After Nothing (2 page)

Kane slept in the basement of a two-bedroom house, if you could call it a house. It had started out as a government project along with two hundred other shitty houses, but once they’d got to the stage where they desperately needed some maintenance the state had sold them. Maybe whoever made that decision figured the new owners would do some work on them. They were wrong. Some of those houses were no more than shacks with boarded up broken windows and flaking paint. One that we walked past didn’t even have a front door. The space where the door was supposed to go was there, with half the door frame still evident, just no door. I would have thought the place was abandoned, except for the man and woman, derelict looking as the house, sitting out on the porch.

The land on the side of the street that Kane’s place was built on dropped away in a long steep incline. At the bottom of this was where the massive concrete pipes of the city’s south drains emerged from underground. It wasn’t a great view, but I guess it was better than being on the other side of the street where all those crappy houses were jammed up against each other, and people lived so close to each other they could probably hear their neighbors flush the toilet.

‘My uncle lives upstairs,’ said Kane as he guided me down the side of the house. ‘He ain’t here.’

The end of his sentence seemed to hang in the air, as though he was leaving it to me to ask the question that would let him finish.

I didn’t ask. I was already thinking through what was going to come next.

The basement was different to any other room I’d been in before. Probably because I’d never been in a teenage boy’s bedroom before, but also because its walls were stained, as was the discolored carpet. There were posters, pinned to the walls, of guys boxing and girls wearing bikini bottoms and nothing else. Between one image showing a heavily sweating man holding up boxing gloves and another with a girl kneeling and holding her bare breasts in her hands was a pinboard covered in pictures of cars. Some were hand drawn, with images sketched on to the cars; flames, intricate patterns, even cartoon characters. Others, like the one with the Grim Reaper on its hood, wielding his scythe as though he was about to cut someone’s head off, had been done on a computer.

Apart from Kane’s bed, which was made, there was a two-seater couch, which was lower on one side and was missing cushion covers. There was also an old dresser with markings that looked tribal carved into its wood. The drawers of the dresser were so stuffed full of clothes that they didn’t close properly, and on top of the dresser there was a pile of clothes, with their hangers still in them, spread flat, one on top of the other. There was no wardrobe for them to hang in. It was strange that they were on hangers. I didn’t ask about them though because at that stage he walked over to me and said, ‘You still want to do it?’

Kane’s comforter was blue, and it was clean. So were his sheets. His room smelt good, and it was warm and light because the afternoon sun was falling into it through the rectangle of the glass sliding door. He had tattoos, and his body was hard. I wasn’t expecting that: the weight of him against me, and how my body had to give, to mold around his.

When he said he’d get a condom, I stopped him getting up and told him I was on the pill.

Him being in me, it felt like nothing and something at the same time. Physically, it was something – but
in terms of this being the whole vine-covered idea, I couldn’t feel any fear or excitement
.

It hurt. To be honest, when he stripped off his jeans I wondered how he was even going to fit in me. I just left that up to him though, and it was soon clear that he knew exactly what he was doing. He even said how good I felt as he was pushing himself inside me.

The edge of his jaw was pressed against the side of my face and his breath was warm on my neck. Even though he was hurting me it wasn’t like I was fighting the urge to push him off me. There was something about his body pressed to mine; something about the warmth of his bare skin against mine, and being close to that much strength.

And then there was the kiss afterward when he’d stopped moving but was still inside me. I hadn’t wanted to kiss him before we’d had sex. I’d actually never kissed any guy before, and I thought maybe he might pick up on that. Anyway, leading up to actually doing it, he got the message pretty quickly that I didn’t want him to kiss my mouth. But somehow I misplaced that thought afterward. I can’t explain how the kiss was, and I obviously can’t tell you what it looked like. I guess it just felt like
me
. I could accept it, and respond to it because I knew it or something. I guess that’s it. I knew Kane’s kiss the first time he properly kissed me.

‘You’re weird, girl.’

We were still lying in bed. I was looking up at the white-panelled ceiling, and turned to face him. He was looking directly at me.

‘Are you normal?’

‘Compared to you? Yeah.’

I think I was going to say something sarcastic back. I never got there though; only got as far as saying his name.

‘Kane –’

He frowned, and I stopped short and was silent.

‘I never told you my name,’ he said.

‘I heard someone call you that last year.’

‘Last year? What are you playing at?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Everyone knows who you are. I told you, I just wanted to have sex with you. But I only want to do it now. That’s what this is, nothing else.’

Kane was looking doubtful – even more so when I added, ‘I want to do it again.’

I lay, looking at him, and his eyes stared into mine before traveling to my bare breasts.

He pulled away the sheet covering us both and then moved on top of me.

I told him ‘harder,’ and he responded. Then I said it again and he stopped moving.

‘’What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘You can’t. Nothing hurts me.’

I left his place and went to a drugstore in his neighborhood. I swallowed the emergency contraceptive pill right outside on the sidewalk. It took me two buses to get home.

