THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE free porn video

Just before my 9th birthday my godmother and great-aunt Frances
bought me a new dark brown suit and new shoes for my Confirmation
ceremony at St. Mary's Catholic School. It was a dim, cloudy
Sunday afternoon outside; but inside the ornate, high-ceiling
Gothic church hundreds of banks of candles cast a warm glorious
light over everyone in the church. Mom and Aunt Frances and my
deceased father's mother, Grandma Rose, drove me to the front en-
trance and let me out on the sidewalk while Aunt Frances parked the
Buick behind the church. I stood there for a moment looking down
at myself, all got up in the immaculate suit and the shiny new
shoes, my hair slicked with a hefty, odorous portion of Wildroot
Hair Oil. I asked myself if it were really me in this costume.
If I bent my arms the sleeves of the suit crinkled and wrinkled
stiffly, but when I straightened my arm the cloth fell back into a
smooth, neatly creased tube. I wore a tight starchy white shirt
with a flowery bowtie my aunt had chosen. The tie and the thick
collar dug uncomfortably into the front of my throat.

I felt out of place, as emotionaly removed from the impending
ceremony as I would have been at a funeral for a perfect stranger's
dead dog. I climbed the front marble steps and entered the front
vestibule, an imposing, darkly paneled hall where I lined up with
a chatty, squealing assemblage of other suited boys. The girls,
fluttering and chirping like sparrows, lined up at the other end of
the hall in fluffy communion-style dresses and white shoes. Soon
the long-robed nuns in their stiff white bobbing habbits shushed us
into silence. They strode quickly through our ranks to check us
out and nod their stern approval.

Even the shuffling of feet on the waxed tile floor came to a
dead stop as my own home-room teacher, Sister Mary Joseph, sternest
and most dreaded nun of all, strode into the room. No more than a
tiny slip of a woman, her imperious expression and long stride gave
her a commanding manner. She stood exactly in the center of the
long and narrow hall, her arms folded firmly before her so that
her hands were hidden inside the floppy arms of her robe. As she
slowly passed her glowering eyes from one end of our ranks to the
other, her thin lips characteristically pursed and reset them-
selves. The hall suddenly echoed as one of the k**s gave a loud
sneeze, which was quickly followed by the echo of four nuns giving
a sharp and loud "Sh!" In the ensuing silence, Sister Mary Joseph
began her announcement in her usual manner, with a rise of her head
and a long deep breath.

"c***dren," she said, "you are about to become soldiers for our
lord Jesus Christ." Pause. "As you attend the holy ceremony of
Confirmation today, you will receive a scapular with an image of
your patron saint." Pause. "Wear your scapular at all times. It
is your protection from the dangers and temptations you encounter
in your struggle with Satan. Protect it as you would your immortal
souls. Many holy martyrs of the Church have suffered pain of death
rather than lose possession of the holy image we will give you here
today." Pause. "You are fortunate and honored that your holy
scapulars will be blessed by none other than Monseignor Kearny from
Blessed Sacrament School. He has honored us by agreeing to deliver
the blessing and the sermon today." Pause. "Now we will all file
into our pews." Pause. "Be silent. And conduct yourselves as
c***dren of Christ and as you were taught in the rehearsals. Don't
forget to kneel and to stand at the proper intervals for a High Holy
Mass. And remember at all times that the Monseignor is watching.
I know you will make him proud of each of you, one and all."

She nodded to a nun at the door, who shoved opened the vast
carved walnut panels that led into the interior. The place filled
with the shuffling of new shoes and rustling of clothes as we
entered double-file, first the boys and then the girls, and took
our assigned places in a line of wooden pews along the right side
of the church. As I shuffled slowly in line along the narrow aisle
I passed my family, Aunt Frances and Mom smiling proudly my way,
and my pert grandmother giving me a wink. Their obvious pleasure
failed to improve my humor; the only pleasantness I found in the
situation was the heavy waft of candle smoke and parafin in the
air, and the dulcet singing of the choir in the loft above and
behind us. As this would be a High Mass, I knew I would at least
have the pleasure of hearing Sister Albert's accomplished choir
singing the Gregorian Chant required by the formality of the
ceremony.

As usual, the Mass progressed in what I always thought was a
tortuously slow pace. And again as usual, I occupied my wandering
mind by studying the dozens of statuettes that line the walls of
St. Mary's. St. Christopher: a rugged, bearded, muscular man
leaning heavily on his staff and struggling head-first through some
undefined tempest, the c***d Jesus hoisted on his massive shoulders.
St. Stephen the Martyr: in the swaddling garb of what I later came
to know as the clothing worn by Roman peasants, lashed at his wrists
and ankles to a wooden post, posed with his eyes lifted to heaven,
all done with exacting, lurid anatomical detail.

My gaze never failed to linger on the carved image of St.
Joseph, whose name matched my middle name and who had been chosen
as the patron saint of my Confirmation. Not as herculean as St.
Christopher, he was a long legged figure with a long beard, seated
at his carpenter's bench with a tacking hammer in one strong hand,
his other arm d****d around the shoulders of the peasant boy
Jesus, who clung absurdly dependant at his side. I studied
Joseph's face interminably, striving to imagine what it might be
like to have had such a father with strong, chiseled features and
commanding eyes under a heavily furrowed brow. I wondered what
his beard would feel like.

And the Virgin Mary, a short, full-hipped woman in a simple
white flowing robe with a blue shawl d****d about her head and
shoulders. Her slim right hand was raised as if conferring on the
viewer the two-fingered blessing that I had seen Pope Pius XII
giving from his balcony in movie newsreels. In her right arm she
held the half-nude c***d who turned its head to gaze at the viewer
with a frown of divine approbation that seemed blatantly inappro-
priate on the infant's face. Always my eyes fixed themselves on
Mary's girl-like oval face. The sculptor had fashioned for her
a pair of enchantingly dark, gentle eyes. Her expression was
tender, knowing, forgiving. I could not match my mother's face
with hers, nor my great aunt nor my grandmother nor anyone else.
I wondered what it might be like to have such a mother. In many
ways her expression reminded me of one I sometimes saw on Martha
Jane. My eyes moved down to Mary's small bosom, and warmly I
remembered the moist swell of Martha Jane's breasts and the feel
of her nipples on my tongue.

I asked myself if the woman who lived within that statue would
be scandalized at my illicit familiarity with the feel and taste of
real, warm, responsive titties. Would she, too, offer a nipple to
me for sucking?

