Early Spring 01 Broken Flower (5 page)

"You'd better go away, Ian," I said. "Mama will be mad."
"Don't be silly. I'm your older brother. Let me see," he said. "I'd like to compare you to this picture I brought up on my computer."
He showed it to me. It did look like my chest. I lowered my arms and he studied me.
"Holy schmoly," he muttered. "That's not baby fat. I assume you have pubic hair as well."
I nodded. That's what Mama had called it the night in the bathroom.
"Don't tell Mama I let you see my chest," I said.
"Of course
I
won't," he said, looking insulted that I would even suggest such a thing. "My research and observations are not something anyone else should know about, not even Father or Mother for that matter, much less Grandmother Emma. It will be something kept solely between you and me. Let's both swear to that. Put your right hand over your heart. Go on."
I did so and so did he.
"Do you swear never to reveal my research and involvement concerning your condition of precocious puberty?"
It sounded very official. "yes," I said.
"So do I and that's that," he said with his characteristic firmness.
He turned and left my bathroom.
How amazing, I thought. I had another special secret, this time with Ian, sealed with an official oath. I had never shared anything as important with him as this.
I didn't know if I should be sad or happy anymore.
I looked at myself in the mirror again. Ian had been very impressed with my buds. I slowly brought my right finer to my nipple. It wasn't the way Dr. Dell'Acqua had touched me, but it gave me a strange, new feeling, which both frightened and interested me. I had never thought to do that before and I had never felt like this before. My face even reddened.
I was staring at myself so long and so intently. I didn't hear my mother come into the bathroom and had no idea how long she was standing there.
"Oh. God," she said. She whimpered like a puppy and
I
immediately stopped touching myself, but it was too late because she began to cry again.
I started to cry, too.
She quickly embraced me. "It's all right, Jordan. It's not wrong for you to be curious about yourself. I was as well when I was growing up. I just can't fathom...can't get myself to accept it so quickly in relation to you. But don't worry. Dr. Dell'Acqua will help us."
"Okay," I said.
She didn't know it, but if Dr. Dell'Acqua was unable to help us. Ian surely would.

Mama rushed me along to get dressed. She seemed to have a need to be as busy as she could. Maybe it kept her from crying. Even though she had stopped at Ian's room to knock on his door and tell him to come down to dinner, he was late again. Grandmother Emma was furious, not only because of Ian, but because Daddy had not come home for dinner either and it was the third night this week,

"Why isn't he coming home this time?" she asked Mama.
"You'll have to ask him. I'm tired of making excuses for him."
"Excuses for him? When a man doesn't come home for dinner as often as Christopher doesn't," she told my mother, "something is sick in his marriage."
Mama stared at her. I could set something very explosive building in her fact. Her cheeks had turned the shade of crimson like cheeks turn when someone is in a very hot room. Her eyes tightened and it looked like she had stopped breathing. I glanced at
Grandmother Emma and saw that even she was a little frightened by my mother's reaction. She had no idea how much flammable tension and sorrow was swirling about in my mother's heart, otherwise she might not have been so quick to snap a spark in her fact. Mama's shoulders rose slowly, as if her whole body was being pumped with air like a party balloon.
'Did it ever, ever occur to you, even for a moment. Emma, that Christopher might be finding something sick in this house and not in his marriage?'" she began, speaking in a rather controlled, calm voice, which surprised me.
Suddenly, she brought her fist down on the table and the plates and glasses jumped like animations that had just been brought to life.
"Did it ever occur to you that your constant needling might be destroying all of us!" she screamed.
I had never seen Grandmother Emma back away from an argument with Mama as quickly, but this time she just calmly set down her napkin and rose.
"I will not take my dinner with such insolence and primitive behavior," she said, turned, and started out.
Nancy had just entered with the platter of sliced filet mignon.
"Bring my dinner to my office.
I
have lost my appetite in here," Grandmother Emma told her, and continued to walk out of the dining room.
Nancy stood there gaping at us.
Mama looked stunned herself at what she had accomplished: driven Grandmother Emma out of her own dining room.
"I guess I'll never hear the end of this one," Mama muttered. She looked at Nancy. "Well, you can serve us here, Nancy. I haven't lost my appetite."
Just as Nancy brought the platter to the table. Ian entered, oblivious to everything as usual. However, he immediately noticed Grandmother Emma was not with us.
"What, she sick?" he asked, nodding at the empty chair and sitting.
Mama sucked in her breath and brought her hands to her head, resting her elbows on the table.
Ian looked at me for an answer. I didn't know what to say or how to begin to describe what had just happened.
"Just eat your dinner, Ian," Mama finally said, lifting her face away from her hands.
Ian shrugged and began to serve himself. Mania looked at me and I started to eat as well. We said little to each other. It was as though Grandmother Emma was still sitting there glaring at us. I saw that Ian suspected Grandmother Emma had found out about me. He gave me some quizzical looks and then waited patiently for his opportunity to talk to me after dinner.
