Something Wild

by Hanna Halperin

  * * *

  —

  THEY WALKED TO T.J. MAXX to buy lingerie. “I like this.” Tanya held up a pink bra and underwear set, the bra straps slender ribbons and the cups made of crushed lace. The underwear was solid pink in front but the back was gauzy and transparent. Nessa chose a second set off the rack and together they tried them on in the big, wheelchair-accessible dressing room.

  The pink bra and underwear looked pretty on Tanya, but Nessa’s skin was pinker than her sister’s, so the lingerie just blended in with her flesh. “Black would look nice on you,” Tanya suggested, so Nessa found the same set in black and returned to the dressing room. They stood beside one another in the big mirror.

  “Who do you want to be?” Nessa asked. “Lola or Layla?”

  Tanya stood up straighter and sucked in her tummy so that her butt stuck out. “Layla?”

  “I guess that makes me Lola.” The name felt soft and pretty in Nessa’s mouth, and she imagined how much softer and prettier it would sound coming from a man.

  “What if it hurts?” Tanya asked. She skimmed a hand over her stomach.

  It hadn’t occurred to Nessa to worry about it hurting, and even then, the thought of pain didn’t scare her. “I think it only hurts at first,” she said. She smiled at Tanya in the mirror and hip-bumped her, and the hilarity of the situation hit them all over again.

  * * *

  —

  NESSA HAD WALKED to Alewife Station from Winter Street before, but it felt different this time, at night, with her sister, so close to so much traffic. Nessa kept waiting for somebody to roll down their car window and ask them what they were doing, where they were going—to tell them to go back home, now. But nobody said a word to them. Once they reached Alewife, that monstrosity of a building—stories of concrete, tangled in highway—Nessa experienced a surge of emotion deep in her belly: freedom. They were really doing this.

  They bought T passes and boarded the train, easy as that. As they pummeled into the city, Nessa looked around at the other people in the subway car. There were teenagers getting off at Harvard Square, college students with their backpacks and their books, people in scrubs, homeless people. There was a loud drunken group of adults, all wearing Red Sox hats, taking up an entire row. A young family with a double stroller, two toddlers peeking out from beneath the canopy.

  And of course there were the couples. Holding hands, leaning into one another, whispering things. Nessa watched them with interest. What was everybody else doing with their evening? she wondered. All these grown-ups with specific destinations in mind, with plans. With dates.

  As they made their way up out of the subway into Central Square, Nessa felt like a dog with an electric leash. She was waiting for the shock, for the harsh yanking back. But as they stepped into the mild Cambridge evening, anything felt possible.

  Inman was a quiet, pretty street with lots of trees and old Cambridge houses, lush gardens out front. Dan’s was a ways down. His house didn’t have a garden. There was a big, sagging sofa on the front porch, the kind of sofa that wasn’t meant to be outdoors, red and green striped like Christmas wrapping paper. From across the street they gaped at his house, chain-sucking Tic Tacs and imagining the man inside.

  “We should have a signal,” Tanya said. “In case we want out.”

  “How about if we touch our chin, that means we leave.”

  Tanya considered it. “I touch my chin when I’m nervous. I might do it by accident without thinking.” She demonstrated, pinching her chin between her thumb and her middle finger. “Don’t you see me do this a lot? It’s one of my habits, I think.” She looked uncertain, grasping at her chin.

  “Maybe,” Nessa said, though she’d never seen her do it before. “How about our eyebrow, then?”

  Tanya tested out the gesture, tracing her eyebrow with her index finger. “Okay.” She nodded. “That works.”

  * * *

  —

  AT TEN MINUTES TO EIGHT they walked across the street, and when Tanya stared nervously at the door, Nessa reached out and knocked. From inside they heard a dog barking and then slow footsteps.

  When Dan opened the door, Nessa was startled to see flecks of gray in his beard, surprised that he had a beard at all. His eyes were small and green and alert and he looked kind of baffled to see them standing there. He was wearing a plain white hat with the bill faced frontward and a button-up flannel, an undershirt peeking out. The undershirt frightened Nessa. She had spent so much time thinking about her and Tanya’s bodies, she had almost forgotten he was going to have a body, too.

