Chapter 18 18

What Jess sees through sunglasses and a homemade filter is so wondrous and frightening that her mind just can't figure it out at first.In the afternoon sky, there seemed to be a huge round beauty spot, like the one under the corner of Anne Frances' mouth. "If I talk in my dream... because I haven't seen my baby for a whole week..." It was at this moment that she first felt Daddy's hand on her right nipple, squeezed it gently there for a moment, moved to the left nipple, and back to the right one, as if comparing sizes.He was panting fast now, and the sound of her breathing sounded like a steam engine against her ear, and she was aware again of the hard thing against her ass.

"Will anyone testify?" Marvin Gaye, the auctioneer of souls, went on. "Witness, witness?" dad?Are you OK? She felt another subtle stabbing pain in her breasts - pleasure tinged with pain.Roast turkey with treacle and chocolate gravy—yet this time she also felt panic and a sort of bewilderment of astonishment. It's all right, he said.However, his voice sounded almost like a stranger's.Yes, it's all right, but don't look back.He squirmed, his hand on her breast moved away.The hand on her thigh moved up even further, reaching the hem of the sundress. Dad, what are you doing?

Her question wasn't exactly fear, it was mostly curiosity.But there was still a hint of fear, like a thin red line.Above her head, in the dark blue sky, hangs a black orb, surrounded by a strange furnace-like ring of light that glows blazingly. do you love me baby Yes, of course-- Well, don't worry about anything.I will never hurt you.I want you to be happy.You just watch the eclipse.I'm here to make you happy. I'm not sure if I want to watch it, Dad.The sense of confusion intensifies, and the red line is widening.I'm worried about burning my eyes.Burn that what's your name?

"But I believe," Marvin sang, "that a woman is a man's best friend...and I will be faithful to her...until the end of my life." don’t worry.He's out of breath now.You have twenty seconds.There is still plenty of time.So don't worry, don't look back. She heard the elastic snap, but it was his, not hers.Her shorts were still in place, though she realized that if she looked down she could see them - he had held her skirt there. Do you love me? he asked again.She was seized by a dreadful presentiment that the correct answer to the question had turned sour.However, she was only ten years old, and this was still the only answer she could give.She told him she loved him.

"Witness, witness..." Marvin begged, now in a weak voice. Her father wriggled, pressing the hard thing even tighter against her ass.Jesse suddenly realized what it was—not a handle like a screwdriver, or a mace from a toolbox in the pantry.That's for sure—consistent with her panic, she had a moment of malicious pleasure that had more to do with her mother than her father. You don't speak for me, that's what you get.She looked at the black ball in the sky through several layers of smoked glass and thought.And then thought: I guess, that's what we both got.Her vision suddenly blurred, and the pleasure disappeared, leaving only a growing panic.Whoops, it's my retinas... must be my retinas are starting to burn.

Now, the hand on her thigh moved between her legs, slid up and down, and stopped at her crotch, covering it firmly.He shouldn't have done this, she thought.His hands were misplaced.unless-- He is molesting you. A voice in her head spoke suddenly. In the years that followed, she eventually identified the voice as Mrs. Burlingame's, which often annoyed her.Sometimes it is exhortation, more often it is blame, and almost always a voice of disapproval.Unpleasant things, mean things, painful things... if you try hard enough to ignore them, they will eventually go away.That was Mrs. Burlingame's point of view.This voice stubbornly insists that even the most obvious falsehoods are actually true.The whole content of a tolerant thought is too lofty and difficult for mere mortals to comprehend.There were times later (mainly when she was eleven and twelve, when she called the voice Miss Petrie, after her second-grade teacher), that she would raise her hand to her ear, trying to block the voice. Nagging, reasonable voices—of course, useless.Because it came from the part where her ears couldn't reach.But in the moment of despondency that dawned on her, a solar eclipse darkened the western Maine sky, and the reflections of stars twinkled in the depths of Duxco Lake.In that moment she was aware (a little bit) of what the hand between her legs was trying to do.She only heard the friendly, genuine part of the voice.She caught on to what the voice said with both horror and relief.

