Chapter 6

Hardly more than a week after the strange confrontation with Mrs. Ardsley, both Wiffie and Hamp left FBCC for good. Wiffie was, in a way, the cause of it all; she had refused to go to bed with Mrs. Ardsley for a second time, having little desire to spend the next three and a half years of college as a sex partner to her housemother.

"I'll have you expelled," Mrs. Ardsley warned. Wiffie countered that she could report Mrs. Ards-ley's erotic tastes to the administration, but the housemother made the point-and it was a valid one-that at FBCC the word of a campus official was always taken over that of a student. "I've been here for twenty-three years," she told Wiffie calmly. "You've been here since September."

Mrs. Ardsley reported Wiffie and Hamp to the proper campus authorities, and a special meeting was scheduled to consider the charges. Wiffie did not plan on reporting Mrs. Ardslev's Lesbian habits; obviously, to do so would be as damaging to herself as to the housemother, and there seemed no point in making herself worse than she did already.

The meeting was to take place on Tuesday morning. On Monday night the housemother in the men's dormitory noticed that Hampton Budd was missing from devotions, and so she checked his room. His effects were gone; all that remained was a note reading, "I hereby announce my resignation from Ferguson Barnes Christian College. Give Wiffie my love. (Signed) Hampton Budd." As it turned out, then, only Wiffie was formally expelled; she stood before the conference table in the administration building and heard the charges which had been placed against her, and the verdict which the special committee had rendered. "Guilty," the president announced, adding that it was shameful that a minister's daughter could stoop so low.

It was home, then; home to hostile parents and the uncertainty of what would come next. Hampton had run out on her, that was the only real certainty. Without him, there was little to care about or live for. Oh, she would go on, but she wasn't sure why.

Her father picked her up at the railroad station. As he loaded her bags into the trunk of the car, he gestured toward the train and shook his head.

"That's the cause of it all, isn't it?" he said sarcastically. "I thought my daughter knew better. How could you have lost every trace of Christian morals!"

It was a very bad scene. Her mother cried a lot; her father, after the one outburst, just treated her the way he treated Negroes who tried to sit in his church-that is, unctuously and badly. "Sex is sinful," he told her. "You knew that. How could you let yourself? And pregnant! May the Lord forgive you. I'm not sure your mother or I can."

They put her in the guest bedroom that night; "You're not our daughter any more," her father said to her. "You won't sleep in your old room until you've proven that you're worthy of the family name again." And so she slept in a strange bed that night, yet in a room next to her parents-so close that she felt they were keeping her there just so she'd feel more imprisoned than she would have otherwise.

At midnight, still unable to go to sleep, Wiffie began to hear noises from her parents' room. It was the sound of talking, interspersed footsteps and the opening and closing of drawers. As silently as she could, the tiptoed into the hall, where she knelt before her parents' door and peeped through the keyhole.

The room was well-lit, and her father's ass was the first thing she saw. It was bare, a pallid double hump of flesh that almost hid her view of the bed. Yet he was wearing his black clerical vest and round collar, and as he turned sideways toward the mirror above the low dresser, she could see that his penis was erect.

"I'll bet they did it like this," her father said. "In front of the roomette mirror." He put his right hand on his rod-like member and waved it at the mirror.

"Don't be silly, Jacob," her mother said quietly.

"All right, then how did they do it?" her father countered with an evil laugh.

"Just like everybody else," her mother replied in an impatient tone.

"Show me how everybody does it," Wiffie's father said. He walked toward the bed.

"You know how it's done."

"You bet I know how it's done!" he said, laughing again, and with a sudden lunge he grabbed the sheet and blankets and pulled them to the foot of the bed. He grabbed his wife then, turning her onto her belly and forcing her flannel nightgown up around her waist. He slapped her on the buttocks again and again, until at last she begged him to stop.

"Show me how it's done," he commanded once more.

"All right," Mrs. Gilford said with a sigh. She rolled onto her back and raised her knees, spreading them apart.

"Not so fast. I'll bet that's not the only thing they did.

A look of suspicion crossed the woman's face. "What do you mean."

"I'll bet she sucked him off first," he said. "That's a perversion.

"Sure, it's a perversion. But show me how she did it."

"I won't, Jacob."

"Damn it, woman show me how she did it!" He climbed onto the bed and knelt beside her, then grabbed her head in both hands and pulled it forward until her lips were in front of his swollen prick. "Show me," he commanded, his voice hard and trembling.

Silently, Wiffie's mother took the prick's head between her lips and held it tentatively.

"Deeper," Jacob ordered.

The woman obeyed, closing her eyes and forcing her mouth to slide several inches up on the penis. He then grabbed her head once more and, in his excitement, forced it all the way up, until her nose was buried in his pubic hair. The woman gagged and grasped her throat, trying to stop the choking.

"Then they did it like this," Wiffie's father said, withdrawing his prick from his wife's mouth and forcing her down against the mattress, pushing her knees apart and forcing his hard-on into her dry cunt. She gasped with the pain of it, and her legs stiffened.