I was fully aware of the blasphemous nature of these thoughts.
As Mass moved agonizingly along, we c***dren prepared for communion
by attending the rear confessional one by one. Dutifully, I ducked
into the dark curtained booth and spoke into the cloth-shrouded
grating that separated me from the priest, whom I could dimly see
and whom I knew immediately to be the kindly and unflappable
Franciscan, Father Edward.

Dutifully, I contrived a suitably penitent voice. Dutifully, I
recited the same repertoire of sins I usually confessed and for
which I was truly sorry: for saying bad things about my fat Aunt
Mary, whom I really didn't like, even after I confessed not liking
her; for talking back to my mother or disobeying and upsetting her;
for not making the bed on Saturday; for taking God's name in vain
when I got angry at a k** on the playground and wished that Jesus
would tear the little bastard's tongue out and send him to hell to
be devoured by slimy gnomes; and for falling asleep during morning
Mass.

Brazenly, I made no mention of wondering what the Holy Mother's
breasts were like. Brazenly, I made no mention of Martha Jane's
breasts or her thighs or that I had made her cum. Brazenly and
stubbornly I refused to connect Martha Jane with evil, and even if
I could I brazenly and stubbornly refused to betray our trust.

On the other side of the grating Father Edward leaned back in
what I could see was a brown leather-backed chair. He gave his
usual sighs and his usual response: "Very well, my c***d, and is
that all you have to confess?"

"Yes, Father."

"You know you must honor your mother and you must not have
unkind feelings for your aunt, for they all love you and care for
you in ways you do not understand. And for your penance I want you
to say ten hail marys and ten our fathers."

"Yes, Father."

"And remember to avoid the temptations and the sins of greed,
envy, and lust."

"Yes, father."

And then the usual, ritualized dismissal: "Your sins are forgiv-
en. Go in peace, and sin no more. "

"Thank you, Father."

I left the man with no inkling of Martha Jane. I wondered if
his benediction forgave me for that as well as for the sins I had
confessed. I thought the penance was a little out of line for not
liking my fat Aunt Mary. Apparently at least half that penance
must have been slated for disobeying my Mom.

Returning to my pew, I found the walls of St. Mary's reverber-
ating with the husky, amplified voice of Monseignor Kearny. From
the ornate pulpit at the front of the church he inveighed weightily
with his baritone's voice of doom: "...and be wary, my c***dren,
of the evil nature of the sins of the flesh, sins that render our
precious souls disgusting in the sight of the Lord. For to Jesus
and His Holy Mother Mary, the sins of the flesh are truly the most
offensive sins of all. Because of them we risk the punishment of
being cast down to a terrible, burning place in purgatory for ten
thousand years, and after that, into the flames of hell for all
eternity..."

Just ahead of me sat Sister Mary Joseph, nodding slowly in
righteous agreement as the monseignor thundered on. I sighed
impatiently, my eyes wandering until they fell on the statue of
Jesus, gruesomely hanging from a crucifix high over the center of
the altar. I cringed at the sight of the bloody nails...

I have no idea how much of this tripe I did or didn't absorb,
but at the time I consciously rejected it as irrelevant to what
Martha Jane and I experienced. At that time I found other aspects
of life to be much more frighteningly evil: evil was the beating
of a boy I knew by some unknown k**s who came to our part of the
project one day from the big apartment buildings on the hill at the
top of Exchange Street. Evil was the Russians wanting to drop atom
bombs on everyone, and evil was the Nazis and the Japs who had
blown off the arms and legs of soldiers and shot out the eyes of
the man who lived a few doors down from me. But I could not equate
evil with the image of Martha Jane spreading her thighs to allow my
hands to please her. To use a more modern phrase: the equation
didn't compute.

However, I was not so brazen nor rebellious as not to
appreciate the majesty of the edifice and interior of St. Mary's
and the solemnity of the ceremony. Gregorian Chant had its
hypnotic qualities, as did the ritual of the purple-robed mon-
seignor moving down a line of piously kneeling c***dren as he
d****d a scapular ribbon round their necks.

When he came to me I kneeled properly and straightly. Behind
me, my mother stood with her hand on my left shoulder as the
ceremony required.

The Monseignor intoned, "What is the c***d's name?"

"Steven," my mother answered.

"And who," the monseignor intoned, "is his patron saint?"

"Saint Joseph," my mother answered.

The monseignor reached toward an altar boy who fished out a
scapular--a thin ribbon with a small, two-inch cloth-framed image
of the indicated patron--and then the monseignor d****d it loosely
round my neck.

"Steven, I confirm you as a soldier in the army of Christ under
the guidance of your patron, Saint Joseph."

There followed a quickly delivered chant of garbled Latin as he
moved to the next c***d in line. Even I, brazen and rebellious
sinner that I was, had to admit that the theatrical power of this
pageantry was highly effective. Of course my relatives were in-
ordinately pleased and heaped praise onto me incessantly on the
drive back home, which mercifully was only a few blocks away.

Mom had arranged for a small dinner with my Aunt Frances and
Grandma Rose, who brought ravioli and salad and knotbread for the
occasion. The kitchen being too small, we ate in the living room
on aluminum trays and paper plates. I'd had to fast in order to
attend the required communion during the ceremony, and it was well
past noon; I sat in one corner and ate like a famished cave man.

"Don't spill gravy on your shirt!" my aunt screamed in her
usual panic, and Mom removed my coat and stuffed a napkin under my
tight collar. The napkin hurt, but I was too hungry to complain.

"Don't eat so fast," my mother prompted. I replied by stuff-
ing ravioli into my mouth until it squeezed out the sides of my
lips.

"There," my aunt grunted, throwing up her hands. "See what
he does? Why won't you listen to your Mama?"

My mother warned, "You better not stain that suit. Martha
Jane will be here later on. See wants to see you in it."

At that, I didn't eat more slowly but I ate more carefully,
making certain the napkin covered as much of my starchy shirt as
possible.

But by the end of the day Martha Jane had not arrived. As it
grew dark I went outside our apartment and looked into their
apartment window next door, but no lights were on. Going back to
our apartment I asked my mother what happened to Martha Jane.

Mom answered, "I guess she didn't have time. She probably
went to the hospital with her mother and her Uncle Joe. He gets
sick all the time with that shot up stomache of his, ever since he
came back from overseas."

