under the lean-to, and after one day of suffering the abuse of the boys he quit entirely.

Clarissa, with her pale complexion that so easily burned, was not allowed by her parents to go into the fields, so now they had the freedom of the town to themselves without the menace of the threatening boys that loitered on the corners. They went to movies, to the park, or shopping for clothes for Clarissa. It was a delight for Stephen to pick out clothes for her. They rarely bought anything, but she would try them on and come out of the dressing room and pose for him and he would vicariously experience the thrill of a new dress. At times when one was just too precious to pass up, he would buy it for her and wear it the next time they played dress-up. Whenever her parents were out, they would play the gender reversal game, and that was the most fun of all.

They rode the horses to the swimming hole and skinny-dipped in the tepid water. Stephen lost his initial timidity and their nakedness became easy and natural to him. They would lie on the blanket and examine each other with surreptitious glances, and Stephen became even more convinced of the perfection of the female body. They practiced and perfected the art of kissing and kissed for long periods of time. The extreme intimacy of the act brought them close to a feeling of blending into one. They intuited that the knowledge that they were acquiring and the arts that they were practicing would be used in earnest with other partners. Now it was in the area of experimentation.

…it was all shining,

It was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place,

The spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

Stephen remembered the lines from his favorite poem, Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas, and could think of no better description of it.

When the tobacco market opened, they visited the huge sprawling warehouses where auctioneers passed down rows of golden pallets and buyers from the major companies bid on them. The buyers were boisterous red-eyed men who followed the harvest from Georgia north as the plants ripened in turn. They worked three months out of the year and drank the other nine. The auctioneers babbled a rapid-fire patois that they could not decipher, and when a pallet was sold, they would shout: "Hang that one on the line". With each completed sale, the tobacco was hauled to factories on flat bed trucks with shirtless black men standing upright among the pallets, balanced precariously without a handhold in the beds. Stephen marveled at their dexterity. He noticed that white women would look surreptitiously out of the corners of their eyes at the beautiful lean bodies of the black workers. The sweet smell of tobacco permeated the entire town and lay heavily on everyone and everything like a blanket.

About two weeks before the start of school, the football team started practices, and Stephen and Clarissa would sit in the bleachers and watch the boys, turned out in pads and helmets and looking like gladiators, slamming against one another, throwing and kicking the ball. Stephen could not understand the game. It looked to him like barely controlled conflict, and he couldn't understand how anyone would want to participate. Maybe it was a means of preparing the young men for “their war.” In this respect, he was once again in the minority, because the high school football team was the town's passion. Every year the team was contending for the state championship, and Fleming Stadium was filled to capacity on Friday nights when the Cyclones took the field. Pretty young cheerleaders in white costumes with short pleated skirts would dance on the sidelines with pom-poms, and Stephen thought that he would much rather be one of them than one of the players knocking themselves silly out on the field.

Did girls just have more sense? To Stephen's mind they did, and they were much more interesting to talk to. Boys engaged in an endless banter of one-upmanship while the girls talked about people and things. Mostly they talked about boys and relationships, who was dating who, who was breaking up, and they consoled one another through the heartaches of love, holding their sisters as they cried. Whenever the boys and girls came together, they would assemble in two groups, the boys knocking each other about, cursing and trying to act manly to impress the girls. The girls pretended to ignore them, chatting and giggling among themselves, and touching up their makeup in the mirrors of small foldable compacts held up to their pretty faces. Stephen gravitated to the girls not only because they did not bully him, but also because he identified with them. He wished he had the freedom that they enjoyed to do the things they did. Just watching one of them expertly applying lipstick in her compact’s mirror produced a longing in him that he knew that he would never be able to experience. He did it with Clarissa during the dress-up games, but he could not do it openly and naturally the way the girls did.

Stephen had always liked school. He liked learning and the teachers liked him, which also did not endear him to the boys. He was the teachers’ pet and always treated them with respect when most of the boys did not. Movies like Blackboard Jungle and Rebel Without a Cause had instilled a sense of rebellion among them, and it was considered cool to be an outlaw. If you asked them what they were rebelling against, they would have been hard pressed to answer you. James Dean, in Rebel Without a Cause, was the quintessential rebel. Dressed in his red windbreaker and faded jeans, with his brooding intensity, he became the role model for an entire generation of boys. True to form, Stephen identified with Judy, Natalie Wood's role as the confused young girl, tormented by her father, while he was actually a mirror image of Plato, the shy, effeminate boy played by Sal Mineo.