A few moments later, after a series of vicious pumping motions, Wiffie's father began to breathe more heavily. "And then they came like this," he growled, his throat constricting on the last word as his legs stiffened and his ass tightened with the effort of bringing forth seed.

Afterward, he wiped his soggy prick on the sheet, got up and turned off the ceiling light, then switched off the lamp on the night table on his side of the bed. Wiffie heard the squeak of springs, and her father's exhausted breathing as he lay beside her mother. There were no further sounds except her mother's quiet sobs, the tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the hallway, and Wiffie's footpads as she tiptoed back to the guest room and got into bed.

In the morning, she was almost glad to hear her father say that she would have to go away. "We're sending you to New York," he told her. "You'll live in the Wayward Women's Home, a house that the church runs for unwed mothers. There you'll be taken care of and taught the importance of Christian morals until you have the child. You'll be expected to work to help pay your way, of course; I believe the home publishes tracts for distribution to guidance. Perhaps you'll want to read a few of your fellow unfortunates and others in need of those tracts yourself."

Both parents took her down to the train. She changed trains in Chicago and rode a Penn Central coach to New York City, where an ancient woman was waiting for her at the station. The woman patted Wiffie on the shoulder and kissed her cheek. Oh, no! Not another Mrs. Ardsley! Wiffie found herself thinking. The woman made no further overtures, however, and they rode in silence to the Wayward Women's Home in the East 20's.

Immediately on arriving at the home, Wiffie was given a physical examination. The doctor was a palsied man in his seventies or eighties who pawed her breasts almost absent-mindedly, presumably in a vain effort to find cancerous lumps. He saved the pelvic examination for last, and when the time came, seemed barely able to find her cunt. Bending over and peering at her crotch, he put a finger forward and felt around. The finger ended up pressing jerkily against her rectum.

"Ow!" Wiffie said as he tried to push the rubber-glove digit into her anus.

"I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head as though to clear the cobwebs. He bent closer then-so close that his nose was almost tickled by the hair of Wiffie's outer lips. "That's it," he said with a friendly chuckle. Then he inserted his finger in the opening and felt around. "Very nice," he told her kindly. "Firm. You should be happy that you're young."

When he'd finished, he patted her on the belly and wandered out of the examining room, forgetting to remove his gloves."

"He's something, isn't he?" the nurse said, shrugging her shoulders.

"Yes, he is," Wiffie replied.

She tried not to jerk back in embarrassment when the nurse suddenly bent over and stared into her cunt. "Don't mind me," the woman said, poking a finger inside. "The doctor's pretty forgetful. Once he left a cotton swab in a girl, and somehow it got wedged so it wouldn't fall out. The poor kid couldn't figure out what was poking her in there until it was time for her next examination."

With that, the nurse stood back and told Wiffie she could remove her feet from the stirrups. She stayed in the room while Wiffie dressed, rinsing the doctor's examination instruments and putting them into a sterilizer.

"Tell me something," the nurse asked as Wiffie pulled on her stockings. "What's it like, doing it for the first time?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know: Doing it with a guy for the first time. Does it hurt much."

"A little."

"I've heard that it can hurt a lot. My sister was raped in the basement when she was twelve. A couple of the neighborhood toughs did it. When she came upstairs afterward, she was crying and her legs were coyered with blood."

"It must have been horrible." Wiffie felt a genuine sympathy for the girl.

"It was. My mother beat her. She just couldn't believe that my sister hadn't encouraged the boys.

Then she made Alice lie down on the kitchen table. While my mother filled an enema syringe with soapy water, I had to wash Alice off. Every time I touched her there with the washcloth, she'd cry out and beg me to be more careful. Then my mother came over with the syringe and stuck it inside her to kill the sperm. Alice was so nervous and tense for months after that, that it made me resolve never to do it with a man."

"Not even if you got married?"

"Me? You must be kidding." The nurse twisted her mouth into a bitter smirk, then unbuttoned the front of her uniform. Her chest was almost flat-she didn't even wear a bra-but on it there were four nipples. "My mother used to call me the bitch," the young woman said. "She told me I should have puppies, if I didn't mind doing it with dogs." The nurse buttoned up her uniform.

"I'm sorry," Wiffie said, stunned and full of compassion. "I'm really sorry."

"Wiffie ... You don't mind if I call you by your first name, do you?"

"Oh, no."

"Great. You can call me Susan." She bowed her head, then looked ;. . her gaze boring into Wiffie's eyes. "I'd like to ask you a favor, Wiffie."

"Yes?"

"Wiffie.. .do you think you could ever bring your self to play with my breasts?"

"I don't know what to say," Wiffie replied, reacting more from sorrow for the girl than from shock.

"Just say that you will."

"All right; I'll try."

"Thank you, Wiffie." Tears filling her eyes, Susan came over to Wiffie and pulled her against her flat chest, kissing her on the lips. 'You're so kind."

