I’d think how I could go to bed and go to sleep then, because I was sleepy.
I was so sleepy I simply couldn’t hardly hold my eyes open.
“So I’d hold my eyes tight shut and say Now I am.
I am now.
I’d look at my legs and I’d think about how much I had done for them.
I’d think about how many dances I had taken them to—crazy, like that.
Because I thought how much I’d done for them, and now they’d gotten me into this.
So I’d think about praying to be changed into a boy and I would pray and then I’d sit right still and wait.
Then I’d think maybe I couldn’t tell it and I’d get ready to look.
Then I’d think maybe it was too soon to look; that if I looked too soon I’d spoil it and then it wouldn’t, sure enough.
So I’d count.
I said to count fifty at first, then I thought it was still too soon, and I’d say to count fifty more.
Then I’d think if I didn’t look at the right time, it would be too late.
“Then I thought about fastening myself up some way.
There was a girl went abroad one summer that told me about a kind of iron belt in a museum a king or something used to lock the queen up in when he had to go away, and I thought if I just had that.
That was why I got the raincoat and put it on.
The canteen was hanging by it and I got it too and put it in the—”
“Canteen?” Horace said.
“Why did you do that?”
“I dont know why I took it.
I was just scared to leave it there, I guess.
But I was thinking if I just had that French thing.
I was thinking maybe it would have long sharp spikes on it and he wouldn’t know it until too late and I’d jab it into him.
I’d jab it all the way through him and I’d think about the blood running on me and how I’d say I guess that’ll teach you!
I guess you’ll let me alone now! I’d say.
I didn’t know it was going to be just the other way.…… I want a drink.”
“I’ll get you one in a minute,” Miss Reba said.
“Go on and tell him.”
“Oh, yes; this was something else funny I did.”
She told about lying in the darkness with Gowan snoring beside her, listening to the shucks and hearing the darkness full of movement, feeling Popeye approaching.
She could hear the blood in her veins, and the little muscles at the corners of her eyes cracking faintly wider and wider, and she could feel her nostrils going alternately cool and warm.
Then he was standing over and she was saying Come on.
Touch me.
Touch me!
You’re a coward if you dont.
Coward!
Coward!
“I wanted to go to sleep, you see.
And he just kept on standing there.
I thought if he’d just go on and get it over with, I could go to sleep.
So I’d say You’re a coward if you dont!
You’re a coward if you dont! and I could feel my mouth getting fixed to scream, and that little hot ball inside you that screams.
Then it touched me, that nasty little cold hand, fiddling around inside the coat where I was naked.
It was like alive ice and my skin started jumping away from it like those little flying fish in front of a boat.
It was like my skin knew which way it was going to go before it started moving, and my skin would keep on jerking just ahead of it like there wouldn’t be anything there when the hand got there.
“Then it got down to where my insides begin, and I hadn’t eaten since yesterday at dinner and my insides started bubbling and going on and the shucks began to make so much noise it was like laughing.
I’d think they were laughing at me because all the time his hand was going inside the top of my knickers and I hadn’t changed into a boy yet.
“That was the funny thing, because I wasn’t breathing then.
I hadn’t breathed in a long time.
So I thought I was dead.