Awakenings

Awakenings

By Charles Coleman

I suppose I could have stayed home alone, and in retrospect I wish I had, but I climbed into the car. We drove north of Toronto where the suburbs gave way to open fields and scattered corn stalks poking through the snow. Red brick farm houses interrupted the grey and white landscape where the snow, caught in swirling twisters, blew from here to there in pointless bursts. No birds sang. One of the farm houses belonged to friends of my parents and on this Sunday afternoon drive we were going to drop in for a visit.

            Having said a polite hello to the friends of my parents I settled in a living room where nothing caught my attention. There was no family dog or cat, and no interesting snacks. They might at least have had a television set. I had only seen television a couple of times and was excited to see more, but there was no TV. A store not far from our house, and aptly called the Static Shop, had a TV in its window. It was tuned to Buffalo, News York, and provided a view of Howdy Doody through a heavy layer of dancing snow on the screen. During a recent pause on my way home snow had fallen where I stood on the sidewalk as well as on Howdy.

            Plenty of droning adult conversation currently filled the room where I sat.

            "Can I go out and do some exploring?" I asked during a lull in the conversation. Getting the okay, I slipped outside. A barn stood across from the house on the other side of the driveway; perhaps I could salvage some of the Sunday afternoon.

            Pushing open the door I discovered that the barn was currently being used as a garage. I walked past the parked car into the shadows beyond. There were pens and stalls where animals may have lived at one time, but now only cobwebs, the odd buzzing fly and the scattered remnants of a once working farm occupied these spaces. Dust motes danced in the few sunbeams that slanted through the gloom from high windows. I stepped over a coil of barbed wire and navigated between a few hay bales toward a workbench.

            Pictures of cheerful women tacked above the bench on the wall caught and held my gaze. They were calendars. One woman, dressed as an Indian, happily beat a drum while a spaniel at her feet looked on. She wore a full headdress of eagle feathers, beads, a skimpy loincloth, and apart from some moccasins, very little else. Her breasts captured my attention, their pink tips pointing at me. I looked down at the surface of the workbench, where a collection of various tools and farm machinery fragments were scattered, but whenever I glanced up they were there, those pink buttons, following my movements like the eyes of certain portraits. I moved my gaze away to an adjacent picture where another woman, also grinning, lolled in a hayloft. She wore a tiny pair of shorts and had a scarf at her neck. She chewed on a piece of grass.

I felt I had intruded into a private place and wondered if Mrs. Lawson was aware of this display, which must surely belong to Mr Lawson. I deliberately looked away, sliding open a drawer in the front of the bench as if casually occupied in some legitimate task. I found a collection of spanners, screwdrivers and wrenches amongst screws, bolts, and several old paintbrushes. A black cylinder the size of a lipstick caught my eye and I picked it up, rolling it between my fingers. Its glass end extended like a tiny telescope so I raised it to my eye. A bare naked lady stared back at me, indistinct and in shadow. The late afternoon sun was fighting its way through a grime-encrusted nearby window, and as I turned towards it the woman seemed to jump into clear focus. The shadows fled and there she was, not a drawing, but the real thing. Her breasts did not jut like the Indian maiden's, but hung loosely. She didn't smile either. Her face was a mask of boredom with a suggestion of irritation, as if someone had told her she had missed lunch and the kitchen was closed. I slipped the little cylinder into my pocket.

            "Do you want to see something?' I said this to my sister who had just reached the top of the stairs. I was getting ready for bed.”

            "What?"

            "Take a look in here," I held out the little telescope. She looked at it for a moment. "You have to hold it up to the light and look through the end." She peered in and then frowned.

            "Where did you get it?" she asked.

            I told her.

            "You stole it?" I admitted that I had. Several things were bothering me. I had stolen it, but guilt over this act was not my main concern. I wondered about the woman viewed. Who was she? How did she get to have such a picture taken? Probably the most unsettling factor was that friends of my parents had it. What sort of people would have and save such a thing? Then came:   What if mother were to find it? Where should I hide it?  

            "I don't think it is something we should have. It makes me feel," I paused, "I don't know, I don't want to think about that woman."

            "You should throw it away then," Anne said.

            I acted impulsively. I threw up the window and launched it into the darkness of the backyard. I didn't see where it landed and I felt better immediately. She would be out of my thoughts forever, somewhere in the foot or so of clean, cold snow that covered the garden in March. The weight that had been sitting on my shoulders should also fall, but I still wondered who had taken the picture of that poor woman? What happened next? How would it have come about that someone took her picture when she was naked?  I tried to put these questions out of my mind and settled into bed with a Donald Duck comic book.

            The previous spring I was shown around the Upper Canada College grounds as a prospective student entering grade five. The man giving the tour paused at the entrance to the pool. Echoing swimming pool shouts of boys escaped from behind the door. My mother was asked to stay outside when my father and I entered for a moment. The sharp smell of chlorine hit us and I was startled to see that the boys running along the sides of the pool were naked. We didn't stay long. 

            "They don't wear bathing suits," I said, back outside.

            "And that's why I had to wait here.," said my mother. "Why don't they?"

            Our guide squinted slightly, tilted his head and pursed his lips. "I don't actually know," he said.

            It concerned me when, after being admitted to the school, we were going to have our first swim. McGee, also a new boy asked if I had brought a bathing suit.

