Chapter 3: Rose

Smacking her gum, tapping her feet, and smirking at parents …

Rose

Chapter 3 of Sex in the 7th Grade

From his office window the principal watched a tall brown-haired girl weave her way across the vacant playground. It was Rose.

From his office window the principal watched a tall brown-haired girl weave her way across the vacant playground. It was Rose. Why was she out there on a Sunday? Soon he knew as he saw four boys sitting in a spanking new ’77 Chevy wagon parked on the road at the far end of the playground. A boy in the back stuck his head and arm out the window. He shouted obscenities and gestured at the girl who had just spent the afternoon with them.

As she stumbled across the baseball diamond, Rose smiled and waved without looking back. She didn’t care that the boys hated her for doing what they had wanted her to do. “Fine. Good. Fuck you! Dick heads!” she yelled as she stood on first base trying to focus on the hands of her watch.

Cecil Dunn opened the office window and leaned into the late November chill. He was sure the girl was drunk, stoned, or both. “Come on in, Rose,” he yelled, “I want to talk with you.”

“Ooh no!” Rose hooted hiding a smile in her hand. One of the boys in the car thrust his arm in the air and yelled something at the principal as they sped off into the late afternoon leaving a half can of warm been spilling its way toward a leaf-choked gutter.

“Don’t worry, Rose. I just want to talk,” Dunn called. “Come on. There’s nobody here but me. I’ll meet you at the side door.”

Rose paused between first base and home plate. She grinned and sang “I’m-a-gonna’ get it now. The principal wants to see me in his office.”

In tight jeans and a summer jacket, with no hat or socks, Rose was shivering with her nose pressed against the glass when Cecil opened the door. He’d taken a detour into the nurse’s office for a squirt of mouthwash.

“‘About time,” Rose blurted as she bolted past the 40 year old man who cared a lot more about kids like Rose than he did about whatever he’d been doing at his desk. She took the stairs two at a time onto the second floor and down the hall to the main office.

“Stinks in here!” Rose shouted as she turned into the outer-office, then around the huge desk, past the principal’s door and into the nurse’s side-office where she vaulted onto the cot slamming it against the wall. Then she worked her loafers loose, let them drop, and reclined in a pose not unlike some paintings she’d seen of Cleopatra.

Cecil Dunn tried not to smile as he stood in the doorway. “Thanks for coming in.” Then he saw a small stream of plaster dust falling from a hole that the metal headboard had poked in the wall. “But take it easy next time, huh.” He pointed.

“What stinks?” Rose held her nose over her squinty smile. Her eyes sparkled.

“Cigar,” Cecil said grinning. “Caught me! So, Rose, what’s happening? What have you been into?”

“Into! What have I been into? God,” she sat up and pretended she was deeply hurt. “Nothin’! ain’t been into nothin’. You don’t smell nothin’ do ya?” Rose cupped her hands to her mouth and nose and blew her breath across the room. “I’m as clean as clean as clean can be. See. Hey, that rhymes. Clean as clean can be, see!”

“Come on, Rose, no more games. Beer, pot, or what?” Cecil moved toward Rose to get a better look. Her eyes were clear, big, brown and innocent. There was a tiny constellation of freckles high on each cheek. Her smile was broad. Her teeth clean.

“Pot!” Rose laughed. “You call it pot?”

“Whatever.”

“Beeeeerrrrrr” Rose blurted the word as if to fill the room. “Lots and lots. Can’t you tell?” In an instant Rose was off the cot speaking her words within inches of the principal’s hawk like face. “Beer and cigarettes. Nothing else.” Cecil wiped his chin on his sleeve as Rose retreated. So, what’ja gonna do?” Rose bounced up and down on the edge of the cot. “Call the cops?”

“I’m not going to do anything,” Cecil said, “I just want you to quiet down and sober up before you head home. Here, have a piece of gum.” Cecil tossed Rose a chunk of Double-Bubble from where nurse Cramer kept in a small jar on the medicine counter.

“You’re a sweety-pie.” Rose leaned back, swinging her feet back onto the bed, and began chomping. “Hey, want’a lie with me? She patted the cot beside her and raised her eyebrows.

