Little Cat (9 page)

‘Yes,’ I said, then, ‘No.’

John was laughing at me. I kept swallowing instead of changing what I was saying.

‘But you probably remember who told you about sex the first time, don’t you?’

I shook my head.

John lit a cigarette and looked at me. We were walking pretty fast.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘The first person who told me about sex was my uncle. He wasn’t much older than me, six years or something, we were just kids, you know, but it pretty much scared the shit out of me. He said it like this: “A man gets on top of a woman and opens her up with his dick.” I swear that’s what he said. I didn’t know what he meant but I knew I wanted to, you know – who wouldn’t? A man opens a woman up with his dick? I’d never even seen a woman naked, not even my mother, and my uncle just goes: “Watch me. I’ll show you.” I wasn’t saying much back, so he started wrestling with me, the way we always did. I was on the floor, and I remember I was trying to look up at what he was doing but I couldn’t really see, you know – I think he was holding his crotch through his pants. Then he was kneeling between my legs and I heard him laughing, going, ‚ÄúOkay, Johnny-John, you’re the woman now,‚Äù and he started spreading my legs – really fucking wide. It
felt
weird, Mira. It felt all fucked up. I was just a kid who didn’t know what was what. So the next thing I know he’s pulling off his pants, they’re down to his knees and his cock is out, you know, sticking straight out, and the only thing I could think was:
Man, that’s big!
What did I know? Fuck, my first hard dick … And I guess it made me get one, too, or something, because I felt like reaching down and putting my hand in my shorts. My uncle was over me, right? He was almost lying on top of me and he started sticking his dick up the little space between my shorts. I could feel it rubbing on my leg. He was pushing it more and more up there and then it squirted – yeah, right up my shorts! I thought it was piss, that I pissed myself or something. But my uncle just jumped off me and I was lying there thinking I wet myself, fuck, why’d that feel so good … ’

John stopped. He was rubbing his face with his fingers.

‘It’s weird to tell you that. That’s fucked-up shit, huh, Mira?’

‘No.’

‘What? You don’t think that’s weird?’

‘No.’

But I felt weird, as if there was gas in my chest, trapped.

‘Wow. You’re the first one then. If I ever tell a woman that story, she just kind of freaks out and thinks I’m gay or something.’

‘No,’ I said again. Nadia would probably think John was gay and say so to his face. I just wanted to know more – like did it happen again? Did you and your uncle ever actually have sex?

John threw his cigarette on the ground in front of us and wrapped his arm tightly around my shoulders. We must’ve looked like a couple.

‘So what happened to you, baby?’

I laughed inside at him calling me that.
Baby!

‘Nothing. Nothing really, my cousin told me something … ’

‘What? How’d she say it to you?’

‘It was nothing. I mean, it was just him and some of his friends in our basement … ’

‘Sounds interesting.’ John laughed. ‘Come on, tell me.’

‘No, they were just telling me that sex happened between a mother and a father … ’

‘Yeah? Go on, it’s all good.’

I’d never said this to anyone.

‘Go on, Mira, you can tell me.’ John started rubbing the back of my neck. ‘Remember what the fuck I just told you?’

‘Well, they told me about sex and it was weird because I’d never really heard anyone talk about it like that before, that’s all.’

I shrugged my shoulders. I’d never told anyone, not even Nadia, about this. I didn’t want John’s arm on me anymore. But he held me harder when I shrugged.

‘Yeah, Mira? Come on, how’d they say it?’

Ezrah had shown us pictures from a big softcover book of a mother and father kissing with their tongues. ‘The father’s tongue makes her take off her clothes,’ he’d said. ‘Then the father puts his penis in the mother’s vagina.’ Ezrah had started laughing the second he said
vagina
. ‘And when the baby comes out,’ he could barely finish his sentence, ‘there’s a hole in her body the size of a head!’ All the other guys had started cracking up too.

