Visible in the shadow she made. She was the dark, black center of the starry Milky Way.

That day she was cleaning the whole house—a spring

cleaning, she said—but really she was just trying to get through the day. She hauled the mattresses outside and propped them up on chairs in the sun; she beat rugs and washed windows inside and out, hung the laundry on the line, scoured the

oven, and scrubbed the toilets with her bare hands. That she was a woman who would rather put her hand in the toilet than talk to me about blood relieved me. I didn't really want to talk about it, either. Not with her.

After sweeping the den, Mama moved on to James's

room, where she bent over the bed she'd just hauled back into the house, tucking the sheets in. I stood in the doorway. "I think something's wrong with me," I said. "I didn't get my period this month." I imagined Mama rushing over to me once I told her, throwing her arms around me, rubbing my forehead and whispering, "Oh, honey, you'll be okay."

But she didn't. She dropped to James's bed and sagged over, clutching her head in her hands. "Goddammit," she said, "you're pregnant," which was even stranger than the time she called me a queer. I thought she should make up her damn mind.

"What?" I said. "Pregnant?" I didn't think I heard her right. "I can't be pregnant; I've never had sex, Mama." She looked up at the ceiling, moaning, "Jesus, what I have done to deserve this? Where did this girl come from?" She looked at me as if I were from outer space.

It was clear that my words were empty as air to her. Then she jerked her head at me. "You're just going to have to get a pregnancy test," she said. "I can't believe you've done this. 2 1 4

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I told you you were spending too much time with that boy. Wait'll I tell your father."

I didn't want to be anywhere near the house when she

told Daddy. I walked outside. It creeped me out to think

of them discussing my body as if it had a life separate from the one I lived in it. It reminded me of the day I drowned, how Mama told a story so different from what actually happened. As I walked down the street, I pictured her and Daddy small in our backyard. Daddy scaling fish beneath the pecan tree, his skin and hair flecked with silvery fish scales. Mama lying in the grass, arms and legs splayed

out like a kid making a snow angel. Lily doesn't know it, Dwayne, but she has a baby growing in her belly, a tiny blue fish baby. It must've gotten inside her when she fell in the lake because she says the boy didn't put it there, but I know better, Dwayne, and we have to do something with her body to get the fish out. Daddy held a limp silverfish up by its tail and with one swipe cut its head off.

The next day it rained and rained and rained. The air

around us turned into water. Daddy drove me down the flooded highway to Tallahassee to get the pregnancy test. Over the sound of the windshield wipers whipping back and forth, he said he believed me; he knew I wasn't pregnant. I was so embarrassed to hear those words: "I know you aren't pregnant." It was like he'd been spying on me and Ronnie or something; he'd thought about whether I'd had sex or not. I couldn't even look at him. There was no way I was going to talk about sex with him. But I wanted to scream,

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"If you believe me, then why are we driving to Tallahassee in a goddamn flood?"

The look on my face must've given my thought away, because he said, "Your mama would feel much better if you went ahead and got the pregnancy test, so why not just do

it and make her happy?" The way he stared out the rainglazed windshield, he reminded me of a stuffed deer with

marbles for eyes. I knew he couldn't see anything in front of him except a blur of gray. I wanted to ask him why he didn't just go pee in the cup if he wanted to make Mama happy.

I felt sorry for him right then, for being so stupid, stupid, stupid to think anything would make Mama happy. I'd been crawling to her side my whole life, saying I was sorry for things I never even did. The pregnancy test was just more of the same.

He parked the car on the street, and we ran through the rain into the doctor's office. We got soaked. Rain dripped from my clothes onto the floor. The nurse gave me a paper Dixie cup and pointed me toward the bathroom. I squatted

over the toilet and held the cup close to my body. It's strange, I thought, that piss would hold the answer to Mama's question. I peed in the cup like the slut Mama thought I was, then carried the warm cup out to the nurse.

