Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 16:36:10 -0700
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: The Very First Summer of Millicent Forday

	       "The Very First Summer of  Millicent Forday"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


(for Joyce Carol Oates)



 The formerly pernicious girl was to be no longer
squandered, for she had been finally re-born--hail glory!-- this
afternoon. It had begun on the summery main street of town.

  In the world broken into shattered glowing crystals that
she saw; in the multi eye effect it seemed her whole body was
capable of now. A delegation in her. Seizure warnings perhaps?
that she had never had before, not in her entire fifteen years of
life..

 This new winnowing fear, and the unaccustomed  red
blush odd and sudden femininity that she had pushed down into
her ankle socks, as though a girl of much oddly younger years.
The world before her seemed to be floating, misty, surreal. As
seemed  her bone structure which were made of myriad confusing
fluctuation ladders her mind imagined, and into whatever was
squirreled about in there, all very whispery, all very quiet.

 But then there was nothing of value, and she felt good to
know that. If she had a fit, if her mind went into electric wire
spasming, what of it? She felt good to feel something not real in
her.

 A physical feeling, almost. One of right brushes of a newly
justified sun smiling its beaming beard down on her as she stood,
wavering just a little bit, she was sure, in front of the Ben Franklin
Five and Dime Store. There with its yellowed orange sun glass
glare in this terrible muggy heat that, in this moment, she would
not bet a penny on existing for anyone but her.

 . And odds were not, after all, that she could be covered
with sunshine in this Saturday afternoon of July where, though
people passed her by, anyone could see her at all. Though they
never had before. Not really.

 The clumsy chemistry of her had made her something of a
false front, a fake being. But now that was over. Something had
ended. Everything had ended. She wished she could take a deep
breath, to show how brave she was. But she did not dare. The
bone castles in her were far too fragile.

 There was the next step, something unending about her. It
appeared in her shiny sweaty body, that she was finally and at
long last mortal. And her mortality could be used as a weapon.
Reality was a dream to her. Reality always had been. And it had
entered her dream kingdom. She could accept anything that way,
couldn't she?

 To douse with black grave dirt those jostling, eyeless,
cruel persons passing by her, who could not see her. To the girl,
who had surely once had a brain, they looked more like brain
nodes walking by unheeding, silly and funny looking, though she
had no notion what a brain node was.

 She stood, becoming, not frightened, but somehow more
relaxed, like a flower at evening rest, knowing the warmth will
stay in the earth, the rains will be gentle when they come soon,
and the sun will shine tomorrow. Nothing planned. Nothing
guaranteed. She was not falling off the Earth. And yet she might
be. Which gave her a curious courage in all that fear she had
always known. When she had used to be someone else.

 And all the blazing pain and horror that had been once her
and the environs of everything she touched and believed had
curled up in as though it had all been  her dearest friend, and
going away. She would most curiously miss it. For it was summer
and she was a part of it, no smaller a part of it than anyone
around her. In her own way.

 She was cloaked in what she was, and what she was made
her appear to others this afternoon as colorless glass, something
that the air allowed within itself, giving her an escape hatch or
allusion, somewhere in the dark spaces of her mind.

 And now she remembered. The elusiveness pearl was
found. And that was that once upon a time, her name which was
Millicent Forday, and she had been a number and alone; the
thought, long ago memory of her, made her feel as though she
could not swallow. As though her throat was suddenly bunched
up and there was a knife cut down the center inside of it.

 Oh, yes, that Millicent, was--had been-- a girl who had
had the right amount of boyfriends, only boys who would allow
her to be as chaste as she wanted to be, as she made quite clear
she would never go beyond a certain border. And thinking these
things in the warm balloon of summer oxygen, she breathed in her
world. And it was her world, and it was a world she could be
visible in any time she wished. For there was nothing self
deprecating or self involving. She just did not wish it so.

 And she turned to her math teacher who had passed by
her,  like a calling wind, like a moment that had passed for the girl
once, and not for the teacher. The girl still blushed. She did now.
She felt mortally wounded by this woman in the crowd, and called
her teacher's name.

 "Miss Hendricks", she said, softly, with a warm rolling
kind of Southern accent, friendly, that was what she was, and she
realized she had not been that before. She had always had an itchy
voice, a voice that said time was wasting and what do you want.
She was not balanced precariously between her world and the
world out there which had become her inside world too. She
could decide who would live. She was terribly thirsty. She wished
she had a Coke right now.

 Her teacher, a tall thin woman with bifocals turned in
surprise and quickly, for the woman had not seen her there until
now, turned around to see the girl beyond the group of walkers,
in the moment she "came to light"  to the woman; the girl being
on a different planet perhaps, but still somehow at the very edge
of the corner of the teacher's world.

