Juliana

by Vanda

  She sat back down on the couch a little closer than before. “Now, tell me what you didn’t like about that kiss.”

  “It’s just that girls aren’t sposed to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what everybody says. It’s not natural.”

  “Kissing you felt perfectly natural to me. And to be frank, from the way you responded, it seemed like it felt natural to you too.”

  “It did not.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Well, uh …. I don’t know anything anymore. Everything’s upside down si nce I left Huntington. I found out I’m no good at singing, so I probably shouldn’t be here in the first place ‘cause I can’t do musical theater ….”

  “Didn’t you say you didn’t want to do that anyway?”

  “So? So? I wasn’t sure, but now I can’t do it. Don’t ya see? I don’t get to figure it out myself. Aggie’s a good singer, so she’ll be in a show soon; she’s already been a model and an actor on radio, so it doesn’t matter that she’s a cigarette girl now, and Dickie already got a job hoofing in Let’s Face It , so he’s doing it. They have talent, and I don’t know what I’ve got. And now, even Danny, the one person I could really count on, has lost his mind and gone off to who knows where, and now we’ll never get married, and I’m gonna be an old maid. An old maid with no career even, and just nothing in my life is going right. I even got kicked out of Hope House, and I thought I was gonna end up a bum on the street like my mother said, but that didn’t happen ’cause Aggie and me found a nice apartment. Except it has rats. Whoever heard of a person’s home having rats?”

  “Get a cat.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe if you got a cat—”

  “No! No! Don’t you understand? Everything’s all wrong. Where’s Danny? I can’t manage life without him. Most of the time I’m shaking half to death wondering how I’m gonna get through my next moment. He’s always been in my life, so where is he? What am I gonna do? And then, on top of everything else, you kissed me and that means I’m getting addicted like Aggie said ’cause I really want you to do it again, but—”

  She leaned over and kissed me on the lips. My whole body arched toward hers and tingled all over.

  While she was kissing me, she weaved her fingers through the wilting curls lying around my neck. I shivered at her touch.

  “Your hair’s so soft,” she whispered.

  I couldn’t speak. I could only feel her presence and stare at her.

  “When you look at me,” she said, “there is such an intensity in your eyes. It almost frightens me, yet I’m drawn to it.” She ran a finger over my ear. “It’s the same look you had the night I kissed you.”

  “You’re beautiful. No, there’s more, more I want to ….” I sunk into silence ’cause the profound thing I wanted to say wasn’t coming out.

  She smiled and ran her fingernails over the side of my face down to my neck. “I love the slope of your neck. You have such striking features. Exquisite. Like an Etruscan sculpture.”

  “Are you seducing me again?” I asked.

  “Yes. How am I doing?”

  “Well—”

  She kissed me again, and I couldn’t wait to get my tongue inside her. That electric current immediately shot to between my legs, burning even hotter than last time. I was melting into her, losing something, gaining something .

  She ran one of her hands over my breasts on the outside of my dress and I could hardly breathe.

  “Does your beau touch you here?” she asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you like it when he does this?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “How about when I do it?”

  “Uh, that’s ….” I couldn’t tell her how much I liked it. That would’ve sounded so …. “But I don’t know if we should ….” She started unbuttoning my dress, so I grabbed hold of the buttons. “Uh, I don’t …?

  “I want to touch you without all this cloth in the way. You don’t want me to do that? It feels very nice.”

  “Uh, well, I guess that’d be okay.”

  I took my hands away and she undid a few buttons on top. My head was telling me this was probably something we definitely should not be doing, that this was definitely against one of the really big rules, but I just couldn’t get my body to agree. It was vibrating, and I didn’t want that feeling to stop.

  She put her hand inside my dress and moved the strap of my slip out of the way so she could touch my bra.

  “Do you like a light touch here, or do you like it when it’s rougher?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t feel much when Danny did it.”

  “How about when I do it?” She slipped a few of her fingers inside my bra and lightly touched my nipple, and I gasped. “It sounds like you like that?” she laughed.

  Then she slid her hand all the way inside my bra, and I gripped the couch cushions so I didn’t scream out loud. I had never felt anything like that before.

  She opened a few more of my dress buttons. “Why don’t we take this top part down a bit?”

  “Uh, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t ….”

  “Whose rule is that?”

  I let her help me get my arms out of the sleeves of my dress; she pushed the top of my dress down so it bunched up around my waist. She pulled down the straps of my slip so that it gathered around my waist too. Then she kissed me again while she unsnapped my bra, took it off me, and dropped it on the floor.

  I covered my chest with my arms.

  “Let me see,” she said.

  “In the country, we don’t ….”

  “Oh, don’t you?” She tickled me around my waist, which turned me into helpless jelly, and I moved my arms away from my chest.

  Her fingers fluttered lightly over my breasts, and I thought I was going to go mad with feeling. I was losing all sense of what I was “sposed” to do. I only wanted to give myself over to her to do whatever she wanted with me.

  She kissed my breast, and her tongue went around the nipple and then on it. At the same time, she pulled at the clothes around my waist. “Can we take these things off?” she whispered, her breath tickling me. “They’re in the way of what I want to give you.”