Fight

Charles L. Coon High School was an grand building of brick and concrete with an ornate stairway that led to the second story entrance. The stone stairs descended to a landing, midway down, and then split into two that continued down either side of the landing. Before classes, students congregated on the landing and smoked and talked until the five-minute bell rang calling them to class. The girls carried their books, hugging them to their chests, and the boys carried them under their arms. Stephen carried his like a girl, it seemed more natural to him, and he was teased for it. He was baffled that the strict gender codes could even dictate how one was to carry one’s books. The rough rebel boys, with their pegged pants and ducktail haircuts, gathered on the corner, and Stephen had to pass them every day to get to school. His passage was always accompanied by catcalls and taunts, but he would continue on his way, eyes cast downward, trying to ignore them, until one day:

"Hey you!" It was Doug Henly, the ringleader of the bad boys and the school bully. Stephen walked on, trying to ignore him.

"Hey, I'm talking to you!" Henly yelled to him. It was impossible to ignore him, so Stephen stopped and faced him.

Henly sized him up with a smirk on his face.

"You the one that goes with Clarissa Conner?"

"We're friends."

"She's about the nicest piece of ass around," he said, "You fucking her?"

"No!"

"You probably wouldn't be able to do it anyway. Let me have a crack at her. I'll fuck her brains out." Stephen could not bear to hear Clarissa talked about in such a crude manner. To his surprise he confronted the boy.

"Don't talk about her like that."

"I'll talk about her anyway I feel like it. She thinks she's so hoity-toity, but she's just another piece of pussy to me." He stepped closer to Stephen, so that they were inches apart, and Stephen could smell the foulness of his breath. Stephen instinctively put up his hands in a defensive posture.

"You want to fight? Hey guys, this little queer wants to fight me." Laughter rose from the assembled boys.

"I don't want to fight."

"Too late," said Doug as he swung and connected to Stephen's jaw with a roundhouse right. Stephen fell to the ground and tears welled up in his eyes. He stood back up and was hit again--and again--and again. He didn't try to fight back.

"C'mon you little faggot. I thought you wanted to fight," Doug laughed. Stephen dropped his hands to his sides and just stood there while Henly pummeled him until he got tired. Larry Conner was among the onlookers.

“Stay down Stephen.” He said. But each time Stephen went down, he stood back up and presented himself for another blow.

"Would you just look at this chickenshit motherfucker? Won't even fight like a man."

“That’s enough, Doug.” Larry demanded.

Larry grabbed his arm to pull him away, but Doug placed his foot against Stephen's stomach and pushed him down onto the sidewalk. The five-minute bell rang, and the boys sauntered off to class laughing over their shoulders. Stephen could hear the steady repetition of the words “chicken” and “queer” as they walked away. Larry reached down his hand and helped him up and Stephen brushed himself off.

“I’m sorry,” Larry said.

“You didn’t do anything,” Stephen sobbed.

“Yeah, I didn’t do anything. That’s why I’m sorry.”

Stephen turned and walked away from the school. His nose was bleeding heavily, and his eyes were swelling closed. He found his way to a thicket overgrown with vines next to the practice field behind the school and crawled into seclusion. He lay there crying in the green coolness of the vegetation. Why, why, why? He never bothered anyone. He tried to avoid them, but they sought him out. Why did they have such an overwhelming compulsion to strike out at him? Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? Because he was different? Okay, he acknowledged that. He was different, but why did that give them license to hurt him.

He stayed there all day and caught the bus home when school let out.

When Clarissa saw his face, she was horrified.

“I’ve been looking for you all day. What happened?”

“Got into a fight with Doug Henly.”

“Oh my God, why?”

Stephen wasn’t about to tell her the truth. He didn’t want her to know that someone had talked that way about her. It was too demeaning. Her being referred to as a “piece of ass” was so atrocious to him that he could not repeat it. Clarissa, his Clarissa, reduced to nothing but an object of some crude boy’s lust revolted him. He couldn’t understand how anyone could look upon someone as sweet and gentle as Clarissa in such a disgusting manner. Or any girl for that matter. To him they were paragons of purity and chastity.

“Oh, you know how he is. It was just my turn, I guess.”

“He’s a heathen. I hate him. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”

“No! Clarissa, please no! Just let it be. It’s over.”

But it was not over. Doug Henly became the scourge of Stephen’s life and taunted him and pushed him around unmercifully whenever they encountered one another. The label of “chicken” stuck to him, and he heard it often as he walked the halls between classes. He came to live in fear of Henly and went to great lengths to avoid him. He would wait in the auditorium in the morning until the five-minute bell sounded, and then he would rush to class. He carried all of his books with him to avoid going to his locker because Henly’s was just down from his, and they would be sure to meet. After school he would once again hide in the auditorium until he heard the busses start up, and he would run to his bus. Each day was filled with fear and he would find excuses not to go to school. His frequent absences were noted and he was counseled about his truancy. His grades began to suffer, and his teachers became concerned, but he didn’t dare tell them the source of his decline.

