Elizabeth J Church - All the Beautiful Girls

“Are you shy today?” he asked. Lily nodded, and he continued. “Well then, how about I ask you questions? All right? Let’s see,” he said, putting his finger to the center of his chin and pretending to be deep in thought. Lily giggled. “Tell me what you like to do. What’s your ten-and-a-half-year-old heart’s favorite pastime?”

Lily was thrilled that he knew enough to add that half year to her age, but she wasn’t used to being asked what she liked. She was used to doing what she was told or suffering the hairbrush—Uncle Miles’ favorite form of punishment, one he reserved for offenses like sassing back or stealing nutty chocolates from the box next to his ugly brown turd of a recliner.

“I like to dance,” Lily said, and then feeling braver, she handed him her bag of popcorn, wiped her hands on her purple shorts, and stepped back from the elephant enclosure. Lily showed the Aviator some of the steps she’d copied from Dinah Shore’s show. She pointed her toes, held her breath, and performed a passable pirouette.

“What’s your favorite kind of dance?” he asked.

“All kinds. Any kind,” she said. “I love the June Taylor Dancers. I’ve seen them on The Ed Sullivan Show. ”

“They’re pretty good,” he said, munching on a few more pieces of her popcorn.

“They kick like this.” She turned sideways, kicked as high as she could, kept her balance. “And when they make those patterns, like a kaleidoscope—I love that. They’re magic. Oh,” she added, “and the outfits. Sequins and feathers. Headdresses!” Lily could hear how fast the words were coming out of her mouth.

“So, dancing makes you happy.”

“More than that,” Lily said, looking up at him. “When I dance—when I dance, nothing else matters. Everything else disappears. There is only dancing.” That was it. Dancing took her to another world, a world that Uncle Miles could not reach. A world where her lost family was a faint shadow, not an omnipresent, weeping wound. When Lily danced, she was not a misfit. She belonged.

But she couldn’t bring herself to say all of this to the Aviator. Instead, she simply said, “I feel happy when I dance. Free.”

“All right then,” he said, just as the band began playing an upbeat song. Lily was torn—she had to get back to her aunt, but she wished she could ask him to come sit beside her.

“Here.” He handed her the popcorn. “You can’t miss the show.” He held out his hand, and she took it. “I was very glad to see you, Lily Decker. Now, you go have fun, and later you can tell me what you think of pink and green and blue and yellow trained poodles, all right?”

Lily laughed. There couldn’t possibly be such a thing. The Aviator was funny.

“I’m not kidding,” he said, touching the brim of his ball cap in a mock salute. “They dance, too, but not as well as you! Now, promise me you’ll have a good rest of the summer, all right?”

“I will!” Lily skipped a few steps toward the bleachers and then turned to wave to him one more time. She watched him cross the parking lot, stand beside his tuxedo-black Corvette, and light a cigarette.

A week later, Lily received a card in the mail that said she ’d been given a Tah-Dah! Dance Studio scholarship, along with a stipend to pay for a leotard, tights, and appropriate dance shoes. It was signed “Your Secret Benefactor.” Aunt Tate said, “Someone has money to burn” but otherwise manifested no curiosity. And so after school Lily rode her faded red bicycle to the studio. It gave her two days a week when she was out of the house, free from chores and the lead-weight sensation of knowing Uncle Miles was due to come through the kitchen door, smelling of oil and diesel and sweat.

UNCLE MILES SAID, “Tonight we experiment.”

September’s full moon through the window made everything silvery bright, lit the edges of things, made silhouettes of her desk lamp and her bureau with her ballerina jewelry box. Lily jammed the ends of her fingers into her mouth, bit down to keep quiet. She squeezed her eyes shut, tight. Warm tears eased their way from the corners of her eyes, ran into her hair, and wet her pillowcase.

Uncle Miles put his mouth to the center of her. He was moaning, which made a buzzing bee vibration that journeyed from his throat, his lips, to her core. And then she felt the growing heat of her own flesh in response. She fought against it but couldn’t help it. “Oh!” she cried, a surprised baby-bird voice. “Oh, oh, oh!” He held her pelvis as if it were a bowl.

She thought that she might explode, that she was descending, plummeting, and it was release and good and hot and out of her control and sick and bad a disease and the worst thing ever that Uncle Miles had done but it felt good. It felt good. It felt good. Oh, no —it felt good. How could her body betray her?

“You like it.” His whisper left a hot brand of accusation against the side of her neck.

Once he was gone, she told herself that tonight was the exception to the rule. Tonight, it was okay to cry. With her face pressed into the wet pillow to muffle the sound of her confusion, Lily cried her shame. Her need. She cried a poisonous blend of gratification and disgust, of wonderment that Uncle Miles had given her pleasure, which was more frightening than any of the painful, awful things he’d done in the past. She cried her rupture, her irreparable breakage.

The light from the gooseneck lamp on top of the church organ turned Mrs. Olson’s face cadaver white as she played “O God of Mercy, God of Might.” Seated next to Aunt Tate in the unforgiving wooden pew, twelve-year-old Lily wrapped her arms around her gut, which had harbored a deep, persistent ache since before the second hymn. Finally, Pastor Lester intoned the benediction and released the sanctified congregation.

Lily immediately headed downstairs to the church bathroom, which wasn’t much more than a stingy coat closet. When she looked at the crotch of her panties, she saw blood. Oh no oh no oh no oh no. A string of dark, thick blood dripped from inside her, and there was more blood in the toilet bowl.

Was this God’s doing? Was this one of the things that the all-powerful, vengeful God did to punish bad girls? She knew that what she did with Uncle Miles was evil, and God did seem so very fond of bloody atonement. Lily wadded toilet paper into her panties and then sat uncomfortably through her sixth-grade Sunday school lesson.

Aunt Tate was waiting in the car when Lily finished class. “What did you learn today?” she asked, waving to some of her Bible-study friends like Margaret Steepleton, who kept a handkerchief tucked between her bulwark breasts and blew her nose loudly at least seventeen thousand times during the pastor’s tedious sermon.

“The story of the prodigal son,” Lily dutifully reported. Then she took a deep breath, steeling herself to tell Aunt Tate about the blood and possible impending doom. “Aunt Tate? I’m bleeding.”

Aunt Tate turned to look at Lily. “Where? Did you fall?”