5.

I switched my bookbag from one hand to the other every half block, then every quarter block, then every couple of steps, because the drawstring was cutting my fingers. The walk home felt endless. The whole way all I thought about was sex. I hadn’t figured out much. Touching myself was bad, but nothing ever felt so good. Father Ransom said sex is only for marriage and babies. Then he made me put his penis in my mouth. Sister Margaret Gabriel said it’s her job to mold me into a good Christian woman. Then she kissed my feet and played with herself. Fuck is a bad word, but Sister said it. Then she said she was bad, but I don’t think she felt any real contrition.

When I passed the poster shop, I had to put my bag down and rest a few minutes. The palms of my hands were red, and there were white welts on my fingers. Who knew a grammar-school education could hurt so much? I stood in the blue shadow of the building and looked in the window. They had a new display there. It was a record album on a little tripod, surrounded by some crazy-looking brass pipes were so small they wouldn’t hold more than a crumb of tobacco. The album was called How to Strip for Your Husband. The cover showed a woman holding a long red veil under her chin. It hung down the middle of her body, between her legs. It hid everything, but you could tell she was naked behind it, because you could see the sides of her bare boobs and her bare hips, and, below them, the pale stripe where she’d taken off her bottom. The idea of taking off my clothes for a man made me light-headed. It would be OK if we were married, though. That’s why the album said stripping for your husband. I could take off my bra and panties, and my husband could watch me. Then he’d take his clothes off, and we’d kiss and — what?

I wanted to know what, and right there, across the street, on the corner of my block, stood the way out of my vincible ignorance.

The big regional library still felt new. It still smelled new. I was in second or third grade when it opened. They call it state-of-the-art, and it’s always made me think of the Space Age. It’s clean and modern, all gray planes and sharp angles, with two-story windows that rise from the sidewalk. I used to spend a lot of time downstairs in the children’s department. Now they let me upstairs because I got my adult card this year.

Time to use it.

The information wasn’t easy to find. Once I got inside, I went up to nonfiction on the top floor, put my bag down under a table in the reading area, and wandered through the stacks. I was too timid to ask for help, and I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. So I wasted time, getting lost among the high shelves, like trying to find my way through a maze, hoping a title would jump out at me.

I was in the section on the Civil War when a voice behind me said, “May I help you, Miss?”

I felt like I’d been caught shoplifting. I knew the next question was going to be, “And what do you think you’re doing, young lady?”

But all the gray-haired lady said was, “You’ve been looking around awhile. Do you need help finding something?” She could have been my Aunt Betty, asking if I wanted a cookie, except this lady was Jewish. She was wearing a gold Hebrew letter around her neck.

“I, uh...”

“Take your time.”

“Do you have anything... ?”

“We have a lot of things.”

“On sex?”

“You mean sex education?”

“Yes, Ma’am. It’s for school.”

Which was kind of true.

“Back this way,” she said.

I saw now why I hadn’t found anything. The sex books were in a bookcase behind Aunt Betty’s desk. I guess they kept them there to prevent kids from sneaking peeks.

“You should find what you’re looking for here. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to ask. There’s also the card catalog.”

She sat down with her back to me and let me look for myself. No questions. Nothing about sin, or the sanctity of marriage, or why a Catholic school would send one of their students to look up stuff about sex. Was that because she was a librarian, or because she wasn’t Catholic?

There were more titles than I expected, right out in the open. There was Sex Talk, and The Sexual Revolution, and Sex: Myths and Realities. There was The Anatomy of Sex and Sex: The Vital Force. Sex This and Sex That.

I picked one called The ABCs of Sex, by Dr. Judith I. Weisberg. It sounded basic, which was what I wanted, and I figured if it was written by a woman, she’d know what girls go through.

I took it back to my table. The reading area is a high balcony that overlooks the main level, with bright skylights overhead. I sat down facing out and started to read. The book was laid out like an encyclopedia, in alphabetical order. I looked up vagina, masturbation, and penis. There was even an entry on feet that said See fetishes.

What blew me away was that there was a word for everything. Everything I did, everything I felt in the past two days had a name. My button is my clitoris. Those incredible peaks are called orgasms, and having an orgasm is called getting off, or coming. When a man puts his penis in your mouth, it’s called is fellatio, or oral sex. It turns out there’s oral sex for women, too, which is called cunnilingus, a long word that I had to practice pronouncing. Cunnilingus, cunnilingus — just saying it to myself made me feel fluttery.

“Class, take out a piece of loose-leaf paper.” That’s what Sister says before a test. I took a piece out now and covered it, front and back. Then I started on another. I could have borrowed the book, but that would be harder to smuggle into the house, and if mom ever found it, she’d send me right back to Father Ransom for another blow job (new word).

The more I read, and wrote, the tighter my panties felt. I looked around. Aunt Betty’s desk was hidden around the corner of a bookcase, and there was no one else nearby. So I lifted my butt off the seat and reached under my skirt. It was a relief to peel the damp cotton off my crotch and feel the air between my legs. I sat down again and went back to my studies, scribbling with one hand and inching my underwear down my legs with the other, one side at a time.

