"Uh oh. The daughter of G.o.d has spoken," Pinkie said. Emma Lee Givens was a stern-visaged, bespectacled daughter of an a.s.sembly of G.o.d preacher. Her face was pretty and her sense of humor more finely developed than she revealed to most of her cla.s.smates. She sat across from Sammy and made no secret that she thought he was hilarious. Ben had found out from Philip that she was the senior cla.s.s"s runaway valedictorian with Philip himself an earnest but distant second.
"Yeah, why do we have to learn all these big words? Us people with normal brains. Not geniuses like Emma Lee and Philip," Sue Ellen said.
"Because you are verbal cretins," Mr. Loring shouted, "and because I have tyrannically and arbitrarily decreed it, and because you will not graduate if you don"t."
"I"m going to incarcerate you, Loring. Then I"m going to decimate you," Jim Don cried out, utilizing the only two words from the vocabulary list he could remember.
"My mommy told me that Loring is one of those things," said Carol Huger, sitting across from Jim Don.
"I feel grievous when I ruminate about your idiosyncrasies, Loring," Pinkie called out proudly.
"Don"t listen to them, Mr. Loring. They are less than thee," Emma Lee Givens said in a voice full of p.r.o.nouncement.
"You sound like a letter to the Ephesians, Emma Lee. Who do you think you are?" Sue Ellen flared.
"No friend of yours, Sue Ellen," Emma Lee said quietly.
"You"re always defending that thing," Carol Huger called from the rear of the room.
"I like him," Emma Lee said, "and I would appreciate it if you would let him teach me. And thee."
"Thank you, Emma Lee," Mr. Loring said, "but you do not have to defend me against the poor creeters."
"I didn"t understand the a.s.signment last night, Mr. Loring," Sammy said. "And when a brilliant scholar like me doesn"t understand it you know it"s got to be complex."
"Samuel," Emma Lee whispered and Ben overheard, "you know you did not read the a.s.signment."
"Creeter," Mr. Loring said speaking to Ben again, "you think you are just wonderful this morning. You think you are the greatest thing that ever hit this high school, don"t you? Admit it, so we can get on with this cla.s.s. What did you think when you looked at yourself in the mirror this morning?"
"He"s the star," Sue Ellen announced and Ben winced with a small pain and an exquisite, consuming pleasure.
"The star?" Mr. Loring hooted. "The star? My word. Lawdy, lawdy. The star? Here in my room. Little ol" Og Loring teaches a star. I thought stars were parts of constellations and galaxies. I didn"t know they could sit in cla.s.srooms. I thought they were heavenly bodies that gave off light and heat and energy. I thought they had to be studied through telescopes. To think I"m standing up here and gazing at a star less than ten feet away. How blinding. What did you think when you woke up and looked in the mirror this morning? Were you surprised to see a star?"
"I didn"t think anything, Mr. Loring. I just gave myself a standing ovation."
After he had laughed, cleared his throat, and cleaned his gla.s.ses one more time, Ogden Loring began the cla.s.s.
"Animules, cracker trash, and star," he began, "today I will continue to show you how teaching can be an art form."
Chapter 23.
From long experience in deciphering the arcane ways of nuns and after hearing Sister Loretta end two successive catechism cla.s.ses with the admonition, "And remember, boys and girls, your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost," and the sudden descent into hushed reverent tones when she mentioned the last CCD meeting before the Christmas holidays, Ben and Mary Anne knew that the cloven-hoofed topic of s.e.x waited in the wings for its sordidly concupiscent introduction.
They discussed the probability on their walks home. "There"s no doubt about it," Mary Anne said, "ol" Loretta Lou is going to hit us with the ol" facts of life. That "your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost" routine is a dead giveaway. Of course, it"s always irritated me that my temple has freckles."
Ben said, "I bet the Holy Ghost hates living in the crummy temple you got for him."
"It"s better than living in the temple of zits."
"I bet Father Pinckney will be brought in to talk to us boys and Sister Loretta will take the girls," Ben said.
"I"ve seen that nasty film on menstruation four times and that disgusting film on birth at least three."