 A woman of precision, a woman not given to surprises, or
not allowing anyone to know she had been surprised or
disconcerted. She might be seeing this girl in another galaxy, but
it was just old hat Saturday in this sleepy little Southern town
after all. And two can play the slightly amused game if they want.
At least those were the vibrations the woman gave to the girl.

 Miss Hendricks, catching himself by not doing so, for it is
never wise to let the students get the upper hand, even though
they did from time to time, smiled professorially at her, her first
line of defense, and unhurriedly walked back the few steps,
passed through the sidewalk traffic, to her student. Though not a
strict teacher and with kindness in her, still and all, the woman
knew more than they, and made damn sure they knew it too.

 Miss Hendricks pinched her summer baked drifting brain
to lead her voice to slightly superior tone and said, " "Millicent"
and was proud of herself for remembering the nonessential,
nondescript girl's name who somehow looked different now than
Miss Hendricks remembered her.

 She smiled that teacher's smile, it did seem slightly genuine. As
they chatted on a hot Saturday down town. Teacher of the usual
moment. Child of the alien visage and the fear of seizures starting
any moment. Indeed, the girl was disappointed they had not
started yet. She looked forward to them. They would take her in
the sky away, she fully believed.

 But right now, woman and girl pretending what they were
not. As they asked how each other was. Teacher asked the girl if
she was looking forward to next term, as they chatted pleasantries
that bored both of them more than a little. Miss Hendricks said
she had enjoyed the girl (already long in the fade out category)
having been one of her students this past term, and told her she,
Miss Hendricks, would be teaching senior geometry the next, and
to, if the girl did not have her next term, drop by his class room
every so often and say hello, to which  the former girl, former
human, said she would.

 Then the teacher, in her blue print summery dress, turned,
after nodding politely, and went on her way. Millicent walked in
the opposite direction.

 Miss Hendricks had walked maybe five paces when she
turned, almost against her will, and looked back at that girl
shadow, who was still looking in the woman's direction. Both of
them seemed momentarily startled. The passersby between them.
Miss Hendricks almost called her name, but something decided
her against it. Felt there was something wrong, like a wise chill of
a dead flower of perfect poise and regality suddenly bloomed  in a
garden of flowers that were not as pretty or as  tall or as colorful
or as regal, but which were also not dead either.

 Which, the teacher idly floated the idea, would be worse?

 Curious thing, and then the woman turned round and
continued walking to her car parked in the town lot, dreading the
heat and breathlessness and the pain that would be her lot in its
interior in this greenhouse.
.
 They saw her, the adults, the children, as Millie walked
through the town, and she was greeted and chatted up from time
to time. They appeared to know her. They appeared to. A bit
startled, a bit shy, and looking after her.

 And Millie, no longer at odds with anything in the world,
feeling light and empty and free inside, thought this was a nice
town to live in and the persons in it were by and large good
people. Millie walked toward Third Street and headed out of the
business district and on toward home. She felt as though she were
an arboreal bird which had been so surprisingly rescued.

 Not because she was ill, she no longer felt so, or taking
the analogy further, that she had a broken wing, but something
else, something so sad and unbearable that she didn't know what
it could be. Or that she had been carrying that weight for so long.

 She had thought slightly in front of rescued, don't think of
it that way at all, because it was important that she think of it that
way. She was independent now, she could take care of herself,
even if her parents died. There being really no other relatives she
could live with. She could do all right, could get a second job,
pay the house notes, have money for groceries and clothes and
the like.

 The thing, though, the terribly curious thing was she was
not perspiring now, and perhaps hadn't been for a bit. It was a
very hot day. The sidewalk reflected heat shimmers and glare and
seemed to be melting right in front of her. The cars kept their
bumper to bumper creeping along in traffic. The sounds were the
same sounds she had always heard.

 Yet everything was magnified somehow. Like a living
moving museum all round her.  The mowed lawns would still
smell sickeningly of onions. Close, close and sticky air. Close,
close and sticky she. But it was now all--different, all curiously
unreal. And she felt a little fear at that unreality. She was
becoming less brave. Just a little so.

 She thought it was in the mid nineties at least. And she felt
hot and she felt drowsy, like a hollow gourd, and thought it
would be nice to make it home so she could lie in a hammock
strung between two elms in her yard, and sip pink lemonade and
relax. Sleep would do her a world of good, in all the shadows.
For she was for some reason very tired, as if she had run a very
long arduous race. And perhaps she had.

