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  • Sunday Morning
  • Esther O’Neale

She sat on the bed thumbing through the biggest book she had ever seen. She had just turned ten and she was a voracious reader, but she was not interested in reading this book. Not yet. The pictures were so tantalizing that she was satisfied just turning the pages and looking, wide-eyed and thoroughly amazed. Suddenly the door opened and she heard a familiar voice, “Put down that book.” She had heard that command before but this time she did not understand the reason for it.

“I’m just looking at the pictures,” she pleaded.

“Hand me the book,” said her father. That was an order she could not ignore.

Tina closed the book and handed it over as her thoughts raced. She was always encouraged to read and she could not understand why, all of a sudden, this book was taken away from her. She wasn’t really reading anyway. She was just looking at pictures of bones and muscles and other parts of the body. The kidneys reminded her of red beans. Come to think of it, some people call them kidney beans.

Bored and frustrated, she picked up a newspaper that was lying on the bedside table and began to read an article about prostitutes being arrested somewhere.

“Dad,” she almost whispered, “what’s a prostitute?”

“Check the dictionary,” was the curt response. [End Page 149]

Strange, she thought. He must be in a bad mood.

“A whore,” said the dictionary.

And what’s a whore? She dared not asked so she checked the dictionary.

“A woman who sells her body,” said the dictionary.

Her mind was at full gallop now. How does she do that? She thought the whole thing was ridiculous. First, a woman sells her body. (What would she do for a body after she had sold it?) Then some policeman has the nerve to arrest her for selling her own body. How did he manage to arrest her if she didn’t have a body? After much thought, she gave up and put it all down to adult stupidity.

She had always been fascinated with words, from the delightful nonsense of nursery rhymes to the near impossible supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of Mary Poppins. At her new school, she seemed to learn a new word every day—words like gumption, confiscate, flabbergasted, thingamajig, cleavage. She had even heard a teacher say that some words were pregnant with meaning. Now prostitute. Her mind wandered back to the big book. It made no sense at all. There had to be something more than bones and muscles and organs in that book.

The following Sunday, she came down with a mysterious illness which she was sure only complete bed rest would cure. She thought she would be allowed to stay in bed and rest because she was so convincing. She did not count on a mother’s intuition, and she quite forgot that her mother had a plaster for every sore. If she could not go to church, Mother reasoned, she would have to take some of that nasty-tasting asafetida which was the family’s cure-all since the devil was a little boy. For a moment, she felt herself getting better, but her curiosity was stronger than her distaste for that disgusting cocktail. She swallowed the concoction in one gulp and lay down under the covers shivering as though she had just contracted a severe case of ague. She wondered why she did not get the usual half an orange to wash down the medicine.

With one eye open, she watched as the rest of the family left for church. As soon as they turned the corner, she eased herself out from under the covers and with one quick bound, she entered the room that contained all those wonderful books into which she escaped from sweeping the yard and washing the dishes and all the dull things that other children her age had to do. She found the book easily because she knew what it looked like and she began flipping the [End Page 150] pages until she found the offending section. There they were—pictures of a naked man and...

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