Teen Angel (10 page)

“WHERE’S THE DAMN KETCHUP?”

“I TOLD YOU, WE’RE OUT OF IT!… Where was I? Yeah,
we weren’t having a thing, even though a lot of people said we did.”

D.B. sat down moodily at the table. She pushed her food around her plate without eating it. Ruth looked at Sonny, who ate more than she ever ate at home, and shrugged her shoulders.

Sonny studied them. In the kitchen light, Ruth looked oldish, maybe even older than her own mother, but in a youngish sort of way. Both she and D.B. had puffy cheeks like Santa Claus and thin lips, even though Ruth’s lipstick created a heart-shaped silhouette on her mouth.

“Well,” Sonny said cheerfully, “I really do love these things here. That bowl is gorgeous.” She pointed to a glass bowl displayed on a shelf above the table.

“Genuine cobalt glass,” Ruth said, picking it up and handing it to Sonny. “That’s from a production of
Auntie Mame
. We played the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee. That’s where I met Chuck, almost married him too. Can’t blame him for backing out. Who wants someone with two mouths to feed besides her own.”

Sonny nodded, but she was beginning to get that feeling which all adults gave her sooner or later. It was like there was no room for you. And all they talked about was themselves and then they’d ask you about school. Some stupid question, like you didn’t have any feelings. Ruth wasn’t so pretty anyway. Her face had deep wrinkles which her orange pancake makeup settled into like ravines. And the roots of her blue-black hair were brown.

“My grandmother used to have something like that,” Ruth continued. “When they came over from the old country, they had the most beautiful set of hand-blown crystal. I remember one decanter with a swan etched on it …”

“You’re not Jewish? I mean. Well, are you?” Sonny asked.

“What do you think I am?” Ruth asked. “Chinese?”

“You don’t seem Jewish at all. Neither does D.B.”

“What do you mean?” D.B. asked, looking up.

“Well,” Sonny said haltingly, “I never saw a Jew like you. You don’t speak with an accent or have a big nose.”

Ruth laughed, shaking her head. “My great-grandfather was a Talmudic scholar in Kiev.”

“That’s another thing. You don’t push D.B. about her grades,” Sonny continued, not saying that D.B. was in 9-7, a class for morons.

“If she wants to be a salesgirl at the five and ten, that’s her business,” Ruth said. “It’s her life.”

Sonny was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. Mothers weren’t supposed to talk like that. Ruth didn’t act like she was a parent. She didn’t give any orders or anything. She just talked to them. As much as Sonny hated her mother always telling her what to do and treating her like a baby, this relationship seemed somehow frightening.

When Ruth stood up, Sonny’s eyes dropped to her legs. Both calves had large, purplish veins. “Have you seen the matches?” she asked D.B. “Your sister is always stealing my matches.”

“I’m taking a bath,” D.B. announced, standing up. “You want to join me?”

“Sure,” Sonny said, eager to get away from Ruth.

“Go ahead, girls,” Ruth said. “I’ll clear up around here. I think there are some clean towels in the laundry bag in the shower.”

“Thanks for everything,” Sonny said politely.

“Thanks for nothing. I just opened a couple containers and the city’s paying for it,” Ruth said. “By the way, Paul Newman is Jewish.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“So is Liz Taylor since she married that dumb kike Eddie Fisher. And Sammy Davis, Jr.”

“COME ON ALREADY!” D.B. screamed from the bathroom. Sonny knocked on the door. D.B. unlocked it. She stood totally
naked. Sonny had seen girls naked in gym class, but seeing D.B. was something else. She looked like someone’s mother, full breasts with pink nipples and a dark, hairy bush.
Holy pubes!
D.B. locked the door behind them.

Sonny felt awkward. She sat down on the toilet seat and tried not to look as D.B. lowered herself into the tub with a splash. “Well, are you going to take off your clothes or just sit there and stare?”

“I wasn’t staring,” Sonny said.

“Never mind.”

“You mean, you want us to take a bath at the same time?”

“Of course,” D.B. said. “We can talk and all.”

“Okay,” Sonny said. She turned her back to D.B., who now lay submerged in the tub. Even though D.B. had already seen her on top, she hadn’t seen her
down south
. And that was something else.

“Could you close your eyes?” Sonny asked shamefully

“Okay, okay already,” D.B. said impatiently. She covered her eyes with her arm.

