Maidenhead (11 page)

‘What’s the picture?’

I held on to a metal leg of the sink.

‘It’s his body ... ’

‘What about his body? It’s okay – just say it.’

‘His body is so amazing. It smells like caramel.’

‘What did you guys do together?’

‘No, I mean. We didn’t do ... No, I mean, fuck, I can’t say it.’

‘Say it, Myra. Just talk.’

‘It’s my hair, he’s grabbing my hair and he’s got it pulled back too tight and he’s naked and my mouth is messed up with lipstick and spit and his cock’s right there ... ’

‘Yeah?’

‘And it’s in front of my face and I’m dumb and I’m mute and he’s calling me a bitch. Then he forces me to suck him or whatever, and when he takes himself out he sprays all over my face.’

Lee looked at me. I felt better and worse.

‘You’re not dumb,’ she said, poking my shoulder.

I had no idea what she was thinking. We didn’t know each other at all. I didn’t even know what high school she’d gone to.

‘It’s okay that you see that,’ Lee said slowly. ‘I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Well, I mean, what do you think that fucking is about?’

I felt relieved at first, that Lee was experienced. That she knew about fucking, that maybe she’d even watched porn like me, porn criss-crossing in my head every time I thought about Elijah: girls on glass tables, glue-shooting cocks, cunts in close-up.

Lee stood up. ‘Myra, I asked what you thought fucking was about.’

‘I don’t know what fucking is about.’

‘Well, I know. You mind if I say it?’

‘No. Say it.’

Lee pulled me up off the floor. We were standing face to face.

‘Fucking is dirty. You want to not have it all romantic and drippy. It’s okay that you want it dirty with this guy. It’s okay that you want that picture in your head to be true.’

Lee got quiet. I blushed. Heat shot through my thighs. What I thought was shame, she was saying, was not shame at all.

GAYL: True. Our bitch wants her backward-ass dreams to come true. Me and the man can make these kinds of dreams true.

§

There he was, shivering in a white robe. Elijah stood on the street across from my school, scanning the tops of the kids’ heads for me.

The wind blew through him. He wasn’t dressed right: head to toe pale and billowing in a thin-looking robe, dreadlocks up in a turban that looked like soft ice cream. He shifted from one foot to the other, searching me out. He was not half-naked and glistening like he was in Key West. I felt my heart pound. I could not cross the street.

I saw Jen and Charlene coming up arm-in-arm through the bodies of kids from our school. I took off my knapsack, dropped it on the ground pretending I needed something in there. I didn’t know if Elijah had seen me yet. But I could feel Jen’s body, her smell when she got close. She wore some fancy Holt Renfrew perfume.

‘Look at that crazy guy,’ I heard Charlene say to Jen. ‘Look. Across the street.’

Jen and Charlene stopped about three feet away from me. I dug deeper in my bag. I found an old pear. Jen dropped her bag on the ground too. It was like she was copying me or something. Fuck.

‘Weird,’ Charlene said loudly. ‘He’s looking at us.’

I don’t know why, but it felt like for a second that Jen was going to apologize to me. I imagined us being friends again, everything going back to normal. I took a bite of the mushy pear.

Then Jen said, ‘No, he’s not looking at us. He’s looking at
Myra
.’

It was mean, how she said my name. She said
Myra
like she hated me. I stood up quickly and put my knapsack back on. I started to walk fast towards the school and I stepped on her bag by accident.

‘Fuck!’ Jen said. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘Sorry,’ I muttered.

I felt Elijah from the other side of the street, his hands in the air like a vapour, an angel. My body started to shake. I held the bad pear. I was completely see-through.

‘
Sorry
,’ Jen mocked me in a squeaky voice.

‘Don’t be so fucking immature,’ I said. I lurched past them, in the direction of school.

‘Oh, don’t be a fucking cunt!’ Charlene said after me.

I stopped and turned around, in shakes. ‘I
am
a cunt!’ I yelled. They were both crouched down like frogs. I felt the pear skin split at a bruise. ‘And you’re both cunts too!’

I took a look across the street. Elijah walked out, in the middle of traffic, holding his arms out to stop the cars. The wind billowed his robe. He was all happy teeth. I smiled too. Charlene and Jen had out their phones.

Elijah had a beard growing of longish black moss. Cars beeped. He looked totally religious. It was weird he wasn’t wearing a coat. I thought for a second of running, going to the principal. I could’ve even called my dad, who I knew was at home in the basement doing nothing. Jen and Charlene were watching me.

‘He fucking
knows
her?’ I heard Jen asking.

Elijah grabbed me tight by the wrist.

And I realized that
I
had made this happen. My thoughts had made this happen.

‘Hi,’ I breathed. His hand was a half-rough, half-smooth piece of ice.

‘What happened to you?’ Elijah peered at my cheek.

The scabs had not completely disappeared but I hid them under my mother’s cream. I yanked my wrist away from him.

‘I’m just hungry,’ I said. I took another bite of the pear.

