"Well, at least I can wash the dishes," Whitney said when Uncle Jeremy had set out for work. Not that loading the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher was any large chore. She'd begged a visit to her Aunt Cassandra on the excuse that she would be more help caring for the newborn baby than she would increase the burden of housework. And then her period had finally surprised her the night of her arrival.

"Don't sweat the petty stuff, Whitney. It's not the first time those sheets have seen a little blood; it's part of being a woman. Anyway, I'm going to exploit you all week; I thought that was the reason for your visit."

"You're sweet, Aunt Cassandra."

"And, when you've loaded the dishwasher, you can hold Joshua."

"Really!" Whitney said. She rushed to clear the table.

"But bring me a spit cloth first." Whitney brought back a diaper from the changing table in the bedroom. Her cot was in what would be Joshua's room; but he was, at two months, a little young to be away from his mother all night. She watched as her Aunt Cassandra carefully placed the baby on her shoulder and pounded on his back. It looked a little rough to Whitney. Then she finished loading the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher.

While her aunt closed the cup of her bra and then her blouse, Whitney carefully supported Josh's head in the bend of her elbow and the rest of his weight on her arm. He was such a dear! He looked up at her while she sang to him, and then sank into sleep.

"You can put him down now," Aunt Cassandra said.

"Do I have to?"

"You'll tire of that soon enough. But come into the living room and talk to me." They settled on opposite ends of the couch, Joshua still in her arms. "Is there anything you want to talk to me about?"

"Not really," Whitney said. Everything was fine, now. She felt a little guilty about imposing on her aunt, even. But she did plan on cleaning the place during her school break.

"I'll probably try to get to the store this afternoon. Is there anything you need? Do you have enough Tampax?"

"Sure." Although she almost hadn't brought the box. "I have a couple of cheap recipes that I know how to cook. I'll write out the ingredients for you and then I'll be able to relieve you in the kitchen for two nights."

She did fix lunch. Then, having been checked out on her ability to change Josh's diapers, she held him while Aunt Cassandra readied herself for the store. "I'll be back in a little bit," she said. "Feel free to munch or watch TV while he's asleep."

"Do you mind if I make a phone call? I have a phone card in my purse."

"Be my guest."

This time, she did set Josh down in his crib when he fell asleep. She made sure that he was on his back and tucked the covers over him. Then she made her phone call. She was running the vacuum when her aunt came back.

Aunt Cassandra did work her, but she also let her hold Joshua whenever he wasn't at her breast or in Uncle Jeremy's arms. The next afternoon, when Aunt Cassandra brought a broom and a bag from the store into the living room though, she insisted that Whitney leave him in his crib and again take the other end of the couch.

"Like holding him, don't you?" she asked.

"He's so ... I don't know, trusting or something. And warm."

"Tell me true. Any time in the future, if Joshua and I wanted absolutely opposite things, can you imagine siding against him?"

Could she? Against that warm bundle of trust and those tiny hands on her fingers. "Well, if what he wanted was wrong..." But Whitney wasn't even certain about that.

"Oh sure. You don't love a kid if you can't say 'no.'" Whitney had often thought how different her aunt and her mother were, but that line showed their sisterhood. "The thing is, you weren't much older than that when I first held you."

Whitney had heard the stories. For that matter, she did trust Aunt Cass to side with her. That's why she had called her in the first place.

"Honey," her aunt continued, "you've been a wonderful help these two days, and I knew that you wanted to see Joshua. But I still wasn't ready for a visit. And you're not the sort of kid to suggest a visit the day before you get on the bus. There was worry in your voice when you called."

Was she that transparent? "Everything's fine now. Really."

"And you're not the sort of girl to let her period take her by surprise."

"I said that I was sorry." Not that she couldn't see where this was going.

"How late was it?"

"Four days, maybe five; but everything is fine now."

"This time. Did you tell the boy?"

"Yeah. I asked if I could call, remember."

"What did he say?"

"He was out, but I told his mother to tell him that I was having a great time. He knew what I meant."

"When you told him that you might have caught. What did he say then?"

"That it couldn't have happened. I mean I still had my panties on, but he sprayed them good. He was right."

"Well, I would never recommend that procedure to a couple trying to have a baby," Aunt Cassandra said, "but it was a risk."

"I know that it was stupid." It hadn't felt stupid, though. It had felt exciting.

They'd been kissing for an hour, and she was hot. Jim had kissed her breasts and petted her thighs. Finally, he'd eased her panties down far enough to allow his fingers inside the leg bands. She'd writhed under his ministrations, feeling the climax come closer and closer. When it had reached her, he'd covered her mouth with a long kiss. Then she'd tugged the panties tight to keep that moisture inside.

