after all.
A quarter of an hour later, when she pulled back the covers, there was
a tarantula on her pillow. She gasped, jumped–and then realized that
the hideous thing was only a painted-rubber novelty item. She sighed
wearily, put the phony spider in the drawer of her nightstand, and got
into bed.
Her ten-year-old brother, Joey, never missed a chance to play a
practical joke on her. Ordinarily, when she encountered one of his
tricks, she went looking for him, pretending to be furious, threatening
him with grave bodily harm. Of course she wasn’t capable of hurting
the boy. She loved him very much. But her mock anger was the part of
the game that Joey enjoyed most.
Usually, in retaliation for his pranks, Amy did nothing more than hold
him down and tickle him until he promised to be good.
Right now he was in bed, probably awake in spite of the late hour,
waiting for her to storm into his room. But tonight she would have to
disappoint him. She wasn’t in the mood for their usual routine, and
she didn’t have the energy for it, either.
She got into bed and switched off the light.
She couldn’t sleep.
She thought about Jerry Galloway. She had told him the truth when she
had ridiculed his skills as a lover. She had seldom had an orgasm. He
was a clumsy, ignorant, thoughtless bedmate. Yet she had let him touch
her night after night. She got little or no pleasure out of the
affair, but she allowed him to use her as he wished. Why? Why?
She wasn’t a bad girl. She wasn’t wild or loose, not deep down in her
heart.
Even while she let Jerry use her, she hated herself for being so
easy.
Whenever she made out with a boy in a parked car, she felt awkward,
embarrassed, out of place, as if she were trying to be someone else and
not herself.
She wasn’t a lazy girl, either. She had ambition. She planned to go
to Royal City Junior College, then to Ohio State, majoring in art. She
would get a job as a commercial artist, and she would labor at fine
arts in her spare time, nights and weekends, and if she found that she
had enough talent to make a good living as a painter, she would quit
the nine-to-five job and create wonderfully beautiful pictures for sale
in galleries. She was determined to build a successful, interesting
life.
But now she was pregnant. Her dreams were ashes.
Maybe she didn’t deserve happiness. Maybe she was bad, just deep-down
rotten.
Did a good girl spread her legs in the backseat of a boy’s car nearly
every night of the week? Did a good girl get knocked up while she was
still in high school?
The dark minutes of the night unwound like black thread from a spinning
spool, and Amy’s thoughts unwound, too–tangled and confusing
thoughts.
She couldn’t make up her mind about herself, she couldn’t decide
whether she was basically a good person or a bad one.
In her mind Amy could hear her mother’s voice again: There’s a darkness
in you. Something bad is in you, and you have to fight it every
minute.
Suddenly, Amy wondered if her sluttish behavior was just an attempt to
spite her mother. That was an unsettling thought.
Speaking softly to the blackness around her, she said, “Did I let Jerry
knock me up just because I knew the news would shatter Mama? Am I
destroying my own future just to hurt that bitch?”
She was the only one who knew the answer to her own question, she would
have to look for it within herself.
She lay very still beneath the covers, thinking.
Outside, the wind stirred the nearby maple trees.
In the distance a train whistle sounded.
The door scraped open, and floorboards creaked beneath the carpet as
someone walked into the room.
The noise woke Joey Harper. He opened his eyes and looked at the alarm
clock, which was visible in the pale glow of the night-light. 12:36.
He had been asleep an hour and a half, but he wasn’t groggy. He was