Chapter 2
It was not Herb violating her, it was a man named Mort ... The memory washed back through her mind as though, as evil as it was, she could endure what Herb was doing to her in his lust only by forcing her mind to concentrate on something else excruciating enough to obliterate the pain of this present nightmare.
Carol Hill had hated and feared all adult men since she was eleven years old, though she had stubbornly refused to talk about it to anyone, her sister or her mother or even her best girl friends. It stayed inside her where, for a long time after Mort had ravaged her naked body, the agony and outrage festered; but finally it became a dull pain, and then just the memory of pain. Until tonight she had even put Mort from her mind to the extent that she had forgotten his name, and the lust darkening his red, sweated face.
Now it was all back in her conscious mind and she knew she would never forget any of it again.
When she was eleven, she lived with Laura and their widowed mother in a house that was too large for them in a neighborhood that was no longer very good. Her mother worked in a bakery all day. She and Laura went to school. Laura was in her last year of high school then, and she worked in a drug store in the afternoons. Anxious to do her share, Carol raced home after school, washed the dishes, made the beds, even the beds in the two paid guest rooms. Morton Engler was one of the paying guests whose rent money helped Ada Hill make ends meet.
"I don't know what we'd do without the money we get from renting those two rooms." How many hundreds of times Carol had heard her mother say that since the trucking accident that had killed her father when Carol was six. Roomers had come and gone in those five years. As a child, Carol saw them as faceless adults in whom she had no interest.
She had even less interest in Mr. Engler, who slept in the back room.
What interested Carol that year was the whispered talk about sex she heard at school and on the playgrounds. She asked as many questions as she dared, but it seemed to her that everybody knew more about sex than she did!
She was afraid to ask her mother, and Laura was much too busy to bother with such silly questions. One night when Laura came home late from the drug store, she was with a boy in an old convertible. Unable to sleep, Carol tiptoed to her window to watch and listen to Laura and her boy friend say good night a few feet away in the darkness.
She caught her breath. She saw that Laura had let him put his hand on her breast, inside her sweater, pushing it up over the top of her strapless bra. He took her right breast out and held it in his hand.
Shocked, Carol stared.
Her breath caught in her throat. She had never seen anything as lovely as Laura's firm, full breast, held in that boy's hand, with the faint moonlight touching it.
He had never seen anything as lovely, either.
He kissed it right on the nipple, breathing so loudly and excitedly that Laura laughed, warning him that someone might hear them.
"I can't help it, Laura. I never saw anything so gorgeous."
"You've got to stop now. I've got to go in."
"Let me kiss it once more, Laura. Just once more. I'm wild, I'll go crazy if you make me stop now."
"All right. Kiss it. Quick."
Carol bit her lip, staring. She saw Laura put her head back, the moon touching at her golden loveliness. Laura closed her eyes. Carol saw that Laura was excited by what the boy was doing to her breast. She was almost as wild as he was, but she could conceal her feelings better.
The tableau in the moonlight ended too soon for both the boy and Carol.
Carol was left puzzled, excited, confused. Was this all there was to sex? It did not justify the whispers she had heard.
She could give little thought in the next few days to anything except the wonder and excitement of a boy and girl together in sex. She had to know more about it! She couldn't go on like this. It was as if there was a perennial burning in her tummy, a bothersome and unsatisfied ache since the night she had watched Carol and the boy outside her window.
She almost asked Laura, in that first raw rush of need, for answers. But she was afraid Laura would be enraged to know she'd spied on her. The very nature of sex made it something personal, secret, forbidden. Perhaps this was part of the thrill. She didn't know yet, but she had to find out. Soon.
Carol was just entering puberty, noticing the soft, dark touches of down at her armpits, at the mound above her thighs. She had been shamed and angered at the swellings that started on her chest until she saw what lovely appurtenances they became in a boy's hand in the moonlight! Now she could hardly wait for them to swell and ripen like Laura's. She had no hope that she would be as lovely as Laura. Laura was so beautiful, no wonder she wanted boys to see her naked breasts!