It was also a promise that they'd made to each other, that one of them would always be covered down there. For Jim had dropped his trousers down around his knees and had crawled on top of her. He had covered her and clasped her legs between his. That had seemed safer, but it had also felt as if she were his captive. He'd held her tight while his hot stiffness had stroked along the insides of her thighs. She'd reached down as far as she could, and he'd moved up until her hands were on his hips.

She'd enjoyed the strokes on her thighs, enjoyed his hands on her breasts and his mouth reaching hers on the top of his strokes, enjoyed the driving force of the muscles clenching under her hands. Most of all, she'd enjoyed the sense of his excitement. He'd been puffing like a steam engine, grimacing as if he were under torture; and it was all because of her.

He had pressed into her panties, providing a sensation which was exciting all by itself, and she'd felt him shaking above her and throbbing right there. Then her panties had been much wetter than she had made them. She'd had to rinse them and wring them out in a gas-station women's room. Bothersome as cleaning up had been, she'd replayed the first part of the evening in her mind again and again. She'd repeated those memories for the two weeks until her period had been due.

Then her memories had turned to terror, but she knew that she was panicking unnecessarily; it was only a day late. When it was two days late, she'd talked to Jim.

"Couldn't happen," he said. "I wasn't in you. You didn't even have your panties off."

"But I'm never this late. I'm regular as a clock. What if... ?"

"If it is true, then we'll have to decide. I'll try to find the money for the doctor. In the other alternative, all I have to buy is the license and the ring."

"You'd marry me?"

"I will marry you. If you'll have me. I just don't want it to be now and this way. I think that you are making a mountain out of a molehill; we're talking 'what if' again. I'd vote for an abortion, if it turns out to be real -- and if I had a vote. But I don't; it has to be your decision. I'll back that decision. Anyway, whatever other problems marriage right now would bring, I'd really enjoy sleeping beside you every night. I just think that you are borrowing trouble."

And, in the outcome, she had been borrowing trouble. But she'd called Aunt Cass that night. Aunt Cass had been available when she'd needed her shoulder to cry on, had thought that she would need her shoulder; and she deserved more attention than Whitney was giving her.

She brought her attention back from the past. "Catch!" Aunt Cassandra said. She flipped something through the air. After catching it, Whitney looked closely. Her face burned when she saw that it was a condom. "It's the wrong time to blush. When every student in your school is talking about that stupid Whitney girl who let herself get pregnant, that's the time to be embarrassed."

Was she supposed to give it to Jim? She'd die. Anyway, he'd take it as an invitation to intercourse; and who could blame him. She wasn't ready for that yet, was a lot less ready after the recent scare.

"I don't know..." she began.

"That's why you came to your Aunt Cassandra. I do know, I'm going to teach you. And if your mother hears about this, you'll never hold Joshua again.

"Now take this broomstick, pretend its your boyfriend -- what is his name?"

"Jim."

"Pretend that the broomstick is Jim. Well, not all of him. I want you to open the package and roll the rubber onto the broomstick as if you were rolling it on Jim."

The broom was some sort of industrial-grade push broom with an awfully heavy handle. Whitney fumbled with the packet. It was greasy, and she started from the wrong side and had to flip it over. Finally, though, she got almost all of it unrolled.

"Is he really that long?" Aunt Cassandra was obviously trying to hold back her laughter.

"Not really." She rolled it up to where she guessed it would go on Jim.

"Okay. You got it on, which is the main thing. That little flap at the end is where the sperm should end up. If you buy a box which doesn't have that, unroll a little before you place it against his dong. That'll give them a place to go. Now give it to me."

Aunt Cass rolled it back up, taking obvious care to get it into almost the original shape.

"These things are use-once. And it is his job to remove it and dispose of it. For practice, however, I think we'll reuse this one, and take it off carefully. It's not as if a tear is any danger so long as you're using a broomstick. Now, think again. This is Jim, or the next boy."

"Hey! What do you think I am?" Whitney was fairly sure that Jim was the one. There wouldn't be a next one.

"Or imagine that it's Brad Pitt. I don't care. Just don't treat it like a broomstick. C'mon, Whitney. This is what the guy thinks is the center of his being, the center of your relationship. Point again about where it would join his body."

Whitney chose a place. She wasn't at all sure, anymore. "Now put two fingers of your left hand around it there. You can hold it firmly, he won't even mind a gentle squeeze, but don't hold it tighter than you would want him to hold your arm." She got two fingers and her thumb around the broomstick. "Hold it with the fingers. Place your thumb on the side closest to you." She did everything she was told.

"Now," Aunt Cass continued, "that's his ego you're holding, his sacred identity. Touch the right side to the top. He'll feel that and react to it. Slowly, as if the organ meant as much to you as it does to him, roll it down until you reach your left hand. Now, you would let go of it. Instead, take a lower grip. Okay, roll it down to cover the last little bit. When you actually do it, make sure to brush the pubic hairs out of the way."

