Cutler 05 - Darkest Hour

demanded. She continued to gaze at me without speaking for a moment, her eyes drinking in my body. What she thought made her draw the corners of her mouth in.
    "You should wear a tighter brassiere," she finally declared. "Your little breasts bounce too much when you walk and anyone can see all you've got, just like Shirley Potter," she said, smirking.
    Shirley Potter's family was the poorest we knew. Shirley had to wear hand-me-downs and some were too tight and some were too big. She was two years older than I was, and the way the boys would spin their heads around to peek down her blouse whenever she bent over was a favorite topic for Emily and the Thompson twins.
    "Mamma bought this for me," I replied. "It's my size."
    "It's too loose," she insisted and then nearly smiled and added, "I know you let Niles Thompson put his fingers in there when you were in the woods with him, didn't you? And I bet it wasn't the first time either."
    "No, I didn't, and you shouldn't have told Papa I was buttoning my blouse when I came out of the woods."
    "You were!"
    "I was not."
    She stepped closer to me, undaunted. Despite her thinness, Emily could be more intimidating than Miss Walker and certainly more intimidating than Mamma.
    "Do you know what happens sometimes when you let a boy touch you in there?" she asked. "You break out into a rash all over your neck and it could stay for days. One of these times that will happen and Papa will take one look at you and see the blotches and he'll know."
    "I didn't let him," I whined, and cowered back. I hated how Emily could glare. Her expression turned into a tight smile. She spoke with her lips so thin, I thought they would snap.
    "It shoots out of them, you know, the seed. Even if it just lands on your panties, it could seep in and make you pregnant."
    I stared at her. What did she mean, it shoots out of them? How could it? Was she right?
    "Do you know what else they do?" she continued. "They touch themselves and make themselves swell up until the seed comes gushing out into their hands and then . . . they touch you there," she said, glancing at the space between my thighs, "and that can make you pregnant, too."
    "No, it can't," I said, but not confidently. "You're just trying to scare me."
    She smiled.
    "Think I care if you get pregnant and have to walk around with a fat belly at your age? Think I care if you scream in excruciating pain because the baby's too big to come out? Go on, get pregnant," she challenged. "Maybe the same thing will happen to you that happened to your real mother and then we'll be rid of you finally." She turned and started away. Then she stopped and looked back. "Next time he touches you, you'd better be sure he hasn't touched himself first," she warned, and left me standing there in fear. I started to shake with anxiety and quickly put on my after-school clothes.
    That night after dinner, I went quietly into Papa's office. He was away on one of his business trips so I could go in there without fear of his seeing what it was I wanted to do. I wanted to read from the book he had that explained the human body and reproduction, to see if there was anything written that confirmed the things Emily had told me. I couldn't find anything, but that didn't make me feel any easier. I was too frightened to ask Mamma about it and I didn't know anyone but Shirley Potter who knew anything about boys and sex. I thought I would eventually work up enough nerve to ask her.
    The next day, after lunch, just as Eugenia and I had planned, I helped her into her wheelchair and we went out for our usual afternoon outing. Emily had gone upstairs to her room and Mamma was away having lunch at Emma Whitehall's with her other lady friends. Papa still hadn't returned from his business trip to Richmond.
    Eugenia felt so much lighter to me when I lifted her from her bed and helped her into her chair. I could feel her bones protruding. Her eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into her skull and her lips looked so much paler than they had looked just a few days ago, but she was so enthusiastic that her shortage of strength didn't dissuade her and what she lacked in energy, she replaced with excitement.
    I wheeled her down the driveway slowly, pretending interest in the Cherokee roses and wild violets. The buds of the flowering crab trees had burst into a deep pink. In the fields around us, the wild honeysuckle wove a carpet of white and rose. The blue jays and mockingbirds seemed just as excited by our