“I’ve got work to do. I’ll check in with you later.” Dunn went into his adjoining office and closed the door. He suddenly felt lost and alone. He felt a gnawing in his stomach as he glanced at the clock. Not tea time yet, he thought. Shit, what a beautiful kid, what a beautiful fucked up kid. In another time, another place, he would have loved to have gone to Rose, to have held her and touched her, to have talked with her and yes to have given her pleasure — pleasure as he knew none of those high school boys possibly could give her. He had read that in some cultures it was the older men who were responsible for initiating love-making for girls. He liked that idea. And he thought perhaps the first love-making for a boy too ought to be in the hands of an older woman — that’s how he had learned. Cecil rubbed his face and blew a sigh. Damn. He wanted a drink. He was emptying his ashtray when Rose gave him a start, bellowing through the office wall. “I’m freezing!”

“Use the blanket, knucklehead!” Cecil bellowed back.

“Oh, yeah, but first I gotta,” Rose jumped from the cot, caught herself on the counter, banged into the door, and tumbled into the office restroom “peeeeee!!!!!” She slammed the restroom door.

“Okay, okay,” Cecil could picture the plaster flowing again from the hole in the wall. He held his head.

Rose had entered eighth grade with the reputation of being a big mouth, a smart ass, and — according to some of the male teachers in the teachers’ room — an easy lay for any number of older boys. The first ten weeks of eighth grade had done little to tarnish her image. She attended school about two days a week, and when she did, she came late, ending up in the office where she usually conferred with the school nurse, Leslie Cramer — L.C. for short. These contacts with the nurse angered many teachers who expected Rose to be in class even though they didn’t want her there. So, the teachers complained to Fred Blanchard, the guidance counselor, who championed their case against the girl who refused to set foot in his office. Blanchard was upset with the nurse because she coddled kids who needed nothing more than, as he put it, “to stand up on their own hind legs.” And he hated Dunn for his new-fangled views on middle school education. What the hell was a middle school anyway? Blanchard and most everybody else in Mountainview wanted to keep the junior high just the way it was when they had gone there.

Of the five teachers who had Rose in class, only her social studies teacher could handle her mouth, and that was by allowing her to use it — chewing gum. Chewing was her thing. When Rose wasn’t cracking corny, off-color jokes, she was chomping loudly on a wad of gum, or snapping bubbles between her back teeth. Often the gum-snapping got her a trip to the office, just what she wanted, a chance to chat with L.C. When L.C. wasn’t in, Rose sat next to the huge desk in the front office, where she was an embarrassment to any civilized person: smacking her gum, tapping her feet, and smirking at parents who might be registering a new 7th grader, or at anyone else seeking an appointment with the principal. Rose had a very tender way of approaching strangers with comments like: “Real nice shoes — are there any more like them at the flea market?” Or “Did you hear about the eighth grade girl who had to leave school last week?” And then Rose would cup her hands so the principal’s secretary couldn’t hear her and whisper “pregnant.”

To minimize such antics, the secretary would often give Rose some stamps to lick over at the side table, or have her sit in Cecil’s office until L.C. could see her. Like the guidance counselor and most others in the community, the secretary disliked Cecil for his efforts to change the school, and for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why she had to put up with Rose. In the old days, Rose would have been sent to the Tingsley School for Youth over in West Atlee.

For his part, Cecil thought his secretary was a horse’s ass, and he cursed her under his breath while he smiled and deferred to her. He suspected that her husband drank too much. And he had often seen her picking her nose, a habit that irritated the hell out of him, for it was also one of his own.

Indeed, Cecil had more respect for the kids at the school, even the troublemakers, than he did for most of the faculty and staff. Rose was an intelligent kid, and he liked her spirit. She got good grades in social studies in spite of all her absences. The way Cecil saw it, good teachers could get good results. But Phyllis Frucnagle in language arts and Greg Hartmann in science couldn’t understand why Rose was permitted to take make-up social studies tests and be graded at the same level as all the other students who were in class every day and did their homework regularly. It wasn’t fair. So Hartmann and Frucnagle campaigned against the social studies teacher. Furthermore, the idea of letting Rose chew gum in class in exchange for a little work was an evil bargain, just another example of how the girl was pulling down the standards of the school.