That's just obscenity.That's it, Jesse. Are you sure?she yelled. Yes.The voice answered firmly—and over time, Jesse would find, it was almost always yes, right or wrong.He meant it as a joke, that's all.He doesn't know he scares you.So don't talk, don't ruin such a wonderful afternoon.It's nothing special. Don't you believe it, baby!Another voice - a brusque voice - responded.Sometimes he acts as if you are his damn girlfriend instead of his daughter.That's exactly what he's doing right now!He's not molesting you, Jesse!He is fucking you! She was almost sure that was a lie, almost sure that that strange, school-sufficient phrase referred to something that could not be done with one hand.But she still has doubts.She felt a sudden bout of frustration, remembering Karen Walkauin telling her never to let a boy put his tongue in his mouth because that would conceive a baby in her throat.Sometimes that happens, Karen said.However, the woman who vomited out the baby almost always died, and usually the baby too.I would never let a boy French kiss me.Karen said.I can let a boy touch my head if I really love him.But I never want a baby in my throat.How would you eat in that case?

At the time, Jessie found the concept of pregnancy both outrageous and hilarious—only Karen Walkau would worry about whether the lights were on when the fridge was closed.Who else would ask such a question but her?Now, however, there is a glimmer of eccentric logic to this idea.Assuming—just assuming—that’s true?If you could get a baby out of a boy's tongue, if that could happen, then— And that hard thing against her ass.That's not a screwdriver, or Mom's mace hammer. Jessie tried to squeeze her legs, a movement that seemed ambiguous to her but clearly not to him.He gasped—a painful, ghastly sound—and pressed his fingers even tighter against the sensitive mound just inside the crotch of her shorts.It hurt a little, and she stiffened against him and moaned.

She remembered much later that her father had probably misinterpreted her moans as passion.Perhaps that was what he was thinking, and however he interpreted her moaning, it marked the climax of this eerie episode.He suddenly arched up under her and lifted her up flat.This movement is both frightening and strangely comfortable... He is so powerful, and she is repeatedly moved like this.For a moment, she almost understood the nature of the chemicals at work here, dangerous yet powerfully alluring.Control of them may also be within her grasp - that is, if she wants to control them. I don't, she thought.I want nothing to do with it.Whatever it was, it was disgusting, horrific, and terrifying.

Then something hard was against her ass, and what wasn't the handle of a screwdriver or Mom's hammer twitched.A hot liquid sprayed out, soaking a piece of her shorts. It's sweat.said at once the voice that would one day belong to Mrs. Burlingame.That's all.He realizes that you're afraid of him, of sitting on his lap, and it makes him nervous, and you should be sorry. Sweat, oh my!Another voice, the voice that will belong to Ruth one day in the future, retorted.It spoke softly, forcefully, but not without fear.You know what it is, Jessie—you heard Maddy and the other girls talking about it one night at a pajama party after they thought you'd finally fallen asleep.This is exactly that stuff.Cindy Lessard calls it semen.She said it was white and it came out of a man's dick like toothpaste.That's what produces babies.Not French kissing.

