30 replies to this topic

[Grace]

I will post the next story in a little bit, but I have to warn that it is very long and very sexual. It's not like me to deal with sex in detail, but the story is about a young couple on the weekend of their wedding, and the conflicts center around how they figure out how to have sex with each other, and I think it's really an exploration of how people treat intimacy.

I just wanted to warn everyone first.

[Devon]

I will post the next story in a little bit, but I have to warn that it is very long and very sexual. It's not like me to deal with sex in detail, but the story is about a young couple on the weekend of their wedding, and the conflicts center around how they figure out how to have sex with each other, and I think it's really an exploration of how people treat intimacy.

I just wanted to warn everyone first.

I will check in all weekend from work to read this. The Dana Drive series offers endless possibilities. In another set of comments to you about your Amy story (which, as I said, touched a personal vein with me), I compared your efforts to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which was the first collection of short stories in English that really gripped me in the language and made me want to learn it better. Dana Drive is like the frame for so many different tentacles of plot, character and action. You were genial to think of such an all-embracing matrix.

Also, as I have said elsewhere, I think you did the right thing when you gave me and others permission to add to the Dana Drive series. It is huge enough to accommodate many different voices and writers.

So....looking forward to your story!!!

And I also responded in writing to your excellent analysis of my last story on its own thread....thanks again.

Devon


PS: This forum will not be as well traveled as the main one, but I see that as an advantage. There was some controversy vis-a-vis Goddess announcing the arrival of my last story on the main board, and, for all I know, they may still be arguing about it. LOL. But there is nothing wrong with announcing things there.

I intend to announce yours when it comes unless you beat me to it.

[Grace]

I think I like that this forum is less traveled, as you say. I think that the people who read and post here are those who are interested in what we are writing and sharing their own writing, and it keeps the people who have nothing productive to say from posting here.

I am especially vulnerable about my writing right now because I am finding it exhausting to give up so much of myself and deal with things in my life that have been buried for one reason or another for a long time. I feel raw after I finish some of these stories because each of them has an element of myself somewhere. It may be a character who represents how I feel or even how I wish I felt or how I wish someone felt about me, and by the time I am done, I feel like I've disentangled something that might have been better left alone.

I took a class in college that was so cut-throat that it left me wounded and very unsure of myself, and I haven't picked up writing - I mean really writing - since then, so when you posted your contest thread, I decided that I would participate just for fun, and it's turned into something much bigger for me, and I have to say that words just spill out when I sit down to write.

I think that the only useful criticism is that which focuses on what is done well in the story as opposed to what is not. When someone tells me something that worked well, I tend to utilize that more, and when they can tell me what didn't work in a way that says they were confused or unsympathetic, that is good, too, because it is helpful and constructive rather than mean-spirited.

That's what I like about this forum most of all. The mean-spirited comments are left elsewhere, and the comments given here tend to help us build trust in one another. I cannot even begin to tell you how nervous I was about posting the first story about Rosemary, and now I look forward to finishing a story so that I can get some feedback.

I also have to say, Devon, that I see your writing maturing (in the best possible way) with each story. I've always thought you have a keen style, but you seem to have slowed down a little bit, and I think that is changing your voice a little and maybe giving you some time to develop your characters and even plot a little more. I sense in your last several stories that you are no longer writing something and posting it five minutes later, and that seems to have allowed you to create more depth.

[Grace]

I want to change the title to "The Honeymoon."

I am getting it ready to post, but I will have to post it in a couple of sections because it is so long.

[Grace]

I fixed the story and put it into sections.

[Devon]

I think I like that this forum is less traveled, as you say. I think that the people who read and post here are those who are interested in what we are writing and sharing their own writing, and it keeps the people who have nothing productive to say from posting here.

I am especially vulnerable about my writing right now because I am finding it exhausting to give up so much of myself and deal with things in my life that have been buried for one reason or another for a long time. I feel raw after I finish some of these stories because each of them has an element of myself somewhere. It may be a character who represents how I feel or even how I wish I felt or how I wish someone felt about me, and by the time I am done, I feel like I've disentangled something that might have been better left alone.

I took a class in college that was so cut-throat that it left me wounded and very unsure of myself, and I haven't picked up writing - I mean really writing - since then, so when you posted your contest thread, I decided that I would participate just for fun, and it's turned into something much bigger for me, and I have to say that words just spill out when I sit down to write.

I think that the only useful criticism is that which focuses on what is done well in the story as opposed to what is not. When someone tells me something that worked well, I tend to utilize that more, and when they can tell me what didn't work in a way that says they were confused or unsympathetic, that is good, too, because it is helpful and constructive rather than mean-spirited.

That's what I like about this forum most of all. The mean-spirited comments are left elsewhere, and the comments given here tend to help us build trust in one another. I cannot even begin to tell you how nervous I was about posting the first story about Rosemary, and now I look forward to finishing a story so that I can get some feedback.

I also have to say, Devon, that I see your writing maturing (in the best possible way) with each story. I've always thought you have a keen style, but you seem to have slowed down a little bit, and I think that is changing your voice a little and maybe giving you some time to develop your characters and even plot a little more. I sense in your last several stories that you are no longer writing something and posting it five minutes later, and that seems to have allowed you to create more depth.

Grace,

Thanks for the background information, and thanks for the positive comments about my writing. I'm happy with staying off the main forum except for econ posts occasionally. I am occasionally followed by some mean-spirited characters who apparently think I am someone else named George or whatever with whom they have a history, LOL. It doesn't bother me. But I can relate to how you felt before posting your first story.

Whenever you post a story, as you have done tonight, I take my time reading it. I intend to do that with this one, so my comments will not be immediate. It will probably take me until the beginning of the week to react, but I intensely enjoy your writing, and I don't rush through it. Tonight looks bad for reading, as we all are quite occupied with actual work instead of just sitting around, but I am about to start reading. I know it will be good.

One thing before I start reading.... We have been successful in getting a separate forum, and that is good. But we have thus far been unsuccessful in attracting Jody Casgraine back. I hope that this forum can achieve that too.

Well, now I have something to read and enjoy when I get a minute.

Back later...

Devon


PS: I have "known" cybernetically Smartblonde (Heidi) from other forums since around 2001 or 2. She and I had an entirely different involvement with an entirely different subject, but one thing I know is that she is a great writer, smart and creative. I believe that she will join us here when the dust clears. Another good writer!

[Devon]

Grace,

During a lull tonight, I started reading... The flow of your prose is excellent. I am enjoying each paragraph as I go along, and thanks for writing in a large font, LOL. I prefer that.

I needed to stop for a minute, but here was the paragraph I stopped on:

She woke up with a start after dreaming of her mother, wearing a big tomato soup can for a dress, chasing her down the side walk of her elementary school, but when she caught her, she said she only wanted to borrow her scarf so that she could tie it on the swing set while Elizabeth pushed her. It was a funny dream, but she was certain that it reflected her fear of being stuck somewhere between her mother and her childhood self. Ben rubbed her back while she leaned forward to look in his mirror and check her lipstick.

That paragraph alone is exceptional!!!! I am going back to your story in a minute and will read it off and on all night. But I had to remark about this paragraph so early on. I wonder if you saw it as a high point when you wrote it. Sometimes one writes things and just knows they are good....like this.

Back to work AND your story.

Devon

[Devon]

Grace,

Just now finished reading up to the point where you stopped. The level of intimacy is intense. The episode brought a lot of things back to me from my own first time....we all have a first time....that I had either forgotten or did not know. Ben is almost too considerate to be true, so I am anticipating as the story continues that he may evolve into something else...someone less considerate, but I will wait with this and let you surprise me.

I like all of the small details you use, the sort of details that I have highlighted in the past.

For some reason, the boarding house aspect intrigues me. Boarding houses seem to be a thing of the past, but I know they were frequent in that era. The maid glancing at the bed was detail that stuck with me.

After reading this, I came to appreciate the difficulty a girl such as Elizabeth must have with first time intimacy and the horrible mistake that parents make in sheltering their children.

Naturally, I want to know how this turns out.....so I am anxious for you to post the rest.

When you delve into guilt themes, you do write a lot like Kafka. There is a Kafka-like glow to this whole thing. Especially, as I have said, in the boarding house aspect: No noisy sex allowed. That would have made things even worse for Elizabeth. I need to re-read a part of this. Did they have to share the bathroom as people do in boarding houses? I am wondering about that as I picture Elizabeth in the bath tub. There is an aura of guilt hanging all over this story....and sometimes it becomes uncomfortable....but in a good way in that the tension of the situation is highlighted.

It is interesting that you write with such unbroken clarity about this event. This story moves ahead much faster than the other things you have written. The style seems to fit the event.

I am basically an optimistic person, but I sense an entire array of negative things coming. A marriage like this may be doomed from the start or it may be the beginning of something which beats the odds.

It will be interesting for me to see where you take it.

I am presuming, of course, that it is unfinished.

Waiting for more when you can.

Devon


PS: Another blunt way of stating what I have said above is that boys just don't know some of these things or don't care. Ben is the exception, but his brother's advice seems crude and even misguided. I wonder if "get it over fast" is, in fact, good advice for a first time. I was NOT Ben at that age. I was more like his antithesis. So I don't know.

PS: OKAY, I RE-READ A PART OF THIS. THEY ARE IN A MOTEL FOR THE FIRST NIGHT. THAT MAKES SENSE. THE PENDING MOVE TO THE BOARDING HOUSE IS STILL OMINOUS.

[Grace]

Devon,

I was able to get all of it in one post, so where it stops is the end of the story with, what I hope, is a subtle sign of the change in her when she smokes the cigarette without choking.

In any case, I think that Ben is 22, and I assumed that most men had outgrown the teenage thing by that time, but I also know that there are some men who are considerate lovers and husbands.

This story for me wasn't so much about the first time but about how we resolved living, even existing together. I think that she married Ben with expectations (as most girls have) of a knight in shining armour who would give all of his love and attention to her, and she was surprised at how real life crept in and interrupted that fantasy. I think he was surprised at how much attention she required, how much of a child she still was.