Sex needed a boy and a girl for its ultimate fulfillment. Whispers had told Carol this, and seeing Laura and that boy in the moonlight had confirmed it. She could seek answers in all the books in her mother's room, and in Laura's belongings, but it all came back to basic facts you got together with a boy. What better way to learn than to show yourself to a boy in exchange for being permitted to see and explore the wonders of his equipment?
Boy and girl. Man and woman. Male and female. There was no quicker, better or more exciting way to experiment and to learn about life and sex, and Carol had the answer to this dilemma. She had found this answer one day while she stood nude before Laura's full-length mirror, examining herself. She began to think about David Miller.
She became more and more excited, standing there seeing her nakedness and thinking about David, who lived across the alley from her.
Now nothing could thwart her plans to learn the thrilling answers to the questions plaguing her innocence.
She looked at her nudity, the nascent breasts, the dark touch at her thighs. She wondered what David would look like standing naked like this before her. She had gone as far now, it seemed to her, as she could go without a boy, a male, someone to share the wonder and exultance of this discovery with her in secret.
Nothing could be easier.
It was as if nature conspired with her. She was alone in this big old house every afternoon. She could hurry the chores and she and David would have at least three hours to themselves every afternoon.
The anticipation was too much to be borne!
Blood throbbed in her temples. She dressed hurriedly, and ran to find David.
David was riding his bicycle, and at first he did not even want to stop to talk to her. At last he rode up to her back steps and sat on the bike, looking at her.
Instinctively, Carol leaned back on the steps, letting the round little knobs of her breasts poke out against the fabric of her dress.
She let her legs part so that David on his bicycle could look along them above her knees. She had never done anything like this before, or even thought of doing it, but it seemed natural and right, and she saw that it affected David. His face flushed red and he looked away
When he finally dared to look back she had widened her legs even more, pretending she did not even know what she was doing.
David stared.
She said, taking a deep breath, as if she were diving into deep, cold water: "That old Melinda Parker makes me sick."
"Why?"
"Always talking like she knows so much."
"About what?"
"You know about sex. I'll bet she doesn't even know as much as you do, does she?" She gave him an admiring look.
But David was young and honest. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know very much."
"Do you want to know?" she said. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
He shook his head. He stared along the inside of her legs a moment, blushing furiously. He looked away and then brought his gaze back. "Gosh, I don't know. My old lady would kill me. Once I just asked her a simple question about babies if they really grew in girl's stomachs "
'They really do," Carol said wisely.
"Gosh! But my old lady hit me. She said she would beat me if I even thought about anything like that until after I was married."
"She can't keep you from thinking."
"She can sure make me uncomfortable! It's like she knows what I'm thinking. She'd beat me."
"Not if she didn't know anything about it."
He drew a deep breath now. He saw the glitter of excitement in her eyes, and he began to share it.
"What do you mean, Carol?"
"I mean us. Why don't you come over here maybe tomorrow afternoon right after school? Don't tell a soul. If you tell ole Martin Gaynor, I'll never speak to you again. And get here right after school. Then you can park your bike out front and your mother won't even know you were over here."
He drew his tongue across his lips. "What do you want to do, Carol?"
In her mind appeared the hazy picture of the boy baring Laura's lush breast to the admiring moon. She thought of herself standing naked before the mirror in her room, of David's standing naked with her, each looking at the other to his fill.
"Maybe I'll show you something," she said. "Would you like to see a girl naked, David?"
He exhaled. "You?"
"Maybe. Would you like that?"
He nodded, unable to speak. "Will you really do it for me?" he finally managed.
"Maybe. Why don't you come here tomorrow afternoon and see?"
"Yeah. Yeah!" He leaped on his bicycle, unable to stand still or to contain the excitement flooding through him. He rode away as swiftly as he could.
Carol sighed heavily. She stood up slowly, a little disappointed. She had hoped that David would be so anxious that he would not want to wait until tomorrow. It was late and they would not have had much time, but there must have been a few preliminary explorations they could have made. David was so young. But she was excited by the looks of him, the way she saw him get excited at the thought of seeing her naked. He was the best she could find.
The feeling of anticipation was heated and troubling to her.