Rose was the best gymnast in the junior high but wouldn’t join the club. She could shoot the eye out of the basket but wouldn’t join the team. The coaches required a no-smoking pledge signed by every athlete. Rose refused. Other kids signed, and some smoked anyway. But Rose had a fierce honesty about her. Good kids are generally better liars than bad kids. At least that’s the way Cecil saw it.

“What in the name of God are you doing in there?” Cecil shouted at the restroom door. “You’ve been in there for an hour.”

“Damn,” Rose shouted back, “Lost an earring.”

Cecil heard the toilet flush. Rose stumbled into the outer office rubbing her head and scowling at Cecil. “Remember,” she said shaking her finger at the principal, “not a word to anybody.” She adjusted the earring with a look of supreme importance and gave herself the eye in the window of Cecil’s door. “There,” she grinned. “How do I look? Good, huh!” Without waiting for a reply she bounced back into L. C’s office and again leaped onto the cot that again slammed against the wall that again gouged the wall that again caused Cecil to hold his head. “Damn it all, Rose!” He wondered what L.C. would think at the size of that hole. Now he knew he’d have to call her. “How about if I call L.C. tonight?” he asked. “She really should know why you were here, don’t you think? And she will know, given the crater you’ve dug in her wall.”

In an instant Rose was off the cot and in Cecil’s face. “Please don’t tell her.” She pulled on the sleeve of his pullover. “Please, pretty please.”

“Hands off. We’ll talk about L.C. later, Cecil insisted. “Now you get in there and keep quiet and don’t slam that cot, understand. We’ll be out of here in twenty minutes. I’ll drive you home.”

“But I’m cold,” Rose pouted as she crawled gently back onto the cot and wrestled with a heavy green army blanket.

“I’ll have to call L.C. tonight,” Cecil thought as he looked at the clock, “already 5:30, and stories about Rose and those boys will be all over town by morning.”

As Rose began to snore loudly, her head completely buried under the heavy blanket, Cecil looked down at some papers that had meant something to him earlier in the day. No use. His gut was screaming for a belt of vodka. He got up and walked into the dark hallway and tried the water fountain. “Shit.” Water pressure was always a problem in Mountainview. The drain was clogged with gum and phlegm. “Damn Rick, lazy bastard,” Cecil muttered as he started down the hall toward the gym.

Actually, Cecil liked the custodian in spite of the man’s general incompetence. Rick was a clever fellow who could smile at those who looked down on him. He had extra keys that the teachers often needed, and he knew how to use them to his advantage. Teachers usually had two keys at most, one to the building, one to their room. Rick had dozens, and he could always locate one on his chain very quickly, or slowly, or not at all.

In the gym, Cecil’s thoughts wandered back to the girl on the cot. Rose spent more time with L.C. than any other kid, and L.C., in spite of what others thought, was a professional through and through — she’d not give a kid all that time without good reason. There had to be something more than L.C. was telling him.

Cecil stood on the free throw line and dribbled a basketball. He recalled the closing seconds of a high school game he had played some twenty years ago. He had been fouled going up for a shot that he missed as the final buzzer sounded. And his team was behind by one point. He could win the game by making two foul shots. All the other players from both teams went to the sidelines as he stepped to the foul stripe. The first shot, he remembered, had bounced around the rim before dropping through. The crowd cheered, and then went silent. He knew the second shot was a winner when it left his hands — underhand from between the legs in those days. It fell through. He was a hero that night, but not to himself. Cecil had wanted to be a football player like his dad had been, and winning that game didn’t change what he had yearned for so hard and so long. Nothing would change that. Ever.

He took a few more shots, still wondering what L.C. knew about Rose that he didn’t. Late in September Rose had moved out of her house and into her older sister’s place down the street. Rumor was that Rose moved so she could smoke her sister’s grass. But Rose then moved back home as suddenly as she’d moved out. L.C. knew why, but wouldn’t tell Cecil, and he knew better than to press her.

