Inside Madeleine (15 page)

As they walked out onto the ice rink, he calmly skated away, toward the other rink guard. Madeleine saw Jennifer come out of the bathroom and she glided quickly over to her friend, her mittens up to her face, covering a nervous, painful grin. Her breath came out moist and floated like damp smoke in the cold air and she put her arms around Jennifer’s neck, saying, Oh God Jennifer—Fucking shit. You’re not going to believe this, and Jennifer ducked her head and twisted herself away from Madeleine’s grip.

Get off me, man, Jennifer said, and her arms flew out sharply from her compact frame. Madeleine winced.

Where the fuck were you, Jennifer snapped, her mouth tight.

I was in the rink guard’s station.

Madeleine’s words echoed in her head. She breathed out wetly again, her breath visible against the black air. The darkness of the sky had come down in front of her like a wall of water.

You were where?

I was in the rink guard’s station. With Oz.

Jesus fucking Christ. You whore.

Jennifer spat on the ice. She turned around and skated back toward the bathroom. Madeleine watched her skate away—watched her enter the bathroom. Then she faced her large head to the sky, the sky that had darkened to a crisp black, the sky that surrounded her. Her groin ached, throbbing like a heartbeat, and holding her crotch with her mittened hands, she counted the throbbing beats, one, two, three.

From that day on she felt inside herself with fascination. The lights off, the house asleep, she lay on her back, her legs spread eagle, groping underneath her pink, flannel nightie, past her round belly into herself. She put a finger and then two inside. She turned herself over, squatting on her knees, quietly, hunched up underneath her covers, her head and shoulders pressing against her pillow. She put two then three then four fingers inside. Afterward, in those moments before sleep takes over, her breath slowing down and steadying, she put her fingers to her face and smelled her earthy smell and licked her hand. I’m big, she thought. I’m big like a woman who’s had three children.

When she bathed, she practiced more. The water lubricating her, in went one finger then two then three. Soon her hand slid deftly in. She then put bars of soap and within weeks, shampoo bottles inside of herself. Up went her rubber ducky. Up went the
washcloth. Her mother would knock impatiently on the door, saying, Maddy, get out of there, you’ll shrivel up like a prune. She left the bathroom damp and cold, water splashed on the floor, wet towels everywhere. How can you make such a mess, her mother asked. Madeleine ignored her, huffed and shut the door to her bedroom. She’d lie in bed, her skin dry and tight, her body cleaned and stretched. She pulled her pubic hairs up, tugging the still damp strands, twisting the course hair around her fingers, until with a quick burning sting, they came out.

She got infections. Ingrown pubic hairs. Yeast infections. Bladder infections. Pelvic inflammatory disease. Her mother took her to a gynecologist, sniffling, asking, what’s wrong with my girl? Are you having sex, Maddy, oh God, be careful. The doctor, a youngish man with an eye twitch asked, are you currently having sexual intercourse with anyone? She lay propped up on a table her feet in stirrups as he put in a speculum and said just relax, oh that’s great, and she thought yeah, you think that’s relaxed, you should see what I can fit up there and she closed her eyes as he prodded around inside of her and she imagined sucking him up there, where she had had the rubber ducky last night. She said I’m not having sex with anyone. He mother drove her home, sniffling. Maddy sat with her arms crossed across her chest, her thick bottom lip sticking out. She’d look out the car window and count the trees passing by. The doctor fit her with a diaphragm that she never used except sometimes late at night, by herself, pushing it in and out of herself before placing the saucer back into its plastic container. She put it in
her drawer by her bed—but she knew her mother checked on it while she was at school, checked to see if the spermicidal jelly had been used.

She woke in the mornings tired, dark rings under her eyes, her fingers smelling that mossy smell. Her insides would be tender at times and she carried this tender feeling around with her at school like a secret trophy. In classes, she’d look at certain boys, boys who once seemed intimidating and powerful and she’d smile at them knowingly, thinking, I could put you inside of me, I could eat you up.

Once, when her parents had returned to bed early and she sat up with her older sister Amanda watching TV, she asked her how big she thought she was there.

What?

You know, down there. How big are you?

You’re disgusting, Maddy.

Just tell me.

I don’t know.

Can you put a finger up there?

Of course I can. I can put a tampon up there.

Can you put all your fingers up there?

I wouldn’t know. Honestly, you are sick.