Susan's hand moved underneath Wiffie's blouse and up to unhook her bra. Wiffie tried not to shrink away when the hands moved over her breasts, one at a time. Soon she felt her nipples hardening under the roving fingers. "I think you'd better stop," she said.

But the nurse ignored her plea, and Wiffie felt herself breathing more heavily as the hands continued to cup and fondle her breasts. She barely noticed Susan's other girl's knee pushing its way between hers, and against her better judgment she bit her Up and kept her mouth shut when the woman's other hand slipped down and lifted Wiffie's skirt.

The poor thing has been through so much! Wiffie thought as the hand moved up between her thighs. Her trepidation dissolved into responsiveness as the fingers reached her panties and stroked her organs through the thin cotton cloth.

Life in the home wasn't as bad as Wiffie had expected. Most of the girls were friendly; all of them had the same sense of shame and fear that Wiffie felt, and their common predicament gave them the kind of esprit dc corps that one finds among elite soldiers and prisoners of war. They meditated together, not many of them taking their devotions too seriously. They worked together, taking turns with washing dishes, doing laundry, and performing the other chores which they were required to do if they were to stay in the home.

Several weeks after her arrival, Wiffie was sent on her first tract-distributing mission on the Lower

East Side. "Wear this cross," her supervisor said, handing her a cheap tin crucifix some four inches in length and three wide. "Keep it around your neck and outside your clothes at all times, and people will know you're a servant of Christ. Most of the Puerto Ricans are Christian and won't hurt you if you're wearing this, and the Jews are all too old and sick to bother you anyway."

Wiffie was put on a bus and told to get off at Seventh Street; she would then work her way eastward until she reached Avenue C, where she would walk back toward Tomkins Square and distribute the remaining tracts to anyone she might see in the park.

The work was difficult at first; Wiffie wasn't used to dealing with strangers, especially strangers who spoke with foreign accents, if they knew English at all, and who left garbage in hallways and whose apartments reeked of unwashed bodies and closed-in cooking odors.

"I'm a Christian witness and I'd like to give you something that may help you," she was supposed to say. But most of the people looked at her oddly when she did so, and after a half-hour of distributing tracts in the officially prescribed manner, she simply began sticking them under doors hoping that no one would ask her what she was doing.

Alas, she had no such luck. "What do you think you're doing?" a young hippie type asked as she stuffed a handful of tracks into a mailbox.

"Passing out tracts," she told him.

"Groovy. Say, do you want to try a joint?"

"No, thank you."

"Come on. It'll make you see God, man."

"No thank you." She smiled at the oddly clad young man and walked on.

On east Seventh near First Avenue she almost fell against a man who opened his apartment door just as she was slipping a tract beneath it.

"What's that?" he asked, bending to pick up the-pamphlet. "Hey, a tract! Come on in. I used to be a Chaplain's assistant in the service; you know that?"

"I'm not supposed to go into the apartments of single men," Wiffie told him. "Is your wife at home."

"I haven't got a wife. But come inside anyway."

"I'm afraid I can't."

"Come in, for Christ's sake!" he commanded, and Wiffie-not wanting to incur his anger-did as she was told.

"What's your name?" he asked as she sat down. He seemed awfully nervous, Wiffie noted; as nervous as she was, if not more so.

"Wiffie Gilford," she said.

"Really. I'm Peter Frenum. I'm an artist. But I guess you can see that." He waved a hand in the direction of the paints and easels at one end of the room. "Can I get you anything?" he asked.

"No, thank you. I can only stay a minute."

"Don't be silly," he told her. "Look: I need help as much as anyone. You have no idea what a fix I'm in. I used to paint kids, but I'm afraid to now. This lady said she'd call the police if she caught me at it again. I can't afford to hire models more than once every week or ten days, and I'm almost going out of my mind with frustration. You have no idea how bad it's been." He bit at a fingernail, then looked up and smiled. "Hey, I've got an idea. You let me paint you, and I'll let you preach to me. How's that for a fair offer?"

"You mean you want to paint my portrait?"

"Sort of."

"Well, all right."

"Take off your clothes, then," he suggested. "What?"

"I said to take off your clothes. That's how I paint, you see. I paint bodies. Breasts, bottoms, backs, thighs.. .you name it. It's a new art form. I call it painting Life."

Wiffie tried to get up and leave, but Peter motioned her to sit down. "Look," he said, "you don't know your way around very well, do you?"

"No. I'm new to New York."

"I thought so. Well, pretty soon you'll begin to realize how badly you need a friend-a real friend. I'm willing to be that friend, if you'll let me paint you. I promise not to take advantage of you in any way."

After thinking over and discussing it for a while longer, Wiffie agreed to a sitting. "But only on my thighs," she insisted.

"That'll do for the time being," Peter told her, standing up and pointing to the bathroom. "You can take your dress off in there. You wouldn't want to get paint on it."

A short while later, Wiffie was sitting on a hard-backed chair and blushing as she held her slip around her hips, watching Peter Frenum paint winged penises and toothsome vaginas from her panties to just above her knees.