Elijah leaned in close to me, he got right up close. ‘What happened to you, Angel? You don’t need that crap on your face.’

He reached his finger out and swiped my cheek. Orange stuff came off.

‘I’m not an angel!’

I knew that Jen and Charlene were fucking shocked to death that I was talking to this guy, that I knew this guy. This man was here from Key West for
me
.

‘Okay, girl, okay, okay. So what are you hiding under there?’

There was mush in my mouth so I just shook my head. I felt the teardrop necklace heavy on my chest.

‘I’m not hiding anything, okay?’ I looked around. Charlene and Jen motioned to me to come over to them. ‘I’m just on my way home.’

Elijah held out a business card. ‘This is where I’m staying.’

I reached for the card but he pulled it away.

‘You want it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Come closer.’

‘Nn-nnn.’

Jen and Charlene were watching, they were watching this. Scared.

Elijah put the card into a fold in his tunic. I licked my lips.

‘Come and get it. It’s in here.’

My heart freaked. I heard Charlene on the phone. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, she was talking too fast.

‘Those girls are jealous of you,’ Elijah said. His lips brushed the top of my head.

Jen and Charlene would never know someone like Elijah. I, alone, knew this man. I was a different person than I’d been before Key West. I was starting to be friends with a girl older than me. I was living with my brother and my dad. I was making out all the time with Aaron who said he worshipped me. My mom left town two weeks ago and I hadn’t heard from her yet. I was a different person from who I’d been before. Fuck Jen and fuck Charlene. I, alone, knew Elijah. This man had crossed the continent for me.

‘Show those two girls over there that you know what to do,’ Elijah whispered into my hair. ‘Show them that I know all about you.’

I put my hand on Elijah’s shoulder and Elijah slid my hand down to his waist.

Take that, frog cunts. This is my man.

Elijah slipped my free hand into the fold of his tunic. I felt him hard in there, moving around. He was forcing me to feel the length of his cock. I’d seen so many cocks now in my porn. Elijah’s was big. I was as big as the sky. My body covered the jerking of what we were doing. I knew Jen and Charlene didn’t know what to do. I knew what to do. I rooted around for the card from Elijah’s hotel, his cock in my hand, squeezing when he pushed up. I had to bend down a little and lean into him more. I heard Elijah grunt. He was looking over my head at Jen and Charlene. He was making me go faster, squeeze harder all along his length. It was hurting my wrist and I was trying to get away. I’d do it later, I’d do it in his hotel. I’d do it on my hands and knees and look up at him just like those girls in the porns.

‘Come on, girl, just do it. Finish up.’

‘I can’t,’ I whispered.

I heard Jen say: ‘Let’s get a teacher.’

Charlene: ‘The police.’

‘Something’s wrong with you, Angel, why’re you so tight?’

‘I’m not, I’m not tight.’

‘You’re tight, you’re too tight.’

‘I am not! I’m not tight!’

Jen and Charlene sped by us like flies. I smelled the rotten perfume.

‘I’m not tight,’ I whispered. ‘My pussy is tight.’

Elijah snorted. I felt a stain of hot wet on his front. I whipped my hand out of his tunic holding the card. I had his number. I looked for Jen and Charlene but they were nowhere around.

‘Where’d you learn to talk like that?’

My heart was beating too fast.

‘You make me crazy, you know that?’

I wished I could’ve walked home with Jen and Charlene.

‘I wanted you from three thousand miles away.’

A police car suddenly burned and screamed by. My breasts went hard inside my bra.

‘But don’t wear that crap on your face when you come see me. You’re a sexier little bitch without that.’

The necklace he made me hit against a weird pulse.

‘When should I come?

’

‘Tomorrow. Saturday. Day of action.’ Elijah smiled. His jaw was like a sculpture. His white turban stood. ‘You come and I’ll fuck your tight pussy all night.’

Blood pounded so hard through my body, pumping and crooked like wires of light. I was going to scream his name when I was coming. I wanted my hands tied behind my back. Just like those sucked and slapped girls in my video clips. They always had to look the men in the eyes when they were coming. The guys wanted to see how much they were destroying them with their big hard cocks like hammers and pipes.

‘You’ll be there, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

I was breathless. Elijah walked away. I held my virginity up in my fist.

GAYL:
Shit
. I got nothing here. I’ve got nothing to say.

§

‘I think you were actually degraded by this guy,’ Lee said to me in the ravine near my house. A greenish light full of flies lit us up. I’d told her the whole Key West story, minus the part about the slap. ‘And it’s like you’re still operating within a pattern of systemic degradation.’

‘Systemic degradation? Degradation, you mean, because he pissed on me?’

‘On your head. Uh, yeah. Where your brain resides. My other point being that you and Aaron don’t do stuff like that, so why’d you do it with that guy?’

‘How do you know me and Aaron don’t do that?’

‘Because I know. I would know that kind of shit. Aaron talks to me, right? We’re pretty close.’