by Pepper Pace
When the alarm went off in the morning Kenny was gone and my baseball cap was on my pillow. I felt so empty. But I knew he’d be back.
In school I felt more alien than ever. I knew something horrible about the world. A kid could end up living in the woods because the home that was provided for him was so much worse. But then I had discovered something else. A kiss…could open up a world of hope…
Knowing Kenny made me so happy and so sad.
****
That night when Kenny came over, I immediately sat him down.
“Kenny. I’ve been thinking. I don’t want you to go back to the woods-”
“Jamie…” he said, sadly.
“Hear me out. Now I’ve thought about this all day. You can sleep here at night. My dad never comes into my bedroom—the whole privacy thing freaks him out. I can make you regular meals, make sure your clothes are clean-”
“Jamie. It wouldn’t work. Your sisters will find out or your Dad. Then you’ll get in trouble. I couldn’t stand that…”
All of the pressure that had been building up spilled over. I burst into tears and Kenny jumped, surprised.
“Jamie-” I pushed his hand away when he reached for me.
“How do you think I can stand it knowing that I’m warm and safe here and you’re out there in the cold?!”
“Shhhh,” he said softly, glancing with concern at the door.
I covered my mouth but couldn’t stop crying. Kenny pulled me into his arms forcibly and I muffled my sobs into his shoulder. It was a long time before I could stop crying.
“It’ll be winter soon," I said. “You can’t live in the woods, and I don’t want you to go down south.” Kenny didn’t say anything but he held me firmly. “If it was me out there and you in here, what would you want?”
Kenny took hold of my shoulders, pulling me back enough to look down at my wet and slimy face. “No one has ever…cared this much.” He seemed to come to a decision. "I’m not an orphan. That’s not the reason I’m in foster care. I have a Mom and I have a Dad. But…my Dad was very abusive to us and he’d beat me and my Mom never tried to stop it.” He took in a long breath. “I was taken away and put into foster care since about the age of ten. Before that I knew how to fend for myself, to steal in order to eat, to hustle for money and to find a warm place to sleep at night. But in foster care I can’t come and go. If somebody touches me or hurts me or uses me…I just gotta take it.” I felt cold, I wanted to shiver and to vomit.
“Jamie, I’d rather die in the woods than go back. I would die if I went back. And if I stayed here, your Dad would somehow find out and surely call the cops on me-”
“Then you run,” I said simply. “You run away, to the park and I’d find you.”
“The worst part of getting caught is what would happen to you. You would be in trouble.” He took a step back, letting his hands drop. “I gotta…think.” He went back to the window.
“Don’t go-”
“I’ll be back tomorrow night.” He began climbing out of the window. “I want you to get some sleep. You look tired.” Then he was gone before I could say another word.
It was another sleepless night. I tossed and turned and had visions of a man beating up a little boy. I saw Kenny’s haunted eyes and knew what had given him that look.
The next morning I dragged out of bed with bags under my eyes. Daddy was alarmed and tried to get me to stay home and at first I jumped at the idea. But then I knew that the first thing I’d do was hop on my bike and try to find Kenny. And I didn’t want to do that. If he needed to think then I wanted to give him the time to do it.
So I went to school once again, depressed. My few friends hovered around me trying to find out what was wrong, one of my teachers even sent me to the counselor’s office.
When she asked me about my home life I was tempted to ask a lot of questions about kids who got abused because you see I had a friend who had been. Not me, mind you, but a friend…
But I was a bit smarter than that.
At lunch I tried to force myself to eat something but once again the idea that someone I loved—and yes, I loved Kenny, didn’t have anything to eat caused me to rush to the bathroom and vomit.
He didn’t eat at all yesterday... I cried in the bathroom stall until lunch was over.
At home I made dinner, a big pot of chili. When daddy got home he came up to my room in a very rare visit, and felt my forehead and made me take medicine.
“Jamie, do you need to go the doctor?”
“No!” I said, surprised and alarmed. I calmed down. “I just want to go to sleep,” I said wanly.
“You get some sleep. I want you to stay home tomorrow.” He gave me a sad look. “It’s times like this that I wish your Mother was here…”
I didn’t think I’d fall asleep because I was so anxious to see Kenny, but I did from sheer exhaustion. I woke up when I felt a hand on my head. At first I thought it was Daddy but I had gotten in the habit of locking my door at night.
When I opened my eyes Kenny was looking at me, concerned. He was feeling my forehead.
“Are you sick?”
I sat up happy for the first time all day. I shook my head. “No. Have you eaten?”
“Have you? You look so thin.”
“No. I left you a bowl of chili on the dresser.” He went and got it and brought it back to the bed. He ate one spoonful then fed me the next. We finished it and he laid down next to me and held me in his arms.