Cecil made ten straight foul shots. Eleven. Twelve. He no longer shot underhand. Now thirteen. Fourteen. Is Rose pregnant? No, she knew better than that. Is she selling her ass? Of course not. Sex for her was “a statement,” that’s what she had told L.C. Something like smoking, she had said.

Cecil pounded the ball on the floor. This was getting serious. Fifteen straight. Now sixteen. Cecil’s resurrected his memory of a thirteen-year-old girl who had left home and spent a weekend in the boys’ dormitory at Gildore College. She’d made $400. But that wasn’t Rose. He missed seventeen. Missed eighteen. Damn it all! He made nineteen and twenty. Yeah! Eighteen out of twenty. Not bad for a forty year-old. Ninety percent. Not bad at all. Now his gut ached again for a drink. He deserved it. Ninety percent! He hoped there was enough vodka at home for several belts. Cheap stuff. Popov. Eight bucks a half-gallon. He and his wife Sally went through two bottles a week. He drank most of it.

On the way back to the office, Cecil stopped into the shop to pick up a box of hard wood chunks left over from the seventh grade woodworking class — breadboards. Every seventh grade boy in Mountainview made a breadboard for his mother, just like Cecil had done when he was in seventh grade. He’d use these excess pieces for kindling.

Back at the office he found a less lively Rose. Wide-eyed and yawning, she dug two aspirin from her back pocket, and took them with a cup of water at the nurse’s sink. She splashed her face, wiped her hands on the backside of her jeans, grabbed her jacket, and followed Cecil out of the building without saying a word.

“I’ll drive you to the end of your street,” Cecil said as they got into the car.

Neither spoke as they drove the half mile through town.

Northern New Hampshire grows dark early in late November, but Cecil still thought it best to drop Rose off some distance from her house. Someone would recognize his car, and he didn’t need that.

“Thanks,” Rose said as she reached for the door handle.

“Sure, Rose, I’ll see you tomorrow, but wait….” Cecil put his hand on her shoulder. “How about I give L.C. a call tonight and let her know you’ve been in her office, okay?”

“Okay,” Rose smiled, “sure, what’s the difference. Give her a call. Tell her I’ll be in to see her first period tomorrow. If I make it in at all….”

Rose slid out of the car and slammed the door. Cecil cringed. He hated having his car door slammed. He especially disliked it when hitch-hikers did it. Such an ungrateful thing to do. No reason to think they’d ever ride together again, he guessed. They all did it.

Cecil gave a little honk as he drove off. He wondered what would happen if anybody found out that he’d let Rose stay at the school that day. “Fuck it!” he thought, as he turned onto the dirt road that took him another three miles to his place. Telling L.C. would make it right and proper anyway. His thoughts turned to his kids and the vodka and the dogs.

Sally had pan fried meatballs on the stove when Cecil stepped into the kitchen. Cecil called for the kids while he fiddled with the vent of the Scandinavian wood stove that stood near the back door. He could hear the boys coming down the stairs. Thump, bump, bump, thump — the younger boy laughed as the rubber head of his doll hit each stair hard on the way down.

“Hi-ya guys,” Cecil hugged and kissed the boys, ages two and four. “Dogs around?” he asked as he poured himself a large glass of vodka over ice.

“They were around when I let them out ten minutes ago,” Sally’s cool tone conveyed her feelings about keeping track of the animals.

When they had moved to New Hampshire five years ago, all was fine. But Sally had not been able to find a decent job and the charming old farmhouse that they had bought for a song when the roses were in bloom turned out, like their marriage, to be without insulation. They were “his dogs.”

Cecil went to the window and was relieved to see the two retrievers digging furiously way out in the bank by the pond. Any other time of year he would have scolded them for digging there, but not in deer season. Last season, four nights in a row, the dogs had walked away from their dinner. It had taken Cecil a week to realize from their foul smelling gas, and finally seeing the clumps of hair in their feces, that they had been feasting on a dead deer somewhere on the property. Some hunter had taken the hindquarters and left the rest.