Lisa’s hair didn’t all fall out. It just thinned out to the point where you could count the individual black strands. Her entire ball-shaped skull was visible. She didn’t care what she looked like by then, but I still had to look at her. Every day for a year I had to see how the whites of her eyes became a more and more sickly yellow. Her skin also took on a yellow tinge. Worse, toward the very end of her life her skin became mottled with grey. My sister’s skin had been light in color and even toned, but at the end it was this repulsive ugliness, which clung to her skeletal frame. She reminded me of a dead, bald baby bird I once saw in the gutter down the road from church. The flesh had wasted away, but the skin was whole and contoured around the delicate bones. That was my sister. A near bald baby bird, who fell from the nest and wasted into death.

I walked past Kane for two days without looking at him. On the third day he stepped out of his group of friends and into my path. I tried to walk around him but he put his arm out, and for a moment his hand was on my waist.

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘What do I want?’

I looked at him and said nothing.

‘So that’s how it is?’ said Kane.

‘How what is?’

‘A’ight. If that’s how you want to be, I ain’t got no problem.'

He stepped away from me and went back to his group of friends. Walking away I glanced behind me, but he wasn’t looking.

The next morning he headed me off before I even reached the front steps of the main school building. He was direct.

‘You and me are gonna talk,’ he said, and he took my hand, holding it firmly as he guided me away from the main building and toward the sports grounds.

I went with him. To be honest, I wanted to know what he was going to say, or do.

He bypassed the track, where a dozen student athletes were doing sprints. I thought he was going to duck under the stands, but he walked around them and then around the side of the old two-court gymnasium, which was seventy years old, as opposed to the new gymnasium, which was three times the size and brand new.

The ground there was littered with empty potato chip packets and soda cans. The grass became damp dirt by the wall, and that was where we stood. He let go of my hand.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, what’s going on with us?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You just wanted to lose it?’

‘Lose what?’

‘Jesus. Your goddamn virginity, that’s what.’

‘I wasn’t a virgin.’

‘Yeah, Natalie, you were. I ain’t stupid, you know. You barely moved. And other girls don’t feel like that. Why didn’t you say something?’

‘You didn’t say anything.’

‘I’m saying it now. What the fuck was that?’

I didn’t answer, just stared at him. Kane responded by moving closer.

‘You ever kissed a guy before me?’

My face filled with heat. It was a strange feeling. Foreign.

‘Why do you even want to talk about it?’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lying.’

‘You asked, I’m telling you.’

‘Are you on the pill?’ Kane punctuated every word.

‘Yes.’

He looked at me hard.

‘Fine, I hadn’t done it before. And I wanted to. I started taking the pill two months ago.’

‘You got it on you?’

‘What?’

‘Your pill packet.’

‘No, it’s at home. I take it in the morning. I’m not stupid either you know.’

‘You already lied to me.’

‘I hate kids,’ I told him, although I didn’t actually know any, and didn’t feel anything about them other than knowing I wasn’t going to have any. ‘There’s no way,’ I added for good measure.

He seemed to relax a little.

What happened next came from Kane, not me.

He took my hand again and walked further along the old gymnasium wall to a door set flat into the side of the building. I probably could have walked passed it ten times and never seen it, but Kane knew exactly where it was. He pulled something out of his pocket that flashed silver in his hand. The door was open in a matter of seconds, and he waited for me to walk inside.

The only light came from the dust- and dirt-covered skylights overhead. Everything was dim to the point where I couldn’t see the whole of things, just parts of them.

It was dusty. I sneezed three times in a row. Here and there bits of broken or retired gym equipment were visible. Chairs and desks could be made out, and a large roll of old carpet leaned against the far wall.

Kane moved me back toward an old wooden teacher’s desk. When the back of my legs bumped into it his hands went to my hips, and he lifted me onto it. I moved further back, thinking he’d come lie on top of me, but his hands went to my thighs and he pulled me back to the edge of the desk, causing my skirt to ride up. Kane studied my thighs a moment and then pulled me closer still.

I tried to pull away from his kiss again, but Kane wasn’t having it.

‘That ain’t how this is gonna go.’

‘I don’t want us to kiss.’

‘Girl, you want to do this or not?’

I wanted to.

It wasn’t like last time when he kissed me and it was so familiar and right. This was kind of scary and overwhelming, and practical. Like me learning how to kiss him back.

‘You okay?’ he said at one point.

I was breathing hard. Rather than speak, I nodded.

We didn’t get fully undressed. Kane touched me for a long time between my legs. In the end though he figured out that I wasn’t particularly into him rubbing me and putting a finger in me, so he stopped and undid his belt and then his jeans.

It still didn’t feel good. And he went way slower entering me. It didn’t help: if anything it dragged out how uncomfortable the whole thing was.

Except Kane’s hands and mouth countered that feeling a little.

His hold on me was firm and kind of reassuring, and just like the last time, it was clear he knew what he was doing. He supported my weight every time he shifted us, his hands going from my waist to my thighs, and then to my butt. And the kissing was really good – not just on my mouth but also on my jaw and my neck and even behind my ear.

When his teeth pulled on my ear lobe a combination of need and electricity traveled straight down through my body to the very core of me. Without quite realizing, I grabbed at his shoulders. Till then I’d kept both my hands pressed to the wood of the desk, but that one action of mine had Kane pull me hard against him. For a moment I wasn’t even touching the desk; I was clinging to him, my legs and arms tight around him. His mouth crushed against mine, and I felt the tremor that ran through him.