I wasn’t aware of anything sexual in their new liking for me, and there were no sex thoughts in my mind. I didn’t think of my body as having anything to do with sex. It was more like a friend who had mysteriously appeared in my life, a sort of magic friend. A few weeks later, I stood in front of the mirror one morning and put lipstick on my lips. I darkened my blond eyebrows. I had no money for clothes, and I had no clothes except my orphan rig and the lone sweater. The lipstick and the mascara were like clothes, however. I saw that they improved my looks as much as if I had put on a real gown.
My arrival in school with painted lips and darkened brows, and still encased in the magic sweater, started everybody buzzing. And the buzzing was not all friendly. All sorts of girls, not only thirteen-year-olds but seniors of seventeen and eighteen set up shop as my enemies. They told each other and whoever would listen that I was a drunkard and spent my nights sleeping with boys on the beach.
The scandals were lies. I didn’t drink, and I didn’t let any boys take liberties. And I had never been on any beach in my life. But I couldn’t feel angry with the scandal-makers. Girls being jealous of me! Girls frightened of losing their boy friends because I was more attractive! These were no longer daydreams made up to hide lonely hours. They were truths!
And by summertime I had a real beau. He was twenty-one, and despite being very sophisticated, he thought I was eighteen instead of thirteen. I was able to fool him by keeping my mouth shut and walking a little fancy. Since taking the math class by storm a few months ago, I had practiced walking languorously.
My sophisticated beau arrived at my home one Saturday with the news that we were going swimming. I rushed into my “sister’s” room (the one who was a little smaller than me) to borrow her bathing suit. Standing in front of the bureau mirror, I spent an hour putting it on and practicing walking in it.
My beau’s impatient cries finally brought me out of the bedroom in an old pair of slacks and a sweater. The bathing suit was under them.
It was a sunny day, and the sand was crowded with bathers and with mothers and their children. Despite being born and raised only a few miles from the ocean I had never seen it close up before. I stood and stared for a long time. It was like something in a dream, full of gold and lavender colors, blue and foaming white. And there was a holiday feeling in the air that surprised me. Everybody seemed to be smiling at the sky.
“Come on, let’s get in,” my beau commanded.
“In where?” I asked.
“In the water,” he laughed, thinking I had made a joke.
I thought of my tight bathing suit. The idea of hiding myself in the water while wearing it seemed to me ridiculous. But I said nothing. I stood watching the girls and women and felt a little disappointed. I hadn’t expected that half the feminine population of Los Angeles would be parading the sands with almost nothing on. I thought I’d be the only one.
My beau was getting impatient again; so I removed my slacks and sweater and stood in my skimpy suit. I thought, “I’m almost naked,” and I closed my eyes and stood still.
My sophisticated boy friend had stopped nagging me. I started walking slowly across the sand. I went almost to the water’s edge and then walked down the beach. The same thing happened that had happened in the math class, but on a larger scale. It was also much noisier. Young men whistled at me. Some jumped up from the sand and trotted up for a better view. Even the women stopped moving as I came nearer.
I paid no attention to the whistles and whoops. In fact, I didn’t hear them. I was full of a strange feeling, as if I were two people. One of them was Norma Jean from the orphanage who belonged to nobody. The other was someone whose name I didn’t know. But I knew where she belonged. She belonged to the ocean and the sky and the whole world.
4
i branch out as a siren
But nothing happened out of the great vision that smote me on the beach. I went back to my blue dress and white blouse and returned to school. But instead of learning anything I grew more and more confused. So did the school. It had no way of coping with a thirteen-year-old siren.
Why I was a siren, I hadn’t the faintest idea. There were no thoughts of sex in my head. I didn’t want to be kissed, and I didn’t dream of being seduced by a duke or a movie star. The truth was that with all my lipstick and mascara and precocious curves, I was as unsensual as a fossil. But I seemed to affect people quite otherwise.
The boys took to wooing me as if I were the sole member of my sex in the district. Being boys, most of them were satisfied with a goodnight kiss or a confused hug in a hallway. I was able, in fact, to stand off most of the spooners entirely. Boys from fifteen to eighteen are not very persistent love-makers. I imagine that if it weren’t for older women seducing them they would remain virginal just as long as girls do (if they do).
Among my suitors, however, were young men who went in for major wrestling, and now and then a bona fide wolf with a complete line of dialogue and a full set of plans. These were the easiest to duck because I didn’t feel sorry for them.
The truth is I never felt offended by any of them, even the wrestlers who mussed my hair. If anything, I envied them. I would have liked to want something as much as they did. I wanted nothing. They might as well have been wooing a bear in a log.
My admirers all said the same thing in different ways. It was my fault, their wanting to kiss and hug me. Some said it was the way I looked at them—with eyes full of passion. Others said it was my voice that lured them on. Still others said I gave off vibrations that floored them. I always felt they were talking about somebody else, not me. It was like being told they were attracted to me because of my diamonds and rubies. I not only had no passion in me, I didn’t even know what it meant.
I used to lie awake at night wondering why the boys came after me. I didn’t want them that way. I wanted to play games in the street, not in the bedroom. Occasionally I let one of them kiss me to see if there was anything interesting in the performance. There wasn’t.
I decided finally that the boys came after me because I was an orphan and had no parents to protect me or frighten them off. This decision made me cooler than ever to my train of admirers. But neither coolness nor disdain, nor “get out of here,” “don’t bother me,” “I have no interest whatsoever in kissing with my lips open,” none of my frozen attitudes changed the picture. The boys continued to come after me as if I were a vampire with a rose in my teeth.
The girl pupils were another problem but one I could understand. They disliked me more and more as I grew older. Now instead of being accused of stealing combs, nickels, or necklaces, I was accused of stealing young men.
Aunt Grace suggested a solution for my troubles.
“You ought to get married,” she said.
“I’m too young,” I said. I was still fifteen.
“I don’t think you are,” Aunt Grace laughed.
“But there’s nobody wants to marry me,” I said.
“Yes there is,” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Jim,” said my aunt.
Jim was Mr. Dougherty. He lived near me. He was good-looking, polite, and full grown.
“But Jim is stuck on my ‘sister,’ ” I told her.
“It was you he took to the football game,” Aunt Grace said, “not her.”
“It was awful boring,” I said. “He’s like the others, except he’s taller and more polite.”
“That’s a fine quality in a man,” said Aunt Grace.
The “aunt” and “uncle” with whom I was living—my ninth set of relatives—helped me make up my mind. They were going to move. This meant I’d have to go back and live in the orphanage till they unloaded me on another family.