Between sips — well, gulps — of his drink Cecil played with the boys on the living room floor and watched the Cowboys overtake the Redskins on a ten-inch black-and- white TV. “Damn it all!” Cecil protested. He wanted to see the Cowboys lose for a change.

With another drink in hand, Cecil called Leslie Cramer. She was busy with friends, but said she’d get back to him in the morning, after talking to Rose.

With the wood stove banked and kids in bed, Cecil was snoring by l0 p.m. He dreamed of a big stag with a huge rack floating high above the Interstate, its forelegs stretched up and out like arms nailed to a cross. Around 2 a.m. Cecil woke to piss. Then, as he stoked the stoves he wondered about Rose and his dream of the antlered Christ. What could it mean? That beautiful creature hovering in the night sky high over I-89?

Not unlike Rose — long, sleek, sensuous. He climbed the stairs slowly so as not to wake his wife.

Cecil was thinking Rose again when he awoke at 5:30 a.m. He wasn’t the only man at the school who was preoccupied with the girl. Big, strong, athletic Greg Hartmann, science teacher and boys’ basketball coach, was ever on her case. Hartmann was bothered by any girl who didn’t conform to his view of proper behavior for girls. For Hartman, female crimes included whispering, chewing gum, laughing, joking, and, of course, smoking or drinking, but above all, any possibility of their “putting out” for boys. Girls in short dresses or tight jeans made Hartman’s brain boil. “Look at her — she’s really asking for it” was his ready complaint to Blanchard and others who would listen.

Cecil kept an eye on Hartmann. He was concerned about Hartmann’s obsession with Rose and other “fast” girls. Nobody on the entire staff (except for Cecil himself) spent more time in the gym when the girls were bouncing about in short skirts practicing cheers. Cecil wondered if Hartmann had any inkling about what was rumored all over Mountainview about his own, sweet, quiet, obedient wife, Jennifer. Word was that she was having a blistering affair with a mousy insurance executive from the Presidential Insurance Group, one of New Hampshire’s largest companies, and based right there in town. Hartmann ought to spend more time watching his wife, Cecil thought as groaned just thinking about the long day ahead.

Sally fixed the boys their breakfast while Cecil frowned in front of the bathroom mirror. His tan had faded and the winter’s layer of fat was proceeding on schedule. It made him think of Phyllis Frucnagle, another teacher who didn’t think Rose belonged in the junior high. Frucnagle wanted high academic standards. She shared Fred Blanchard’s concern about “giving the taxpayers their dollar’s worth of good solid, basic education.” Like Greg Hartmann and the school secretary, Frucnagle felt that society should find other places for girls like Rose. Why waste everybody’s time, including the girl’s, was Frucnagle’s beef. One of the things that Dunn detested most about Frucnagle

— along with her shapeless body — was that he had to agree with her opinion on certain points like that one. Fact is Rose didn’t belong at that school. But then who did?

Cecil gulped his juice, kissed the kids, and waved goodbye to Sally. Rose was again on his mind as he drove down the dirt road hardened by the night’s freeze. By mid-morning Leslie and Cecil were comparing notes in his office. L.C. had met with Rose first period and had gotten her permission to talk about it with Cecil. “She trusts you,” Leslie began, perched on a high metal office stool she had pulled into his office. “I just wanted to be sure that it was okay with her before we got into this.”

Cecil listened for fifteen minutes as L.C. told him much of what he already knew: Rose on the loose; Rose on the run caught stealing beer with a bunch of high school boys; Rose smelling of marijuana at the school dance; Rose and another girl caught mooning cars on a Saturday night at 1 a.m. from atop an overpass on I-89; Rose in the middle of town on a crowded sidewalk telling “Officer Friendly,” the very nice young police officer recently hired by the county to work with troublesome teens, to screw himself, and if he didn’t like it, to screw his old lady too. Cecil had to chuckle at that for he too thought that the “Officer Friendly” program was little more than a federally funded bad joke, and where did they ever get that name, “Officer Friendly.”

