by Cyndy Etler
“Two years and ten months,” I say, swinging faster.
“So you’re eighteen?”
“Yeah. How old are you?”
“Is that your question?”
“What?”
“You said you had a question.”
“Oh! No, my real question is, why’d you guys push us out in the rowboat?”
He lets go of my hands so fast I fall back on his bed, and he’s clapping. And laughing. “Was that not the funniest shit you’ve ever?! You should’ve seen you two, trying to paddle with your hands!”
“I mean, yeah, it was pretty funny. Someday I’ll definitely die laughing, telling my grandkids about being stranded in a rowboat in the Central Park pond, at one a.m. in January. And I’ll really roll when I tell them about getting whacked in the shoulder by a flying oar, and paddling to get to where the other oar landed in the water.”
He sits on the bed next to me. Too close.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” he says. “Let me kiss it and make it better.” He’s pulls my shirt off my shoulder and leans his head in.
“No, no, I’m fine.” I try to pull my shirt back up, but he won’t let me. He’s pulling it in the other direction. Half of my bra is uncovered.
“No, I’m fine! Really!” I lean away from him, and he’s on me hard and quick, like a lion who’s been waiting for this zebra.
“No!” I push him off easy with the weird Hulk strength I would get, before Straight, when I fought my step-siblings. I’m up from the bed with my shirt half-off and my jacket half-on. I’m opening all six locks on his door and spitting out gibberish, like, “Get me the fuck outta here, get me the fuck…” I get the last lock open and I’m hard-clacking down all the flights of marble stairs, and thank God, thank God, there’s a taxi. I put my arm out and it comes to me, like witchcraft.
Then I’m in the backseat saying, “I don’t know where it is,” to the nice brown eyes looking back at me in the rearview. “I just know the name.”
“Okay,” the driver says. His accent makes the letters crisp as toast. “You tell me name. I get you there.”
“It’s a store,” I say. “Brooklyn Tile and Bath.”
“Brook-lin Tile and Bat,” he says back, then leans over his passenger seat and pulls something out from underneath it. A yellow pages. He starts flipping through the book and tracing his finger down the page, like this is just what superheroes do. I can hear him whispering, “Brook-lin Tile. Brook-lin Tile.”
Then he sits up, shifts into drive—chunk-chunk—and pulls the cab into the street. I lean back and exhale a bagpipe’s worth of air. I didn’t even notice I wasn’t breathing.
There’s a little flag hanging from his rearview. It has a crescent moon and star on it. The flag and me are swaying back and forth, in sync, as he quietly drives along the almost-empty streets.
“I like your flag,” I say. “It’s pretty.”
He looks at me in the rearview. I can tell by the crinkle of his eyes that he’s smiling.
We ride along, me and the flag rocking gently, when my brain wakes up. “Fuck! Wait!” I say. “Fuck! I’m so sorry, but I—I’m sorry!” I’m trying really hard not to cry. I’m failing. “I have no money! I spent my last money! I’m so—”
“It’s ok,” he says, his words toast-crisp. “I give you a ride.”
When he pulls over, there’s the big belowground window. In the soft yellow store lights, I can see the base of the golden bathtub. I was in that tub so long ago, it feels like it happened to someone else.
“Good night,” the taxi driver says, and I try to think up a way to thank him. I can’t move, because how do I leave without paying him? He leans forward and pushes a button. The red alarm clock numbers on his fare counter click to $0.00.
He turns and looks at me with his kind face and his kind eyes, and he nods.
“Good night,” he says again. “Be safe.”
“Okay, I—I will,” I say, like a promise. Like that’s how I can thank him.
“The fuck is this?!” Glen says through the intercom when I buzz his apartment, 4C. Deanna looks pissed when I get up there. But I can’t care.
“You gotta take me home, Dee. You gotta.”
I stand there like an island as she skitters around grabbing her stuff. As Glen goes into the bedroom and CLICK shuts the door.
Deanna says nothing to me the whole ride back to Connecticut. I say one thing to her: “Dee, Glen had alcohol in his kitchen. Right out on the table! Did you not see it?!”
She flips the radio volume to mega, and when we get to my house, for the first time ever, she doesn’t wait to see if I get in. I stand and watch as her taillights thin out.
One bird sings a note, like he’s asking permission for it to be morning. Another answers back. And then they’re all awake, thousands of them, calling to each other like a symphony warming up. I sit and watch the sky shift from navy to purple to pink.
28
FEBRUARY 1990
TWO YEARS AND ELEVEN MONTHS OUT
I feel weird again. I don’t know if my Prozac stopped working, but I just—I don’t feel right.
We watched this movie in English, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s about this guy who gets locked up in a mental hospital, even though there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s trapped in there with this staff lady who hates him, this quiet demon named Nurse Ratched. She tries and tries to make him break—to admit that he’s bad, that everything’s his fault—but he won’t give in. So she has his brain snipped in half. Fucking lobotomy.
It flipped me out, the movie. I sat in the back of class and hyperventilated. I must have been crying too, because my face was all wet, even my shirt. And I keep having nightmares about it. Except in my nightmares, there are no windows.
Deanna hasn’t called me in a month. And she hasn’t come to school. There’s nothing to do without her. There’s nobody to talk to. I miss her. I miss my friend.
