Jeremiah Quick by SM Johnson Page A

birdlike,
but couldn't have been more than four or five or the weight of her
body hanging from the mirror would have brought her, and it,
crashing to the floor in a pile of nakedness and broken glass. But
this never happened.
    Later that same year, Santa Claus or some
beaming-but-still-cloying adult, gave her a delightful accessory
kit called a "vanity set", that contained a brush, a comb, and a
mirror with a handle. She held the kit in its box, staring
wondrously at the mirror through the clear cellophane window. It
was the best gift ever. She could look at herself while lying in
her bed, or, because the bed springs were squeaky, while lying on
the floor. She could explore what she saw with her fingers.
    Which she did, obsessively.
    Eventually she touched herself with objects.
The bristles of the hairbrush were almost too intense, but the
tines from the comb not enough. A necklace chain could be settled
deep between her buttocks, then pulled slowly or quickly from back
to front. The scrape of it against those mysterious folds caused a
tingle all the way to her toes. Made them curl, in fact, and
brought her hips off the floor in a desperate straining for
something she was too young to name. The smell of her fingers,
afterward, was another pleasure; a secret naughtiness she could
indulge in even in front of other people.
    No one talked about these things, and she
somehow knew it was a secret. She was torn between thinking she was
the only one who touched her private parts when she was alone, or
that everyone did, and it was just one more item on the list of
Things We Don't Talk About. Like her father's drinking, and her
mother's unpredictable and very often irrational rages.
    What would the neighbors think?
    Indeed.
    At some point she found a chain of linked
balls. She remembered it very clearly – it was the sort of chain
she'd seen attached to not-so-lucky-for-rabbits-feet, but this one
was oversized. The chain itself must have been eighteen or twenty
inches long, the steel balls nearer in size to her mother's pearls
than her brother's BBs.
    When she floated them over her folds, the
end few spheres disappeared.
    That had never happened before.
    She was lying on the floor on her back,
knees tucked to her chest. She could see what her hands were doing,
but only sort of, and it was awkward to hold her neck up for very
many minutes at a time.
    She watched her hand lower the strand until
all but the one she was holding between thumb and index finger were
out of sight.
    They weren't hiding between her butt cheeks.
She checked.
    Wherever they went, they weren’t hurting
her, and she didn't think they went into the place where pee came
out. She stretched her free hand under the bed and felt around for
the hand mirror. The mirror showed the chain, and a small dark
opening into which most of the chain had fallen. Well, that was
curious.
    She pulled the chain out. The opening was
still there. She dropped the chain back in, still holding on to the
end because she was afraid of losing the whole thing.
    She removed the chain and poked the opening
with her finger. It opened more and her finger went in, and nothing
hurt. She hadn't been able to feel the chain in there, but when she
moved her finger, it felt like a feathery brush inside of her, like
the feeling of butterflies in her stomach, but gentler and more
private.
    She was delighted. This opening in her body
promised to be great fun, and it was hers . No one else would
ever have to know.
    Later in childhood, someone's older brother
had to be taken to the emergency room because he'd poked a bobby
pin into his butt and somehow misplaced it there.
    Pretty had found many interesting things to
put into her vagina, but it had never occurred to her to poke
anything there . Especially bobby pins. So that bit of
gossip, intended to further the glee little girls feel over the
humiliation of an older brother, sent her into a whole new
direction of exploration.
     
     

     
     
    She knew the