The Signature of All Things

explore their genitalia at all. In another medical journal, she learned that sexual precocity can be brought on by bedwetting, by too many beatings in childhood, by irritation of the rectal area due to worms, or (and here Alma’s breath had tightened) by “premature intellectual growth.” That must have been what had happened to her, she thought. For if the mind is overly fostered at a young age, then perversions will inevitably arise, and the victim will seek self-indulgent substitutes for intercourse. This was primarily a problem in the development of boys, she read, but it was, in rare cases, expressed in girls. Young people who self-indulged in their own bodies would someday grow into married people who tormented their spouses with the urge for intercourse every night of the week, until the family would fall into sickness, decay, and bankruptcy. Self-indulgence also destroyed the health of the body, creating a rounded back and a limping gait.
    The habit, in other words, did not advertise itself well. But Alma had not originally intended to make such a habit of self-pleasure. She made the most earnest and sincere vows to stop. Or she did so initially. She promised herself that she would stop reading salacious material. She promised herself she would stop indulging in sensual reveries about George Hawkes and his damp shock of dark hair. She would never imagine putting his hidden member in her mouth again. She swore never again to visit the binding closet, not even if a book needed repair!
    Inevitably, her resolve would wither. She promised herself that she would visit the binding closet just one more time. Just one more time, she would allow her head to fill with these stirring and abhorrent thoughts. Just one more time, she would swirl her fingers about her quim and lips, feeling her legs clench and her face grow heated, and her body yank loose once more into a stew of marvelous havoc. Just one more time.
    And then, perhaps, once more again.
    Soon it became obvious there was no defeating this, and eventually Alma had no choice but to silently sanction her own behavior and continue on with it. How else could she have dispatched the desire that amassed itself in her, every hour of the day? Moreover, the effects of this self-befoulment upon her health and spirit appeared so markedly different from the warnings in the journals that for a while she wondered if she was doing it incorrectly, such that it was accidentally beneficial, rather than harmful? What else could explain the fact that her secret activity did not bring on any of the dire effects about which the medical journals warned? The act brought Alma relief, not sickness. It flushed her cheeks with healthy color, rather than draining her countenance of all vitality. Yes, the compulsion brought her a sense of shame, but always—once the act was complete—she felt herself swept up into a vivid and precise state of mental clarity. Straight from the binding closet she would run back to her research, where she would labor with a renewed sense of priority, catapulted back into study by energetic lucidity, by a bodily pulse of useful, thrilling animation. It was always afterward that she was at her brightest, her most awake. It was always afterward that her work truly thrived.
    What’s more, Alma now had a place to work. She had a study of her own—or at least she had something that she called a study. After she had cleared all her father’s superfluous books from the carriage house, she had taken over one of the larger, disused ground-floor tack rooms for herself, and had turned it into a place of scholarly refuge. It was a lovely situation. The White Acre carriage house was a beautiful brick building, regal and serene, with tall, vaulted ceilings and wide, generous windows. Alma’s study was the finest space within that structure, blessed with steady northern light, a clean tile floor, and a view of her mother’s immaculate Grecian garden. The room smelled of hay and dust and horses, and was filled with an agreeable clutter of books, sieves, plates, pans, specimens, correspondence, jars, and old sweets tins. For Alma’s nineteenth birthday, her mother had given her a camera lucida , which allowed her to magnify and trace botanical specimens for more accurate scientific drawing. She now owned a fine set of Italian prisms, too, which made her feel a bit like Newton. She had a good solid desk, and a wide, simple laboratory bench, for performing experiments.