Ebony Prunier by Matcham Caine When I was 12 years old I was in my final year of Mosman Park Primary School, a big fish in a tiny pond of infants who still wet their pants, tripped on shoe laces they couldn’t tie, and cried when somebody stole Mum’s sandwiches from the lunchbox. The school was located between Stirling Highway at one end of the suburb, lined with Berlinesque-style housing commission flats, and large homes overlooking the majestic Swan River at the other. It was an anomaly of the school that the city’s poorest and richest kids shared the same classroom. Although envy existed, it generally went the other way: it was the kids from the highway end that had the best toys, the coolest clothes and the greatest freedom. Mosman Park in summer swelters in over 40 degree temperatures for up to two weeks straight. Even at night the temperature can rarely drop below 35 degrees during a heat wave. It’s a dry heat, the kind we call Mediterranean in Australia because we don’t yet have our own name for it. Perth, being spread out and suburban, fills every available space with lawn but in summer it dies and yellows and thins to stalks except on cricket ovals where it's fed by giant sprinklers that look like African birds. Your eyes water and your lips chap and the soles of your feet burn at the beach. Classrooms were more like furnaces for little children. We’d sit there and be cranky and watch the clock until we were let out to drink from the playground trough. That’s during a heat wave. In general, however, strong sea-breezes blow through in the afternoons to displace the warm easterlies that build up overnight in the desert and ravage Perth by morning. The sea breezes are always a welcome relief, cooling the air temperature by several degrees. You’d sit in the classroom and hear the trees rustling and know that the worst of the heat was over for the day. Soon you were having to talk over the noise of the trees and when you went outside you kept one hand near your face to keep your hair out of the way. It was during summer, on alternate Friday nights, that the local cricket club ran movies on an old projector in the pavilion directly behind the school. Too many years have gone by for me to remember the names of all the movies I saw there: westerns, war movies, comedies, disaster flicks. Only one, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, vividly stands out in my memory and that is for its black and risqué humour, as well as for having us on our feet dancing and learning words to songs we’ll probably never forget. I would like to say I fell in love with Bette Davis at these screenings, or developed a passion for John Ford’s subversive direction, but this is not so. Most likely, we were submitted to Pink Panther movies, early Clint Eastwood flicks. In any case, the movies themselves were secondary to being allowed outside our homes on hot nights to meet up with friends, smoke, drink and tentatively explore our sexuality. Ebony, Ebony Prunier, was in both my classes the two years I attended Mosman Park school. But I can’t say I ever knew her all that well, and I imagine most others in my class would say the same. She was beautiful, but a loner. Actually beautiful is not the word. She was too indolent for that, too wanton, with bedroom eyes even then. But she was attractive in her own right, and exuded a maturity and poise that humbled us all. It was said she wasn’t a virgin, that she hung around with 16 year olds who smoked grass as well as cigarettes and bought beer over the counter at the local drive-in. She was friendly with the only aboriginal girl in our school, who finished the year before, and her large and nomadic family who slept and ate as much outside on their verandah as inside. Other than that, nobody took much notice of her. Most boys, myself included, had girlfriends by then but she was never amongst them. On this particular night I met up with a friend and we were sitting in the dark watching whatever film was showing at the time. At interval, a duration of 20 minutes or so, we slipped off into the grass behind the back of the oval for a cigarette. In the dark light of the pavilion there were several small groups like us puffing away. Like I said, I don’t know if anyone actually enjoyed smoking – I certainly didn’t – but the kids from the Stirling Highway end all smoked so we did too. We were turned towards the back deck of the pavilion where we could see Ebony standing alone, staring out into the darkness. We talked about her for some time, about her supposed exploits, and then my mate dared me to ask if I could sit next to her. Sitting next to someone had a precise meaning, known to both boys and girls. It meant that in tiny tiny degrees I would attempt to ravish her, first by placing my arm around the back of her chair, then around her shoulders. If I was very lucky I’d then be able to reach around further and feel the contour of her breast through her top. Finally, if all my lucky numbers came up I’d be allowed to reach inside her shirt and perhaps even inside her bra. This was the holy grail. Nobody in my class had ever attained it. My initial reluctance to approach Ebony was only partly fuelled by the fear she may not play by the rules. The point of the game was to see how much you could get away with, not necessarily to reach the score-line. It was a game in other words that required resistance. The idea of holding Ebony’s breast in my hand excited me, but not if the conquest was to be on her terms, if she willingly allowed me. On the other hand I could see no reason why she should abandon the rules for my benefit, a mere 12 year old, and although fear of outright rejection also played a part, finally I did ask if I could sit next to her and in her calm indolent way she agreed. With the projector again flickering in the sweltering Perth night I slid my