  The voice that told me what I was not sposed to do was a distant whisper that I could barely make out. She took off my dress, slip, girdle, nylons and I let her. By the time my saddle shoes plunked onto the floor I had long forgotten about being embarrassed. One of her hands hovered near the waistband of my underpants, and I wanted her to take them off me so bad, but I couldn’t tell her. But as she kept kissing me and running her fingers around my belly the pressure between my legs kept building.

  She slid her hand inside my underpants, and I knew I was about to die a most exquisite death. “Open your legs a little,” she whispered, “so I can touch you in there.”

  By then, she could’ve asked me to do anything, and I would’ve done it.

  “Oh, gosh,” I exclaimed when she touched me there.

  She looked into my face and said, “Let yourself feel it. It’s really quite heavenly.” I was surrounded by her.

  She slid my underpants down my legs to my ankles, and I started breathing harder than I knew was possible. I felt her nails against the skin of my legs. The fine hairs on my upper legs, the hair no one ever sees ’cause they’re almost invisible, rose to her touch. She slid my underpants all the way off and a whoosh of freedom enveloped me. Her fingers tickled the insides of my calves and my thighs. They moved back and forth in that place, and I started breathing harder, and something like an explosion happened, shaking me, and I was grabbing at her blouse and yelling, “Oh, gosh, gosh, oh, gosh, gosh …”

  Far off, I heard her saying, “Good, good.” Then my body relaxed and my breathing was even again, and she was holding me in her arms, lightly kissing my face.

  “What happened?” I asked, sleepy.

&n
bsp; “Well, my dear, I think you just had your first orgasm.”

  “Oh. What’s that?”

  “Later.”

  I started to push myself out of her arms, but she held me back.

  “You don’t have any place to go or anything you have to do. Just enjoy it. Judging from the way your life’s been going lately I think this was something you really needed. And deserved.”

  I smiled sleepily and sighed. After all the worry about Danny, and the curfew, and the rats, and my mother, and all the things that swirled endlessly through my mind, I was completely at ease lying naked in her arms, so relaxed that I fell asleep.

  I woke up on her couch, a pillow under my head. A blanket that smelled like her perfume covered me. The sun peered in through the filmy white curtains and pigeons cooed on the window ledge. The fire no longer burned in the fireplace and the candles had been snuffed out .

  I felt at ease, healthy. I stretched. “God is in His heaven, and all is right with the world.” Then, I looked under the blanket and saw that I had no clothes on and remembered what I’d done. I sat up straight. “Oh, no.”

  My clothes lay neatly folded on the chair across from me. I looked around, but there was no sign of Juliana. I crept out of the blanket, and crouching down, I tiptoed to the chair. I dressed fast. I was afraid she’d come in and see me. Of course, she’d already seen about as much of me as anyone possibly could, but still.

  I tiptoed into the music room.

  “Hello?” I whispered. No Juliana.

  I looked in the kitchenette. No Juliana.

  I was glad not to have to face her. I grabbed my coat and hat and ran out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I pushed past the courtyard gate, I found Dickie standing on the stoop outside my apartment building. He was bundled up in his winter coat, his hat pressed down over his head.

  “A letter came for you today at my apartment. There’s no return address on it, but it looks like Danny’s handwriting.” He held it out for me.

  I was afraid to take it. “What does it say?”

  “Don’t know. It’s addressed to you.” I took it in my hand. “I wanted you to see it before Aggie started yakking at you about what he said. I’ll go upstairs so you can read it by yourself.”

  “Thanks, Dickie.”

  “Keep your chin up, kid.”

  I sat on the stoop staring at the envelope in my hands for a long time. I looked out over at the piles of squashed cigarette butts that spread across the courtyard cement floor. Pages from a discarded newspaper flapped in the wind. Taking in a deep breath I slid my thumb under the sealed flap of the envelope lifting it. I slipped the folded blue paper out.

  Dear Al,

  I’m writing to you finally. I’m sorry I didn’t sooner, but I’m so ashamed. You deserve a better fella than me. I feel so sick about what I am, but I don’t know what to do about it. There’s this bad, awful thing inside me and it’s been in me for a long time, so don’t blame Max. He didn’t do this to me. I did it to myself.

  They say the army can make a man of you, so I’ve joined up .

  “No!” I yelled at the letter. “You don’t believe in it. Come back.” Tears rolled down my face.

  My mother signed the papers so I could enlist. She doesn’t know what I am. Mom just goes along with everything I want because she loves me. If she knew about this, it’d kill her so please don’t tell her.

  I suppose Aggie and Dickie know by now and hate me. Tell them I say hi anyway if you want to. The worst of it is knowing how much I let you down. Sorry I didn’t say good-bye, but I couldn’t face you. I’m sorry. More sorry than this letter can ever say. Sorry our team is broken and that it’s my fault. Forget about me if you haven’t done that already. Someday, you’ll be a grand actress on the stage, and you’ll meet a handsome man and he’ll marry you and make your life good. Better than I ever could.

