Maidenhead (18 page)

‘Myra thinks she’s, like, the greatest lay in the world.’

Maybe Lee had told Wils about me and Elijah.

‘Easy. Myra’s just curious, you know.’

‘She’s
not
curious, Aaron. She just doesn’t know what the fuck she wants so she’s going to fuck over
everyone
.’

‘That true, Myra?’ Aaron said. ‘You wanna fuck me over or just fuck?’

It was true that I was going to be the greatest lay in the world. I was going to experience so much that everyone would want me. I’d be a master and a slave. Elijah and Gayl would take me back.

‘What d’you think, My?’ Aaron was so stoned.

‘I’ll wait up for you,’ I said.

GAYL: Thank the Lord below. Amen. Myra’s going to get laid. Maybe now some shit will change.

§

My mother called from Seoul for the first time since she’d left. The line was so bad that I heard my voice echo first.

‘Myra! Oh shit! I just realized it’s the middle of the night. I was just about to hang up ... I forgot your birthday, Myra, I’m so sorry, my god, I can’t believe I did that, please forgive me.’

My mother sounded squealish. Maybe that was the distance.

‘Myra, you there? Yes? Oh god, I’m just so glad you picked up. You’re awake! I was going to hang up. Oh, Myra, I’m so sorry about your birthday, it’s upside-down here. I really miss you. I miss you all.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’ve just been getting everything together, you know, my documents, a bank account, all my stuff and getting jobs, teaching jobs, I mean, I can’t believe it’s been almost a month. Everything takes so long here. It’s just such a
thing
being over here, it’s like your life is upside-down! I mean, that’s not quite right, I mean that I feel upside-down. I feel like I’m standing on my head.’

‘You could’ve called. You could’ve emailed, right? It would’ve taken one second.’

‘Myra, I
know
. God, I’m sorry. I miss you guys. I miss you and Jody and Jeff so much. I question myself all the time if this was the right thing. I’m sorry, I promised myself I wasn’t going to talk about this and blame myself. But you’re right, I should’ve called. You’re seventeen.’

‘So where are you staying? Can I call you?’

‘Oh god! That’s funny. My cell is only Asian right now. I’m living at this place called a love hotel, can you believe that? And there’s only a communal phone, or something like that. I’m going to get my cell to be international sometimes, I just haven’t figured out hardly anything here, it’s crazy, and Jon and Sarah left, they went to Japan! They decided they didn’t like Seoul or something, when it’s so incredible, I mean it, I think you’d like it. Oh, Myra ... ’

‘What’s a love hotel?’

‘Sorry, I’m rambling, right? I know I am. But, anyway, most kids here live with their parents until they’re married, practically, it’s an economic reality. So, most apartments are pretty small here and the kids have to go somewhere to be together, you know, and have sex.’

‘And you’re living in there?’

‘I am. It’s really a nice place. I have my own bathroom.’

‘Do you hear the kids doing it?’

‘Oh god. It’s not like that, Myra. I mean, it’s like a rooming house, a little hotel, and oh, it’s not just kids, anyway ... Oh, whatever. I guess most people living here are English teachers like me.’

‘You like those people?’

‘Who?’

‘The people at the motel.’

‘Sure I do, I’ve met some really great kids. I mean, not kids, they’re younger than me but they’re not kids. They can’t believe I have teenagers, actually! They think I’m younger than I am.’ My mother started laughing. She didn’t hear my echo. ‘Myra? You there? Oh, the line’s bad. There’s people from all over the world here. It’s been very inspiring for me.’

‘There’s people from Africa there?’

‘Yes, actually, funny you mention. There’s a guy from Nigeria on the floor above me. Oh, the Korean women are just beautiful, it’s a really beautiful, beautiful city, Myra, and I’m going to travel around a bit too.’

Now I started laughing. I didn’t know why except that I hurt.

‘You sound good, Myra, it’s so good to hear your voice,’ my mom said. She was so far away. ‘You know, I think that Nigerian man is in the arms trade or something ... ’

There was a long patch of static and my mom was laughing through it.

‘This line’s going to die soon, I’m sorry.’

‘Okay.’

‘Ummmm ... How’s your cheek doing now? Is Dr. Bernhard still taking care of it?’

I heard my mother breathing through the receiver. It occurred to me how funny it was, how perfect it was that porn likes a red cheek and a good spanking slap.

‘My cheek is perfect,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m glad, Myra ... How is your dad? I mean, how’s he doing?’

‘I’m not going to tell you about him.’

‘Oh ... ’

‘We’re fine, all right? Everything’s perfectly fine.’

‘I’ll call Jeff tomorrow. Jody’s really loving residence, she says. And she says that you’re seeing someone? I mean, that you’ve been spending time with someone?’

Fucking god. I
knew
whatever Lee said to my dad would travel fast. I had no idea if Lee had told my father about Elijah, or Aaron. If Lee was as bad now as Jen and Charlene.

‘Dad is a troll.’

My mom said nothing.

I went on in the void, through our dying line. ‘He sleeps in the basement and comes home from work early and then he’s on his computer all night. What do you think he’s doing down there?’

‘His problems are not your problems, okay?’

