In One Person

I
had
penetrated her, surely I had not penetrated her
there
!
    M RS. H ADLEY WAS SUITABLY impressed that I had conquered the
shadow
word, but because I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell Martha Hadley about Miss Frost, I had some difficulty describing how I’d mastered one of my unpronounceables.
    “Whatever made you think of saying ‘shad roe’ without the
r
, Billy?”
    “Ah, well …” I started to say, and then stopped—in the manner of Grandpa Harry.
    It was a mystery to Mrs. Hadley, and to me, how “the shad-roe technique” (as Martha Hadley called it) could be applied to my other pronunciation problems.
    Naturally, upon leaving Mrs. Hadley’s office—once again, on the stairs in the music building—I ran into Atkins.
    “Oh, it’s
you
, Tom,” I said, as casually as I could.
    “So now it’s ‘Tom,’ is it?” Atkins asked me.
    “I’m just sick of the last-name culture of this awful school—aren’t you?” I asked him.
    “Now that you mention it,” Atkins said bitterly; I could tell that poor Tom’s feathers were still ruffled from our run-in at the First Sister Public Library.
    “Look, I’m sorry about the other night,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to add to whatever misery Kittredge had caused you by calling you his ‘messenger boy.’ I apologize.”
    Atkins had a way of often seeming on the verge of tears. If Dr. Harlow had ever wanted to summon before us a quaking example of what our school physician meant by “excessive crying in boys,” I imagined that he needed only to snap his fingers and ask Tom Atkins to burst into tears at morning meeting.
    “It seemed that I probably
interrupted
you and Miss Frost,” Atkins said searchingly.
    “Miss Frost and I talk a lot about writing,” I told him. “She tells me what books I should read. I tell her what I’m interested in, and she gives me a novel.”
    “What novel did she give you the other night?” Tom asked. “What
are
you interested in, Bill?”
    “Crushes on the wrong people,” I told Atkins. It was astonishing how quickly my first sexual relationship, with anyone, had emboldened me. I felt encouraged—even compelled—to say things I’d heretofore been reluctant to say, not only to a timid soul like Tom Atkins but even to such a powerful nemesis and forbidden love as Jacques Kittredge.
    Granted, it was a lot easier to be brave with Kittredge in German. I didn’t feel sufficiently “emboldened” to tell Kittredge my true feelings and actual thoughts; I wouldn’t have dared to say “crushes on the wrong people” to Kittredge, not even in German. (Not unless I pretended it was something Goethe or Rilke had written.)
    I saw that Atkins was struggling to say something—maybe about what time it was, or something with the
time
word in it. But I was wrong; it was “crushes” that poor Tom couldn’t say.
    Atkins suddenly blurted: “
Thrushes
on the wrong people—that’s a subject that interests me, too!”
    “I said ‘crushes,’ Tom.”
    “I can’t say that word,” Atkins admitted. “But I am
very
interested in that subject. Perhaps, when you’re finished reading whatever novel Miss Frost gave you on that subject, you could give it to me. I like to read novels, you know.”
    “It’s a novel by James Baldwin,” I told Atkins.
    “It’s about being in love with a
black
person?” Atkins asked.
    “No. What gave you that idea, Tom?”
    “James Baldwin is black, isn’t he, Bill? Or am I thinking of another Baldwin?”
    James Baldwin was black, of course, but I didn’t know that. I’d not read any of his other books; I had never heard of him. And
Giovanni’s Room
was a library book—as such, it didn’t have a dust jacket. I’d not seen an author photo of James Baldwin.
    “It’s a novel about a man who’s in love with another man,” I told Tom quietly.
    “Yes,” Atkins whispered. “That’s what I thought it would be about, when you first mentioned the ‘wrong people.’”
    “I’ll let you read it when I’m finished,” I said. I had finished
Giovanni’s Room
, of course, but I wanted to read it again, and talk to Miss Frost about it, before I let Atkins read it, though I was certain there was nothing about the narrator being black—and poor Giovanni, I knew, was Italian.
    In fact, I even remembered that line near the end of the novel when the narrator is looking at himself in a mirror—“my body is dull and white and dry.” But I simply wanted to reread
Giovanni’s Room
right