Maidenhead (6 page)

He was forcing me outside. I wanted to push back against him. It wasn’t my fault what he had done, how much he liked me. I didn’t know that he was with her. You can’t just slap someone you don’t know. It wasn’t fair the way that woman, that fucking bitch, came at me. She had to wake the fuck up, not me! I wanted to push back against Elijah and say something right, like: I’m old enough. But I couldn’t let go of my burning cheek. That woman looked like she hated me. She’d hit me so hard.

‘You have to go, angel.’ Elijah was looking at my body.

Angel? I’d dressed up on purpose to be his little bitch.

‘You have to go now, come on. I’ll see you soon.’

‘But we’re leaving tomorrow!’

Elijah shut the door. The wind wrapped tight around my temples. It made the palms shake. I took the one-hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket and I shoved it in under the crack of the door. Open up! I kicked the door. I am old enough, you fucking asshole! I’m not jailbait!

The sun burnt my scalp. I felt my scalp sting.

I thought about going home, I thought about Jen. She always got sex and I didn’t even get near it. I got pissed on by a guy, this beautiful African guy.

I went to that room to have sex with that man.

I didn’t want anyone ever to know I’d been hit.

LEE: Myra, you need to explain why you even wanted to stay with him. That woman was horrible to you, she slapped you, and that guy had no balls to stand up to her and protect you.

GAYL: I was in pain, okay? My man fucked up my work. Serious work. You don’t have any sympathy for that?

LEE: None of that was Myra’s fault.

GAYL: No?

LEE: No.

GAYL: Well, she was marked now, for sure. Not by his piss, but my slap.

§

On the last night of our family vacation, I woke up, too hot, to my parents’ synchronized breathing. My father had a pinched nose so it sounded like an exaggeration. He was the conductor. My mother slept between my father and the wall. My brother had the cot. I was in the queen-sized bed with my sister. Something, it was obvious, was wrong with my face. It felt like my cheek had exploded on the pillow. My mother noticed how red it had been yesterday when I found my way back to the pool.

‘You got too much sun there,’ she said, glaring over her sunglasses.

I knew I had to get up out of bed and check out what was going on. It was way too dark inside our room. My father had shut the curtains before bed because the college kids at the motel had been staying up all night. Our thick flowered drapes didn’t hide noise very well. Our room faced the pool. That pool was slimy with sunscreen and saliva. Sometimes garbage was floating on it in the morning. My mom said we’d never stay at a place like this again.

I got out of bed as quiet as I could and touched along the wall to the crack of light from the bathroom. I knew something was wrong from that wetness on my pillow, but at first, in the mirror, I didn’t think it was me – my cheek was completely swollen as if plastic were inside it. My eye above it was a slit. My nostril was even pinched on that side.

I realized that it had been me who was wheezing out there, not my father.

I climbed into the tub to lie down. I pulled the shower curtains tight to each end. I felt sand through my pyjamas from all of our feet. Five bathing suits drooped on the string near the ceiling. Mine was that fucking pink wet one with holes in the sides.

I thought I was definitely going to have to tell my mom what had happened to me. She’d probably want to call the police. My cheek throbbed. It was assault. I wished I could tell her what had happened to me, but the story felt too twisted. I’d already made so many wrong moves.

I fell asleep in the bath like the Elephant Man, knowing I would not tell the truth.

§

It was Jody who found me in the morning. ‘Something’s wrong with Myra, Mom, come!’

My mother’s face hung over the bath. She told Jody to get some ice wrapped up in a towel. She was more animated than I’d seen her all week.

‘Myra, the sun, oh the sun, the terrible sun.’

She swirled the tip of her finger onto my burning-hot cheek.

The fluorescent lights buzzed. Jody found ice.

‘You didn’t put on sunscreen, Myra, I’m sorry. It’s monstrous, this sun.’

My mother didn’t want to leave me alone when she saw me like that in the morning so swollen and sore. I told her she should go out and have her last day, I was fine. Our plane took off at ten o’clock at night.

‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay here with you,’ my mother said.

‘Please just go,’ I moaned. I was still in the bath. ‘Go to the beach, bitch ... ’

Jody dumped the rest of the ice in the sink and she left the room. I heard Jeff laugh outside. The TV was on.

‘Myra!’

I had just said the word
bitch.
My father came to watch me and my mom through the crack in the bathroom door. He tried hard not to look at my ballooned-up cheek.

‘Myra,’ my mom said softly. ‘Why are you so upset?’

‘Why the fuck do you think I’m upset?’ I swore really loud. My mom stepped backwards. It flew out of my mouth, first
bitch
and now
fuck
.

‘Myra!’ my dad yelled. ‘Quiet!’

I noticed Jody and Jeff go out to the hallway. ‘Take the kids to the beach, Neil. Please.’

I got out of the bathtub and ran past my mother, then my father, to the chairs near the window. I was mad and it felt good.

‘She is not coming anywhere with us,’ my dad said to my mom. My dad’s eyes were alive, like the lids were peeled back. I tried to stay still. He was never really that nice to my mom; he never asked about her, or about what was she thinking. Now he was trying to defend her against me. It was a total joke. Even my mom knew that. I wasn’t going to the beach, anyway, looking like a freak. My dad’s too-open eyes made me queasy and hateful.

‘I just want to be alone, all right?’

‘Neil, go. We don’t need you right now.’

It took a minute before he left, before he tried to slam the door shut even though it was on one of those non-slammable hinges. We heard him say
goddammit
in the hall. My mom walked over to me near the air conditioning. She had to fiddle around with it to stop it.

