She was humming, too, and I realized she really had been a lot more worried than she had let on. We sat and munched and made jokes about my day at school for half an hour before I got to the point. “I gotta ask you about something,” I started. “Sure, dumplin’. About what?” She was practically giggly. “Intercourse.” Well. If you ever want to stop a room dead silent and get some undivided attention, I could suggest using that word. It hadn’t sounded all that powerful when Dr. Matassa used it, but it must have just seemed tame in the same conversation as “rape.” Right now Miss Lydia looked like a frog on the business end of a gig. “You said we could talk about anything.” I could feel myself blushing and it was making me furious. “We can. We most surely can.” She looked like she was reminding herself to blink. “You just shifted gears on me a little abruptly, that’s all.” We sat with our hands in our laps looking at each other. There was a fair amount of expectation in the air.