This story has nothing autobiographical in it except how she had worried about her first period and if he would go to the bathroom in front of her and what would she do when the lights were turned on because those are the things that terrified me about getting married. LOL

Other than that, it really is a story about trying to reconcile the different perspectives that we have, but I did like that Bitty would throw a tantrum and then be sorry about it and he was so even-keeled until she pushed him too far, and one of the things that she wanted most of all was to know that he would fight for her and not regret that they had gotten married. That's what made her so afraid when she was lost because she expected him to be right behind her, and when he didn't come, she started worrying that he would never come for her.

What I worried most about was that she was too naive. I mean, girls talk about this stuff, and it would be very hard for her not to know exactly what was going to happen, but it was important to the story that she didn't know and that he had to tell her and she had to reconcile her fear with her curiosity. I thought the overall setting might work okay because it was a time when the world was more innocent and her mother had worked so hard to keep her from any truth, even to the point of Catholic school.


Thank you for reading it and for your feedback. I don't know why this story was so much longer than the others, but I was just writing along and the things that happened just happened (I had no idea where this story was going - it started out being an older couple who was going to Boston to visit their son and the mother spent her time in the car thinking aobut how he had turned into a communist [lol] and then she remembered back to her first time with her husband, and the story turned into what it is). When I wrote the last sentence, it was the end. I think that is my biggest writing tic - it just ends and I know that it's over, but I never plan on where a story ends up.

I am working on another one about two girls who live across from the boarding house, and it incorporates some of the details in your story just for fun.

[Devon]

Devon,

I was able to get all of it in one post, so where it stops is the end of the story with, what I hope, is a subtle sign of the change in her when she smokes the cigarette without choking.

In any case, I think that Ben is 22, and I assumed that most men had outgrown the teenage thing by that time, but I also know that there are some men who are considerate lovers and husbands.

This story for me wasn't so much about the first time but about how we resolved living, even existing together. I think that she married Ben with expectations (as most girls have) of a knight in shining armour who would give all of his love and attention to her, and she was surprised at how real life crept in and interrupted that fantasy. I think he was surprised at how much attention she required, how much of a child she still was.

This story has nothing autobiographical in it except how she had worried about her first period and if he would go to the bathroom in front of her and what would she do when the lights were turned on because those are the things that terrified me about getting married. LOL

Other than that, it really is a story about trying to reconcile the different perspectives that we have, but I did like that Bitty would throw a tantrum and then be sorry about it and he was so even-keeled until she pushed him too far, and one of the things that she wanted most of all was to know that he would fight for her and not regret that they had gotten married. That's what made her so afraid when she was lost because she expected him to be right behind her, and when he didn't come, she started worrying that he would never come for her.

What I worried most about was that she was too naive. I mean, girls talk about this stuff, and it would be very hard for her not to know exactly what was going to happen, but it was important to the story that she didn't know and that he had to tell her and she had to reconcile her fear with her curiosity. I thought the overall setting might work okay because it was a time when the world was more innocent and her mother had worked so hard to keep her from any truth, even to the point of Catholic school.


Thank you for reading it and for your feedback. I don't know why this story was so much longer than the others, but I was just writing along and the things that happened just happened (I had no idea where this story was going - it started out being an older couple who was going to Boston to visit their son and the mother spent her time in the car thinking aobut how he had turned into a communist [lol] and then she remembered back to her first time with her husband, and the story turned into what it is). When I wrote the last sentence, it was the end. I think that is my biggest writing tic - it just ends and I know that it's over, but I never plan on where a story ends up.

I am working on another one about two girls who live across from the boarding house, and it incorporates some of the details in your story just for fun.

I don't think my computer got all of it.

Here is the last paragraph:

He winked at her and reached for his socks. She came out of the bathroom with clean teeth and a clean face and a dab of lipstick, and he was sitting on the bed tying his sneakers. She thought of last night and how kind he had been about it, and even though he had hurt

It may just be a computer thing. "hurt" is the last word I got before the end of your post. If it is just my computers (at work and home), please post the rest of it here in a separate post.

Excellent story!!

Devon


PS: Need to get off now. I'll see this when I get back this pm. I don't want to miss anything.

[Grace]

Devon,

I was able to get all of it in one post, so where it stops is the end of the story with, what I hope, is a subtle sign of the change in her when she smokes the cigarette without choking.

In any case, I think that Ben is 22, and I assumed that most men had outgrown the teenage thing by that time, but I also know that there are some men who are considerate lovers and husbands.

This story for me wasn't so much about the first time but about how we resolved living, even existing together. I think that she married Ben with expectations (as most girls have) of a knight in shining armour who would give all of his love and attention to her, and she was surprised at how real life crept in and interrupted that fantasy. I think he was surprised at how much attention she required, how much of a child she still was.

This story has nothing autobiographical in it except how she had worried about her first period and if he would go to the bathroom in front of her and what would she do when the lights were turned on because those are the things that terrified me about getting married. LOL

Other than that, it really is a story about trying to reconcile the different perspectives that we have, but I did like that Bitty would throw a tantrum and then be sorry about it and he was so even-keeled until she pushed him too far, and one of the things that she wanted most of all was to know that he would fight for her and not regret that they had gotten married. That's what made her so afraid when she was lost because she expected him to be right behind her, and when he didn't come, she started worrying that he would never come for her.

What I worried most about was that she was too naive. I mean, girls talk about this stuff, and it would be very hard for her not to know exactly what was going to happen, but it was important to the story that she didn't know and that he had to tell her and she had to reconcile her fear with her curiosity. I thought the overall setting might work okay because it was a time when the world was more innocent and her mother had worked so hard to keep her from any truth, even to the point of Catholic school.


Thank you for reading it and for your feedback. I don't know why this story was so much longer than the others, but I was just writing along and the things that happened just happened (I had no idea where this story was going - it started out being an older couple who was going to Boston to visit their son and the mother spent her time in the car thinking aobut how he had turned into a communist [lol] and then she remembered back to her first time with her husband, and the story turned into what it is). When I wrote the last sentence, it was the end. I think that is my biggest writing tic - it just ends and I know that it's over, but I never plan on where a story ends up.

I am working on another one about two girls who live across from the boarding house, and it incorporates some of the details in your story just for fun.

I don't think my computer got all of it.

Here is the last paragraph:

He winked at her and reached for his socks. She came out of the bathroom with clean teeth and a clean face and a dab of lipstick, and he was sitting on the bed tying his sneakers. She thought of last night and how kind he had been about it, and even though he had hurt

It may just be a computer thing. "hurt" is the last word I got before the end of your post. If it is just my computers (at work and home), please post the rest of it here in a separate post.

Excellent story!!

Devon


PS: Need to get off now. I'll see this when I get back this pm. I don't want to miss anything.

Oh, wow! Thanks for letting me know because that's way up at the beginning. I will repost it this afternoon in several installments so you can see the whole thing. Sorry about that!

[Grace]

The Joneymoon

Elizabeth Bailey stepped off the yellow school bus and followed her classmates into St. Mary's High School then veered left and headed out the back door where Benjamin Behr was waiting for her.



They walked to his pickup without speaking, and he opened the door on his side and boosted her in. Otherwise, they did not touch, and he closed the door gently and pulled away as quietly as his old truck would allow.



When they got outside of town, Elizabeth heard Ben let out a sigh of relief, and he put his arm around her and pulled her in close. Her heart was pounding.



He played with her pony tail while she chewed on her nails, and they were half way to Houston before she was ready to talk.



"You're sure, right Ben? Right?"



"Baby, yes, I'm sure. I can't think of anything I have ever been more sure of."



She was relieved, even though she knew that he would say that. She was glad that he was willing to reassure her because there was no turning back now. Her friends had to know she was missing, her mother would have gone through her bureau and found the clothes she had taken, and she would have called her father to come home from work, but he would have kept her from calling the police because he hated to cause a scene.



Elizabeth was seventeen now, and there was nothing they could do to her. She had hoped for something different, maybe even a real wedding, but things had taken a turn, and as Ben liked to say, "it is what it is."



She hadn't been able to bring anything but her driver's license and her favorite compact and lipstick because anything else would have been suspicious. She rarely carried a purse, and she intimated that she expected her monthly womanhood to make a visit, so her mother didn't ask any questions. She had the thirty six dollars she had saved from working in the drug store last summer tucked into her socks, which made her feet hurt a little, but she couldn't afford to leave that much money behind.



Finally they got to a little town just past Houston, and Ben parked at the court house and took her hand. "I love you, darlin," he told her.



He opened her door, and they walked down the sidewalk towards the chamber where they did weddings every other Friday morning. They had to wait in line behind two other couples, and when it was their turn, Ben dug the rings out of his pocket and handed them to the judge's wife who was standing up for them and clutching a bag of rice to throw on the way out.



The ceremony was short, and all that Bitty could remember was saying, "I, Margaret Elizabeth Bailey take thee Benjamin Adam Behr to be my lawfully wedded husband," because those names were so heavy, so foreign from who they seemed to be.



His kiss was quick and utilitarian, and on the way out, the lady handed them a little Bible to commemorate the ceremony, and Elizabeth Behr walked out of the door with her husband..



In the pickup, Ben took her hand, and they drove away in silence. It wasn't that they had nothing to say; a whole week had passed without them speaking, and she had longed for this moment for three months now. She thought they both must be feeling a little shy right now, and she was worrying in her own mind because she kept expecting a police car to drive up behind them with its blaring sirens and carousel lights to take her home.



Ben stopped off the highway at a little diner where they could get lunch and gasoline, and he asked her if she wanted to call her mother. She did not. She wasn't ready to tell her anything. They shared a roast beef sandwich, and when she crawled back up into the pickup, she found herself drowsy. Ben let her lean against him, and as she drifted off, it occurred to her that she would wake up married.



She woke up with a start after dreaming of her mother, wearing a big tomato soup can for a dress, chasing her down the side walk of her elementary school, but when she caught her, she said she only wanted to borrow her scarf so that she could tie it on the swing set while Elizabeth pushed her. It was a funny dream, but she was certain that it reflected her fear of being stuck somewhere between her mother and her childhood self. Ben rubbed her back while she leaned forward to look in his mirror and check her lipstick.



