Chapter 9

Flossie held her breath throughout the Christmas Break. She expected a mob to gather outside her house any minute, and haul her out to be tarred and feathered.

But nothing happened. She spent the break trying to figure out how to put wall paper on uneven board walls, with gaps between the boards, and reading an old book on plumbing from the library to see if she could learn how to extend the city water from the toilet to the kitchen.

When school started back up, though, it was the first question that was asked.

“Are we going to have a health class?” asked Minnie, a ten year old black girl.

“I haven’t planned it yet,” said Flossie, irritated that the subject had been refreshed so quickly. There were groans.

“Now, listen to me,” said Flossie, putting her hands on her hips. “Sex is very serious business. That’s why only adults do it. You are children, and I will not do this until I think you’re ready. You can moan and groan about it all you want to, but you be patient!”

The chorus of “Yes Miss Flossie” was there, but there wasn’t much energy behind it.

School went on, and Flossie did try to plan out how to give such a class. She knew now that there would have to be something for every age group, or whoever got left out would squawk. By the same token, she had no clear idea of how much to say ... or withhold from each age group. She had already learned that some of the students were a lot more aware of sexual things than she would have believed. What she remembered about the subject from college was that the reproductive cycle of plants and non-human animals was discussed, with the assumption that children would then be able to make the transfer to human sexuality. There had been a list of films that were recommended, but she had no access to those, nor equipment on which to show them. The only direct references to human sexual behavior had been about the supposed dangers of masturbation, for the boys, and about teaching girls about modesty and control of sexual urges. Flossie knew about trying to control her own sexual urges. It was impossible. When she got aroused, for whatever reason, the only way she knew to bank that fire was with her fingers. Apparently that was even too taboo for college classes, because the only references to masturbation had been concerning boys. The other taboo subject had been birth control. It was actually illegal to discuss that in some states, and the recommendation had been not to approach it at all.

She wished now that, during the Christmas break, she had gone on a trip to one of the big city schools, and learned what they were doing. But she hadn’t. And now she was stuck.

She sat down one night, and wrote up a lesson plan for the younger children. She used hemp as her example, since every household had a rope lying around. The seed of the plant was the “baby”. Those grew into either male, or female plants. Bees and the wind carried the pollen from the male plant to the female plant, which then produced more seeds.

From that point, she had no idea where to go. So, on impulse, she just tried it as it was written. The next day, she announced that the older children would read, outside in the fresh air, while the younger children had health class.

You would have thought a bomb had exploded. There were, of course, the objections of the older children, but Flossie was adamant that the youngest students would take the class first. Then there was an argument about who was young and who was old. Flossie stopped that with one question.

“Which of you girls have started your monthlies?” she asked.

There was dead silence.

“What’s a monthly?” asked Bessie, who was nine.

“If you have to ask, you haven’t started yet,” said Flossie. “You go over there in that corner of the room.”

Bessie stood up, looking hurt somehow and moved. Mariah, who was eight, stood up and went with her. Lucinda and Janet, both seven, followed when Bessie beckoned to them. Johnnie Sue, Ruth Ann, Hilda Mae and Bernadette were left.

“You four go stand in that corner,” she said. The girls, all of them blushing, went quickly.

With the younger boys, she took a different tack. She called them, one by one, to an unoccupied corner and whispered in an ear.

“Do you know where babies come from?”

She got answers from some of them like “The stork brings it ... excepting I’ve never seen a stork before.” Another boy said his little brother came from a pumpkin patch. Those she sent to the corner with the younger girls in it. Leon, of course, was the one who caused her trouble. He was eight, but his answer was simple. “Mamma had my little sister in the bedroom. Ellie was in Mamma’s tummy, and they got her out in the bedroom.”

“But do you know why your Mamma had Ellie in her tummy?” asked Flossie.

“I asked her about that,” he said seriously. “She told me she wanted to have a sister for me, and Daddy gave her one. She wouldn’t tell me where Daddy got a baby to put in her stomach, but I saw them one night. Ellie woke up and was crying, and Mamma didn’t come, so I went to get her. Daddy was lying on top of Mamma nekkid and thrashing around. I asked them what they were doing and Mamma said Daddy was trying to give her another baby. Daddy yelled at me, though, and I had to leave before I could see how he was doing it.”

Flossie decided that she’d put him in the younger group, but she was nervous about it. Her description of pollination didn’t match up too well with what he’d seen.

Jesse said “Like a dog? Kinda?” He went to the older group.

She shooed the older children out, and drew the plants on the board. As soon as that was done she went to the door quickly and opened it. Hilda Mae and Luthor jumped away from the window, where they had been pressing their faces against it.

