Maidenhead (17 page)

‘She kept me after school a few times to work on things with her, just cleaning the classroom or whatever, or talking about our class and who I liked and didn’t like. I didn’t think that much about it, actually – I was just happy to be with her. We analyzed people and that was cool. I felt special, I guess. But then it kind of progressed, if I can use that word, from it just being easy to talk to her about school to her wanting to talk to me about my family, especially about my mom and dad and how much they let me go out and all that. And I talked. I liked her and I told the truth about all of those things. I didn’t feel strange about any of the time we spent together until she started telling me one day about herself too, stories about how she went on dates with guys but she didn’t ever want to be with anyone. Then she told me she thought the penis was a very ugly organ. She asked me if I’d ever seen a penis before.’

‘Wow.’

‘I know. Grade 6, right? And I hadn’t, of course. So, I think that’s where it turned. Nothing happened that day, but it happened pretty soon after that. She capitalized on something, I guess, the fact that I didn’t know anything about sex and that I liked talking to her. Because then, this one time, she just admitted it. She said she couldn’t help it. She said that she really, really liked me and she didn’t want a boyfriend. And she kept asking me all the time if I was okay with that, if I was okay with her feeling things for me like that. And she said if I was uncomfortable, I should just tell her. But the thing was, I wasn’t uncomfortable. I liked it, actually, and I liked her too. She told me stuff about herself. She was smart.’

‘So, you mean, it was a good experience for you?’

‘No. Not really. I mean, that’s not a bad question, and it was all pretty good until she started wanting stuff from me. Like, first it was a kiss goodbye on the cheek. Then the double kiss. Okay, once, I remember this really well, after a double kiss she kind of grabbed me by the waist and kept me close. And then she said, “Lee, you have an incredible body. I just think you should know.” She didn’t let go of my waist when she said that. That was when I really felt that something was happening between us. Something uncontrollable.’

Lee paused. She looked past me.

‘I was only twelve, right? So to me, when she said I had an incredible body, I felt like I was hot shit. I had this secret. We started doing more things. I sat on her lap. I let her put her legs between my legs. I used to look at myself naked in my bedroom and think of how she would be seeing it. And I wanted her to see me like that because I felt like I was addicted to that feeling of her saying,
You have an incredible body. I think you should know.
We started kissing more. We got to doing it with our tongues. I let her touch my breasts.’

Lee’s cheeks lit up. She looked out, not at me.

‘I wore these special loose shirts and this was just when I was getting tits or whatever. I wore them so that she could feel me there, but she never just felt my breasts when she went under my shirt, she always felt everywhere around them, taking so long to get to them. I closed my eyes and sat on her lap, sometimes facing her and sometimes away from her and I’d just sit there so willing and lap up every single second because every single stroke of it felt so good. She knew how much I liked it. She really knew. I was her lapdog. She had so much power over me.’

‘Lee ... ’

‘No, listen, this one day we were really going at it, probably the most I’d ever let her do. My pants were opened and it was the first time she was going in my pants. I was going to let her do everything that day, it was seriously the day I knew I was going to let her feel me down there, I’d thought about it endlessly, right? And my shirt was up, she was kissing and licking my breasts and I was holding her too, I was really holding her tight because she was sucking and sucking on my nipples so hard I thought I was going to faint from how good it felt.’

Lee looked at me, an open book.

‘Our janitor walks in. He coughs or something. I don’t remember being shocked but she, she immediately starts sobbing. Her whole face goes red and she covers it up with her hands. I think she actually fell down on the floor. I still have no idea how she went from doing what she was doing to full-body fucking sobbing. I remember I pulled down my shirt and zipped up my pants. Then I went out with the janitor and I never saw her again.’

Lee took one huge long drag of smoke and let it out to the light.

‘See, what I realized later, Myra, I mean not until much, much later – because I was a fucking suicidal mess after she left our school and I had to be examined by psychologists and doctors and shit – was that through that relationship with her, I’d just gone along with her feelings the entire time. I felt a lot and I wanted it, yeah, but essentially I just went along with her desires. First her need to talk to me, and then her need to get me to talk, then her need to touch me and her need to know how I wanted her to touch me. But this whole thing happened without me really understanding what my own needs were, or where they came from. I can admit that. I loved her back, right? Just like she loved me.

‘So, it took me all these years to examine what was mine in there. I mean, if she didn’t like me first, would I have liked her? Considered her for fucking? I’m being honest. This is the kind of stuff I have to take responsibility for.’

Lee’s knee was shaking. I moved my hand there.

§

I woke up to low weeping moans from the bathroom. I was too scared to move.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ I whispered. I didn’t know if it was morning.

Gayl started hacking. Elijah stirred and pulled me in close.

‘She’s having some emotional issues,’ Elijah said, breathing in my neck. ‘Go back to sleep. The woman is confused.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s not your age, Myra.’

‘So?’

‘She wants a baby.’

‘Oh.’

Elijah laughed. ‘But you’re all these dark bitches until fifty or sixty.’