For a moment, in the passivity of his orgasm, she was held there rigidly, bewildered, frightened, and somehow agitated.She listened to him gasp after breath, exhaling damp breath.Then, slowly relaxing his hips and ass, he lowered her back down. Look no further, baby.He said.Although he was still panting, his voice was almost back to normal.The dreadful excitement was gone from it, and there was nothing vague about what she felt now.That was purely a deep relief.Whatever happened - if anything - it was over. dad-- No, stop it.Your time is up. He gently removed the pile of smoked glass from her hand and kissed her neck even more softly.As he kissed her, Jessie stared at the strange, darkened lake.She was vaguely aware that the falcon was still calling.The crickets were deceived, and began their evening song two or three hours earlier. A remnant image floated before her eyes, like a circular black tattoo surrounded by an irregular ring of green flames.She thought: If I look at it for too long, if I burn my retina, maybe I'll have to look at that image for the rest of my life.Like what you see after someone knocks out a flashlight right in front of your eyes. Why don't you go in and change into your jeans, baby?I thought, maybe wearing a sundress wasn't such a good idea after all. He said it in a dry, emotionless tone that seemed to imply that the sundress was her idea (even if it wasn't yours, which you knew perfectly well. That Miss Petrie voice said immediately).Suddenly a new idea came to her: what if he decided to tell his mother what happened?The possibility was so frightening that Jesse burst into tears. I'm so sorry, Dad.She cried and put her arms around him, and pressed her face into the hollow of his neck, smelling the faint scent of his perfume, or cologne, whatever it was.If I did something wrong, I'm really, really, really sorry. God, no.He said.He still spoke in that dry, thoughtful tone, as if trying to decide whether to tell Sally what Jesse had done, or to sweep it under the rug and hide it.You've done nothing wrong, baby. do you still love me?she persisted.It occurred to her that she must be crazy to ask, to risk such an answer, that it would destroy her.But she had to ask. certainly.He answered her immediately.There was a little more life in his voice when he spoke, enough for her to understand that he was telling the truth (oh, how reassuring).But she still suspected that things had changed, all because of something she didn't understand. Obscenity is—obscenity is just an obscenity. She knew it had something to do with sex, but she didn't know how much, how serious it was.Maybe, it's not the "straight in" kind of stuff the girls talk about at pajama parties (except for the oddly knowledgeable Cindy Lessard, who calls it "deep sea diving with the long white pole") , a term that strikes Jesse as both horrific and comical).The fact that he didn't put that thing in her ass probably doesn't mean she's immune to what some girls say, even what the girls at her school call "having a baby."She thought again of what Karen had told her on the way home from school with Karen Walkauin last year.Jesse tried to reject those words.That was certainly not true, and even if it were true, he hadn't put his tongue in her mouth. Her mother's voice sounded in her head, loud and angry: Don't people say this: Squeaky wheels get greased! She felt the hot wet lump stuck to her ass, still expanding.Yes, she thought.I think this statement makes sense.The squeaky wheels did get lubricated, I think. dad-- He held up his hand, a gesture he used to make at the dinner table when Mommy and Maddy (usually Mommy) started getting angry about something, and Jessie couldn't remember Dad ever making that gesture to her.It only reinforced her current sense that something was frighteningly wrong here.Moreover, she made a terrible mistake (perhaps she agreed to wear a sundress), and the result was that things changed radically and unaccountably.The thought made her very uncomfortable, like some invisible fingers were relentlessly turning inside her internal organs. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that her father's gym shorts were on one side.Something sticks out of there - a pink fleshy thing.Certainly, that was not the handle of the screwdriver. Before she could look away, Tom Mechter caught her gaze and quickly adjusted the shorts so that the pink flesh disappeared.He frowned and grimaced, and in a blink of an eye he showed a disgusted grimace.Jesse's heart tightened again.He caught her eye, mistaking her casual glance for impolite curiosity. He spoke about what happened just now, and then cleared his throat.We need to talk about what just happened, baby.Of course not now.Now you have to hurry in and change your clothes, preferably take a shower too.Go, or miss the eclipse finale. She has lost all interest in solar eclipses.Of course, I will never tell him in this life.She just nodded and turned away.Dad, am I okay? His look of surprise, doubt, wariness—a mixture of expressions that intensified her uncomfortable feelings: angry hands churning inside her, rubbing her insides...Suddenly, it dawned on her that he felt the same way she did. Bad, maybe worse.In that moment of lucidity, nothing disturbed her