  She also, though she tried hard, suddenly remembered
she had no idea what she had been doing down town, how long
she had been in the sun's beady overpowering glare, and its
playing hide and seek with reality and sanity, Or where she had
been before that.

 She hated that thought--reality and sanity--the opposites
being delusion and insanity. The words which once had had a nice
sound to them for her for some reason now smelled of dead flies
and looked like huge thick steel doors and walls with a million
unbreakable brackets in them and no hinges on the doors or walls
at all, at all.

 She felt, if things would just rhyme, if she could live in a
world of rhymes, she would feel better. Because she was not
feeling well again.

 If she could just perspire. That would be something. A
person could die being in all this heat and not being able to
perspire. She stepped onto the sidewalk across the street, dodging
traffic at a green light, with horns blowing at her. As she stumbled
across in front of them.

 She felt lost,  more than a little frightened, all the nice
alienness of the recent past had deserted her. She did not know
what had happened to her.

 She walked now by the housing project five blocks from
town, she had walked that far without knowing it?, where some
black kids were in the community yard, tossing around a baseball,
and she felt the skin on her left arm,  and her left arm alone, dry,
hot, but dry, like the skin of a baked orange, as  now was the skin
on her forehead when she pushed her hand against it; she felt
somewhat let down when she removed her hand and the forehead
stayed as it was.

 She had thought it might fall off like old ceiling plaster.
What had she been expecting otherwise? A door to open in it and
her hand to be caught in it and cut off with the sharp door blade?
Had she expected her head to open by a button she would push in
the center of her forehead, the top of her skull springing over to
lay next to the side of her face?

 The boys were noticing her. She wondered if she knew
them.  She was not comfortable in the presence of Negroes.
Especially Negro boys. They frightened her by just being there.

 One of the boys called something to her, but she was
unable to make out his patois. She had learned the word "patois"
in school last year, and liked knowing it. It sounded so much
better than some other words for it.

 That was what her mother had always told her, remember,
they can't help it, if one of them says something you can't
understand, just pretend you're deaf and go about your business,
they can't help it, their big lips and all and their poor upbringing.

 So she walked on, her head down, and more than one boy
yelled some not very kind things at her and she wanted to turn
and apologize. The other boys were laughing and imitating her.
Even so, she wanted to apologize for them, which made no sense.
But how could she apologize for their being cinders in the way of
her view of the sun? As though they owned it or something.

 She had a sudden desire to blame the whole thing of her
life on them.

 She was hurt, blushing,  and angry at herself. She had
made her mind up from some time forward, when?, she would
stop mollycoddling herself and stop thinking of herself as the
Rose Princess.

 Rose Princess would never have breasts small as hers, far
too small  for a girl that age, another cause for heart ache and
some derision. Of course, she knew the boys who were the cream
of the crop would not date her at all, unless she put out, and she
had put out to a point. Loneliness being a terrible thing.

  She might even put out for those boys back there playing
baseball; indeed, had she noticed them at all, looked at them, she
might have remembered one or two. A cock in the mouth was a
cock in the mouth, regardless of color, after all.

  Boy, she thought, they must have been desperate to go
out with me. She half laughed. She found nothing wrong with
thinking it, that she had had sex with a lot of boys. But she
hadn't. She didn't do that. Yet, the thought said, no guilt. And
the thought patted the sidewalk along with her steps.

 She walked faster, the voices behind her were mean and
shingled the air. They had no centrality to them. There was a
great deal of angry pain and unaware divorcement in them, and
she started running.

 Though she knew they would not follow and was
somewhat sad about that. Their voices did keep up with her, at
least in her claustrophobic mouse going round the merry go
round brain--the voices sounded louder and deeper, as though
they were ten years or more older than they really were. The
voices like switchblades racing after her. Voices like old angers
that were now to be taken up again, first time, personally, from
them to her.

 And their laughter scalded her. She wished Miss
Hendricks were with her here, wished the woman could have
leaned all that tallness down to those boys, and tell them a thing
or two about life, tell them that in the real world. That this kind of
stuff just doesn't go, in the real world; we have to respect others
before others can respect us.

 And they would probably knife her to death, but the girl
creature would get away, she was untouchable, unblameable, now
invisible again. She could not be expected to interfere or save
Miss Hendricks' life or anything like that. She didn't want Miss
Hendricks hurt or dead.

 After all, Miss Hendricks had been the first adult the girl
creature had had sex with.


 To see Miss Hendricks defending her, all noble like,
though.  It would have been exciting,  having her honor defended,
and to think she was the soul and sanctity of rationality and
sanity.