Out on the highway, Elizabeth counted the cars and then leaned over to turn on the radio. That is when they heard the news. They listened, silently, to the details that were at best sketchy, and no one had said the president was alive or dead, and neither of them wanted to interrupt the radio announcer until they heard one way or the other.



When the news was official, Elizabeth asked if they should go back home. Ben said of course not, what difference would going home make? Bitty said it didn't seem right to be getting married on the day the president was murdered, and Ben said he didn't give a hot damn because they had waited too long for this day, and that made her laugh.





They were quiet again, and she could see Ben chewing on something in his head, so she let him think, and for a little while, she went through her mental diary, something she liked to do, and she put all the important moments with Ben in order and thought about each of them slowly and carefully.



"Was she the only one?" Elizabeth asked.



"Who?" he answered.



"Katherine," she said.



"Oh, hon," he said, "we've been over this and over this. I made a big mistake. I hardly even knew you then."



"But was she the only one?" She tucked her leg underneath her and perched on the seat.



"There was no one else. I never wanted to be with anyone but you. I told you it was a mistake."



"I don't understand," she said. "I never understood what I did wrong. Why you needed someone else."



"You didn't do anything wrong. You were fifteen, Bitty. I didn't know I was going to marry you."



"But you knew you weren't going to marry her."



He didn't answer, and she saw his jaw set, so she stopped talking and started counting cars again.



They ate dinner at a truck stop, and Elizabeth sat at the booth and remembered the weekend they met. She was fifteen, and Ben had just turned twenty, and they met because she broke the heel off of her shoe when her church group went to sing at the old folks home in Fort Worth and he took her into a little room all by herself and fixed it for her. It was the summer he worked as a handyman, and he told her that what he most remembered about that summer was her clear little voice and how small her foot felt in his hands.



He found out where her church was singing the next morning, and he showed up and asked her if he could walk her back to the Sunday School room where they were going to feed the girls. She would not make a commitment one way or the other, but she did tell him that he was free to do whatever he would like, and when he saw her looking around nervously, he understood.



She went back to Louisiana, but they worked out a system where he could send her letters at her cousin's house, and her cousin would mail her letters to Ben. Whenever her church sang out of town, he would drive there to meet her, and finally he insisted that she tell her mother who put an absolute stop to everything and cried for days because she had made Bitty join the sunshine girls and the choir and every other thing that would keep her busy on the weekends so that she didn't end up like her brother with that flippant little wife who had a baby on the way when they got married.



She had been eight when her brother married Louisa, and when her mother found out about Ben, Elizabeth realized that her mother had orchestrated her life in such a way that she had never been alone with a boy and had never had a phone call or a date or much of a conversation for that matter in her whole life.



They had to be careful after that, and he met her once when her mother let her go to a football game in an attempt to help her forget about Ben as long as she didn't get interested in any other boys, which her mother felt was not likely as long as they were out on the field and she wasn't. They spent the fifteen minutes that she felt she could safely wander away from her friends talking under the bleachers. He asked her to marry him because he couldn't stand being away from her, and she said yes without hesitation. He had everything worked out, he said, but they had to wait until she turned seventeen and he got a day off from college. Then he would come and get her.



They were planning on the day after Thanksgiving, but when the president decided to come to Dallas, he got a free pass from school, and he called her cousin on the telephone and told her to tell Elizabeth that he was coming for her. He had to bribe her cousin with a promise to introduce her to one of his friends at Christmas in order to keep her quiet, but it had worked, and now here they were, married and on the way to their new house.



He would graduate from college in May, and he wasn't sure how they would make it until then, but she said she could go to work to which he promptly said nonsense and told her that she would go to night school and get her diploma and that was the only way he would marry her.



After a reassurance that she was seventeen and not in the family way, the Dean at his college agreed to write him a letter of support to a lady he knew in Fort Worth who owned a boarding house and could provide them a room for almost nothing as long as Ben agreed to take care of a few things and Bitty would do the laundry. They rented a little room at Mrs. Clary's Boarding House, and she had warned Ben that they better not be too loud because people had to get up and go to work, and she didn't care if they were newlyweds.



Ben scraped together the money to stay at a hotel that first night, and Bitty knew that he was more nervous than she was. She knew having a baby was painful because she had paced around the waiting room with Michael when Louisa had the baby and she heard the distant screams coming from the hall, but she wasn't exactly sure how to make a baby. She knew that a boy would take your underclothes off and take off his pants and lay on top of you, but that was all she was certain of.



Her mother wouldn't tell her anything, and in fact, the only reason she knew anything about womanhood was because the school nurse made a mistake and marked her as having a permission slip from her mother when, in fact, her mother had refused to sign it and told her that when the time came, she would explain it to her. But the nurse didn't tell them much about making babies except that your body did that and his body did that and sooner or later your bodies would do something no one seemed to be able to describe and you would be able to have a baby. After that, she had to go to Catholic school where the nuns felt that any mention of sex would lead the girls astray.



She was glad Ben knew more about it than that, and she had heard that you could do something to keep from getting pregnant even though the nuns had said that was a sin, and she intended to tell him that was probably a good idea since they couldn't afford a baby and in all honesty, she wanted him to herself.



Ben kept playing with her foot under the table and grinning at her, and she knew that he was being fresh, but if you were married, weren't you supposed to be fresh? After they finished dinner, Ben loaded her into his old pickup and put his arm around her. She was just a little irritated that he was being so possessive until she remembered that they were married, and then she snuggled up under his arm.



When they got to the motel, he told her to wait in the car, and then he came back with a key and took her old trunk in and came back to walk her to the door. He unlocked the door, and when she started to go inside, he grabbed her up and carried her across the threshold, and she laughed in spite of her fear. She was certain that being married to Ben was going to be a good time.



While he was in the bathroom, she undressed and pulled her nightgown over her head. It was barely dark, but she was very tired, and she did know that whatever it was you did to make a baby, you did it on your wedding night, and she was just curious enough about it to want to get on with it.



Ben came out wearing nothing but his underwear, and Elizabeth looked away. "Don't be scared," he told her, and then he crawled into the bed beside her. She lay perfectly still on her back with her hands flat against her sides. She didn't know what she was supposed to do, and she hoped that he would not be heavy when he climbed on top of her.



He kissed her forehead softly and nuzzled his chin in her hair. She could feel his breath against her cheek, and he seemed to be breathing hard, but it wasn't cold or anything, so she thought he might be scared, too.



He took her hand in his and told her that he loved her and that what he was going to do might hurt a little bit, but every woman had to do this, and he supposed it only hurt once because women were doing this all the time and none of them was crying about it.



He tried to reach her breast through the top of her nightgown, but it was too tight around her neck for him to work his way in, so he began rubbing her over her clothes. She felt her nipple harden, which happened sometimes when she went outside and it was cold, but she found the sensation reasonably pleasant, so she didn't push him away.



He began pulling her nightgown up, but she was lying on top of it, and he yanked too hard and she heard it rip, and that made her mad because it was her best nightgown, and if he had been a little more patient, she could have pulled it up for him.



She lifted it up to her knees, and he slid his hand underneath and rubbed her stomach. That made her happy. It was personal, intimate, but it didn't feel dirty, and it didn't hurt, so it was fine for him to touch her there. When his hand began to creep down and he ran a finger under the elastic of her panties, she flinched.



"Are you scared?" he whispered.



"Yes," she said.



"I'll go slow. I'll be careful, I promise."



"Will you stop if I tell you to stop?" she asked.



"Yes," he said, "but then we have to try again."



"Okay," she said.



She let him slide her panties down to her ankles and then she kicked them off. He pulled his underwear off, and she felt his hardness against her leg, and she was worried a little about that because whatever he intended to do, it involved that hardness, and that was the thing that she knew was supposed to hurt.



He put his hand between her legs and began touching her down there, and she wanted to scoot away from him, but it felt warm, so she laid there and let him rub her until she began to tingle, and that was scary because she had never felt that before.



He pushed her legs apart, but she resisted. "Elizabeth," he said. "We have to do this."



She relaxed a little, and he separated her legs, and when he touched her, she could feel something wet, and she was horrified. She had started her period, she thought. Oh, God, nothing could be worse than this. She had worried and worried about the first time that happened after they got married and how she would be able to hide it from him because no matter how much they might know about each other, she would never, never talk about that to him. She started pulling herself up, and he held her down firmly.



"What's wrong?" he asked. "I haven't even done anything yet."



"I'm bleeding," she cried.



"Not yet," he said.



"No, I am. I can feel it. It's wet."



He laughed then, and she was horrified. How could he laugh about this? Was he going to be one of those boys who made fun of girls and embarrassed them even more? She could not stay married to him if he was going to do that.



"It's not blood, darlin," he said. "That's you. That's what you are supposed to do."



"What do you mean?" she asked she asked suspiciously.



"You get all slippery so I can get inside without tearing your skin. Well, at least after the first time."



"Get inside?"



"Bitty," he hesitated. "Do you know what I am going to do to you?"



"Sort of. Well, not exactly. I mean, I know you're going to get on top of me."



"Oh, honey," he said. He moved away from her and sat up. He didn't feel that it was fair to press this upon her without her understanding it, and he regretted again how she would skirt around any conversations about sex so that he never knew exactly what she expected from him. "Okay, here's what is going to happen. You will spread your legs, and I will put myself into you. It will hurt a little because I have to break the skin, and it might even bleed, but next time it will feel good."



"What! You can't put that inside of me. It's too big!" she started edging off the bed.



"Come back here," he said. "You do know that babies come out that way, don't you?"



"Yes," she said, rolling her eyes. She had a dog who had puppies once.



"Well, if a baby can come out of there, I can go in there. It stretches like that."



"Okay," she said. "Just get it over with."



"No, I don't want to just get it over with. I want it to be special. I can't help it if it is going to hurt you, but I don't want it to be awful for you."