Mama went right up to her room, first telling us not to make any noise or touch anything forbidden. "I don't want any more trouble with your grandmother tonight," she said.
After she started up the stairs. Ian suggested we go outside. "I want to talk to you," he told me. He looked around and added, "It's safer outside. C'mon, Jordan."
I followed him out. We continued down the steps. I gazed down the driveway at the street, anticipating the possibility of Daddy's arrival, but the street was quiet with barely any traffic.
All the time we had been living at Grandmother Emma's house, Ian and
I
rarely took walks together. Ian was too interested in making discoveries in nature and if I tagged along, it would be as if
I
were walking alone anyway. He wouldn't say much to me and I could stay interested just so long in his lectures about a stick of weed or a new species of bug. We were always warned about leaving any toys around the grounds or disturbing the flower beds, bushes, or lawn furniture. We never had any friends over to play with us here either. My mother had been considering having my seventh year birthday party outside by the pool, but it was only five days away now and she had done nothing about invitations or planning.
"With all that's happening." she told me, "I just can't concentrate on it. We'll have our own little birthday party for you, Jordan.'
I hadn't had a birthday party with school friends or preschool friends since I was four anyway, but I had been invited to many parties--in fact, to Missy Littleton's just two weeks ago--and even at this young age. I felt a sense of obligation to return the invitation to those who had invited me, I was very disappointed. Grandmother Emma wasn't, I was sure.
"Did Mother tell Grandmother Emma about you?" he asked immediately. "Or did Father tell her?"
"No," I said. "They argued about Daddy's not coming home and then Mama banged the table and yelled at her and she wouldn't stay at the dinner table. She went to her office to eat."
"Banged the table and yelled at her? Holy schmoly. Sorry
I
missed it," he said. He wasn't even interested in the details of their argument. His mind was already traveling on another highway. "Anyway," he said, "I thought I should help you understand more about precocious puberty."
Ian had more of his computer-printer printouts with him in his back pocket when we walked out of the house. It was still light outside, the final minutes of twilight making it seem like the sun was hanging on for dear life before sinking below the horigon. Stars were just showing, popping out of the darkening blue like bubbles rising to the surface. This year spring was much warmer than it had been last year and I thought the birds especially were a lot happier about it. There seemed to be more of them and they were charting louder and more frequently.
"How do the birds know when to return?" I asked Ian once, and it was like the best question I had ever asked him.
I
could see the respect and
appreciation in his face for asking a question he didn't consider childish.
"Lower animals and birds have something called instinct," he told me. "It works better than clocks. It doesn't stop until they die."
"Can you see it?"
"No, no. Look, can you see your hearing, your tasting, your smelling? We know about the world around us from our five senses, but the animals and birds have a sixth sense, their instinct. It just clicks in their bodies and they know nature has told them it's time to return. When you're older. I'll help you understand it better," he promised.
Ian was always promising something like that, but not to get rid of me. I really believed he meant it and might even have made a note in his journal. I knew he kept one in which he made notations about things he observed and learned. No one was allowed to see it, not even Mama. He kept it locked up in his desk drawer.
"What exactly did the doctor or Mother tell you about your period?" he asked as we walked down the well-manicured lawn path that veered around the house and back toward the pool, the cabana, and the tennis court Daddy used with his friends from time to time.
"It will come every month," I recited, "but it won't kill me."
"Hardly. That's it? Nothing about female egg production in your body?"
"Eggs in my body? No," I said, grimacing.
"They are called eggs, but they don't look like the eggs we eat for breakfast, Jordan."
He looked back and then he took out his papers and pulled one out to show me a picture.
"Sit here," he said, nodding at one of the decorative iron benches on Grandmother Emma's front lawn. I did and he sat beside me. "See, this is a female egg. It's really just a cell called an ovum. Once a month your brain sends a message to your reproductive organs to release an egg to receive the sperm."
"What's that?"
He showed me another picture. "Looks like a..."
"Tadpole?"
"Yes," I said.
"It actually swims inside you, inside the female, trying to get to the egg. If it does and it's successful, conception or the creation of a baby starts inside the female. There are literally thousands of them at once."
"Babies?"
"No, Jordan. Sperm."
I looked at the two pictures and shook my head. I couldn't imagine how these two things could become a baby, but if Ian said they did. I was sure they did. And thousands of tadpoles? How did they all fit inside anyway? I was getting suspicious. Was this real or something Ian was creating like one of his science fiction stories?
"Where does this tadpole come from?" I asked.
"From the male, from out of his penis," he said. "He puts it into the female through her vagina," he added, and I popped up like toast in a toaster. What a horrible idea!
"You're lying to me, Ian. And you're being disgusting, too!" He shook his head. "Why do you say that?"
