The Melting Season (25 page)

His house had three stories and was narrow. Every room was carpeted. There was no furniture in the living room except for one chair. There was a small kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door. It was empty.

There is nothing to eat
, he said.
Sorry.

She followed him up the stairs. There were two rooms on the second floor. One door was open, and there was a mattress on the floor.

I have a friend who sleeps here sometimes
, he said.

On the third floor there was a bedroom with a king-sized bed, draped in satin sheets. A closet with mirrors for doors. One of the doors was open. It was full of suits. He dropped her bag on the floor. There was a bathroom attached to the room.

Let’s go
, he said.
Time to shower.
He took her by the arm.

I just want to sleep, she said.

She walked into the bathroom. The tiles on the wall were brown. He followed her. She turned and faced him.

What if I don’t want to take a shower?

He put his hand in her hair. He stroked it. He turned it around in his hand, caught it up in his fist.

I don’t want to, she said.

He gathered up more of her hair in his fist, twisted it tight, and then slammed her head against the wall.

 

 

 

 

 

“THAT WAS ALWAYS THE PART that made me cry when I was a kid. Every time I heard it. Somebody hurting my mother. That was the worst thing in the world I could think of,” I said.

I was curled up tight against Prince. His hand was in my hair, and he kept stroking it, and I liked it.

“It scared me,” I said to Prince. “I have been scared forever.”

“No one should tell a little kid those kinds of stories,” said Prince. “It wasn’t right, what your mother did. I am sorry for her pain, but you cannot lay that kind of thing on a child.”

“It was our secret, I guess.” I pulled up closer to Prince. I kissed him.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “We can just lie here. It’s late, and you’re feeling all kinds of emotions right now.”

But the kissing felt necessary to me. I was desperate for Prince to touch me. I got up on my knees and pulled up my dress from the bottom, up over my thighs and hips, up over my breasts, till I stood there naked in front of him. “Well, there you go,” he said. He moved one hand over me, then got up on his knees, too. He put both hands on my breasts. “They’re so nice,” he said. He kneaded them, then he started sucking on my neck with giant juicy kisses. They spread from my neck to my face and then my lips. There was his tongue in my mouth. He licked the inside of my mouth. Then there were kisses down my body and he had his hands on my ass and then behind my thighs. He pushed me back calmly. “Let me lay you down,” he said. He ran his hands all the way up and down, then very gently down the insides of my legs. Prince rubbed his palm on the outside of my crotch, and it warmed up. And then he leaned over and blew on it and it was like a wind to a flame.

That was when I started making all kinds of noises. I must have sounded like a real loon to him. But holy moly, I was feeling good.

Then he put one finger inside me, and I clenched up. He knew it, too. I stopped making noises. I was just concentrating. He put another finger inside me and moved them back and forth slow only for a minute. “Do you like it?” he said. He looked at me. He would not let me look away. I was thinking too much, though.

So he pulled his fingers out of me, dropped down and blew on me some more, before he started licking me up and down. I asked him to keep going. Okay, I begged him. I had my hands up to my breasts and I was pinching my nipples. It took nothing, just a minute of that, and then I came, his tongue still inside me. Then he pulled back, his face damp with my wetness, and said, “That’s right, baby girl.” Then he pressed his palm against my crotch again and then stretched his other hand around my neck and stared at me. He waited until my breathing calmed down.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“You’re not,” I said. “You won’t.”

He put a finger in me. “So wet,” he said, and then he put in another, and moved back and forth. He put his hand to my face. “Can you feel me?” I shook my head. I looked down at his hand. He pulled back and then put another finger in me. I shuddered a little bit. “You’re starting to feel me now, aren’t you?” It was true, I was. It was like I was staring at the sky and all of a sudden a shooting star went by me. There was something new in my universe. He moved his hand back, and there was another one, another finger deep inside me. I held my breath and looked up at the ceiling. I was feeling everything at once. And then there was the last finger. I cursed. I cursed loudly. I cursed my fears. I cursed my mother. I cursed the past. And then I came into the future.

