Harvesting the Heart (19 page)

Priscilla's brother, Steven, was a junior in high school and was the source of most of her information about sex. We knew he had done it, because he kept condoms hidden in his nightstand, as many as twelve at a time. Once, we had stolen one and opened its silver wrapper. I had unrolled the pale tube over Priscilla's arm, marveling as it stretched and grew like a second skin. I had watched my fingers slip over and over as if I were stroking velvet.

Minutes after we had settled ourselves in the closet, Steven came into his room with a girl. She was not someone from Pope Pius but probably a public-school girl from downtown. She had short brown hair and wore pink nail polish, and her white jeans rode low on her hips. Steven pulled her onto his bed with a groan and began to unbutton her shirt. She kicked off her shoes and wiggled off her pants, and before I knew what had happened they were both naked. I could not see much of Steven, which was good, because how would I ever have faced him? But there were the smooth circles of his bottom and the pink heels of his feet, and tangled across his back were the legs of this girl. Steven squeezed the breast of the girl with one hand, revealing a nipple like a strawberry, while he rummaged in his nightstand drawer for a condom. And then he began to move on her, rocking her back and forth like those playground animals on thick wiry springs. Her legs climbed higher, her toes crossed on Steven's shoulders, and they both started to moan. The sound rose around them like yellow steam, punctuated by the scrape of the bed on the hardwood floor. I was not sure what I was seeing, sliced as it was by the closet into strips, but it seemed a machine, or a mythical beast that shrieked as it fed on itself.

Priscilla's crazy aunt from Boise sent her a Ouija board for her fifteenth birthday, and the first question we asked it was who would be the May Queen. May was Mary's month, or so we'd been told at Our Lady, and every year there was a parade on the first Monday night in May. The students would march in a procession from the school to Saint Christopher's, preceded by the discord and oompahs of the school band. At the end of the parade came the May Queen, chosen by Father Draher himself, and her court of attendants. The prettiest girl in the eighth grade was always the May Queen, and everyone assumed that this year it would be Priscilla, so when we asked the Ouija board I gave a subtle push toward P, knowing it would have gone that way no matter what.

“P what?” Priscilla said, impatiently tapping her fingers on the cursor.

“Don't tap,” I warned her. “It won't work. It's got to feel the heat.”

Priscilla rubbed her nose with her shoulder and said that the board didn't want to answer that question, although I wondered if it was because she was afraid the next letter might not be R. “I know,” she said. “Let's ask it who you're going to go out with.”

Since spying on Steven, Priscilla had been dating a steady stream of boys. She had let them kiss her and touch her breasts, and she told me that the next time she might even go to third base. I had listened to her describe the way Joe Salvatore jammed his tongue in her mouth, and I wondered why she would keep going back for more. First base, second base, third base—it reminded me of the Stations of the Cross, the special services during Lent where you said a prayer for each of the twelve steps leading up to the Crucifixion. I'd been doing it for years every Friday during Lent, and it was the same hour-long ordeal week after week. First Station, Second Station, Third ... I would flip ahead in the prayer book to see how much longer I'd have to suffer. It seemed to me that in a different way, Priscilla was doing the same thing.

“S-E-T-H,”
Priscilla pronounced. “You're going to go out with Seth.” She took her fingers off the Ouija cursor and frowned. “Who the hell is Seth?” she said.

There was no Seth in our school, no Seth related to Priscilla or to me, no Seth anywhere in the world that we knew of. “Who cares,” I said, and I meant it.

The next day in school Father Draher announced that the May Queen that year would be Paige O'Toole, and I almost died. I turned bright red and wondered what on earth had made them pick me, when Priscilla was clearly more beautiful. In fact, I could feel her eyes searing into my neck from the desk behind me and the cruel jab of her pencil in my shoulder blade. I also wondered why, for a rite honoring the mother of God, they'd pick someone who had no mother at all.

Priscilla was one of the May Queen's attendants, which meant she got off easy. I had to spend every day after school being fitted for the white lace gown I would wear during the procession. I spent hours listening to Sister Felicite and Sister Anata Falla as they pinned up the hem and adjusted the bustline from last year's queen. As I watched the setting sun run into the gutters of the wet streets, I wondered if Priscilla had found another friend.

But Priscilla did not hold the May Queen appointment against me. She cut her trig class two days later and stood outside the door of my English class until I noticed her waving and smiling. I took the bathroom pass and met her in the hall. “Paige,” she said, “how do you feel about getting violently ill?”

We planned a way for me to get away from May Queen practice that day: I would start shaking during lunch and then get severe abdominal cramps, and although I would be able to troupe it out till the end of the day, I would tell Sister Felicite that it was that time of the month, something the sisters seemed to be overly accommodating about. Then I'd meet Priscilla behind the bleachers and we'd take the bus uptown. Priscilla said there was something she had to show me, and it was a surprise.

It was nearly four o'clock when we arrived at the old car lot, a blacktop area enclosed with high mesh fencing that someone had rigged with two netless basketball hoops. A shock of multicolored, sweating men were running up and down the makeshift court, passing a dirty ball back and forth. Their muscles flexed, outlined and taut. They grunted and gasped and whistled, hoarding the air like gold. Of course I had seen basketball before, but never like this. It was primal, angry, and wholehearted, played as if the players' souls were at stake.