But the day before the appointed cla.s.s, Ben heard an argument between Father Pinckney and Sister Loretta after 6:15 Ma.s.s. It was still dark, although the sun was beginning to shimmer and stir the rim of the eastern horizon and Ben was extinguishing the candles on the altar when he heard Father Pinckney"s voice.
"I shall not do it, Sister. And all the Sisters of Mercy in all of their thunderous battalions praying nonstop, twenty-four hours a day could not make me do it. I get embarra.s.sed, Sister. I have tried to do it before and I just get embarra.s.sed. I am a man of keen sensibilities and a total lack of experience in the subject matter and I shall not make a fool out of myself in front of twenty boys. My G.o.d, Sister, they know more than I do."
"They don"t know it from the Catholic viewpoint. They don"t know what is sinful and what is not."
"Nor do I, Sister. Nor do I."
"Of course you do, Father. You hear their confessions."
"I will not do it, Sister. I will not teach s.e.x to those loose-limbed satyrs. I"ll make them memorize the Act of Hope instead."
"Then I"ll have to do it myself, Father, if you insist on shirking your responsibilities."
"Sister, good Sister, merciful Sister," Father Pinckney had said as Ben remained near the altar immobilized with a sense of guilt as though he were overhearing a conversation between heavenly figures, "you have prodded me in a vital spot, for I do indeed shirk too many of my responsibilities. But do believe me that I cannot do what you ask. I don"t know what to say to teenage boys or girls about this tenderest of all subjects."
"I know what to say," the nun said darkly.
"Then say it, dear Sister. Say it and praise the Lord."
On the next night, Sister Loretta entered the room on the coldest night of the year and began the cla.s.s with a prayer for chast.i.ty that she read from a black manual. She then announced that a registered nurse from the naval hospital was upstairs to speak privately with the girls while she herself would lecture the boys on a subject of great importance to all of them in later life. The girls rose and were herded out of the room, giggling and turning shyly back toward the boys, some of whom whispered with each other as the footsteps of the girls pattered on the staircase as they escaped the gaze of boys whose minds trembled with forbidden imagery, and a sadness seized them as they listened to the exile of their companions entrapped and made holy by the mystery of the blood flow. Ben did not understand why his mother, his sister, and his friends had to bleed, hurt, and cramp; the separateness was an abyss, a continental divide that kept them apart. When the girls had settled into the upstairs cla.s.sroom, Sister Loretta began to speak to the boys.
"Tonight," she said in a lemony voice, "I would like to discuss the subject of s.e.x with you." She mouthed the word "s.e.x" with a visible distaste as though it were part of a most bitter and unsavory language. "Now I am going to speak to you as if you were young men. Mature young men. If anyone feels he might laugh or be embarra.s.sed with what I have to say tonight, he is free to leave the room."
Every eye in the room focused on Sister Loretta; no one moved and not one boy tried to attract the attention of another boy.
"Now most of you probably think that nuns all have faces that can stop clocks and have no s.e.xual urges at all. This is not true. All human beings have s.e.xual drives because all human beings are animals. But nuns and priests have wed themselves and consecrated themselves to the memory of Jesus Christ; they have made the supreme sacrifice of negating these urges to better serve their Master. They have purified themselves so that their prayers will be more pleasing in the sight of G.o.d. Their reward will come later and will be far greater because of their sacrifice. Their place in heaven will be higher than those who yielded to the temptations and petty cravings of the flesh."
Her voice was bloodless and her eyes seemed drawn and unlived in as though the capillaries that fed them were filled with the dust from the Catholic centuries that sustained her.
"Of course it is important for you to remember that s.e.x is beautiful. It is G.o.d"s way of perpetuating the species. But it is only beautiful if it takes place between two people duly married by a priest under the sight of G.o.d. Because of the holy act of s.e.xual intercourse, children are brought forth on the earth. s.e.x in marriage is only holy if it is done for the procreation of children. If it is done for simple animal pleasure, then it is sinful and repugnant to G.o.d and his chaste Mother."
