Chapter Three Frankie #2
Pearl and I have known each other since we were children, playing dolls and house together, making forts in the woods.
I taught her how to fish and how to make a pipe with a dried-out corncob and a reed from the riverbank.
She taught me how to play dolls and to sew and get along with the dull girls our age.
But the year we turned twelve, our friendship shifted.
I knew I was different, that I didn’t like boys the way other girls did.
That when I lay awake in bed at night imagining a future where I was married, it wasn’t a boy I was kissing and coming home to, but a girl.
And not just any girl, but Pearl. I kept my thoughts and feelings to myself, did not dare speak them out loud.
But like all secrets, it festered and metastasized.
It became a bright burning thing that was all I could think about some days.
I knew I was in love with her when I was ten years old, but even then I understood how dangerous this was.
Not only because of the wrongness of my feelings for her, but because of who she was—the daughter of the wealthiest, most important man in town.
My fate was sealed one afternoon when we were thirteen. We were in Pearl’s bedroom sewing together, working on a quilt.
“Have you kissed a boy yet, Frankie?” she’d asked.
I didn’t answer, just felt my face and ears grow red as I concentrated very hard on the tiny stitches I was making. We’d pieced the top together, then pinned it to the backing with cotton between. We were doing the quilting, neat curved patterns of stitching to hold it all together.
“I have,” she confessed. “I kissed Charlie Dunn up in the bell tower at the factory. He asked to see the bell and I sneaked up there with him and we kissed.”
I still said nothing, just continued working on my stitches, listening to the blood thrum in my ears.
I hated Charlie Dunn with my whole heart in that moment.
Hated him and longed to be him. What right did he have to be the first to kiss Pearl?
He knew nothing about her. He didn’t know what she looked like when she was sparkling with sand and silt drying off on the beach after swimming at the pond, or the way her lips turned red from raspberries we picked in the thicket by the river.
He didn’t know her secret fox smile or that the second toe on each foot was longer than the others, which she claimed meant that she came from royalty.
He hadn’t counted each freckle on her cheeks or noticed all the shades of gold in her hair when the sun hit it.
He was just some dumb boy who saw the breasts growing under her dress, breasts that many of the girls our age didn’t have yet, not the way Pearl did.
“Set down your needle,” Pearl instructed, and I did, glancing at her as I tried to keep my breath steady. She moved closer to me on the bed, the unfinished quilt covering our laps, our legs touching. “Do you want to know,” she asked, “what it was like? I could show you.”
“I-I—” I stammered, my body trembling slightly.
She took my hand, placed it on her shoulder.
“He put his hand here like this, and I put mine on him, like this,” she said, clasping my left shoulder firmly.
“And Charlie, his sweater was scratchy, but your shirt is soft,” she said, running her hand over my shoulder, caressing my back.
“And he smelled of onions and wet wool, but you, you smell like apples.” She smiled, leaned closer.
I could feel her breath on my cheek. “He put his lips on mine and moved his hand down here,” she said, pulling my hand down over her left breast. I stopped breathing, my whole body thrumming with a terror and longing I’d never known.
Her lips brushed against mine and I jerked away as though I’d been burned with a hot iron.
I had never been more afraid of anything, or anyone, than I was of her, of my own feelings for her at that moment. I stood up, letting the pinned quilt fall to the floor. “I’m sorry,” I said, taking a reeling step toward the door, dizzy, lightheaded, and trying to catch my breath.
“It was just pretend,” Pearl called after me.
“I have to go,” I told her as I practically ran from the room.
After that, I avoided Pearl for a long time.
When she would corner me and ask me to come over, or to go ice-skating, I made excuses, told her I had plans with the boys.
It was true that I had always preferred the company of boys and found their games, their talk, much easier to understand.
But I still thought about her and often wondered if she thought about me too.
But surely not in the same way I was thinking of her.
At night, under the covers, I’d let myself imagine what might have happened if I’d let her show me what kissing was like that day in her bedroom, our bodies pressed together under the quilt.
Our first real kiss was seventeen months ago.
October 17—what Pearl now called our anniversary.
We’d been at the fall harvest celebration.
The church was decorated with leaves and cornstalks, the bonfire in the churchyard was blazing, the fiddlers were playing, the apple brandy and hard cider flowing.
I’d sneaked away for some quiet and Pearl followed me, tucked her arm into mine, and asked me to walk with her.
We crossed the yard and made our way toward the woods.
“You are a puzzle to me, Frankie O’Massey,” she’d said.
“Am I? How so?” I was wearing my finest pressed white shirt and trousers, a gray vest I had tailored to fit me perfectly.
We’d crossed the path going into the cemetery and she led us past it, going deeper into the woods.
“Most people, boys in particular, are easy for me to read. I see them looking at me and I know what they’re thinking. What they want. But you, I’ve caught you looking at me many times, but I cannot for the life of me see what’s going on in your head. You’re unreadable. And it drives me mad.”
I was stunned, fervent, but not sure what to say.
This was dangerous territory. One wrong move and I would pay dearly.
I am no fool. I knew what would happen if Pearl told her friends, laughing about odd Frankie being in love with her.
Word would spread like wildfire through town.
It was one thing for me to dress the way I did, keep my hair cut short, and smoke and drink with the men, but confessing my feelings for Pearl would be crossing a line that could not be uncrossed. “I’m sorry,” was all I could manage.
“You should be,” she said, shaking her head, clucking her tongue. “Driving poor girls mad.”