 Miss Hendricks had especially liked to put her tongue up
the girl creature's vagina. To taste the juice. To feel the little
"love penis." To stroke it with her womanly hand. To make the
girl creature a sea creature stirring from the depths. Something no
boy had accomplished with the girl formerly of this Earth.

 She had turned the corner, literally and figuratively, and
the boys were out of her sight though she knew they were saying
sexual things about her. She wished she had had the courage to
have looked at them, to see if one or more of them had been with
her at some time or other. She hadn't put out to them often
however she reassured herself.

 She remembered she had somehow or other been dared
to,  had, yes, that was it, been a little woozy with drink at the
time, though she didn't remember anything else about it, who put
her up to it, if she had won something, and for that matter, she
didn't remember any of the boys she had had sex with. Which was
hardly fair. She did doubt however their penises were always that
much bigger than white cock.

 The parabola of heat laced that crazy thought. Look at
me, for God's sake, that's crazy. I don't even know how to do it.
Miss Hendricks scared the hell out of me when she came on to
me. When she said what she did. When she advanced. When she
knew I wanted it. To make it with a woman. With her even.

 But I'm not experienced. They had sex with her because
they could. No other reason. Miss Hendricks had sex with the girl
because she could. Because it was daring and different and
wrong. The girl knew that. She did not kid herself about it. With
all of them, the ones she remembered, she had felt then apart from
herself. She pushed these dangerous memories which were not
hers at all, away. Think of the heat. Can't think of anything else.

 Perspire, dammit. Forget the woman who seemed to not
remember the eager girl in bed with her. The eager girl who had
had to tell the woman who was naked except for the curious fact
she never took her white bra off and asked the girl, who did as
asked, to suck her nipples through the lacy material which was so
wrong for such a prim lady, the asking and the bra material and all
of it, when you came right down to it.

 She was not perspiring on this very hot day and she had
wished a teacher who had always been kind to her, who had made
her cum, when no boy had, and to whom she had clung, dead, and
she wished to have some pornographic films of her sex partners
so she could review them at her leisure and remember them at
least.

 It was so horribly unfair, she having sex with them, and
not remembering it more than a vague hush puppy from a long
time ago. The taste of it old and indifferent. A memory of a long
series of memories really. When you came to it, she was not that
kind of girl.

 When Miss Hendricks helped the girl creature, and what
was she now that the world was scaring her to death with its
darkness this long hot afternoon of Saturday?, sit on the woman's
face, and the woman's tongue went up inside her and tickled the
caves of her and the girl giggled, did she giggle because she
wanted to? Or because it was expected of her?

 Did sexuality have to be a show? Did you have to do what
they told you to do, even in that? Was anything pleasurable at all
to her? Or to anyone?

 I'm tired, she thought, and hot, the heat has made me
delirious. She mercifully began to perspire. She perspired like she
did when one boy put it to her up the ass and another boy made
her suck him off at the same time.

 Miss Hendricks had been curious what the girl did with
boys. And asked her to tell her in great detail. Miss Hendricks
found that especially fascinating, as she held the girl in her bed
and stroked her butt crack and put her maidenly finger inside.

  The girl creature, now most sadly, most gladly, herself
again, had entered one of the neighborhoods near her home. She
walked past a man in hairy bare chest and red swim trunks, heavy
belly, waxing his car; she walked past a stick bone woman in a
swim suit, lying on a pink beach towel in her yard with
overgrown grass, head to one side, sunglasses on.

 The woman lay on her front, with her top undone,
catching sun rays as though she could become summer through
the heat and the tan that was easing on the greasy Coppertone
flesh of her, and through her.

 Millie dallied for a moment with the thought, I could tell
her how women have sex and I could feel her hairy crotch and I
could insert a penis like finger if she only knew what is passing
her by and she dead out of luck, the summer grass sun
worshipper.

 There were children going to the corner grocery store,
running past her in giggles and sweat. One or two of them
bumped into each other. One bumped into her as though she was
not there. Millie felt for a moment that airy chance of being
invisible again, but then knew she was not. Deflating again with
it.

 She knew now she was just a summer fixture. The
thoughts she was having, these mad thoughts, were just the
results of the sweaty hot sun dancing in her brain. Mad--now
there was another word that smelled like dead flies or lighting
bugs in a Mason jar, insects that had been smothered to death by
cruel insensitive little boys.

 Millie was the school whore. Face it.

 The word "whore" was red and enflamed and went down
her throat hard like the bone of summer that she never felt alive
unless it was invading some aperture of her body.

