But maybe I don’t have to. Not yet.

And perhaps the urge to hide in sleep wasn’t all-there might have been something else, as well. Some part of her that intended to have this out in the open once and for all, no matter what the cost.

She sank back down on the pillow, eyes closed, arms held up and sacrificially spread, her face pale and tight with strain.

“Especially you girls,” she whispered into the darkness. “Especially all you girls.”

She sank back on the pillow, and the day of the eclipse claimed her again.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

What Jessie saw through her sunglasses and her home-made filter was so strange and so awesome that at first her mind refused to grasp it. There seemed to be a vast round beauty mark, like the one below the corner of Anne Francis’s mouth, hanging there in the afternoon sky.

“If I talk in my sleep… “cause I haven’t seen my baby all week…”

It was at this point that she first felt her father’s hand on the nub of her right breast. It squeezed gently for a moment, drifted across to the left one, then returned to the right again, as if he were making a size comparison. He was breathing very fast now, the respiration in her ear was like a steam engine, and she was again aware of that hard thing pressing against her bottom.

“Can I get a witness?” Marvin Gaye, that auctioneer of soul, was shouting. “Witness, witness?”

Daddy? Are you all right?

She felt a delicate tingle in her breasts again-pleasure and pain, roast turkey with a Nehi glaze and chocolate gravy-but this time she also felt alarm and a kind of startled confusion.

Yes, he said, but his voice sounded almost like the voice of a stranger. Yes, fine, but don’t look around. He shifted. The hand which had been on her breasts went somewhere else; the one on her thigh moved up farther, pushing the hem of the sundress ahead of it.

Daddy, what are you doing?

Her question was not exactly fearful; mostly it was curious. Still, there was an undertone of fear there, something like a length of fine red thread. Above her, a furnace of strange light glowed fiercely around the dark circle hanging in the indigo sky.

Do you love me, Punkin?

Yes, sure-

Then don’t worry about anything. I’d never hurt you. I want to hesweet to you. Just watch the eclipse and let me he sweet to you.

I’m not sure I want to, Daddy, That sense of confusion was growing deeper, the red thread was fattening. I’m afraid of burning

MY eye. Burning my watchamacallums.

“But I believe,” Marvin sang, “a woman’s a man’s best friend…and I’m gonna stick by her…to the very end.”

Don’t worry. He was panting now. You have another twenty seconds.At least that. So don’t worry. And don’t look around.

She heard the snap of elastic, but it was his, not hers; her underpants were where they were supposed to be, although she realized that if she looked down she would be able to see them that was how far up he had pushed her dress.

Do you love me? he asked again, and although she was gripped by a terrible premonition that the right answer to this question had become the wrong one, she was ten years old and it was still the only answer she had to give. She told him that she did.

“Witness, witness,” Marvin pleaded, fading out now.

Her father shifted, pressing the hard thing more firmly against her bottom. Jessie suddenly realized what it was-not the handle of a screwdriver or the tackhammer from the toolbox in the pantry, that was for sure-and the alarm she felt was matched by a momentary spiteful pleasure which had more to do with her mother than with her father.

This is what you get for not sticking up for me, she thought, looking at the dark circle in the sky through the layers of smoked glass, and then: I guess this is what we both get. Her-vision suddenly blurred, and the pleasure was gone. Only the mounting sense of alarm was left. Oh jeez, she thought. It’s my retinas…it must bemyretinas starting to burn.

The hand on her thigh now moved between her legs, slid up until it was stopped by her crotch, and cupped her firmly there. He shouldn’t be doing that, she thought. It was the wrong place for his hand. Unless-

He’s goosing you, a voice inside suddenly spoke up.

In later years that voice, which she eventually came to think of as that of the Goodwife, frequently filled her with exasperation; it was sometimes the voice of caution, often the voice of blame, and almost always the voice of denial. Unpleasant things, demeaning things, painful things… they would all go away eventually if you ignored them enthusiastically enough, that was the Goodwife’s view. It was a voice apt to stubbornly insist that even the most obvious wrongs were actually rights, parts of a benign plan too large and complex for mere mortals to grasp. There would be times (mostly during her eleventh and twelfth years, when she called that voice Miss Petrie, after her secondgrade teacher) when she would actually raise her hands to her ears to try and blot out that quacking, reasonable voice-useless, of course, since it originated on the side of her ears she couldn’t get to-but in that moment of dawning dismay while the eclipse darkened the skies over western Maine and reflected stars burned in the depths of Dark Score Lake, that moment when she realized (sort of) what the hand between her legs was up to, she heard only kindness and practicality, and she seized upon what the voice was saying with panicky relief.

It’s just a goose, that’s all it is, Jessie.

Are you sure? she cried back.

Yes, the voice replied firmly-as the years went by, Jessie would discover that this voice was almost always sure, wrong or right. He means it as a joke, that’s all. He doesn’t know he’s scaring you,so don’t open your mouth and spoil a lovely afternoon. This is no bigdeal.

Don’t you believe it, toots! the other voice-the tough voice responded. Sometimes he behaves as if you’re his goddamned girlfriend instead of his daughter, and that’s what he’s doing right now! He’s not goosing you. Jessie! He’s fucking you!

She was almost positive that was a lie, almost positive that strange and forbidden schoolyard word referred to an act that could not be accomplished with just a hand, but doubts remained. With sudden dismay she remembered Karen Aucoin telling her not to ever let a boy put his tongue in her mouth, because it could start a baby in her throat. Karen said it sometimes happened that way, but that a woman who had to vomit her baby to get it out almost always died, and usually the baby died, too. I ain’t ever going to leta boy French-kiss me, Karen said. I might let one feel me on top, if Ireally loved him, but I don’t ever want a baby in my throat. How wouldyou EAT?

At the time, Jessie had found this concept of pregnancy so crazy it was almost charming-and who but Karen Aucoin, who worried about whether or not the light stayed on when you shut the refrigerator door, could have come up with such a thing? Now, however, the idea shimmered with its own weird logic. Suppose-just suppose-it was true? If you could get a baby from a boy’s tongue, if that could happen, then-

And there was that hard thing pressing into her bottom. That thing that wasn’t the handle of a screwdriver or her mother’s tackhammer.

Jessie tried to squeeze her legs together, a gesture that was ambivalent to her but apparently not to him. He gasped-a painful, scary sound-and pressed his fingers harder against the sensitive mound just beneath the crotch of her underpants. It hurt a little. She stiffened against him and moaned.