She walked up the steps, going into the house thinking that she needed to touch herself down there. The excitement had gotten to her, and she did not see how she could wait until tomorrow.
She drew a deep breath. Perhaps if she went into her room, locked the door and touched herself, she could relieve some of the agitation.
"Hi, missy!"
She jerked her head up. She'd been so intent upon her own inner emotions she was not aware that a man, one of the boarders, stood just inside the rear screen door.
"Oh, hello, Mr. Engler." A frightening thought occurred to her and she tried to make her voice casual. "You're home early."
He held the door open for her, looking at her in a strange way that upset Carol but had nothing to do with sex in her mind because sex had nothing too with the elderly, and Mort Engler must be at least forty. He was much older than her mother, and surely her mother never even thought about sex any more.
But the odd look in his eyes troubled her. Maybe he had overheard what she had said to David and would tell her mother! She smiled at him, "We were talking about our homework. I'm going to help David with his homework."
"Sure you are, honey." He touched her head, and she withdrew from him. "You don't have to be scared of me, honey."
She didn't have to be, but she was.
She moved away from him, going toward the front of the house. There was something unexplainable about him that upset her. She had never paid any attention to him before, and now she didn't like him.
"Don't run away, honey," he said. "Come here. Let's you and me talk. Maybe Uncle Mort can help you with your homework."
"Thanks. But later. Right now I've got to run to the store for Mamma."
She went out the front door, letting it slam. There was no errand for her at the store, but she wanted to get away from that old man and that silent house. She went to the playground and stayed there until time for her mother to get home.
Mr. Engler looked at her oddly, later, giving her warm little smiles, but she was thankful he said nothing about her to her mother.
At school the next day Carol and David barely dared to look at each other. They exchanged shy glances. Once Carol looked at him and found him staring at her. His face turned red and he glanced hurriedly away. At noon he gazed at her with a question in his eyes and she nodded. They did not speak to each other; they were so filled with guilt they were sure anyone could read it in them. It seemed the school day would never end for Carol, but finally it did.
She walked home alone, her books pressed against her breasts, her breath rapid.
The tension mounted inside her.
She raced into the house, did the dishes, let the dusting and sweeping wait for another, less riotous, time. She made the beds in her room, her mother's room, one of the boarder's rooms. Mr. Engler's door was locked, but this was not unusual. Boarders sometimes locked their doors for one reason or another. She didn't stop to think about it. She heard David's bicycle bump the front steps and she caught her breath, wanting to hide, wanting to run out and grab his hand and draw him into the bedroom in the silent, barn-dark old house.
She managed to walk sedately to the front door. She said, "Hi, David. Come on in."
He looked miserably uncomfortable. "You sure it's all right?"
Carol felt braver now, seeing that she would have to lead him the blind leading the blind! but it made her feel older, more sophisticated. Actually, David was a year older than she was, but he seemed younger in so many ways, and especially now, when he was afraid to enter her house though he wanted to more than anything. They had played together for years, and only once while they were wrestling had they realized they were not just fellows, made a little differently.
They knew better now.
All they wanted to know was how differently, in what exciting ways were they unlike?
She led him into her bedroom and closed the door. He stood awkwardly. She sat down on the bed. "Come here," she said.
"The bed's all made up."
"I made it up. I can make it up again."
The silence closed in upon them. It seemed to Carol she could hear mice skittering in the attic. She knew better. It was just that they were drawn tense, hypersensitive to everything, even sounds.
"Do you want to?" she asked, remembering that yesterday afternoon on the back steps she had asked if he wanted to see her naked. Today she could not quite use that word, though she knew that she was going to do it for him, she wanted to undress for him.
David nodded, unable to speak at all.
"Then come here," she said. "Sit down."
He obeyed silently. He sat rigidly on the side of the bed. She stood up before him, pretending she was Laura with her boy friend in the moonlight, wanting to show him what she looked like with no clothes on.
She slipped off her dress. She wore only a pair of panties under it. He stared at her small, rounded breasts when she bared them.
"Do you like me?" she whispered.
"Jeeze," he said, "what if somebody comes in?"
