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"What?" I asked, finding myself more intrigued than I had anticipated.

"She made him wear tight rubber underpants. He said sometimes he was actually in pain down there. He told me that w

as why he was afraid to look at girls or think about them."

I had heard and seen some very ugly things in my life and I had grown up thinking this was the way it was with poor, oppressed people. Distortions, promiscuity, pornography, all of it was natural to the world I'd lived in and grew like fungus in our dark, dirty neighborhoods.

But the twisted and ugly avenues people's thoughts traveled apparently knew no money barriers. Charles's mother had tortured and abused him in a different way, but the result was the same, I concluded.

"How horrible," I muttered. "Didn't his father have anything to say about it?"

"No. His father had left them soon after he was born." "I don't blame him," I muttered. I thought for a moment. "Was he still wearing those confining rubber underpants when you knew him? When you kissed him?" She nodded and then turned crimson with a memory. "What?"

"Swear you'll never tell a soul," she said.

"I don't gossip, but I swear."

"He ...made me stand on one side of the room and he stood on the other and he took down his pants to show me the rubber underpants and then he lowered them to show me how quickly it--"

"What?" I practically shouted. She swallowed hard. "How quickly it grew and grew and then erupted when he touched it."

I sat with my mouth open for a moment.

"He did that in front of you?"

She nodded.

"That's so weird."

"I ran away:' she admitted. "It frightened me."

"I think I would have run too." I grimaced at the images. "He was your only boyfriend?"

"Sort of," she said. "After that, we didn't see each other much. I had the feeling he had told his mother what had happened and she had forbidden him to see me."

She looked so devastated because she had told me the story that I immediately changed the subject and got her to talk about other things like television and movies, books she had read and places she had been. The story had actually made me sick to my stomach and I wanted to forget it as well.

When she asked me questions about my life in the Projects, I found myself exaggerating the good things. It almost sounded as if I had left a wonderful world to come suffer in this big house with all these rich people and go to a private school. She left looking at me enviously and I felt as if the house and my new life was corrupting me, turning me into another one of those who stored secrets and lies in her heart.

Late in the morning, Grandmother Hudson arrived like a storm. I heard her voice rattling the walls as soon as the front door opened. The nurse, Mrs. Griffin, stood at her side and tried to hold her arm. She was a tall, dark-haired woman who looked strong enough, but Grandmother Hudson refused to lean on anyone or anything.

"Where is everyone?" she cried.

I rushed out of my room and hurried down the stairs. Merilyn came running from the kitchen.

"Welcome home, Mrs. Hudson," I said.

"Ma'am," Merilyn said with a nod.

Grandmother Hudson gazed around with furious eyes, glanced into the living room and then started down the hallway toward the dining room.

"Mrs. Hudson. I want you upstairs and in bed," Mrs. Griffin said.

"In a moment," Grandmother Hudson replied, waving her away. Mrs. Griffin looked at me and then at Jake, who beamed a wide smile and shook his head.

"Did you wash down that dining table once since I've been gone?" Grandmother Hudson demanded of Merilyn.

"Yes, ma'am."