She's Twelve

I have to keep reminding myself that she’s twelve. Twelve. Outside my classroom, there’s a little girl, her hand probably shaking as she completes her quiz. Not because she’s cold, or the test hard. Because of what I’ve got in my hand.
I thought she was going to cheat. The paper was stuffed inside her palm, but I could see it. I’d given her a few chances to get rid of the note before finally taking it from her. The previous year, a skinny girl with tired eyes had stuffed her cheat notes in her mouth, chewing furiously before I made her spit it in the garbage. This one acted dumb. You only need a pencil, I told her. Oh, she said, and hurried to her desk and back to me, but the paper was still there. Deanna, I said, give me what you have in your hand. Confused, she looked around, hoping something would come to mind. I shot my hand out and waited. Gently, she placed the paper in my hand before I sent her to the hall to write her quiz.
The rest of the students were waiting. They’d watched me and watched her, and were hoping I’d reveal the contents of the confiscated note. (Some teachers do that—read the notes out loud to the class to embarrass the students engaged in the elicit classroom communication.)
They know that’s not my style, but they called out read it anyways. I frowned and shook my head disapprovingly and told them to get back to work.
I unfolded the clammy note behind my desk and the evidence of a two-sided correspondence was evident. The bubbly cursive writing in the blue pen was Deanna’s, but the sharp, light pencil strokes were unfamiliar. Certain words started to leap from the page: pleasure, cock, orgasm, with diagrams to support. They were commenting on the size of their boyfriend’s genitalia and its affect, or lack of, on them, complete with more rich description than I thought Deanna was capable of.
At first, I’m feeling sick at the thought of a pre-pubescent penis, erect or otherwise, being surveyed by Deanna. Then my stomach turns because she’s twelve. And having sex.

When I was twelve, it would still be five years before my first kiss, and I was daydreaming about the ultimate first love. None of the boys around me looked anything like the man in my dreams. They were skinny, for the most part, and had less hair on their arms than I did. Their idea of romance was sticking their head out of a yellow bus window and yelling, Wanna go to the dance with me? In that case, I reluctantly yelled back, without turning back, yes. My first foray into the land of junior-high love was a dangerous one, bloody, in fact, and one I wouldn’t soon forget.
My date’s name was Greg Smith and he had red hair—his first fault. As I walked to the school through the mid-evening haze, I asked myself again and again what I was doing. I didn’t like red hair, I didn’t like spending more time at school than I had to, and I didn’t like to dance. Then, like now, I couldn’t dance. The only part of me that could keep a beat was my toe. Or shoulder. Throwing my feet into the mix was disastrous. But I’d decided that it was about time I take part in a school social. After all, worse come to worse, Greg would want to slow-dance and I’d have to say yes. In that case, I knew what to do: stick my arms out to his shoulders, locking my elbows zombie-style and rock from one foot to the other, careful to make eye contact with everyone except Greg.
As fate would have it, I wouldn’t be so lucky. I’d gotten my first period earlier that year, and now it was my fifth “time of the month.” I was still trying to convince my mom to let me use tampons, so I’d walked to school with an extra pad in my back pocket and what felt like a PB&J between my legs. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t tell the difference between my anxious sweat and the blood trickling from my uterus. Partway through the dance, when I went to survey the situation, I found that I’d leaked right through my dad’s jeans and spotted my limited edition Beatles t-shirt with blood. Needless to say, I left the dance without bothering to explain to Greg. So, the next day, and until I set him straight in grade eleven, Greg told everyone I left the dance because I was angry that he danced with Janice Lam.

Now, twelve years later, I have to supervise the junior high dances. And I’m still reticent. Not because I can’t dance, because I can’t stand watching them dance. Gone are the days of zombie-like swaying and the chicken dance. They still play the odd YMCA, but more often than not, our small gym is pulsing with R&B and hip-hop. I spend my time shaking my head at the pelvic thrusting and the not-so-subtle grinding. Of course, I do what I can to break up the action, but there’s something arresting about catching two girls pawing each other to the pounding beat while a dozen boys stand around, mouths gaping, and their hands hiding their crotch.
I’m sure I could find a dark corner somewhere, away from the prying teacher eyes, where a young girl takes to her knees for the pleasure of a boy. He thinks he’s entitled, she thinks she’s the lucky one.
And it makes me want to scream, because they still giggle at the word hormone, their mommies make their lunch, and they ask me what a coincidence is. Meanwhile, the boys are sticking things in places they can’t name, let alone spell, and the girls are giving fallacio and spitting it out so they don’t get pregnant. And they’re only twelve.