I was jotting down the word “lesbian” when Lisa Della Robbia tapped me on the shoulder.

“Jeez Louise!”

“What, did I scare you?” she asked.

“Yeah!’

A shhhh flew over from the librarian’s desk.

“Sorry,” Lisa said in a whisper. “What are you reading?”

“Nothing,” I whispered back. I shut the book, with the back cover facing up, and folded my arms over it.

“No, come on, what?”

She tried to peek at the book, but all she could see through my arms were Dr. Weisberg’s face and the words “A complete, uncensored guide...”

“Nothing,” I repeated. “How come you’re here?”

“Looking for this...”

She laid a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank on the table.

“Sister Margaret confiscated my copy.”

I never read it, so I didn’t know what Sister thought was wrong with it, but it’s always a mistake to bring outside reading to school.

Not that I was surprised Lisa did. She’s the smartest girl in class, and one of the two smartest kids. She and Eddie Szywicki have been competing for grades since for as long as any of us can remember. One report card, his average is a point or two above hers. The next one, the standings are reversed. Both of them always have their hands up in class.

Lisa sat down next to me, still curious about The ABCs of Sex. She’s not pretty, really. She’s what grownups call striking. She has dark, deep-set eyes, heavy eyebrows and black hair that she parts down the middle and pins behind her ears with barrettes. Mostly what she has, though, is big tits. She was the first girl in our class to wear a bra, back in fifth grade. She was still wearing her uniform, like me, and she was wearing something else ― something I’d noticed before but never paid much attention to.

“Did Father Ransom give you that?” I asked.

“Yes.”

We touched our medals at the same time. We didn’t say any more about them, but they became an instant bond between us. I wondered what she did to earn hers. Without a word, she slid the book out from under my arm, and I let her. Father Ransom’s Miraculous Medal Girls didn’t have any secrets.

“Why’re you looking at this?” she asked me, flipping it open.

“I don’t know anything.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Just what stuff is called.”

“Have you ever done anything?”

“You mean with a boy?”

“Or anything.”

“No,” I lied. I was very aware of my panties, which at the moment were wrapped around my knees. Very nonchalantly, while Lisa leafed through the book, I propped my chin on my hand, pretending I was looking at it too, and with my other hand under the table, I tried to work my panties down my legs, but they were too tangled up, and they wouldn’t drop.

Lisa had the book open to a drawing of a vagina that had all the parts labeled. She traced one finger around what was called the labia, and then down what was called the perineum to the anus and all around again. She pressed the clitoris like a buzzer, so hard the skin under her fingernail turned white.

“I’d never let a boy touch me there,” she said.

“You have to when you get married.”

“I’m not getting married.”

“How come?”

“I don’t like boys.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re disgusting. All they do is talk about ... you know.”

“You mean your tits?”

The word sent us both into giggles.

“Shhh!” she said.

“Do boys like your tits?” I said.

“They like them too much.”

“At least you have tits.”

“Stop saying tits!”

We pressed our hands to my mouth. The laughs backed up and sputtered out our noses. It was fun, like we were five years old. Sister says bad words are a sin against the Second Commandment. But the Second Commandment says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” What do tits have to do with God? And besides, she said “fuck,” so who cares?

Somewhere during our little fit, Lisa put her hand under the table and tapped my bare thigh. I don’t have to tell you what she felt down there. Her pinkie grazed the waistband. Then she moved down until her whole hand rested on the sweaty crotch. Her face went blank, and she pulled in her chin and screwed her eyes down. Then she smirked and plucked the elastic like a rubber band. It snapped against my leg.

“Getting warm down there?” she whispered.

I had no answer to that.

“Do you touch yourself?”

I had no answer to that, either.

“Come on,” she said. “I won’t laugh.”

“Only a couple times,” I said, like that made a difference. “What about you?”

“Were you gonna do it here?”

“Uh-uh. They were just uncomfortable.”

“How’re you gonna get ‘em back on?”

I could see that would be a challenge. There was no way to stand up and pull them over my hips without exposing my bare butt to the reading room ­— and while we’d been talking, an old guy had sat down behind us with a magazine. So I did the next best thing: I reached down and slid them all the way off. It was a struggle to get my clunky shoes through the leg holes, and I thought I heard the cloth rip, but finally I managed to pull them free and stuff them in my pocket.

“There!” I said.

“You take chances,” Lisa said.

I was smoothing my skirt just as the librarian came around the corner.

“Are you girls all right?” she said. It wasn’t a question. “This is a place for study, and I’ll have to ask you two to keep it down.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” I said.

“We should go,” Lisa said.

I folded up my notes and put The ABCs of Sex in the re-shelving bin while Lisa picked up our bags from the floor. As I passed the old guy, I noticed the magazine he had was Playboy, which they have, but you have to ask for it. I was afraid to look at what he was doing under his table.

What is it with everybody and sex?

Lisa and I went downstairs with Aunt Betty giving us a smile and a nod. Lisa checked out her book, and we were hardly out the glass doors when she said to me, “You gonna put them back on?”

“Out here? Besides, who’s gonna see?”

“How’s it feel?”

“Why don’t you try it for yourself?”

“Nowhere to do it.”