Pin (5 page)

Ursula and I spent about ninety percent of our indoor time in our rooms. We each had a small color television set to keep us contained and out of the rest of the house. Mother had a schedule. On Mondays she would come up and clean Ursula's room and Ursula would have to spend her time in mine. On Tuesdays she cleaned my room and I spent my time in Ursula's. It always took me a day or two to get used to moving around in my own room after my mother left it.

Miriam and Ursula were sent right upstairs to her room. I went back into mine and sat by the adjoining door listening to their conversation. They talked low about boys in school and their teachers. They talked for a long time. It was like they had first met each other or something. Neither of them could wait to get her thoughts out to the other. Sometimes they talked at the same time. Eventually Ursula introduced the Need as a topic of conversation. I was expecting her to do that. From the way Miriam listened and responded, it was evident that she hadn't much information about it. She kept asking Ursula questions and Ursula answered them like a little sex education instructor or something. She took on the pedantic, correct tone of voice that father often had. Their voices got lower and lower, and after a while, I didn't hear a thing. I thought for a moment that they had gone down for cookies and milk, so I went out and quietly made my way to the kitchen. But my mother was alone in there, polishing
silverware. I quickly made my way back up to my room and listened at the door again. There was hardly a sound. I knew they wouldn't have the nerve to go anywhere else in the house.

Slowly and very carefully, I turned the knob of the door. I must have spent ten minutes turning it. When I felt it would open, I moved it back by fractions of an inch until there was just a slight crack of an opening there. Then I sprawled out on the floor and peeked through it. At first I saw nothing; just an empty room. Then I saw both of them, lying naked on the bed. They were just lying there, side by side, staring up at the ceiling. I watched them like that for the longest time. Then I saw Miriam turn toward Ursula and sort of shrug her shoulders.

“I don't feel anything,” she said. “Are you sure this works?” Ursula had a smile on her face and looked a little flushed. She put her finger to her lips to indicate that Miriam should be silent and then she took Miriam's hand and placed it right between Miriam's legs. There was very little hair there and it looked as white as chalk. Ursula kept her hand on Miriam's and she began moving Miriam's hand in small, circular rubbing motions.

She did this for quite a while, but Miriam didn't seem to have any response. Ursula was getting impatient with her. Finally Ursula took her hand off and put it on herself. Miriam just lay there watching Ursula work herself up. I thought the expression on Miriam's face was very funny, but I held in any laughter. Then Ursula had Miriam turn over on her stomach, her hands under her and between her legs. Ursula moved Miriam up and down on her own hands by pushing slowly and firmly on her naked ass.
They did this for quite a while too. Ursula looked like she was getting angrier and angrier. Finally, I could take it no longer myself.

I opened the door further and slipped into the bedroom. I was halfway up to the bed, crawling, when Ursula saw me. I put my hand up to indicate that she shouldn't say anything and she didn't. I knew she would cooperate. She just sat there looking down at me while Miriam continued working on herself. When I got to the bed, I took Ursula's hand off of Miriam's ass and did it myself. I helped her along the way Ursula had been doing. At least two minutes must have gone by before Ursula couldn't hold in her laughter any longer. When she did laugh, Miriam turned and sat up.

The moment she saw me, she screamed and covered her nipples with her hands. I fell back on the floor and rolled around, laughing hysterically, while Miriam rushed around the room gathering her clothes. She was sobbing at this point, so I got up and went back into my own room. A little while later, I heard Miriam and Ursula leave and go downstairs. And then, not long after that, Miriam's father came back up the hill and picked her up. My mother didn't know what had happened and she didn't care. She was grateful that Miriam was leaving, I guess. After she was gone, Ursula came up to my room.

“You're a bastard,” she said. “You did that just because I had a friend over and you didn't.”

“You played along.”

“I didn't know what else to do,” she said walking to the window. There was a moment of silence between us. Ursula couldn't stay angry at me long.
“Leon, why do you suppose the Need isn't so great in Miriam?”

“I don't know. Ask the doctor. He'll be glad to tell you all about it.”

“He'll start asking me all kinds of questions if I do.”

“So ask Pin,” I said. She turned around fast and stared at me for a moment.

“Do you still ask Pin a lot of things, Leon?”

“Why?”

“I just wondered. I heard the doctor and mother talking about you and Pin. They don't like the way you talk about him all the time.”

“That's tough.”

“They blamed each other.”

“For what?”

“For letting it go on, between Pin and us. I don't think we'll be able to talk about Pin in front of them anymore, Leon.”

“You're probably right.”

“We'll keep him to ourselves, huh?” There was some new excitement in her eyes. She walked over and sat on my bed. “I mean, we won't ever mention his name in front of them anymore, OK?”

“I suppose so.”

“I think Pin is a very lonely person,” she said. Her tone of voice indicated she wanted to play one of those create-your-own-world games. I wasn't in the mood, and besides, Pin wasn't a toy. “I think he wishes he could live here with us. What do you think?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think he does.”