Some afternoons he and Clarissa would go to the library to study, and afterward, to the Sidewalk Soda Shop, about a block away. Her father would pick them up on his way home. The soda shop was a narrow little place with a counter on the right and a row of booths on the left. There was a jukebox on the back wall that had all the latest hits on it, and they would listen to music, sing along, and sip strawberry milkshakes. The owner did not tolerate the bad boys and their disruptive behavior, so it was relatively safe. Mostly the girls patronized it, much to Stephen’s liking. Stephen was accepted as one of them and the girls would talk about subjects that they would never talk about in front of boys. He learned about menstrual cycles, periods, tampons; the girls would even say when they were “on the rag”. He discovered that, among themselves, they would use language they never used around the boys. The sweetness and innocence that they projected would lapse, and some of them would talk like sailors. But not Clarissa, never Clarissa--her sweetness and gentleness were not pretensions but the way she truly was, and this is what marked her as being prissy, a goody two-shoes. It was also not in her favor that she was the prettiest one among them, and the other girls were jealous of her. The one thing that they were not jealous of was her attachment to Stephen. Though they all liked him, it was a mystery to them why she chose him as a boyfriend. Perhaps it was because he was non-threatening. He treated her like a lady at all times, and the way he would look at her made them envious. Oh, to have a boy treat them like that--but then, they wanted someone a bit more--masculine.

Friday nights they went to football games and watched the Cyclones beat whomever they were playing. Caravans of cars driven by parents would transport the kids to away games. Most of the bad guys were on the team, and, as if they needed it, the coach encouraged aggression. But it kept them away from Stephen, and he could join his girl friends and watch the game in peace. After home games there was a dance at the teen club that was located in a large, two-story white house on Nash Street, and later, when construction was complete, the club moved to the new Rec. Center beside the town swimming pool.

Coach Rodgers was a mean little man who also taught physical education. The coach had singled Stephen out on the first day of class and made life miserable for him. The boys went into the locker room to change into their gym clothes, and Stephen was horrified because he was wearing his panties. When he refused to change in front of the other boys, the coach grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt, slammed him against a locker, and kneed him in the groin. Stephen ran out crying. After that, he didn’t wear panties to school, but he was still uneasy in a room full of naked boys. When they showered after the workout they would pop him with rolled up towels that left red welts on his body.

Oh, if only he were a girl, life would be so much easier. He prayed every night for God to make him a girl, but God wasn’t listening, so he could only be who he was in his mind. When he had sexual fantasies at night, it was always as a girl with a boy. When he masturbated he would not touch his penis, but would rub himself against a pillow until he came. To touch the horrid thing would be to validate it.

Aunt Lucy and Uncle Bobby watched him sink further and further into depression. They were both certain of the cause, but they had no idea what to do about his sorrow. Uncle Bobby knew because he had been through it himself. Aunt Lucy knew because she could read him like a book. Granny Adele was disappointed that the son of the “only real man” she had had was a fairy.

Suicide

Stephen began to think of suicide. He felt that he was a stranger in a strange land and that there was no place for him here and never would be. Life had become intolerable and the only relief he could conceive of would be if he left it. A horrible mistake had been made when he was born male when it was so obvious that he should have been female. Maybe in another life, if there were one, whoever controls such things would get it right. He thought about how to do it. A straight razor was out because his mother had tried that and ended up in a mental institution. Granny Adele had a shotgun somewhere-- she was always alluding to it when she talked about her no-good husband-- but he had no idea where it was kept and he dared not ask. Anyway, a shotgun would leave such a mess, and he didn’t want to leave it to Aunt Lucy and Ida May to clean his blood and brains off the walls. That would be discourteous. He could go to the swimming hole when the river was in flood and swing into it on the rope, but the idea of drowning, trying to take a desperate last gasp and breathing in nothing but muddy river water, did not sound appealing to him. And the swimming hole had become a cherished place, so he didn’t want to do it there. He could slam the Chrysler into a bridge abutment, but he couldn’t drive and didn’t have a license and it would leave the family without a car. There were pills, but he didn’t know how to get them. So, in complete frustration, he abandoned the idea. In any case, he didn’t want to inflict that pain on Clarissa or Aunt Lucy. And what if the Baptists were right? Suicide is a sin and he didn’t want to burn in everlasting hellfire and brimstone even if Uncle Bobby assured him that he would be there, too. Uncle Bobby had said that the Baptists were full of shit, but how does he know? There were hundreds of religions and beliefs out there and any one of them could be right. When you’re dealing with things metaphysical, rationality is out the window. You can never draw valid conclusions from insubstantial hypotheses so one idea is as valid as another. Best not take the chance.

