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especially affection. I’d certainly rather be yelled at than kissed. Displays of that sort gave me thejitters, and my heart would pound as though someone had scared me on Halloween. I hated it when Desi kissed Lucy or when Ralph Cramden became all mushy on
The Honeymooners
. I always left the room before Alice threw her arms around Ralph, forgiving him for his weekly indiscretion, like bowling with Norton on her birthday. Whenever I hadn’t seen someone in a long time, like my grandmother or some visiting priest who was a relative, I was expected to kiss them, or say I’d missed them, or express some sentiment that I really dreaded. The Indians who I knew dealt with affection the way I did. They left things understood.
    There was something comforting in the RCA Victor Indian’s stoicism, and I became close to him, realizing that although he didn’t gush with approval he never criticized, nor could I hurt his feelings. Because he was just
there
as a kind of emotional witness, for some reason I began telling him how I felt about things. He never reacted to anything I said, which gave me a strange sense of freedom. At first I looked for a reaction so I could gauge what to say next, and when it wasn’t there I pushed on, telling secrets I didn’t know I had.
    Sometimes I told him all the things that worried me. I felt I wasn’t like other people, which was in itself terrifying, since I had no idea why or what happened to people who were “different” when they grew up. Would I be a weird adult like Warty who ran the dump? I knew it was a fact that people who were bad burned in hell. I got yelled at for being bad more than almost anyone at school, certainly more than any other girl. What if I perpetually burned in hell and every day cursed my wretched soul for not being good on earth, which was such a tiny testing patch compared to eternity? I told the Indian that every day I turnedover a “new leaf” (a phrase often suggested by my mother) resolving to be a good girl, which I knew meant being a quiet one. Mary Alice Cary, the girl who wore a large bow squarely on the top of her head, was always quiet, even in the washroom lineup as she offered up “ejaculations” — the rhythmic repeating of religious phrases which become trancelike, such as “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph” said hundreds of times. I became determined to perpetually ejaculate or “offer up” my silence to God. (“Ejaculations” was a word that Dr. Small, the psychiatrist I was sent to see after stabbing Anthony McDougall, found interesting and he encouraged me to describe its meaning on repeated occasions.)
    These “new leaves” never lasted more than ten minutes. They withered when the first chill of my normal personality blew in by 9:15 the next morning. I was either asking “doubting Thomas” questions (as Mother Agnese called my religious inquiries), or talking to my neighbour in the O through P aisle, or getting out of my seat. I would rather have been beaten or punished than be made to sit in my seat for four hours at a stretch. By twelve o’clock I felt as though I were in an iron lung. In fact I liked punishments, such as cleaning the lunch room or peeling gum off desks, far more than sitting there. I assumed that everyone wanted to talk and move around as much as I did, but all of the other girls and many of the boys were made of stronger stuff. They succeeded in “offering up their desires to the Holy Ghost,” as Sister Immaculata suggested. The devil started me fidgeting by 9:15 and by 9:30 I was up and moving. After I explained all this to the Indian I felt better and sensed his approval. I figured he wasn’t bothered by any of this, since he still came back, and therefore, I must be OK.
    It was definitely a give-and-take relationship. I also took greatpains to entertain the Indian as an audience. I felt that although he never actually beamed,