Maidenhead (10 page)

I felt the receiver on my mouth. I heard my heart beat in my throat.

‘You have hair on your vagina, don’t you?’

Jen had hair. Charlene had hair.

‘It’s brown?’

The voice knew. Static was constant, electric.

‘And when did you first start menstruating, Myra?’

I was flinching inside. Dr. Bernhard said that girls had to know about avoiding pregnancy. He said that we would do an internal only if I was not a virgin.

‘Eleven,’ I said.

‘Oooh, baby. That’s early.’

It was Elijah. I heard his accent. He was trying to hide it.

‘You got breasts that early as well, little girl?’

My breath was going unnaturally fast. I had to tell Dr. Bernhard that I was a virgin. If I could have lied I would have lied. I would have washed my virginity away in a flood.

‘What size brassiere do you wear?’

I heard laughing in the background.

‘34C.’

‘You’re not still a virgin, are you?’ His voice got clearer through the buzzing. ‘Yeah, you’re not a virgin. She’s not a virgin. I told you. That’s hot as fuck.’

He was talking to me and to someone else. I remembered that woman’s slap. I was going to hang up.

‘What did it feel like to have a cock inside you?’

The phone was a weapon.

‘Come on, did it hurt the first time?’

My kneecaps were touching. I wanted to scream.

‘Yeah, it hurt a lot,’ I said.

A bat-screech laugh came from somewhere behind him.

‘She’s lying,’ I heard.

‘Nah, she’s not lying. She’s finally fucked a boy.’

I was going to hang up. I was going to hang up.

‘So you’re not a frigid little bitch anymore?’

I threw the phone down on the floor hard enough to break. I cupped my hand between my legs.

Telling myself not to be scared didn’t work.

GAYL: Oh boy. Oh yeah. She likes the sexual attention.

LEE: Attention? Are you crazy? That’s not attention – that’s harassment!

GAYL: Listen to what you’re saying about sexual charge. That it’s nothing but harassment, are you for real?

LEE: Don’t put your twisted contradictory banter onto me.

GAYL: Fine. Think what you want.

LEE: I think it’s bullshit.

GAYL: I think it’s kinky that she’s scared.

§

Aaron raced through the yellow lights for no reason. He had a white Dodge Ram with plaid blankets on the seats. ‘Love doobing and driving, oh yeah!’ Aaron wasn’t afraid of cops or getting busted. He knew the drug laws of the province code by code. He was in the process of becoming a member of the Marijuana Party and he’d been a grow apprentice last summer in B.C.

I was totally skipping school. My mother wasn’t around to get a call from the VP. We hadn’t even heard from her yet. My dad had never in his life spoken to one of my teachers before, so I thought, correctly, that there’d be space there for me to skip. Aaron said he’d lend me books for some ‘real’ high school education. We were going, first, he said, to deal with the ‘money issue.’ Aaron passed me the joint. The car was steady and fast.

This was the third time in my life I’d ever smoked pot. The first two times were with Jen who’d gotten it from her mom’s boyfriend. I don’t think I had completely inhaled with her, but even so, we got into hysterics about her cat licking itself with its head all contorted. It was cleaning between its legs in a field of black fur. We couldn’t speak we were laughing so hard, saying imagine if we had to bend down inside ourselves to clean ourselves there, to clean our pussies like pussies?

‘Pass it back, My. It’s fucking strong shit. Chris is gonna love this strain.’

We were on our way to the old Molson Plant, where Aaron bought his stash together with Wils, who was in the room with Lee when she held the garbage can for my puke. Apparently they were all middlemen for Chris, who linked up to the market in the States. Lee called Chris the Anarchist King. Whatever that meant. I had a lot to learn. Aaron was right, high school was not the only place.

Lee was with Wils at the Plant when we arrived. I was terribly stoned. I’d put my mother’s makeup back on my cheek even though the toothpaste had kind of helped dry it all out.

‘I’m Lee,’ Lee said.

‘I know,’ I said.

Lee was wearing a red fuzzy sweater. Her cheeks had tiny brown beauty marks high on the bone. Wils was a lot taller than Lee. He had a bowl cut and rectangular glasses. Lee and Wils looked like friends more than a couple.

We all smoked another J together. I was going at it without any thought of how fucked-up I’d be. Twenty-foot concrete vats were being used to grow plants.

‘Chris says in Vermont they’re not as discerning.’

‘Whatever, this shit is stinky, dude.’

‘He’ll love it,’ Lee said.

Aaron and Wils were like businessmen. So was Lee, she seemed at least twenty years old. Aaron took out a briefcase, or a satchel, made of black leather and a strap. Leather and a strap. I started to laugh. A video had been emailed to me that morning with a leather strap gag cutting into a girl’s lips. She was sniffing this little white glob on the carpet and her tongue came out from around the gag, she was about to lap it up, when some guy off-screen above her started pulling on the gag, it was just like a leash, he kept pulling her head up by the gag. She looked like a dog, a pink-tongued and thirsty and excited little dog.
Gaggedcumeatingslut
was her name.