but her own voice.She thought: You should, my God, you caused it! Yes.He said . . . but his tone didn't quite convince her.It's all right, Jesse.Now go and tidy up. Ok. She tried to smile at him - forced a smile - and did.Her father was stunned for a moment, and then smiled back.This made her feel a little better, and the moving hand in her body stopped stirring temporarily.But as she walked out of the large upstairs bedroom she and Maddy shared, the feeling began to return.Worst of all, she worried that he would feel compelled to tell her mother what had happened.In that case, what would mother think? That's our Jesse, isn't it?Squeaky wheels. A clothesline hangs in the middle of the bedroom, dividing it in half the way girls do at camp.She and Maddy hung up some old sheets on string and painted them with brightly colored patterns using Will's crayons.Back then, painting bed sheets and partitioning bedrooms was a great joy.But now it seemed silly and childish to her.Her elongated shadow danced startlingly in the center of the sheet, looking like a monstrous shadow.Even the scent of pine resin, which she usually liked, seemed overdone and boring.It's like spraying air freshener liberally around to cover up some bad smell. That's our Jesse.Never satisfied with the arrangements made by others, always looking for opportunities to make some changes.Never happy with other people's plans, never able to stay alone in peace. She hurried into the bathroom, trying to get ahead of that voice, and guess what, she couldn't.She turned on the light, yanked the sundress off her head, and threw it into the laundry basket, glad to be free of it.Eyes wide open, she looked at herself in the mirror, and saw a little girl's face surrounded by a big girl's hairstyle—a face now loosened from pins, curls, locks.It's a little girl's body, too—flat chest, thin hips—but not for long.It has started to change.It had done to her father what it had no right to do. I don't want to have boobs at all, and I don't want to have a curvy butt.she thought numbly.Who would have thought if they made such a thing happen? The thought made her aware again of the wet lump at the bottom of her shorts.She took off her shorts—cotton shorts from Sears Tower, once green, faded to gray now.She put her hands inside the waistband of her trousers and lifted her trousers curiously.There was a lump on the backside, but it wasn't sweat, and it didn't look like any toothpaste she'd ever seen, more like pearl-gray dishwashing detergent.Jessie looked down and sniffed cautiously.She smelled a faint smell that reminded her of lake water after a series of hot and dry weather, and the smell of well water for many years.She once brought him a glass of water that smelled particularly strong to her, and she asked him if he smelled it. He was shaking his head, no, he said cheerfully.But that doesn't mean there's no smell.All I can say is that I smoke too much.I guess it's the smell of the gravel aquifer, baby, trace inorganics, that's what it is, kind of smell.Which also means your mom has to spend some money on fabric softener. Trace inorganic matter.Thinking about it now, she sniffed the faint scent again.She couldn't figure out why it attracted her, but it did. The smell of sandy aquifers.That's all, the smell— Then the more assertive voice sounded.On this afternoon of the eclipse, it sounded a bit like her mother's voice (for example, he called her baby, which she sometimes called her when Jessie avoided chores or forgot a duty that annoyed her).But, Jessie knew, it was really her own grown-up voice.If the belligerent voice was distressing, it was strictly because it came too early.But it came anyway. Here it is, doing its best to bring her back together.She found its rough, loud voice strangely reassuring. That's what Cindy Lessard was talking about, that's the one—it's his cum, baby.I guess you should be thankful it's on your panties and nothing else.But stop telling yourself fairy tales about how you smell lake water, trace elements from sandy aquifers, or whatever.Karen Walkain is a douchebag, never before in the history of mankind has a woman conceived a baby in her throat.You know.Karen Walkain is no fool, though.I think she's seen this thing before.Now you see it too.Man stuff, semen. She suddenly felt nauseous—not so much from the thing as from the person who excreted it.Jessie tossed the shorts on top of the sundress in the grid basket.Then she pictured her mother emptying the grid basket and doing the laundry in the dank basement laundry room.She pulled this particular pair of shorts out of this basket and found this particular buildup.What would she think?Whoops, the mischievous, squeaky wheel at home has been lubricated, of course—what else? Her nausea turned to guilty fear.Jesse quickly took out the shorts.Suddenly that mild smell seemed to fill her nostrils, strong, non-irritating, and disgusting.Cream and coins.she thinks.That's what it smells like.Kneeling in front of the toilet, clutching the slumped shorts, she vomited.Before the smell of the partially digested hamburger entered the air, her complexion returned to ruddy.Then she turned on the cold tap of the sink and rinsed her mouth.Her fear of being here for an hour or two, throwing up on her