Anna Boner

After the event I will later recount, I avoided Etna with an unrelenting determination. If I had been asked why, I imagine I would have blushed, unable to provide an explanation. I found this disturbing as I had up to then been a child who was perfectly capable of articulating what I thought. I think of her now and remember my own guilty admiration of her. I also remember how she would have spoken the same kisses to a silage-breathed pimple-face, as to a face with skin like velvet and breath like hot sugar. 
My first day of school, a boy with ringworm on his scalp sat beside me. The scab looked huge and multi-coloured, and was surrounded by a bald ring. I sat paralysed in horror and wondered if it grew down into his head. Then Etna sat on the other side of me and distracted me with her familiarity and unshadowed smile. We were friends immediately. I gradually noticed how she was never a part of infantile bickering, such as accusations of sum copying. Or later she never suddenly befriended a soon-to-be birthday girl, whose parties were renowned for having enough ice-cream, chocolate and lemonade to make everyone sick for a week. I used to think that when God made Etna, he painted a smile on her face with a sweeping, affectionate stroke. Maybe He stood back, clasping his hands against his chest, taking a last twinkle-eyed look at her. And I used to think that when God made me, He hung invisible weights from the comers of my mouth.. 
It was a hot sultry Thursday aftemoon, the Summer before Etna and I started secondary school. We were roaming the fields of the farm where I was brought up. We were accompanied by Willy and Seamas, two boys from a neighbouring farm. I had relieved long Summer hours in the past in the company of Willy and Seamas. They would try to persuade me to join in ridiculous games they had invented, such as seeing who could drink a bucket of water without vomitting. Now I found them idiotic and dull. Etna began to irritate me. She laughed loudly at every stupid thing they said. Her eyes and mouth stretched open so wide that they looked as if they would rip at the seams. I decided to leave them to their fun for a while and went to look for wild strawberries at the edge of the woods. Most of those I found were mushy, hot and an over-ripe red. I did not chance eating any for fear of worms. I froze as I approached them - their figures in the distance reminding me of a scene from a funeral.. Etna lay on the ground and the boys stood at either end of her looking down at her body. They reminded me of the two praying peasants in the picture in the kitchen at home. As I drew nearer, my stomach swallowed itself up. Etna rolled on the parched grass, eyes shut, in a kind of stupour. Her girlish floral blouse was fully unbuttoned revealing her breasts. Her lips were parted, emitting a silent laughter, and whispering a language I did not understand. The boys looked more manly now, and nastier. They looked at her as if because her eyes were closed, she did not know they were there. They reminded me now of the men outside Mass on a Sunday, looking at the women coming out of the church. I wondered what Sr. Joan would say if she saw Etna now, and whether God had made Etna at all. 
I walked quickly ahead of them on the way home. It was as if I were waking from a dream. I did not look my mother in the eye when I got home. I felt as if I had been up to something bad in my absense. Not bad like hitting Mary Sullivan with a stone, or bad like stealing toffee sweets from Ryan's, but a new kind of bad; a bad that made me feel dizzy, a bad that required words I did not know. 
From that day on, Etna looked to me to be birthmarked all over with dirt. Her teeth looked mossy yellow. She stood out in the school yard like someone wearing red in a crowd of black. She stood legs apart, one foot turned inwards childishly. Her breasts pushed in the direction of the nearest group of adolescent males, and she watched them like a cheerful vulture. Her laugh seemed to bounce of the walls and ground, echoing into every crack and crevice. 
Frequently my ears were hit with rumours circulating about Etna. They were absurd graphic accounts of what she had done behind the bicycle sheds to, "Noel, or was it Eamonn? Sure it was probably both of them knowing that one!" I tried to barricade my ears to these words with a vulgar colour and poetry to them, trying to convince myself that Etna's exploits were of no concern or interest to me. But they tickled my ears like listening to the sea in a shell coated in silky wet strands of seaweed. Afterwards I would try to dismiss what I heard as utter nonsense, but would nevertheless think, "How could she do that. . .and with him?! ! Could she not just wait?" 
We had been put in different classes which made avoiding Etna easier. When it was impossible to pretend I did not see her, I would give her a quick 'hello', letting on I was in a terrible hurry. She seemed oblivious to my trying to be rude to her. Sometimes she would suddenly creep up on me and start to chatter, like a babbling child. She would ask me how the family was, or say how she would definitely fail her exams and how I would 'fly through' mine and that I had always been 'so smart'. Once she even asked me how 'What were their names again?...Willy and Sean', were. I replied bluntly that his name was Seamas, and that No, I did not know and was not particularly interested anyway. I quickly left. 
And then came the last day of school. I felt it was the last day of an old life and an old me. I thought sadly of the chosen one or two, whom I had vowed I would kiss passionately by the end of third year. . .then fifth year. . .and now sixth year. But I consoled myself with the fantasy of the exotic, eccentric and handsome man I would meet in Paris. 
Before the official last photograph of our year was to be taken, I felt the need to go to the bathroom. I remembered the eleven o' clock breaks, in this small bathroom on the second floor, with my friends sharing mint cigarettes and repeating over and over how we could not wait to finish school. The walls which had always looked a sickly hospital green, reminded me now of peppermint ice-cream. I heard a whimper from a cubicle. Instinctively I turned towards the door, but for some reason I stopped. I knocked lightly on the door, asking,  
"Are you O.K. in there?" 
"Is that you Deirdre?", Etna replied. I wished then that I had sneaked quietly away. Etna came out. I backed away. I saw something in Ftna's face that I had not seen before, it was sadness. She started to cry and fell softly around me without hesitation. My eyes filled instantly with tears. "What's wrong Etna?", I said. 
"Can I tell you Deirdre? Can I?" 
"If you like", was all I could say. 
"Well, I thought . . . I was going to . . . going to have a baby Deirdre. And it's grand 
really, because I'm not. But I was sort of used to the idea and . . . now I'm sad I 
suppose." 
Etna seemed to me now as she had before that strange, dreamy, clammy day. Her 
tears seemed to channel through the smudgy layer, making her look beautiful. 
We did not stay in contact. I went to Paris shortly afterwards 

I am back on the farm now. I have been looking at photographs of my unsmiling parents, the flat space between them filled with the dull, stiff background curtain of the photographer's studio. I found the last school photograph, from which Etna and I were absent. I wondered first when seeing it if I were invisible, or draped in shadow. Then I remembered her and wondered if she ever had her smiling baby.