  He wasn’t cute, but he wasn’t exactly ugly either, and when he smiled and opened the door for them, there was something gentlemanly about the way he stretched out his hand, gesturing for them to come in. “Welcome. Did you find it okay?” His voice was soft, like when teachers deliberately speak quietly to make you listen up.

  Tanya nodded. She looked a little pale.

  “We took the T,” Nessa said.

  Dan led them into the living room. There was a gray couch and a green La-Z-Boy pointed toward the TV. The room smelled like smoke and artificial orange. “Can I get you ladies something to drink?”

  Nessa and Tanya glanced at one another. “What do you have?” Nessa asked.

  “Wine. Beer.” He looked at them, his eyes moving quickly up and down. “Orange juice.”

  “Beer for me,” Tanya said, surprising her sister with her out-of-the-blue confident tone.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “Sure thing.”

  They sat next to each other on the gray sofa while Dan disappeared inside the kitchen. They both felt the urge to laugh, though neither one of them did.

  Dan came back in the room then, carrying three bottles. He put two down on the coffee table in front of them and then settled into the La-Z-Boy with the third. “How old are you girls?” he asked, taking a sip.

  “Eighteen,” Tanya said, without missing a beat. She took a swig of her beer like she’d done it a million times before, and it occurred to Nessa that maybe she had.

  Dan nodded and pulled the bill of his hat down so it sat more securely on his head.

  After a few sips the drink made Nessa feel warm and relaxed. “This is good,” she said, holding up the bottle. She thought her voice sounded nice. Sultry even.

  “Glad you like it.”

  She glanced at her sister. Tanya’s cheeks were pink from the alcohol and she had tossed her hair over to one side so that it fell like a wave over her face. Nessa stopped herself from reaching over and tucking the hair behind Tanya’s ear.

  For several more minutes there was silence and then Dan set his bottle down on the table and leaned forward in the chair. “So I wasn’t expecting two of you. How does this work? I just pick?”

  Tanya and Nessa glanced at one another. They hadn’t really thought about this. The idea of splitting up made Nessa feel shaky, a deep sort of scared, right in her gut. She thought about their mother then and wondered what Lorraine would think if she knew what they were doing right now. Then she thought about Jesse. How angry he’d be if he knew that Dan had offered them alcohol. Jesse wouldn’t want them to be there; she was sure about that. She turned to Tanya and gently touched her eyebrow with her pointer finger, hoping Tanya might nod or touch her own eyebrow, but Tanya just pressed her lips together and shrugged. Then Tanya turned back to Dan. “Yeah,” she said. “You choose.”

  “Well, in that case.” He nodded toward Tanya and Nessa felt something sharp break in her chest.

  “You want to . . .” He trailed off.

  Nessa looked down at the beer in her hands, still half of it left, and tried not to let anything show on her face. The shaky feeling and the hurt feeling were all mixed up. She wasn’t sure which one to listen to.

  When Nessa looked up, Tanya looked pale again, but maybe, Nessa thought, a little pro
ud. Tanya didn’t say anything to Nessa but made a face like, Is that okay?

  Nessa nodded. “I’ll just see you later,” she said. When neither Tanya nor Dan moved, Nessa stood up and pulled her shorts down a little with one hand, the other hand still around the neck of the bottle. Then she left.

  Outside, she sat down on the Christmas-striped sofa on Dan’s porch to wait for Tanya. The second half of the beer was easier going down and she drank it in long, slow sips. She felt bad for herself and angry at Tanya. Her sister should have listened when Nessa had touched her eyebrow. Nessa set the empty bottle down and stretched out on the sofa. It smelled musty, but it was soft and worn, surprisingly comfortable. She lay there, looking up at the rotted wood of the porch ceiling and the cobwebs fuzzed over everything like moss. From somewhere down the street, she heard the revving of a car engine and the blast of a radio grow louder and then softer as it passed through the neighborhood.