 It was just suddenly there like scalding water had been
thrown on every inch of her body, three times over. There was
nothing else of her. Just her sex. There was nothing else in her,
but all those boys whom she could not remember. And the
teacher who had had her one time and never wanted her again.

 She was a pin cushion of summer and everything came to
her and through her like she was a railway tunnel and the
passengers--when she had her first, of course, she had no
memory--were racing through her, like darning her together for
their little pleasures and then off into the darkness and distance of
night, with the train whistle lost and forlorn coming back to ache
her already scratched and tender skin down there.

  She stopped moving, bent over, gagging, arms around
her waist, for a moment, before she moved on. No. Stop. Get in
control. You will not act a fool in public. It was imperative she
move on.

 I don't want to go mad, like a mad dog, she thought,
perhaps said, as she realized she was not walking toward home
anymore, not running, but walking fast, far away from home,
because she knew she could never go back there again.

 The birds in trees prepped her somehow with their
chatter.

 There was the cacophony of the day, with kids shouting as
they biked past her. people sitting on front porches of houses,
listening to the ball games on radio, and laughing, and ice in
summer tea glasses crystallizing around Millie, as she thought, for
the first time consciously, that was how it had been when she had
"come to."

 She had been crystallized. Not the world around her. She.
She had been put together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and she
was the completed puzzle but at the same time, she was in far
more pieces than she had been before. And more pieces were
tumbling out of her, and off her, even now. She was Humpty
Dumpty deconstructing.

 She was breathing hard. The sidewalk was bouncing
under her as she walked faster. She was not sweating again.
Under her arms, at her waist line, on her palms, she was dry as a
desert. As though she were made as if without pores.

 She had been born standing in front of the dime store--a
fast blip back to that--with whatever had happened between then
and now, lost-- and she was looking for someone to care for her,
to take her in, and without awareness, she was heading in the
direction of Miss. Hendrick's house.

 Realizing she was not far from there now.

  And she was very frightened of all the things and people
around her, things and people she had been around all her life.
And now she did fit in, in some awful alien puzzling way, with
them.

 A woman, sweeping her porch, wearing a floppy green
house coat and mules, a red kerchief round her pulled up hair, a
woman Millie did not recognize, sun glare or not, heat infraction
or not, seemed to be wearing a tiny rainbow nebulae around her,
and called out to her and told Millie to give her regards to Millie's
mother.

 Millie paid no attention, while desperately trying to
remember who the woman was.

 Millie would have no dealings with the past anymore.
Only cowards live in the past, especially cowards who have no
past in which to live, not a past that was ever real. Nothing is
hope for the future. Future wishing is just trying to make the past
different and an attempt to sling it over your shoulder in the
future, which really is impossible, Millie thought.

 She would have none of that anymore. She had lived
totally in the past, even when the past was the present, and she
wasn't even 16 yet. She knew her age, her name, she recognized
certain things and people; she knew how to get home; and now
that she stood in front of Miss Hendrick's little brick and wood
home, she realized what was to happen. She found the fear of all
of it gone. She took to it, like a baby in warm water bath. She
knew what to do.

 Some things. Some things though. She thought of
protractors and slide rules and equations written with chalk of
blackboards; the dusty sneezy smell of the chalk; the clogging
smell of the chalk on the blackboard. These things she held to
tightly as she knew how.

 Angels to protect her, as though she had entered some
undefined country with new olfactory senses, she or it, and she
felt a red welt goring her, growing to two and three welts on her
groin, no, "down there," her mother had always called it. She
remembered things her mother said, but not the woman per se,
not what she looked like, nothing. All out of Millie's head.

 And she was a part of the sun glare, now that the cinders
were no longer in it. She was a part of the heft and feel of it. The
sounds around her, mowers and cars and kids skating past almost
knocking her over, one of the kids, turning round to her, saying a
sex thing, laughing, begging, please, she not responding, knowing
it drove him crazy, then with put upon masculinity, he turned
forward again and went with his friends.

 Forgetting her immediately.

 "Millicent" Miss. Hendricks said, opening the door to the
girl's desperate palsied knock.

 Millicent, vaguely thinking, I've such an ugly name, it's a
TV comedy character's name.

 It's square and bloated and foolish looking and wanting to
please everybody all the time and constantly denigrating itself,
even though it knows the fault is not it's, but please don't anyone
be mad at me or forget me, because it's so scary being the other
kind of mad; it's so scary being locked up with only me in thick
metal rooms with no keys at all, and scraping on the walls with
my fingernails until little blisters of blood flow from underneath
them and stripe my skin with death.

 Miss Hendricks put her hand on the trembling girl's
shoulders and brought her inside, closing the screen door.

