Brad Watson - Miss Jane

THE SPRING AND summer storms were terrifying and thrilling, with sudden gusting winds, thick waves of rain, bone-jarring thunder, lightning that made everything for an instant like the inside of a vast glass bowl of bright blue light, or crackled across the sky as if to crack it open to the heavens, or boomed so near so sudden, leaving smoking trees in the woods or the edge of a field. There was a wooded area her father left open to the cattle so they could hide in there during storms. The rain flooded the flat yard, creating rivers where before there seemed no natural depression in the ground. Wind howled around the house in long, bending moans, moving against it like a flooding river, so that she feared it would rip the whole thing from its columns of foundation stones. And always, after, the yard and the fields beyond were littered with stripped branches and leaves, arboreal detritus and debris, and often, in the yard, some animal drowned from the sheer volume of water in such a brief time, a stray housecat caught out in it, or a bird, or a possum.

She would sit alone on a branch in a hickory nut tree near the pig pen, watching the hogs, sows, and piglets. Beyond that the cattle grazed in the pasture beside the pond, in their massive, slow, ponderous bodies. With their stupid, wary expressions. They startled easily.

She’d seen the hogs mount the sows in their pen. The hogs seemed almost to try to tender up the sows before they got to it, bumping the sows’ behinds with their noses, rubbing up beside them, bumping their heads gently, almost like a kind of kiss. The boars’ big pink things with the curled tip would come poking out. She went a little pop-eyed first time she saw that. They did not look like stinkhorns. And when they would mount the sows, the hogs didn’t seem to move much, every now and then pushing against her bottom, shuffling their comically tiny hind feet toward her in a little two-legged dance. And the sows stood as still as they could, just kind of staring ahead, their ears canted forward, and then after the hog got down they would kind of stand next to each other until another sow or boar came up, curious, and broke the spell.

When she asked about it, her mother seemed surprised and shocked, but the others only laughed at her questions.

She had seen dogs going at it, too, of course. A female would stray from a neighboring farm and have a small pack of males trailing along, nosing her. The female always seemed a little sullen, as if to say, I suppose I’m ready for this, although I’m not sure about it . She would be evasive without actually running away. The male had always to follow the female around, patiently impatient, attentive, until the female would stand still long enough for him to mount her. Then it was quick, with great purpose, the male’s eyes wandering off either in pleasure or distraction, she could not tell. The female’s eyes kind of sideways like she was thinking and not able to quite figure it out.

She had never seen their hound or Top doing it. What she didn’t realize was the hound was too old, stupid, and lazy, and Top, having been a stray, had been fixed by whoever he had first belonged to, before he was run off or ran away on his on.

Birds fluttered themselves together while on a branch in a tree and then fluttered apart and looked a little bewildered. The birds did not truly understand their compulsions at all. She thought maybe they would actually forget they had done it pretty much just right after doing it. Birds are the most distracted creatures in the world , she thought. She could figure that much. Bird brains. The rooster, too, hopped onto the backs of the hens, who seemed to bow down for him and lift their tails, and he clawed and grappled and flapped his wings and pushed himself at them, and you couldn’t really see much because of all their feathers, just the thrashing around. If they let that hen keep her eggs they would have chicks.

She was never able to come upon cats going at it. They were as secretive and mysterious about this as they were about anything else, if not more so. Although a female in heat seemed truly tortured by the condition. She did not want what needed to happen to actually happen but if it didn’t happen soon she was going to lose her mind. But somewhere, sometime, it always happened, for the female would disappear and no longer be seen creeping through the yard yowling in a low growly way, shoulders hunched. You might hear them down in the woods, screaming like tiny panthers. And then later there would be kittens.

She spied on Grace and her mother, when she could, after their baths, while they were dressing. If they saw her they stiffened and turned away or shut the door. Then she would take the shaving mirror from the wall over the pump sink out back and, down in the woods, set it on the ground, pull up her skirt, and examine herself. She hadn’t been able to tell enough about Grace or her mother to see much difference, but she could tell she was different, all the same. Well, she’d long known she was different, but she wanted to know more.

When she asked the doctor to tell her more, at first he looked a little exasperated, then said he would try to show her.

He came back the next day with a book in which there were drawings of the female genitalia. He let her study it. She asked questions about some of the details, and he answered her bluntly. She looked at it for several minutes, the drawing. Then she closed the book and said, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and ran off for the shaving mirror, book in hand. Down in the woods, squatting over the mirror, she looked back and forth between the image there and the drawing in the book. At this point, she was mostly just fascinated by seeing what she was seeing. She didn’t feel a shock, or anything bad, just then. She closed the book, returned the mirror to its place, and went back out front where the doctor was waiting. She handed him the book and thanked him.

“Clear enough for now, then?” he said.

“I guess,” Jane said. Then she said, “I want to go to school like everybody else.”

“I know.”

“Help me figure out how to do it.”

“All right. Let me think about it for a couple of days.”

He started to go, then turned back.

“You know, Jane, there will likely be teasing.”

She just looked at him, tears welling up that she blinked back. She nodded.

“I already know that,” she said.

Mrs. Ida Chisolm

Rt. 1, Old Paulding Rd.

Dear Mrs. Chisolm,

As per our conversation regarding daughter Jane’s (and your) concerns about managing her incontinence as she begins her public life at the Damascus school, and if you feel the necessity of taking extra measures to insure her mental comfort and avoid accidents, I would recommend that the child refrain from eating and drinking after the evening meal. A little extra time in the privy first thing in the morning. A very light breakfast (absolutely no coffee, as this is not good for children of her age in any case but coffee is a diuretic and would increase the frequency of urination and possibly bowel movements as well), a very light lunch. She should sip a little water during the day so as to avoid dehydration. She should have a healthy snack when she gets home and partake heartily at supper. Make sure she drinks plenty of water in the afternoons. I would not give her iced nor hot tea.

I’m sure she has told you that I went over all this with her myself. She seemed to understand. Such a wise little girl you have there, as you well know.

She is a healthy child, all things considered, and this regimen should not cause her any more than some initial, mild discomfort, to which I believe she soon will become accustomed.