we can do together.” Grandpa broke the silence.
“What’s that, Grandpa?” I replied excitedly. “Do you want to play Parcheesi?” We had been having a running competition.
“Let’s take a bath together.”
“A bath?” The idea seemed kind of strange. I had never taken a bath with my father or even my brother except when we were little.
“It will be great,” he added. “It is a natural thing to do and you will like it. It is how I like to relax.”
He turned on the faucet while I went to my room to put on my bathing suit.
“You won’t need a bathing suit in a bath. You can take off your clothes in here,” he added, gesturing for me to come into the bathroom with him.
When the bathtub was full, he took off his clothes and got in. Then he told me to take off my clothes and join him. I took off my shorts and top and folded them. I put them on the floor in the corner by the sink. The last thing I took off were my panties. I got in the warm water facing him and it felt good.
“See how relaxing this is.” He sat in the water with his eyes closed for a few minutes with his hands along the tub rim. I closed my eyes too but peeked out of one open eye. I watched him put his hands under the water. His breathing changed. It became deeper and faster. Then he opened his eyes and grabbed my hand. I barely moved.
“You know, Dianne, you are old enough now to know where babies come from.”
“I do know where they come from, Grandpa,” I proudly answered. “God puts a seed into the mom’s belly and the baby grows in there.” I thought I was clever to know this fact already. Grandpa laughed and held my hand more tightly.
“That is not how the seed is put into the mom, Dianne. There is more to it and I need to tell you the truth.” He stood up and his body looked different than what little I had seen when he got into the bath. His boy-part was big and he touched it with both his hand and mine. The skin felt warm and soft. When he began to move our hands over what he explained was what the man used to plant his seed in the woman, I pulled my hand away. I couldn’t picture that what he was saying was true. How could that go into what I believed was a very small hole?
He explained how the man and the woman would make the seed come out and then demonstrated with his hand. “It is just like blowing on a dandelion.” Then this milky liquid dripped out from between his fingers as he made a heavy sigh. It landed in the tub, so I didn’t move. I didn’t want to be near the seeds. He got out of the bathwater and wrapped himself in a towel. When he left the bathroom, I gathered up my clothes and quickly got dressed. I couldn’t wait to tell my best friend back home what I had learned.
Grandpa did tell me not to mention my lesson to Grandma. He said they disagreed on when a girl should learn the important facts of life. I promised.
The train ride home felt different than the trip there. I left Barbie and Ken in their box, but now they faced each other in case they wanted to make a baby.
My mother picked me up from the train, and as soon as we got home I asked if I could go to see my best friend, Emily. She lived down the street, and since she was a late-in-life child with much older siblings, she had the best of everything, including a playroom that was just for her.
When I arrived, Emily hugged me as if I had been gone forever and we went into the playroom. We took out all the dolls and clothes and set out to create their lives in miniature.
“I know how babies are made,” I told Emily matter-of-factly.
“I do too,” she bragged. She explained the same “God planting the seed” story that we both must have heard at church, and so I decided to show her with our dolls.
“That can’t be true.” She seemed shocked.
“No, it is true. My grandpa took a bath with me and showed me how the man makes the seeds in his penis that are planted inside the woman. He said it was time for me to learn the right way.”
“Did you see his penis?” Emily asked with her eyes opened wide.
“Of course, I did, silly. How else would he have shown me how it all worked?” Emily disappeared for a few minutes, and I continued to pretend that Barbie was cooking a casserole in the Barbie kitchen. After a while Emily returned with her mother, a stylish woman who wore her hair piled up on top of her head like a movie star.
“Dianne, come join us for a snack,” she said, guiding us up to the kitchen. She had made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Wonder Bread and added Bosco to our milk. We chewed on our sandwiches as we had many times, but Emily’s mother kept staring at me.
“Dianne, Emily told me about what happened at your grandfather’s house. You do know that grown men are not supposed to take baths with little girls and tell them about where babies come from?”
I knew it felt weird when it happened, but it was my grandpa, and if he thought it was time for me to know the truth, then it must have been time.
“Dianne, you need to tell your mother what happened at your grandpa’s house. She needs to know.”
I had not thought about telling my mom. Even though I didn’t think much of what had happened, I had a feeling that telling my mother would be embarrassing.
“If you don’t tell her, I will,” Emily’s mother insisted. I knew that she would too, because she and my mother were friends who often went to each other’s houses for coffee.
“Okay, I will tell her,” I promised.
When I got home my mother was in the kitchen by herself. She was making soup and asked me if I would like to stir the pot.
“Can I talk to you, Mom,” I said softly. She turned off the stove and we went into the dining room.
“If it is about your hair, I already told Grandma she should not have permed it without asking me first.” She reached for my hair. I started to cry. “It will grow back soon enough,” she reassured me. This only made me sob more.
I told her about Grandpa and the bath and watched her expression change. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she held me close. We both cried.
“That wasn’t your fault,” she reassured me. I didn’t understand what she meant. But I knew by her reaction that something bad had happened, something that could never be taken back.
Later that night I overheard my parents arguing. I knew it had to do with my grandpa telling me about where babies come from. I was very confused. Why was it wrong for my grandpa to tell me the truth? He didn’t make it sound like it was wrong. Maybe I did something wrong to make everyone so upset. I wished I had never said anything to Emily.
The next day I overheard my father calling my grandpa on the phone. I wasn’t even trying to listen, but he was yelling for most of the call. I could hear only his side of the conversation, but he seemed very angry. “It’s me. You know why I am calling. You expect me to believe you over my own child? I know what a sick old bastard you are!”
I wasn’t used to hearing my father curse since the car broke down, and especially not at Grandpa. But I knew my father meant what he said. I felt awful about Grandpa and somehow felt sad for Grandma. If I hadn’t gone to see them,