             Miss Hendricks of middle class. Miss Hendricks of
normal. Representative of a world where everyone went to movie
theaters and some restaurants, the right kind, and  the larger
churches.

 And this representative of all that was sane and decent
stood in front of Millie now; in front of this terrible defenseless
little girl and the woman put her hands on both the girl's
shoulder, delicately, for she was a delicate little girl, and she was
pretty.

 To Miss Hendricks at least.

 School had been over for only a month and a half, and
though this was certainly Millie, and their tryst had been over
longer than that. But Miss Hendricks remembered it and her with
great fondness. The girl must have been on an excellent diet that
worked so quickly, because she had a willowy figure now, she
had remembered her as being a bit on the chunky side, and her
mousy hair of then cut short, was now longer and seemed better
groomed.

 Have I caused this change? Miss Hendricks wondered.
Having forgotten all about seeing the girl downtown earlier.
Here, in the woman's house, the memories of the girl returned.

 But she wasn't corners or skeletal or emaciated, this girl. I
have saved her, Miss Hendricks thought. I have given her that
intangible that had gone to make her up, that makes her far more
than she used to be.

 These thoughts darted in those few seconds before the girl
looked up and really noticed the woman for the first time.

 Miss Hendricks brought her to the couch, and sat with
her, holding the girl's clammy cold hands, noting the girl was not
perspiring, and concerned now about that, the woman was.

 The air conditioning was on and the house was cold. The
girl did not shiver. As Miss Hendricks did when she went from
the blazing outside to the cool air of the house.

 "Are you all right, my dear?" Teacher voice, slightly
superior, but reachable, she made sure of the inflection.

 The girl was looking down at the carpeting. My, the
woman thought, this child is in a great well of thought. Miss
Hendricks' mind drifted. Comparing her own large full busted
figure to the girl's small breasts. What a pity for her, the woman
patted her hand.

  Miss Hendricks was not a Lesbian. This girl was the first
one she had. The first one she had wanted. And she began to feel
sexual. Began to want to grab the girl's hands and put them on
her womanly breasts. To make her squeeze them, the breasts that
poked out her blouse most fetchingly, if Miss Hendricks was so
immodest to believe.

 She stroked the girl's hands that were lying in the girl's
lap. She felt herself getting warm looking at them, at her body,
her crotch.

 The girl had grown surely an inch or two or more taller
than it had been at the end of school, in a body that was now so
pretty and popular and so strikingly immature and younger now in
its robust sudden maturity, save for those little breasts. The hips
were nicely flared. She had nicely countered legs now that the
baby fat was finally gone.

 How Miss Hendricks envied her. This girl could get the
best boys in town for a song. What could the girl have to feel so
sad about? To now make herself cry?

 Miss Hendricks pulled the girl to her shoulder and let her
weep there. She patted the girl's back. She felt the girl's sweat
begin again. Making her damp to the touch. I want her again, the
woman thought. Here on this hot July summer Saturday. I want
her in bed with me and close and I want her fingers exploring me.
This time, she knew, she would take off her bra before she had
the girl suck her like a little baby at her mother's tits.

 Millie was a hefty tall girl who now seemed like a tiny girl
rambling around in a large lonely house that was a showplace, in
which she was refracted by mirror into mirror, making her smaller
and smaller, until there was no her there at all, just this shell. In
this supposition.

 I am her lover, Miss Hendricks thought, as she pressed the
girl into her breasts. As she felt a flair of heat at her vagina. In
this, Miss Hendricks was wrong. She was not the girl's lover. She
was the girl's keeper. This was what they had bought themselves
and each other, though they would never know it as such.

 "I can be bought," the girl thing against the woman now
said. Her voice muffled. The teacher pushed her from her, asked
her to say it again.

 So Millie girl creature of some new species said it again..
Her voice still had the honey toned accent of the old Millicent, yet
the words--how dare this girl say such a thing to Miss Hendricks.
The goddam nerve!

  And yet, Miss Hendricks was attracted to it and to her,
put off, yes, but the aggressiveness of the girl, the power the
woman now held in her hands of Millie, yes, the boys will be quite
surprised from now on.

 If they hadn't been surprised already. What a good
teacher am I; no more bookish little slob of a girl in brownish
hand me down dresses.

 No, this time a head cheerleader, and president of clubs,
this time the boys would not make practical jokes of her, as Millie
had confided that they did. They would want her, really want her,
no more the town pump, Millie, and fall all over themselves in
competition for her.

 What else has this girl suckled at my breast, the teacher
thought, smiling at the tearful girl, drying the tears with a
handkerchief? My god, if anyone just knew what a great teacher I
am, Ha!