Once again before getting ready for bed, I checked Martha Jane's
apartment but no one was there. Reluctantly I went back to our
bedroom and removed my suit, getting into my undies for bed. Mom was
in her nightgown, turning out all the lights. I lay on the bed in
the lighted bedroom near the window and studied the picture of Saint
Joseph on my scapular. The portrait had been done in oils, appar-
ently in the late Victorian period. The man was heavily bearded,
piously looking toward heaven with a conventionally saintly gaze.
The scapular itself was a simple device, a black flat rayon ribbon
with the cloth-bound portrait dangling by a similar piece of cloth.
The painting was done in the same rich oils as a picture once shown
to my class by Sister Mary Joseph, who had found in a book what she
considered to be a true representation of the fires of hell. She
brandished the book before the ogling eyes of the k**s and told us
what would happen to us if we were sent to hell. It showed a dimly
lighted cavern populated by crawling serpents and evil clouds of
smoke. Snarling, leering, crocodile-toothed hairless dogs ate their
way through the intestines of screaming victims and cruelly tore off
their arms and legs.

Holding my scapular before me, I wondered if its reputed magic
powers could indeed protect me from such a fate. Certainly, it
had done a shabby job of protecting me from temptation. I couldn't
imagine how anything could keep me from engaging in future naughty
intimacies with Martha Jane. The image that made me feel a creepy
apprehension was that of having to protect the scapular with my
life. Suppose, as Sister Angelica from the fourth grade had pro-
posed weeks earlier, the Chinese Communists invaded the country
and arrested all the Catholics and strangled their c***dren? I
would be found wearing a scapular, certainly a dead giveaway, and
would be sadistically and slowly strangled if I didn't give it up.

This morbid thought haunted me as Mom climbed in the bed and
shut the light. When I grew a little older Mom would sleep in the
living room on the sofabed, but in those days she slept with me.
My place was at the window side, because I often enjoyed sitting
by the window sill and looking out into the dark before falling
asleep. Mom said good night and rolled away from me. For a long
time I lay face up, pondering the magnitude of my reponsibilities
as a soldier in the army of Christ with an official scapular that
I had to wear at all times to confirm my identity.

Late in the night I awoke and found myself totally alone in
the bed. Feeling something moving under me, I rose up on my knees
and looked down. Horrified, I saw dozens and then hundreds of
black thumb-sized roaches dashing across the white sheets in all
directions. Frantically I pounded the mattress and made wide
sweeping movements with my outspread hands to wipe them away.
They kept coming, multiplying, crawling everywhere, I couldn't
stop them...

Suddenly I was awake. I was on my knees in the bed. My
Mom slept on her side, next to me. My hands were spread on the
sheets in front of me. But there were no roaches. Only the
clean white sheets. My heart pounded. I waited for it to stop.
The only object on the sheet before me was the tangled, black-
stringed scapular.

I picked it up and placed it on the window sill. As I did
so, my arm was flooded by a narrow beam of moonlight.

Stealthily I moved to the edge of the foot of the bed, then
onto the floor. My heart still pounding slightly with the memory
of my terror, I slowly opened the corner chest and took out a new
sheet, which I brought with me into the kitchen, carefully looking
back to see my mother still asleep. Wrapping the sheet around me,
I opened the back door, wincing as it creaked halfway open. Look-
ing behind me again, I saw no one following me. I walked into the
dark back yard, barely visible in the light from a streetlamp
several doors away near the corner of the building. A cricket
chirped lazily. I moved out near the curb of the access driveway
behind our building and looked across Martha Jane's back yard. I
saw no lights. It was too dark for me to see into their bedroom
window. I wondered where she was. When would she be back?

My mother appeared in her nightgown at the back door, frown-
ing sleepily into the dark with swollen eyes. "Speedy? Speedy?"

Reluctantly, I walked toward her with the tails of my white
shroud trailing at my feet.

"What are you doin' out here in the middle of the night?" She
bent down and examined me. "Are you walking in your sleep? Huh?
Are you asleep?"

Seeing that she had furnished me with an excuse as good as any
I might conjure on my own, I nodded yes.

"Are you asleep?" she asked again.

I nodded. "I'm asleep," I said plainly, and looked up to see
if there were any possibility that she believed me.

"Well, come in the house. Come on, get in here and get back to
bed." She pulled me gently into the kitchen and stroked my hair.
"Are you awake now? Answer me, are you awake now?"

I nodded yes, and kept walking in my oversized sheet to the
bedroom, where I left the sheet on the floor and climbed back into
bed. As Mom settled beside me I nestled back into my pillow, face
up, and looked away from her into the shafts of moonlight that
banded the window sill.

Mom asked irritably, "What *were* you dreaming about?"

"Roaches," I muttered.

"What?"

"Roaches. The roaches from the scapular."

"Roaches?" she repeated, incredulously. "Well, go back to
sleep. Are you alright now?"

I nodded yes, several times.

"Go back to sleep, then."

She turned away from me and drew the top sheet to her
shoulders. Soon she was still, breathing deeply. I lay watching
the moonbeams, listening for echoes of Martha Jane in the room.
The resting woman beside me felt like a foreign object that didn't
sound or feel like the Martha Jane I wanted to talk to and explain
my dream to.

I searched the moonbeams and thought about her until I fell
asleep again.



PART 3B:


For several weeks I saw Martha Jane only now and then as she
walked across the grounds on her way in or out of the project. She
caught sight of me once from a couple of blocks away and smiled and
waved and yelled Hi.

Meanwhile, it seems my Mom and future step-dad had gone through
a brief spat. They started dating again a few weeks later. But my
sitter was not Martha Jane. In fact, I had two different sitters
at first. The first must not have been very interesting, as I have
absolutely no recollection of who they were or how they looked. The
identity of the second sitter is also a blank, but I recall that I
spent the evening not at home but in the sitter's apartment, across
the driveway and at a slight angle from my own building. Through
their back kitchen window that night I could see the back door that
led to my own apartment. And just to the left was the apartment
where Martha Jane and her family lived. At one point that night I
saw her in her kitchen; there was no mistaking that pretty face and
frizzy auburn hair. I waved to her. Of course, she didn't see me.
I went back later and waited for a while but she didn't show again.
And by the time the sitter walked me back across the driveway back
home, all the lights were out in Martha Jane's place.

When I had not seen her for several more days I bumped into her
accidentally just as I was going out the front door on my way to
school. She came outside at the same time with her schoolbooks
under her arm.

"Hey, hon," she sang as she locked her door. She beamed at
me and gave me her best Southern twang. "Where've you been,
sugar?"

"where've-you-been-too," I mimicked playfully.

"Well," she went on, making a silly face, "Where YOU been?"

"Well," I said in the same way, "Where YOU been?"

She laughed and gave a mild go-away wave with her free hand.
"Oh, silly!" She shook her head. She was wearing a long plaid,
pleated skirt and a white blouse. I very clearly remember that
morning and how she looked; bright, clean, basic, unpretentious,
very very pretty in a simple, uncomplicated way.