  Then it arrived all at once. Her fear. She stood, chest heaving, cupped her hands against the window and pressed her face to it. The room she was looking into was dark, a dining room table stacked high with mail. She pushed her ear against the glass and listened. She wasn’t sure what she was listening for, but each time she heard the groan of a bus from down the block, or the wind through the trees, it sounded eerily human. The noises were frightening, but the moments of quiet—when Dan’s house seemed to pulse with some silent warning—were even more so.

  Nessa knocked, first softly on the window, as though Tanya might be just behind it, waiting for her signal. And then she went to the front door and knocked again, this time harder. She tried the doorknob. It was locked.

  “Tanya!” she yelled, but there was no answer.

  Images of her sister began running through her head like a slide show—Tanya embracing their father at his wedding, Tanya curled up on the couch with their mother. Tanya, naked and perfect, diving into the swimming pool. And then Nessa thought about the porn she’d seen—the woman with her shaved vagina and large engorged breasts, the strange sounds she was making, and Nessa began to cry. She pounded the door with her fists. “Tanya!”

  Nessa ran around to the back of the house. The lawn was dark and dead, no grass, just overgrown weeds and rocks. She tripped over something—a hose—and landed hard on her hands and knees. Pain exploded in her mouth where she’d bitten her tongue. She pushed herself up. The back of Dan’s duplex was dark except for one window on the second floor, which was emitting a grayish glow. She tried the back door, but it didn’t budge. “Tanya!” she yelled again, waving her arms over her head.

  She ran back around to the front porch and jiggled the doorknob, tried forcing the windows up. Finally, she sat on the front steps and waited. She counted in her head at first, and then out loud. She was at seven hundred and forty-two when the door opened and Tanya stepped out.

  “Tee.” Nessa stood, leaking with tears and snot and blood.

  Tanya looked back, dazed, her makeup smeared under her eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  When Nessa reached to hug her sister, Tanya took a step back, then nodded without meeting Nessa’s eye. “Come on,” she said.

  “What happened?” Nessa followed her down the steps and onto the sidewalk.

  Tanya looked left and right down the street. Then a car pulled up and her sister nodded toward it. “There,” she said. “He called me a cab.”

  They climbed into the backseat together and Tanya gave the driver their address.

  Tanya was quiet, staring out the window. Nessa reached over and touched her sister’s shoulder, and Tanya turned to Nessa and smiled politely as though she barely knew her.

  “Here you are, ladies,” the driver said as he pulled into their driveway.

  Tanya took some cash out of her pocket and handed the driver two twenties. He gave her back some change and she looked at the money bewildered, like she wasn’t sure what to do with it, then slipped it back into her pocket.

  Outside the air was cool and clean and smelled like home. Everything was as they’d left it: the blur of bushes out front, the trash bins leaning against the side of the house, the sloping telephone wires.

  “What happened?” Nessa asked Tanya again, once the cab disappeared down the block.

  “Nothing,” Tanya said. “It was just sex.”

  The way she said sex, like it was something that shouldn’t have to be explained, gave Nessa the feeling she had better stop asking questions.

  2003

  Nessa didn’t sleep that night, and across the room from her, neither did Tanya. Her sister’s breathing remained quick and shallow and she got up to use the bathroom five times, once every hour. Nessa kept count. After the third time she whispered Tanya into the darkness, but Tanya didn’t answer.

  Eventually light bled through the blinds, flinging stripes across the walls and ceiling. Nessa lay listening to the rhythm of Tanya’s breathing—still awake—until her sister got up for the sixth time and Nessa heard the shower start.

  Nessa sat up. Her body was sore from being awake all night and her eyes burned. Tanya’s bed was a mess. The blanket was spilling onto the floor, the sheet dislodged, tangled and twisted like something alive splayed on the middle of the mattress. Her sister’s stuffed animals, usually wedged between the wall and the foot of the bed, had been moved up by the pillows. Nessa sat down on the bed and took one of the stuffed dogs in her arms. When she pulled the blanket up to cover herself, she noticed Tanya’s jean shorts shoved into the crack between the wall and the mattress. She pulled them out. Tanya’s underwear was still inside, the pink lace dark and stiff with blood. Nessa sat up, dizzy.

