Possession (3 page)

Her own bladder had been full to bursting when she had arrived home to find Lena dead. Now it demanded attention. The Day-Old-Bread-Store loomed ahead, windows steamed over. She ran inside, knocking over a stack of stale sandwich loaves, bouncing oblongs of red, yellow, and blue wax-paper into the narrow aisle.

"Hey!" the Italian shouted. "You! Girl!"

"Bathroom," she cried. "You got a bathroom?" He was so close to her that she could see the pores of his nose, the stubble of coarse black hairs on his chin. He nodded and gestured toward the back of the store, as she dashed past him and slammed the door. The toilet was dirty, but she was past the point of caring. The Italian looked at her curiously when she finally came out. He had pulled down the shades in the front windows, casting a greenish pall over the bread inside. The past-date bakery goods looked like bodies huddled on the white metal tables.

"You O.K., girl?"

Louise bent to pick up the bread loaves scattered around her feet. Wonder Bread. Wonder. Wonder. Her fingers felt numb, and she couldn't seem to grasp the slippery loaves. She looked up at the Italian and saw that he looked funny. But everything seemed different; the whole world had changed.

"Let 'em be. They're too old anyway. I'll give them to the pig man when he comes by."

"You're closing so early? It's only four thirty."

"It's a slow day."

She liked his voice; it was soft, and she was amazed that she had someone's full attention. She walked over to the

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counter and leaned against it. "You always close up at five. Every day but Sunday, you're open nine to five. See, I remember?"

"It don't matter. They don't come in by now, they won't be in. What's the difference in a couple loaves of bread?"

Vito Ferrano was thirty-eight, a bachelor not by choice but by circumstance, the grudging support of a senile father and a sister whose mustache discouraged serious suitors. Now the girls looked past him at the guys in their twenties, guys who still had hair and hadn't the girth that Vito had. He rubbed his hands over the white apron covering his belly| and felt the growth between his legs; this girl always did that to him. How old was she? Eighteen? Maybe nineteen. Not real pretty girl, but not bad either. She didn't carry herself like the ones who came into the store and teased him just so he'd throw in a free bag of doughnuts. She hunched her shoulders to cover up those breasts, or maybe it was just much weight for her to carry up front. He leaned forward over the counter, balancing his body! on his splayed hands, hoping the apron hid the erection that! he couldn't stop. There was something peculiar about the] girl, but he couldn't figure out what.

"You got problems? Somebody chasing you?"

"... I don't know. Maybe. She died ..."

"Who died?"

"My grandmother. You know her. She comes in on: Fridays and Tuesdays."

"Oh, yeah." He didn't know. One old lady looked just \ like the next to him. "That's too bad. You feeling real sad • about it, huh?" She bit her lip and looked down, poking her finger into the yielding white plastic package of rolls on the counter. She didn't feel sad, but she supposed she should. It was very quiet inside the dim store, and she could hear the man breathing.

"I just came from school and I found her. Just sitting there. Just dead. I didn't think people died sitting up."

He watched her, seeing the rise and fall of the white blouse over her breasts, the bones in her wrist so close to the

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skin that they shone through. He reached a plump hand across the counter and patted her hand. Her skin was as cool as water, and his own so hot he thought he would burn her with his touch.

"It's good when they go like that. They get old, and they just kind of stop. They don't feel nothin'; it's like you just turn out a light, you know? Just click, and then no more."

She nodded faintly. He took it for grief that she could not put into words. He moved around the counter and she leaned toward him, putting her head on his shoulder. He held his body back. He didn't want her to feel the bulge of his erection. What kind of a man gets a hard-on when he's supposed to be comforting a poor girl like this?

She smelled him, a yeasty odor, and his aftershave lotion. It smelled good. It got the smell of the house out of her nose. She leaned closer to him and he put his hands tentatively on the hip bones that pushed through her blue wool skirt, trying to hold her away from his lower body, but she pushed forward. She felt like a little rabbit to him, all bones, helpless, but her breasts burrowed into his chest, sending sucft shocks through him that he trembled.