We walked a few blocks together. I noticed she seemed to be
getting thinner. She also looked tired, but cheerful. It turned
out she had been working very hard in school and was overly anxious
to do well. "You wouldn't know about that yet," she said, "you're
barely in the third grade."

"What grade are you in?" I asked.

"The umpteenth, feels like."

Umpteenth was our private code that meant something akin to
forever or infinity.

"I'm coming over Saturday," she said. She had stopped and
seemed serious and looked steadily at me without moving.

I said, "Oh. Okay!" and beamed at her. She kept looking at
me in the same mysterious way. I didn't know why she wasn't
saying anything. She seemed concerned, apprehensive.

"Well," she said after a minute and a short breath, "I am
*supposed* to stay with you Saturday night, anyway."

I did not know what she was getting at or what was going on,
or why she emphasized the word "supposed". I do remember the
moment clearly. I became very tense; I felt suddenly distant from
her and didn't know what was wrong.

She asked me pointedly, "Are we still friends, hon?"

"Sure we are," I said.

"I mean...are we still really, really friends?"

I blushed. "Your my own special, very only, very umpeenth-
degree friend."

"And you're my special little man, hon," she said, but she
wasn't smiling, except weakly, sympathetically.

We talked a little more, I don't remember what we said. She
seemed absent-minded. It was not until Saturday night that I
discovered what she was thinking.

It was all quite complicated. At least, it was for Martha
Jane. As an adult I now understand, but as a 9-year-old I could
not fathom it. I viewed things more simplistically.

Next Saturday, Martha Jane and I sat and talked after she made
dinner and after we cleaned the dishes. Then she studied on the
sofa a while. She asked me a series of seemingly unrelated
questions, none of which I remember. She was not as openly
affectionate as usual and seemed remote, though not at all cold.

Our exchanges were brief and rather formal. She asked me about
some uncles of mine who had not returned from the war, and she
asked if I ever saw my Uncle Frank--my father's brother and one of
the few male relatives in my family who had survived and returned
home. I told her that Uncle Frank had not seen me since he fin-
ished his last hitch in the Air Corps and decided to come back to
the States and go to college on the GI Bill. I told her about his
getting wounded in a B-26 in the Pacific a few years ago and how he
pulled up his pants leg and showed me the pink scars of the three
healed bullet holes in his lower thigh.

She winced, making an "Ugh" face. She said firmly, "I don't
want to hear about it. I've heard enough about the war."

So I didn't say any more. I sat on the floor watching her,
trying to figure out how to get through to her.

Martha Jane announced, "My Uncle Joe died, you know."

"Yeah," I said, "Mama told me."

"He was sick for so long, from his war wounds. He lived longer
than we thought he would, but...It was hard on Mother. That's two
men the war took from her, her husband and her brother." She
stared ahead pensively, then blinked awake. "Well. Enough of that."

I said earnestly from across the room, "I'm real sorry, Martha
Jane."

She smiled weakly. "Thank you, hon. I know you are. It'll be
alright." She looked back at her book and began scribbling in her
notepad.

For a long time--perhaps for most of the evening, it seems--
she pored over her studies and remained unresponsive.

Later that night I felt she was still mourning, despite saying
she would get over it. I had seen a whole neighborhood full of
hurt, tragic people: widows, the disabled and the paralyzed, the
shot-up and the abandoned of the War. I had seen my mom's sister,
my young and plain-looking Aunt Martha, when she came to our
apartment once in the middle of the night, pounding on our front
door and screaming for help until she woke us. My mom scrambled
out of bed and I stood in the hallway watching from the bedroom as
Mom opened the front door for Aunt Martha, who rushed sobbing into
the living room and collapsed in a wailing heap on the sofa. Her
husband had beaten her again. Mom and Aunt Martha tried to hide
the bloodied bruises from me, but I had already seen them on Aunt
Martha's face and arms and I knew what the marks meant without
being told. Seeing her, I wanted to cry and throw my arms around
her--even though she was, unfortunately, one of those adults I
didn't trust. She was even more grimly puritanical and prim than
my Mom, and a fundamentalist who considered everything an occa-
sion for sin of some kind. But I understood her pain, both
physical and emotional, without having it explained to me.

That night occurred some years earlier, when I had just turned
6. The commotion woke up Martha Jane's family next door. She and
her sister Evelyn came over in their robes and pajamas and Martha
Jane went straight over to me because my mother panicked and was
rasping, "Get Speedy out of here, get him out of here!" Martha
Jane led me to bedroom, where I looked up at her and whispered so
the others wouldn't hear, "I already saw it."

She looked down at me. "You did what, hon?"

I repeated, looking back to make sure the others couldn't hear
us, "I already saw it, Martha Jane. I saw what happened."

Martha Jane knelt down to me in her rumpled bathrobe and
looked into my eyes with her deep, striking green ones. "Then,"
she said eyeing me seriously, "you understand what happened."

I nodded. Then I added, so the others wouldn't hear, "Uncle
Bobby hurt her again."

We were alone in the room. I could still see in my mind the
earlier glimpse of Aunt Martha's bloody lip and the dark bulging
eye, and the blue-black on one of her arms. I started crying. I
could not stop the tears from falling down my face, despite my
attempts at remaining calm.

"Oh, honey," Martha Jane implored, "don't get scared and
start crying, now."

"I'm not scared," I sniffled. "I know how Aunt Martha hurts.
It makes me cry."

"You--" Her eyes looking into mine softened and seemed to
turn to mush. "Oh, you sweet baby."

"Why does he do that to her?"

"I don't know, hon. But you are so sweet. So very sweet."

She closed the bedroom door, shutting us off from the sobbing
and wailing in the living room, and put me back into bed. She told
me it would all be okay in the morning and she understood my
feelings. She sat on the bed and said I shouldn't feel bad about
not being with the others and she really didn't want me to feel as
though I were being "locked away" in the room. She said, "I'll
stay in here with you for a while if you want, okay? So you won't
be all by yourself?"

I told her, "It's okay if I stay in here, 'cause I know Aunt
Martha. I know how she is. She doesn't want us staring at her,
she feels all ugly and everything. I'll stay here so she won't
feel ashamed. But...they don't have to yell at me. They're always
hiding everything and acting like I won't understand."

"No, hon. They're just scared, that's all. They're upset."
She stroked my head. She told me she would come back later and
that she would tell my Aunt Martha about my concern for her. But I
said, "No, don't tell her that."

"But why not, hon.? I know she'd appreciate it."

"I don't want you to."

"But, Speedy...honey, why not? What's wrong?"

"I don't...want...you...to."

"But, hon...?"

"'Cause every time she sees me, she'll be embarrassed. She'll
remember tonight. That's the way she is."