But there was more to the story. L.C. explained that Rose’s mother was in her second marriage, and compared with the first, it was a good one. The first father had drunk himself to death. The whole family, Rose included, had loved and respected this new man when he first came onto the scene. That was when Rose was in the third and fourth grades. Rose had especially liked it when he read her bedtime stories and tickled her back when she went to sleep.

L.C. leaned forward and lowered her voice. Over the past two years the stepfather had himself taken to heavy drinking, and at times he had passed out at night beside Rose who would wake up frightened by his heavy snoring. Rose had told L.C. that she felt like she was sleeping with “a big old stuck pig.” But Rose feared shunning him because she loved her mother, didn’t want to start any trouble.

L.C. continued. By the time Rose was in sixth grade, and had started to menstruate, the father no longer read bedtime stories. But he just continued to tickle her and pass out in her bed. Then one night, drunk, he had pulled her close as he masturbated, soiling her pajamas. He hadn’t entered her, but he had scared the hell out of her, and she had run screaming to her mother — who told her that it was “just an accident” and that she should go back to bed.

˜Did he ever do it again,” Cecil wanted to know. L.C. didn’t think so, but according to Rose it then that “something snapped” between her and her mother. She said she could feel the snap in her head that very night when she told her it was just an accident and go back to bed. “Those were the exact words that Rose had used, ‘I snapped.’”

From then on, as the mother saw it, Rose was the problem. That’s when Rose really began to raise hell at school and in the community.

But Cecil still didn’t understand. It just didn’t add up. Hadn’t Rose moved out of the house when she was in sixth grade — to live with the older sister just down the street? Wasn’t she free from the old man then?

That’s right; Rose had freed herself from the stepfather. L.C. leaned forward on the stool and touched Cecil on the knee, “Listen, Rose has a little sister, Stephanie, right? Stephanie’s now in the fifth grade. Same age as Rose was when the father frightened her so bad.” L.C. leaned back. “End of story.”

“No shit!” Cecil mumbled, as he picked at a scab on the back of his balding head. He glanced into the outer office to see if his secretary was watching them. She wasn’t, but there she was picking something herself and thinking nobody was watching.

Cecil blew a long sigh at the ceiling. He remembered that over Thanksgiving Rose had told him that her family was taking a trip to Canada, and that she didn’t want to go, but that she was going anyway. She said she could have stayed home at her older sister’s, but had decided to make the trip anyway. When Cecil had asked her why, and she had just shrugged her shoulders.

It was cool in the office, but Cecil was beginning to sweat. He pulled at the crotch of his pants. He didn’t like knowing what he now knew. “That’s it isn’t it L.C., the drunken bastard’s after the little sister?”

“Well, we’ve got to be careful about what we say,” L.C. reminded Cecil. “We’ve got nothing but what Rose tells us. It’s a mess, Cecil, because she’s not only trying to protect her little sister, she’s also trying to force the stepfather into the open. She’s daring him to touch her. But he’s not taking the bait. He’s acting like nothing ever happened, and the more he acts that way, the madder Rose gets. Her mother’s accusing her of trying to take him away from her, and the little sister’s confused because she really likes the stepfather, and doesn’t know what’s eating Rose. Like I said, it’s a mess.”

L.C. slid her hands down into the pockets of her dress and stretched. She like knowing that Cecil admired the firm shape of her breasts pressed so tightly in her uniform.

“Rose thinks the father might lose it and do things to Stephanie when she’s asleep,” L.C. continued. “And Rose says she’ll kill the bastard if she catches him. She’s carrying a knife. She says she’ll slit his throat — and she means it, Cecil, she really does.”

“So what can we do?” Cecil asked, “Do we have anything at all for social services?”

Leslie leaned back on the metal stool. “Getting the child abuse people into this might only make things worse, especially with the mother’s attitude. Rose is her own worst enemy. Who will believe her when she’s running around the way she is. You know who the stepfather is, don’t you?”

Yes, Cecil knew. Her father was on the board of directors for two banks, and president elect of the Rotary.