‘They all started asking me if I wanted a baby,’ I said to John.

‘And what did you say?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t want a baby?’

‘No! Not from them!’

John laughed and I laughed too. I think my voice finally sounded normal.

Then John turned my shoulders. We were standing in front of an old house with a cracked cement porch. The windows in the front were covered with sheets.

‘This is it,’ John said, unlocking the gate. ‘I want you to come in and see where I live.’

‘No, I can’t. It’s okay, I have to go.’

‘Come on, Mira. Just for a minute.’

I told him no again, that I had to go home, but he just kept saying, ‘It’s okay, we’re right here, just for a minute, just a minute.’

I really didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go inside that house.

John squeezed hard at the back of my neck. His hand felt so big, as if my whole head fit in it. I don’t know why I thought that I couldn’t just go home – run away from him even. I thought for a second that he might chase me if I ran. Or maybe he would’ve grabbed me around the neck so I couldn’t breathe.

‘One minute, come on. Just for a minute,’ John whispered. ‘I don’t say these kinds of things to everyone, you know.’ He was shaking me back and forth a little by the shoulders. It made me hiccup one last time.

It smelled like smoke right inside the front door. There was a narrow black staircase that we had to go up. John moved aside so I could go first. I thought he was watching how I walked. I felt my hips move from side to side, even though I didn’t usually walk that way.

He was going to touch me. As I climbed the stairs I knew what was going to happen. He was going to touch me.

‘Thanks,’ John said quietly to the back of my head. ‘For coming up.’

I thought again of running, but I was already at the top, waiting for his hands to come around and unlock the door.

It seemed as if the apartment was all in one room. There was a kitchen in one corner, a
TV
and a couch in another. There were videotapes all over the floor. It smelled as if someone had just been cooking.

I walked over to the window. There was a hole in the screen. I heard some kids screaming and I thought the noise was coming from the huge apartment building with the foil on the windows that we had passed. I could still see it far off, standing like a rock. The sun was orange, just about to disappear.

‘So this is where I live, baby.’

John came up behind me and turned me away from the window. He was pointing to a couch. I squinted as I moved toward it. John was smoking again. I knew I should call home, but my parents were probably already out for dinner.

‘Why don’t you take off your shoes and get comfortable?’

John laid his cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table. He stood in front of me and gently pushed me down onto the couch. Then he moved the table back a bit so he could kneel
on the floor in front of me. Smoke was filling up the room. I squeezed my thighs.

‘It’s okay,’ John said, sliding off my shoes. ‘I like you a lot, you know.’

Holding my bare feet in his palms, John started sliding his fingers between my toes. I was sweating. I didn’t want him to do that. I curled up my feet and tried to pull them away.

‘Okay, okay. Anything you want, Mira,’ he said. But he didn’t let go. He started kneading the arches of my feet with his thumbs. I let my head lean back and closed my eyes. It made me stop feeling like a sound was going to come out. My hands were on the couch beside my hips. I was bracing myself. It was like he knew something about me.

‘You’ve got beautiful feet, Mira.’

I lifted my head. John was pulling my toes up to his lips. I couldn’t believe he wanted to do that! He was smiling, watching me trying to watch him. My eyes kept opening and closing. I couldn’t keep them open.

‘Relax, baby … ’

I felt my feet go all wet with his steam. A suction came down.

‘Mmmmmmira … ’

His slippery tongue pushed in and out of the cracks. My whole body started to shake. I thought for a second I was laughing with my mouth closed. John stopped and looked at me.

‘You’re a funny girl, you know,’ he said.

John stood up and took off his T-shirt. There was no more sun in the room.

‘I know you have a beautiful body under there.’

My teeth were chattering. A beautiful body? I stared down at my smashed thighs. I heard the zipper of John’s pants. My fingers were pushing under the elastic of my skirt. I wanted to do it and I didn’t. I was wiggling around. My underwear slid off at the same time as my skirt. I knew I should call home.

