The Beast
(Published in Bylines, Spring 1992, and Isaac Asimov's
Science Fiction Magazine, March 1992) c 1992

This is the only story I wrote while I was living in China.
So it is not about China at all. It is about Ohio.



I was 13. It was spring, the barren time in March when you
cannot be sure if it is really warmer, but you are so desperate
for change that you tell yourself the mud at the edge of the
sidewalk is different than winter mud and you are sure that the
smell of wet soil has suddenly a bit of the scent of summer
rains, of grass and drowned earthworms. And it has, because
it is spring and inside the ground something is stirring. I was
wearing a yellow linen dress which my mother had picked out
and which I therefore disliked although I knew it flattered me.
My shoes were white and I was concentrating on keeping
them out of the mud. My father and I were going to mass--my
mother did not go; she was Protestant. My father put his hand
on top of my hair, his palm on my head, and I could feel the
bone of my skull and my skin and his hot palm, so dry and
strong. When I was a little girl, he did that often, and called me
'Muscles.' He had not called me Muscles or put his hand on
my head for a long time. I could not help arching my back a
little, I wanted to push against his hand like a cat but the
instinct that comes with being 13, the half-understood caution
that makes a girl timid, or wild, the shyness told me to just
walk. I wanted to feel the rough edge of the pocket of his coat
against my cheek, but I was too tall. I wanted to be seven
again, and safe. But I still wanted to push against his hand and
put my hand in his pocket and steal the leather palmed glove,
that secret animal.
Instead I went into the church, took a Bulletin, dipped my
finger in Holy Water and genuflected. The inside of the church
smelled like damp wood and furniture polish, not alive at all.
My father took off his coat and draped it over the edge of the
pew and when I came back from communion I stole his glove.
The paper taste of the wafer was still in my mouth and I took a
deep breath of the leather. It smelled like March.

We walked back through the school because it was drizzling,
my father tall in his navy suit and my shoes going click on the
linoleum. There were two classes of each grade, starting at the
sixth and going down to the first. The hall ended in a 'T' and
we went left through the gym, walked underneath the bleachers
and stood next to the side door, waiting for the rain to stop.

It was dark under the bleachers. My father was a young man,
35, younger because he liked to be outside, to play softball on
Saturday and to take my mother and me camping on vacation.
He stood rocked back on his heels with his coat thrown over
his shoulders and his hands in his pockets. I thought of bacon
and eggs, toast with peach jam out of the jar. I was so hungry.

The space under the bleachers was secret and dark. There