Aunt Lucy and Clarissa, and, to a lesser extent, Uncle Bobby were his only saving graces. Without them he’d have cashed it in long ago. Aunt Lucy didn’t know what to do with him. She’d sing him to sleep every night and coddle and pamper him but she recognized that some of her magic had gone out. Uncle Bobby identified with him more than anyone, but Bobby Joe wasn’t capable of anything but sarcasm. Only Clarissa could lift him out of his funk, but only temporarily. He needed her, he clung to her, she was the only safe harbor from the storm that raged around him, but someday he feared she would think he was suffocating her. He worried about that, but she had shown no inclination to abandon him. He thought about checking out every book in the library and retiring to his room and reading for the rest of his life, but one could only check out a maximum of three books at a time, and that would require frequent trips into town effectively negating the whole purpose. Maybe there was an answer somewhere, and he just hadn’t found it yet. And, in any case, he finally saw that suicide severely limits your options.

He began to spend more time writing. He kept a journal, but it was too depressing to re-read. He wrote short stories and plays, and he wrote a poem once for Clarissa to turn in for an English assignment. Her teacher submitted it to a national competition, and it won an award and was published in the National PTA magazine. Clarissa was completely embarrassed at the praise she received. She wanted to come clean, but Stephen convinced her that it was too late, and she’d better just go with it. The drama club performed two of his plays, but he was too shy to take his bow. One was about Blackbeard the Pirate, and the other, about a Wilson County Tobacco Festival that didn’t exist. It was a musical with a lot of singing and dancing. His English teacher told him he had a rare gift and encouraged him to continue. Then she wondered why he was flunking English.

“It makes no sense, Stephen. You have such a high IQ, and you should be making A’s. You’re not applying yourself.”

No, he was not. When he finally made it to the safety of the classroom, he spent the class time submerged in his dreams. His imagination was too strong, and the things he conjured up were far more interesting than what was going on out there. The teacher would be droning on about something or other, and he’d be dancing with Gene Kelly in stiletto heels and a sequined ball gown. They sent him to a counselor who tested him and told him that he was a genius with an inferiority complex. She didn’t tell him what to do with his inferiority complex--she just told him that he had one. He only saw the counselor three times, and he frustrated her so badly she quit. They didn’t replace her. They sent him to a psychiatrist in Raleigh, and Aunt Lucy drove him up once a week. The psychiatrist was a Freudian and had him lie on a couch while he psychoanalyzed him, and then he diagnosed him as a genius with major depression and told him to focus on the bright side of things.

When all of it was over, he felt more confused than ever. Clarissa was right there for him. To her, he was just fine the way he was, and with her, he was just fine, but he couldn’t be with her all the time and without her he was adrift for she was his anchor. She kept him grounded, but as soon as he was away from her, he was tossed about like a leaf in the wind.

Aunt Lucy did some research and located a private school in western North Carolina that focused on the arts. Swananoa Institute for the Arts was a school for both boys and girls who were considered to be artistically gifted. She talked to the head mistress, and after she described Stephen’s writing talent, she was told that he would have to be evaluated, but from what the head mistress had been told, she didn’t think there would be a problem getting him in. Skirting lightly on the surface of the more delicate subject of his effeminate personality, the head mistress understood exactly what she was referring to, and reassured her that there were many boys “of that persuasion” at the school and that it had never created a problem either with staff or students. Aunt Lucy discussed it with Stephen, and he was interested. It would mean leaving Clarissa, but it would remove him from the awful situation he was in. He could see her on weekends and during the summer, she could visit him in the mountains.

The school was located in a cove in the Smoky Mountains between Asheville and Black Mountain. They drove up on a weekend and were given a tour, and Stephen sat for an entrance evaluation. The center of the institute was a Victorian mansion, built in the early nineteenth century that had been donated by a wealthy widow for the purpose of establishing a place to groom young people for careers in the arts. There were several outbuildings, each devoted to individual arts: dance, music, writing, art. The main house served as the administration building. There was a natural outdoor amphitheater and an auditorium for the performing arts. The classes were kept small to allow for individual attention to each student. They were impressed with what they found.

“Well, what do you think?” Aunt Lucy asked as they were driving home.

“I liked it a lot.”

“Would you like to go?

“If I can get accepted.”

“You’ll be accepted.”

They drove along in silence for a while through the cool autumn air. The mountains were lovely this time of year, dressed in evergreens and hardwoods in a wash of fall colors that looked as if patchwork quilts had been laid over them. Mountain Laurel grew in bunches on the lower slopes.

