Dirty Old Maid Only the first time do you fall in love with your lover. After that, you fall in love with being in love. Old Wives' Tale I. I lifted my dress for licorice in the field behind the house, a harmless enterprise until Bobby Fuchs dared me out of my Carter's briefs. I showed him ~ walked my bare bottom to the tire swing, crawled in, let the wind do the rest. I didn't think he'd stick around to watch me stumble back into my white panties in a very different kind of hurry from when I'd taken them off. That was the first night I ever wanted to be alone. Mommy asked why I closed the door to take my bath. I told her I didn't know and shivered out of my clothes. Silence. My belly stuck cold on the side of the clawfoot tub as my legs slipped in the thick water. She saw mud stains from the heels of my Buster Browns dried red on those cotton briefs. She snatched them up like they were hers, let the water run clear to my chin, like she couldn't fill it high enough. Then she scrubbed me sore. Bobby kept following me. I didn't want to swing for him but I didn't want him to leave. He threatened to tell everyone that I had a birthmark back there if I didn't show him. I was very careful to keep my panties clean. Back in the tub, I asked my mother if I had any birthmarks. Half-laughing, she said no, I was a perfect little girl. It never occurred to me that he made it up or that I was perfect. By the time I was twelve, his hands moved to where his eyes had been. After he took older girls to movies, he picked me up and dropped me off, a little dirtier each time. At thirteen, I finally had the courage to straddle a mirror. Although what I saw was a shiny eyeful, it looked more like a wound than a birthmark. It would always feel like a lot of both. II. I still live in that house, feeling lonely but watched, lost. I drove Mark away when he tried smoothing beauty on my face with hands soft as silt. All I felt was muck. The inside of my skin is mud- kissed, bubbling full of Bobby in his car, full of his white breath striking cold glass, my feet kicking car windows, trapped in an avalanche of flesh hot as boiling mud. Men are reminders of the business of the birthmark. III. My mother left me the house. It needs kept after. I don't. The clawfoot tub's been scrubbed rough over time. The porcelain's worn and the bare ceramic absorbed a pale pink color from the red dirt I garden in. I made a scarecrow, dressed her in my mother's crinolines and camisoles and my dainty party dresses. On chilly nights, I put a shawl on her. In hot sun, she wears a bonnet. In early spring when the earth is loose, vulnerable, soil, hard raindrops find the ground and bounce off, splashing dirt on her clothes. Soaked, she slides down her plank. I've spent hours watching her ~ the slow- slump as her filling softens, the limp neck of that little statue who only keeps the hawks away while pigeons and crows peck at her outstretched arms. copyright 1994 kathy jo kramer