I don't know how long Martha Jane sat looking at me, stroking
my hair, with that amazed look on her face. Finally she said, "I
have to go in there and help. You sure you'll be alright?"

"Yes."

She sighed and rose and went to the door, but before going out
she leaned inside and blew me a kiss. "You're my little man from
now on, hon," she said, and closed the door.

That night had taken place some years before and was one of
the very early incidents that had so endeared me to Martha Jane,
and her to me. Now it was a few years later. And Martha Jane had
become more than just a neighbor. More than a friend. And now I
saw that she was the one who seemed hurt. Or, at best, worried
about something.

I didn't know what to do about it. I was good at clowning,
though, and I wondered how I could make her laugh. At 9 o'clock
she hustled me into the bathroom (no bubble-bath this time. I was
getting a little "too old" for that) and she stayed in the living
room while I bathed. I dried off and straightened the room, and
peeked around the door into the living room. She was on the sofa,
studying intensely. But I did see a crumpled kleenex in her hand,
and her eyes had reddened.

An wave of empathy had me almost crying with her. There was a
curtain-covered closet in the hallway between the bath and the
bedroom. It could not be seen from where Martha Jane sat on the
sofa. I got out of the tub, dried off, and went rummaging in the
closet, looking for a funny idea. Martha Jane heard me kicking
around.

"Speedy, I thought you were going to bed," she called.

"Just lookin' for somethin'," I called back. I found my
six-shooter outfit in there, and a cowboy hat. I put on my mom's
dress with my six-guns and holsters on backward. I had seen enough
John Wayne movies to be able to do a fairly acceptable imitation of
the guy. I donned this outfit and tied toy spurs loosely on my
ankles. Pulling the brim of the hat down low over my eyes, I walked
into the living room. I looked ridiculous. I stood there while she
had her face in her book. It was a minute before she realized I
was there, and when she finally looked up I yelled out in my best
John Wayne voice:

"Howdy, pil-grum!"

She blinked. Her mouth fell wide open and she covered it with
the kleenex. I strutted across the room with big stomping John
Wayne steps. "pardon me, ma-uhm, but...this town ain't big for
thah two of us. One of us has...got tah go."

She laughed in her oh-my-god, head-shaking way, not a big laugh
but several breathy intakes. She blurted out, "Do you intend to
sleep in that outfit?"

"Why, yes'm" I said, still John Wayne. With my thumb over my
shoulder I indicated an imaginary object behind me. "Just me and...
muh horse, over there."

"Oh, no," she said. "You are so cute." She wiped one eye with
a corner of the kleenex, trying to hide her red eyes. I think she
knew I couldn't possibly have missed the gesture, but she kept up
the effort. She said, "I have something in my eye, hon. You go on
and get ready for bed. Go on, now, it's late."

"Well...okay," I said, disapppointed that I hadn't accomplished
very much. I walked back to the closet with one of my aluminum toy
spurs dragging uselessly off one foot, and removed my silly gear
and stored it back in the closet. As I was doing so, I saw Martha
Jane turning back the bedclothes in the bedroom. I undressed down
to the underwear that I usually slept in and crawled into bed.
Martha Jane fluffed the pillows and turned off the lamp. She stood
by the bed.

"You ready to go to sleep now, cowboy?"

"Right, ma-yum."

She was silent. She looked at the floor. I saw her eyes
water. She was dark against the dim light shedding in from the
living room.

"You never met your daddy, did you, hon? You never saw him.
He got killed over there before you ever knew who he was."

I didn't know what to say to that. Every relative I encount-
ered--and there were many of them in my huge family--mentioned my
dead father at every visit, every Mass, every picnic, every Bingo
game, every damn holiday dinner. Now Martha Jane was doing it.
I was not angered by it, but I did find myself unable to understand
this constant lingering over the memory of dead men I never knew.

Martha Jane went on quietly. "My daddy was killed in the war,
too. He was one of 'em, too, that...died, got killed." She took a
deep, wobbly breath, and sighed. "I guess you're lucky, Speedy, you
never knew your daddy, but I knew mine. I used to..." She stopped
again, breathed deeply, and when she started again her voice had
cracked and broken up. "I used to see him all the time. Every day.
So you don't know what that is, when some Army sergeant you never
saw before--" and she began talking and crying at the same time--
"shows up at the door with a letter--"

She suddenly crumpled and fell to her knees, her hands on
her head, which was cradled on the edge of the bed. She cried her
heart out, not wailing, but heaving in long, wrenching, c***dlike
sighs. "I miss him! Oh, I miss him! Why isn't he here to help
us?"

Instantly I went to her, squatting on the bed and holding her
head, the only part of her I could reach. She cried and cried and
cried. I didn't know what to say, but I did know to hold her and
stroke her hair. Eventually she calmed down, and returned my hug
with a long tight embrace of her arm around one of mine. With a
long sigh, she reached up to the night table for another kleenex
and sat on the floor, drying her eyes and looking up at me.

"You knew I was thinkin' something, didn't you cowboy?"

I nodded.

"You...are one little smart-ass," she said, blowing her nose.
She sniffed loudy. "You know what a smart-ass is?"

"I think so."

"Well you are one sweet smart-ass. Now, c'mon..." She stood up
and started tucking things in again. "I'm done now, I got it outta
my system and it's a-a-all over with. You get yourself to sleep.
C'mon, John Wayne."

"Martha Jane?" I began. I had not told her what I desperately
wanted to tell her.

"Yes, hon?"

"I..uh...Hmmm." I scratched my head.

She came closer to the bed. "What is it, big boy?"

"I still never..."

"Mm-hm, okay, you still never. You still never what?"

"I never told anybody what we did together."

She stood deadly still and silent, looking toward the floor,
hands on her hips. She pursed her lips and made another sniffle.
She didn't say anything. I thought I had offended her.

"I mean...," I went on carefully, "in case you were worried
about that. I mean, at first I thought that's what...you were
worried about."

She said, "Oh." She neither moved nor looked at me. "Oh,"
she said again. "That."

"I just wanted you to know," I said, shrinking from her and
back into the bed.

She shook her head, seemed to ponder deeply. Abruptly she
left the room. I lay there numb, figuring I had somehow pissed
her off in the worst way. Then the living room light went out.
The only light in the room was moonlight falling on the bed.
I heard Martha Jane walking toward the bedroom. I turned and
could barely see her at first, but soon she appeared in the dim
light of the moon beside the bed.

She said sternly, "C'mere, Speedy."

I crawled to the edge of the bed. She was wearing dark
clothes, a blue blouse and a ruffled blue skirt. All I could
see were her eyes.