Two boys began to giggle uncontrollably at the front of the room. It was P.K. Hill and Gilbert Fewell. Both were in the tenth grade and both of them had turned a fine shade of scarlet during the course of Sister Loretta"s presentation. They tried to m.u.f.fle their laughter with their hands, but this only made it worse and they grew desperate as the nun glared at them with a glance that had known glaciers, tundras, and the bottoms of oceans.
"Children giggle at topics of utter seriousness, Mr. Hill and Mr. Fewell. If you insist on being children, I suggest you hold hands with one another like baby boys do. Go ahead. Hold hands and then I"ll continue."
The two boys looked at each other, then at the nun. Painfully, they took each other"s hands and blushed again as the other boys laughed.
Then Sister Loretta got to her point. "There are some boys in here who probably play with themselves at night. Abuse themselves. I am sure all of you know what I mean."
"Yes, Sister," Ben thought, hating her, "I know what you mean."
"Always remember that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost and when you abuse yourself s.e.xually, you are also abusing the house of G.o.d. Scientists call this vile habit masturbation, but it is more aptly referred to as self-abuse," she said, glaring into the collective face of adolescence which suffered before her. "Self-abuse," she repeated. "Just think of these two words and you will never be tempted to engage in this again. G.o.d knows if you abuse yourself. He watches you. He sees you do it. It disgusts him. It disgusts him so much that he calls his mother, the Blessed Virgin, to his side to watch the hideous spectacle. Then he calls his angels to watch and all the Saints in heaven. Thousands upon thousands of Saints and Angels are watching you every hour of the day. They especially watch you when you are alone at night. They see the dirty things you do with your hands and private parts. All of heaven: G.o.d, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Blessed Mother, the Seraphim, and all the other Angels scream out their hatred of you, chant and sing that they despise you as they watch you flaunt yourself and weaken yourself with your filthy acts."
As Ben listened in pitched horror at Sister Loretta"s portraiture of heaven"s entire populace jeering at some thin lad"s whacking off in the privacy of his room, not knowing he was being observed by the entire celestial civilization, Ben thought of himself, his sinfulness, and his innocence. He had received no preparation-none-for his entry into the arena of a Catholic adolescence. Sedulously, he had once avoided the cl.u.s.ters of boys who haunted the locker rooms with their salient, knowledgeable talk in which his finely honed sense of morality denied him partic.i.p.ation. No one had told him that anything but urine would ever come flying up his penile tract. So on one night, one miraculous night he awoke tingling with a pleasure that turned soon into a divine madness as though G.o.d himself had come into his center, invaded his source, as hot sperm shot into his hand and Ben ran to his bathroom amazed and afraid that he was bleeding to death. And there he had found it and, though it was still a mystery, s.n.a.t.c.hes of locker room conversation came back to him, and paragraphs in forbidden books, and in an instant, he knew he was a life-giver. For the next hour he studied the sperm, a.n.a.lyzing it, as it cooled, thickened, and dried; the white gold mined from interior rivers, his body that tingled with mystery and the knowledge that a sweet dark angel lived in his body, lived in his body deeply.
But then the nuns and priests had gotten to him. Each year they increased their emphasis on s.e.xual education. Most of the boys he knew laughed about what the good sisters and the good fathers had to say about s.e.x. But not Ben. When Sister Marie Daniel stated that masturbation saps your strength, Ben felt incredibly tired, exhausted beyond imagination. When she listed warts, pimples, and madness as direct results of incessant masturbation, Ben looked at the warts on his hands, blushed through the pimples on his face, and felt madness and disorientation violate the frontiers of his psyche. And this same Sister Marie Daniel had told a cla.s.s full of boys that if "thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into h.e.l.l." But Ben had known that she was not talking about eyes and hands, and during the entire year that he was under her influence the image of his p.e.n.i.s being lopped off for the glory of G.o.d haunted him always. He felt sure that if Sister Marie Daniel had had her way, she would have applied leeches to the p.e.n.i.s of every Catholic boy who entered her domain and left them on until each p.e.n.i.s was sucked dry of blood, a limp, desiccated sac of flesh that could be snipped off and thrown from her convent window. Nuns could pray their vespers in a p.e.n.i.s-littered garden and the sad corpses of boy p.e.n.i.ses could be reminders that h.e.l.l would not claim these lads because of sins of the flesh.