I
moved next to my father and knelt close. The snow soaked through my jeans.

“Where’s Jenny?” I said.

“My stomach’s on fire,” he said. He rubbed his belly and licked his lips around the corners.

“Dad, where is Jenny?”

“She’s upstairs, I think. Your mother’s got her locked up there in the bedroom.”

I took the drink from his hand.

“This is not you,” I said.

“Are you hungry?” said Timber. “When was the last time you ate something?”

My father looked at Timber and opened his mouth and then nothing came out. Then he just started nodding. Timber waded toward him and lifted him up. “I’ll take care of you,” he said to my father. “We’ll set you up real good.” They struggled off together in the snow toward the front of the house, Timber telling him all the things he was going to feed him. Chicken noodle soup. A big bowl of chili. Cheeseburgers.

I turned to Valka. Her eyes were bigger than ever. “I swear they were not this crazy when I left,” I said. “They got stuck in the snow, I think.”

I slid open the back screen door and we walked in silently. Inside the kitchen looked the same as always but maybe worse for the wear. The orange tile of the kitchen floor was beat down with a brown film. There were three ashtrays on the kitchen table, all overflowing with butts. Some were stubbed out, and some my mother must have lit and just forgotten to smoke. Beer cans everywhere. It stank to high heaven. There was a pile of broken glass in the corner. I looked around the corner to the living room. Two chairs were overturned.

“The scene of the crime,” said Valka. “I’m surprised there isn’t a chalk outline. Or a hooker passed out somewhere.”

“Let’s go get Jenny,” I said. We ran upstairs. I tried the handle on the door. New locks had been installed. I did not know when that had happened.

I banged on the door. “Are you in there?”

“She locked it from the outside,” said Jenny. “You need a key.”

“I got this,” said Valka. She shook the door handle, then peered closely at it. “We need a knife,” she said. “Like a really thin knife.”

I ran back down to the kitchen and rummaged through the silverware drawer. Something in the sink caught my eye and I stopped where I stood. I looked back over toward the sink slowly. Inside it was a massive pile of blond hair. Jenny’s pride.

My mother walked around the corner from the living room. She was wearing a housedress and held a cigarette and a can of beer. Her lipstick was perfect. Her hair was held high, but her head hung low. I crossed my arms and looked at her.

She crossed her arms right back at me and said, “When will you girls learn?”

I pulled out a knife from the drawer. “Sit,” I said.

My mother waved her hands in the air. “Fine, fine.” She slumped down at the kitchen table.

I reached my hand out to her. “Give me the key.”

“I swallowed it,” she said.

“You’re insane,” I said.

“Oh, please,” she said. “You and I are the exact same kind of crazy and you know it.”

I pointed a finger at her. “Do not move,” I said.

She flapped her hands in the air. “Where the hell would I go?” she said.

I ran back upstairs and handed the knife to Valka. She slid it between the door and the frame, jiggled it a few times, and the lock popped open.

Inside the room Jenny was sitting on her bed. Her knees were up to her chest. She had a small bowl of hair left around her head. The walls around her were bare. All her posters of hip-hop stars were gone. The fall football schedule. Every single wrist corsage she had ever been given. The calendar where she counted down the days till graduation. A collage of movie stars she admired. Everything was gone. It was just Jenny alone in her bedroom with a bad haircut and a baby in her belly.

“We’re busting you out of here,” said Valka.

Jenny looked at Valka.

“Where are we going?” She sounded hard.

“Away from the mean lady,” said Valka. Jesus, Valka really did not get kids.

“You know, I don’t even care about this baby,” she said. “I could care less.”

“Do not say that, Jenny,” I said.

“Keep it, kill it, whatever.” She curled herself up into a ball even further. “It doesn’t matter to me. It’s just another thing that’s happened to me.”