"You are one smart little boy," she said. "Yes, I was worried
about that. I wanted my daddy to get me out of trouble, I thought
I was in trouble about that." She paused and said something,
almost to herself, something I would be able to understand only
years later. "I am goin' to hell. We're both goin' to hell."

She then reached out and pulled me to her by one hand, she
standing by the bed with me on my knees near the edge. She looked
deeply into my eyes briefly, and then hugged me tightly. There was
something serious and desperate, rather than playful, in the way
she clasped me to her. So I made no moves on my own. I simply let
myself be held, my arms d****d loosely around her neck. When she
made no response after a moment I gave her a hug and waited. But
she stood unmoving beside the bed, silent, enfolding me closely
with one arm around my back and the other cradling my head into her
neck and shoulder.

With my face in her neck I was unable to see hers in the dark,
but I could tell that she was looking down at the floor silently
for a very, very long time, perhaps for almost two minutes. During
that time I very lightly stroked her back and then put my own hand
on the back of her neck to let her know that I would wait, wait for
her to stop thinking or whatever it was she was doing in that long
wordless minute in the dark.

She moved her lips; faintly I heard them part, and she took in
a small breath as if to speak, but she stopped. I waited for her
in the darkness around us. Her eyelashes flicked once, and I knew
she was looking past my shoulder, across the bed, out into the moon-
lit window behind me. Her lashes flicked again against my cheek,
and she looked down once more, breathing. She parted her lips again
and they made a mildly dry, sticking sound. And she breathed and
waited and waited, as if something from deep inside her were slowly,
slowly struggling to the find a place in her breathing and in her
voice. She looked down. She swallowed. Hard.

"Hon?" she began, tentatively, barely audible. Her lips were
so close to my ear I could feel the moisture of her breath on my
earlobes. "Do you want to be nasty with me?"

My head buried in her neck, I nodded slowly.

She paused again, and again I heard her lips part drily near
my ear. She continued, softly. "Do you mind if I say it's nasty
but I want us to do it anyway?"

"I don't mind."

"I mean...I mean I know and you know that everybody says it's
wrong and we're not supposed to do it, but...I want to anyway.
I want you to understand: I know it's nasty...but that's why I
like it. And I don't understand it."

"But I like it too," I whispered back.

Again she hesitated before she relaxed her arms and held me
more loosely. "Good," she whispered in my ear. "Good." She
stroked my back for a moment and gave my head in her neck a brief
affectionate hug. Then her fingers were at the front of my
underwear. She tried to find her way into the slit but couldn't,
so she pushed her hand gently under the top band.

She whispered, "Your dick, hon...", and soon her fingers found
me and wrapped around me warmly. "...there he is..." She hugged my
cock gently. Then she murmured so softly I could barely hear, even
though her lips were still against my ear: "I like it too, hon. I
can't help it. We're so much alike."



PART 3C:


At the time, most of this went right past my very young level
of awareness--but I clearly understood that she was troubled. I
knew that I somehow had to stay with her and believe in her and
help her in some way. I wanted to bring indescribable pleasure and
comfort to her. She was making me feel loved and tickly now, and
I wanted desperately to do the same for her. I found the folds of
her skirt and tried to gather them up, but had a hard time; my
hands were too small. She stepped back, not letting go of my cock,
and used her free hand to lift her skirt. She spread her feet
apart and looked down while I massaged her mound over her panties.

"Ah, hon," she breathed. "You remembered just exactly how I
like you to do that."

As she had done, I slipped my hand under her waistband and
found her pubic hair and her soft folds. She was not wet yet.
But she moved one foot to open her legs more so I could find her
crease.

I whispered, "I want to make you feel good." Now I hoped I was
learning to talk to her as she talked to me. I was beginning to
comprehend the nature of my own very young sensuality, realizing how
so much of it was mirrored by Martha Jane, and learning to try and
contact those elements within her. I was not yet very certain about
any of it. But now I had glimmerings of the giddy adrenal rush gen-
erated by the allure of the forbidden that held us and our secret
world together. And I was beginning to understand as well the para-
doxical, inexplicable comfort we both experienced by giving in to,
rather than resisting, our hunger. In short, I was getting older
and more sexual, and I realized more than ever how complex were the
emotional and physical needs that bound us. It was scary. It was a
lot like rushing blind across the avenue the way I used to, traffic
headed at me in all six lanes, not sure if or how I could make it
safely to the other side--but knowing, from where I stood at that
moment, I would not and could not run back.

Martha Jane moved her head slightly, toward me. Her lips
touched my ear. Her mouth opened and I heard the thin saliva break
as she licked my earlobe. And then my neck. Under one hand I felt
the skin on the back of her neck move and flex as she reached
farther with her tongue and licked behind my ear, then down, then
into my neck again. Under my other hand, she was getting wet.

She pulled her head back, smiling and looking down to watch my
hand working between her legs in the dark. She spread her knees
apart a little more. She softly hissed, "Put your finger in me..."
I found her hot opening, now growing wetter, and slowly inserted
what came to me naturally--my longest finger. She urged quietly,
"All the way in, hon, deep..." Her eyes closed as she sighed a
trembling, breathy "Aaahh..."

"Like that?"

"Yes, baby."

I flexed my finger in her. I never ceased to be amazed at
the way the inner Martha Jane could suck on my fingers in her.
"Did that feel good?"

"Bend your finger again, inside...Yes...keep doing that..."

We continued for a while, but it soon became uncomfortable
standing up. She broke away and got undressed. Before climbing in-
to bed she removed my tshirt and underwear and had me sit up against
a pillow that she placed against the headboard. Then, naked in the
moonlight, she lay before me on her tummy with her head in my lap
and started sucking me. She sucked gently, wetly, slowly, immersing
me in her very hot mouth and holding me there. Then slowly she
withdrew, sucking upward, and came off me with a loud swallow of the
wetness she had re-sucked off me, and sighed lasciviously. "You
feel so good in my mouth. You fit all the way inside."

She licked her lips and sucked me again in the same way, gently
but fully, flattening her tongue along the underside and pressing
slightly, then started bobbing her head slowly and rhythmically.
I was amazed and hypnotized. I began to be aware of her physical
beauty and the depths of the desperate lust that lurked in both of
us, there in the dim shaft of light that fell across her naked back
as she licked and sucked.

She stopped and asked, "Do you know what I'm doing?"

I just stared at her. Of course I knew what she was doing,
though she had never done it so gluttonously. But I didn't know
what it was called.

"I'm suckin' you off. Do you like it when I say that?"
Once again, her eyes had a strange glint and her voice sounded
inordinately wicked.