She felt embarrassment over her clumsiness, but also embarrassment over the pictures that Aunt Cass's words brought to her mind.

"I really think that you have it," Aunt Cass said. She waited while Whitney rolled the condom back off into a tight ring. "Now look at these."

"These" were a box of 11 more rubbers, and several compacts. "Thanks," she said. "I think."

"Well," Aunt Cass said, "it's not the sort of gift that I'll be offended if you don't use. It's just that I want you to have them when you want to have them, if that makes any sense at all." It sort of did. "These compacts all are empty, but they all latch well. You can have one or two of them for carrying in your purse. A couple of rubbers will fit inside any of them.

She took a deep breath. "Look, put the broom in your room and hide these and the practice rubber in there somewhere. Don't hide the broom. If we need it, it will be where you used it last. Anyway, you know how to put it on. You can practice without an audience."

Whitney followed instruction. Her aunt went to start dinner preparations.

"Your father," Aunt Cass continued when Whitney joined her, "gave me the sort of advice that only a brother-in-law can. A father can't say it to his daughter. I was getting towards the end of puberty, and feeling weird -- I had all these feelings and all this equipment that was new or newly active. I was supposed to be something which I had no idea how to be, and I wondered how I stacked up. You know how that is." Whitney knew quite well. "He took me for a walk around the block, we circled it four times. What he told me was that boys did think about me as sexy; I didn't need to worry about that. Boys my age didn't look at me and figure that I had less bosom than the playmate of the month; they were trying to get a guess at the shape of my breasts. And, he said, they were trying to figure out what was between my legs. So I never needed to worry about them thinking I was sexy.

"The next step, he said, was that a boy had the same worries I had with a lot more to justify it. The boy thought about sex morning, noon, and night; and he was pimply-faced with a breaking voice. He told me that when I found the man I wanted, he would almost certainly think of me as sexy; he would almost certainly not think of himself as sexy. If I found a way for me to think of him as sexy, and live in a way that showed that I thought him sexy: then the man would not only think of sex when he thought of me, he would think of me when he thought of sex. Which, your father suggested, was about a hundred times an hour."

Whitney nodded.

"Now, he didn't take that any further. The next time that he mentioned that discussion was in a letter after I told you guys about the pregnancy. But I'm not a total dummy. Do you really think that I took all those psych. courses because I was fond of rats?"

"That's what Mom always said."

"Well, not the four legged kind. You and Kristin are only two years apart; that's why you always can tell what the other is thinking."

"Pfft!" Whitney could hardly remember one occasion when her baby sister had understood what she had said, let alone read her mind.

"Well, must be. You wouldn't think that my sister could speak for me, otherwise. Anyway, when you've been to college and seen the wide assortment of boys available, you make your choice. Then come see your Aunt Cassandra about being happy with that choice." Whitney really believed that she had already made her choice. But she knew that tone of voice, the seriousness trying to hide its seriousness. Her mother couldn't be wheedled out of such positions; she was sure that Aunt Cass couldn't either. She wondered if she and Kristin sounded alike to everyone but themselves. Horrible thought.

But that night, with everyone else asleep, Whitney thought about her lesson.

She dug the opened condom out of the bag and dragged the broom over to the bed. Resting the broom over a chair made both the angle and the height more realistic. Was Jim that large around? He'd sure looked huge the first time she'd seen him, but she'd come to accept that organ as just another part of him over later petting sessions. But Aunt Cass had told her not to treat it as just another part.

She remembered the first time that she'd let him undo her bra. "Ohh, Whit, ney" he'd said, dragging it out into three words. He'd touched her skin lightly, as if it might bite his fingers; and then his lips had attached to her nipple and sucked until it hurt. She hadn't meant to let him kiss her breasts that time, had meant to save that until later. But he had seemed so worshipful at first. Maybe that was how she should treat his organ, as something important in itself, the way he had treated her breast.

The way, for that matter, he had reacted to her lower hair the time that she hadn't worn panties under her jeans. He'd felt it often enough by then, felt the lower and more important parts; but when he'd pulled the jeans down and seen that she had nothing on underneath, he'd taken one deep breath and stared and stared. "It's so beautiful," he'd said, "you're so beautiful." She'd been afraid for a minute that he would kiss that.

Should she kiss him there? Should she express its importance that way? Girls did, but -- however excited he made her -- what she and Jim had between them was an expression of love. Kissing there seemed plain dirty to her. So she wouldn't.

She would treat it as important, though. She sat on the bed so that the broomstick was level with her breasts and pointing almost straight towards her face. She brought her fingers around it in a light grip. What would it feel like? Not as hard as this, but warmer. And alive. Every time she had seen Jim's it had been moving slightly. Which was why she had to hold it.