Beneath the Attic

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  Prologue

  “Why are you smiling? Are you an idiot?” my mother asked. She was as pale as a faded white rose. Startled, she looked more squeamish than angry, cringing in the doorway.

  I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, staring down at my bloodstained knickers after I had called out loudly enough for her to come running.

  My stomach was tight with cramps, but I wasn’t thinking about that.

  “I’m not a little girl anymore,” I told her proudly.

  She put her hand over her heart and took a deep breath, her eyes closed. I really thought she might faint. Then she looked at me, my words finally crashing through her ears.

  “What? Of course you are still a little girl. Don’t leave the room,” she ordered, and fled to send for Grace Rose, a nearby nurse, to “deal with the matter.”

  She had never once discussed this inevitable event with me. It was as if sex didn’t exist for her and she still wanted me to believe babies were really brought by the stork. Later, she would accuse me of willing what she called “Eve’s curse” to happen too soon and unintendedly revealed that it hadn’t happened for her until she was nearly fifteen. By the time Grace Rose arrived, I had fallen asleep on the floor. She knelt beside me and stroked my hair, waking me. My mother hadn’t followed her up to my bedroom.

  Despite my mother’s insistence that I was still a little girl, Grace Rose complimented me on how grown-up I was about the start of my monthlies. I didn’t wail; there was no panic. I certainly hadn’t done what my mother accused me of doing: I hadn’t willed it, but, especially these past few months, I’d been anticipating it. I could feel the changes coming in my body, and from what I understood about the sexual fantasies other girls my age experienced, mine were more vivid and daring.

  I was eager to hear everything Grace Rose had to say. She was tall, with light-brown hair and calm green eyes. Although she was too thin, she wasn’t unattractive, but she was twenty-three and unmarried and, as far as I knew, not promised to anyone, which I found more curious. There were all sorts of rumors about her, ranging from a terrible early romance that ruined her future hopes to that she simply didn’t like boys. People like my mother who wanted to employ her medical expertise overlooked all that. They would never ask her a personal question. But not me. I wanted her to talk about herself.

  “To be honest,” she told me, “I was far more frightened and frantic about it when it first happened to me than you are. Most girls dread it, but I have to say that your mother wasn’t exaggerating.” She smiled. “You do look like you’re happy.”

  “I’m happy to be a woman and not a little girl. My mother can’t stand it. How old were you?”

  “Thirteen and five months,” Grace said.

  She smiled, remembering. I could feel her honesty. Why couldn’t my mother be more like this? Why did I have to turn to a stranger?

  “Is it weird that it happened to me so soon?”

  “Oh no. It’s not that unusual.”

  “My mother thinks so. You saw that.”

  She kept her soft smile. There was more in it. She wasn’t just trying to be a good nurse. She saw something in me that she really liked. Maybe she saw herself.

  “Mothers don’t want their daughters growing up too quickly.” She tightened her lips. I was confident that she was remembering her own mother’s reactions. “I was told to keep it secret, but from the look on my face, all my girlfriends knew what had occurred. We were all anticipating it for ourselves.”

  “Did boys know?” I wasn’t at all interested in other girls’ reactions.

  “None I told,” she replied, “but there were some . . .” She widened her eyes, implying one or two might have realized it.

  My mind went wild with thoughts. Could boys really tell? How did your body change? Was there something different about the way you walked, even talked? I nearly overwhelmed her with my flood of questions.

  She saw quickly that I was like someone who had crossed the desert of sexual ignorance and even at the age of twelve had tasted the salty flavor of passion. After I was washed and dressed, she sat with me on my bed. It was wonderful to have a young woman explain things, someone who seemed to have had the same need to know more at my age. My mother never would do this, never would tell me anything I really wanted or needed to know. She was a child of the Victorian age, a time, I was told, when people put skirts on curvaceous piano legs because those naked piano legs were too suggestive.

  “From now on,” Grace said, sotto voce because my mother was nearby, probably hovering and listening on the stairway, “you want to keep track of dates.”

  “Dates?”

  “When you’re most fertile. Sometimes we forget or we think we’ll slip through safely.”

  I was pleasantly shocked and excited by just how uncensored Grace was being. Keep track of dates? I was still only twelve. That meant Grace thought I might have sexual intercourse, perhaps in the near future. Otherwise, what was the point of such a warning? From this day on until it stopped, eggs hovered inside me, waiting for the right time to seize a sperm, or was it the other way around? No matter. It all seemed too busy and uninteresting, all that crawling around somewhere within my vagina. It made me think of tiny ants. Ugh.

  I refused to reduce love and romance, sex itself, to science, anyway. I didn’t want to talk about ovaries and eggs. What could that possibly have to do with romance? I could see Grace understood me.

  Actually, why shouldn’t she be warning me? I thought. Surely she was wise enough to have seen that at the age of twelve I already had the power to literally hypnotize a man with my cerulean eyes and full, shapely lips upon which kisses would quickly explode into unrestrained passion. If I could dream it so vividly, surely I could do it well.