When they returned home, Stephen discussed it with Clarissa, and she was excited for him. She appreciated that it would remove him from the constant harassment he had been enduring. She would miss him terribly, but she wanted what was best for him, and she knew that he was far too sensitive to suffer the abuse much longer. She was excited about visiting him in the mountains. A letter came in the mail a few weeks later. He was accepted to begin the fall term next year. But could he last that long? With the prospect of respite on the horizon, Stephen thought that he could.

Melinda

For the first time in her life, Melinda was behaving somewhat responsibly. She loved her child and doted on it incessantly. They had hired a nanny for Amanda, but Melinda didn’t want to trust the child with anyone else, so after a few months they let her go. With all of her time consumed by Amanda, she had little time for William. Sex with him had become boring and lifeless, and eventually they stopped altogether. She was sure he was getting it elsewhere, but she didn’t care. He made excuses to travel more and more, and, rather than resenting it, she welcomed it. Even when he was in town, he was rarely at home. He’d be playing golf or out drinking with his buddies, come in late at night when Melinda was asleep and leave before she woke. They never spoke.

As time went on, however, she became restless until at last she left the child alone and went out to a speakeasy. Amanda had been sleeping through the night for some time now, and, anyway, she would not be gone that long. She got very drunk, met a man and stayed the night in a run down motel. When she awoke the next morning, she had a massive hangover and was filled with guilt. She reached home and rushed to the baby’s crib, but she was too late. Amanda’s head had become wrapped in her blankets and she’d suffocated. Melinda turned away from her daughter, went into the bedroom, and retrieved her husband’s revolver from the drawer in the bedside table. She loaded one round, put the gun in her mouth, and pulled the trigger.

Atonement

When Stephen had this last dream it horrified him. Once again, it was so real, so vivid, that he was sure he had lived it. Is this why he was so tormented in this life? Had Melinda’s influence carried over to such an extent that he was paying for her sins, and was this the reason that he had always felt so strongly that he was female? He was Stephen but he was also Melinda, and he was paying a karmic debt for what he had done as Melinda.

Stephen and Clarissa were sharing a booth in the Sidewalk Soda Shop when he told her about the dreams. She tried to assure him that they were just dreams--horrible dreams, but dreams nonetheless. Still he could not shake them. It was impossible to convey to her the power of them.

“Even if what you say is true,” she tried to reason with him, “then you were given this life to redeem yourself.”

“Redeem myself how? How do you redeem yourself from that?”

“I don’t know Stephen, but God will give you an opportunity. I don’t believe in this reincarnation stuff, but I believe in God, and if you give yourself into His care, He will not desert you.”

Larry came in, scanned the room, and not seeing any of his buddies, he sat down with them.

“What are you kids up to?” He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and retrieved a crumpled pack of Luckies. He shook one out and tapped it on the table to pack it, stuck it jauntily in his mouth, and lit it.

“Just hanging out,” Stephen said.

“Up to no good I expect.”

“Trying to stay out of trouble,” Clarissa replied.

Normal banter—meaningless--but if nothing else a form of acknowledgement and a means of making contact. Larry talked about school, how Mrs. Patterson was a mean old bitch, and what was the sense in taking Latin when it was a dead language. Stephen liked Mrs. Patterson, and he liked Latin, but he wasn’t about to say so. The couple felt cheated at having been imposed upon, but they endured it for the sake of maintaining a semblance of harmony. Doug Henly and Billy Morgan burst through the door and came to their table.

“Larry there’s been a nigger hung last night down to the swimming hole and he’s still there,” Doug said, “Let’s go see him.”

“I hate that word,” Clarissa said, “It’s so demeaning. You have no class, Doug.”

“Class my ass, a nigger’s a nigger far as I’m concerned, Miss Priss.”

Clarissa rolled her eyes.

“C’mon, lets go.”

“You wanna go see a dead nigger, kids?” Larry laughed at them, “How ‘bout you, sis?”

“No way--you guys are gross.”

“I know Mr. Chickenshit don’t want to go,” Doug said.

After his many humiliations at Doug’s hands, Stephen felt a need to prove himself.

“I’ll go,” he said.

“Stephen!” Clarissa scolded him.

“No, I’ll go. I’m not scared of a dead man.”

“Great, c’mon then,” Billy said.

“You can drop me off at home,” Clarissa said.

Billy had a 1950 Ford with straight pipes and fender skirts, and they loaded into the car and took off in a cloud of blue smoke, burning the tires. They drove out of town and parked the car at the Connors’ house.

“You sure you want to do this?” Clarissa asked Stephen a final time.

“Sure, no big thing,” he shrugged nonchalantly as if he saw dead men all the time.

Clarissa shook her head and went into the house.

“Boys!” she said as she walked away.