"Oh, stop it," she said. "Don't be chicken."
She was pushing her panties down now, and his eyes widened, looking at her. She saw that something was happening to David and he was pressing his hand over himself as if in a sudden agony. He squeezed hard, his face red.
She stood there naked, letting him look at her.
"Why don't you take off your clothes?" she said.
"All of them?"
"Unless you really are chicken."
"I'm not chicken, and stop saying that. It will just be terrible if somebody catches us my old lady will kill me!"
"All right. If you don't want to play with me, I'll get dressed."
"Play with you?" He repeated it numbly, as if this were more than he had dared dream, even in his wildest anticipation of this afternoon.
"Not unless you undress too."
"If I take my pants off?"
She saw that the excitement of a male was fettered under his belt, and she was too excited to argue. She nodded, staring at the way he held himself, thinking that in a moment she would see what was causing him such pleasurable agony.
"All right. Take them off. Quick."
She stood unmoving, watching him loosen his belt, then unzip his slacks and let them fall about his feet. He wore no underpants.
Carol caught her breath in a delicious ecstasy of astonishment. She'd seen pictures of males in doctor books, but none stood out as David did. He was pulsing with excitement and desire. She gazed at him as if she were the first woman to make this elegant discovery about a man.
She backed to the side of her bed and lay down on it with her legs parted so that he could see her clearly.
"Come here," she whispered, her eyes closed. "Touch me. Put yours against mine, David. Do that."
But at that moment she heard the heavy tread of footsteps in the hall, and David heard them, too. David had been stepping out of his pants. Now, groaning, he grabbed them up, ran to the window and opened the screen. He leaped out to the ground and went running across the yard.
For a moment Carol remained immobile on the bed as if rudely awakened from a deep sleep. It was as if her mind was still drugged, and she was able to contain only the restless feeling of loss and frustration. David had looked so beautiful! He was gone! He had run away and she had lost him!
As she sat up, the door of her bedroom opened and Mort Engler stepped inside.
She stared at him, shaking her head.
"What do you want?" she managed to say.
"Come on, honey, none of that innocent-baby talk. I heard you and the kid. I been listening outside your door ever since you came in here!"
"Get out! You've no right-"
"You want me to tell your ma what you and the kid was doing in here? No sense in this world lying about it, honey, I heard it all, and now I'm seeing it. You spreading your little body out on that bed for him to crawl to. You want me to tell your ma about that?"
She was sick. She shook her head.
He walked slowly toward her, as if she were a bird that he hoped to trap without a net.
She whispered, revulsion in her face, "Get away from me. Let me alone."
Mort Engler laughed. "Honey, I'm not going anywhere. I been waiting a whole day for this. Ever since I heard you talking out on them back steps."
She stared up at his face. She had never seen anything like it. Fright welled up from the deepest pit of her empty belly. All desire, all interest in sex, everything fled her mind and was replaced by terror. She didn't know what this man wanted from her. All she could think was that he was old and ugly and the light in his eyes would haunt her nightmares the rest of her life.
"Let me alone!"
He was standing in front of her now, trembling with the lusts racking him. His eyes were distended, fixed on the nascent loveliness of her, the promise of what she was going to be, the excitement of what she was at this moment, and what he had heard her saying to that stupid kid.
"I can teach you, honey," Mort said. "You want to know about it? I'm going to teach it to you all of it."
"Let me alone! I'll tell my mother!"
"What will you tell her? That you was with this boy naked with him and I happened to catch you at it? Is that what you're going to tell her? You want me to tell her how you was begging that boy to put himself to you? Do you?"
"Oh, no, no! Please don't!"
"Then you stop sniveling, and be friendly to ole Mort."
"I'm scared." She shook her head, trembling with chill and fright. "Please, Mr. Engler! Don't! I'm scared."
"Nothing to be scared of, honey. Just don't fight Uncle Mort and everything will be fine. Look. Look at this. See what I got for you? You thought that kid was pretty good. That was just a kid. Look at Mort. Look. Touch. Look at me!"
She shook her head, revolted. "No! No! No!"
