Sapphic Embrace: The Half-Japanese Girl (2 page)

Her fingers slipped
underneath the waist of my jeans, slowly dragging along my skin,
then popping the buttons and unzipping. We both wormed our pants
off, and I almost tore my plain white panties to avoid Meredith
seeing them. I felt the short hairs of her pussy rubbing against my
own, her bodily warmth melting into mine.

Now both of us totally nude,
I returned to kissing her, allowing our bodies to mingle, her
breasts mixing with mine, our parts, our legs, our feet, all
playing together, interlocked, contorting as my muscles tightened
against her. Her tongue slipped back into my mouth, and I tasted
her again. My hands ran through her full, blonde hair.

One of her fingers touched
my clitoris, and my whole body flexed as though surprised. It felt
blissfully good, her finger delicately working me, like an expert
surgeon. Her body writhed against me. I tried to return the gesture
and finger her as well, but her clitoris was tightly pressed
against my thigh, and I could barely concentrate from the pleasure
coursing through me.

I had a sudden orgasm,
gushing and passionate, shaking through me like a seizure. My whole
body contracted around her, as though every muscle in my body had a
need to grasp her and never let go. She came as well from the
motion of her clitoris next to my body, and I felt her warm juices
sliding out onto me, mixing with mine and soaking into our
bones.

We collapsed onto the couch
in a sweaty mess, arms and legs wrapped around each
other.

CHAPTER THREE

Family

“
Stop priming me to hate your family,” she said with a wry
grin. “I’m sure they’ll be wonderful.”

“Oh… but they’re not,” I
said.

We were driving through the
snow-covered countryside to my mother’s home in Calvert County,
passing by all my old high school haunts, seeing where new traffic
lights and roundabouts had been added since last I came home for a
visit. It was a beautiful winter day, and I should have been
looking forward to the family visit.

“I know you never wanted me
to come,” she said.

I sighed. I hadn’t wanted
her to realize I was putting off introducing her to my family.
“It’s not because there’s anything wrong with you.”

“Of course it’s them,” she
said. “Not everybody is comfortable with the lesbian
thing.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s the
exact opposite of that. My mom loves lesbians. She’s a little too
pro-lesbian. She’ll be so proud of me I might be sick,” I
said.

My mother lived on a commune
she had helped start. It allowed in only women and, on occasion, a
select few gay men. They made crafts for sale online and grew their
own vegetables, but spent most of their time exploring the spirit
world.

I was totally right about
her reaction. She pronounced a “victory for sapphism” and planted a
bed of violets in our honor. I blushed and hemmed and hawed and
tried every social cue I could think of to get her to stop, but
nothing worked. My mother was always oblivious to that sort of
thing, and assumed that everyone bought into all the crap she
did.

My mother dragged us to a
community winter sun disc dedication for a sister commune in
Zambia. I whispered to Meredith that it would be boring but would,
at least, take up the bulk of our afternoon without too much pomp.
Meredith only smiled at me and said, “Your mother is delightful.
Okay, she’s a bit a silly, but you should go easy on
her.”

“She’s so embarrassing,
Meredith. She’s often much worse than she is today. My last
boyfriend broke up with me because she was pushing this power
crystal multi-level marketing thing…”

“Well I’m going to judge her
based on what I’ve seen-“ Meredith began, then stopped, her mouth
hanging open, as we approached the cluster of people getting ready
to commune with each other, nature and a dozen white British
emigres to Zambia.

Meredith was looking at a
pretty young blonde woman, an athletic type with strong features
and hemp sundress. She awkwardly approached us and said, “Meredith,
hi. It’s been awhile.”

“Emma, hi.” Meredith’s voice
was flat, almost robotic.

It took me a minute to
recall that Emma was Meredith’s last serious relationship, and that
it had not ended well. I didn’t remember the details, but I knew it
had concluded with a restraining order.

