She saw quickly that I was like someone who had crossed the desert of sexual ignorance and even at the age of twelve had tasted the salty flavor of passion. After I was washed and dressed, she sat with me on my bed. It was wonderful to have a young woman explain things, someone who seemed to have had the same need to know more at my age. My mother never would do this, never would tell me anything I really wanted or needed to know. She was a child of the Victorian age, a time, I was told, when people put skirts on curvaceous piano legs because those naked piano legs were too suggestive.

“From now on,” Grace said, sotto voce because my mother was nearby, probably hovering and listening on the stairway, “you want to keep track of dates.”

“Dates?”

“When you’re most fertile. Sometimes we forget or we think we’ll slip through safely.”

I was pleasantly shocked and excited by just how uncensored Grace was being. Keep track of dates? I was still only twelve. That meant Grace thought I might have sexual intercourse, perhaps in the near future. Otherwise, what was the point of such a warning? From this day on until it stopped, eggs hovered inside me, waiting for the right time to seize a sperm, or was it the other way around? No matter. It all seemed too busy and uninteresting, all that crawling around somewhere within my vagina. It made me think of tiny ants. Ugh.

I refused to reduce love and romance, sex itself, to science, anyway. I didn’t want to talk about ovaries and eggs. What could that possibly have to do with romance? I could see Grace understood me.

Actually, why shouldn’t she be warning me? I thought. Surely she was wise enough to have seen that at the age of twelve I already had the power to literally hypnotize a man with my cerulean eyes and full, shapely lips upon which kisses would quickly explode into unrestrained passion. If I could dream it so vividly, surely I could do it well.

“Do women always get pregnant if they have intercourse?” I asked.

She smiled as though she had expected the question.

“No, not if they’re careful, as I just explained, but . . .” She hesitated, debating with herself about telling me any more.

“But what?” I asked, impatient.

“There are ways if you prepare ahead of time. Think about it and don’t just rush into it. Some women practice the rhythm method,” she continued, and explained it in detail. “Some are using this relatively new device called a diaphragm, and some insist their lovers use what’s known as a rubber condom. There are some other things to do. Some women just depend on men to withdraw in time.”