  “Do women always get pregnant if they have intercourse?” I asked.

  She smiled as though she had expected the question.

  “No, not if they’re careful, as I just explained, but . . .” She hesitated, debating with herself about telling me any more.

  “But what?” I asked, impatient.

  “There are ways if you prepare ahead of time. Think about it and don’t just rush into it. Some women practice the rhythm method,” she continued, and explained it in detail. “Some are using this relatively new device called a diaphragm, and some insist their lovers use what’s known as a rubber condom. There are some other things to do. Some women just depend on men to withdraw in time.”

  I knew I was sitting there gape-eyed, but I quickly tried to look like I knew more than I indicated and was not really that shocked at her frank talk.

  “Your mother might get very angry at me for telling you all this, but I believe in telling a girl who’s reached your stage of life everything.”

  Oh yes, she was right about that, I thought. My mother would be very angry and never use her for anything else.

  “I promise. I won’t tell her anything you said.”

  “It’s far better than learning it on the street or from some sexually active girl. The key thing,” she insisted, “is never rushing into it. Stop when you feel yourself losing control.”

  Me lose control? That wasn’t going to be my problem, I thought. The responsibility was surely something every man who dared to cou
rt me would bear.

  Probably from the first day I had studied my image in my mother’s antique French Regency carved wood mirror, a glass that supposedly had reflected the faces of royals, even princesses, I had realized I was special. Grace Rose knew it, I was sure.

  “You’re going to be very beautiful, Corrine,” she said, pausing in my bedroom doorway on her way out. “But with beauty comes great risk. Don’t forget that. Men will lose themselves over you.”

  She was so convincing that she took my breath away.

  But after my talk with Grace Rose and as my body continued its march toward womanhood, I became even more confident of what she had predicted. When I looked into this magic historical mirror my mother had put up in the hallway outside her bedroom, I saw the brilliant faces of femmes fatales, women who had always been in control of their lives and especially their relationships with men. No one else could see it, but I saw it, the tiny, spidery threads that emanated from my face and body. I could will one to touch a boy, a young man, and hold him tightly in my web until I was tired of him and then simply let him go, drifting through the rest of his life frustrated. To make proper love to any other woman, he’d have to be able to superimpose my face onto his fiancée’s or his bride’s, and even then, he wouldn’t be totally satisfied.

  Other women would always envy me. Some would absolutely hate me. But alas, I thought, that was the sacrifice I must endure.

  Was it a curse or a blessing?

  It wouldn’t be that long before I knew the answer.

  “It’s easier for you, Corrine,” my best friend, Daisy Herman, declared. “You’re so pretty that boys flop about like silly seals at your feet.”

  Daisy was easily what anyone would call adorable rather than beautiful. Shorter than most of us our age, she had diminutive facial features. She was doll-like, someone who would look like a little girl forever, which was nice when you were a child but not something a grown woman would want.

  It was midafternoon on a Saturday, and, like some invisible magician, early spring had run her palm over bushes and flower buds to startle us almost overnight with a bright green, rich cherry-red, and corn-yellow world. Daisy, Edna Howard, Agnes Francis, and I were lying on a brown horsehair blanket under the old, spreading oak tree my father had named Henry the Eighth because of the six smaller oak trees around it. He said they represented Henry’s wives. Proof, he said, was that two of the six had had their tops blown off in a storm, and Henry the Eighth had beheaded two wives. When I was little, I believed it. My mother thought it was all ridiculous.

  This was the first time Edna and Agnes had been invited to one of my so-called womanly talks. Both were rather dumpy and plain, grateful for any attention, especially from me. I left it up to Daisy to issue the invitations. That responsibility made her feel more important and helped her convince anyone that she was my trusted personal assistant.

  After Daisy’s comment, Edna and Agnes looked at me, anticipating some protestation of modesty, but I wallowed in and often sought compliments more like someone who was far more insecure about her appearance than someone who was confident of her beauty. I even requested praise from mirrors hanging anywhere I went, often pausing to ask, “Am I truly lovely?” I always heard the answer I expected, the answer I deserved.

  However, whenever my mother caught me studying myself, she would pounce, declaring, “You’re too arrogant and full of sinful pride, Corrine.”

  I would feel my insides twist and knot so tightly that I couldn’t breathe and had to get away from her as quickly as I could. I swear, if she had claws, I’d have been scratched from head to toe.

  Why couldn’t she see that it wasn’t so much my being narcissistic as it was my realizing that anyone who wasn’t blind or stupid had no choice but to praise my features, from my unique sapphire-blue eyes with my long eyelashes to my diminutive nose and full, soft, and naturally crimson lips? I had my mother’s high cheekbones but a strong hint of character in the way my jawline was just slightly prominent. I had inherited that from my handsome father. I was rarely sick and never pale. My father swore that I had possessed my rich magnolia-white skin from day one, but my mother said that was a preposterous exaggeration.

  “Beauty is often not enough,” I told Daisy.