The voice of Sister Loretta smashed into his thoughts and he returned to her words.
"Satan also watches you abuse yourself. Only it pleases him and makes him happy. In his everlasting torment and d.a.m.nation, this is the only thing that eases his pain or brings him any joy. He laughs and calls the other demons to his side, millions of them, screaming, howling, bat-faced men and women with their doomed, tortured faces made happy for a single instant by the sight of you abusing and desecrating the temple of the Holy Ghost-your precious body. But do keep in mind my original point. s.e.x is very beautiful. But only if it takes place between two people duly married by a priest under the sight of G.o.d for the purpose of procreation of children. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Sister," the cla.s.s answered.
"Are there any questions?"
"No, Sister," the cla.s.s answered more quickly.
"Now the Virgin Mary can help you during times of temptation. Pray to her often. Pray that she helps you become chaste. Pray to her when impure thoughts come to your mind. Have her statue in your room. Also a statue of Jesus and Joseph and other saints. Turn their eyes toward your bed. Have them watch over you and admonish you with sinless eyes. Keep your rosary beads on your bedside table so you may reach for them when the devil walks at night."
There was no movement among the fetid, dirty little masturbators who sat in an advanced state of spiritual rigor mortis before their catechist. Each boy thought that Sister Loretta was speaking directly to and about him and only him, that somehow she had learned the vile secrets of his bedroom where he waited between spotted sheets and fought with the furious dragon of his own s.e.xuality that issued forth from a forbidden cavern unknown to him, unseen by him. And when once it had been so easy to be good, to be Christian, to refrain from having strange G.o.ds before you, to refuse to covet your neighbor"s goods, to kill, to covet wives, or to commit adultery: where it had been easy to be priest-like, now there was this cataclysmic beast whose hoofs tracked across a boy"s soul, flogged by a demon horseman who could ride through even the sternest gaze of Jesus or Mary, a horseman who could trample G.o.d himself if the hour was late, the sky full of stars, the boy alone, and the desire thundering through him in the thickening and enlarging that he both dreaded and loved.
If the devil caused it, if in Ravenel, South Carolina, in the year of 1962, Satan had taken possession of that vulnerable geography around Ben"s loins, staked a claim in this beleaguered region; if the rise and ebb of his bright manhood was the sole armature of the Prince of Darkness, then he had developed the most potent weapon. For sometimes it came. His brain would sing with the faces and bodies of girls he pa.s.sed in hallways, who sat near him in cla.s.s, who walked into his life and out again in stores, theaters, or trips, and in movies. He had never touched a girl, never held a girl"s hands, never made an advance to do so, and had no immediate prospects, but by night he walked like a king before a kingdom of light and flesh where b.r.e.a.s.t.s came to his mouth, thighs opened and legs seized him in the moonlight sacrament of entry and surrender, the blood rising, the heart in fury, and all women his lovers, his companions, his prey. Above him, the Blessed Virgin stared at him in enraged alabaster, the Christ on the crucifix howled as though Ben were driving another nail into his body, and the angels in their fiery cl.u.s.ters and starry squadrons lamented the fall from grace in beautiful, silvery billions.
She knows about me, Ben thought to himself, she knows and this lecture is directed at me and no one else. Did Father Pinckney tell her about my confession? They probably exchange notes. Hey, Sister, by the way, did you know that Ben Meecham beats off at night quite a bit. Shocking, isn"t it? I was surprised myself considering how many times he receives communion and serves Ma.s.s.
Feeling dead, Ben"s mind skipped to the hills of Alabama where his mother"s kin would whisper to him when Lillian paid calls alone about their private visions of Catholicism. The hill people had a warped, yet sensual, mythology invented to explain to themselves this mumbo-jumbo that Lillian had embraced when she married the pilot from the Midwest. Ben"s great aunt told him the truth about priests and nuns. "They are not what you think they are. When you take a bride in the Catholic Church, one hears tell that the priest spends the first night with her while you pray tied and bound upon the altar. And I, myself, have seen, Benjamin, on motor trips to Atlanta, two or three nuns circling the walls of cemeteries praying for the bones of the murdered infants implanted in them by priests. I have heard their lamentations. When you are older we"ll take you to the river by the New Zion Baptist Church and have Brother Catlett wash you in the blood of the Lamb."