‘I still live here, right? You don’t. So you don’t know.’

‘I don’t want to hear about you babying your dad! He’s an adult, for god’s sake. I want to hear about you.’

‘I’m not babying him! He gives me and Jeff twenty bucks a week to get us out of the house and shut us up.’

‘I’m sending you guys money soon. Please. You don’t have to worry about your father. It’s disgusting ... ’

‘It’s not disgusting.’

‘Myra, I have to get off the phone, there’s someone waiting.’

‘Fine. Go.’

‘I’ll come back, you know.’ My mother’s voice was a pipsqueak.

‘No you won’t.’

‘I will.’

‘Well, I won’t need you anymore when you do.’

§

Aaron staggered into my bedroom around five in the morning. He was jumping on one foot like a monkey in the rain. I shut the door tight.

‘It smells like Indian food in here, My.’

Aaron slid off his shirt and jeans. His chest was bony, the colour of a peach. His cock looked like a rag that he squeezed and let go.

‘I got here as fast as I could. I’m sorry, I’m just so fucking horny for you.’

Now his penis was a wire. He was searching on the floor in the pockets of his jeans. I watched him slide a condom on himself.

‘You’re so fucking sexy, Myra.’

I wasn’t doing anything. I was just standing there watching him, feeling cold.

‘Wils was laughing at me how fast I ditched him. Come on, you need help?’

I didn’t need help. I unzipped my jeans. I felt my hands under my armpits and I took off my T-shirt. Inside my head was Elijah, just Elijah. They made me leave them. My nipples were hard. I wanted to be at Filmore’s, my love hotel.

‘Oh man, I love your body, your breasts, I love all your hair.’

I shuffled over to Aaron who was now lying flat on my bed, just his cock standing up. I stretched my legs and climbed over him. Aaron kept closing his eyes and opening them. His lids were purple-red like his cock. It looked like he was falling asleep. But he was so hard. He was reaching up for me and I just did it. Easy. I climbed right on. Climbed on and slid down. Aaron yelped. My thighs swung out to each side in a squat. I felt like an orangutan. It didn’t even hurt. The flute hurt. I was good for a second when Aaron held my waist and started rocking me around. I got into it and I closed my eyes and kind of danced and bounced on top of him. I put my hands on the wall over his head. Aaron was rocking into me pretty hard when suddenly he sat up like an ironing board, one of those ones just popped out of a wall. He buried his head in my tits and jerked up so hard that my bed moved a foot away from the wall.

‘I’m gonna come,’ he said. ‘Is it okay if I come?’

‘Yes.’

I held on as his body got tiny and iron, he grunted and sweated but his sweat had turned cold. Aaron was licking me, kissing and biting my neck as he fell out of me, saying, ‘Oh fucking, man, Myra. Thank you so much.’

I scissored up off him. His penis was a dot.

I thought about Lee, I thought about my mother. I didn’t want to be in some silent game of female mistrust.

§

I started my essay with the line
You could be raped a thousand times and you could still be a virgin.

This was also my thesis, the force behind every word about the freedom of slaves.

It occurred to me that my mother was reading that book on the comfort women of Korea because she’d been planning to go there for a while. The comfort women in the Second World War are grandmothers now and they are asking the Korean and the Japanese governments, ‘Is it right to ignore me like this as if they did nothing to me? Were the soldiers justified in trampling an innocent and fragile teenage girl and making her suffer for the rest of her life?’ The Korean comfort women have stopped covering their faces at their public gatherings. They have realized, forty years later, that they were not dirty, that they had done nothing wrong.

§

When I knocked on their door I was not a virgin anymore. Gayl answered in a tight pink dress with embroidery on it, a spiral, fuchsia, over her chest.

‘Where in the hell did you go for so long?’

‘What do you mean?’

Gayl ushered me in. ‘See? He wants to be with you. Look at that sorry dog.’

‘Fuff! Fuff fuff!’ Elijah was in bed. He barked under the sheets.

‘It’s not fuff, it’s
ruff
,’ I said, kind of surprised. ‘Like: RUFFF RUFF RUFFF!’

Elijah and Gayl laughed at my impression.

‘We got a wildebeest there.’ Elijah crawled out of the sheets.

‘Yeah, yeah, a dangerous one.’

‘
De bitch of de north
.’

‘All newly laid.’

I stared at Gayl. She winked. She knew. How the fuck did she know? Gayl took me by the hand. Her hand was warm. She seemed all better and strong. Adnexitis happened after miscarriage, I’d read. It caused infertility. It was a violation of sexual function.

Gayl turned on the TV to the country-music station. There was a skinny blond woman on there singing in a headdress. Gayl swung me around the room in a square dance or something. Her arms were so strong that I was lifting off the floor. Elijah clapped along to the beat.

‘Make your mountains higher, make ’em higher each day,’ the woman sang on TV. ‘Make it so your sunshine is brighter than a ray.’

Then the blonde took a bow and her headdress fell off. Elijah clapped. Gayl gave me a hard little quick little hug.

‘Seriously, why’d you leave us alone here? We don’t really know this town and you make him feel so much better. Look at him. See how he feels better?’