The boys walked around the house circling the field where nothing but bare stalks remained of the tobacco crop. They entered the woods and took the path down to the river, the three older boys smoking and jiving with one another. Stephen walked behind them reluctantly, scared of what he was going to see, but not daring to turn back and prove to them that he was ‘chicken’. When they came to the clearing at the swimming hole, there, hanging from the limb of a tree, was the body of a naked black man. His head was turned grotesquely to the back, and they saw that there was something in his mouth.

“Caught him messing with a white woman, and the Klan took care of him,” Doug said.

Stephen blanched at the sight, stopped at the edge of the clearing and would go no further. The body twisted slowly in the wind until it faced them and they saw that his groin was all bloody, and it became obvious what it was in his mouth. Stephen’s stomach turned somersaults, and he bent over and threw up on the ground. Billy and Doug laughed at him.

“Can’t take it can you?” Billy said. “Ain’t such a big man after all, are you?”

“Maybe he needs a closer look,” Doug said. “Grab him, Billy.”

“Leave him alone,” Larry said.

“Aw, we’re just gonna give him a close up. Have something to tell his grandkids about.”

Doug and Billy grabbed him and dragged him to the swinging corpse until he was standing right in front of it.

“Take a look, sissy boy.”

Stephen would not look up. Still sick to his stomach he kept his eyes on the ground.

“I said look!”

They grabbed the boy and pulled him forward and pushed his face into the bloody cavity at the man’s groin.

“Get him, Stephen, get him,” they laughed as they rubbed his face in the gore.

“You guys cut it out,” Larry demanded, “This isn’t funny.”

Stephen vomited again down the front of his shirt. The horror of it was too much and he retreated into himself to escape it. The boys released him.

“Get down on your hands and knees,” Doug demanded. “I’m gonna give you what you really want.”

Stephen obeyed without protest and got down on all fours. Doug pulled his pants down and saw the pink panties that he was wearing. Stephen no longer cared. He would do what they wanted.

“Goddamn, would you look at this? Look at this queer motherfucker,” he said, “I’m gonna give you what you really want, faggot.”

"Not like that," Stephen said. He removed his pants and lay on his back and opened his legs. Doug dropped his pants and approached him, and Stephen opened his legs wider to accept him.

“You ready for this, boy?”

"Yes," Stephan said. He submitted himself to Doug for whatever Doug wanted to do with him.

He felt an excruciating pain as Doug drove inside him. Thrust after thrust until finally he grunted a few times and withdrew leaving his thick issue spilling out of Stephen’s anus and down between his buttocks.

“Get you some, Larry,” Doug said.

“You guys are disgusting. Get up Stephen.”

“How ‘bout you, Billy?”

“I damn sure ain’t going where you been. Get up on your knees, queerboy.”

Stephen obeyed. He knelt before the other boy, and took Billy’s penis in his mouth.

“Suck it,” Billy ordered him.

And Stephen sucked as Billy pumped into his mouth. It went on until Stephen felt gobs of thick semen fill his mouth.

“Swallow it,” Billy said.

And Stephen swallowed, and then he fell to the ground and rolled over on his back.

The two boys looked around and saw that Larry was gone.

“Let’s get out of here,” Doug said, and Stephen could hear them running away down the path.

He lay there looking up into a blue autumn sky. The sharp creamy remnants of Billy’s semen hung in the back of his throat. The air was so clear that the trees and the river looked sharp and vivid like a hyper-reality. A breeze was stirring the trees, and somewhere a crow was cawing. The hanged man twisted slowly around and around and around.

Stephen’s senses were acute but his brain wasn’t working at all. He was registering sensations but he lacked conception. He just lay there. Time was meaningless. A minute, an hour, a week? All that remained for him were sights and sounds and the taste in his mouth, the horrible smell of the corpse. And finally he heard a sound that registered: the hoof beats of a horse. He heard it being reined in, heard the slap of the leather reins against a tree as the horse was being tied. And then Clarissa was there. She sat beside him and pulled him into her lap. She used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe the semen from his lips. She held him close like Michelangelo’s sculpture “The Pietà”: like Mary holding the body of her crucified son. He found it so difficult to look at her at first, but finally he did. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

“Clarissa,” he said.

“Oh, Stephen,” she cried, “Larry told me what they did to you.”

He turned his face from hers. He could not look at her.

“Do you think you can ride?”

“I don’t know. I can try.”

She helped him up and saw stripes of blood running down his legs.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

She pulled his pants up and helped him to the horse. She boosted him up, and he winced in pain when he landed astride the horse’s rump. She mounted in front of him and they rode back to the house.

He told Uncle Bobby what had happened, and Uncle Bobby wanted to report it to the police, but Stephen refused.