“Look at him, Paige,” Priscilla whispered. Her fingers gripped the chain links so tightly that the joints paled. “He's so beautiful.” She pointed to one of the men. He was tall and lean and could jump with the grace of a mountain lion. His hands seemed to cover the basketball. He was black.

“Priscilla,” I said, “your mother will kill you.”

Priscilla didn't even look at me. “Only if some Goody Two-shoes virgin May Queen rats on me,” she said.

The game ended, and Priscilla called him over. His name was Calvin. From the inside of the fence, he pressed his hands against hers and pushed his lips through one of the little open diamonds to kiss her. He was not as old as I'd originally thought; probably eighteen or so, a public high school kid. He smiled at me. “So we goin' out or what?” he said, talking so fast that I had to blink.

Priscilla turned to me. “Calvin here wants to double-date,” she said. I stared at her as if she was crazy. We were in the eighth grade. We couldn't go out in guys' cars; we had weekend curfews. “Just for dinner,” Priscilla said, reading my mind. “Monday night.”

“Monday night?” I said, incredulous. “Monday night's the—” Priscilla kicked my shin before I said anything about the May parade.

“Paige is busy until about eight,” she said. “But then we can get away.” She kissed Calvin again, hard, through the fence, so that when she pulled away she had crosses pressed into her cheeks, red as scars.

On Monday night, with my father and the neighbors watching, I was the May Queen. I wore a bride's outfit of white lace and a white veil, and I carried white silk flowers. Before me went a stream of Catholic children, and then my attendants in their best dresses. I was last, their icon, the image of the Blessed Virgin Mother.

My father was so proud of me that he'd taken two entire thirty-six-picture rolls of film. He did not question me when I said I'd be celebrating with Priscilla's family after the service and that I'd stay over at her house. Priscilla had told her mother she'd be with me. I moved across the cooling pavement like an angel. I thought,
Hail Mary full of grace,
and I repeated this to myself over and over as if that might knock sense into me.

When we got to the church, Father Draher was standing by the tall marble statue of the Blessed Mother, waiting. I took the wreath of flowers that Priscilla had been carrying, and I stepped forward to crown Mary. I expected a miracle, and I watched the statue's face the entire time, hoping to see the features of my own mother. But my fingers slipped over Mary as I offered the wreath, and her pale-blue cheek stayed as cold and forbidding as hate.

Priscilla and I were picked up by Calvin in a red Chevy convertible on the corner of Clinton and Madison. In the front seat with him was another person, a boy with thick straight hair the color of chestnuts and smiling island-green eyes. He jumped out of the car and held the door open, bowing to Priscilla and to me. “Your chariot,” he said, and that might have been when I fell in love.

Dinner turned out to be Burger King, and what amazed me most was not that the guys offered to pay but that they ordered an enormous amount of food, much more than I could even think of consuming. Jake—that was the name of my date—had two chocolate shakes, three Whoppers, a chicken sandwich, large fries. Calvin had even more. We ate in the car at a drive-in theater, under a moon that seemed to rest on the top of the screen.

Priscilla and I went to the bathroom together. “What do you think?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I told her, which was the truth. Jake seemed all right, but we'd barely said more than hello.

“Just goes to show you,” Priscilla said. “That Ouija board knew a thing or two.”

“It said I'd go out with a Seth,” I pointed out.

“Jake, Seth,” Priscilla said. “They're both four letters.”

By the time we returned to the car it had become dark. Calvin waited until Priscilla and I sat down, and then he hit the button that raised the roof of the convertible. It sealed itself with a faint sucking sound, covering us like a mouth. Calvin turned around to Jake and me in the back seat, and all I could see was the white gleam of his teeth. “Don't you all do anything I wouldn't do,” he said, and he settled his arm around Priscilla like a vise.

I could not tell you what the movie was that night. I clasped my hands between my knees and watched my legs tremble. I listened to the sounds of Calvin and Priscilla, skin slipping against skin in the front seat. Once I peeked and there she was, swooning and batting her lashes and whispering breathlessly just as we had practiced.

Jake kept three inches between us. “So, Paige,” he said quietly, “what do you usually do?”

“Not that,” I blurted out, which made him laugh. I pulled myself farther away, laying my cheek against the steamed glass of the window. “I shouldn't be here,” I whispered.

Jake's hand moved across the seat, slowly, so I could watch it. I grasped it, and that was when I realized how much I had needed the support.

We began to talk then, our voices blocking out the moans and echoes coming from the front seat. I told him I was only fourteen. That we went to parochial school and that I had been the May Queen just hours before. “Come on, baby,” Calvin said, and I heard the tug of a zipper.

“How did you ever get together with someone like Priscilla?” Jake asked, and I told him I didn't know. Calvin and Priscilla shifted, blocking my view of the screen. Jake inched closer to the window. “Move over here,” he said, and he offered the shelter of his arm. He kept his eyes on me as I hung back, like prey at the brink of a neatly laid trap. “It's okay,” he said.