Shortly thereafter, her mother approached her bedside. Nervously, she discussed the facts of life with her daughter, explaining how the size of one’s vagina changes to accommodate different things. A man’s penis. A baby. Her dark eyes darted around the room. She wiped a greasy strand of hair from
her forehead. She coughed and kissed her daughter goodnight on the forehead, her lips hard and tight.

Jennifer no longer talked to Maddy. Maddy’s new best friend was an equally small girl with dull, tan eyes and an extensive knowledge of sexual things. Her name was Carrie and she had had sex with many high school boys. Carrie was in Madeleine’s math class and they often did homework together, which meant Maddy let her copy her homework.

How big are you down there? Maddy asked her one day.

Big enough.

Big enough for what?

For dick, silly. For big dick.

I think I’m bigger than most.

Oh yeah? Well, you’re a big girl.

Yeah, but even for a big girl.

At Carrie’s house, Maddy convinced her friend to show herself. Carrie’s mother was spending the night at her boyfriend’s house and the two girls had smoked a joint and were watching TV.

Come on. Let me see. I want to see what yours looks like.

You’re a pervert, Carrie said, her eyes narrowing, but she appeared intrigued.

Come on, Carrie. I’ll show you mine.

Carrie stood up and pulled down her jeans.

Promise not to tell anyone we did this? I don’t want people thinking we’re lesbos or anything.

Yeah. Of course. I won’t tell.

She wore striped blue panties that were delicately stained yellow in the crotch. She pulled them down and kicked them off. She stood there, revealing a tan-colored patch of hair between her thin legs and nothing else.

See, she said.

I want to see the inside, Maddy said.

Carrie blushed and frowned. The TV illuminated her from behind and she sat down and spread her legs.

There.

Maddy looked. She saw two, small pink mounds. She was disappointed.

Let me spread it open.

Carrie didn’t say anything and Madeleine with one hand, gently opened up the pink flesh. Nothing there, she again was disappointed. She wanted to see a dark hole, an endless, vast tunnel.

How big of dick have you put in there?

I don’t know.

Carrie got up and dressed.

Show me.

Carrie distanced her hands in front of her face. Like this big, she said and shrugged, like ten inches. Fat ones, too.

Madeleine leaned back on a cushion and looked toward the TV and said, do you want to see mine?

Sure. Why not.

Maddy removed her pants and sat like her friend had, with
her legs spread apart. With one large hand she pulled herself wide open and looked up at Carrie, who squinted between her legs.

Ugh. That’s disgusting.

It’s big, isn’t it?

I don’t know. It’s gross, though. All pussy is gross.

What do you mean you don’t know? It’s big!

I guess so. It’s just gross.

Carrie looked at the TV.

Maddy buttoned up her clothes. The next night, at her own house, she took her father’s shaving mirror out of the bathroom and locking her door, peered at her insides in the mirror. Carrie was right. From the outside its capacity wasn’t entirely visible, but she was not so easily deceived. She put three fingers inside and then looked. Yes, indeed, she thought. Yes I do.

She began stealing vegetables from the fridge. Cucumbers, carrots, whole bunches of celery. Her mother thought she was eating them and occasionally said something to her daughter. When did you eat all of those, she’d say, looking at Maddy with narrow, suspicious eyes. Well at least it’s just vegetables, she’d say to her daughter. And Maddy did eat them—but only after she put them inside her. She shopped with her mother, buying the large, economy-sized bottles of shampoo. During her nightly bath, she worked up to putting them inside of her. Her crotch was smooth, baby peach, from pulling at all the pubic hairs. She wanted the whole world in there, she wanted the whole world to disappear in her cunt so that she could slide it—gleaming,
coated damp—back out again. By the end of the seventh grade, she decided to do so.

She fucked the rink guard Oz again and the other one that Jennifer was never going to fuck. She fucked friends of theirs, too. On Friday nights, her mother would drop her and her new friend Carrie off at the rink. Sometimes Jennifer would be there but she never said hi to Carrie and Madeleine. Oz told his friends about her and they drove to Howard Park to see her, their souped-up cars roaring. She imagined the things he said to them. She’s beautiful. She has beautiful breasts. She’ll make you come so hard. With her mouth. With her cunt. She’s the best there is. And she’d think about their cocks, all big and hard, just for her. She made them that rigid, that sleek. They lost control for her. She drove them wild.

But it wasn’t quite like that and Maddy knew it. She knew they came to see her, but she also knew the things Oz said to them were different than she imagined.

