A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries by Kaylie Jones Page A

me with wolfish eyes.
    “You want to hold my slingshot?”
    It seemed slightly hypocritical for me to do so, but I was not planning to aim the thing, much less shoot at any small animals, so with just the right touch of unwillingness, I said, “All right.”
    “You see, it works like this.” He held it up and pulled back on the elastic. “My father taught me how to make them.” There was something tough and hard-edged about the way he manipulated the slingshot, and the slightly gruff sound of his voice made me think that this was not the pretend Cowboys and Indians game I played with Billy, this was the real thing.
    “I’ll make you one,” he said.
    “I don’t want one,” I said quickly.
    “Want to see my snails?”
    “Your snails?”
    “Yes. I collect them.”
    “You don’t hurt them, do you?”
    “Of course not,” he said as though I were completely stupid. I had never been afraid of snails, I liked them. He brought a box out of another dark corner and placed it between us. It had leaves in it and mosquito netting over the top. He reached inside and soon there were three gray snails with brown and beige shells gliding slowly up his arm, leaving thin wet tracks.
    “You want to hold one?”
    “Sure,” I said.
    “Then take off your shirt.”
    “Why?”
    “They feel really good on your chest and neck,” he said simply.
    Why not allow a snail to crawl along my chest? I lifted my shirt up over my head. He put a snail on my shoulder near my neck and then kissed me on the corner of the mouth. His lips were sweet and wet, like cherries. He had a strange, longing look in his eyes which made my stomach churn uncomfortably.
    There I was, bare to the waist, with no breasts for him to touch. I wondered with a certain amount of envy whether he might not like Cassandra or Mary-Ellen better than me, if he ever got a look at them up close. I decided we must never invite him over to play at our house.
    “Take off your skirt,” he said slowly. He was pinching the hem in his dirt-stained fingers while he kissed the palm of my hand.
    I did not want to take off my skirt. On the beach, I wore no top—no girls my age did in France. But to show him my white cotton panties up close was another story. But I did not want to anger him, either. I agonized over the decision.
    “Promise me you’ll never kill any more animals with your slingshot.”
    “I promise,” he said flatly.
    I convinced myself momentarily that it would not be terribly naughty of me to take off my skirt for a few seconds—it would be my sacrifice for the forest animals—and off came the skirt. There I sat in his dark tree house in my white panties which felt scratchy from the dirt on the floor. As soon as I had removed it I felt completely exposed and my heart ached with dread because now he could hold something over me. After that, the boy and the tree house sank in a brownish haze and remained that way forever in my memory.
    “Take them off, too,” he said, nodding toward the panties.
    “Non.”
    “Take them off, I said.”
    “Non. I’ll tell.”
    “Ha ha ha!” He laughed sordidly, kissing me again. “You want to see what I look like naked?”
    “I already saw my brother naked,” I said, a nervous edge beginning to strain my voice.
    “That’s not the same. Look.”
    His thing was pale and curved upward like an index finger crooked in a beckoning gesture. He grabbed my wrist and brought my hand toward it. The back of my hand grazed its mushroomlike head as I tugged to free myself. I screamed and kicked at his shins, snatching my shirt and skirt with my free hand. He tried to seize my clothes but my grasp was firm and I threw myself out of the tree house rather than let him have them. I managed to grip a few rungs of the ladder on my way down, which broke my fall. The earth below the tree was soft but my knees and palms were nevertheless badly scraped and bruised. I tore through the brambles and thickets in my bare skin, still gripping my