Falling on my head like a memory…

I asked James Ensor what his favorite memories in the rain were, and very much enjoyed his reply.  So I think I’ll reciprocate with my own.
 
Somehow, even though I’ve thoroughly enjoyed spending time with certain individuals, though fairly transient, at many points during my life, my memories in the rain are all solitary.  I must have been caught in the rain with other people I knew at various points, I just can’t seem to recall any presently.  
 
The rain experience which stands out in my memory as most euphoric took place when I was seventeen years old.  To backtrack a little, when I lived in Houston, Texas, three years before, I’d taken the first half of French I in a small but affluent high school out in a forest, and actually quite liked the course, though I hated everything else about that school, save the scenery.  I ended up transferring to another school for the second half of my freshman year, the school my mom taught at, where block scheduling, which only allowed me four courses that semester, prevented me from taking the second half of French I that school year.  Fast forward a little and the following school year, my sophomore year, was spent in Laredo, Texas, in a little high school in the very ethnocentric hispanic town.  I remained at that school until graduation and in that town until I was twenty years old.  
 
When I signed up for classes at that school, my counselor told me they didn’t offer any French classes there, only Spanish, a language everyone there but me spoke fluently, and pretty much primarily.  Then as she looked on her computer, she told me there was one class that year of French II, a class that had been formed for a handful of seniors that had taken French I back when they were freshmen and had not been able to complete their required second year of foreign language credit due to their required course not existing.  She signed me up for it and told me to worry about French IB, the second half of French I, sometime later.  My French II teacher, who was very laid back, found out on day one of class that none of the seniors remembered more than a handful of words in French, so she just decided to restart at the beginning of French I.  That was such a slacker class.  The teacher was busy with her own stuff most of the time, so on most days, me and all of those seniors, most of whom were pretty cool and quickly became my friends, just chatted and joked around, looked up things in an English to French dictionary like how to say, “Would you give me a spanking, please?”  
 
Pourriez-vous me donner une fessée, s’il vous plaît?  That query became the anthem of our class and the center from which all other topics radiated.  It came as no surprise that we didn’t even make it to the end of the first half of French I.  We were all given credit for the second year course, but I still had no credit for the second half of the first.  My counselor told me she’d have me take the course-credit exam for it at some point, that she’d schedule it and let me know.  I didn’t feel like being on her case about it, partially because I was nervous that I hadn’t yet learned anything from the second half of French I.  I was also a very busy young girl, with all of my AP courses and clubs and organizations, magazines to edit, etc.  But finally as my senior year began, I decided to inquire about the credit with my counselor.  She told me she’d get back to me on it, and then called me in one day and told me she’d scheduled me to take it in four days, handed me a French I textbook “in case you want to refresh your memory”, she said, and told me which chapter the test began from.  She then informed me that only grades of 90% or above were accepted for credit on these types of tests and that they were known for being pretty hard.  
 
Needless to say, I felt quite overwhelmed.  That night, I refreshed myself on the part of the book I’d studied two years before and got to where we’d left off in class, a few chapters before the part of the book the test covered.  Needing to learn those before moving ahead, I began Saturday morning zoning in on each lesson, trying to master each as fast as I could and cover each chapter as thoroughly and swiftly as I was able.  I didn’t have time for any distraction whatsoever, as the task seemed absolutely impossible to me, but imperative.  I tested myself out with every quiz and test from the book as I went along, and just kept going at it all day, most of the night…had to get some sleep, though I was reluctant.  Woke up Sunday morning and realized I still had sooooo much to cover, well, learn, really, since it was all new to me.  Took out my notebook and began working, and slaved over those books until I felt like I was going out of my mind.  I picked my head up and straightened my back for the first time that day, and looked at the clock.  Four thirty p.m., about.  I peered through my grandmother’s gauzy white curtains right beside me on the couch and saw that the sky was a wan shade between eggshell and light grey, no brightness coming through.  Too early for the sunset, I noted.  Was late September, I believe.
 
My grandmother walked through and our maid, Natalia, an older woman who stayed over for a night once every two weeks, spent a day cleaning, and then went back across the border to Nuevo Laredo, Laredo’s Mexican sister city, followed behind her all made up (no pun intended) in the prettiest red lipstick, black liquid eyeliner, deep red blush, in a lovely dress, and carrying some of my grandmother’s old shopping bags, as she did every time she left our house after cleaning.  My grandmother would drive her to the edge of the border, just a few miles away, and Natalia would walk out and pretend she’d been out shopping for the day and cross the border and go home.  Evidence of her working on the U.S. side could have kept her detained.  
 