"Okay, I'll try." She laid back down and pulled her nightgown up, and the neon light from the window spilled across the bed, reassuring her that there was no blood after all.



When he leaned against her, she felt that he wasn't as hard as he had been, and then she understood. She had never seen a man in real life down there, but Fuzzy McDaniel told her once that it got hard and some stuff shot out of it and then it wasn't hard anymore. She realized that the stuff that shot out was what would make the baby, and then she remembered to tell him that she didn't want a baby if she was going to finish high school while he finished college.



She laid back against the pillows, and when he climbed on top of her, he was hard again, and she could feel him pushing against her, and he asked her if she was ready. She nodded, and she felt him slip down between her legs, which felt nice, but then he was pressing into her, and she felt like she was being ripped apart, and she told him to stop, but he didn't stop, and she felt him going in and out, and she was crying and biting her lip, and then his back arched and he pushed deep inside of her, and while she burned down there, he moaned and then laid down limp on her.



She was hurting badly, and she wanted him to get off of her right now, but he was panting and wouldn't move. Finally he looked at her.



"Are you okay?"



"No, I'm not okay. It hurts, and you can never do that again."



"It won't hurt next time," he told her.



"No next time," she said, crawling off the bed.



"Where are you going?" he asked. He was reaching for a cigarette.



"I am going to take a bath," she said. She felt sticky and was still burning down there.



She went into the bathroom where she intended to lock the door, but there was no lock, so she wedged his shoe underneath where he couldn't get in.



She drew her bath and looked at her face in the tiny mirror over the sink. She didn't look any different. Well, at least that part was good. She turned the light off and lit the emergency candle on the back of the toilet.



She pulled her nightgown off and saw the blood that had soaked through the back of it, and she didn't know if she should try to wash it out and wear a wet night gown to bed or let it dry and hope she could get it out later. When she remembered that it was ripped anyway, she decided to let the blood dry.



She dipped a toe in the water and found it sufficiently scalding, and when she sat down it was deep, and she could still feel a dull burning down there. She didn't want to get her hair wet because she had set it the night before and the curls were perfect, so she sat up straight and let the water settle in around her.



She heard Ben pushing against the door, and she told him to go away, but he managed to dislodge the shoe and came in anyway.

[Grace]

She folded her arms across her breasts and leaned over so that he could not see her nakedness. He touched her back, and she shivered. He pulled off his pants, and for a moment, she thought he was going to use the bathroom in front of her (another thing she had worried herself sick over), but instead he slipped in behind her and water sloshed over the edge and onto the floor. She tried to get up, but he put his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back down.



She was exhausted. If every day was going to be like this one, she was already sorry she had gotten married.



He wrapped his legs around her and encircled her small frame in his arms. She let herself relax and lay back against him. She felt that he was hard, but she would not do that again. Not tonight.



He rubbed her arms and kissed her back, and his hand wandered around to her breast, and she pushed him away, but not very hard because she was just too tired to fight him. He was very gentle when he touched her, and when his hand moved down, she said, "no, please don't," but he put his finger against her lips and whispered, "shhhh . . . " and kept rubbing her. He didn't touch the inside but drew lazy circles around the outside, and she started feeling that tingling again, and once he hit a spot that made her shudder, and when he failed to find that spot again, she tried to position herself to get his hand there all the while he nuzzled against her shoulder from behind.



"Does that feel good?" he whispered.



"Mmmm," she said. She didn't want him to talk.



When he couldn't get his hand to the right place, she took his finger into her own hand and tried to guide him, and finally, she pushed his hand out of the way and found the spot with her own finger, and she could feel the tingle turn into a pulse and she pressed harder, and she felt the blood in her chest, and then she felt an explosion that made her stiffen and then left her limp. She was speechless.



"I told you," he said, laughing.



She began sobbing, embarrassed at what had happened and humiliated for having run away from home, and scared of what tomorrow might bring, and filled with a deep sadness when she realized that the president had been killed on her wedding day and for the rest of their lives, that would somehow hang over them.



He reached for a wash cloth and the bar of soap sitting on a little table beside the bathtub, and he pushed her forward and began washing her back. He scrubbed her shoulders and her neck, and he turned her around so that she was facing him and washed her arms and legs and tickled her between her toes with the wash cloth. He got out of the tub and stood naked, dripping on the floor, and held his hand out to her. She stood up, and he wrapped her in a towel and wrapped a towel around his own waist and led her back to the bed.



He didn't ask her why she was crying, and he didn't ask her to stop, and she was grateful to be with a man who didn't tell her that she wasn't allowed to cry. He let her lie down and covered her naked body with the thin sheet and blanket, and while she slept, he sat in a chair by the window and smoked.



He looked at her fondly. She was still a child, he realized. Her lipstick was pink and frosty, and she had gone to school in her bobby socks and penny loafers, which each had a dime tucked into their little pockets. Her hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon, and she had even brought her school books into the motel room, and he saw the little hearts and flowers she had doodled on the paper covers. He picked up one of the books and saw that she had drawn a tiny heart with BB in the center of it, and he suspected she had drawn that heart while sitting on the bus waiting to meet him behind the school.



On the table beside the bed was her little silver locket with a picture of her niece on one side and Jesus on the other, but underneath the picture of Jesus was a picture of him that he had given her in August. It was him in front of his dorm with the other engineering students, and she had cut his tiny face out and placed it behind Jesus so her mother wouldn't find it.



He studied her face and realized that they had not spent this much time together since they met two summers ago, and a jolt of fear ran through him. What if it turned out that she didn't like him as much as she had thought? What if she looked at this as a teenage version of playing house and before long, she wanted to go back to her friends and her church or even her mother?



She had promised him that this is what she wanted, and they had talked about how they would get through until he graduated from college and was able to get a job at which time they would not be rich, but she certainly wouldn't have to do other people's laundry to help pay the rent. She said she didn't care if they never had money; as long as she could kiss him every night, she would be happy the rest of her life.



He had had to teach her to kiss. She had never been with a boy before, and she puckered her mouth so absolutely tight that her lips turned blue, and when he told her to relax a little, she opened her mouth so wide that her gum fell out, and he laughed at that. She pouted for a while, but the next time they kissed, she followed his lead, and it was perfect. She liked to kiss, he knew, but she grew stiff every time he tried to touch her. He could hold her hand and put his arm around her, but if his hands began to wander, she would pull away from him, and he could see that he was scaring her. He left her alone after a few times, and she was happy with that arrangement. It drove him crazy to be so close to her and not have her, but he knew that he had to wait until she was ready to make a commitment to him and then he would have the rest of his life to touch her.



After he asked her to marry him under the bleachers, they were able to meet again a few weeks later, but this was the last time they had seen each other. He had called her at her cousin's house twice before he came to get her to confirm all of the details of their elopement, but he was rather worried that he would stand at the door behind the school waiting and she wouldn't come. He imagined the students coming and going and the little kids swinging and sliding and seesawing in the primary school playground next to the high school while he stood there waiting for her to show up. He saw the sun set and rise again, and there he stood, waiting for Elizabeth.



The last time they had seen each other, Ben told her to bring along the things that she wanted to take with her so that he could take them home with him. She told him about the thirty-six dollars and offered to give it to him, but he told her to keep it and bring it so that he could take her shopping for the things that she would need and couldn't bring.



He picked her up on a Saturday morning when her mother and father were in the city shopping for a new refrigerator, and they had met at the school so that he could show her exactly where he would be waiting for him. She was dragging an old leather suitcase that she had found in her basement and filled with clothes and things that she thought she could get out of the house without her mother's noticing. She had asked him not to look through her things, and he hadn't because he did not want her to feel like he was her mother. In her suitcase, lying open on the floor beside the bed, he saw two candy bars sitting on top, and he found that somehow endearing. She really was a child.



He had helped her up into his truck and then driven outside of town to a drive-in theatre where they could sit without being bothered. There they talked about how to make this work, and he told her to come to school and go out the back door and he would wait for her. He had all the details straight, he said, and he wouldn't even let her get in on her own side because that meant two doors to creak shut instead of just one. He would have their room at Mrs. Clary's all set up with her things put neatly away, but when she reminded him not to go through her things, he told her that he would bring the suitcase with him so that she would have whatever she wanted right there. She asked him if he would buy her a tooth brush and a hair brush because she couldn't get out of the house with those.



She had gone to school wearing six pairs of panties and two bras, and she was able to put on an extra blouse under her big bulky sweater, and she wore a pair of britches rolled up to her knees under her skirt because there was no wind that day. She felt like a marshmallow, but the clothes fit fine because she had lost a few pounds in the last month from the stress of getting caught. She had put her best nightgown into the suitcase, and her mother did ask about that, but she said she had left it behind at a church slumber party and one of the girls at school had found it but kept forgetting to bring it to her.



She had tucked in a pillowcase that she had embroidered with flowers that said BB in red letters, but she had thought about that carefully, too, and if her mother were to ask about it, she would say that it was part of a set she was making for her father and mother for Christmas. His name was Bryan Bailey, and she could make a Benjamin Behr pillowcase without getting caught. It was her wedding present to him, and she did not want him to find it before they were married.



When it was almost time to for him to leave, he told her that they needed to talk about their wedding night. He asked her if she was going to be okay if they were to stay in a motel the first night, and she said she thought that would be very romantic. Somehow, he just couldn't bear the thought of lying in bed with her while complete strangers milled around in rooms beside them. He was also a little worried that she might want to back out, and he didn't want their neighbors to be privy to that conversation.



"Elizabeth," he said, "you haven't ever been with a boy, and I want to make sure that you are prepared for this kind of commitment. I mean, you can't come to bed in your clothes every night."



"Well, I am going to wear my nightgown," she said as if he were crazy.



"I know that, but what I am trying to say, I guess, is that people who are married are very intimate with each other."



"Yes, but it's dark when that happens," she said.



He sighed. "I know, baby, but you just need to understand that you can't be frigid."



She hated that word. It was a contradiction of the greatest kind. The boys said that at her school like it was a bad thing, but she also knew that girls who were not frigid were the worst kind of girls.