“Told you so,” came Curtis Lee’s laughing voice from out in the yard.

She didn’t have to say anything. She just glared at them as they scuttled back to the shade under the tree in the yard, where the others sat with an open book.

“So,” said Leon, when she was done. Before she could say anything, he went on. “When I saw Mamma and Daddy in the bed, he was giving her his pollen?”

Flossie blinked. “Well, for our purposes, yes ... that’s exactly what he was doing.”

Then the other children wanted to know what Leon was talking about, and things went downhill. He, of course, was almost eager to tell them what he’d seen.

“I seen my parents doing that too!” said Otis, who had said his brother had come from a pumpkin patch. “They yelled at me too!”

“That’s because sex, when it happens with adults, is a very private thing,” explained Flossie. “You don’t run around naked in front of people do you?” All of them shook their heads agitatedly. “Well, sex needs to be done naked, like the plant needs to be standing in the wind, and that’s what makes it private.”

In the end, she was amazed at how easily they accepted the “facts” she gave them. Bessie had wanted to know about “monthlies” again, and Flossie had just said it was a time her mother would talk to her about when it happened, and that it just meant she was growing up and getting ready to be a woman. That was taken with a nod, and just like that, the class was over.

It had gone so well she was amazed.

Of course, with the younger kids out of the way, the older kids began to pester her endlessly. The success of her first attempt made her feel a little better, but she knew she’d have to give the older children more than hemp plants. That they already seemed to be aware of masturbation, at a minimum, required that. That they also seemed to be familiar with what Leon had described ... and knew much more about what was going on in those situations, made her feel like she would have to talk about things that even embarrassed her. She knew there was a balance to be struck. She just didn’t know how much weight to put on each side of the issue. Because of that, she planned her presentation very carefully.

The best laid plans very often do go awry. That’s certainly what happened to Flossie. Part of it was because some of her students were much more advanced, at least compared to Flossie, than she would have dreamed. But probably the biggest thing that blew her careful presentation out of the water was that the time she finally decided to give the class just happened to come at a point in the growing season where there was little, if anything, for the children to do. That meant their afternoons were free.

She had planned on talking to Ruth Ann privately, to “preview” the course. Then, while she gave the course to the other teens, Ruth Ann would be asked to take charge of the little ones, reading, or doing simple math or whatever. She explained her plan to them, so they would understand why Ruth Ann got the privilege of having the class first.

But, when the kids determined, between themselves, that they could all stay late, after the younger children had gone, they demanded that their health class be given then. They sensed that they would be much more free to ask questions, if the little ones were nowhere around.

Flossie was therefore flying blind, once more, on the fateful day when the class was scheduled to be given. She had eight very attentive students when they settled into desks that had been rearranged into a circle. A psychologist might have smiled when he saw that, once everyone had settled into a seat, somehow, the circle had males on one side, and females on the other.

Trying to set a light atmosphere, by making a joke, Flossie asked “As you may have heard, it is widely said that many of you were brought to your parents by the stork.” She waited for laughter. There was none.

“Or were found in a pumpkin patch.” she added, uncomfortably.

“Miss Flossie, if all you’re going to do is tell tales, I don’t see the point in this class.” said Johnnie Sue somewhat flippantly. There were grumbles of assent from many of the others.

Flossie pushed on. “Well, that’s what some children are told. It is not true, of course. Who knows how babies are actually made?”

The students all looked at each other, but nobody spoke. There were no snickers, though. This was all being taken very seriously.

Flossie was suddenly unable to launch into the physical description of what brought about the fertilization of a woman’s egg.

“Okay, well, then, let’s start by using the example of the hemp plant,” she said, slipping back into the familiar. She went through it, and they actually listened. When she was finished she said “Are there any questions so far?”

Luthor raised his hand.

“But people don’t have pollen,” he said. He looked around his body like he expected to see dusty flakes of pollen on him somewhere.

“They have sperm,” said Ruth Ann. She blinked, as if she were surprised she had spoken.

“That’s right,” said Flossie, happy beyond belief that someone else was talking too. “The man has sperm. It acts in much the same way as pollen does. When the sperm comes into contact with a woman’s egg, it can fertilize it, and a baby is made.”

“Women don’t lay eggs!” blurted Moses.

No one made fun of him.

“That’s true,” said Flossie. “A woman’s eggs are up inside her body, in a special place. They don’t actually come out like they would in a chicken, and even if they did, they’re so small you couldn’t even see one without a microscope.”

She had to explain what a microscope was then. She described it as a very strong magnifying glass.