"Yes," I whispered back, suddenly realizing how breathless I
was. And I was doing some hard, nervous swallowing of my own.
"You know I do. Especially the way you do it." I was truly
flabbergasted that there were so many ways to bring pleasure to
each other.

She returned to her sucking, which she continued for quite
some time, breaking to gently fist my wetted cock. The cloying
sensuality of her motions and words caused me to make what I know
to be a seriously wicked grin as I watched her pump me. "That's
good," I whispered.

She looked up. "Yeah?" She grinned back.

I grinned again too, into her eyes. "Yeah. Keep doin' it."

"Yeah, honey."

"Ah..."

"Feel it, baby...enjoy it..."

And once again, her eyes and her words and her voice held me
mesmerized. She herself seemed hypnotized by my own spellbound
reaction. We fell into unalloyed devilishness, as if demons within
us had generated a chain reaction neither of us could not stop. She
wouldn't let up. The lust in her eyes and her voice met mine, mine
met hers, and they fused. We were glued to it, tangled it in. I
kept hearing the nuns and the aunts and relatives warning me, but
all their screaming voices together could not drown the tantalizing
whispers of Martha Jane. And the more my eyes lit up with pleasure,
the more Martha Jane saw it and gloated on it.

She gave a low, dirty chuckle and breathed, "You like it. You
like being like this with me." She kept looking into my eyes,
directly into them, into my cornea and through the optic nerves
and into my brain. As she wetly stroked my twitching cock I heard
only the wet slush of her hand in the hot spit she had left on me,
and her endless, libidinous whispers. "You like it just as much as
I do, don't you, I can tell. I like it too. I like watching your
face while I make you feel good. I love your dick. I love
touching it. I love milking it, and sucking..." She pumped and
then sucked and then pumped me again. I was feeling extremely
strange and giddy and I knew she did too. A dark wicked wave seemed
to wash into the room and lick me squarely in the scrotum under my
balls, then lick upward along my spine and settle in the back of my
head. I could see the reflection of these new and growing impulses
in her own eyes, I could hear her voice echoing my own rising
lechery. We fed it, and fed on it, helpless in the dark and the
moonlight. She fisted me loosely now, looking up at me. Distinctly
I felt and saw her own eyes catch the glint of lust in mine, and she
leered and fisted and kept whispering. "I feel you liking it, I
feel you jumpin' in my hand. Such a beautiful, hard, sweet little
cock. It gets so big. How does it get so big from being so little?"

"I like you making it big," I managed to whisper back, but
only after fighting for the breath to say it. I took a deep
breath and gasped brazenly, "I like watching you watch me."

Her eyes rose, surprised and please that I was joining her
in this hypnotic whirl. "I'm so glad you like this. Want me
to suck you some more?"

"Yes, it feels so good."

"I want to suck you and I want you to fingerfuck me, like
last time."

Uh-oh! A new term in the ever-expanding lexicon. I was taken
by surprise. Another Martha Jane word. At that point I somehow
knew there would be an explanation forthcoming. Contented, and
learning for the first time what the word "turn-on" would later come
to mean, I let her suck me and we continued our lurid whispers and
glances. Of course, I did not cum. This was fortunate, in a way,
since literally I didn't know what I was missing. But at one point
a pang of sensual tickling shot through the length of my shaft, and
I felt an oozing from me that mixed with her spit and slickened it.
I wondered if that meant I was cumming.

But the feeling passed too quickly for me to stop and ask
questions about it. For Martha Jane had risen to a half-sitting
position beside me, her head against the headboard. Her left leg
lay on the mattress between us, bent at the knee toward me so her
inner thigh was spread to expose her slit; and she bent her right
knee upward, keeping her foot on the bed, using her heel to spread
her right leg wide and exposing even more of her nakedness. She
shoved her hips forward so that I, lying beside her, could fully see
her auburn tuft and the widening, smooth-lipped slit below. With
one hand she spread the silken hair that partly covered her, and
wantonly instructed me on how to touch her clit and how to insert my
finger and how to search far up inside her and find a magic bundle
of muscle and nerve that made her arch her hips and sigh lustily and
made her nipples swell in my mouth, and she looked down, leering
and watching me please her and holding herself open for me, telling
me this was her cunt, and she said that when she felt really nasty
as she did now that she wanted me to call it her cunt, and as I
pulled her clit and stroked the tender place far inside her wetness,
her words and her voice and her sighs slid into a barely audible
stream of hissed obscenities.

And I remembered doing this to her before and making her cum,
but now I knew she wanted me to call it fingerfucking and that she
liked the word and so did I, and she liked me watching her on her
side with one leg bent between us and the other with one knee raised
and resting spread away from her so that she could use the leverage
of that leg to raise her cunt toward me and we could watch me
fingerfuck her, and she liked watching while I did it, and her
raised knee soon fell and she dropped back into the pillows and
spread herself flat and gave herself over to the long cum that
seemed to be on its way, and for a long while she simply lay and
enjoy it and sucked on my finger in her. And finally I gave her the
smashing, paralyzing orgasm she wanted, her head pressed far into
the pillow and her neck straining, her arms and legs stiffened
against the white sheets and her nipples jutting upward as she
threw her head back and suffered silently the sweet agony I was
giving her, taut and stiff for what seemed to me a perilously long
time. Her hips gave a slight jerk, and I expected her to slide into
her swooning relaxed state, but instead her head snapped farther
back into the pillow and her teeth showed in the dark and she
whimpered "Oh!" in sudden surprise, and then "Ah!" and she came
again, again, again as I moved my fingers in the way I knew was just
right for her, never for a moment wanting to lose my way in giving
her pleasure, caring for her, protecting her in her utter nakedness,
striving to make it perfect and right for her. And finally, with a
great sigh and a whimper that I know could be heard out in the dark
street beyond our window, she relaxed with a final lurch of her
hips, and began breathing in waves, then breathing regularly and
deeply, and she made the same sounds she made when she cried, but
now they were sounds of exhaustion and release.

I licked her nipple, my soaked hands now lightly massaging her
outer lips and inner thighs, and she put a hand on my arm and cried,
"so good!", and on reaching down to touch my cock she found wetness
there, a smear from inside me, and she opened her eyes and looked at
me and then looked at my cock and reached down and kissed the tip,
moaning "oh your cum, your sweet cum!" She licked it off me and it
tickled terribly and I felt deep in my balls the oozing of another
smear, which she milked out of me with a long slow pull upward on my
dick, and she licked that off too with tender relish, as if even the
smallest beginnings of my cumming were as precious as water to a
parched throat. And then, out of breath and with a final gasp, she
literally fell into me and hugged me and held on and went straight
to sleep.