  I sipped some lemonade and looked past my girlfriends into the woods at the cool shadowy areas. Even from this distance, I could see a swarm of bees madly circling a dead log. For a few moments, I was elsewhere, riding a beautiful white horse beside my debonair fantasy fiancé.

  “You mean you have to be smart, too,” Agnes said. “Right?” she asked, nodding when I didn’t add any other comment. Her highly nasal voice broke my dream bubble.

  “Not in the way you’re thinking, Agnes,” I snapped at her. I was so enjoying my reverie. “I know how much you like to read and pretend you’re as informed about politics as any boy or young man our age. But there is a particular book of knowledge that I think belongs with women only.”

  “Where did you get it?” Edna asked, wide-eyed. “Did you read it?”

  “No, silly frog. It’s not actually a book. It’s something that comes naturally to you when you start to feel more like a woman than a girl. You do things instinctively to water men’s mouths with desire.”

  Now the two of them were smirking at me with skepticism. As usual when I spoke to girls like this, I had to spell it all out.

  “For example, there are special ways to look at boys who even slightly attract you. You bat your eyelashes and run your tongue over your lips to signal your interest. There are things you can do with your parasol to make yourself look sexier or indicate to a young man that you have interest in him when walking by. Maybe next time, if there is a next time, I’ll bring one to illustrate.”

  I paused and, like a heart-to-heart confession, added in a suggestive whisper, “I’ve often tested these suggestions.”

  “And what happened?” Edna asked quickly. Her eyes reminded me of sizzling egg yolks.

  I shrugged. “Nothing in particular, because I didn’t want it to go any further. Even though we don’t have the right to vote, we can have an influence on what happens in our lives. More women should think like that. As my father says, ‘If you act like sheep, they’ll act like wolves.’ ”

  Daisy smiled. She loved when I spoke with anger when it came to the rivalry between male and female.

  “How do you know so much about how to behave around men?” Agnes demanded with some annoyance. “We’re about the same age, and I would never think to do any of that.”

  “Are we?”

  “Well, I was fourteen last week,” she said. “Edna is and Daisy is and you are.”

  I shrugged.

  “Years as a measurement of your maturity are . . .” I looked again at Daisy, who had a better vocabulary since her mother was a schoolteacher. She knew instinctively by now when I wanted her to finish one of my sentences.

  “Nebulous,” she said.

  “Huh?” Edna said.

  “Vague, unclear. In other words, Edna, time passed pulling up your own knickers doesn’t guarantee your maturity.”

  She and I laughed.

  “Daisy is exactly right. We’ve all learned the science about making love, but when you’re an adult, you realize that’s hardly enough. You can’t learn all you need to know from boring old books in order to conduct a satisfactory romance. Most of what’s really important is, as I said, natural instinct. That’s how it comes to me and hopefully someday soon will come to you. You grow into it, ripen like an apple or a grape.”

  “What exactly are we to expect?” Agnes asked. She had small eyes as it was, but when she squinted, they looked like pinholes. “I mean, how would we know when it’s come?”

  Two swallows flew close to us and then turned off to the right.

  “It’s like birds,” I continued. “Female birds don’t go to a school for birds to learn how to attract male birds and create new ones, do they? They do what they must to make it happen.
It’s in you, in your very female bones,” I said. “Things just . . . explode inside you.”

  “Explode?” Agnes asked.

  I raised my eyes and coached myself to have more patience. Then I glared at her.

  “Don’t you have new and different feelings, Agnes? No tingles, no urge to touch yourself? You have had your period. You shouldn’t act like a child and cover your eyes at the sight of a penis.”

  “The sight of what?” Agnes looked like she had swallowed one of the swallows.

  “Some girls are ashamed to admit their feelings. But we’ve all agreed to be honest with each other. Right?”

  “Absolutely,” Agnes said.

  “Well?”

  She looked at Edna.

  “Yes,” Edna confessed. “I have seen only my little brother’s penis, but I’ve had those feelings.”

  “There. And there’s nothing evil about it, Agnes. One day, the man you love or marry will be touching you in exactly the same places you’re touching yourself. And don’t deny you do,” I quickly accused like a head-on-fire minister.

  I thought she would faint. Her face reddened until it was as crimson as fresh-spilled blood.

  “I’m sure your father touches your mother there, too. Or if he doesn’t, he finds another woman to touch.”

  Daisy laughed, and Agnes’s jaw dropped.

  Edna shook her head. I think she wanted to put her hands over her ears, but she was entranced. I smiled to myself. If only my mother could see how infatuated most of my girlfriends were with me, she might appreciate me more. After she had her heart attack learning I conducted these secret womanly talks, of course.

  Actually, now that I was older and my loveliness more obvious, my mother’s criticism of the pride I took in myself infuriated me. Why would she want to rein in such beauty anyway? Most mothers would be proud, beaming and gathering compliments like a cotton picker.

  “Has your mother told you most of this?” Edna asked. “Is that where you learned about it?”

  “My mother?” I laughed. “Hardly. It would be too shocking. She would have heart failure, and I would be accused of matricide.”