Everyone in the doctor's office thought I was a slut, too. Their eyes blared at me. She's been doing it; she's a dirty little girl. The nurse told me to sit down and wait for the results, and I wanted to tell her, / know the results, but I knew she wouldn't believe me. I sat down next to Daddy in an icewhite room and waited. He thumbed through a copy of

Field and Stream, looking intently at photographs of dead animals. Nothing felt real. I started thinking, What ifI am 2 1 6

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pregnant? What if something weird happened when Ronnie touched me?

In a few minutes the nurse came out of the back room

and said, "Well, you're lucky this time. The test is negative." I wanted to cry, to tell her I didn't feel lucky.

Daddy didn't say a word on the ride home. The rain had stopped falling, but water puddled the road, ran fast through the ditches. When we got home I walked right past Mama and went straight to my room. She looked around me to Daddy, who shook his head no.

"No what?" she said. "She's not pregnant."

As I slammed the door to my room, all I heard her say

was, "She's lucky," and I wondered if everyone in the world was crazy except for me.

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34

When I told Ronnie what had happened, he laughed.

"Jesus, and I lost my reputation for nothing." We were sitting in the backseat of his mother's brand-new black Electra next to the dam where seagulls fluttered like paper in the wind above the muddy river. After not having a car for years, Mrs. Lubjek bought a huge boat of a car, the backseat as big as a bed. She said it made her feel safe.

Ronnie said the car made him horny. All that space. The musky smell of leather. Me and him. Almost a private room. We can stretch out here. He rubbed his crotch when he said this. I'd never touched him there on purpose. I wanted to that time in the garage, but I didn't. I wanted to see him naked then, too.

I guess the thought of me having a pregnancy test really

turned him on—as if we really had done something, instead ofjust being accused of it. That evening he whispered softly in my ear, scratching his whiskers against my skin, "Baby, I know we can't go all the way, but there's something I need you to

do for me. Baby, please." He said other girls did it; it was what girls did when they didn't want to lose their virginity or risk LU V I C K E RS

getting pregnant. I'd never have to worry about my mother again—plus, it would keep his balls from turning blue.

I didn't know what "it" he was talking about at first. I wasn't supposed to. Knowing what boys wanted and giving it to them meant you were a slut. I considered doing it, whatever it was. I considered that blue, those girls, and I looked at Ronnie's freckled face and imagined it turning blue also, imagined how his orange hair would look next to blue skin and wondered if his freckles would turn a darker blue or stay as they were?

We kissed, and he touched my breasts with one hand;

with the other he stroked between my legs. "All you have to do is suck it," he said. He grinned. "Just like a lollipop."

I knew girls that'd done it—Betty had, and she said it gagged her. "I don't know about this," I said, sitting up straight, "don't know if I want to do this," but he insisted. Putting my mouth around his dick was a way out, he said, This way, you keep your virginity; this is the way everyone does it. There was so much talk about virginity, always the girls^ never the boys, as if boys didn't have anything to lose. I thought about it for a moment. Didn't this mean I'd

lose my virginity? I didn't see how sucking a dick couldn't. What was the difference between a mouth and a pussy? Wasn't that a riddle? I tried to remember the answer. No boy will marry you.

Mama already thought I was a queer and a slut, so I didn't see the point of saving anything. I didn't know what I was, queer or slut, didn't know which one was worse. So I said, "Okay, I'll try it," and Ronnie sat up quickly and unzipped his pants. His penis sprung out, pale and hairless. I touched the tip with my fingers. It felt like silk, and I thought, This won't 2 2 0

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be so bad, and I bowed my head over his penis and I couldn't help it, it was like I was at the dinner table, about to try a new dish, so I sniffed him. I swear I couldn't help it and there was no smell, but it was too late. Ronnie noticed this sniffing and said, "What? Does it smell?" and I said, "No, but I don't want to do this. I can't do it."

"Jesus Christ," he said, leaning back. "Are you sure you're not queer?"

"Of course not," I said. "Godammit, Ronnie, I just had a fucking pregnancy test."

"I know, I know, I know, I know, I know." He ran his fingers through his hair, gave me a look as though he wasn't quite sure what I meant. "We might as well do it," he said. "I mean, your mother already thinks we did."