THE JIGGLING OF THE BED WAS WAKING STELLA.
The jiggling came into her consciousness from a distance, the way a horse rides toward the movie camera in a romantic western. The hoofbeats grew louder and louder till they were upon her, and she woke up.
But she was lying in her bed, and the room was full of moonlight. She glanced up over the headboard and there was a three-quarters moon gleaming like a shield. She had forgotten to pull the shade and close the curtains, the way her aunt always instructed.
The house and the night were absolutely still. No, an airplane was flying low over Norwood, headed for the airport.
During the summer, several times a week, she and Darl had walked over to the highest hill on Norwood Boulevard, only a couple of blocks away. They sat with their backs against the largest oak tree on the highest hill, and hugged and kissed for hours. Sometimes when a plane flew over large and low, it seemed just above their tree. Each window of the plane was clearly outlined, and Stella knew that on the other side of the line of portholes were rows of people in upholstered seats. Those travelers had no idea that she and Darl existed, that just below, for an instant, she and Darl were lying on the grass in a rapture of pleasure.
But the plane was passing over her bed now; it couldn’t have awakened her.
She inspected the room—dresser with its bench and winged, three-way mirror, the highboy. How still the furniture seemed. The room had only three pieces of furniture in it. When Stella studied, she worked at the dining room table. Without moving, she glanced at the closet door, and it was closed and still, standing white and tall in the moonlight.
Then what had moved?
Stella became aware of her hand placed low between her thighs. She stirred against her hand. Yes, she had been rubbing herself. She had been masturbating. Stella smiled. She became a froth, a foam of amusement.
She had read that shocking word in one of her college psychology texts. Despite myths, the book said, masturbation did absolutely no damage of any kind, mentally or physically. Myths? No one had ever mentioned masturbation to her, let alone myths about it. Now she knew what it was. She giggled—she tried so hard to be good; in sleep her unconscious had tried to relieve her need. So much kissing and hugging, all summer. Then fall weather had set in, and they really didn’t have a place to go.
Last night, with warm jackets on, she and Darl had walked to their giant oak on the boulevard, but the ground was too damp and chilly for sitting. All the leaves had fallen, and the bare branches stretched bleakly into the night sky.
They resolved to stay only till a plane had flown over. She stood with her back against the rough oak bark, and Darl pressed against her, kissing and kissing. When they heard the plane approaching, Darl flung himself flat on his back on the cold ground, spread his arms out in crucifix fashion, and said, “Raped by a jet plane!” All lit up, the plane roared over them.
Shocked at Darl’s exclamation, Stella had just stood there staring down at him. Had she ever heard anyone say the word rape out loud? Then she thought of Professor Andrew Gainey, at the college, singing the rape song from The Fantasticks at the top of his lungs. It hadn’t meant rape at all; it had meant sex. With his resonant, confident, gleeful voice, he was letting sex out of the bank vault and into the world. Beautiful.
Stella moved her hand from her crotch and touched her engagement ring. Such a sweet circle, topped with its little diamond. A diamond like a clear seed. Aunt Krit didn’t accept Darl as her fiancé. “I don’t believe you love him,” Krit had said. “When you set the wedding date, then I’ll believe it.”
Stella had asked, “Why don’t you believe I’ll marry Darl? I have a ring.”
“I just know,” her aunt said. “He’s not right for you. I believe we might be distant kin to his family.” But she never offered a shred of evidence.
From her bed, Aunt Pratt called, “No, we’re not.”
“He’s no Prince Philip,” Aunt Krit replied from the kitchen. That was it; she didn’t think anybody but a prince might be good enough for her niece. “He’s not Prince Rainier.”
The aunts never disagreed face-to-face, but in their trans-room differences, Stella always rooted for Aunt Pratt.
Stella held up the ring to let the moonlight kiss it.
So, she’d been masturbating so hard, she’d jiggled the bed. She’d awakened herself. She laughed out loud, but quietly. What kind of repressed southern lady coward are you? Consciously, she placed the palm of her hand over her nightgown and rubbed. Nothing happened. That was fine. She smiled at herself again and made a vow to do just as she pleased with her body. But not to tell. Well, she could probably tell Nancy; they always confided in each other.
She hadn’t told Darl but tomorrow after school and before work at Fielding’s, she was going to the gynecologist. At the doctor’s, she would get a prescription for birth control pills, and then she and Darl could do what they wanted. She wasn’t as stupid as she looked standing against the oak tree on the boulevard: he had needs, and so, it turned out, did she. Sexual needs.
But Old Maid Aunt Krit was right that they hadn’t set any wedding date yet.
Stella held her hand up in the moonlight and spread her fingers, as though she would seine the light. She looked at the opposite wall to see if the moonlight was strong enough to cast a shadow. It wasn’t. The light was diffuse. The whole room was luminous; the dresser and the closet door, her hand, all were equally magical.
Quietly, she slid down from the high bed and sat on the bench before the three-way mirror. She wanted to see her face in moonlight. There she was. It was as though she were walking through the woods, came to a still pond, and looked down to see her own face. Here she was in a quiet room, a virgin fair in an enchanted world.
Tomorrow, November 22, would be an important day: she would get birth control pills, and a new world would open to her. But the store was open of course Friday night—a pre-Thanksgiving sale—and she’d have to go to work the switchboard, the same as every Friday night.