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
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.
I married Jim Dougherty.
It was like being retired to a zoo.
The first effect marriage had on me was to increase my lack of interest in sex. My husband either didn’t mind this or wasn’t aware of it. We were both too young to discuss such an embarrassing topic openly.
Actually our marriage was a sort of friendship with sexual privileges. I found out later that marriages are often no more than that. And that husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.
Jim’s folks didn’t care much for me, for which I couldn’t blame them. I was a peculiar wife. I disliked grownups. I preferred washing dishes to sitting and talking to them. As soon as they started playing cards or having arguments I would sneak out of the house and join the kids in the street. I liked boys and girls younger than me. I played games with them until my husband came out and started calling me to go to bed.
My marriage brought me neither happiness nor pain. My husband and I hardly spoke to each other. This wasn’t because we were angry. We had nothing to say. I’ve seen many married couples since that were just like Jim and me. They were usually more enduring kind of marriages, the ones that were pickled in silence.
The most important thing my marriage did for me was to end forever my status as orphan. I felt grateful to Jim for this. He was the Lochinvar who had rescued me from my blue dress and white blouse.
My various advisers had been right about marriage putting an end to my popularity as a siren. The boys did not come after Mrs. Dougherty. The rose seemed to have fallen out of her teeth.
5