‘I think I’m ready,’ I said for some reason, forgetting exactly what my problems were.

Wils was beside me. His eyes were buggy and happy and glinted green. I think I was good but just really dizzy. Lee looked at me not sideways but diagonally. We were the same height. I felt something activate between us, like a wobbly plastic strip in the air. Aaron and Wils were talking about passages too, the pathways of drugs through Vermont to Miami. Lee kept looking at me on that angle, like trying to re-ignite and make real the thing that was wavering between us. The plants breathed. That’s how stoned I could be. There was something between me and Lee, between me and the plants. The ceilings were vaulted. There was a growth between my legs: a pig’s tail, corkscrewing pink. I needed to jam it into something. I needed to rub it against another pig. Maybe I’d never felt truly horny, just the preparation. Maybe this feeling, this tail, was its ultimate expression.

‘Hey, Myra, wanna come to the bathroom with me?’ Lee asked.

My tail receded. Aaron looked at me weirdly. He was measuring baggies with Wils off a huge bush ball of weed. The satchel was open, a calculator and a thermos inside.

‘Are you guys done soon?’ I asked.

Lee smiled at me. ‘Just come,’ she said.

Lee held out her hand and I didn’t take it, but I followed. We walked through the concrete hallway. Vents blew chemical air. Oil spotted the ground in zigzags.

The bathroom was small. Water dripped from the four-legged sink.

‘You and Aaron are hot and heavy, huh?’ Lee took the elastic out of her hair and shook it out.

‘No, not a lot.’

‘What do you mean not a lot?’

‘I don’t know. I mean not so much. We just met or whatever. You and Wils are together too?’

‘Eighteen months,’ Lee said. She looked at me behind her through the mirror. I slid down the wall to sit on the cold floor.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t really see you two together.’

‘Why not? That’s bold. You don’t even know me.’

Lee turned around and looked down at me. Her hair stood out from her skull like soft brown and black twigs.

‘I don’t know. Forget it.’

‘No, what do you see? I want to know.’

My jaw was all stiff. ‘You seem kind of off to the left of him. Bigger maybe, I don’t know.’

‘You see that?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

Lee watched me and pulled her hair back into a bun. ‘Well, he’s kind of a man-boy. But I like that.’ Lee took out her stash wrapped in foil from her back pocket. ‘What do you want to do tonight?’

‘Smoke more,’ I said.

‘Okay, cool.’

Lee rolled a J on the medical-looking sink. ‘Let’s smoke all night and talk to the gods,’ she said.

‘We have to find them first.’

‘Right. Invite them in.’

‘Make them happy,’ I said.

‘Yeah. On our knees!’

I knew Lee knew what it was like to be on her knees, sucking a guy. I didn’t know yet, but I pretended I did.

‘Let’s go back and tell our men,’ Lee said. The joint was already lit. She was grabbing my arm to pull me up.

I forgot that we were talking about them. When Lee said men, I thought of Elijah. I thought of being on my knees for him. Elijah on my knees, on the phone, on his way. He told me that he was coming to Canada. I heard that bat-screeching laugh. Female.

‘I don’t want to go back yet,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’

‘Okay. You’re right. You’re okay. Let’s stay a little longer.’

Lee sat down with me on the floor. I was trying to de-stone myself, to stop being scared. Lee took a drag off the joint, then she ground it out on the floor, watching me. I was shaking. Shaking like after an orgasm. I couldn’t stop myself.

‘You’re okay,’ Lee said. She put her hand on my shoulder.

‘Okay, I know. I’m okay. But, uh, it’s like ... ’

‘What?’

‘Uh ... There’s this guy who’s supposed to come in from out of town to see me and I don’t know what to do.’

‘You mean the American guy?’

‘How do you know?’

‘You told me about him.’

‘I did?’

‘You said you were seeing some American guy and that he was imposing.’

‘I did? I don’t think I said that.’

‘Yeah, you did. That first night we met. When you were puking. Right after you puked. You were talking about some American guy, that he was a musician, a lot older. You said you were seeing this guy and you missed him a lot.’

‘I did?’

‘Yeah. And you said he made you that necklace.’

‘Oh god. Did everyone hear me?’

‘No, they were smoking. They didn’t care. You were just telling me.’

‘What else did I say?’

‘So is this guy a Rasta or what?’

My teardrop black-red-yellow-and-green talisman against violence.

‘No. I mean, I don’t think he is. I don’t know. I really don’t know. He’s from Tanzania. God, I feel sick.’

‘From telling me? From what?’

‘No. I just feel really sick. I don’t know how to deal with it, like, that he’s coming here.’

‘Well, he sounds cool, I guess. The Rasta from Tanzania.’

‘No!’

‘Why?’

It hit me then, everything that happened in Key West. I had not told anyone. There was just my scabbed-up cheek and my porn.

‘What’s the matter, Myra? You can tell me.’

I had to speak or I was going to faint.

‘Okay, okay, okay ... I’ve got this picture in my head of him and, uh ... Okay ... It’s going over and over, it’s filling up my head, I can’t stop it.’