“If you want me to, I’ll stay here at night-”
I sat up and hugged him tight. “I feel so much better.”
Kenny smiled weakly. “I just hope you don’t get into trouble because of me.”
I kissed him swiftly. “I won’t.” He caught me and kissed me one of those soul searching, bone melting, heart thumping kisses.
Flushed, Kenny sat up and moved away weakly. I sat up on my elbows and looked at him curiously.
“Do you feel that tingly feeling, too?” I asked
He nodded silently.
“Kenny…” I wanted to know. “Are you a virgin?”
“No.”
“Have you…done it a lot?”
“Not a lot.”
“Are you embarrassed to talk about this with me?”
He sighed. “Jamie. I didn’t have sex because I wanted to…I had to.” He sat back against the cushion in resignation.
“The first time I did it I was 12 and it was with my teacher. She just started touching me after school one day.”
“Your teacher?!” I asked, shocked.
He nodded with a frown. “Then it was one of the older girls at the group home…. It gets worse. Are you sure you want to know?”
“Kenny have you ever done it with anyone you wanted to be with?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t want to know about any of them.” I brushed his hair back reassuringly. “Do you want to do it with me?”
“No.”
“You don’t?” Yikes, I thought.
“I mean I want to, but I‘m not going to. Jamie…I hate…I hate those people who used me. I wish I’d never done it, any of it. I may not know everything but I know that when you do it too soon it opens a door that can’t be closed. If I’m going to be there to open the door, then…I’m going to make sure I’m always there. I’d be with you forever Jamie if it was my choice. But until I’m 18 my life is at someone else’s mercy.”
“You’d be with me forever?”
“If you want me.”
“Yes, I want you!” I whispered urgently.
He smiled but his grey eyes were still sad.
My first night spent with Kenny was wonderful. He held me in his arms the entire night, spooned around my body. I had instructed Kenny to get in the closet if anybody should knock on my bedroom door…and chances were Daddy would, to check on me before he went to work. And he did.
Smoothly Kenny got into the closet as I unlocked the door in feigned sleepiness.
�
�Good morning Daddy,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“Sorry to wake you, Baby. You feeling any better?” I contemplated how much longer I could milk my illness and decided it wouldn’t be a good idea. Daddy might get it in his head to actually take me to a doctor.
“I feel much better.”
“Well you go back to bed. Sorry I woke you.”
After he had gone back downstairs I relocked the door and 15 minutes later he was driving off to work.
Kenny took a long hot shower while I made a nice breakfast of pancakes and sausage with scrambled eggs.
Daddy came back home right when I was flipping the last pancake. I thought I was going to pass out! “Daddy? What are you doing home?” I tried to keep my voice calm.
He looked at the food I was cooking. “Why are you cooking all this food?”
“I- was hungry.”
“You’ve been eating an awful lot to be so sick, little girl.”
I nonchalantly turned back to the stove. “Why did you say you came home?”
Daddy looked around with a suspicious frown on his face. “I don’t know…something just didn’t feel right…Jamie Lynn? Why is that shower running?”
I gave him a blank look. I had absolutely nothing.
Daddy gave me a shocked look then he rushed up the stairs. Dear god…if it had only been Kenny and I sitting at the breakfast table eating, even though I was wearing pajamas, that wouldn’t have been bad. But Kenny naked in the shower…my Daddy was going to kill both of us!
“Daddy!” I screamed. He slammed the bathroom door open. Daddy!” He pulled back the shower curtain.
The shower was running into an empty bathtub. Daddy shoved past me into my bedroom. Other than an unmade bed, there was nothing to see—except for my open window.
Daddy hurried out of the room and checked the house from top to bottom—he stopped abruptly to put out the fire in the kitchen. In the excitement I’d forgotten to take the food off the stove.
He looked at me surprised and hurt, as if he had never seen me before. Then he grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me to the car. I was wearing my pajamas still and no shoes.
I was too scared to argue. Daddy was going crazy! He drove us to the hospital, pulling up to the emergency room entrance.
“Daddy! What are you doing? Why are you bringing me here?!” The image of my Mother’s dying face as she lay in the hospital bed filled my memory. It was the last time I’d been here.
Wordlessly he dragged me to the receptionist's desk.
“We need to see a Doctor. I think my daughter’s pregnant…or....” He shook his head, “She needs to be checked or examined.”
My mouth opened then closed in shock. Pregnant!
“Daddy, what are you talking about?!” This was a nightmare. I was so scared, seeing him acting crazy like this, being in this place.
He gave me a stern look. “You’ve been doing something Jamie…”
The nurse sent an orderly to take me back to be examined.
It was the most degrading thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life! The doctor made me spread my legs and put my feet up on metal stirrups. He asked me if I’d ever had a pap test and I didn’t even know what that was. He was old and he touched me so intimately that even though a nurse was present, when he examined my breasts I burst into tears.