 And she said, knowing she did not mean to offend her by
offering herself so guilelessly, so normal as rain, there in the
summer afternoon sun; and outside, people around, on porches,
leaning on car hoods, talking, passing the time of day; did the
teacher, without any apologies, without any hesitation or
embarrassment, "Yes, Millie, how much do you charge?"


 And Millie looked so beautiful and quiet and impossibly
real, and her face directed at the woman, their eyes meeting,
unashamed, no longer shy even with each other, as the sun
through the lace curtains, over her shoulder was so yellow and
sentimental and friendly hued, like a beautiful sunflower guarding,
this was a most erotic tableau. It was like love.

 "I want you to talk to some black boys in the project."
Millie said. "They made fun of me earlier. Said I wanted their 'big
black cocks in my mouth and up my butthole and in my fuck
hole.'"

 And Mr. Hendricks, outraged. First at the girl for saying
such things. But then a fury arose in the woman that black boys
talked to a white girl like that. The idea! The sheer animal African
gall of the bastards. God hell yes I will give them a talking to, you
had better believe I will.

 And said as much to the girl. The woman's ire raised.

 So in the cool dark of the living room with the shades
drawn, the woman  dropped the act, and became a stupid
desperate greedy little girl, put her arms around Millie--we have
got to do something about that name-- and took off the girl's
blouse. And momentarily, the woman knew there were no
divisions between inner and outer, between the Millie then and
the Millie now that she had gotten some smarts, some self
reliance.

 Miss Hendricks remembered her now, crystalline pieces of
her when they first had sex, as one remembers a movie seen a
long time ago, swimmy and distant and hazy. She had been afraid
of knowing them, this prim and proper woman. Before. Knowing
what men and boys wanted. Knowing what girls and women
wanted too. But now everything was opened up to her.

 Who had been the teacher, after all?

 Knowing it was the only thing, the sex, that counted and
somehow, it didn't matter to her anymore how it had occurred,
that it had made her one of them. Miss Hendrick's parents had
honeycombed her insides with the easy over in seconds paint job
of self justification and blindness that was 20/20, that the woman
now saw as total blindness.

 That had been inculcated in her by churches very real and
very large and very important, without any real need for depth of
thinking or complexity of character, only the voicing of the
words. Love is hate. Hate is love. Indifference is passion.
Rejection is loyalty. Down is up. Up is down. Just say it. That
makes it what it is.

 But not now. And the woman vowed as she took Millie's
bra off and put her mouth on each firm nipple, gone for all time,
that nonsense of before.

 Simply the unhindered obvious naked hiding in front of
everyone. It didn't matter, the words used, as she had once
thought it did. Feelings she had had for boys who of course never
gave her the time of day, the wonder at the girls who had these
boys and the complexities she saw in those relationships, because
she had once seen them through her own shimmery wonderment,
which had never been theirs, complexities she did not want for
herself either, now made her laugh.

 It was hooking, unhooking, coupling, uncoupling, using
bodies as devices, but before this had happened to her, before
Miss Hendricks was now undressing this child, how good it was a
child, in her small musty bedroom, slowly and with awe, and she
smiling kindly at the now naked girl.

 Knowing, yes, that Millie had been a device in her own
way, to all those boys. Her books, her stolid sad self, all of this
was to languish her with the indecisions, the confusions, to sluff
off humanity on her as a stalking horse, so they didn't have to
bother with it.. Her presence gave ascendancy to a boy or girl
who sometimes was vaguely somewhere or other in her direction
kind to her.

 And this spreading of a momentary greeting was infused
into all the other boys and girls and teachers and parents as if by
osmosis. They had done their duty. Their charity work was over.
Now was the fun part. Everyone lived for the fun part.

 Everyone lived for the senses. Feelings were made and
broken in an instant. Persons were used, rejected and instantly
forgotten. And she lay naked with this vibrant lusting hot writhing
girl, on that too large, too alone bed, and they did everything their
hearts desired.

 She would never speak to the woman again. She must
not.

  When she passed by Miss Hendricks at school, she would
not say hello or notice her at all. She would not take senior
geometry from her. Make it, move on. And don't ever fall in love,
for that would be the old Millie, who had been a frumpy love lorn
toy for boys.

 But now, yes, as woman and girl finger fucked each other;
now it was-- love 'em and leave 'em and they still wanting her so
badly, which of course would be half the fun for the girl.

 Miss Hendricks knew neither Millie nor she had ever truly
wanted integrity and dignity and worth. The loners get that. The
losers. The square pegs never fitting in round holes. Neither of
them had wanted to be truthful and loyal to persons who barely
knew they were here.