"Well, I don't know what you expect from me, but I am certainly not going to parade around naked," she told him.



"Okay," he said. "I don't want to fight about this. I just want to make sure that you understand that we will be sleeping in the same bed in one little bedroom with a bathroom down the hall, and we are going to have sex, Bitty."



"Well, I know that! Did you think I was going to marry you and ask you to sleep on the floor?" she laughed.



"I just want to make sure," he said gravely. He knew that she did not understand just how intimate sex was, even if she knew the mechanics of it. He knew, too, that she had been told all of her life that it was dirty and sinful unless you were married and then you only put up with it because you had to. He, himself, had two sisters and a mother who had said the exact same thing to them.



"How do you know this?" she asked. "How do you know what it's going to be like?" Her tone was accusatory, and he felt that he owed it to her to tell her about Katherine.



"I slept with someone once," he said.



"Once?"



"Well, more than once, I guess, but I broke it off with her just before you and I met."



"You did that with someone else?" She was beginning to raise her voice.



"I did," he admitted, "and, Bitty, it was the stupidest thing I ever did. I was seeing her when I met you, but it didn't last. I swear to you, once I met you, I never saw her again."



Elizabeth looked away. She did not like this turn of events. She did not like imagining him with someone else at all. In fact, she felt sick to her stomach at the thought of him huffing and panting around naked in some smoky room with a girl that was exactly the kind of girl her mother had warned her about.



When she reached to open the car door, he panicked. "No, Bitty, please don't go. I promise you I have not touched another girl, haven't even looked at anyone else since you let me kiss you. I never will. If you leave me right this minute, there will never be anyone else for me as long as I live. Please, baby."



She opened the door and then closed it again. She felt so betrayed by him as if she had done something to deserve his infidelity, and she knew that was ridiculous. He didn't owe her an explanation for anything he had done before he knew her, before he loved her. On the bright side, at least one of them would know what to do when the time came.



"Okay," she said. "But you better not ever hurt me again. Never like this again."



"I swear," he said. She reached for him, and he laid his head on her shoulder, and she took his hand and placed it on her waist. She was trying to show him that she was not afraid, but he was not going to push her. He wanted to show her that he respected her fears and that he would never hurt her by making her do something against her will which is the reason he wanted to talk about this in the first place.



"I can't wait to make love to you," he told her.



"What's it like?" she asked.



He had to tread very carefully at this moment. He couldn't come out and tell her how unbelievably good it felt because that would be a betrayal to her, but he didn't want to scare her and give her the impression that it wasn't the greatest thing he had ever experienced.



"You'll like it," he simply said. "Maybe not the first time, but after that."



"Did you like it?"



"I will love it with you."



"But you liked it with her?"



"Well, yes, Bitty, I suppose I did," he sighed, "but I didn't love her, and with you it will be different." He sat up straight and took her hand. It was time for her to go home.



"If you change your mind," he said, "you have to call me."



"I won't change my mind," she said, smiling. "If you change your mind, if you decide you want to be with her instead, just don't show up. If you aren't there, I'll know."



"Elizabeth," he said evenly, "I haven't seen her in two years. I have waited as patiently as I know how to wait for you to turn seventeen, and if you don't walk out that school door, you will break my heart."



"If you aren't there when I come out," she said, "you will break mine, and I will never, ever forgive you."



When he kissed her goodbye, she pressed herself against him, but he knew that she still did not understand what he had been trying to say. He was a big man, and at six feet, he towered over her. She was barely five feet tall and weighed only 92 pounds. He was lean, but he still weighed almost two hundred pounds, and he was scared that he would be too big for her. What if it did hurt the second time and the time after that and the time after that and never quit hurting? He could not bear the thought of not making love to her even more than he couldn't bear the thought of hurting her.



The Friday morning that they got married, he was at the school by six thirty and had to wait two hours for her to open the door, but he would not be late. No matter what. He had thought long and hard about how to handle her; he knew she was very fragile and he would be taking on a whole life into his hands. He hoped he could make her happy, and he wanted to be able to take care of her because he knew she still needed time to grow up and learn how to be a wife and some day a mother, and then he would chastise himself for under-estimating her tenacity, which was one of the most charming things about her.



He had talked to his older brother back in Kentucky who was married with a baby. Bobby was the only person he felt could give him good advice and would speak candidly to him. The boys in his dorm were most interested in teasing him about robbing the cradle and shot gun weddings, but Bob listened to his concerns and then told him what he thought might be the most important advice he would ever get in his life.



"Whatever you do," he had said, "Get it over with as fast as you can. Don't hurt her any longer than you have to, but if she begs you to stop in the middle of it, don't stop. It will make it worse next time. You have the rest of your life to make up for it, but the first time, you just want to do what you have to do as fast as you can do it."



That made sense to Ben, who had already taken Katherine's virginity, and he had been awkward and fumbled around unsure of himself, and she wouldn't let him touch her for weeks after that. With Elizabeth, he wanted to be as careful and gentle as he could be, and his brother had warned him that Bitty, because she was so young and naïve, might get to the moment and then change her mind, and he told Ben not to push her. He said that Ben had to make it clear that they were going to do this, but it did not have to be on uncertain terms.



Watching her with the neon lights spilling across her face, Ben was filled with remarkable tenderness for her. He had fallen for her so long ago, and he had walked on egg shells the whole time to keep her happy, even though he wasn't sure that he had really needed to do that. She was easy to please and seemed happiest when she could just pull up under his arm and have him look out for her.



He remembered the time that they had been walking near a little church and a dog jumped out and bit her ankle, and he had grabbed her and run six blocks back to his car to take her to the hospital. He had frightened her, she said, making her think she was bleeding to death, and when they got to the pickup, she had only a tiny puncture. But it made her happy that he would do that for her, and it was all that she had ever dreamed of. He understood that she had a youthful idea that he was her white knight, but the truth was that he was terrified that she really was hurt and how he would ever possibly explain this to her mother.

[Grace]

At four o'clock that morning, he crawled into the bed beside her and pulled her next to him. They slept soundly until after eleven and the maid knocked on the door. Ben jumped out of bed and threw his pants on, opening the door a crack. He asked the maid to come back in fifteen minutes, and he saw her disapproving look as she surveyed the bed.



Bitty was awake now, and she wasn't sure what to do. She did not want him to look at her while she got dressed, and she knew it was ridiculous, but last night had left her confused and embarrassed.



"Don't look," she said. "I want to get dressed."



He told her that he would go into the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face while she got dressed, and she looked at him gratefully.



She dressed in her extra skirt and blouse, and she noticed that there had been a little more blood at some time during the night. She brushed her hair and pulled it back with a rubber band, and Ben came out of the bathroom wearing only his blue jeans. As she walked by him, she ran her finger across his stomach that, in the daylight, pleased her very much.



He winked at her and reached for his socks. She came out of the bathroom with clean teeth and a clean face and a dab of lipstick, and he was sitting on the bed tying his sneakers. She thought of last night and how kind he had been about it, and even though he had hurt her very badly, she knew that he didn't mean to, and now she thought that the whole thing was not quite as bad as it seemed at the time. There was that thing in the bathtub, after all, and she wondered if she would ever be able to duplicate whatever conditions there were that had set that in motion.



She sat down on the bed beside him and reached for her own shoes and socks. He knelt down in front of her and slipped her sock on for her. He pushed her legs apart and pulled her close to him. She could feel his heart beating hard against her own, and he wrapped his arms around her, and she felt his hardness again, and this time she wasn't as afraid as she had been last night.



"I want you, Ben," she said.



"Really?" he looked at her face.



She laughed, tussling his hair. "Of course, really."



He began playing with her buttons, which were quite stubborn, but finally he had opened enough of her blouse to reach around behind her and unlock her bra. He lifted her bra and put his mouth on her breast, and she felt that tingle again, so she cupped the back of his head in her hand and pushed him towards her. She had felt her breasts and knew that quite a pleasant sensation lay in their mysteries, but she did not attribute it to a man in any way. She had assumed she was strange, though she did know that the boys at school were obsessed with girls' cup sizes. She didn't realize that they might want to do anything more than stare at them.



He gently tugged at her nipple with his mouth, and she moaned softly under her breath, and that is when they both heard the door burst open and the maid stood there looking at both of them, and Elizabeth ripped a button from trying to close her blouse too fast, and Ben stood up and asked her for five more minutes.



They could hear her muttering under her breath about kids these days and no one had any respect, the president wasn't even in his grave, and what kind of an animal would take a little girl to a motel anyway, and what kind of girl would go?



Ben grinned at Elizabeth and handed her sweater over to her. "Put this on," he said. "You can fix your blouse later."



They gathered their things and ran to the pickup, and he took her to Mrs. Clary's. When they opened the front door, she was waiting for them with a little cake and a candle to wish them a happy marriage. She showed them down to the basement where their room was, and Elizabeth was relieved when Mrs. Chatty Kathy finally left them alone.



She unpacked her suitcase into the three drawers he had left for her, and then decided she was hungry. They ate from one end of the cake, and he licked a smudge of frosting off of her cheek, and then they were lying on the bed again. The only window was over the washer and dryer, on the other side of the basement, so when Ben shut their door, it was pitch black. He cracked his shin on the edge of the bed and then ended up sitting on her, but they laughed in the darkness, and she scooted over to make room for him.



"Are you glad we did this, Ben?" she asked.



"I'll be glad when we do it again," he said.



"No, I mean this. This room, this marriage, all of it."



"Yes," he said. "Aren't you?"



"Oh, yes," she answered, and she found his hand and led him to her. This time he was very slow and very careful with her, and she opened herself to him willingly, and he did not find that place, but she still thought it felt good, even though she was a little sorry that he hadn't tried to help her find her own way.



In the darkness, he fumbled for a cigarette and offered one to her. She had never smoked before, so she choked and sputtered and handed it back to him, and he sat on the bed with two cigarettes hanging out of his mouth while he hunted around for the lighter.



