Double Lover

The first time I wrote a poem I was very troubled by the problem of rhyme and I was scratching my behind all during the composition. I was eight years old and I remember it distinctly because my Uncle Lemmie (dead a long while now. The only thing I remember about him is that he was always pushing a garden wheel¬barrow. When other children talked about their fathers' Fords, I used to brag that my Uncle Lemmie pushed me around in a wheel¬barrow) saw me scratching and told me that little ladies didn't, not anywhere. He lowered the handles of the wheelbarrow gravely as he said it, sat down on the bench beside me, and began tenderly braiding my hair. "What're you doing, Millie?" he said. "Writing a poem. What rhymes with fire?" "Lots of things. Tire, or fire . . ." "I've already got fire." "Well, then spire." We were sitting across the street from my house. Inside through the porch windows I could see my father reading the Sunday paper and I could see my mother playing the piano. Over by the cellar door I could see the smoke which seemed to be coming from the garden where my uncle had been gathering dead leaves and burning them. I had a school copybook on my lap and a pencil in the hand that wasn't scratching. My knees, sticking out beyond the hem of my skirt, were dirty as usual, this time with coal dust. So to cover my knees I moved the copybook cautiously along my skirt with the tip of the pencil while my uncle was busy with my hair. He said, "How come you're writing poetry?" "Because I've got something extra important to say to Mommy and Daddy. And I can't use spire." "Well, let me see what you got so far." I want to tell you right away About a big red fire, That if you want the house to stay You've got to His breath smelled while he pondered the verse over my shoulder. "That's not bad," he said. "What about in-spire?" I gave it some thought and shook my head. "Per-spire?" "Uncle Lemmie," I rebuked him, "this is serious. I was down in the cellar before, and if they don't call the fire engines soon, we won't have a house. There's a whole pile of Daddy's old newspapers caught fire from the stove." What with Daddy running with water buckets in a minute or two and Mommy screaming and Uncle Lemmie and my brother breaking the fire alarm box and calling the fire engines, and the fire-men pulling hoses all over the porch, the poem never got finished. But when the firemen, chopping and dousing away, had saved about three-quarters of the house, Daddy said, "What the hell was she writing poetry for?" And Mother hit me hysterically in the back of the head and said, "Why didn't you tell us?" But even after Uncle Lemmie had explained about the rhyme, they didn't understand. Now I believe that the act of poetry is always utilitarian. For them, of course, my wanting to communicate in poetry at all, and my searching so hard for the perfect rhyme to do it with, remained—forever—a purpose mysterious, rankling, insolubly perverse. But that was because I never told them that it was I who had set the fire. It was about this time that I began to get a bit thinner—more boyish, I felt with immense pleasure—and began to chase in desperate tomboy style after Sandy and his friends. Most of the time they managed to elude me, or they teased me with games that demanded feats physically impossible for me. One summer day with me at the tag end, Sandy led the pack on a chase of Follow-the-Leader. Jumping from high walls, swinging from trees, climbing over barbed-wire fences. On the last of these I tore both the hem of my skirt and my calf—a ragged, bloody cut behind the knee. I still have that scar, too. He took me back to the house and treated the wound with cotton and iodine while I sat and writhed in a chair in the living room. There was no one else at home. I still remember how dark the living room was with the blinds drawn, and the smell of the iodine which I thought was the smell of my blood, and Sandy's blue hat which he had debonairly tossed under the piano after wiping his fingers all over it to get the blood off them. I was crying. To quiet me (I thought), he said anxiously, "Would you like me to show you what grownups do at night?" I must have sensed that there was something wrong because I immediately began crying louder, quite deliberately. Obviously, however, he had already given his plans much thought. He replied as if I had raised an anticipated objection. Resourcefully, he began drying my eyes with my braids. "There, there. You're never too young to learn. You're a clever girl, but you lack initiative." He was almost fourteen years old, and the power of his rhetoric by now was formidable. I made no attempt to engage in debate. I adjusted my skirt, which he had raised much too high to treat my leg (I suddenly noticed), and started putting on the sock and shoe which he had removed because they were wet with blood. "I want to go out again and play," I said. "That's the trouble with you girls. You want to grow up to be wives and mothers without the responsibilities of training for a pro¬fession. No wonder so many of you fail. Until the day you marry, you refuse to start practicing. It's all play with you, isn't it? You've got to take your responsibilities more seriously." The best I could manage was the childish, "You think you're so smart, don't you!" But it was I who thought it, and a lot more: radiant with his messy blond hair tufted over his ears, enviably slender, and manly, and graceful, and above all earnest and sensitive—with shadowy eyes and encyclopedic lips. "My leg still hurts," I said. Single-mindedly, he continued, "Where do you expect to learn-" this said scornfully—-"from books, from hygiene classes, from pajama-party bull sessions? There's no substitute, I tell you, for the school of hard knocks. Experience is the best teacher, and practice makes perfect." "Let go," I complained, because by now he had his hand under my skirt, & I began to have the first clear idea of what we had been talking about. I got up. "All right, Millie," he said gravely, "let's be realistic. How do you want to learn about this? From Mommy & Daddy?" The thought was embarrassing. "I'm going out to play," I repeated. "And when? Do you want to have to wait till you're my age to find out?" That really gave me pause: waiting five years seemed an unimaginable strain. "And then do you want to have to learn from strangers?" He had saved his trump for last. I thought of all the little boys I knew. "What do I have to do?" I said cautiously. But for all his arguments, he had only the mistiest ideas. In the darkness of the living room, standing & gyrating and hopping forward across the rug, we performed a weird and ritualistic dance. This way and that he turned me, making certain pistonlike motions of his own, which frightened me and left him confused, but pleased at his daring. Finally he tied my shoelace for me & picked up his hat & we went out to play Follow-the-Leader again with his friends. That evening while Mother changed the Band-Aid he stayed in the room listening to see if I would say a word about what had happened, and we were both flushed the whole time. Still frightened, I said nothing. After dinner, at Daddy's suggestion, Sandy delivered a fervent oration on the topic, "Firecrackers in the Hands of Chil¬dren." Gradually from that day on I began to hate Mommy & Daddy for making no attempt to interfere with us or stop us. I never allowed myself to realize that it was I who prevented them with my utter silence—How could they expect me to tell them? I thought. The only attempt I did make to tell occurred the next morning: I set fire to the house. I tried words, too, the very best words I knew: I want to tell you right away About a big red fire That if you want the house to stay You've got to but nobody understood. So I abandoned poetry.