Leslie got up to leave. Cecil glanced at the clock. Five minutes until the next period. Cecil asked L.C. about arranging a meeting with the older sister to see what she might offer as a possible way out. Leslie agreed to call her. But without the mother’s support, any case would be hard to make. Maybe the older sister could get the mother to open her eyes.

The bell rang as the secretary tapped on the window and motioned toward Rose standing just inside the outer office door. In her tight blue jeans and wearing what looked like a man’s dress shirt, she was leaning against the wall smacking her gum and smiling that squinty-eyed smile.

“Oh God,” Leslie laughed. “Who else!”

“Come on in,” Cecil signaled the girl.

L.C. got up to make space for the girl who swaggered around the large outer-office desk and past the secretary now flushed with anger. As Rose perched on the still-warm typewriter stool, she was center stage and knew it.

“Who sent you?” Cecil asked.

“Frucnagle,” Rose responded, spitting Frucnagle’s name with a disrespectful emphasis on the first syllable, then Rose paused oh so lady-like and said, “I’m sorry, I mean Mrs. Frucnagle.” But the pronunciation was still questionable.

“For what?” Cecil asked.

“Nothin’,” Rose snapped, indignantly. “Didn’t do a damn thing. Just itched my nose, that’s all,” Rose turned and winked at L.C. still standing in the doorway.

“Sure, kiddo, you itched your nose, I’ll bet.” L.C. was dead serious and let Rose know it as she took leave into her office. “I’ll bet that’s all you were doing, itching your nose. Get hold of yourself, girl.”

Cecil knew what L.C. meant. Kids had an interesting way of “scratching” their nose, or pretending to remove a speck from their eye — with the middle finger extended.

Cecil pointed to the chair in the corner of the office. “Sit over there,” he said, “and get rid of the gum.”

Rose slid off the stool, tossed her gum in the waste basket and sat back down.

The secretary was watching. She’d report to all the others over lunch.

“No more gum,” Cecil said as he wrote out a slip assigning to Rose two afternoons of detention for “disrespectful conduct in Mrs. Frucnagle’s class.”

But there was no mention of detention in the morning bulletin, so later that morning Phyllis Frucnagle walked into the principal’s office to see what penalty had been assigned the girl. Dunn told Frucnagle that he had given Rose two, two-hour detentions. He could tell Frucnagle was still irritated. “What would you like me to do?” Dunn asked, “You tell me what the penalty should be?”

Frucnagle just shrugged. But what she did know is that the detentions wouldn’t make any difference. Cecil knew that too.

That afternoon in the teachers’ room Greg Hartmann huddled with three of his male colleagues, fuming over what Frucnagle had told him concerning the latest incident with Rose. “What can you do?” he said with a look of frustration. Then with anger, “she’s got legs like peanut butter. They spread all over the place. Little whore! The best thing would be for somebody to knock her up, and then she’d be out of here for good.” The others nodded.

In the months that followed, Leslie and Cecil met several times to discuss what might be done. They considered sharing what they knew with a few of the more understanding teachers, but decided that would be too risky. Word would get out, and sooner or later everyone in town would know, and ugly images of Rose with her stepfather would make their way back into the school and onto the walls of the restroom stalls and into unsigned notes left where Rose would pick them up: “Dear Rose, we heard about you and your old man,” destroying what little security the girl could find in school and then, indeed, she’d be gone for good.

Dunn called Superintendent Clark but he didn’t want to pursue the case. It was his policy to know as little as possible (at least on the record) about controversial matters. He advised Cecil to keep quiet. The stepfather had influence. Was on the Rotary. The school had no proof. None. There were several hundred other kids in the school who needed some attention. Why should the nurse and principal spend all their time on just one of them? Risk tearing the community apart. (Clark was on the Rotary too.)

“Give it a rest,” the Superintendent advised Cecil. “Lay low. She’ll move on in the fall. You can’t win ’em all.”

L.C. and Cecil determined that in fact the best course of action was no action. L.C. would be there for her. That was good enough. Maybe Clark was right. There were a lot of other kids needing attention, and she’d be gone come fall. Can’t win ’em all.

Back to table of contents and introduction: Sex in the 7th Grade