When he found his way to the lamp on their little dresser, he told Elizabeth that they needed to move the lamp over by the table so he didn't have to light his way across the room which, in the middle of the day, still swallowed them in total darkness.



He found Elizabeth lying on the bed trying to button her blouse, and he went to her and asked her to let him help her. His hand reached inside and cupped her breast. "Good God amighty, Ben!" she squawked. "Haven't you had enough?"



He grinned and told her that he could never have enough of her, but she pushed him away and told him it was time for them to get up and get something to eat; she felt a headache coming on. Ben realized that they had not stocked their shelf on the refrigerator, and though Mrs. Clary made breakfast and dinner every night, they were on their own for lunch. Ben took her down to the automat and let her choose her sandwich which took a long time. He fished an old blanket out from behind the seat, and they walked down to the Davy Crocket Elementary School playground and spread out to have their lunch.



When she asked why he had a blanket behind the seat, he told her that he had watched the stars in his astronomy class, thankful that she didn't press him to find out with whom he had been watching the stars.



He rubbed her palm while she lay back on the grass and looked at the clouds. The street was so quiet, but she sensed an undercurrent of activity, and then it dawned on her that people were paying their respects to the president.



"We should go home," she said. "The president is dead. We should have more respect than this."



He took her home where Mrs. Clary was watching her television set and invited them in to watch with her because it was obvious that they were going to be a nice couple and would respect the privacy of the other tenants and she knew this because, she said, they had not taken food off of anyone else's shelf.



They watched for a while, and then Mrs. Clary went to put on supper, and Elizabeth offered to help, but Mrs. Clary told her no, not on her honeymoon, and in a little while, she and Ben went back downstairs so that Ben could study for an exam on Tuesday.



She sat quietly for a while, and finally she couldn't stand it anymore.



"Will you build me something?" she asked.



He turned away from his book. "What would you like?"



"I think I want a bridge."



"What kind of bridge?" he asked.



"I don't know. The kind that has a troll, I think."



"Oh, and who is going to build you a troll?"



"Well, I think if you build a bridge, you will get a troll automatically."



"Let me think about this bridge," he said. "I'll build it for you. I will build you a bridge to the moon."



She was reminded of George in It's a Wonderful Life, and then she asked him if he was tired of her already.



He held out his hand for her to come sit on his lap at his little study table, but she didn't move.



"You're being awfully needy today, aren't you?" he teased.



"Tell me. I just need you to say it."



"I will never get tired of you, Bitty Behr." He pledged his boy scout pledge of honor.



He turned back towards his books, and she flopped down on the bed, already bored.



"Play cards with me," she said.



"Bits, honey, I have to study. You have to let me concentrate."



"But it's our honeymoon," she said.



"I know, but if you let me study, I can take you out for a walk tonight."



"Fine," she said.



"I know," she started a little later, "I can paint my nails."



"Elizabeth," he warned. "Not another word."



She sat, cross, on the bed and stared at him. If she stared at him long and hard, he would surely turn around and pay attention to her. She didn't think she liked this situation much anymore. She had given herself to him, let him do that thing to her, and now he didn't even want to make time for her. Well, she thought, I'll show him. I won't let him do it again for a whole week.



She started making shadow puppets with her hands, which played across his face, and he slammed his book down and shouted at her.



She huddled up in the corner, angry at him but determined that he would not have the satisfaction of seeing her cry. The tears welled up in her eyes, and she was careful not to wipe them, but when her nose started running, she climbed off the bed. He looked at her sharply, and she told him she was going to the bathroom and put her head down.



She was gone for a long time, trying to get the tears to stop and waiting for the hall to clear out so no one would see her, and then she started worrying about what he would think she was doing in the bathroom, so she slipped out of the door and found her way onto the front porch where she dangled her feet off the rickety old swing. The sun was beginning to set, and she started walking. She wasn't sure where she was going, but when she ended up at a gas station fifteen minutes later, she saw the phone booth. Her mother was tiresome and demanding, but she missed her and was certain that she would be worried.



She dug the dime out of her penny loafer and asked the operator to connect her. It was her father who answered the telephone, and when she said, "Daddy?" He took off to yelling at her.



"Where have you been? We've been worried sick about you. Do you know what you've put your mother through? Where are you? When I get you home, I'm going to beat you black and blue."



He went on and on, and she wanted to hang up, but it was good to hear the worry in his voice. At least he had noticed that she had left. Ben was probably buried in a book and might never even realize she had left.



Her mother took the phone then. "What have you done to yourself, Elizabeth? What have you done? You've thrown your life away. You've shamed yourself. You're ruined, I tell you! Ruined!"



"I'm married, Mama," she said thrusting her hand with its skinny gold band across the phone booth as if to prove to her mother that it was true.



Her dad took the phone again and asked her, "Are you pregnant, girl? I'll kill him. I swear to God I'll hunt him down and kill him like an animal."



"Daddy, I'm not pregnant," she insisted. He didn't seem to want to hear that, but finally her mother got back on the phone and said, "Well, you've messed up good now, little girl. I hope you don't want to come home. You'd better be ready to take your lumps."



"Mama," she said, "I just wanted to let you know that I'm married and I'm not coming home."



"Seventeen years old," her mother said. "You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into. I told you to get rid of him with all his pawing and grabbing."



Elizabeth did hang up then, and everything she had suspected was now confirmed. She would never be welcome in that house again, and they would always think that she had done that thing and gotten herself in trouble, and even if they hated Ben, they had to look upon him with a little sympathy because here was this man with his whole life ahead of him and now he was stuck with a dirty girl who was carrying a child. That's what all of the kids in her school would think, too. That she had gotten into trouble and forced him to marry her.





She sank down in the phone booth and wondered what to do next. She wanted to go home, but where was home? Was it in that little room in a dark basement where she was banished like a child to the corner? Was it her old room with its pink bedspread and her track ribbons and faded crepe paper pom poms? No, that wasn't it. She didn't want to go there. She wanted to go back to Ben, but now she was scared. What if he never came to get her? What if he wouldn't let her back into the house?



She left the phone booth and turned the corner to walk down the block behind Dana Drive and after a few blocks, she decided to go home where at least Mrs. Clary would let her sleep on the couch until she could figure things out. She walked for half an hour before she realized she was lost. . She ran into the playground at the elementary school and found a swing to sit in. It was dark now, and there was no moon. She was frightened by the squeaky swings and the empty street but she was afraid to leave there because at least there were street lamps spreading a pool of light around her swing. She knew she was close to home, but she was afraid that she would head in the wrong direction and be worse off.



She couldn't stay here all night, and then she remembered what she had learned from Michael when he was teaching her to drive. She walked back the way she came and started watching for landmarks. It would do no good to knock on a door and ask to use the phone. She didn't know the number; she didn't even know the address. Mrs. Clary had a fire place, so she made herself watch for smoke, but it was too dark to see any smoke until she walked right up on it.



She walked for over an hour before Ben found her. He had been driving up and down the streets, had gone to the gas station where the attendant said he had seen a girl of her description using the phone booth, and Ben called her father thinking that she was on her way home. Her father balled him out good and proper, and Ben took it because he deserved it, but when her father said that she was Ben's problem now, he knew that Bitty wasn't going home.



He got back in his pickup and started driving again. He was frantic. When he thought Elizabeth was going to go home, his heart was broken, but this was worse. She was out in darkness in an unfamiliar city without a sweater on a chilly night, and God only knows what could have happened to her by now.



He found her on the corner, and he threw the door open and ran to her, and she screamed because his pickup was rolling down the street, and then it ran over a trash can and a man came bounding out of his house and wanted to know what the hell was going on, and Ben was jumping to get into the pickup, and finally he got it stopped. Elizabeth stood on the corner watching all the commotion. He apologized to the man whose trash can was only slightly dented, so he waved Ben away, and then Ben came walking towards her.



She wasn't sure why, but she was mad at him. Just five minutes ago, she was terrified that he wouldn't come for her, but now that he was here, she wondered what had taken him so long. She turned around and started walking away from him.



"Bitty, wait!" he shouted. She could hear that he was now running, and she took off running, but he was much faster, and in just a few seconds, he had caught up to her. He grabbed her arm, and she flung herself away and screamed at him to leave her alone.



"Why did you leave?" he asked. "What's wrong? I don't understand."



"You didn't even come looking for me," she cried. "I was gone for hours."



"I've been looking for you for hours. I thought you went up to help Mrs. Clary, but she said the last time she saw you, you were on the porch swing, and then I started walking, calling for you, and the whole boarding house came out and started yelling for you, and when I couldn't find you, I called your mother."



"You called my mother?"



"Yes, and they accused me of all kinds of things, and Bitty, no matter what I said, they didn't believe me."



She turned to face him. "They won't let me come home," she said.



She saw the pain in his face, and then she said, "I don't want to go home, but I wanted them to want me to come home."



"Com'ere, darlin'," he said.



"No."



He reached for her again, and when she pulled away, he grasped her arm firmly and pulled her into him. "Yes," he said.



She let him hold her for a little while because he was all that she had but also because he had come looking for her, had fought for her, and that was more than she had gotten from anyone else in her life. He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders and steered her towards the pickup.



When they got back to Mrs. Clary's, all of the tenets were huddled around the front door waiting for them, and when they started to ask questions, Ben shook his head and told them that Elizabeth had just gone for a little walk and lost her way home.



Mrs. Clary told Ben to fetch Elizabeth's robe, and she drew a bath for her. She stood helpless in the middle of all of these people, and Mrs. Clary said, "Here, honey, you come get warm in the bathtub while I fix you a plate."



Elizabeth took a bath and hoped for a minute that Ben would come in, at least to check on her, but she knew that he would never do that in front of all of these strangers, so she washed herself and got out and found a fluffy towel in the cabinet, and Mrs. Clary knocked and handed her a nightgown and robe through a crack in the door, and she got dressed.



When she went down the hall, she saw that it was empty. The neighbors must have decided to give her some privacy, and when she went downstairs, Mrs. Clary was setting up their plates and lighting a candle for them. Somehow she had missed Ben who must have gone to the other bathroom to shower because his bathrobe was missing off the hook on the back of the door.