 Miss Hendricks rode Millie and felt every square inch of
her and their mouths met and their tongues entered each other's
mouths, and they stroked on their womanly furred crotches and
they were as hot as blazes. Sweating as if the sun was inside each
of them, never to be set free again.

 She had been mad with this, mad that they could not see
what prevaricators and frauds they were, how could they be so
blind? They were correct now. This was truly real. The words,
spoken and unspoken, said so. That was enough. They had spilled
into each other. Had become each other.

  Now as Miss Hendricks rubbed her tongue all over
Millie's clit, she knew the girl vibrated with the same raw
immediacy, the same joy and relief there was only funny rubbery
emptiness before all of this. She was free. For the first time. Take
her pleasure and hit the road. Just like everybody else. Both of
them.

  There was no love happening here and no love happening
anywhere. And later, on thinking through all of this, Millie
thought she should have known that earlier today when she felt
momentarily that her body was composed of eyes which were
seeing all the faces, all the smiling smirking self righteous faces of
boys and men who now came to memory, a memory of the future.

  Fake as hell, and a cheat, she becoming just another run
of the mill girl who threw the past into tomorrow and called new
and first time. And once upon a time, having been giggly enough
to actually believe it. And this woman who was having sex with
her was a desperate woman, a stupid and blind blockhead of a
woman, filled with her own self importance, filled with a self
righteousness. Wanting Millie only for woman fuck and nothing
else. Using her like all the boys used her body. All the time. She
had come here for completeness. She was just being had one
more time.

 She would hold Miss Hendricks to her promise though.
She would see to that.

  Miss Hendricks seeing her as all the others had seen her,
as all those boys and men she had seen looking at her, reflected in
her body eyes, all millions of them. And using them as community
mirrors.

 Sharing was fine, in order to reflect themselves and be
sure there was nothing in her or them, nothing that would need
past the moment, nothing that would grow dependent on her or
some other girl, only nascent anger in these past and future boys
and men, anger they cultivated like bees around honey.

 Fuck 'em and forget 'em. And a big amen to that.
Because honey can't sting, but it can trap a bee, trap them but
good, and the anger and rejection and killing inducing words were
always at the ready, for pushing themselves out of the trap.

 It was damn time Millicent did some of that her own self.

  Miss Hendricks coming, gasping, "I love you,
baby" and Millicent felt overjoyed in the fact she herself did not
feel a damn thing. And that felt pretty great. Not feeling was like
a feeling in itself.

 . Nobody felt love for Millie. No one ever would. It was
bed Olympics And she was teaching the old bat now. No soul
topography explorations. Such ideas, such expectations, even on
the most minimal level could get a person ditched before anything
like contact of any sort was even made.

 People sensed that. She sensed it of this foolish woman.
Like a bad aroma and it sent them running fast and hard. She
knew about cowards and fools and stupid little whiny boys who
could be broken so very very easily. Especially the grown up
kind. The ones so unaware of themselves. She knew them very
well.. From the inside out.

 Confection in a chaotic world. And she was desperately
happy that she didn't give a damn about the teacher or anyone
else, anymore than anyone had ever given a damn about her. It
tasted shockingly sweet.

 And Millie felt ice cold, as this woman cooed and kissed
her and said the things Millie was ashamed to admit she had said
to all those boys.  And Millie felt the thirsty need for vengeance,
knowing it's built into all of this; it's one of the major kicks of the
whole thing. Dancing round the sharp butcher knife edge and
skewering just before being skewered needs no self justification at
all. Just timing and talent.

  It's the first commandment. And would she take pity on
those who were as she once was? She would not give them the
time of day. And she told the teach it was time to exact the
payment.

 Miss Hendricks, besotted of the girl, did not hear her for a
time. Then she begged off till later. She could talk to the nigger
boys any time at all. No, Millie said, you said you would pay for
me fucking you; I now demand payment..

 It took some time for Millie to get Miss Hendricks around
to believing that the girl was as serious as hell. The woman
sighing, leaving the girl's body most reluctantly, finally agreeing
to get dressed, to go with Millie, to talk to the boys. Miss
Hendricks had never talked to nigger boys from the projects. Miss
Hendricks thought she could handle them like she could handle
the white boy bullies she had dealt with in the past.

 Miss Hendricks was about to get the surprise of her little
life. Millie smiled as she and the woman dressed, the woman
having Millie kiss her flabby old tits first for good measure.

 Millie thought, after this little event is over, she would just
exact payment from everybody else in cold hard cash.