‘Oh man, that’s sexy.’

I felt my fingers behind me, unhooking my bra.

The father’s tongue makes her take off her clothes. The father puts his penis in the mother’s vagina.

‘Oh god, yeah. You have beautiful breasts.’

I stared at the hair above John’s penis. His penis was starting to jerk around. It moved to the side, looking soft then looking hard. It looked like a worm turning purple in the rain.

I wanted to get rid of the thing that was tightening inside me. I thought that if John just lay on top of me, everything would be fine. I knew what sex was. It was Nadia’s fist.

‘I could look at you like this forever, Mira.’
My vagina started to feel strange on the couch, like powder dissolving into the ground.
‘Aw, baby, why’re you cold?’

John’s body came down on me quick. His hairy chest pressed into my breasts. He was so heavy I didn’t think I could breathe. I felt his penis start to move on my thighs, there was some kind of stuff on it, shiny, lukewarm. I was going to say stop, but John put his lips directly over mine. He was kissing me hard. His tongue was in my mouth. I was breathing out the side.

‘Mmm, good, you really know how to kiss.’

I started doing it like he was, it seemed like forever. I bit into his lips and he bit my lips back. John’s hand wriggled down between both our stomachs. My legs spread wider. His finger poked around.

‘Shhhhh, shhhh. Babe, you’re so wet … ’

I tried to look down between the darkness of our bodies. John’s hand was holding the top of his penis. I moaned as he started to push it to my vagina. My moaning was there to keep the tiny space I had left between me and him. John was grimacing, wagging his penis up and down. He was pushing it deeper, then pulling it away. The head of his penis was shining with gloss.

‘Open up, baby, open your legs.’

I knew it wasn’t right. He was supposed to use a condom. But I felt myself plug. The plug made me mute.

John kept pushing and pushing, he couldn’t go in any further. I didn’t want the feeling of the tightness inside me. I wanted to break. John forced my knees open and whispered too loudly, ‘Open up, come on! Open up! Open up!’

One of my legs suddenly fell off the couch.

‘I’m inside you, babe. Come on, babe, come on!’

Bone into bone. The plug was a wall. The only fist I felt was my actual fist.

John lifted his hands to the side of my head, used his hard shining forehead to keep me flat down. My eyelids were grinding.

‘Good girl, shhh, good girl … ’

I needed to move side to side in my hips. It felt different when I did it, different better. I pushed my hips up into his body. I used my fists to hold myself up.

‘That’s it. That’s the way … ’

Something was stuck there inside me, like a log stuck in fire.

‘Yeah, baby, fuck, good girl, that’s the way … ’

It didn’t hurt more when I moved a bit faster. There was just something burning, a fever down there. John’s hands squeezed my ass, his hands spread me open, spreading until I was bigger, unstuck. Oh god, I was doing it. It! Really It! I was feeling him move faster in and faster out. I was trying to feel every in, every out, but I couldn’t keep up, it was going too fast. I didn’t even know if I was feeling him or feeling me. I shut my eyes, I tried to relax …

‘Yeah, fuck, you’re so hot.’

Something flew up inside me. I heard myself grunt. It flooded my insides, flooded my head and I floated, floated, just for a second … Then John’s head hit my chest and I was back in the room, back on the couch, knuckles under my bum as John trickled out of me, saying my name.

‘Mira! Mira!’ The men at the club called me by my real name.

I was doing my trick: lying on the ground with my hands behind my shoulders, then pressing up, my back in an arch. I walked that way to the edge of the stage so that in front of their faces, my cunt touched the pole. It looked like a split-open flower they’d stepped on.

‘Oh yeah, baby! Go for it!’

I stood up red-faced and turned around slowly. I imagined their claps slapping right on my ass. I tried to smile backward over my shoulder, but I could only do it for a second. It was a baby’s smile, a dog’s smile.