"Honey, it's hard," Mrs. Clary said. "I married my dear husband and left home when I was fifteen, and I was scared to death. You'll be okay." She gave her a quick hug. "He was worried sick about you."



Elizabeth nodded and made a mental note never to think of her as Mrs. Chatty Kathy again. She was kinder to her than her own mother had ever been.



Ben came down the stairs, and Mrs. Clary left them alone.



"Come here, Elizabeth," he told her. She worried when he called her that because it always meant that he was going to say something serious to her. He was sitting on the little stuffed chair in the corner, and she climbed onto his lap.



"Why did you leave?" he asked. "Tell me because I don't ever want to do whatever it is I did again."



"Do you remember the day you met me at the school? The day that they went to the city to look for a refrigerator?"



"Yes," he nodded.



"That morning, she kept insisting that I go with them, and I kept telling her no. I had set my hair because I knew I was going to see you, and then she started screaming at me and I think she knew, Ben, where I was going, but I wouldn't give in to her, and my father came in and started yelling at me, and I told them that I had to go to the library to check out a book, and she took after me with a hair brush because she knew I was lying, and Ben, she crushed the curlers against my head, and I had to wear my hair down that day because I had cuts down the back of my neck from her beating me."



"Oh my God, baby. Why didn't you tell me? I would have taken you that day."



"Because I was still sixteen. They could have come for me and forced me to go back home, and then she would have beaten me to death."



He rocked her on his lap and told her that she would never go back there. Never. He told her he was sorry about last night that maybe he hadn't been gentle enough with her, and they didn't have to do anything until she was ready, and he felt miserable all the way around.



"I only told you because that is what you did wrong. When I wanted to talk, you shouted at me because you were trying to study, and I thought of all the times when she had yelled at me because I was an inconvenience to her. I hated that."



"You weren't an inconvenience, sugar, " he said. "I have to study, and you were a distraction. Don't you think I wanted to throw that book across the room and take you back to bed? I just wanted to get my reading over with so I could get back to you."



"Really?"



"Really," he said. "You have to let me study, Bitty, and you can't make me feel bad about it, but you need to know that all I want is to spend every minute of every day of the rest of my life with you, but, darlin, that won't put food on the table."



She told him that she really didn't eat that much, and he laughed and picked her up off of him and they ate the dinner that Mrs. Clary had brought down.

[Grace]

When they were done, she laid on the bed, and he sat down beside her. “Would you just hold me tonight?” she asked. She was wounded, he thought.



“Com’ere, sweetheart,” he said. He held her through the night, and when he awakened, she was sitting in the chair, and the candle was lit.



“Bitty?”



“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I haven’t acted right, I know. I should’ve let you study.”



“If I got you some books from the library Monday,” he said, “would you read them while I study?”



“I guess so, but it’s not that. It’s that I was mean to you, and you have been so sweet to me. I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”



“Come back to bed. We can talk about this tomorrow. Everything is fine,” he said, pulling the covers back for her.



She blew out the candle and crawled in beside him, and he drifted off to sleep, but Elizabeth could not.



She laid in the bed, worrying about how she must be a disappointment to him and how she had such a hard time telling him what she was thinking because she knew she was being childish, and she really wasn’t very good at playing a grownup, and he was a man. And she knew that she had tried his patience all weekend, but she didn’t want to be like she was. She wanted to be sophisticated like the women in the movies with their stockings and high heels and blood red lipstick, but she couldn’t help it if her mother wouldn’t let her wear real shoes unless she was at church, and it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know how to smoke. It wasn’t really her fault that she didn’t know about sex, either. She had tried to talk to her mother who simply accused her of being a whore, and the nuns did not allow the girls to talk about anything except the church and told her that she was hurting the baby Jesus every time she thought about being with a boy.



She had ached for him for months, hurting the baby Jesus during every free moment of her time. She was so conflicted when he would try to touch her because she wanted him to, but she knew it was wrong, and the nuns had told them that wives had a duty to their husbands but not until they were married, and they never told her that she would feel that explosion that she had felt, and she was sure that something was wrong with her because she wasn’t supposed to like it.



But she did like it, and she liked feeling him inside of her but it wasn’t the physical part, it was different. It was like he possessed her, melted into her, in a way no one else had ever done, but it was more than that because he wanted to be inside her, and she knew that he had worried about her when she was gone. And she wanted him to wake up because she wanted him to take these worries away from her.



She woke him up when he felt her hand creeping down between his legs, and he was surprised at her because he never thought she would come for him as he had wanted to come for her so many times that day. He rolled over and kissed her shoulder and kissed her stomach and said, “Tell me what you want.”



“I want to feel you inside me,” she said, unable to tell him that what she wanted most was to spill her feelings out and let him help her put them in order and sort through them like they were files in a legal office, but she couldn’t risk exposing such deep wounds, so she said she wanted him inside of her and when he was, she moved his hand around so that he found that spot again, and as he moved in and out of her, he rubbed her in just the right way, and it took a long time, but when it happened to her, he could feel the strength of her contractions, and then he couldn’t hold it in any longer because, though he had heard about this, he had no idea that it would happen for her, and it made everything so much better for both of them.



He got up to get a towel for her to clean herself with when he realized that he had not used a condom, and he felt his stomach lurch, but when he turned on the light, he was covered in blood. He ran towards her, scared that he had torn her, but she was fine, and then she saw the blood and turned white.



“Are you okay?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”



She sat, staring at him and the blood that had matted in his hair. She had gotten her period after all. She started to cry.



“What is it, honey? What did I do?”



“It’s my period,” she said. “Oh, Ben, oh, no. I don’t have anything for it.”



Relief flooded over him. She wouldn’t be pregnant.



“Here,” he said, “take this towel.”



She pushed it between her legs and then said, “There’s blood on the sheets.” She wouldn’t look at him.



“We’ll wash them in the morning,” he said. He tried to lift her chin, but she resisted.



“What’s wrong? I have two sisters, Bitty. I know this happens. Please don’t be embarrassed.”



She turned away from him, and he sighed. It was fifteen after five. When was this weekend going to end? he thought. When would they settle into their real life? She exhausted him. He felt that he couldn’t do anything right, and he had tried to be patient with her and give her time to come to him, but he couldn’t help it if she had gotten her period. He didn’t make that happen. Then he realized that he wouldn’t get any sex from her for the next four or five days, and that made him even more irritable.



He laid down beside her, and in a little while, he could smell bacon floating down the stairs, and he tugged on her hair and told her to get up. Mrs. Clary didn’t have many rules but one of them was that you ate when it was hot or you didn’t eat.



“I can’t go up there,” she said. She wouldn’t meet his eyes and then he realized that she did not have any feminine supplies, and she couldn’t very well walk around with a towel between her legs, so he went rummaging around the basement to see if he could find anything less intrusive. He was able to find Mrs. Clary’s storage shelf with rolls of toilet paper, and he brought one in to her.



They had a little bathroom all to themselves in the basement that was nothing more than a toilet and utility sink, but it at least afforded her some privacy, so she made him turn away while she crept out the door, and then she called for him to bring her some clothes, and when he asked which ones, she told him just to find her something, anything.



He brought her blue jeans and a plaid shirt, and he found a bra in her drawer and some clean underwear and handed them to her through the door. She washed out the bloody towel the best that she could and wadded it up behind her back so that Ben wouldn’t see it when he came into the bathroom, and she found the big trash can and buried it deep inside, and then she went back to their room.



She was so pale that Ben felt instant regret for having been irritated with her earlier, and he leaned down and kissed the top of her head, and then he hugged her and lifted her off the ground, but she was still very grave.



“Ah, Bitty,” he said. “Please don’t. It’s not like you can run away for a week every month. This is just what happens, and every woman in the world has a period, and you just can’t do this.”



She glared at him, and he sighed. He went into the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth, and he realized that her blood was still on him, so he cleaned himself up the best that he could and went back into the room to get dressed. She turned away from him and put her bobby socks on and rolled her cuffs. He smiled at her, remembering that she had once told him that she had to buy her britches in the little boys’ section of Smith and Taylors because they didn’t make blue jeans small enough for her. He didn’t know very many girls who would wear them, but he liked that about her because it was such a defiant little thing for her to do.



They went upstairs for breakfast, and the table was full of their neighbors, and they finally got introduced to everyone who looked at them fondly because there hadn’t been a young couple in the house in over a year. These two would bring some happiness, they all agreed.



Elizabeth still would not look at Ben though she did pretend like everything was just fine, and that was a relief because he really hated it when people felt the need to air their dirty laundry in public as his mother used to say.



After breakfast, all the tenets prepared for church, and Elizabeth decided that she wanted to go say a prayer for the president, and there had to be a mass going on somewhere. She got dressed for church and wadded toilet paper up and chose a large handbag and put nickels in it because sometimes you could find one of those dispensers in a bathroom. Even if the president had never died, no stores were open on Sundays in Texas, so she was stuck until tomorrow unless she could find a little machine.



Ben was not Catholic, and he had actually been surprised that Elizabeth didn’t take issue with that because a friend of his had explained that they would not be legally married in the church if Ben did not convert, but she had not asked him to. They found a small church a mile or two down the road, and Elizabeth told Ben that he could wait in the car if he wanted, but he went in with her because, if nothing else, he felt he should say a prayer for the president, and he could probably sneak in a request to help Bitty get over whatever it was that had twisted her ponytail this weekend.



They lit their candles and went through the ritual, and when Ben started to do something wrong, she would press against him to let him know that he wasn’t qualified to do this or that in the church, and it was generally uncomfortable for him, so he was glad when it was over and they walked back outside where he felt less stifled. She seemed happier now, and Ben thought that maybe God had answered his prayers.



When they got back home, they changed into their blue jeans, and Ben asked her if she wanted to take a walk with him, and she said okay, but he was a little worried because she was still so pale and her eyes had purple circles under them.



They walked over to the playground and sat in the swings and he said, “I’ll take you shopping tomorrow so you can get . . . um, whatever it is you need to get for . . . well, you know.” He didn’t want to embarrass her.