Sonny removed everything but her panties.
Did she have to? D.B. didn’t know. Nobody knew
. She slipped them off and leaped into the tub on the opposite side of D.B. Since her legs were several inches longer than D.B.’s, they reached up the wall behind her head.

“So what do you think of Ruth?” D.B. asked.

“I never met anyone like her. And she’s your mother. I still can’t believe it. And Jewish!”

“Do you have some sort of hang-up about that?”

“I just can’t stand Jewish people. The kids are snotty and all they do is study for tests. The parents are cheap and nervous.”

“I don’t know about that–” D.B. said.

“Listen, all my parents talk about is Jewish this and Jewish that. Every time I mention somebody, right away they want to know their last name so they can figure out whether they’re Jewish. If there’s some airplane crash, they just care about Jews who died. I
can’t stand it! And their friends are like that too. They all come from Poland.”

“Can you speak Polish?” D.B. asked.

“I used to. And I guess I still understand most of it but I hate it. They talk about the war all the time and concentration camps. I can’t stand all that junk.”

“My mother’s probably on her second drink now,” D.B. said. “She must really think I’m dumb. She sits around stewed out of her gourd all day and tells me she’s drinking orange juice on the rocks.” She played with her breasts, which bobbed on the water’s surface like buoys.

“Did your father … er–”

“He died when I was six. Cancer of the liver.”

“Do you remember him?”

“I’ve seen pictures and I know he’s my father, but I can’t remember anything about him. Neither can Rita. She was eight when he died. And Ruth, all she knows is that he left her with two kids.”

The warm water lulled Sonny.
Everything was okay. So far
. D.B. had poured some Ivory Snow Flakes into the water so they were covered in a white blanket of soap bubbles.

“Do you know what you want to be when you get older?” Sonny asked. “I sometimes think about that kind of thing.”

“Sure,” D.B. said. “I want to get married to someone rich. If he doesn’t have money, forget it. I don’t care if he’s older. And live in a big house with maids and servants, and have two children. A boy and a girl. I even know what I’ll name them.”

“What?”

“The girl will be named Yvette, after Yvette Mimieux, and the boy either Adam or Jeffrey.”

“I want to do something special,” Sonny said. “Sometimes I think about being an artist like Kirk Douglas in
Lust For Life
. Or
maybe a writer. If I’m a writer I even know what my novel will be about.”

“What?”

“Okay, don’t laugh,” Sonny said, throwing her head back but careful not to wet her hair. She closed her eyes. “It’s all about this beautiful young girl named Sarah who is the illegitimate daughter of this very powerful prince in Europe. When the war comes, he has her adopted so she won’t be killed. Anyway, this peasant couple brings her up but they never tell her anything about her origins. But somehow she has always sensed it. She knows she does not belong with her parents. They don’t even look like her. Well, she ends up running away and I don’t know exactly what happens in between but at the end of the novel she finds her real father. Over the years, he has regretted his decision and he’s searched all over the world for her. They end up living together until she meets this count … I haven’t decided how to end it.”

“Sounds very good,” D.B. said, nodding her head. “Like it’s real. Where did you get the idea for that?”

“I don’t know. Inspiration, I suppose. Do you really like it?” Sonny bent forward, clutched at D.B.’s arm, and accidentally kicked her.

“Will you watch it! I told you I did.” D.B. pulled her arm away from Sonny’s.

“I never told anyone else about it.” She paused. Then Sonny said, “Do you have a best friend?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a friend that you’re closer to than other friends. Someone you could tell a really bad secret to, if you had one. Who’s closer than a sister and would never betray you for all the money in the world.”

“Not really. I used to be pretty close to Mary but not anymore. Do you?”

Sonny shook her head. “Would you like to be
really
best friends?”

D.B. thought for a moment. “Sure.”

“We have to tell each other a secret that we never told anyone else. That’ll be our bond. Like we’re blood sisters.”

“Okay,” D.B. said, “but first I got to think of one.”

Think of one?
Sonny was flooded with dozens of horrible secrets but she knew which one she would choose. The worst one.
Did she dare? Suppose D.B. told someone? And then everyone would know
… “Did you think of one?” she asked.

“Sort of. But you’ve got to promise, really promise not to tell anybody. Do you swear it?”