“What they did to you was inexcusable. It was nothing short of rape. They need to be horse whipped.”

“It wasn’t what they did to me that bothers me, Uncle Bobby.”

“What then?”

“What bothers me is that I liked it.”

Uncle Bobby looked at him and shook his head.

“Not the way they did it, but I liked what they did.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Maybe it was an act of atonement.”

“Atonement for what?”

“I don’t want to be this way, Uncle Bobby. Why do I have to be this way?”

“Why? Who knows, sweetie, who knows? I wish someone could explain it to me. People who say that it’s a choice are ignorant. Why would anyone choose to be an outcast? I wrestled with it just like you have until I finally accepted who I was. It got easier after that. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, and there is certainly nothing to atone for. You act as if you made a choice to be the way you are, and must be punished for that choice. I have watched you struggle against it, knowing that it was futile, but each of us must work it out for ourselves. What color are your eyes, Stephen?"

"Blue."

"Change them to brown."

"I can't."

"Precisely. And that is my point. You cannot change it, and your only atonement can come about through acceptance of who you are."

“But it’s so unnatural.”

“A very wise man once told me that anything that occurs in nature is by the very fact of its existence, natural. It may be uncommon but it is not unnatural. Just don’t let it define your entire being. Some of us get caught up in defining ourselves primarily as homosexuals: a homosexual doctor, a homosexual teacher, a homosexual garbage man. That doesn’t happen with heterosexuals. A lawyer who is heterosexual is a lawyer that happens to be heterosexual. He is a lawyer first and foremost. It should be the same for us. We’re normal people that do normal things, and we just happen to be homosexual. Accept yourself, but don’t get caught up in the labels. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir. But I don't feel like a homosexual. I feel like a girl who somehow got born into a boy’s body.”

"Is it that you feel like a female in all respects or are you just using that to justify your sexual desires. They would be alright for a female, so therefore you want to be female."

"No, I don't think about sex that often, but I feel like a girl all the time."

Uncle Bobby took Stephen in his arms and kissed him on the cheek.

“In that case, you're a good girl, Stephen.”

Redemption

Stephen withdrew from school. He was accepted at Swananoa for a mid term transfer, and Aunt Lucy drove him up with his things. He could not face Clarissa, so he didn’t see her or talk to her before he left.

At Swananoa, after a period of adjustment, Stephen flourished. Everyone accepted him as he was, and soon he was producing what his instructor called “stellar” work. He met a boy who, in a serendipitous coincidence, was named Carl, and they had a brief romance. Stephen tried to accept himself as homosexual but he could not. The only way he could relate to Carl was as a girl; he felt strongly that he was a heterosexual female, but his body would not reconcile with his mind. Carl was gay and, as such, he was attracted to men, and Stephen’s girlishness eventually became distasteful to him. So what was there left for someone like Stephen? And then he read about Christine Jorgensen, a man, an ex-GI, who had always seen herself as a woman trapped in the body of a man. Through hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery, she had become a woman. The more he read the more he identified. Here was someone like him. He was not, after all, alone. He was transsexual and there were others like him.

He did not return to Wilson, and in the summers he took jobs in Asheville. He did not contact Clarissa. She had seen him that day at the river where he had lost his honor; he had submitted to those boys and let them use him, and he had liked it. His shame before her was too great. What must she think of him?

He graduated with honors from Swananoa and was accepted at the University of North Carolina. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Bobby visited him frequently. Clarissa attended Meredith College For Women in Raleigh. She forced the issue and came to visit him.

“I hope you don’t mind my showing up like this. I had to see you.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Oh Stephen, why didn’t you call or write? I was so terribly worried about you.”

He tried to explain to her his shame and his inability to face her, and, as she always had, Clarissa understood and forgave. He had done a lot of research on his gender dysphoria and he explained to Clarissa about his transsexuality. Again she understood. She’d never had a clinical name for it, but she had sensed from the beginning that his male body was a lie that covered over his true self. They began spending weekends together and never tried to be anything more than girl friends.

Stephen graduated with honors, and continued with graduate school until he earned his doctorate, after which he taught creative writing at his alma mater. Clarissa graduated from Meredith and went from there to Duke Medical School. During their post-graduate years Stephen became Stephanie and began living full time as a woman. She and Clarissa shared an apartment together in Chapel Hill.

As their lives went on, Stephanie wrote three novels, each of which was well received. They were not popular bestsellers, but in the halls of academe, she was considered a serious writer. Under the care of a therapist and an endocrinologist, she began Hormone Replacement Therapy. She grew breasts, her skin softened, and her hips flared out into a nice hourglass figure.