Then Sister Loretta, washed in the blood of dead infants, gave out the a.s.signment for the next meeting in January. "Memorize the Act of Hope which will be found in the index of prayers in the back of your Catechism. I think we"ve accomplished a lot in this meeting. P.K., you and Gilbert can quit holding hands unless you wish to walk home that way."
The cla.s.s laughed except for Gilbert, P.K., and Ben. "You are dismissed. Have a happy and holy Christmas."
Chapter 24.
It was Christmas Eve. The tide was going out in the river. The air was cold, breezeless, and stars sparkled through moss and waited for a bright half-risen moon to climb higher in the sky. A group of carolers from the Blood of His Son Baptist Church sang from house to house, a choir of dark voices moving from one end of town to another, the collective lights of their candles winking and dancing at the end of surprised verandas. Their songs were full of renewal and their presence before the mansions set back from the Lawn brought forth the gray aristocracy of the town to wave and call to the singers whose faces, bright under stars and behind candles, smiled as they sang about the birth of G.o.d.
The Meecham family prepared for midnight Ma.s.s. Mary Anne and Ben, fully dressed, knelt before the Christmas tree rattling presents that bore their names.
"Is this all the presents?" Mary Anne asked.
"You know Mom and Dad bring down most of the presents after we go to bed," Ben answered.
"Of course I know it. I can tell you where every present in this house is hidden."
"How do you know?" Ben challenged.
"Because I"ve snooped around a lot. Gone on reconnaissance missions. Paid off informants. I"m real nosy when it comes to presents."
"You can say that again."
Picking up a very small present, shaking it for some telltale clue of its content, balancing it on her palm, she weighed and a.n.a.lyzed it with the expertise of a rapidly developing sense of human avarice.
"What"s in this one?" she asked. "No sound from the little devil."
"It"s a suppository. It"s from me, with love," Ben said.
"Very witty, feces face," she snapped. "No, it"s probably a diamond ring. Five carats or more. Probably sent by a stranger who has seen me from afar. A shy billionaire who"s been inflamed to pa.s.sion by the sight of my body."
"He must not only be a shy billionaire. He must be a real ugly billionaire."
"Keep it up, jump-shooter," Mary Anne said, "and I"ll have to roll out the big guns."
"What could you say to me that I couldn"t handle?"
"Oh, I wouldn"t say it to you. I"d go up to Daddy-poo and tell him that I saw you sniffin" Mom"s underwear on the clothesline."
"You wouldn"t do that!" Ben cried out.
"No one messes with Big Mary Anne. It"s suicide. Because there"s n.o.body in the world that fights as dirty."
"You"re just like Dad," Ben said.
"I read that in a book recently. About some poor creep who liked to stick his nose in his mama"s nasty ol" panties. Of course, if I told Dad that I saw you doing it ..."
"He"d just kill me and that would be it. No questions asked," Ben said.
"Exactly. So I would advise my golden boy brother to beware when he deals with his brilliant, but modest, sister."
"I got you a gift that I thought you"d like, Mary Anne. You"re always complaining about your freckles, so I got you a gallon of hydrochloric acid. You just pour the whole thing over your head and it"s guaranteed to remove every freckle on your body. Also your nose, your ears, and your lips."
Karen and Matthew entered the room and headed straight for the presents under the tree. Following behind them was Mrs. Meecham, radiant in a yellow dress, her red hair piled fashionably, and her finest jewelry glistening around her neck, above her left breast, and on her wrists and ears. Ben and Mary Anne sat transfixed. There were times when it stunned them both how beautiful Lillian could be.
"I pay homage to the queen," Ben said with a flourish.
"Thank you, darling," Mrs. Meecham beamed, curtsying and blowing kisses to her son. "This is just an old something I had in the closet to put on. I haven"t had anything new or exciting to wear in a c.o.o.n"s age."
"Does it ever bother you, Mama, that all your children look like toads?" Mary Anne said.
"Speak for yourself, Mary Anne," Karen said.