  Yours Very Truly,

  Pvt. Daniel Boyd

  I tore the letter in half.

  A pigeon walked by my foot pecking at the cigarette butts hoping for food. I tore the halved pieces in half again.

  I tore it again and again until it was in tiny pieces around my feet. My whole body shook with cold then heat.

  “How could you do this to me, Danny?” I reached for the porch railing, but I couldn’t pull myself up. My arms and legs were Jell-O. “What am I sposed to do now ?”

  I laid my head against the railing knowing I’d wake up soon.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Thanksgiving by yourself in New York City has got to be the loneliest place in the world. The city people go away, and the tourists go to Times Square and 34th Street. Everywhere else is deserted. Especially Greenwich Village. Who’d want to go there if they didn’t have to? There’s hardly any traffic or even cars parked on the streets. All the stores are dark and bolted. Even in the cafés there are only a few lonely looking people sitting at the tables. In the morning, a dog walker might stroll by, but by afternoon it’s rare to see even one person on the street. You’re surrounded by a quiet that shouts into your ears reminding you that everyone has gone off to some other place. That everyone is celebrating the holiday with people who love them. Everyone but you.

  Dickie and Aggie took the train to the Island to celebrate. They had planned on announcing their engagement, but then Dickie couldn’t come up with the money for the ring Aggie had ogled at Tiffany’s, so they postponed the announcement. I thought Aggie was being unreasonable expecting Dickie to come up with that kind of money; he’s just a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage like her.

  Aggie worked it out that both families would have Thanksgiving together at the Wrights’ house. They wanted me to come with them, but all that celebrating would make me too sad.

  In the morning, I listened to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on the radio. There were more than a million people there. A few too many for me.

  In the afternoon, when most people were eating their Thanksgiving dinners, I wrapped myself in my coat and walked through the streets of the Village trying to make time pass. It was gray and cold and it had rained in the morning so there were puddles in the street gutters .

  I thought of Danny’s mom, Mrs. Boyd, alone in her house. I wondered if she thought Danny and I were still gonna get married. I hadn’t only lost Danny; I’d lost her too. She and I used to spend hours talking at her kitchen table. A couple times when Mom locked me out of the house, Mrs. Boyd found me and brought me into her house. She was real happy Danny had decided to marry a nice girl like me.

  Everyone’d been talking about Danny and me getting married since second grade so how could this other thing be happening? I knew I should call Mrs. Boyd, but what would I say?

  I pictured Aggie and Dickie warm in Aggie’s house with all the neighbors and relatives laughing and joking. In the morning in the kitchen before they put the turkey in the oven, Mrs. Wright would pull out the turkey’s rear end and hold it up for everyone to see and say, “Hey! Look, the Pope’s nose.” Everyone would laugh.

  Then usually someone would put on a record of “The Hut-Sut Song.” That was my Catholic priest song! Aggie and Dickie loved it when I did my imitation of a Catholic priest saying mass. I would put a handkerchief on my head and talk into a bathroom cup pretending I was speaking Latin, but I was really saying the words to that song. You know, “Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah,” and so on. Aggie, Dickie, Danny, and all the grown-ups would laugh. Not my parents, of course. The neighbors were afraid of my mother, and my father didn’t go anywhere without her.

  I wandered through the tree-lined streets as the day drifted into evening hoping to see one single other person who wasn’t having Thanksgiving dinner either. There was only the occasional swish of some car whooshing by.

  I found myself on Juliana’s street. I stopped in front of her building and looked up at the second floor. A light was on in the upstairs parlor. It spread a pale yellow glow across the half-open curtain. She must h
ave been having Thanksgiving at home. Maybe she had friends over. Probably everyone would go downstairs to have Thanksgiving dinner in the main parlor ’cause that was bigger. I pictured her up there in the small parlor sitting on her couch laughing with her guests and giving them tea in those little Turkish glasses. I wondered who her guests were. Was Max up there with her?

  It looked safe up there. Then the light flicked off and the room was gone. Oh, God, what if she comes out and finds me standing here. I hurried away, continuing my journey to nowhere.

  I started in the direction of my apartment, but then I turned around and walked in the opposite direction. I stood outside Max’s apartment. A light was on in there, too. Does everyone have someone to be with on Thanksgiving except me?

  I turned to see a man in a cap walking toward me. He was in his shirtsleeves with no tie and not even a coat in this cold.

  “Hey, you’re Timothy, the limousine driver, aren’t you? ”

  “Limo driver? Nah,” he said, pulling his cap over his eyes. “I don’t drive no limo. I work on the docks.”

  “Don’t you remember? You took Max and me to the Tom Kat Klub. In the summer.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He snapped his fingers. “I remember now. That was the time Max wanted to pretend I was a limo driver, and he was my rich boss.”

  “Pretend?”

  “Yeah, those games make him … you know horny.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sorry for my crude language. Excited. You know, sexually. So I play along. You’re the girl from that night, huh?”

  “You were pretending?”

  “I got the beer.” He held up the brown paper bag he was carrying. “You coming to the party? Call me Slag.” He walked down the steps heading toward Max’s door, and I followed.