Maidenhead (5 page)

‘They do a ceremony out there, every year, where the slaves were buried. An African guy, like, a priest or something, he comes every year special to do that and it’s a big party, like, lots of drumming and music, a fire.’

Maybe this guy liked the way I looked from behind. Maybe he wanted to make love to me too. I wanted to make love to the Tanzanian guy.

‘You wanna meet me there? It’s, like, a big party, we could dance. You look like you like to dance, yeah?’

I turned quickly, shaking my head no and left the room. I knew the guard thought I ran out of that room like my mom.

This time, in the stall of a bathroom that was designed like a boat, I knew exactly what I was doing. I pulled up my skirt and sat down on the toilet. I used both my hands. I was thinking of the security guard out there, outside the door, imagining he was going to come in in a second and call me
bitch. Don’t run away, little bitch. Come back, little bitch.
He’d have his knees on either side of me and he’d hold the door with his back and hold me in front of the toilet and take down his pants and show me his thing and he’d say
Come on, bitch, stay with me, bitch. Bitch
was a compliment. That child was a slave. I felt it bigger inside me this time, coming like a parachute opening. I felt it pulsing and rising up even in my throat.
Bitch.
My mother couldn’t take it. This time I spasmed throughout my whole self.

My family was waiting outside of the museum for me in the sun.

‘Where were you?’ Jeff said. He looked worried. My father had his back turned.

‘Myra, we’re going for lunch now,’ my mom said carefully. ‘Something light.’

Maybe she thought I’d just puked. Adolescent girls like to puke.

‘What do you feel like?’ Jeff asked me, trying to make things better.

‘I don’t care,’ I said.

‘I want a Coke,’ Jody said.

‘Hamburgers okay?’

‘Hot dog,’ I said, thinking about my mouth.

As we walked towards the beach to one of those crappy beachside BBQ shacks, I realized that I was really the only one in my family who could handle looking at those pictures. I saw those slaves for what they really were: people caught in a horror show. Men were now wanting something from me too. Having an orgasm was like this private transmission of what their wanting did to me.

GAYL: I like the way she mixes it all up and pulls it all together. I didn’t get to see that exhibition. But, you know, it sets a nice tone for our abject adventure.

LEE: You’re so critical. You’re being mocking, right?

GAYL: No. It’s for real.

LEE: I don’t believe you.

GAYL: A smart female has got to be critical, you better believe that.

LEE: I do. I believe that. But you don’t have to be a bitch.

GAYL: Why not? Bitches are the best.

§

By day five of our vacation, I was masturbating every time I went to pee. By day five of our vacation I was always wet. I felt it walking and sitting down too. I felt it the very first thing in the morning. On day five of our vacation, I knew I had to go back to his room.

I walked through the same alley where I’d walked with him last. I promised myself I was going to stay there this time. I was going to stay there this time and lie down on his bed. I was going to stay so he could take off my clothes. I didn’t know what he’d think of me naked, without my bathing suit.
Come back, little bitch.
The only person who’d ever touched my breasts was the woman who’d fitted me for my first bra and she had scolded me for not coming sooner. She’d picked up my breasts and then kind of let them go roughly. She said to my mother outside the change room: ‘Her breasts are going to sag. You should’ve come sooner.’ I thought that that guy would suck my breasts. Masturbating felt amazing. I mean, why would someone be afraid of sex? Sex was going to feel amazing. Sex was going to blow my mind. Sex with that guy was going to make me want it more and more and more and more.

I got to the motel with this plan in my head, but then all I could do was stand there outside. Count the rows of black holes studding up the white walls. This time I didn’t have a towel or a book to hold on to. I had a one-hundred-dollar American bill in my pocket that my father had given me on the first day of our vacation.

The way the stairs creaked I felt sweat in my shoes. Weeds were growing between the splinters. One of the spider plants had fallen down. Its pot was cracked and the roots were exposed.

There was a room-service tray outside his door – two plates and a glass with milk glued around the bottom. I stood at the railing and looked out at the sea. It wasn’t far. In Key West the sea was never far. The guy said he was born in Tanzania. I’d pissed on my bathing suit inside his shower. I’d seen him touching himself through the dark.

This time, I was wearing underwear. This time, I had on a bright pink thong. The fabric was sticking to me under my skirt. I didn’t put gloss on my lips so they were dry. I heard a baby crying on the beach.

I knew this guy wanted to see me again.

I put my ear to the door. The door was opposite the bed. I was going to knock but then I heard music. He was playing that ocarina again. It made me remember that we were really going to have sex. That sound was like code for sex, it was the way that we’d met. He’d be so happy that I came back. This time I wouldn’t run away. I was finally going to have sex. With a man, a musician, a genius musician. I was going to surprise him. I was going to make him the happiest person alive! I held the doorknob. My hands were sweating. He’d make me come like I made myself come.

The door was open. His door was already open. He sat on the bed, his humped back knotted with nodes for the spine. My heart was racing: I’d let that person inside me.

I slipped half into the room holding on to the door. The curtains were still in a heap at the window from how I’d ripped them down. The music didn’t sound smooth; notes jerked, one way up. I stood in that dull dead space at the door unable to move. I heard water run.

Then a woman came out from the bathroom.

She was holding a rag between her legs. She wore a man-sized white robe. The woman was tall and older and black like him, her hair in two thick French braids merged at the back. She moved in a swagger like she was drunk, pushing between her legs and laughing. The cloth she was holding down there was smeared with blood.

