1.

My name is Cindy Purple, and I’m in eighth grade at Annunciation. School is OK, but the sisters and priests are always going on about sin – which, for them, is just another word for sex ― and sometimes I think their priorities are messed up. They never talk about Vietnam, for instance, where people are getting killed, and that little girl in the photograph ran down the road naked because her clothes were burned off. Instead, they hammer away at the smut in the movies and on TV. The day I found out what sex feels like, Sister Margaret Gabriel had lectured us for like half an hour, starting with the girls on Laugh-In who dance in bikinis with words painted on their bodies. She was even upset about that poor girl in Vietnam ― not because she was burned and crying, but because family newspapers dared to print a picture of a naked girl.

It’s not enough to resist temptation, Sister said. We Catholics must avoid the occasions of sin, and the filth in the media was making that impossible.

I can see what she means, though. Sex is everywhere, and it’s hard not to think about it. There are ads for X-rated movies in the paper all the time, and every day, on my way home from school, I walk past the Blue Meanie shop, where they sell black light posters and freaky comic books, and you can smell the incense whenever the door opens. That afternoon, they had a new display hanging in the window. It was a blow-up of a comic book cover with the title “Young Lust,” and it showed a girl with tears in her eyes standing next to this guy who was looking straight ahead like he was ignoring her. The girl was thinking, “Two weeks ago he was dry-humping me in the elevator! And now ... and now I’m lucky if he remembers my goddamn name!”

I had no idea what “dry humping,” was, but Sister has warned us about lust — even though she never explains what lust is. She just says it’s a sin, like pride and sloth. But I understood “goddamn.” That’s the worst thing you can say. Once in sixth grade I saw a kid hauled out of the schoolyard when one of the nuns overheard him use it. It was a week before we saw hm again, and the next month, he was gone.

Sister Margaret Gabriel calls that store “the textbook definition” of an occasion of sin.

I wasn’t thinking about occasions of anything when I got home that afternoon. I just wanted to get out of my uniform. It felt like summer outside, even though it was still the middle of May. Warmer than average for this day of the year, the radio said. The girls at school wear navy-blue uniforms, and the dark color soaks up the sunlight. My shoulders were hot, and my panties felt damp in the back. As soon as I got inside, I dumped my books on the dining room table and ran up to my room.

It felt good to kick off my clunky saddle shoes and peel off my knee socks. I rubbed my feet a long time, bringing back the color where the socks had dug red grooves. Then I reached behind and undid the zipper. The jumper came off over my head, crackling with static, and when dropped it on my bed I was already unbuttoning my blouse.

Most of the time, I keep my underwear on when I change, but like I said, my panties were damp, and my bra was pinching me under the arms. So when I went to the bathroom, I got rid of them, too, balling them up on the toilet lid. The pink tiles made the bathroom cool and rosy. I stood at the sink naked, wiping myself with a washcloth. I wiped my face, and my pits, and the broad valley between my tits, which was filmy with sweat.

Last year you could have played Monopoly on my chest. It still barely raises a lump under my uniform, but now, standing there with nothing on, I was surprised — and, I have to say, a little impressed — by the way my puppies were filling out. No way you could call them whoppers, but it’s obvious I’ve gone my last summer without a bra. I bounced up and down on my toes, trying to make the mounds jiggle, and I swear they did a bit. Then I swiped down on them with the washcloth, pressing them flat, and they sprang back up when I let go. My nipples are pink like cotton candy. The little rings around them are pink, too, but lighter, so the white underneath seems to shine through. They got small and hard while I washed them, like knots in a pink ribbon. I liked the damp roughness of the cloth, with I rubbed it in circles over the round hills, feeling their shape and weight.

Was it a sin to look at them and touch them like that? To admire them? I took a step back and looked at my whole body. Was I even pretty? I have green eyes the nuns used to notice when I was little — Miss Purple, open your eyes wide for Sister Miriam — but I’m pale all over, and the cinnamon freckles on my nose make me feel like I’m still a kid. Naturally, the first thing anybody sees when they look at me is my long red hair. Everybody has something the other kids make fun of, and my hair is mine. Lucky for me they’ve never seen the hair between my legs, because that’s even brighter — an orange puff-ball pasted on my white body. It’s not all grown in yet, and I could see, under the ball, a dark notch pressed between a pair of puffy white lobe.