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Show 6 from me one day Leon Palmer peed his pants and the urine ran down his leg and onto the floor and then in a thin yellow stream straight across the floor toward me. It wriggled a little, like a snake, and like a snake elongating itself came on toward me, fascinating me. But Miss Turner did not see it, and Leon sat with his eyes attentively upon his reading book like an angel in church, and I began to get nervous. The stream crept toward me like a fuse burning up to me. I looked at angel face Leon, I looked at golden Miss Turner, I looked at the fuse. No one saw. The fuse burned right up to touch one of my shoes and I could not even move my foot, paralyzed. Of course it was then that Miss Turner looked down. Boom, her eyes widened, (to, her mouth said, and she looked at me with all her trust and all her love gone up in a puff of smoke. I shook my head like the cuckoo bird gone wild in a clock blown to smithereens. Him! I cried. I pointed an accusing finger at his damned angel face: HIM! Of course Leon was convicted on a wet pant leg. So why did I always feel a little guilty? Strange to me now, I didn't fall in love again, not with anyone my own size, until the fifth grade. Was I staying faithful to Katie Cannon? Or was it only that Noreen Johnson didn't ripen in my eye until then, she of such starched dresses and fat yellow curls that I could not resist her. We made eyes at one another, but it was my own mother who made the date. She dressed me in little pants and little shirt and little tie, all formerly Henry's, and drove me willing or not over to the Johnsons', Mrs. Johnson coming out to the car with a firm grip on Noreen, whose dress was starchier than ever, her curls fatter, her pretty face looking stoned. Our first date. I looked like a Munchkin, she smelled of Ivory soap. I didn't believe myself at the time, I still can't. From this distance I see two puppets getting into the |