“It’s taken care of,” she said, and then he remember her handbag and dropped the conversation altogether.



“Push me,” she said, and he got out of his swing and pulled her back and let her go, and her pony tail bounced in the breeze, and from behind, she looked like a little girl. God, he loved her. He just wanted to make her happy, and she was so complicated. He thought he would never get things right, and he remembered when he was sleeping with Katherine and how simple that relationship was. They would meet in his dorm room on the weekends, and she would climb in through the window and they would spend hours in bed, and then she went home and he was completely satisfied with their arrangement. Until he met this little waif in a swing with her dancing pony tail and red bow, and his heart smote him to even think for a second that Katherine could compare to her.



She was pumping her legs hard, and he felt a moment of panic when he realized how high she was swinging, but then she slowed down and he went back to his own swing. She stopped swinging, and in a minute, she crawled into his lap and straddled him and then snuggled into his neck and he held her like that for a long time without saying anything.



When they got back home, Mrs. Clary and the neighbors were in the living room watching the television, and they filled them in on the news. The man who had shot the president was shot right there on tv with the whole world watching. That made Ben a little sick to his stomach, but Elizabeth was fascinated. She stayed behind with the tenets while Ben went back downstairs to finish his reading.



At dinner time, which was in the early evenings on Sundays, they sat quietly listening to all of the conversations, and when it came around to the civil rights issue, Elizabeth said, “Well, the niggers will be crying,” and everyone laughed except Ben. He looked at her sternly, and her heart sank. He had told her once that he was a supporter of equal rights for everyone, and he hated the word “nigger” because it was so common. He thought that people who used that word sounded ignorant and trashy, and here she had gone and done this in public.



She insisted on helping Mrs. Clary clear the table and do the dishes because she did not want to go back down where Ben would let his disappointment in her be made very clear. He was sitting on the porch swing having a cigarette, but she noticed that he was watching her through the window and he was clearly upset with her. When he walked past her in the dining room, he did not speak and he made an effort not to brush up against her.



The dishes were done, and she could not put this off any longer. She walked down the stairs with dread, and Ben was sitting at his little table with a book open and drawing something on graph paper. He was playing with his slide rule when she came in. He said nothing to her.



She plopped into the corner chair and said, “Well, let me have it. Go ahead.”



“It’s your choice,” he told her. “I won’t tell you how you’re supposed to feel, but by God, Elizabeth, don’t you ever do that when I’m sitting there again. I will not have people think that I agree with that, and I mean it.”



She was stunned. She had irritated him before, but he had never been this mad, and she really thought it was unfair. He couldn’t blame her for getting caught up in all of the excitement. And she was from the deep south, and that was just the way people were. He was from a coal mining town in Kentucky, but he had always fought such things; he told her so. He was not going to be like the people he grew up with, and what difference did it make to them if everyone had a say in how things were supposed to be, anyway? She had agreed with him on that point, but when she tried to argue that “nigger” didn’t really mean anything, it was just the way people talked, he told her that he hoped she would never say that again because it meant something to him and he felt like they both had a responsibility to raise their children differently and how could they do it if she thought that a word like that meant nothing?



She told him that she was sorry and it wouldn’t happen again, but he just shook his head at her and turned back to his graph paper. She was crushed. She jumped out of the chair and screamed, “This is my honeymoon, dammit! It’s the only one I’ll ever get, and you are ruining it. I hate you!” She headed towards the door, but he got there first, and he told her to sit down and shut her mouth, and she pounded her tiny fists against his chest, and he picked her up and set her down on the bed and said, “you better watch your language, too.” He left her, deposited there, and sat down in his chair.



“You better not tell me what to do, Benjamin Behr, and you can just go to hell,” and she headed for the door again.



“Stop it right now,” he said in a low and even voice. “You are not going to run away every time we have a fight.”



His voice scared her, so she sat back down. “This is not us having a fight,” she protested. “This is you being mean to me and for no good reason.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she bit her lip to choke them back.



“Goddammit, Bitty! I have done everything I know to do to make you happy, and I told you that I didn’t like that language, but you’re just being spiteful now. You promised me that you were ready for this, and it’s obvious you are not. I didn’t make you have a period. I didn’t get you lost.” He sat in his little chair and put his head in his hands and she wondered if he was crying.



She came over to him then and told him that she would not bother him again. She was sorry, she said, and she was the one who was wrong, and she knew it wasn’t his fault that she had gotten her period, and wasn’t there anything she could do to make this up to him?



He took her in his arms and told her it was his fault. He had been so anxious about going to get her, so nervous about this weekend, and he was just trying to say the right things, but would she please, please not talk that way again because he wanted to believe that she was a better person than that. She agreed that she would try as hard as she could not to say anything that would embarrass him again, and then she told him to get back to his books and she would not say anything else to him until he was finished.



He told her that maybe Mrs. Clary had a book upstairs that she could borrow, so Elizabeth went up and came back down with a copy of The Scarlet Letter because that was a book that the nuns would not let them read.



She laid on the bed and read until her eyes were heavy, and at eleven, Ben woke her up and told her that he did not have school the next day; Mrs. Clary had told him that the news was saying that Monday was a day of mourning and no one was doing anything while the president was getting buried.



She tiptoed down the hall and took her shower as quietly as she could, but most of the neighbors were still awake, watching the news with Mrs. Clary. Ben had already showered and was lying in bed, reading her copy of The Scarlet Letter.



“I read this in high school,” he told her.



“I didn’t think they had books in Kentucky,” she teased. He had often complained about their lack of faith in education in his little hometown.



“Well, we did have a library that came to town every week,” he said. Then his face lit up, and he remembered to tell her that Mrs. Clary said the Bookmobile came to the Piggly Wiggly every Thursday, and she could get a card and check out books and while she was at night school, he would study.



He closed the book, and she climbed over him. He told her one time that she could have whichever side of the bed she wanted, but they weren’t going to go back and forth because he needed to find his place and stick to it.



She smelled like baby powder, and he reached over and pulled her hair and smiled at her in the darkness. They had found that leaving the door open would give them just enough light to see their way to the bathroom and no one else but them and Mrs. Clary went downstairs, and they didn’t think she would be down before they were up in the mornings.



She smiled back and nestled under his arm and then she felt that he was hard again, and her heart skipped a beat because what if he expected her to do something, and then she closed her eyes and decided to stop worrying about it so much.



He pushed against her gently, and her eyes flew open, and he reached around and cupped her breast through her nightgown. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do, so she laid there, pretending to sleep, but he took her hand and pressed it against him, and she wrapped her hand around him and realized that he had put that into her and God, it was too big for her little body, but he led her hands up and down and moaned softly in her ear. She turned towards him because her arm was aching from trying to do all this backwards, and he kissed her face and started pulling her nightgown over her head.



She didn’t understand what he expected her to do. Her nightgown was off now, and he had crawled on top of her, and she was dying inside because she could feel him pressed up against her pad, but he didn’t seem to care.



“Put your arms around me,” he told her. He was trying to wedge her legs apart, and she told him no, but he told her it was okay, he wasn’t going to do that to her.



She relented, and then he was between her legs, but he did not try to force his way in. She put her arms around him and felt the muscles on his back, and she tried to look at his face, but he was too tall, and she could only see his chest and hear his heart beating.



She wanted to feel him inside of her and she got mad all over again that her stupid period had ruined her stupid honeymoon, and then he was pulling at her panties and he asked her if she would let him do it if he got a towel to lay underneath her, and she said “no,” and then he said, “please?” and she nodded.



He pulled the covers back so they would not get blood on the sheets and he lifted her gently and arranged the towel underneath her. When he went to pull her underwear off she said, “wait.”



He grimaced. “What?”



“Shut the door,” she said. “I don’t want you to see it.”



He told her that he didn’t care; she was so beautiful to him and this was a part of her, and it didn’t bother him one bit, but she said, “No. If you want to do it this way, you’ll have to shut the door.”



He shut the door for her and then climbed in beside her, and he wanted to touch her there, to make her climax again, but he thought that might be too messy, so he just laid on top of her and put it in as easily as he could, and she arched her back towards him, and he flipped her over so that she was on top, which caught her by surprise, and she slipped off of him, but he lifted her up and set her back in place. Her legs were too short and spread too far, so he pulled her knees up so that she was squatting on him and could use her feet for traction. She moved up and down but she wouldn’t let him get too deep inside of her because she said it still hurt, so he rolled her onto her back, and he pulled her legs up, and then she wrapped them around his waist and hooked them together, and he thrust himself deeply into her as hard as he could, and she cried out in pain, but he came anyway, and she could feel his contractions deep inside of her, and then he was finished.



“Was it okay?” he panted.



“Yes, it was good,” she said. She was disappointed that it hadn’t escalated for her, but she suddenly felt sticky and got embarrassed all over again.



He found his way to the door and let the light from the window spill into the room, and he told her to wait right there. While he was in the bathroom cleaning himself, she touched herself, and when it was almost time, she clenched her teeth and closed her eyes tight so she didn’t see him standing in the door way watching her.



When she opened her eyes, he was standing by the bed, and she was startled and then blushed deeply at having been caught doing that, and she felt like she should hold her hand out and let him hit her rapidly with a ruler, but he was smiling at her, and she noticed that he was getting hard again. Out of nowhere, she reached up and yanked on his penis, and he laughed at her, and then handed her a clean towel and helped her out of bed. She wouldn’t let him go into the bathroom with her and when she got there she realized that her pad was still belted to her panties, and oh holy Jesus, what if he saw that?



She wrapped a towel around herself and went back to retrieve her things and thank God her nightgown was covering her underwear and she scooped them all up in a heap and went back to the bathroom.



Ben was smoking, waiting for her, and he felt like a total ass because he should have known better than to ask that of her and really, when it came right down to it, he was just like any other horny bum, and he vowed that he would never do that to her again. He was relieved that she did not seem upset, and he picked her up and sat her on the other side of the bed, and she took his cigarette from his lips and took a long draw on it, and she only coughed a little bit this time.