Sonny crossed herself, “And hope to die …”

“Last year my sister got pregnant.”

“Rita? You’re kidding!” Sonny gasped.

“Please don’t tell anyone. The only reason I know is because she had to talk to somebody so she told me.”

“What did she do?”

“She got some kind of abortion. All I know is she went down to Puerto Rico for two days and when she came back, that was it.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, but the worst part of it was that she didn’t know who the father of the baby was?”

“What do you mean?” Sonny asked. “How could she not know? I mean, it’s not like she was blindfolded or raped, is it?”

“You are thick. Do I have to spell everything out?”

“You mean, she did it with more than one person?”

“You win an award for smarts, Sonny.”

“God!”

“What’s your secret?” D.B. asked.

“Mine is much worse. Please promise you won’t say anything, ever. Even if we have a fight or someday you hate my guts and can’t stand me. Do you promise?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Sonny began nervously. “Do you ever touch yourself?”

“You mean, down there?” D.B. asked.

Sonny nodded.

“I have.”

“So have I.”

“So?”

“A lot,” Sonny said shamefully.

“So?”

“Do you think you can hurt yourself doing that?”

“What do you mean?”

“This is really private.” Sonny looked close to tears.

“What’s the matter?” D.B. asked softly.

Sonny bit her bottom lip. “I’ve become deformed down there.”

“What do you mean?” D.B. asked, a look of fright crossing her face.

“My mother warned me but I couldn’t help it even though I really tried not to. Once she caught me while I was watching television with a blanket over me. Anyway, she said I’d become deformed and something else too.” A tear ran down Sonny’s left cheek.

“Come on,” D.B. said, reaching out to put her arms around Sonny. “What else?”

“She said-oh, I just can’t tell you this …”

“Go on,” D.B. said.

“Please don’t ask me,” Sonny said, turning away from D.B.

“It’s okay. You can tell me. We’re best friends, right?”

“She said,” Sonny took a deep breath, trying to stop crying. “That I won’t be able to hold my piss!” she blurted. “That I’d lose control. And the worst part of it is that it’s begun to happen.”

“First of all,” D.B. said, “how are you deformed?”

“It’s stretched out of shape. I have these two things that hang there. I swear, it looks like a boy’s.”

“I don’t believe you. Show me.”

“I can’t. I just can’t,” Sonny said, her body shaking with sobs. “Please don’t ask me.”

“Come on,” D.B. urged her gently.

“Believe me. I can’t.”

“Maybe you’re not deformed. I promise I won’t laugh at you. Now just raise yourself and let me see.”

Sonny grounded her arms on the bottom of the tub and slowly raised her torso above the water until
it
could be seen.

“It looks like everyone else’s,” D.B. said, bending over to inspect it.

“But you haven’t seen under the hair. The hair hides it.” Sonny parted her pubic hairs until
IT
was in full view.

“What’s wrong with it?” D.B. asked.

“Don’t lie to me,” Sonny said fiercely. “LOOK AT IT!”

“I swear it doesn’t look any different than mine.”

“Do you have this?” Sonny asked, pulling out the lips which hung about half an inch.

“Of course! That’s what they’re supposed to look like,” D.B. said. “Look!” She stood up in the tub and showed Sonny her vagina.

“Yours sticks out too!” she exclaimed. “I don’t get it. Mine didn’t use to. Before I touched it. I had nothing on the outside, like Cathy, the girl I baby-sit for.”

“How old is she?” D.B. asked.

“About ten.”

“That’s why, dopey. You are, as Mrs. Weber in Hygiene would say, sexually mature down there.”

“You mean it?”

“Of course. My mother and sister look like that too.”

“But do you get wet down there sometimes? Not when you’re going to the bathroom, I mean?”

“Sure. That just means you’re horny.”

“Me?” This time, Sonny’s tears were from relief.
She was normal. Thank God!

“What’s the matter?” D.B. asked affectionately.

“I really love you,” Sonny said.

“Okay, so stop with the tears already.”

Grabbing the edge of the tub, Sonny stood up and gave D.B. the biggest hug she could manage. It was only when she felt her breasts against her that she realized she had hugged another woman, both of them naked. “I mean it,” she said, kissing D.B. on the cheek.

“We’re best friends, but no lezzie stuff. Okay? Let’s get out of here before we both look as shriveled as the Gooch’s asshole.”