O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [24]
“I do have a Marine buddy who has trained himself not to blink his eyes,” he answered.
“ ‘Well,’ I wondered, ‘can I get past this mighty lion guarding the gate?’ Men rule by raw power. Girls rule by sleight of hand. How do you find them?”
“Girls of sixteen can be very silly.”
“And boys of nineteen even more silly.”
“For your enlightenment, I am twenty and can support a beard,” he said.
“So I diverted your attention; it was easy to get past you.”
“If you had me ordered to Inverness to make me feel lowly and ill at ease, you have not succeeded.”
Zachary delivered his words smartly, not avoiding the intensity of her stare. He seemed to understand and was prepared for the game he knew she made of reducing young men to silly boys.
“Where did you learn to dance so well?” she asked, changing the subject.
“I was born and raised in the Marine Corps. I learned in dance halls. My da first set me on the end of a bar when I was six years old.”
“Oh . . .”
“My da was a top-ranking NCO. When we were stationed in and about civilization, we’d join the local church with other NCOs and their wives and we’d dance at . . . charity affairs.”
That stung! Quick now, Amanda . . . “And your mother?”
“She died a few days after giving birth to me.”
“Forgive me.”
“Of course,” he said, and smiled. “You know as well as I that if you are a Marine stationed in the capital, half your duty is to know how to dance.”
And she smiled and tottered for a moment on the brink of saying something, then decided. “Daddy’s garden is filled with couples who couldn’t wait for midball to get out here and neck. Most of them have been matched up by their parents at age eight, so that by the time of their cotillion they were virtually engaged. I know every girl here. Every one of them has been felt up. Except me. I have mushed around a little but never really found it to my liking.” Her hand touched his face and chin. “I think I’ve been waiting for someone who can support a beard.”
“I know it’s fuzzy, but the Marine Corps says I have to shave every morning whether I need it or not. Anyhow, I’m gaining on it.”
“Zachary,” she said with a new tone, different from her other tones.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I see boys and men look at my bosom longingly, but I’ve never let anyone touch my breasts.” Zachary turned a bit away from her. “Are you afraid?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sit here with me on the bench,” she said, and rocked back and forth. “I’ve never revealed them before, not to my brother and hardly to my own mother and sister. Will you be my friend for a minute?”
He nodded.
“When I turned thirteen, something began happening inside me.”
“I think I understand,” he said.
“I was looking at myself in the mirror one morning and was overcome with the impulse to touch myself. It set off incredible sensations I did not know existed. I tried to speak about them to my mother, but it was not something to be spoken of. So I asked my dearest friend, Willow, but she was completely innocent. I soon learned that I was in a forbidden place. Here, this sudden wonderment was happening inside me, but it made my own mother too uncomfortable to speak about it. Touching myself was not only forbidden, but sinful. Parts of the Sunday sermons that had made no sense to me as a child suddenly made sense. I had gone in league with the devil. I couldn’t tell anyone how joyous it felt. I learned what was happening to me and I also learned that becoming a woman was a sentence to suffer. Zachary, I must be making you terribly uncomfortable.”
“No, not at all.”
“I’ve never even really enjoyed holding hands with a boy before this. I always had casual boyfriends, but I came to know they had their own stirrings, as well . . .”
Zachary nodded once more.
“When you are dancing and wrestling with boys you can feel them getting emotional beyond their ability to control. You know what I mean?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Boys would always be humiliated. Suddenly