"Don't cry," he whispered, although she wasn't crying at all.

"What's your name, girl?"

"Lou— ... Lureen."

"That's pretty. You're pretty. A pretty, pretty girl." He stroked her hair. "This makes you feel better?"

She nodded her head and moved closer to him. She felt the hardness against her belly, and wondered what it was, and yet, not knowing, liked the feel of it. She worked herself closer to him, feeling the odd stirring that she'd never been able to explain. Her legs felt weak, and she clung to him for support. He lifted her onto the counter and stood between her knees.

"You call me Vito," he whispered. "You like being here with Vito, don't you? You forget about what's outside there. You forget you're sad." He stroked her hair, her face, and let the fingers covered with silky black hairs trail down her neck. And then he

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touched her breasts, petting them as if they were separate beings. Stroking, kneading, rubbing them in a circular motion. She closed her eyes. This was the best she'd ever felt in her whole life. She could never remember being touched at all, and now she was being touched in a way she had never imagined. It was so much better than leaning against the washing machine.

"Little rabbit," he murmured. "Poor little rabbit." He opened the buttons on her blouse, and she made no move to stop him. Her breasts felt as if they had grown, as if they had to burst out of her blouse. She kept her eyes closed and gasped when she felt his lips on her nipples. He touched the erect pink flesh gently and then sucked, and she felt a warmth spread between her legs and into her hips and belly.

Suddenly, he moved away and she opened her eyes in protest. She watched, fascinated, as he untied the long white apron, and stood before her in a white T-shirt and dark trousers. He stared at her breasts and his face was so different, flushed with color, his lips parted. She could see the bulge in his pants and she watched as he unzipped himself and let a great blue-veined cylinder of flesh spring out. It seemed to have a life of its own, standing out from his open fly, the slit at the end of it touched with a drop of moisture.

He pulled at her shoulders, drawing her forward on the counter, and she spread her own legs farther apart, aware of dampness in the crotch of her panties. He was not gentle now, but fumbling and hurried as he tugged at her panties.

She knew that this must be the bad thing that Lena had warned her about, but she didn't care if it hurt. Grunting and panting, the man moved toward her, and she lowered herself onto the purplish probe, sliding down over it, wrapping her legs around his waist.

It did hurt, but only for an instant, and then Lureen felt, for the first time in her life, that the empty place inside her was filled up. She clung to him, and he lifted her clear of the counter, circling the room in a clumsy dance until at last he gave a cry and his arms lost their strength. He set her back

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on the counter and. slumped beside her, his head on his arms, breathing so harshly that she thought he was sick.

"Vito?" She watched him with alarm. "Did I hurt you?"

"Huh?" He looked up at her and began to laugh. "Naw, you sure as hell didn't hurt me, little rabbit. You only just wore me out." Relieved, she slid off the counter and began to look for her panties. She found them under a table and put them on. She watched him and saw him changed. He had been with her, touching her, surrounding her, enveloping her, and now he seemed so distant; he turned away and zipped up his pants, reached for his apron and tied it around him again.

"Vito?" she said quietly. "Do you still like me?" He looked up, and his face was back to the way it always was. He didn't seem to know her. He grabbed a rag and started to wipe the counter.

"Sure, sure I like you. I like you fine."

"But you're different—than you were before."

"Well, it's always different after. You know..."

"No."

"Didn't you ever do it before?"

"No."

"Oh shit!"

"Well, I never did. But I liked it."

"Lureen ... how old are you?"

"Sixteen."

He slammed one hand down on the counter and looked at her as if he hated her, and then he slumped and said quietly, "Lureen, I'm sorry. I thought you was older. I wouldna never done it if I knew."

"But I liked it."

"You gonna tell anyone?"

She considered that for a moment. "No. I haven't got anyone to tell. Can I come back again?"

"Sure. You come in anytime. I'll save you one of them pecan pies they send down from Philly."