So anyway, my grandmother left with Natalia and I decided I needed a breather.  I felt like I’d been going mad.  I stood up and stared out at the dimly lit sky and opened the big sliding glass door in the dining room.  There was a touch of chill in the air, which was quite atypical for that time of year there, and I stood in front of the black iron screened door and breathed some of it in; I needed it.  I remember inhaling the coolness, enjoying the feeling of it inside my lungs, the tightness of it against my skin…and then I heard a crash of thunder and thick streams of rain suddenly filled the air outside as densely as french and english lettering had been clotting my notebook pages.  I had never done anything like what I was about to do, at that point in my youth, but I felt such an intense desire, need, even, to feel that cool deluge as close to me as possible.  Since it was just my grandmother and me living there together, I knew I would not be walked in on for at least…20 minutes.  So I decided, quite brashly, to follow my impulse.
 
I hurriedly pulled my shirt off over my head and pulled down my ivory satin sleep shorts, left them both on the floor and ran outside into my tiny backyard wearing nothing but my panties.  Crisp white low-rise cotton panties with bold navy blue lines crossing sideways like x’s and a single red dot in the center of each small enclosed diamond shape, the edges of the panties navy blue and scalloped.  I remember the panties because I could see them clearly reflected in the giant living room window as I danced around outside.  The raindrops were hard and cold, but felt wonderful against my skin, against the hot intensity I’d been feeling all weekend, the searing pressure, the tight confinement.  I remember the rain running in rivulets down my bare breasts and then blending together like a sheet of water as I ran my hands over them and squeezed them to learn what they felt like with cold rain on them.  My nipples looked hard and dark in my reflection in the glass, and I raised my arms above my head and stood on tiptoes to see what my chilled wet body looked like all stretched out.  I looked rather pale, I thought, and my underwear were becoming quite translucent.  I dashed around the yard working out some of my tension and squealing with delight.  High pitched, I remember.  The experience was so thrilling and pleasurable I was moved to cartwheel across the wet grass.  I cartwheeled excitedly back and forth, doing two or three at a time and then changing direction, so as not to crash into the orange tree, which was low to the ground.  I jumped up afterward and squealed more, and began moving and dancing around in whichever way my body and visceral mind directed.  I remember the dancing involved running my hands over my cold wet body a lot, and how sensually awake I felt.  
 
I realized after a while that my grandmother might come home soon, and that she was likely to be pretty shocked and upset if she saw me out there like that.  She’d be convinced that every tiny hole in our wooden privacy fence would naturally have a perverted little man behind it watching me.  “The peeping toms!  The peeping toms!”  she always warned me.  I always pictured cats, tomcats, peering through whenever she used that expression, so it made me laugh.  I did wonder if my squealing had drawn any attention from neighbors on either side of the fence, but I didn’t want anything to get in the way of the pleasure I was feeling, so I chose not to care.  Realizing I had to go inside very soon, I ran back to the middle of the grass and did a few more cartwheels, ran up to the glass and watched myself jump around some more, tilted my head back and felt the rain on me, ran my hands up and down my wet body once more, and went back inside.  Peeled off my little soaking wet panties, picked up my clothes, and took a shower.  
 
I got back to work after that, same intensity as before, and decided to take the following day off school, so I could have one more day to finish, which I desperately needed.  By the end of that Monday, I’d covered every chapter and learned the material in them as best as I could in three and a half days.  Half of a course-load in that short time period had seemed impossible, and I still had serious doubts about how I’d do on that test.  When I went in to take it the following morning, the tape recorder for the verbal half kept malfunctioning, and no one in that office was able to fix it.  Still, I tried to make the best of it.  Tried to pronounce the words convincingly.  Though, because it had just been me and a book, and I didn’t yet have internet access at my house, I had never heard most of those words spoken by anyone other than myself.  And I realized during my test that I didn’t know at all two of the words that came up, that I had to have gotten wrong.  Because I had to get at least a 90 just to receive any credit for the course, I seriously had my doubts.  But one morning a few weeks later, in my Physics II AP course, this big obnoxious nerdy kid came up to me, a guy that was constantly annoying me, and congratulated me.  My counselor had asked him to tell me that I scored a 94% on the french test.  I was so relieved.  And a little bit proud, I’ll admit.  Though most of my other grades were higher than that, half of a foreign language course in three and a half days had seemed quite impossible.  Of course, I should have been studying it over a much longer period, but oh well…
 
I hardly retained any of the material I quickly stuffed into my brain that long weekend, but I’ll always remember dancing and cartwheeling nearly naked in the cold afternoon rain.