I crawled over on the bed next to her and put my arms around her. “Jenny, you are just going through some hard times right now. No one has been looking out for you. I am sorry. But I have come to get you.”

“I’ve been in this room for two days,” she said. “Mom said I needed to think about what I had done. I have been thinking. And I do not care. I did not care when I was having sex with those men. I couldn’t hardly feel it even. I don’t feel anything. That’s why I do it so much. To see if I can ever feel.” She looked at me. “I can’t feel, Moonie. I’m a freak. What is wrong with me?”

I felt a horrible something inside me. It was hotter than hell. It was not just me that was this way. I wanted to run outside and throw myself into a snowbank. It would be the only way to cool down. I wanted the Nebraska winter to take me whole.

 

 

 

 

 

HOW DID THAT STORY GO AGAIN? The one she told me a hundred times. Leaning in so close, her whisper sounded like thunder in my ear.

In the bathroom, she took off her clothes. He looked at her and grunted. She got in the shower. He turned on the water. He took off his clothes and got in the shower. He took some soap from a dish and began to wash her.

She tried to let it feel good but it did not. She started to cry.

Don’t cry
, he said. He was annoyed.

I want to go home, she said.

He looked at her, bored. He turned her around, then bent her over in half. Easily, like she was a rag doll. She squeezed her legs together.

Stop that
, he said. He forced her legs open. He rubbed the soap all over her. He forced himself in, and she squeezed her insides tight.

That ever happens to you, you just squeeze tight, she told me. Pretend you’re frozen shut in there. Pretend it’s broken. Pretend you are somewhere else. Pretend you are anywhere else but right there. Pretend you are not you. Pretend what you need to pretend to not feel a goddamn thing.

And that was when he shoved himself in her ass. Because he wanted to make sure she felt it.

 

 

 

 

 

OH, JENNY, I THOUGHT. You, too.

She was ranting.

“And if I can’t feel, then I don’t care, and if I don’t care, then I’ll do whatever Mom wants with this baby.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” said Valka softly.

“This is my friend Valka,” I said to Jenny.

“You shouldn’t talk that way,” said Valka.

“I’ll talk however I want,” said Jenny. “You don’t know what I’m going through. You don’t know me. You don’t know a goddamn thing.”

“I know I don’t know you,” said Valka. “And I am not going to tell you that you are right or wrong about who you sleep with or how many people. It takes all kinds in this world, and I’m not one to talk anyway. And I don’t even care if you decide to keep that baby or have an abortion or give it up for adoption or whatever else you could choose to do. But you should have more respect for your insides. The fact that you can conceive, that your body works in that way. You should not be careless about your power. There are people who would kill to have that power. You should appreciate it. It’s your body. You do what you want with it. But you respect it.”

Jenny burst into tears. And then Valka burst into tears. And then what was I to do but cry, too? We all sat there on the bed and had ourselves a good cry. I cried for my mother more than anything, and for how my family would never be the same again. Valka cried for Peter Dingle and her insides that had betrayed her. My sister cried because life is hard and because she no longer had her beautiful hair and because she had something growing inside her that she already loved, she could just feel it. And we all cried for our insides and our outsides and the whole wide world.

When we were all cried out I took Jenny in my arms. I whispered that I understood everything she felt, or did not feel. That I was the same as her, that she was the same as me. She pulled back and looked at me. I promised to help her. But we had to get out of there.

Eventually it was night, pitch dark everywhere, and it started to snow again.

“If we are going to get anywhere tonight, we better get going soon,” I said.

Valka stayed upstairs with Jenny to help her pack and I went downstairs to talk to my mother.

“Don’t even start on me,” she said, as soon as I walked through the doorway.

I walked to the refrigerator and popped open a can of beer. I sat down across from her at the kitchen table. I took the cigarette that was burning in my mother’s trembling hand and I smoked it.