“I haven’t seen you since
Thanksgiving,” Emma said, hugging Meredith, who winced at the
words. A sinking realization flooded through me — she had told me
she couldn’t spend Thanksgiving with me because she was with her
family, not with her ex.

Emma kept chatting about the
past few weeks, pushing that knife deeper into my back with every
few words:
Remember that woman I was
telling you about at Thanksgiving?… Last time we talked, I didn’t
know what was going on yet… I swear every time I can’t sleep and
get on my computer at 4am, you come online moments later and we
have a chat and you make me laugh every time. I almost treasure my
insomnia more now.

My mother was there, just a
few feet away, getting ready for the sun disc dedication ceremony,
and I didn’t want to cause a scene in front of her. But I was so
hurt I couldn’t speak. I just looked at Emma, hatred simmering even
though it was obvious she didn’t know about me.

“Amy…” Meredith said softly,
“Come on, let’s go inside.”

Emma was hurt but nodded,
watching us go with her hands on her hips. Meredith wrapped one arm
around my back, and I moved away from her. On the patio in front of
my mother’s house, I said, “You lied to me!”

“Amy, let’s go
inside-“

“Were you lying to me first,
or her? You said you wanted a committed relationship. Do you
remember that? I wasn’t sure. You were. But were you still with her
this whole time?”

“No, I swear, Amy. We were
broken up then,” she said, biting her lip and looking down. “We’re
still… mostly broken up.”

“Mostly?”

“It’s
complicated.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” I
said. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I didn’t want to cry in front
of her.

“Amy, I’m sorry,” she
said.

“I can’t be with you right
now,” I said. I turned around and walked towards the cars, ignoring
my mother and everyone else watching me go. “I trust you can take a
cab home?” I got in my car without waiting for a response and drove
away, avoiding making eye contact with her, standing on the porch
and watching me.

CHAPTER FOUR

Fight

I
awoke suddenly to loud knocking on the door.

I threw a nightgown on and
opened the door. Meredith staggered in place there, her hair a
tousled mess, her eyes red, staring at me. “Emma dumped me. She’s
moving to London with Gretta.” She wailed and pushed her way
inside, almost knocking a lamp off the end-table.

“Meredith-“

“Please, let me stay with
you tonight, sweetie,” she said, reaching out to rub my cheek like
she used to. But her balance was off-kilter, and her hand just
tapped my cheek, cold and clammy on my skin.

I pushed her hand away.
“Stop it, you’re drunk.”

“I need you, Amy,” she said.
“I don’t want to be alone.”

“No one wants to be alone,”
I said, “But you can’t just barge in here, drunk, in the middle of
the night.”

She was suddenly quiet and
still, screwing up her eyes at me. “Well, I’m sorry for disturbing
you. I’m sorry for disrupting the beauty sleep of the great Amy
Carlisle with something so tawdry as my crushing loneliness!” She
lurched drunkenly past me and into the kitchen. “Whatya got to
drink?”

“Meredith, I don’t have any
alcohol,” I said.

She looked at me
cross-eyed.”What? What the fuck is wrong with you? You never have
alcohol here.”

“I don’t drink.”

“You drink with
me.”

“That’s because I’m an
easygoing person, Meredith. I’m sorry, I really need to go to bed.
I have to go to work in the morning-” I looked at the clock. “Go to
work
soon
, I mean.
Obviously you’re in no condition to go home, so you can sleep on
the couch here-“

“What?”

“We’re not together anymore,
Meredith. Remember? You forgot you already had a
girlfriend.”

“Oh, don’t bring that up
again.”

“That was like three days
ago, Meredith,” I said. “We’re not past it. If you don’t want to
sleep on the couch, I’ll call you a cab.”

She drunkenly mimicked me.
“I’ll call you a cab, Meredith. I’ll post on Facebook about how hot
you are, Meredith. I’ll brag to all my friends I’m bisexual
now.”