We slept like that for a while, with her splayed over me as
if knocked u*********s. She awoke with a start and looked at the
clock. "Darn!" she whispered frantically, "they'll be coming home!"

Quickly she dressed. As she did, she caught me smiling at her
from my pillow and she told me, "Speedy, you are remarkable. My
god, I wish I could tell someone about this. They'd never believe
me..." She looked at me as if she were in shock. "How do you do
this to me? Where did you learn to do this?"

"Do what?" I asked, truly puzzled.

"You know what I'm talkin' about," she scolded midly, hopping
a little to get her shoes on. She sat on the floor and tied her
laces. "You made cum in my mouth, too, didn't you?"

"I...think so."

"Listen," she said earnestly, finishing her shoes and getting
up to bend over me. "I want you to grow up and cum. I can't keep
doing this all by myself. Do you have any idea what you just did
to me?" She gathered up the wads of kleenex and started straight-
ening the place quickly, mumbling, "I didn't even know anything
like this was possible. Where in the world did you learn how to do
it like that?"

"You taught me," I said.

She caught herself, pausing as if startled, and went back to
her hurried straightening. "I'm just talking, hon. You go to
sleep. Your Mama will be home soon."

She returned to the living room and her books. The light in
there snapped on. I rolled over and looked out the window. I did
not understand the significance of this nor the problems it would
cause later. But I had experienced an unusually intense level of
eroticism which I feared and yet didn't fear, something apparently
as new and exotic to her as it was to me.



PART 3D:


That was a sensuous summer. Mom's relationship apparently ran
smoothly for a while and my stepdad-to-be took her out not fre-
quently but regularly. Each time, Martha Jane would show up on time
and we'd fix dinner for each other, clean up, do a little homework,
and then undress each other in the tiny bedroom. Soon the room
echoed with our sighs, whispers, and moans of pleasure and lust.
The only sex we had outside that bedroom was the one time Martha
Jane showed up at our place one rare Saturday afternoon when I had
not been shipped off to relatives for the weekend. Martha Jane had
iced tea with Mom and chatted a short time, and told my mom she
wanted me to come next door and help set up a record player her
sister Evelyn had given to Martha Jane and her mom.

She brought me to her apartment and as soon as we were inside
she took me into her bedroom. I told her I thought she wanted me to
help her with the new phonograph and she giddily and impatiently
replied that the machine was set up already and she really just
wanted us to be alone. "I don't know what's got into me today," she
exclaimed, almost visibly trembling. "I feel so nasty. God, I hope
we don't get caught!" She lay on the edge of her bed with her legs
hanging over the side. Lifting her skirt, she panted, "Fingerfuck
me, hon. Hurry. Somebody might show up." I put my hand inside her
waistband and fingerfucked her inside her panties. She came almost
immediately. Afterwards, nervous and fumbling, she lay me down the
same way and jacked me with my zipper open until I felt that little
buzz in my cock and she pulled a little drop out of me and licked it
off. Then we straightened our clothes and went into her living
room, where she settled down. And just in time: about ten minutes
later her sister Evelyn arrived unexpectedly. I talked with her
briefly and while she was in their kitchen making lemonade Martha
Jane saw me to her door and whispered as I left, "That was close.
But it sure felt good!" Afterward she told me we shouldn't try that
sort of thing again, as the schedule in her place was truly unpre-
dictable and so many of her mother's friends always popped in. And
she said she never, never wanted to risk having my Mom find out.

Had sex been the only aspect of our relationship I have little
doubt that both of us would have soon tired of this sitting routine
and sought more varied pleasures elsewhere or with someone else. But
we had a life outside the bedroom that was also special for us and
that only added to our feelings of intimacy, devotion, and pleasure
in the bedroom.

My back yard was a small patch of lawn about the size of a
modern suburban carport. It lay along the curb of the access drive-
way that fed into the project from the street and led to a parking
lot around the corner of our building. Near the curb was a large
black oak. We spent several evenings there on weekdays at dusk,
just after dinner, as the long summer days ended and the stulti-
fyingly humid Southern air turned breezy and cool, the sky glowing
purple and orange. It was there under the heavy, leafy old oak tree
that I told her about my strange dream with the roaches. She said
she had no idea why I would dream such a thing, but she suspected
the nuns had scared the hell out of me.

Martha Jane and I discussed our dreams frequently during those
waning summer days under the tree. She often dreamed of her father
coming to her in the night, but he was reduced to the size of a boy,
a very small boy almost as small as an infant. His head was
bloodied and disfigured (he had died in combat on Okinawa from head
wounds). He would plead for help, but when she rose to go to him
she saw the rest of the house was filled with more like him, thou-
sands of them, moaning and reaching for her. In the dream her
mother made tea, oblivious to it all and apparently deaf and unable
to hear, but as she sipped her tea she said she didn't want to hear
and appeared to have gone quietly insane. Overcome with helplesness
and rage, she would wake up sweating.

She said she once had a dream about me. I was standing in a
dark room smiling at her. She said my eyes were very large and
very dark, almost gigantic, and they glowed in the dark room. As
she stepped toward me she became very small and felt faint, and
suddenly I was very large and very much older and went to her with
a glass of wine, gently cradling her head in one arm while holding
the wine for her to sip. The wine was warm and was in a small
silver chalice. She said the most striking part of the dream was
my remarkably dark eyes that seemed to fill the room. They were
kind and endearing, but there was something frightening and ruth-
less about them as well.

Across the access driveways were the small back yards of the
building directly behind ours. I never knew our backdoor neighbors
personally. Occasionally I'd look out our kitchen door and see one
of the neighbor ladies standing in her kitchen and talking with
Martha Jane across the driveway.

One of those neighbors, a Mrs. Johnson, would open her back door
each evening just before dark and carefully slip her bathrobed,
paraplegic husband in his wheelchair down the three or four concrete
steps into their back yard. She would make him comfortable there on
their little patch of grass, read the newspapers to him, or tune a
station on their small brown GE portable that rested on the ground
between his wheelchair and her aluminum lawn chair. Many after-
noons, Martha Jane and I sat on the curb and watched this ritual.
We would say hello to Mrs. Johnson and to Mr. Johnson, and Mrs.
Johnson would smile and wave hello and bend down to Mr. Johnson and
tell him we were out there with them. Mr. Johnson was unable to
respond. Nor could he move his legs or arms or his neck or his
eyes. He slumped limply in his wheelchair, wearing striped pajamas
and a brown bathrobe, his eyes ogling blindly ahead, a thin drool
forever flowing down one side of his slack and expressionless face.
Mr. Johnson had been almost