He said he’d be quick about it and he put a metal thing in me that hurt so bad I screamed for Daddy, of all people, to help me. I was getting hysterical and the nurse held my hands down and fussed at me. Then I felt myself bleeding and I heard the doctor chastise that my hymen hadn’t been broken before but with all my fussing it was broken now. It hurt so bad!
When the doctor was gone the nurse hugged me even though I hated her and the doctor and Daddy, but I hugged her back and sobbed because there just wasn't anybody else. She gave me a sanitary napkin with no sticky side…just long flaps that went up the back and front then she sent me back out to Daddy.
My hair was all over my head, my face swollen and tear streaked and I kept my arms tightly folded across my chest.
Daddy was moving from one foot to the next. “I’m so sorry Baby—that doctor said you’d never been touched.”
I could have told him that, if he’d asked, I thought bitterly. He had the nerve to try to put his arm around me, but I ducked out of his reach.
“The nurse was whispering to him “…give her two for the pain…cramping…bleeding…hymen broken.” I tuned them out.
The drive home was quiet and Daddy had red rimmed eyes like he’d been crying. “So sorry Jamie. I just thought-”
I squeezed my eyes shut and he stopped talking.
At home I hurried to my room and locked the door. Then I got into bed trembling, a deep pain in the place between my legs that just the other night had been tingly and exciting.
I’d been having a period for a year and a half now, but this wasn’t my time. You couldn’t tell by the cramping in my belly, though.
“Baby…” Daddy called through the door. “I put some pain pills on the kitchen table in case…you need them. Jamie? I’m going to work now…”
I buried my face in my pillow. “I hate him!” I cried. “I hate him!”
I didn’t even hear Kenny climb in through the window.
“Jamie, don’t cry.” He sat down next to me and I grabbed him tight hiding my face against his chest. “Did he hurt you?”
“What?” I blinked and looked at him. His face was scared. Then I remembered that all he knew was that I was crying. I told him the entire story. “I hate him, Kenny! I hate him!” I wiped my face. “I don’t even know if I’m still a virgin. I mean, it hurt so bad. If…doing it is like that I don’t want anybody to ever touch me like that again!”
Kenny stroked my hair solemnly, listening to my every word with deep concentration.
“I’m going to make love to you now.” I gave him a surprised look.
“What? But I have blood-”
“When you make love for the first time there is blood, so it’s okay. And, I will…well, pull out.” So I wouldn’t get pregnant, I guessed.
“My stomach hurts, and I feel…dirty.”
“I want to make you feel clean.” Kenny leaned forward and kissed me.
Kenny kissed me, and once again he taught me another kiss. Before it was his tongue dancing against mine. This time it was a little more dangerous because his teeth gently grabbed and tugged my lip. And for it to work you had to alternate between licking and sucking and nibbling. I’d never known about this type of thing.
I didn’t think it could happen, but I felt the tingle- far away, but it was there.
Kenny slid out of the bed. He watched me as he kicked off his shoes and socks. He pulled off his t-shirt and dropped it on the floor. Kenny was lean but muscular. He tugged down his pants and I glanced away at the sight of him completely nude. I’d never seen a penis before- other than in pictures…and well, if Kenny wasn’t built like a grown man then I never wanted to know one.
He didn’t force me to look at him or anything, but I figured if it was going to end up inside of me I shouldn’t be too embarrassed to look. He didn’t act shy about it and allowed me to stare.
I slid off the bed, then backed away from him and out the door. “I’ll be back,” I called over my shoulder. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
Moving gingerly, as I still ached, I went downstairs and got the pain medicine. Then I went to the bathroom and washed with cool water and soap. I felt a lot better and the bleeding had stopped. Still, I remembered how bad it hurt when the doctor had put that metal thing in me…and Kenny was bigger than that…
When I went back into the bedroom Kenny was under the covers. With a deep breath I stripped down and tried not to cover my nudity. Kenny sat up and looked at me from feet to head, then he lifted the cover for me to climb in, which I did quickly.
“I love you, Jamie,” he said solemnly. I relaxed.
“I love you, too.”
&
nbsp; He kissed my eyes and nose and lastly my lips, slipping his tongue into my mouth, which was becoming my favorite way to kiss. Tentatively I felt fingers on my breasts across my nipples and the fire roared in my core as if it had never gone away. I gasped.
Kenny leaned down and kissed my breast. His lips gently closed over my nipple drawing it into his warm mouth. His sucking was gentle yet firm and I had one glaring thought; this person that I’d fallen in love with was not a child. Whatever had happened to him in the past had pushed him forever out of that category. I thought that I was an old soul...but Kenny was the real deal. So that was two of us that had lost their childhoods forever. I had no choice but to respond to him as I was; which was as a woman, not a child.