John Irving - Until I Find You

Jack’s confusion understandably upset the school nurse. Miss Bell had talked to many girls about their first periods; while she was awkward in discussing menstruation with a nine-year-old boy, she was at least prepared to do so. But the area of male nocturnal emissions was way off Miss Bell’s map. She was aghast that Jack could confuse a wet dream with menstrual bleeding, but she was at a loss to explain the difference to him. “In all probability, Jack, you won’t even know the first time you ejaculate in your sleep.”

“The first time I what ?”

Miss Bell was young and earnest. Jack left the school nurse’s office knowing more than he needed to know about menstruation. As for the specter of his first wet dream, he was in terror. A nocturnal emission sounded like something one might encounter at the bat-cave exhibit in the Royal Ontario Museum. If, in all probability—as Miss Bell had said—Jack wouldn’t even know the first time he ejaculated in his sleep, this meant to the boy that he might bleed to death without ever waking up!

In the play, the most impressive hulk among the grade-thirteen girls, Virginia Jarvis, was cast as Jack’s mail-order husband, Mr. Halliday. Ginny Jarvis looked like a fur trapper. She was both big and womanly—in the manner of Emma Oastler and Charlotte Barford, but Ginny was older. She had a more developed mustache on her upper lip than Emma had, and Mrs. Oastler’s push-up bra could never have contained her. Prior to Jack’s first rehearsal, Emma informed him that Ginny Jarvis was one of the two grade-thirteen girls who knew everything about penises; the other one was Ginny’s best friend, Penny Hamilton, who was cast as the evil chaperone, Madame Auber. (Penny had lived for a time in Montreal and did a killer French accent, of the kind everyone in Toronto found very funny.)

As for the grade-twelve girl who, according to Emma, also knew everything about penises—the third boarder—that was Penny’s younger sister, Bonnie. Penny Hamilton was a good-looking girl, and she knew it. Bonnie Hamilton had been in an automobile accident; innumerable surgeries had failed to correct her limp. (It was worse than Lottie’s.) Something permanently twisted in her pelvis caused Bonnie Hamilton to lead with her left foot while dragging her right leg behind her, like a sack. Jack did not find her limp unattractive, but Bonnie did.

Bonnie Hamilton wasn’t in A Mail-Order Bride in the Northwest Territories; she refused to be in any plays, because of her limp. But Jack thought Bonnie was more beautiful than Penny. During rehearsals for A Mail-Order Bride in the Northwest Territories, he saw Bonnie only when she was sitting down. She was the prompter. In a folding metal chair, with the script open in her lap, Bonnie held a pencil ready to make note of the errors. Naturally, she didn’t limp when she was sitting down.

In the first rehearsal, when Ginny-Jarvis-as-Mr.-Halliday asked Jack-as-Darlin’-Jenny if she’d “started bleedin’ yet,” the sheer coarseness of the moment evoked an awkward, embarrassed silence from the rest of the cast. “I know, I know—it’s an unforgivable question, but that’s the point,” Mr. Ramsey said.

Jack answered in character; he already knew his lines. Bonnie Hamilton didn’t need to prompt him. “What do you mean ?” Jenny screams at Halliday. “Why should I be bleedin’ ?” But Jenny knows exactly what Halliday means.

Halliday grows impatient. He can’t believe how long it’s taking for his child bride to become a woman. One evening, when Jack-as-Jenny is singing a nostalgic song on a porch swing, Ginny-as-Halliday assaults her. Clever girl that she is, Jenny has stolen Madame Auber’s pistol—a prop Mr. Ramsey borrowed from the Upper Canada College boys’ track team. It was a starting gun that fired blanks. At the end of Act Two, Jack-as-Jenny shoots Ginny-as-Halliday with the starting gun. He-as-she fires two very loud blanks into her-as-his chest, and Ginny Jarvis—a star on the St. Hilda’s field-hockey team—falls on the stage with an athletic thud.

Act Three is Jenny’s trial for Halliday’s murder. Her defense is that she was only a child when she was forced to marry the fur trapper, and that she is still a virgin. The “miracle”—namely, that Jenny hasn’t yet begun her menses—is disputed by the prosecution. Jenny refuses to be examined by the community’s only doctor, because he’s a man. The few women in the community—only two women are on the jury—are tolerant of her refusal. (They despise the male doctor.)

Jenny’s fate appears to be in the hands of a female physician who has been summoned from Yellowknife. But before the lady doctor arrives, Jenny is saved by another miracle of her own making—once again, the power of prayer. While testifying about shooting Mr. Halliday, Jenny suddenly stands, screams, and begins to bleed. A prop more creative than the UCC track team’s starting gun is employed for the bleeding. Jack wears a plastic bag filled with water and red food coloring under his dress. His wrists are bound together at his waist. When he stands, he clutches his lower abdomen as if in pain—bursting the bag of colored water, which soaks his dress and hands blood-red.

Darlin’ Jenny’s piercing scream indicates to the jury that this must be her first period. She has been telling the truth. She is innocent. Trial over! But Jack was able to practice bursting the plastic bag—at the time, filled with just water—only once before the first performance. He thought that more practice might have helped.

Meanwhile, backstage, after the dress rehearsal, Emma Oastler, Penny and Bonnie Hamilton, and Ginny Jarvis stealthily dressed Jack in a school uniform they had scrounged from one of the bigger grade-six girls—a short gray skirt and knee-highs. Since Jack already had makeup on—a little rouge, some stage lipstick, which showed redder than it was in the footlights—it was only necessary to adjust the wig he wore as Darlin’ Jenny. Flanked by Penny Hamilton and Emma, with Ginny Jarvis leading the way and Bonnie Hamilton (accompanied, as always, by her limp) taking a rearguard position, Jack-as-a-girl marched straightaway to the older girls’ residence. In the after-school hours, their entrance from the second floor of the junior school was unobserved.

The Hamilton sisters shared a room. Ginny Jarvis occupied the room across the hall from them. There were no locks on the residence doors, but the matron was not inclined to check on the girls until after supper—when they had to be accounted for and were supposed to be studying. Jack was invited to lie down on a bed. He must have looked anxious, because Emma bent over him and whispered in his ear: “Don’t worry, honey pie, I won’t let anyone touch you.” But Jack was in the presence of girls who were older than Emma; he was frightened.

“Which one of us do you like looking at the best, Jack?” Ginny Jarvis asked. By the indifferent way she raised the question, Ginny seemed resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t be the boy’s first choice. Penny Hamilton was staring at him with an intimidating self-confidence. Bonnie Hamilton wouldn’t look at him; she stood at some distance from the bed, her left foot forward.

“I think Bonnie is beautiful,” Jack said.

“You see?” Ginny asked the assembled girls. “There’s no predicting what turns on men or boys.” Jack could tell he’d made Penny angry by not choosing her, which under the circumstances made him more anxious than before. “Get closer to him, Bonnie,” Ginny directed. “Let him see more of you.”

Bonnie lurched forward, left foot first. Jack was afraid she was going to fall on him, but she dropped to her knees beside him—catching her balance with both hands on his chest. She still wouldn’t look at him. She knelt next to him, putting her hands on her thighs and staring at her lap; ever the prompter, it was as if she were waiting for someone to flub a line. Jack was suddenly shy about looking at her, because Bonnie wouldn’t look at him. He could feel Ginny Jarvis lift his skirt and pull down his underpants. At least he assumed it was Ginny—Penny Hamilton seemed too peeved with him to take an interest. No one touched him. “It’s little, all right,” Penny said, when Ginny had exposed him.