“Miriam Cohen isn't half as pretty as I am, is she, Leon? Not half as pretty.” She looked at herself in
my dresser mirror and stroked her hair. I thought about what she had said about keeping Pin a secret. The idea made my heart beat faster. I was afraid, afraid of … losing him.

It made my fingers numb again. Ursula saw me opening and closing them.

“What's the matter with your hand?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. She reached out and took my hands into hers. I looked into her smiling face and the numbness seemed to go away.

U
RSULA WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD WHEN FATHER
performed the abortion. I knew she was having sex with boys. She told me all about it. That was an effect father had on us, I guess. We were both very matter-of-fact with each other about things other brothers and sisters kept very private and personal. We got into the habit of sitting together in the dark of our rooms, after a night out with someone, and discussing it. If I went out, she would be waiting up for me in my room. And if she went out, I was either waiting in her room, or in my own with the adjoining door wide open.

One particular night she came in about a quarter to eleven. She was permitted to stay out until
midnight and most always she stayed out right to twelve, so I was surprised to hear her walking up the stairs. The light went on in her room and I walked in rather than wait for her to come to me this time. She was standing in front of the dresser mirror, combing her hair harshly with a metal comb. I watched her for a while. She was obviously very agitated.

“OK, what's the matter?” I said, taking a seat on her bed.

“Everything.”

“That narrows it down perfectly. Didn't you go out with Mike Elias tonight?” Elias was in my class and he was always telling me how much he admired my sister. He buttered me up a lot. I was very indifferent to him, sometimes downright rude, but he ignored or took everything I dished out.

“Yes,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse. I saw a red streak down the back of her neck. It looked like a scrape of some sort.

“What happened here?” I said, getting up and touching it.

“He was a bit clumsy in the ‘throes of passion.' How do you like that expression? Shirley Bennet showed it to me in a book today. ‘The throes of passion.'” Her lips grew tight and she squinted her eyes as if she were about to break out in tears.

“Beautiful. What really happened?”

“That's what happened,” she said, with a little laugh following her as she hung the blouse up in the closet. She unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it.

“Where did you go with him?”

“Where you went with Cora two nights ago, Kaplan's Lake. It was a great spot—dark road to the lake, and parking there with the moonlight dancing on the water. Isn't that the way you put it?”

“You went there just because I went there, didn't you?”

“You know good spots are hard to find. Mike always wants to go to the cemetery and I don't feel comfortable there.”

“Shit.”

“What's the matter, Leon?” she asked with a sly smile on her face. I watched her reach back and unfasten her bra. Her breasts shook for an instant and then stabilized in their firmness. At fourteen, Ursula had the bosom of a fully grown woman. She turned around and reached up for her nightgown.

“So? What happened to make you so upset and bring you home early?” I waited as she went out to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. I didn't like the way she was avoiding me. It wasn't like her. Usually she was eager to discuss her dates and get my opinions. The first night she let a boy put his hand on her naked breasts, she came home and we lay together on her bed in the dark. She spoke softly, telling me how it sent electricity through her body.

“He had his leg between mine,” she told me, “and I felt him pressing against my vagina.”

“Vorgina,” I said. It was automatic.

“I liked it. We got into a kind of rhythm. I had two orgasms.”

“What about him?” I said dryly.

“I don't know. I wasn't interested in what he had. Are girls interested in what you have?”

“Sometimes. Cora Brooks is always asking me how it feels. She drives me nuts that way. I keep telling her to shut up and she keeps asking me how it feels. I think she's keeping some secret statistics.”

“I can see where that would be annoying.”

So it was very unusual for Ursula to be close-mouthed about her dates. When she came out of the bathroom, I asked her again.

“What upset you tonight?”

“I went to the brink,” she said, getting into bed, “and I lost control.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember how I'm always telling you how much control I think I have because I'm so aware of my body and its reactions to things?”

“So?”

“I don't have it.”

“Are you going to make sense or not? If you don't want to talk, it's perfectly all right with me,” I said, and started for the door.

“Don't get so uptight. It isn't easy this time.”

“OK,” I said, turning back. “OK.” I was quiet. I sat back on her bed and leaned against the wall, waiting.

“We had intercourse,” she finally said. I closed my eyes hard when she said it. I remember doing that, but I don't know why. I didn't say anything even though she paused for a few moments. “I remembered what you told me about Cora getting excited when you spent all that time kissing her shoulder. It sounded good somehow. I got him to do it to me. He was impatient, but I kept him at it.”

She paused again. I thought about Mike Elias, a tall, lean redhead with milk-white skin. He had freckles scattered over his neck and forehead. He wouldn't be bad-looking except for some missing teeth.

You could see he was aware of it because he rarely
gave anyone a wide smile and had the habit of mumbling a lot. He didn't open his mouth enough to voice sounds clearly.

“We were in the back of his car,” she went on. “He had his hand between my legs too. I just felt like I was going to explode if I didn't do something to stop the pounding of my heart. Do you know what I mean, Leon? Do you know what I mean?”