I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Elijah strapped me in with his arms and tried to stop me from shaking. He was shaking too. I didn’t know what to do. The sheets were damp. Gayl’s retching and hacking went away. Elijah rubbed my cheek with the cracked tips of his fingers.

I heard a whimper.

‘I’m going to check on her.’ Elijah rolled away from me. I got cold. After a few seconds I got up out of the bed. Gayl was on the floor in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet. I touched her shoulder.

‘Are you okay?’

Tiny hairs were stuck to her forehead with sweat. Her eyes were so heavy that she only looked at me through half of them. They were red-flecked.

‘Get yourself out of here,’ she said. ‘Leave me alone. You should listen to him.’

‘Do you need water?’

Gayl laughed and hacked. ‘I just got this fucking annoying problem. Did you hear me? Get the fuck out.’

I left her and went back into the bed with Elijah. I lifted up his arm, hid myself under there. ‘When you and I make love, it’s going to be big,’ Elijah whispered.

‘What about Gayl?’ I asked. Her sweat and sickness and red eyes in there. ‘Do you have big sex with her?’

‘She can’t do it anymore.’ Elijah held me even tighter.

My heart flipped. ‘What’s wrong with her? Why is she so sick in there?’

‘Emotional problem, I said.’

Lee would say I was in over my head, that I would have to figure out what my needs were in all this.

‘But maybe we should take her to a hospital. She’s really really sick.’

Elijah pushed me over to the side of the bed. He sucked his teeth. ‘She’s got a woman problem. Go tell your daddy.’

‘What?’

Gayl started retching again.

‘Get out of here, all right? Leave us alone. Can’t you hear her? She wants you to leave!’

Elijah closed his eyes. The bathroom door clicked. Both of them had told me to leave.

‘What did I do?’ I asked. ‘Fuck, what’d I just do?’

Elijah didn’t open his eyes. ‘Don’t make me get up,’ he said.

He didn’t care about me. Neither of them cared at all about me.

Lee was right, I’d degraded myself.

§

I called Aaron when I got home at three in the morning. He was driving to Barrie with Wils in the car. He answered his phone just by breathing in smoke.

‘My, my, Myra,’ he said on the exhale.

‘Are you ever gonna stop smoking?’ I asked him. Female problems where you can’t have sex, I looked that up on Wikipedia.

Aaron coughed crap. ‘Not gonna stop if I can help it, baby. Why do you ask?’

‘Does Wils even like me?’ I asked.

‘Why do you always want to know about yourself?’ Aaron asked back.

‘I’m just curious.’

‘And narcissistic?’

‘Whatever. No.’

I counted on Aaron to be nice to me. He didn’t know that I just wanted to get fucked, as quickly as I could. Gayl could’ve had adnexitis, I read – inflammation of the Fallopian tubes, the uterus, the ovaries too.

‘Wils is in love with someone, Myra, someone you know and fucking like! Okay. Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker so you can ask him yourself.

Aaron took another long bubble hit. I heard Wils say, ‘Be careful, man.’

‘Wils, please tell Myra what it is that you love most about our lady Lee.’

‘She’s not who you think she is,’ I said before Wils could talk. I don’t know why I said that. I was conscious that it wasn’t right, that it was betrayal. But I felt it inside me: I had to fuck something up.

‘Lee’s my partner. It’ll be two years in December.’

‘I think you don’t know everything about her.’

‘What the fuck is she talking about, Aar?’

‘Hey, hey! Myra’s cool. What’s going on, Myra, are you being, like, psychic or something?’

‘What does that mean?’ Wils said.

‘It means that she’s smart, like, her body is an instrument.’

I was surprised that Aaron said that, considering what was going on, I mean, what I wanted from him. Nothing physical had happened with us in a while.

‘Maybe Myra will help you with Lee,’ I heard Aaron say.

‘Lee’s elusive,’ Wils said. ‘And I don’t need any help.’

‘So how’s your sex?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be so crude, Myra, Jesus!’ Wils shouted. A truck honked. ‘Aaron, slow the fuck down!’

‘You’ve made her come?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Is she good?’

‘Yeah, she’s intense ... ’

Then I heard Wils take a toke, the babbling brook. ‘Why should I tell you anything, Myra?’

‘Because I’m curious. Because I’m brilliant.’

Aaron said something that I couldn’t hear. Wils laughed.

‘I believe you,’ he said.

Now I was in the car too.

‘Um, okay. Lee breathes all over me really fast, she gets in my ear and I feel kind of smothered by her,’ Wils started. ‘Then, listen, at night, when she’s sleeping, she can’t really breathe. She has some kind of problem with breathing. She loses her breath, or it’s like she holds each breath in and she makes this weird sound when it’s coming out as if she’s deciding if she should take another breath. It’s kind of a whining sound, like a crack in the floorboards.’

‘Sounds spiritual,’ I said. ‘Like she’s dreaming about breathing.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Wils said.

‘Maybe she just really needs to explode.’

‘Shut the fuck up, Myra. Do you ever shut up?’

‘Fuck you too, Wils.’

‘Bad blood between you kids, or what?’ Aaron laughed.