knees in front of the toilet bowl, was starting to fade.Her stomach seemed to calm down, if only she could avoid that bland, copper-coins-and-cream smell. Holding her breath, she threw the shorts under the cold tap, rinsed them, wrung them out, and threw them back in the coffer basket.Then, she took a deep breath while brushing her hair away from her temples with the back of her wet hand.If Mommy asks about those wet shorts in the dirty laundry— You are already thinking like a criminal.That future lamented a voice that belonged to Mrs. Burlingame.You see, being a bad girl is too much for you, isn't it?I sure hope you'll-- Be quiet, you little bastard.Another voice growled in reply.You can nag as much as you want in the future.But now we have to deal with a, thing, if you don't mind, okay? No answer, fine.Jessie brushed her hair nervously, though few hairs were hanging down and sticking to her temples.When Mom asked what happened to the wet shorts in the laundry basket, Jessie simply said that it was too hot and she went swimming without changing them.All three siblings have done so at times this summer. Well, you better remember to put your shirt and shorts down the tap too, don't you, baby? correct.She agreed.good idea. She slips on the bathrobe that hangs behind the bathroom door and goes back to the bedroom to get the shorts and T-shirt she wore when her mother, brother, and sister left that morning—now it seems like a thousand years ago.She didn't see them at first, so she got down on her knees and looked under the bed. Another woman knelt like this.A voice commented.She had asked about the same smell.That smell of copper coins and cream. Jesse listened, but couldn't hear the words.Her mind was still on the shorts and the T-shirt—on the stories she was weaving.As she suspected, they were under the bed.She reaches for it. It comes from the well.The voice commented further.The smell from the well. Yes, yes, Jessie thought, grabbing her clothes and going back to the bathroom.The smell from the well, good.You are a poet and you don't even know it. She made him fall into a well.The voice said it was finally understood by Jesse. Jessie stood in a daze in the doorway of the bathroom. She suddenly felt a new and deadly fear.She realized that she actually heard the voice, and she realized that it was not like any other sound.It was like the sound you would normally hear on the radio late at night—a sound that might have come from somewhere very far away. Not that far, Jesse.She is also on her way to a solar eclipse. For a moment, the upper hall of the lakeside house in Daxko seemed to cease to exist.In its place was a tangled clump of blackberries, shadowless under the eclipse-darkened sky, and a distinct smell of sea salt.Jesse saw a scrawny woman in civilian dress, with black and white hair pulled into a bun.She was kneeling beside a cracked square plank, with a pile of white fabric beside her.Jessie knew it was a thin woman's petticoat.who are you?Jessie asked the woman, but she was gone. Jessie did look back to see if the ghostly thin woman had gone behind her.But there was no one in the upstairs hall, and here she was. She looked down at her arm and saw that it was covered with goosebumps. You are out of your mind.lamented the voice that would one day be Mrs. Burlingame.Oh, Jesse, you're not doing well, you're doing very badly.Now you are afraid that you will lose your mind and pay the price for it. "I didn't," she said, looking at her pale, contorted face in the bathroom mirror. "I'm not going to lose my mind!" She waited for a moment, in a kind of frightened uncertainty, to see if any sound—or the figure of a woman kneeling beside the broken plank, her petticoat spread out—returned here.But she neither heard nor saw anything.That annoying outsider, telling Jessie that she pushed him, took him down the well and was gone. Too nervous, baby.Said the voice that would one day become Ruth.It was clear to Jesse that while the voice didn't quite believe it, it decided that Jesse had better move on, now.You think of the woman with the petticoat next to you because you've been thinking about shorts all afternoon.That's it.If I were you, I'd forget about the whole thing. This is a brilliant idea.Jess quickly soaked the shorts and shirt under the tap, let them dry, and stepped into the shower by himself.She soaps and rinses.Drying off his body, he hurried back to the bedroom.Usually she never cared what she was wearing when rushing through the hall, but this time she cared.She didn't take the time to tie the yukata straps, but just wrapped them tightly around her body. She stopped again in the bedroom.She bit her lip, praying that the weird voice wouldn't come back, praying that there wouldn't be any more of those crazy auditory hallucinations or hallucinations, or whatever that was.Don't come back with anything.She took off her bathrobe on the bed, hurried to the closet, and put on clean underwear and shorts. She smells the same, she thought.Whoever the woman was, she smelled the same smell, the smell was from the well, and she made the man fall into the well.This is happening now, during a solar eclipse.I am sure-- She turned away, a clean blouse in one hand, and froze.Her dad stood in the hall, watching her.