They came in carloads of two up front and two in the back. Cute, tall, short, pimply, mean, quiet, scared, rough. Big cocks, small ones, but they were always hard. Pressed up against tight jeans. They’d get hard before she got in the car. They’d get hard just leaning over the rail of the ice rink, as Carrie and Maddy skated up to them in hot pink ski jackets that matched their hot
pink lips. Their eyes sticky with sparkly blue eyeshadow and thick, thick mascara.

They’d get hard as they asked the girls to come out and drive around, shifting from leg to leg, tight blue jeans revealing it, hands in their pockets, nervously looking around. Carrie would work the front and Maddy would work the back because they fit better that way. But it changed, too. Depending on who the boys wanted. Some dark skinned Italian boy who sat behind the wheel, compact and gruff, saying, come here Mad girl, come here. Get your big ass up here I don’t want that little skinny girl, his eyes black and round. And Maddy would smile smile smile, so wanted, so so wanted, and she’d get up front with him and Carrie would jump in the back.

Their cocks hard against their jeans, thick, lumplike. She put her hand on it. Looking at it in their pants. Looking at the boy looking at his own thing, looking at her hand on his cock still nestled in his jeans. She unzipped their jeans, carefully, so as not to hurt the goods, some zippers moved right along, other stuck and rusted, took a while. Those were the best. The boys’ mouths would open, they’d get anxious, breathless, they’d put their hands there to help, sometimes grabbing the zipper from her and undoing it themselves, sometimes pulling out their hard cocks, sometimes leaving it in their Jockey underwear for her to pull out. They wanted it so bad it hurt them. Their cocks bouncing up, straining in their own skins. Beads of sticky clearness on top, quivering, dripping. So ready to blow Maddy bit her lip, trying not to laugh.

She put her hand on it. Stroked it gently stroked it hard. She put her mouth on it, licking it. Jesus, girl. Oh my God. Grunt. Moan. She put it all the way back in her big lipsticky mouth. Tight hands in her hair, sweating palms. It never took long. They were powerless. Sometimes they pulled her up and put it in her, pulling her jeans down over her round ass, sticking it straight in without a finger to her cunt. Just pushing it right in there and sliding it in like butter because she was always wet and she was always ready.

She fucked all the rink guards’ friends. Joey, John, Matt, Bobby. All the high school freaks. Long-haired, combs in back pockets, pot in the glove compartment, AC/DC, Black Sabbath on the radio. She fucked them so good, fucked them better than the high school girls—fuckmonster Maddy, only a little junior high student. They told the other high schoolers. They told the football team, they told the basketball players, they told all the boys who needed to fuck.

She walked around her junior high, her head in the clouds, her thoughts on the weekends. The boys her age were small, lifeless things. Skinny, nervous, looking at her large, proud chest, hands in their pockets, playing with themselves. Sometimes, the ballsy ones, would say, hey Maddy I hear you give good head. She’d look straight at them, some younger brother of some boy she fucked, and they’d run away laughing, turning their heads back to look at her as they ran away, laughing at her. Pussies, she’d snear. Little fucking momma’s boys. No one’s ever touched your little cock. If you have one. Sometimes
they’d come back, chins up, moist upper lip, saying, oh yeah. You want to see my cock? Their hands in their pants. She’d say, whip it out then why dontcha. Little faggot boy. Your fucking baby cock, I’ll laugh right at it. And they’re in their pants now groping around all nervous too scared to whip it out. And they say you whore, you fucking whore, pants unzipped, hand on their hard neglected little cock, too scared to show it and she’d say your mother’s a whore boy, that’s why you were born.

When she graduated from junior high most of the high school boys she fucked had graduated from the high school. So she roamed the halls of the new, bigger school, coolly, mostly anonymous. The boys sometimes still came by the rink looking for her. Their cars bright red, engines loud as shit. But she grew tired of them, she started to see the lines on their foreheads and the pathetic look in their eyes. No longer in high school they moved out of their homes. Some moved in with their girlfriends and got married and stopped coming by now that they had pussy waiting for them at home. They had stupid jobs at garage stations and plants and factories and record stores. Their eyes grew duller and their brows wrinkly so she thought, no more of these old guys. The ones who didn’t marry moved in with each other, Tim and Steve and whoever and their apartments stunk of rotten garbage and stale beer in the filthy carpeting. Sitting around on beat-up couches and La-Z-Boys, their heads hanging low, turtlelike, crunched over, sitting around watching the same TV shows. They’d call her on the phone, saying Maddy why don’t you come over here and she did a few times but she liked
them better when they were in high school. They had more confidence then.