He was walking her toward the door, his hand flat and insistent on her back, urging her out.

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"No. I mean can I come back—like it was today?"

He pulled up the green shade on the door and surveyed the sidewalk outside, satisfied himself that it was empty of traffic, and unlocked the door.

"Sure. Well, we'll see. You're O.K., kid. You're just a little young."

She turned against his pressing arm, trying to hold onto the good feelings, and yet seeing them vanish. "Didn't I do it right?"

"Kid. You did fine. I'll see you around. Right?"

Lureen was out the door and on the sidewalk. The ice beneath her feet looked clear on top, but she could see dirt and debris frozen into it where it coated the cement. She turned and headed slowly up the street toward the drugstore corner. It was so cold. Even the drugstore guys had gone inside. She didn't want to go home, but there wasn't anyplace else to go.

"Hey! Kid!"

Lureen looked back at him, standing outside the bread store. And she felt the loss that she would feel for the rest of her life. How could she have been so close to him just a few minutes before and be so separate from him now? How could people pull apart so completely? She had liked the "bad thing," despite Lena's warning, but she had basked in being held. Once it was over, there was no more holding. She made a half-step toward him again, but his voice held her away.

"I'm real sorry about the old lady. You take care now. Right?"

He didn't want her back. She walked away, wondering. There was something that made men want you close, and there was the thing they could do that took away the empty place, but you couldn't count on them to want you afterward. It didn't make sense to her.

She'd expected that Pete would shout at her when she got home, but he just looked up dully when she walked in. She went to bed all by herself—for the first time—luxuriating in being able to sleep in the middle of the bed, and in the silence.

* * * 18

Lena's departure made so little difference to her that it was as if her grandmother had never existed. Pete went his own way, and Lureen rarely saw him. Sometimes she'd catch a glimpse of him downtown with a woman; it might have been just one woman or a series of women who looked so much alike that she couldn't tell one from the other. He gave her money once in a while and sometimes he brought groceries home. She existed on cokes and egg-salad sandwiches and Franco-American spaghetti, and used whatever money was left over for movies. Pete won a twelve-inch television set on a punchboard. She found it in the living room one afternoon. It must have been for her, she figured, because he was never home to watch it.

It changed her life.

Because she couldn't read, Lureen had drawn all her information from movies and pictures in books. She could not afford to go to the movies very often, but now she could spend hours and hours in front of the television set. The square plastic Philco centered with gray images was an education for her. The soap operas went beyond anything she had ever gleaned from movies; she could be part of them, live through each day's drama on "As the World Turns," and see what a family was supposed to be. It explained things she had never been able to grasp. She realized that Dorothy had not returned because Dorothy was suffering from amnesia. On television these people who had forgotten always came home eventually, and so would her mother.

Television became far more important than going to school, and she went less and less often. When she signed Pete's name to excuse notes, no one questioned her, the only class where she understood what was going on anyway was Home EC. The things she really needed to know about were home on TV. She could spend a whole day and half the night curled up in Lena's old chair, the shades drawn against the sun. Sometimes she yearned to crawl into the set and be part of the life inside. Time telescoped and she was always amazed when the "Star Spangled Banner" and the nightly prayer came on.

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"I Love Lucy" and "Queen for a Day" and the rest erased any memories of Vito Ferrano. She forgot what he looked like; the only thing that remained of that afternoon that Lena died was a rippling sensation, an awareness of her belly. It wasn't insistent enough to make her want the funny fat man to touch her again. If he could make her feel that way, then she suspected any man could.

There was a man she dreamed about, a man who walked with her day and night. Elvis. When she saw him for the first time on Ed Sullivan, she was stunned by his beauty. He was clean and pure, and yet he moved in a way she'd never seen a man move before. The audience roared and screamed when he moved his hips that way, and the cameras suddenly focused on his face alone. But Lureen felt so much more for Elvis than the audience did; he had such sadness about him. She could see it in his eyes and hear it whispering beneath the beat of his songs. She wanted to put her arms around him and tell him she understood.