‘Fuck this thing,’ she said. She looked out the window. Three guys were doing cannonballs into the pool.

When my mom looked at me again, my big red fat cheek, I thought she was going to say something like, ‘I think you should try not talking to me like that.’

But I heard my mother breathing too fast. She kissed me on the forehead.

‘Bye-bye,’ she whispered as if I were a baby. Her breath was sour. My throat instantly swelled. My mother stayed close to me like that, not moving. I wanted to apologize:
Bitch
just flew out of me. I met this guy who called me
bitch
...

I heard my mom swallow inside her throat. I was staring at the floor watching her feet. For a while I didn’t think she was going to leave.

‘Can you go now?’ I asked.

My mother moved away. I knew I didn’t sound nice. I stared through the screen doors at the kids at the pool, their burnt red shoulders, their string bikinis. The palm trees were waving, dry at the tips. When I heard the door click, I couldn’t believe that my mother had listened to me.

I had the TV to myself. My cheek was really hurting. I rubbed those little melting ice cubes on it, flipping channels. I stretched out. I got past channel sixty when a pink leg filled the screen. There was stuffed nasal breathing. Then a girl’s face with the hair drawn back too tight, her mouth ringed with lipstick and spit. It was only a second before a body slid in and covered up the face. Then the camera circled around and found the girl again: she had a wide-open mouth and something was in it. You couldn’t tell at first that it was a cock. It looked like an arm. Her eyes were shut, she was gagging. Our room was freezing. My mother hadn’t shut off the air conditioning right. The girl was about to open her eyes but then the screen went black and a message came up:
Charge to Room? Press One to Continue.
I wanted to watch it. It was synchronicity.

My cheek was numb from the ice and I pressed one. The movie started up in another scene, though, as if it didn’t pause in the right spot. I put two pillows behind my head. I stuffed one in between my thighs. Another girl was there now, a different girl who was blond and chubby, kneeling on a glass table. This girl was wearing a purple thong and see-through high heels. A penis banged her across her cheeks. She was laughing at that. My heart was going crazy. ‘You like sucking me?’ a guy’s voice said. ‘Yeah? You wanna suck me? Do you? Yeah?’ Then, that second girl, her mouth red and wide, looked right at the camera. She was so different than that first girl who’d kept her eyes tightly closed. This girl was actually talking with that penis and trying to play with it to get it in her mouth, going, ‘Yeah, gimme, yeah, gimme. I wanna suck you so bad. Gimme.’

‘Look at her,’ a guy’s voice said. ‘Look how much this slut wants it.’

I didn’t feel the pillows behind me anymore. There was air in my chest where there was supposed to be beating. This wasn’t like masturbation at all. I wasn’t even touching myself. I was going to come without touching myself.

That girl’s cheeks were so red, her eyes always stayed open, she was looking up at the guy and literally begging for it.
Gimme gimme gimme, please!
I realized, then, that her hands were tied behind her back. Her hands were tied and it popped in her mouth. She was laughing, she was so happy and tied. Her sucking was limbless, magnetic. I felt my head moving in time; I didn’t have thoughts. Then all of a sudden the guy pulled out of her mouth and the cock was hot red, he was shaking it, squirting her lips with this cream. God, I’d never seen that before, all that stuff spraying out of him! The tied-up girl, she started going crazy, like groping around for it with her head like a baby bird, and his fingers were pushing the white stuff that landed on her face back into her mouth. She wanted that cock back in her too, she was groping and panting and I could barely watch her like that. Then another guy untied her and immediately she started rubbing herself, lying down spread on the glass table. Her wrists were all red and she still had drops on her face that looked like glue. She was rubbing herself furiously, she started pushing her thong inside herself and humping the air towards the camera.

‘She loves it, she loves it, look at her go!’

My eyes were slit, I couldn’t look straight at it, her pussy, her thong, how much she was rubbing herself and pushing that thong up inside of her and pulling it out and they showed that, in close-up, the most close-up I’d ever seen, her fingers rubbing and fabric going inside herself, everything was red and swollen and hospital-like.

My cheek started to hurt again. Then the first girl came back into the picture. She bent down and opened her fresh lipsticked mouth into the mouth of the second girl and they started kissing, there were guys around them, cocks pointed out at the top of the screen, and the first girl, she had something in her mouth, it was globby and creamy and she dripped it out of her lips slowly into the second girl’s. They were moaning and passing that stuff between them, opened lips, like spit, white glue, and they were licking each other’s tongues and lips and both of them were moaning together, one’s eyes open, one’s eyes shut. I felt so woozy and high that I shut my eyes and came; it felt painful and electric, like a shocking inside-out. Hot water gushed from me. I grunted. Fuck. I wet my side of the bed.

I couldn’t find the TV converter. My legs ached. I needed a towel. The converter was on the floor. I didn’t know how much that cost.

When my family came back, I was outside on the balcony waiting. The sun was as hot as it could be in the day. My mother came in last, behind my dad, then Jody and Jeff. No one was talking. My mother shut herself in the bathroom right away and didn’t even look to see where I was. Jeff stared at me through the screen doors but he didn’t say anything or smile. It was like he was fascinated by my new face. My cheek must’ve been glistening from the sun. Jody jumped on the bed, the dry side. ‘Where’s Myra?’ she asked. Jeff pointed at the balcony. Jody looked like she felt sorry for me. Maybe they’d all made a pact or something. Don’t talk to her until she talks to you.