Clarissa became a physician. She married a man she met in Boston where she served her residency, and came home to Wilson to practice. They had three children, two girls and a boy she named Stephen. She and Stephanie maintained contact, exchanged frequent letters, and later email. When either of them was troubled, there would be phone calls that lasted long into the night.

On her thirty-fifth birthday Stephanie finally achieved her dream and fully became what she always felt she should have been. Clarissa supported her through the entire process, and was there by her side when she came out of the anesthesia. She was a woman now, but it didn’t really strike home until the first time she put on her panties and realized that there was no longer that horrendous bulge in them. She threw up her hands and danced around the room singing, “I am woman, hear me roar.” The shy, insecure, boy had became a pretty, confident woman. The caterpillar, a butterfly.

Granny finally made good on her threat to die, but it took years to accomplish. She was ninety-three.

Aunt Lucy married a lawyer who had lost his wife to breast cancer, and she finally had her baby—a boy she named Stephen. They fixed up the old house that Granny had left to her, and lived a contented life in the country.

Uncle Bobby moved to New York City and died of Aids in 1979. Stephanie returned to Wilson for the funeral. There was a small memorial service at the Catholic Church and a graveside interment at Maplewood Cemetery. Bobby Joe was placed beside his mother in the Howell family plot and Stephanie could almost hear them bantering away at one another. She stayed with Clarissa and her family. The children loved their Aunt Stephanie, and she’d take them to the park during the day when Clarissa worked. She visited with Aunt Lucy and her husband and Lucy told her how proud she was of her.

One night Stephanie and Clarissa went to “The Purple Griffon”, a new nightclub, for a girl’s night out. And there, across the room, was Doug Henly, standing at the bar, a beer in his hand. He was dressed in a cream-colored leisure suit with a purple shirt that was unbuttoned to reveal his hairy chest, trying his best to look like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He was scanning the room for unaccompanied women.

“Well, look who’s here,” Stephanie whispered to Clarissa.

“Who?”

“Doug Henly, and looking mighty proud of himself, I must say.” She pointed him out.

“Oh, yes. The ubiquitous Mr. Henly. He’s become the quintessential lounge lizard. He works in a video rental store.”

“I always knew he had potential. Watch this.”

Clarissa touched her arm. “Steffie, don’t.”

Stephanie made eye contact and winked at him. He swaggered over to her as she and Clarissa giggled.

“Hey, babydoll,” he said, “You new around here?”

“I guess you could say that,” Stephanie smiled.

“You look familiar, though.”

“Is that a line? I think I’ve heard that one before.”

“Ha! You think I’m trying to pick you up?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Well, hell yes, you’re the hottest chick in the joint, and I’m the best dancer in this town. You want to see my moves?

“And you’re the most forward man I’ve ever met. Is this part of your moves?” Stephanie played the game, but with just enough “come on” in her voice to keep him interested.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, baby.”

He was so smug and self-assured: God’s gift to women. A slow song came on and Doug asked Stephanie to dance and she accepted. As they danced Stephanie rubbed her body against his until she could feel his erection pressing into her belly. She arched her head back to invite a kiss and when Doug tried for her lips she turned her head aside and whispered in his ear, her lips brushing on his ear lobe seductively:

“You don’t remember me, do you, stud?”

“Remember you? I thought you said you were new around here.”

“Oh, I’m new alright. But we’ve met before.”

“Really? Where?”

“On the banks of the Tar River. Beneath the corpse of a hanged man.”

A confused look came into his face followed by a flash of recognition.

“You?”

“I used to be Stephen Howell,” Stephanie said as she brought her knee up sharply into Doug’s groin. She turned and demurely walked away and left him on the dance floor, doubled up in pain.

“Steffie, you naughty bitch!” Clarissa said when Stephanie returned to her.

“Serves him right,” Stephanie said. They laughed like schoolgirls as they ran to the car.

On the way home they sang “The Cell Block Tango” from the musical, Chicago.

He had it coming

He had it coming

He only had himself to blame

If you'd have been there

If you'd have seen it

I betcha you would have done the same!

Once a year in the last week of June, Stephanie would join Clarissa and her family in Morehead City for a week at the beach. The Pavilion had been torn down and replaced with a kiddie playground where they would take Clarissa’s children to play. At night, after they put the children to bed, they’d sit on the screen porch and listen to the waves breaking on the shore. The gentle onshore breeze seemed to be a courier delivering bittersweet memories that swept over them and carried them back to another time, another world. At such times, their eyes would meet and they would just look at one another. There was something in their eyes--something--an inexplicable longing, an understanding--perhaps both. They were closer to each other than they would ever be with anyone else. They had learned through the years that there could exist a deep and abiding love that did not require a sexual component. And that love would last their lifetime.

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