"Oh, yes, you will. I'm tired of fooling with you!"
"You'll hurt me!"
"Why don't you try me and see? Now, if you want me to tell your ma what I found you doing and saying, you go on fighting me."
"No! No!"
"Then lie still."
She lay down obediently, staring at his eyes that had grown wild and livid with lust, burning, forgetting everything except the satisfaction of his abnormal cravings.
She closed her eyes to shut out the look in his contorted face. She held her breath to escape the odor of liquor on his breath. She held herself rigid for fear he would hurt her.
She could not relax, even when he cursed her.
She felt his hands touching her, lifting her, putting her legs apart, and then he was pressed hard against her.
Mort tried, but he could not budge her. He gave it up at last, and pulled her over on top of him. He lay on his back on her bed and clutched her small buttocks in his tightened fingers. He moved her thighs up and down on him, faster and faster. His breath grew louder and his fingers tightened like claws.
She tried to forget her agony of terror. He had not hurt her yet, and perhaps he would not. He was moving her against him in a way that pleased him, and the heat and friction might have boiled response from her, but nothing could melt that cold iceberg of horror and fear she felt toward him, the revulsion that went through her at the look in his eyes.
He went on holding her naked body upon him, wrapping her legs about him, working her frantically against his body. She squirmed upon him, feeling herself crushed against him, unable to breathe, afraid to cry out. She knew that what was happening to her was one kind of excitement adults had with each other, but it was nothing she wanted it killed in her all desire to experience anything like it, even with a boy her own age. With David this would have been wonderful, out of this world, fabulous. But with this old man it was revolting and disgusting.
And she would never want a man again. Never.
As for Mort, he went out of his ever-loving mind trying to ignite in her some of the unbridled lusts that shook him and drove him beyond reason. His chest heaved with the passion that rocked him. He crushed her body down upon his, moving her against it so that he held himself against every part of her. She writhed, fighting, but this only served to make him more animal-like, more berserk. She saw that the only way to end it was to lie docile and spineless, letting him use her as he pleased until somehow he was sated.
This happened sooner than she dared hope. He breathed faster and faster, his chest rising and falling, his trembling fingers closing tighter and tighter upon, her. And then he churned and spasmed wildly for a moment, then rolled away from her and lay still beside her on her bed.
She did not move. At last he got up and walked out of her room without looking back at her.
Carol stayed where she was a moment and then she jumped up and ran across the room. She locked the door, leaning against it, shaken with revulsion and loathing.
She breathed through her mouth, thinking about Mort.
He had acted ashamed; but she knew how, when she had touched herself, her reaction was usually shame, only this soon passed and the desire returned.
The desire would return with him.
He'd be waiting for her like this every afternoon.
It would be as if she were his slave around the house.
She shook her head with passionate resolve.
No. That ugly old man had caught her once and he had used her in ways that not even Melinda Parker had ever heard of. But he was never going to get her alone again.
She would tell her mother about it.
That was the only answer. She had to, or she would never be able to come home in the afternoon and do her chores. It would all come out anyway, because her mother would keep after her until she found out why she did not come home.
She would finally have to tell the truth, that she was afraid of Mort Engler.
She feared him as she had never learned to fear the devil himself.
She had to tell her mother the truth, no matter what Mort told about her and David.
She turned her head, her face fierce, speaking through the door toward Mort's room at the rear of the hall.
"I'm going to tell on you," she said aloud. "I'm going to tell. Everything you did, the way you looked, that ugly light in your eyes!"
She felt better, thinking that she would fix him for what he had done to her. To her eleven-year-old mind this seemed the way to find absolution and safety. She was afraid of Mort and afraid of all grown men. She barely remembered her own father, and the thought that one grown man would use a little girl's unripe body for satisfaction of his savage lusts made her fear them all. But she would tell her mother, and her mother would send Mort away.
Then she would be clean again.
Feeling a little better, she went into the bathroom, got in the shower. She stayed there for more than an hour, letting the water run on her, hot and cold, cold and hot. She felt as if her body would never be clean again. She tried in vain to wash away the revolting memory of that evil old man.