‘You gonna help me or what?’

I’d come here to have sex with this guy. The woman stood over him holding her gut. He didn’t take the ocarina out of his mouth.

‘Hey, Elijah! It’s the only way to cure this fucking thing.’

The guy still didn’t respond. His name was Elijah. He blew a high note up towards her face. The woman started this kind of wobbly dance, cleaning herself with the bloody cloth. Her robe came open and I saw her breasts. They were long at the top and sloped into bells, with dark brown nipples right at the centre. Flesh shook on her legs; they seemed musical too, like a chiming instrument that you hit with a stick. The guy, Elijah, played faster now, following her shaking body with sounds. The room was humid with messed-up sheets and old sun. When the woman got into the bed, she smoothed down her robe like wings at her sides. Her thighs were relaxed. There was no more blood.

‘Touch it,’ she said. ‘Touch me, come on.’

Elijah didn’t move from the edge of the bed. ‘I fucked up,’ he said. ‘We gotta leave.’

‘With a chick?’ That woman glared at him. Elijah didn’t answer. ‘Fucking please say no. Do I look like I’m in any shape to be travelling right now?’

The woman grabbed the sheets from the middle of the bed and tried to cover herself. ‘Don’t even fucking tell me if you fucked up. It’s Spring Break, right? There’s a fucking spread of eager legals. Don’t even fucking tell me.’

Elijah tried to wrestle the covers away from her. She was angry, though, trying to get away from him and keep covering herself. Then Elijah’s hand gripped her thigh. Veins bulged in his arm and he began kneading her there. She sort of settled down when he started that. I couldn’t see it all but I knew where he was going when he kneaded higher and higher on her thigh, his hand using a hook-shaped push. I felt it too. I wanted to feel that too. After a few pushes of him doing that hard and her closing her eyes and spreading her thighs, it looked like he was inside her with his whole arm. The woman started to cry these amazing sex sounds. I couldn’t believe she was feeling so much. Then Elijah leaned down and put his mouth on her there. He had both hands on both her thighs, kneading. His mouth opened and he started moving his head between her legs. I saw his pink tongue through the thicket of his hair. The woman gripped his head and pumped up. Then she thrashed and grunted. God, I wanted that too. She was bucking up into his face, like using his head to masturbate. It was as if the two of them were a freakish machine: he pushed in and she bucked up. Then she roared, it was massive, like a standing-up bear. Elijah stopped moving. After a few seconds the woman started laughing. She rubbed her eyes and pushed him away.

Elijah sat up and looked at her. Her skin was glowing like the moon.

‘Don’t do that to anyone else,’ she said quietly. ‘Got it?’

‘Yeah,’ Elijah said, wiping his mouth. ‘Yeah, G., sure. My mouth is all yours.’

The two of them stared at each other. I stepped backwards, sweating, intending to leave, but I pressed against the door and it clicked. The woman looked at the door.

‘What?’ I said, louder than I meant to.

The woman looked at me. I noticed her bottom lip was split, as if she’d bitten through it. I saw blood on her robe in the shape of a lake.

Elijah walked over to me and grabbed my wrist. I didn’t know if he was mad. I didn’t even know if there was a secret between us. He looked back at the woman on the bed and kind of moved himself over so she could see me.

‘Fucking hell, E. What the fuck kind of little baby is that?’

‘I tried to tell you,’ he said. ‘But she came on her own.’

I wanted him to touch more than my wrist. I wanted him to touch my chin and open my jaw so I’d speak. He should do to me what he did to her. I wished, god, I wished. The woman leaned forward and laughed. It was like she heard my thoughts. A draft froze through my chest.

‘What?’ I said for the second time.

‘What, what?’ the guy said, mocking me.

‘She’s fucking jailbait, E.’

Then Elijah pushed me against the shut door. It was rough and I got scared. My eyes flew down to his grey cracked-up feet.

‘How old are you?’ he whispered in my face. ‘Say eighteen.’

I heard the woman laughing on the bed. She clutched her gut. Elijah had me trapped. He smelled like smoke and caramel. I felt his eyes on my T-shirt that was too tight across my tits. I stayed as still as I could while he pushed his chest up against me. The woman wouldn’t stop laughing, then coughing. It was wrong, it was like she couldn’t stop her own sounds.

‘Does she need a doctor?’ I whispered. I was so turned on being held there at the door by this guy, but I also felt like I was going to throw up.

‘Get her fucking out of here!’

That woman had bolted up from the bed. She was staggering towards us, breasts eye-like, alive. Elijah peeled himself off me and left me exposed. This woman was two heads taller than me.

‘What the fuck is this, Elijah?’ The woman was angry. Her body gave heat, I felt it, purplish, fluorescent. ‘Why do you like this baby-faced one?’

I knew I stared at her one second too long.

The woman slapped me hard on the cheek.

‘Is she going to wake up or what?’

The woman smiled after she slapped me, like it relieved her of being angry. She walked backwards. I held my face. Wake up? I was shaking. You can’t just slap someone for fucking staring. I hated her. I was not a baby. I was totally awake! I was going to fuck her boyfriend endlessly.

Elijah took me by the shoulders and opened the door.

‘It’s time for you to go now,’ he said.

‘Go? Go where?’ Pain flared in my cheek.