“You’re a lesbianism-snob,
Meredith! You’re so concerned about whether I’m really into girls
or not, as though you’re
so
important that I’d pretend to be gay just to be
with you. Like we’d be together for years and get married and then
one day I’d wake you up and say ‘Surprise, you sure thought I was a
dyke, huh? Got ya! I’m gonna go suck cock now.’ That was never
going to happen, Meredith,” I said.

“I know you do like boys,”
she said. “You get all hot and bothered when they come on TV. And
your neighbor, don’t tell me you don’t have a crush on
him!”

“I’m not going to apologize
because I occasionally see a sexy man on TV! And Calvert is a
stripper and a model and an escort, he’s like professionally hot.
That’s not fair,” I said.

“Well, you need to get over
him,” Meredith said.

“I am over him! You know how
you can tell that? Because I went and got in a serious relationship
with someone else, except it turned out it was only serious for
me!” I shouted, “Now are you sleeping on the couch or in fuck-off
land?”

She screamed in rage and
threw an empty glass at me, missing me completely. It shattered on
the wall and littered the carpet with shards of glass. “You
bitch!”

“You are a drunk and a
pothead!” I said. “And I think you should leave.”

She threw another glass at
me.

“I’m going to call the
police,” I said, wishing I had my cell phone at hand.

“Fine,” she said, stalking
out the door without taking her eyes off me.

CHAPTER FIVE

Makeup

I
couldn’t sleep after Meredith left, and I just sat on my couch and
wondered if sexy Calvert below me had heard the fight, and the
possibility of asking him to spend the night was more than a
fleeting thought. But mostly I was too upset to want to be around
anyone else, and when the anxiety didn’t go away, I called out sick
from work. I hated feeling like she had won, had ruined my day with
some intoxicated bitchiness that she probably wouldn’t even
remember the next day.

She called me that evening,
and I almost didn’t answer. Then finally I clicked it and, unsure
whether to say “hello” or just go right into talking, I was
silent.

“Amy?” her voice came out of
the phone tinny and timid. “Amy, look, I know… Or, I’m pretty sure
anyway, I’m pretty sure I came to see you early this morning. I was
drunk. Amy… Are you there?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did I wake you up this
morning?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know
what I said, but I’m sure it was stupid and hurtful and reckless,”
she said.

“It was all of those
things.”

“I want to make it work,”
she said, “I’m putting all my cards on the table, Amy. I know it’s
going to be difficult, but I like you a lot and I think we can work
out a way to be together.”

“Fine, let’s meet,” I
said.

We met at our favorite
coffee shop and made old-fashioned small-talk, completely ignoring
any of the important topics.

It wasn’t until she agreed
to come over to my apartment to watch a movie, and we walked to the
Metro station together, that I brought up the drunken elephant in
the room. “I, uh, I think you have a drug problem, Meredith,” I
said. “You know I work in mental health, right? I actually work for
a dual-diagnosis program for people with addictions and mental
illness-“

“Amy, stop, I don’t have a
drug problem. I just drink a little and smoke weed, and I barely
even do that,” she said.

“If you want to be with me,
you have to drink in moderation. No drunkenness.”

“Fine,” she said. She
gritted her teeth like it wasn’t really fine, like she was willing
to try but knew she was likely to mess up.

When we got back to my
place, the silence in the air was thick. Neither of us knew what to
say, so we decided to put a movie on. That’s what we used to do
when we didn’t have anything else to do. We’d lay on the couch in
each other’s arms and watch something quirky and indie.

Luckily I had bought a few
movies in the bargain bin a few days ago, the kind of indie quirky
romance flicks we typically liked best. We playfully argued over
which one to watch, with her accusing me of choosing one because of
the handsome man on the cover, and me denying it though we both
knew she was right. In the interests of comity, I chose a lesbian
romance about biker-babes in prison — it was a subtitled Hungarian
art film, precisely up Meredith’s alley.