"Mama!" I cried.
Ian came to his door and looked out.
"Go to your room, Jordan. I told you to go to sleep," she said, coming down the stairs.
Ian rushed out and helped her get Daddy to his feet. He looked totally dazed and confused. They guided him up the stairway.
"Thanks, Ian. I'll take it from here. Go to sleep, dear," Mama told him. "Get Jordan back into her room."
"Okay, Mother," Ian said.
Daddy said nothing. Mama guided him to their bedroom and Ian came down the stairs, yawning.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Daddy fell on the floor when they came home. Mama left him there and I went to help him' ."
"You should have left him there," he said. "Go back to bed."
"Ian, did you hear what he said to me?"
"No, but I'm sure it was something very stupid, Jordan. Go to sleep."
"It was about that thing, that orgasm," I said, but he didn't hear me. He was already back into his bedroom and closing the door.
I looked up the stairway and then at Ian's closed door and I thought, Flora will know what Daddy meant. She'll tell me.
Ian just doesn't want me to know. He likes it when I have to ask him everything.
But that was when I was a caterpillar, and I was beginning to feel more like a butterfly.
12 Show Me
. Mama was a deaf and dumb person the next morning. She came into my room and almost like an actress in a silent movie, she went through the motions of helping me to take my medicine. I was very sleepy. When I started to wake up. I asked her how Daddy was. She didn't answer. She acted as if she didn't hear me and left my room. It wasn't until Ian and I were at breakfast that she said anything.
"I forgot to tell you both. I couldn't get the horseback riding reservations for today. They're all booked. I made it for tomorrow."
"That's okay, Mother," Ian said. "I have some things I want to do today."
Mama nodded and then turned away quickly. I saw her shoulders tremble. She had seen Daddy drunk before, but never looked as sad about it as she did this morning. I glanced at Ian and saw his eyes were narrowed into those penetrating slits he made when he was in deep thought about something. He looked at me and I realized how concerned he was. He rarely looked this upset about anything that happened between Daddy and Mama. At times I had the feeling he saw their arguments as just part of some television comedy show. This week it was this next week it would be that. He could turn it on or off, so it frightened me to set him this concerned.
"Is Daddy still sleeping, Mama?" I asked her. Ian turned to see how she would answer.
"It's more like someone in a coma," she said without looking at us. She took another deep breath. "Finish your breakfast and go outside, Jordan. It's a beautiful day. Don't waste it waiting around for your father to return to the living."
I did as she asked. Afterward. I asked Ian what he was going to do. He said he was going to continue his exploring for carnivorous plants. He wanted to collect them for a study he was making in preparation for his next science project. He entered a science fair every year. Last year he came in second and thought he should have been first.
Left on my own, I took the book Ian had given me for my birthday and went out on our porch to sit and read. It did help me understand the development going on in
my body, but at the same time. I grew more frightened of the possibility that the medicine wouldn't work and I would soon indeed look foolish with a bosom and monthly periods while I was only in the third grade. Contrary to what I had hoped. Ian's book only raised more questions in my mind, especially about the sex act between males and females. I wanted to ask Ian things, but he was in the woods already, and despite his clear and very factual manner of answering. I was still a little embarrassed about it. I had never told him the full extent of Dr. Dell'Acqua's examination. I couldn't remember the word she had used when she was finished, but I knew it meant things were far more serious than Mama had hoped and maybe Daddy's scary question when she had first told him was a real question. Could I have a baby grow in me?
Once again, I thought about Flora's offer to help me. Even though she was a stranger, she was still a girl, and a girl who had been through what I was experiencing. Ian really had been unfair to her. She was just trying to tell me about something so I would know what to expect.
Maybe she was right about Ian. Maybe he was immature, at least when it came to sex. He certainly had a more dramatic reaction to the things she had told me than I had. He was the one who was embarrassed by it. I didn't understand enough and Flora wasn't embarrassed at all.
Listening to her was better than reading this book. I thought. I didn't even see the word orgasm in here. It was hard to imagine the tubes and tadpoles and eggs inside me. I wanted to know more about how those tadpoles got inside me or anyone. How long did it take? How did you know it was finished? Would any boy be able to do it or only a boy you loved?
Ian had told me he was going to make me his Sister Project, but that was so he would learn things about me or from me. I wanted to learn things from him. He was simply using me to do another science project. He even said he thought he might make a big contribution to medical science. What was more important, me or his becoming famous? This wasn't fair.