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The
Panties Lesson by
Tony Lindsay from
his collection of short stories, Pieces
of the Hole
I
was eight years old when I learned my panties lesson, and like many
predicaments of my childhood, I was following Franklin Benton--the older
kid next door who my parents thought was responsible enough to walk me to
school. They were wrong. Franklin
was a curious kid with a criminal nature, and when he clicked into either
his investigate or get paid mode, he didn’t consider what was best for
himself or me. On more than one occasion our two-block walk to school
ended with us either in the principal’s office or in the back of a
police squad car. Even
though he was three years older than me, Franklin kept a snotty nose and
wore thick glasses and was the target of a lot pubescent teasing. He
wasn’t my best buddy, but I think I was his. His interests at the time
of my panties lesson revolved around girls. On
that bright spring day, he approached me during recess. He pulled me away
from my class buddies and whispered to me his idea of sneaking into the
gym during the sixth grade girls’ sex education class. Initially, I had
no interest. It was spring, we were outside at recess, and it was going to
be my turn to choose teams for kickball. Sneaking back into the school
didn’t sound like a good idea at all. I
was anxious to get away from Franklin and back to my own classmates until
he explained what sneaking in the gym would allow us to see. He baited me
with an opportunity few third grade boys would turn down, a chance to see
some panties. He
told me that if we hid under the bleachers in the gym, we would get to see
all the sixth grade girls’ panties because they would be sitting above
us. It sounded like a good plan to me, except for sneaking away from the
playground meant missing recess and kickball. Kickball
was the one game I was really good at. A kid didn’t have to be tall,
burly, or a good runner to play. All a kid had to do was be able to kick a
ball and run a little. It was my favorite game; but, the thought of being
able to tell my buddies that I saw all the sixth grade girls’ panties
did seem like a better deal. I was in. We
were successful in leaving the sunny playground undetected, and slithering
between the gym doors into the dark gymnasium was a breeze. Getting under
the bleachers was easy enough, too. The problem I noticed was that the gym
was dark and beneath the bleachers all we could see was the back of the
girls’ legs and their shoes. The gym was full of girls, however, and
they were watching a movie about girl stuff. I
turned to leave because of the darkness, but Franklin grabbed a hold of my
arm and told me to wait. He whispered assurance that when the lights came
on, the girls would stand, and we would see all their panties. Held by the
possibility of seeing the treasure no boy in my class had seen before, I
stayed and began watching the film. What
I understood from the film was that girls grew eggs inside them, and the
eggs were full of blood. When the eggs fell out of the girls, they cracked
open, and the girls had to catch them in this big band aid, and then, put
the whole mess in a little blue bag. It
all seemed really gross to me. I remembered my mother telling me that eggs
with a lot of blood in them were no good for cooking, so the eggs these
girls were growing had to be ruined. I was glad my mother brought our eggs
from the supermarket. Crouched
under the bleachers, panic suddenly took me. It occurred to me that we
were beneath a whole lot of girls and at any moment their eggs might slip
out and land on us. That thought motivated me toward the gym doors, but
just as I crawled from underneath the bleachers the lights came on, and
fat Anita Stein and her fatter twin sister Claries screamed, "A boy.
There's a boy in here!" In
a matter of seconds, girls surrounded me. They were hitting me, and
kicking me, and calling me nasty. I couldn't believe they were calling me
nasty. I wasn't the one growing ruined eggs inside of me. I
really wanted to hit fat Anita in her stomach and make her eggs crack open
since she was the one hitting me the hardest and the most, but my father
told me never to hit a girl. So, I didn't throw one of the punches he
taught me; instead, I covered up and blocked as many balled up fists as I
could. When
the teacher finally got to me, I was beat up pretty bad and confused as to
why the girls attacked me. I saw Franklin running out the gym doors
unnoticed and untouched. Old mean Mrs. Langston grabbed me by my ear and
dragged me to the principal's office. There I sat rubbing my arms and
trying not to cry. I was hurting, but it was girls that hit me. So, I
couldn't cry. When
the principal asked me what I was doing in the gym, I told him I was
trying to see some panties. He thought that was funny, but not funny
enough. He called my mother from her job to the school. Now,
I knew mama leaving her job was trouble. She made it perfectly clear to me
after my last stomach ache that I should be near death for her to leave
her job. I wasn't hurt enough for her to leave work. I tried to relay this
information to the principal, but he ignored me. Mama
said very little when she got to the school. She was in her pressed white
nurse’s uniform, and her face was stern. I saw her smile a little at the
principal, but when she looked at me, the smile was gone. Walking the two
blocks home, she said nothing. When
we got home, she sat me at the kitchen table and asked me if I was a
pervert. I didn't know what a pervert was, but I said no because of the
way she said the word. She asked what I was doing in the gym. I mumbled
the truth, and she told me to repeat it. I couldn't say it so she would
understand. I couldn't look at my mother and tell her I was trying to see
some panties. I just couldn't. My
mumbling didn't satisfy my mother, so she told me what the principal told
her. "So
you want to see some panties, huh? Okay, little man, I'm going to pull my
dress up and show you some panties right now!" I
was horrified. I ran crying to my room and closed the door. I heard my
mother outside my door threatening to come in and show me her panties. She
kept knocking on the door telling me to come out and see some panties. She
called my grandmother from next door and told her what happened. She, too,
knocked on my door and asked me did I want to see her panties. When my
eighth grade sister came home from school, she knocked and told me she had
plenty of panties I could see. They kept this up despite my tears and
pleas until my father came home from work. I
heard them tell him, and I heard him laughing hard and loud. When he came
in my room, he had tears in his eyes from laughing. I didn't see what was
so funny. He picked me up and carried me into the kitchen where my mother,
grandmother, and sister were sitting eating dinner. He
told them they better keep their clothes on and stop scaring me with their
panties. And he told me that soon enough I would learn that panties were
only the wrapper. Those words got him a hard smack on the butt from my
mother. Daddy
had me up on his shoulders, and he carried me all the way outside to the
car, then we drove around the corner to the barbecue joint and got us a
rib dinner. We sat in the car and ate by the junkyard. We threw the rib
bones to the junkyard dogs. Wasn't no girls and no panties in sight, just
daddy, the junkyard dogs, and me. On the way home, I saw Franklin leaning against the drugstore wall, staring at the locked newsstand on the corner. The day before he pointed out to me that they sold naked lady magazines at that stand, and as hard as he was staring, I knew we would be looking at the magazines soon.
Click
cover to order YOUR copy of PIECES OF THE HOLE today! New
fiction from Tony Lindsay: his first short story collection Pieces of
the Hole. This collection represents several walks of life within the urban African American community. Storylines targeting seniors, teenagers, young couples, returning college students, inmates, corporate workers, and both young and midlife lovers are presented. Here, the reader will find both heartwarming tales as well as on the edge of your seat fiction.
Tony
Lindsay
is the author of five novels and a short story collection, One Dead
Preacher (BlackWords Press), Street Possession
(Urban Books), Chasin’ It (Urban Books), Urban Affair (Urban
Books),
One Dead Lawyer (Q–Boro Books), and Pieces of the Hole (Third
World Press). He has written reviews and articles for Black
Issues Book Review and submits to the African American
literary website Timbooktu.com.
He has published in the young adult magazine Cicada and
currently teaches creative writing at Chicago State University under the
adult continuing education program. A native Chicagoan, he was educated at
University of Illinois, Chicago.
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