an urge to stretch my legs. She said to me, “Why, after all the things you do every day, the sudden urge to have your legs stretched?” I had always been extremely lazy, enjoying nothing so much as lying on my bed, my legs resting on the windowsill, to catch the hot sun, reading one of my books, stolen or otherwise, or just toying with another treasure. After my mother said this, I stopped going to the lighthouse for a few days, and I worried about how to explain this interference to the Red Girl. How convenient for me it would be, I thought, to have a mother to whom I was not a prime interest. But I found a new tack. A few days later, I told my mother that for my drawing class I had been asked to observe a field at sunset, so that in class I could reproduce it in watercolors; would it be all right, then, if I just went for a small walk up and over the hill? The question was framed in just the way I knew it would appeal to her, so eager was she to contribute to my scholarship. Of course she agreed. My feet must have had wings; in seconds, I was at the top of the lighthouse.
All the time I had been kept prisoner under the watchful gaze of my mother, the Red Girl had faithfully gone to our meeting place every day. Every day, she went and waited for me, and every day I failed to show up. What could I say to her now? “My mother, the Nosy Parker, would kill me—or, worse, not speak to me for at least a few hours—if she knew that I met you in a secret place,” I said. For a while after I got there, we said nothing, only staring out to sea, watching the boats coming and going, watching the children our own age coming home from games, watching the sheep being driven home from pasture. Then, still without saying a word, the Red Girl began to pinch me. She pinched hard, picking up pieces of my almost nonexistent flesh and twisting it around. At first, I vowed not to cry, but it went on for so long that tears I could not control streamed down my face. I cried so much that my chest began to heave, and then, as if my heaving chest caused her to have some pity on me, she stopped pinching and began to kiss me on the same spots where shortly before I had felt the pain of her pinch. Oh, the sensation was delicious—the combination of pinches and kisses. And so wonderful we found it that, almost every time we met, pinching by her, followed by tears from me, followed by kisses from her were the order of the day. I stopped wondering why all the girls whom I had mistreated and abandoned followed me around with looks of love and adoration on their faces.
* * *
I now quite regularly had to observe a field or something for drawing class; collect specimens of leaves, flowers, or whole plants for botany class; gather specimens of rocks for geography class. In other words, my untruthfulness apparatus was now in full gear. My mother, keeping the usual close tabs, marveled at my industriousness and ambition. I was already first in my class, and I was first without ever really trying hard, so I had nothing much to worry about. I was such a good liar that, almost as if to prove all too true my mother’s saying “Where there’s a liar, there’s a thief,” I began to steal. But how could I not? I had no money of my own. And what a pleasure it was to bring a gift and see that red face, on receiving it, grow even redder in the light of the setting sun on the balcony at the top of the lighthouse. Reaching into my mother’s purse for the odd penny or so was easy enough to do, I had had some practice at it. But that wasn’t enough to buy two yards of multicolored grosgrain ribbon, or a pair of ring combs studded with rhinestones, or a pair of artificial rosebuds suitable for wearing at the waist of a nice dress. I hardly asked myself what use the Red Girl could really have for these gifts; I hardly cared that she only glanced at them for a moment and then placed them in a pocket of her dirty dress. I simply loved giving her things.
All the time I had been kept prisoner under the watchful gaze of my mother, the Red Girl had faithfully gone to our meeting place every day. Every day, she went and waited for me, and every day I failed to show up. What could I say to her now? “My mother, the Nosy Parker, would kill me—or, worse, not speak to me for at least a few hours—if she knew that I met you in a secret place,” I said. For a while after I got there, we said nothing, only staring out to sea, watching the boats coming and going, watching the children our own age coming home from games, watching the sheep being driven home from pasture. Then, still without saying a word, the Red Girl began to pinch me. She pinched hard, picking up pieces of my almost nonexistent flesh and twisting it around. At first, I vowed not to cry, but it went on for so long that tears I could not control streamed down my face. I cried so much that my chest began to heave, and then, as if my heaving chest caused her to have some pity on me, she stopped pinching and began to kiss me on the same spots where shortly before I had felt the pain of her pinch. Oh, the sensation was delicious—the combination of pinches and kisses. And so wonderful we found it that, almost every time we met, pinching by her, followed by tears from me, followed by kisses from her were the order of the day. I stopped wondering why all the girls whom I had mistreated and abandoned followed me around with looks of love and adoration on their faces.
* * *
I now quite regularly had to observe a field or something for drawing class; collect specimens of leaves, flowers, or whole plants for botany class; gather specimens of rocks for geography class. In other words, my untruthfulness apparatus was now in full gear. My mother, keeping the usual close tabs, marveled at my industriousness and ambition. I was already first in my class, and I was first without ever really trying hard, so I had nothing much to worry about. I was such a good liar that, almost as if to prove all too true my mother’s saying “Where there’s a liar, there’s a thief,” I began to steal. But how could I not? I had no money of my own. And what a pleasure it was to bring a gift and see that red face, on receiving it, grow even redder in the light of the setting sun on the balcony at the top of the lighthouse. Reaching into my mother’s purse for the odd penny or so was easy enough to do, I had had some practice at it. But that wasn’t enough to buy two yards of multicolored grosgrain ribbon, or a pair of ring combs studded with rhinestones, or a pair of artificial rosebuds suitable for wearing at the waist of a nice dress. I hardly asked myself what use the Red Girl could really have for these gifts; I hardly cared that she only glanced at them for a moment and then placed them in a pocket of her dirty dress. I simply loved giving her things.
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