17.
February 1932
Fulton, Missouri
WHEN HELEN PINNED THE LAST SECTION OF HAIR into place against her scalp, Mildred, one of the other girls who boarded at Miss Humphries’s, took a step away and studied her. “Good, you’ve got the hang of it. Your hair will look pretty in the morning when you take the pins out.” She sat back down and huddled toward Helen. “Now listen, we never get much homework on Thursday nights. What do you say about coming to the movies with us? Mata Hari’s playing and Garbo’s supposed to be sensational.”
Helen placed the remaining hairpins in a tin and glanced at Mildred to see if she was serious. Since her talk with Miss Schultz, she had become friendly with the three other girls who boarded with her. She often helped them with their homework by editing their writing assignments and they had reciprocated by helping her with styling her hair and selecting what clothes to wear, but this invitation from Mildred marked the first invitation to do something social. As the other two boarders leaned in the doorway and joined in with Mildred’s urging, Helen beamed, not quite believing her good fortune. “I like the idea of a story about a lady spy. I just read a letter to the editor in the newspaper complaining that the cinema has hit a new low by showing a film featuring such skimpy costumes and a racy plot. Do your parents know you’re seeing films like this?”
Mildred giggled. “If my parents knew I was even thinking about it, they’d probably lock me up.”
“Well then, let’s go before the cinema stops showing it!”
The date was sealed and when the following Thursday evening arrived, all the girls traipsed along the brick sidewalks to the cinema to take their seats in the crowded theater. Helen inhaled the smells of soap, powder, damp wool, and cigarettes and absorbed the sighs and breathless giggling of the other girls as she settled into the dark, delighted to be in such proximity to the group. When the film began, Helen could hardly focus on the screen. Instead, she watched the girls around her, the way the light flickered across the smooth skin of their faces, but then Greta Garbo appeared and everything else was forgotten. Each time Mata Hari danced, Helen could barely breathe. The slinkiness of her sparkly gown, her bare back . . . Helen was transfixed. She’d never seen anything like it.
That evening as she lay in the dark in her narrow twin bed, images of Mata Hari returned to her, setting off a contraction deep inside her core, a fluttering in her chest—sensations she’d never felt before. With visions of Greta Garbo filling her mind, she allowed her fingers to travel down to between her legs and lost herself in the sensation of pleasure that she was able to summon all by herself. This was nothing like what had happened with Jimmy in the outbuilding. He had been rough and smelly and everything he had done had hurt. But this feeling she could conjure herself? This was something entirely different. After several minutes of being lost in her arousal, she jolted as if an electrical current had zapped through her and gasped. What was she doing? Even in the dark by herself, she felt her cheeks flush with mortification. She was not supposed to be doing anything like this, especially as a girl. Thinking about—much less touching—that part of her body was wrong—she had gotten that message loud and clear. From school, from church, from home—everywhere. What was wrong with her?
But . . .
Why was it wrong? What was so wrong about pleasure? She was by herself, not hurting anyone. Was she hurting herself somehow? The shame that suffused her felt confusing.
Did any of the other girls feel this way too? Did Mildred? Did they ever do this to themselves? She straightened in her bed, stared at the ceiling, and wished she could stop her mind from spinning with questions. But even more, she wished she didn’t always feel so different from everyone else.
THURSDAYS AT THE cinema became a regular pastime for Helen and her roommates, and Frankenstein became a favorite. No matter how many times they watched it, when the thunder clapped and the monster’s hand first moved, they never failed to shriek and reach for each other. Every time one of the girls buried her head in Helen’s shoulder, she held her breath. Every time one of them squeezed her hand, she studied her face for any sign of attraction, but as far as she could tell, there was nothing but camaraderie in anyone’s gestures. And while these new friendships felt wonderful—she realized she’d been hungering for this laughter, the easy conversations, and even the simple pleasure of sharing silly jokes—what would it be like to discover something more? Something like what she saw happening between Marlene Dietrich and Clive Brook when she watched Shanghai Express. The problem was that she couldn’t really picture exactly what she wanted to discover. The lead actors never excited her the way they did everyone else.
When the other girls sighed over men like Charles Farrell and Clark Gable, Helen nodded and agreed that the movie stars were dreamy and handsome, but she didn’t really feel the collective excitement that engulfed the other girls. How she wished she did! The palpable longing in the girls’ voices when they described how they imagined their future husbands elicited something akin to pain in Helen. Getting married, having babies, tending to her future house? She couldn’t picture herself doing any of these things. She’d contemplate her future, her mind straining to come up with a picture of what it looked like, but nothing materialized and this left her in a cold sweat.
After all, what could be more terrifying and lonelier than a blank future?
AS SPRING APPROACHED, boys began meeting Helen and her roommates in the lobby, and when it came time to file into the theater, all the girls jockeyed for position to