  Tanya walked in a few minutes later wrapped in a towel. Her face was clean, all her makeup washed away. She blinked at Nessa, expressionless. Nessa thought about Dan’s ruddy, pockmarked cheeks, the hint of his smile when he’d opened the door. She fell from Tanya’s bed onto the floor. “I’m so sorry, Tanya.” She was crying again.

  Tanya didn’t move or speak. When Nessa looked up, Tanya was watching her as though from a distance.

  “Tanya,” Nessa said. She held up her sister’s bloodied underwear and then she started to hit herself. On the side of her head, on her face, her ears, her cheeks. She began to breathe slower, the slapping like a metronome.

  “Stop, Nessa,” Tanya hissed. She reached down and grabbed the underwear from Nessa’s hand. “Stop. You’re acting crazy.”

  “Are you hurt?” Nessa whispered.

  Tanya’s eyes were bone-dry. “No.”

  “Should we tell Mom?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Tanya cried. “Promise me you won’t tell Mom.”

  “But are you okay?”

  “Jesus, Nessa. Just stop talking about it.”

  “I shouldn’t have let you stay in there,” she said. “I’m so stupid. This whole thing was so stupid.”

  “Maybe. But it’s over now. There’s no point in talking about it.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Yes,” Tanya said shortly, and something hardened in her sister’s face. That was all she was going to say. Tanya walked over to the closet. Her shoulders were tense, speckled with water droplets, her hair a wet, dark sheet down her back. “Can you step out,” she said with her back still to Nessa. “I want to change.”

  Tanya had never asked Nessa to leave the room so she could change, and it frightened Nessa, that her sister didn’t want Nessa to see her body. Nessa stood and left, closing the door behind her, and waited in the hallway, listening. There was the sound of Tanya’s footsteps and the click of the lock on the doorknob. Nessa thought maybe Tanya was going to cry, but Tanya was silent. The only sounds coming from the bedroom were those of clothes being yanked out of drawers and pulled on.

  * * *

  —

  SOON AFTER, TANYA got a boyfriend. He was three years older than Tanya, one year ol
der than Nessa, a senior named Dylan Starr. Tanya came up to Dylan’s chin and when they walked the halls together, he kept one arm draped over her, his fingers grazing her chest.

  Tanya started coming home late, usually after dinner, her hair tangled around her face, her lips so red and swollen that Nessa felt embarrassed to look at her. When Nessa asked Tanya if she and Dylan Starr were having sex, Tanya raised her eyebrows, as though that was answer enough.

  “So you are?” Nessa pressed.

  “What do you think,” Tanya said in a voice that was neither sneering nor genuine.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking,” Nessa said, but she got no further information.

  “Is sex with Dylan good?” Nessa asked once, lightly, the way she imagined girls talked about boys they were sleeping with.

  “Stop asking me so much about it,” Tanya said. “It’s weird.”

  Nessa waited until her sister left the room to cry. She was crying a lot those days, after school and on weekends, the kind of crying that left her body weak and depleted. Often she fell asleep afterward, and it was that feeling, her body preparing itself to lose consciousness, that she craved. She’d wake up several hours later, the sun on its way down, almost dinnertime.

  During the day her naps were deep and dreamless—hours simply disappeared. At night, though, she dreamt about Dan. In her dreams, he had chosen Nessa. She’d wake up tingling, the way she felt right after having an orgasm, and it was that, more than anything else, that made her despise herself.

  Tanya had new friends—Dylan’s friends, mostly older. Nessa saw her hanging out on the Ledge, a cluster of benches where the popular kids congregated before and after school and during lunch. Sometimes she’d watch Tanya from across the quad, laughing and leaning into Dylan Starr, gathering her hair on top of her head and tying it into a messy bun—the way popular girls knew how to do, the gesture as sensuous and exotic as a dance move. Watching Tanya, suddenly popular, confused Nessa. Her little sister had surpassed her; abandoned her. And Nessa had no one to blame but herself.