Rebecca Coleman: The Kingdom of Childhood

Forget about it. Banish it. God help you that you should look upon such a scene and realize that someday you will want it, too.

I thought the horror was in what I saw, but I was wrong. The horror came as I realized that, for what he had done, the child in me was right to blame him entirely, and the adult in me blamed him not at all.

Russ stayed in his upstairs office the entire evening, and for once I did not resent his absence.

Once my stomach ran out of things to throw up I sat down at the table with a cup of weak chamomile tea dribbled with honey and Rescue Remedy. I thought about the day Zach and I had felted balls for the craft sale, standing at this same table, apart in body but our desires, no doubt, the same. I had felt powerful then, exalted by him, an object of mystery. I had the power to grant any wish he might dare to utter. Now I was garbage to him. The kind that smelled.

There was a hard knock on the door, and I rose to answer. I felt relatively sure of who it would be, and was not surprised.

She said, “I’m not done talking to you.”

I stepped aside to let her in.

She entered my kitchen and stood beside the stove, her arms crossed over the front of her overalls. Her russet hair was ponytailed back. I looked past her to the teakettle on the back burner and checked to see if the gas was on.

In an indignant voice she demanded, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

I said nothing.

“How could you?” she snapped. “ You . Princess Fairy Pixie-dust. Miss Wear Your Woolens So You Don’t Catch a Chill. Explain yourself.”

I wondered if Russ would hear her and come down to see what the commotion was, if it became a commotion, which seemed likely. I dearly hoped he would not. I felt competent to handle an angry midwife, especially in the kitchen, but less sure of how to manage Russ. Most likely he would turn up the Ken Burns Jazz Collection and think harder about fish.

Her face darkened with frustration at my silence. More loudly, she asked, “How could you fuck a sixteen-year-old boy?”

I replied, “How does anyone fuck anyone?”

The answer didn’t appear to satisfy her. “Do you know who’s been supplying him with condoms all these months?” she asked. “ Me . Because it’s the job of adults to teach teenagers to be responsible. That’s what grown-ups do.”

“You’ve done an admirable job.”

She picked up the jar of comb honey beside the stove and flung it at me. It missed my arm and hit the refrigerator, sending an amber trail trickling down the white. The jar rolled across the floor with an undulating glassy sound, dispensing with bits of comb that flecked the tile.

“I ought to turn you in,” she yelled, and now I felt real fear, more of Russ than of her. “I told him I wouldn’t, but I’m very tempted. Someone needs to hold you accountable, even if he won’t.”

“I don’t believe he told you anything,” I said quietly.

“Oh, he sure did.”

“I don’t believe you. I think you’re just guessing in the dark.”

She leaned forward from the waist, her eyes large, face jeering. “You’re wrong. I was shocked . I would never have guessed a Sylvania teacher would do such a thing. To a boy .”

At that moment the chain inside me broke. “He’s not six years old,” I shouted, my hands in fists at my sides, my neck arching toward her. “He’s not a child. He knew what he was doing and he came after it like he had a free pass to fucking Disneyland. He wouldn’t be taking all your precious condoms if he wasn’t dying to use every last one of them. And who are you to him? Nobody at all. Just another adult he likes to talk to about sex. And you’re jealous. You wish you’d had the nerve.”

Her lip curled like a dog’s. “That’s bullshit. How dare you. You’re so twisted you don’t even know what it is to feel protective of somebody who’s young.”

“Oh, I know what that’s like. But my kindergartners aren’t barging in and dropping their pants in my classroom two minutes after dismissal. Which is what your little angel has been doing for months . He doesn’t want to be protected. He wants to be blown.”

She rested her hands low on her hips and came toward me. “You need to turn yourself in.”

“I’m not turning myself in for anything. I’ll turn him in first for ripping half my hair out the last time I victimized him.”

Her face was inches from mine. I could see every puckered pore along her cheekbones, every haphazard eyelash. “Turn yourself in or I will.”

I cuffed her ear with my open hand and shoved her as hard as I could, sending her stumbling backward into the stove. As she winced, I grabbed the glass sphere Bobbie had given me, delicately streaked with color and hanging in the window by a thread, and flung it at her. She ducked, and it shattered against a cabinet in a spray of shards.

“You’re insane,” she shouted. “You need to be evaluated. There’s something wrong with you, Judy. I mean it. I’m calling a psychiatric transport on you.”

“Go ahead,” I yelled back. “Be my guest. Make sure they’ve got a rape kit.”

She stared into my eyes for a long moment, then brushed past me and out the door.

On the night of the Wicker Man Festival, Fairen came by to pick up Zach, her small white car turning sharply into the driveway with a grace he had to admire. They stopped to get sandwiches, then sat in the car for a long time, heater blasting, making out. For once he didn’t mind the setting one bit. It wasn’t half bad, this business of hooking up in cars, if one respected the limitations of the space. The frustration of wishing he could take her elsewhere had its own peculiar excitement.

Once at the lake they ducked through the trees and entered the park, where the party was already in full swing. To the right a band played in an amphitheater; straight ahead, in the lake itself, scaffolding supported a high platform on which the wicker man was suspended. It looked less like wicker than like blocks of straw held together with metal bands, and, Zach guessed, the burn would be fast and messy; chunks would probably fall off, necessitating the midlake location. The pyrotechnics guys, two shadowy figures moving around a control box, looked like they were making the final preparations.

Fairen set down her backpack and unfurled a quilt onto the cold ground, a little distance from the amphitheater. She waved to a couple in the crowd, dancing to the modern-Celtic music coming from the stage, heavy on the drums. “Want to dance?”

“Not yet. Maybe when the burn starts.”

“Oh, c’mon. Don’t be inhibited.”

To distract her, he chose to deliberately misinterpret her meaning, and leaned in to kiss her. She laughed and kissed him back, and after a little more of that he playfully wrestled her down onto the quilt. A pine bough sheltered them somewhat, but people were everywhere, and so he contented himself with the sort of kissing that didn’t quite qualify as public indecency.

A whoop went up from the crowd, and Zach looked up to make sure it wasn’t a reaction to him and Fairen. Instead he saw a tongue of flame lapping at the leg of the wicker man. He rolled himself back up to a sitting position, and watched as the legs, and then the torso, gradually caught fire. Fairen moved across him, sitting backwards on his lap briefly and taking a moment to kiss him again before standing up and reaching out her hand.

“It’s started,” she said. Her smile was almost persuasive. “Come join me.”

“I liked what we were doing.”

“There’ll be more of that later. C’mon.”