            "We don't wear them," I said, adopting the tone of one in the know. On our way back to class, McGee brought it up.

            "Did you notice that Ruthig has a "fuzzer?" (Our word for pubic hair.)

            "I guess so."

            Ruthig also had an incipient mustache. We were in grade five and most of us were eleven. It transpired that Ruthig was actually thirteen, and had told someone that he had Croation blood. I knew he came from Yugoslavia and that he had lost a year while learning English. When I heard he had Croation blood I had said "Ooh," with an inflection of understanding. I didn't really know what having Croatian blood meant. Now I decided that it was a hormone condition that resulted in an early maturation. This was on my mind because I had lately been anticipating puberty and covertly reading a book called You and Your House Wonderful, a frustrating book, likely intended for who? Prim Victorian ladies?  It glossed over all the topics I wanted to know about, while concentrating on washing and cleanliness. There were mentions of hormones and 'development,' but I never came away from a reading any the wiser. It was a gift from my staid grandmother to my sister on the Christmas when she was thirteen. She had unwrapped the book in excitement before dropping it just as quickly. My mother retrieved it and quietly said to my sister that, "This will be a most useful book, dear... about that 'business.'" I was of course intrigued about what this 'business' might be and immediately demanded to know. My sister had blushed deeply and made no answer while my mother tucked the book away.

            Of course I made it my business to find where the book was hidden, but nothing faintly interesting came to light during several secret and frustrating reads. Years passed, and as I approached puberty myself a renewed interest in this hopeless book blossomed. I had also recently heard my parents talking about hormones in a conversation that had ceased as I entered the room.

            "What are hormones?" I injected into the silence that hung between my parents.

            "They are things in your body that make it grow, dear," said my mother, looking up briefly from her knitting. In my mind I connected this information with the growth I was currently thinking about a lot, namely erections. I couldn't believe how casually my mother said this. With my ears burning I left the room and slipped upstairs to the third floor and my domain. Hormones were clearly something rude. Ruthig probably had too many of them and suffered from Croatia.

            It was on a quiet afternoon in April that Mr. Gardner, who usually taught us science, announced that we would be having a slightly different class.

            "This afternoon boys I want to cover a topic that you may be confused about. It is better to have the straight facts instead of the rumors and misinformation that often surround the topic."

We exchanged glances. What was this going to be about?

            "You are becoming men, and soon there will be things happening to your body that you may wonder or even worry about."

            Now it is possible that I have repressed what happened next. I am sure it was certainly something that Mr. Gardner would like to forget. Sweat broke out on his brow and he wiped it away from his reddening face with his handkerchief. He laughed in a most uncharacteristic manner and sat on the edge of one of the desks with one leg swinging. I have to say I remember virtually nothing of what he said. I don't actually think he said very much. I remember being advised to wash thoroughly and keep everything 'down there' as clean as possible. I do remember he lightened things up at one point with a joke about a 'honeymoon salad.' It was apparently 'Lettuce alone.' I expect I remember this because we used the term whenever possible.

            "Sir," offering the bowl of lettuce at lunch, "would you like some of this honeymoon salad?" We would all then enjoy a conspiratorial laugh together. Men of the world.

            It was something of a relief when my father, not quite so embarrassed as Mr. Gardner, but getting there, took me aside a few days later.

            "I understand you have had a 'chat' at school about the transition from boyhood, um, about becoming a man."

            "Oh yes," I replied, trying to look both knowledgeable and nonchalant. A 'chat' suggested some 'back and forth.' The chat at school had been exclusively 'forth.' No one asked a question.

            "Well, I want to let you know that if you ever have any questions you can come to me with them."

            I assured him that I would do this, though I was thinking how extremely unlikely this would be.

            It was on a balmy Saturday morning later that year that Anne and I decided it would be fun to have a picnic in the garden. The snow had gone, the grass was green and, after quite a few days of rain, it was finally dry. We would spread a blanket on the grass and have sandwiches.

            "That sounds like fun," said my mother, so we made roast beef sandwiches, took a tray of drinks and sat in the sun listening to the birds. In the border beside the lawn the tulips and daffodils were thinking about opening up. There were already some blooming crocuses. It was in the midst of this idyllic scene that an icy hand clutched my heart. I watched as my mother picked up a little black cylinder about the size of a lipstick from where it was mostly hidden from view in the flower bed. I glanced at my sister and we exchanged shocked looks. Mother turned the nasty thing that held the unfortunate woman's secret embarrassment this way and that, and then, horror of horrors, held it up to her eye.

            How was she so familiar with such a thing? Had she peered into one before? My heart had been stopped for some time before she discarded it on the tray beside the plate that had held the sandwiches. Shortly after we carried the lunch items back into the house.

            In what I considered a casual movement I picked up the viewer and scuttled out of the kitchen. I could hear the rush of water into the sink. Mother and Anne were preparing to do the dishes. I whipped the viewer up to my eye and gazing out into the sunlit garden, peered into a hazy world of dark blotches and spidery lines. I could make nothing out. She had dissolved or retreated into mold and mildew. That was what a winter in the garden under the snow would do.         My relief was intense. I had been saved, and so had the dignity of that unfortunate woman.

            My knowledge of assorted questions regarding sex remained like the image of the barenaked lady in the viewer - clouded, probably distorted and for the time being no longer particularly troubling.