"Who would let someone pee into her? 1 don't know why you're lying, but it's not funny," I said, and walked away quickly. I headed toward the rear of the house. I felt like throwing up our dinner. The very thought of what Ian told me made me shiver.
Ian caught up with me quickly and tugged my arm. "I understand why you're upset," he said. "You're way too young for this, but your body is forcing you to learn it and you'd better," he warned.
I spun on him. "Mama never said anything terrible like that."
He sighed and shook his head. "Believe me, Jordan, she will. She's just overwhelmed,'" he said.
"Why do you know everything?"
"There's no point in getting mad at me, Jordan. You can't get rid of the message by killing the messenger."
"What's that mean? I don't know what you say most of the time."
He produced the rest of his sheets. "There's a lot more to explain and I have the illustrations to show you."
"I don't want to see it!" I cried. I did start to burst into tears. "Stop
it!"
I ran this time and went all the way to the pool before stopping. From this position. I could see Grandmother Emma's bedroom. Her lights were on, but her curtains were drawn closed. That didn't mean she wasn't peering out at us. There were many times I caught her doing that.
Who cares? Let her, I thought, and flopped onto a pool lounge. I folded my arms tightly across my chest and stared defiantly at the house. It suddenly looked more like a fortress, a castle with a dungeon and a torture chamber just waiting for me.
Ian walked slowly toward me. "Do you want me to help you understand all this or don't you?" he asked.
"I don't want you to lie and frighten me or make me sick with ugly ideas."
"I'm not going to lie about anything. Jordan, and I don't need to frighten you. I don't need to play these childish games. You have a serious problem and the quicker you understand it all, the better it will be for you."
I looked up at him. I knew he wasn't lying about that. Everything that was happening to me was turning our world, or at least Mama's and my world, upside down.
"Well, then don't tell me silly things."
"It's not silly. You don't understand. ' He sat beside me on the lounge and we both looked at the house. "No one would let someone pee in them."
"Of course they wouldn't," he said.
"You said they did."
"Something else comes out of a male person besides urine. When he does sexual things, he--"
"
I know. His penis grows and grows."
"You know that?"
I shrugged. I didn't know what it meant. I had heard some girls laughing about a boy when they were in the bathroom and I was there, too. I heard what they said about his bulge.
"But you don't know why or what happens next, right?"
"I don't want to know," I said suddenly. I was getting frightened and I didn't know why I should. All I knew was I was shivering
Ian looked at me without speaking for a long time. I could see his mind was turning thoughts over and studying each one carefully, as if each was a fine jewel too precious to display unless fully appreciated.
"Well, maybe you know enough for now," he decided. "The question is why what is happening to you is happening and whether or not Dr. Dell'Acqua can stop it until it's the right time for it. If she does that. I guess you're fine with what you know right now, but if you have any questions and you're too embarrassed to ask anyone else, ask me. Okay?"
"Okay," I said. It was easier for me to agree to putting it all off to some future date.
"Someday. I'm going to be a doctor myself," he told me. This was the first time he had told me his ambitions. I didn't think he had told Mama or Daddy yet. "I've just not decided on what kind, whether or not I want to deal directly with people or work in a research center."
I had no idea what kind of work he would do in a research center. I didn't even know what that was, but I was still very impressed.
"You'll be all right. I'm sure," he said, and stood up. He looked around with his hands on his hips like Daddy when he was thinking or deciding something. "I overheard Father tell Grandmother Emma that we were definitely going up to the lake next week, and I'll let you in on a little secret," he said, turning back to me.
"What?"
"Grandmother Emma suggested we stay up there all summer."
"She did?"
"Yes, because Mother won't permit us to be sent to sleepaway summer camp. Father thought it would be a good idea, only he won't be there with us all the time. Just on weekends. Maybe," Ian added. "Did Mother say anything about it to you?" I shook my head. He smirked. "Wouldn't surprise me if she doesn't even know yet," he said, and started back to the house.
If she doesn't even know yet? We knew, but Mama didn't? This house was big, but it was filling up with secrets. I thought, secrets not only in shut-up rooms and closets, but also inside everyone's hearts. One day they all might just blow off the roof and everyone will see who and what we really were inside this grand house people treated more like a national treasure. Then maybe so many people wouldn't be so envious of us and want to be us.
When it grew darker. I also went back into the house and decided to watch some television. Ian had already gone up to his room and Mama had locked herself away. Daddy was still not home from wherever he had gone instead of coming to dinner. The house was so quiet. I could hear water running in a pipe to Nancy's bathroom. When the house was like this, and everyone was in his or her own place. I felt very small and wanted to curl up in a ball like one of the caterpillars Ian had in a tray. As soon as they were touched, they tightened into a circle. Ian said that was just being protective. He called it hope. Maybe that was what I was doing, too, hoping what frightened and bothered me would all just go away.