Rite of Passage

“I suppose I ought to be pleased by your initiative,” Daddy said, “but what I think about is the permanent damage to your sense of balance that might well have resulted if you two hadn’t come back inside in time. You might never have been able to move again without suffering vertigo.”

The thought alone was enough to make me queasy.

Daddy finished by settling a punishment of not being able to go anywhere for a month. For a month, after class with Mr. Mbele or Survival Class, I had to come straight home and stay there. Miss Brancusik then and there meted out the same restriction to Jimmy.

In some ways, that was the hardest month I ever spent, cooped up in the apartment and not able to go anywhere. Sitting at home when other people were free to come and go, free to play soccer, to go folk dancing at night, or to sit around the Common Room while Jimmy and I had to go check in. In other ways, it wasn’t entirely a loss. For one thing, it gave me time to think about my character deficiencies. I didn’t think of them in exactly those terms, but I did determine not to be any more stupid than was absolutely necessary, which is much the same thing. Also, since we were both stuck in our own homes, Jimmy and I did quite a lot of talking and I got to know him better.

The first thing we did when our month was over was to go to Salvage, detouring around Mrs. Keithley, and apologize to Mr. Mitchell. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I never wore my pin until I was back on good terms with him. Then it was all right.

11

We received our automatic promotions from Sixth Class to Fifth in the fall when First Class went off on Trial and another group of younger kids began training. Through the fall, as we approached the end of our first six months of training, we one-by-one turned thirteen. Not only was I the smallest one in the class — not that I minded, since being cute little black-haired Mia Havero never hurt anything — but my birthday was last. It came, as always, on Saturday, November 29. One of the advantages of a permanent calendar is that it gives you something to count on.

On my birthday, Mother made a special trip to see us — well, she spent the day with Daddy. She presented me with one of her sculptures and I thanked her politely. She didn’t like being thanked, for some reason — and I assure you that I was nice — and left the room.

Daddy, who isn’t always as single-minded or as busy as you might think, had done something that I would never have thought of. He’d called the library and they made a search of all their recordings and sent him a fair copy of no less than five pennywhistle records. I once, believe it or not, went through a stage of thinking the Andrew Johnson books were all mine and nobody else knew about them, and it was something of a shock to learn that they did. The pennywhistle records that Daddy gave me didn’t produce quite the same feeling of losing something private, but I would never have dreamed that anyone would ever have recorded pennywhistle music. I thanked Daddy and kissed his cheek. I had never been able to be demonstrative when I was younger, but since we had moved to Geo Quad somehow it came easier, like a lot of things.

The biggest surprise of my birthday was Jimmy D. He asked me to go to the theatre with him. I think he was a little frightened when he did and that surprised me. I’d always thought that he saw me as, at best, a brotherin-arms, and not as a girl 9t all.

The play was put on in the amphitheatre where they hold Ship’s Assembly and we actually went to it instead of watching it on the vid. It was Richard B. Sheridan’s School for Scandal and except that I got a little sweaty in the palms of my hands, something that had never happened at home and that I can only attribute to my being excited, I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

I was excited all evening, too. When we got home, Jimmy took my hand and touched the palm with his finger.

“Your hand is sweaty,” he said.

I looked up at him and I nodded.

He said, “So is mine,” and he showed me, and it was.

Jimmy kissed me then. In spite of what they say, I was a little surprised. I had no idea that he wanted to, though I’d been hoping he would. It shows you what secret passions you can arouse. It was the first time anybody had ever kissed me like that and it made my heart pound and my hands sweat even more. Whatever I’ve forgotten, I’ve remembered that birthday.

It was almost as though Jimmy and I had invested something of ourselves because after that we had an unspoken understanding. Instead of carping at each other all the time, we only fought when we were mad. You can’t squabble in public with somebody you sometimes kiss privately, or at least I found I couldn’t. Of course I didn’t tell anybody. I wouldn’t want them to think I was changing.