chair closer to hers. My mate had positioned himself immediately behind us so he wouldn’t miss anything, including any part of Ebony’s anatomy that might reveal itself. Ebony for her part maintained her dignity and poise, neither responding nor resisting, nor even taking much notice of, the chair clumsily hopping across the floor or my arm’s hesitant movement towards the back of her neck. At this stage I was in familiar territory. More importantly, Ebony was behaving predictably, like other girls I’d attempted this routine on, keeping her eyes firmly fixed to the screen. Then all hell broke loose. She leaned back, turned her mouth to my ear and whispered, “Do you want to finger me?” I’d heard about fingering. It was a kind of pose kids adopted in the playground, knowing about fingering and why girls liked it. Somebody spread a rumour that girls had to be fingered when they menstruated, which is what happens when a girl falls pregnant, thereby implying it was something physiological. Nobody really believed it. We had a sense that girls liked it in its own right and it was a great honour to be asked to take part. In the few seconds between Ebony’s warm breath on the side of my face and my lips whispering “okay” this honour did occur to me, but so too did the realisation I had no idea how to go about it. Ebony sensed my concern. “Don’t worry, I’ll guide you,” she said. She had already unzipped her jeans and now she was wriggling them down her thighs. In the flickering light of the projector I caught a glimpse of her panties and panicked. What if anyone could see? I couldn’t see my mate behind me, and I was too terrified to turn around, but I knew he knew what was going on. His seat squeaked. Something brushed my back. He leaned close so I could feel his warm breath, like Ebony’s. Right at this moment, if Ebony showed any uncertainty, if my pride wasn’t swallowing me whole, I could easily have turned back to the movie and watched it through to the final credits. Only the thought that others would surely hear about the endeavour at school encouraged me. Grimly cradling Ebony’s shoulder, I glanced around the room to check if anybody was watching and took aim with my hand. It landed on her belly just above her panties and I was at once surprised how soft her belly was, so unlike my own. It felt like a mother’s belly, warm and nurturing. For a short time this belly was dispossessed of the girl who sat across from me in class and I let my hand linger. I would have let it linger there indefinitely but Ebony gently took it and, lifting the top of her panties with her other hand, pushed my fingertips just underneath. Then she released my hand and lightly took hold of my arm below the elbow and pushed herself forward on the seat. The landscape of her flesh was more diverse and so much more vast than I could ever have imagined. My hand travelled forever across terrain as immense as the world. This is literally how it seemed and I was unable to reconcile the mysteries of these exotic countries with their genesis, a girl composed of flesh and blood, like me, or so I had thought. Adrenalin packed my veins. My hand, my whole body was shaking. My scalp prickled and broke into a sweat. When I reached the coiled mat of her pubic hair Ebony grabbed my arm tighter. She wanted me to proceed quicker but I wouldn’t. Everything was too new. I didn’t even have pubic hair myself yet and I wanted to stay and enjoy its springy softness. I let it squirrel up between my fingers. Then I brushed it lightly as I continued exploring. Ebony clutched my arm tighter. I thought her body’s topography would be predictable and flat. I thought there would be a gentle slope towards the space between her thighs but there wasn’t, there was a mountain to traverse first. My hand reached her pubic mound and instead of descending began climbing. This is in fact the strongest memory I have. How far would my finger have to climb before it came down the other side? More importantly, how could a young woman’s body, which you can hardly notice in jeans, be so diverse and disorienting? I wanted to stop. I wanted time to think before I went on. My finger slipped inside her before I knew it. Even then I wasn’t sure, despite the moistness. Finally I pressed against her. Yes, there it was, cushioned on all sides. I knew my mate was looking but I couldn’t see him. All three of us sat in complete silence. “What now?” I whispered after jiggling the finger two or three times. I couldn’t think what else to do. Ebony let go of my arm. I felt her body relax and she said, not unkindly, “Nothing, that’s it.” And so it was. I slid my hand out from the front of her jeans and she arched back and did up her zipper. I looked around, holding my finger like it was broken. Apart from my mate, nobody else in the room appeared to be aware of what had just occurred. I was relieved. We watched the rest of the movie in silence, my arm still grimly clutching her shoulder, my legs shaking uncontrollably. None of us ever said anything about that night, including my mate who slipped away as soon as the lights came up. At school Ebony was no more or less aloof than usual, and in the days afterwards I had to convince myself that indeed we had done what now consumed my entire daytime thoughts. I saw Ebony only a few times in the years that followed. She went to a Catholic school while I went to a Protestant one for boys where I wasn’t to see even a girl’s bra until I’d left. We never spoke. I watched her from a distance, in her uniform at the community library, outside a bus stop, at the beach once, and each time I wondered why she’d granted me that one special favour, if she remembered it, and if so whether the memory meant anything to her as it did to me. She continued to look beautiful in that wanton, indolent way and more than once I wanted to sit next to her again.! |