But it’s all my own fault. She tried to hook me up with cute guys who liked me, so we could be matched sets of boyfriends and girlfriends. She tried to make it so we could be with each other, plus guys, all the time. I fucked it up by being a prude.
It’s all because I wouldn’t let those guys have sex with me.
Not having sex is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
Now I’m paying the price. I’m alone again.
29
STILL FEBRUARY 1990
TWO YEARS, ELEVEN MONTHS, AND THREE WEEKS OUT
He resurfaces at Club 12 for an 8:30 Thursday meeting. I’m already in my spot on the back counter when the meeting starts, because I was here for the 7:00 meeting too. If I can get the car, I’ll camp out at Club 12 meetings all day.
He comes in, says hi to some people, and gets a cup of coffee before finding a seat. Even though the meeting’s started. Even though the speaker’s speaking. He doesn’t care if he’s being rude. He’s just that Grant.
Because I’m tucked in the way-back corner, I get to watch him as he does all that. He doesn’t think to look back here for me, and why would he? We haven’t seen each other in a year—a whole year.
Some lady sitting by the coffee moves her bag off a chair. Grant winks at her and sits. He’s taking a sip from his Styrofoam cup, looking around the room, when he spots me. I’m leaning forward so my hair hides my face—like I’m so into the speaker, I can’t even notice him—but still, I feel him see me. It’s like getting zapped by a cow prod.
I can’t, can’t, can’t seem like I give a shit. That’s what made him drop me: letting him see that I was dying to be in his world. I keep my eyes off him for the whole meeting. It’s the longest ninety minutes of my life.
At the end of the meeting, everybody holds hands and put their heads down for the Lord’s Prayer. And I get this idea: squeeze the hands of the guys on either side of me at “
Amen.” Like I’m saying, “Thanks, keep coming back,” you know? And it works. They both stick around to talk to me, even though I’ve never seen them before. So instead of loner girl desperate to talk to Grant, I look like popular girl who doesn’t know he exists.
When the guys turn to leave, it’s like the clouds parting to reveal the face of God. One guy moves left, one guy moves right, and there’s Grant, leaning on the wall across from me. His arms are folded over his chest like, I’ll wait till the clowns clear out.
You know how, when a cartoon guy sees a foxy lady, his heart jumps out and his eyes go boi-oi-oing as his tongue flaps down to the sidewalk? That’s me when I see Grant standing there, waiting. For me. Family-crest Grant.
It’s cold, and his Suburban is parked closest to the door, so we climb into it. It smells like family trips to ski chalets. It has an 8-track tape deck. The heater comes on hard and fast.
More than we’re talking, we’re kissing. Grant with his Southport home and his scholarship to Yale and his GRAN key chain, his “I’ve still got a girlfriend” and his class, his safety, his money—that’s the Grant who is kissing me. And I’m kissing back. A lot. Because this is better than Nutella, better than grilled cheese. This is better than Benetton and Coach bags and a brand-new stereo with detachable speakers. This is love.
Grant is on top of me on the bench front seat. He’s pushed up above me with one hand on the window, the other on my stomach. He’s looking down at my face. He’s not smiling. I’m not smiling. He’s moving his hand up, and oh my God, she’s right. Deanna’s right. About the eraser rub over the bra. Oh my God.
He’s looking at me, and he scoops his hand around my boob and pushes it out of my bra with an “Uhhh.” And then he puts his face. On my boob. He rubs his face. On my boob. And it’s the softest, scratchiest, hottest, meltiest thing I’ve ever felt and I love him. I love him as he sucks hard on my one nip and eraser-nubs the other. Then he switches and he’s licking the other through my bra and moving his hand down into my jeans, and I feel like some rabid animal as his fingers slide easily under my waistband. I must be really skinny now, since he doesn’t even need to unzip me. And his hand is in me and my head is smacking the door because my toes are pushing off the steering wheel because I feel so fucking good.
He pulls his hand out of my jeans so he can turn off the heater ’cause we’re boiling. He presses up above me again, panting, looking down at me. And he pops the button on my jeans. While he’s looking at me, he unzips my jeans. While he’s looking at me. And I mean, he’s really looking at me, like maybe he’s in love too. He leans back and unpops his own jeans and moves a little to get his red plaid boxers free from the front V of zipper and jeans, and I know what’s under there because I see it. I see it pushing the red plaid up into a sideways triangle. I see it, and I’m scared. Because what’s going to happen?
Grant mashes his hand down my lips, down my chin, down my neck, down my boobs, down my stomach, down and down, and then up and in. And out and in. And he uses his other hand to tug my jeans and undies down, and mother fuck does love feel scary and good, and he moves both hands to my sides and he leans down, and he kisses me and I’m spinning and slipping and Goding, and he’s pushing his boxers against me. But I’m scared, and I say, “No.” He’s still kissing me and I feel—God—and he’s pushing, but it’s not soft cotton boxers; it’s clay. It’s warm Play-Doh. I say, “No,” and, “I’m a virgin,” but he’s pushing, but I say, “No,” but he’s pushing and I—
I don’t say anything.
Because he’s here.
He wants to be with me.
Maybe he loves me.
Everything is terrifying.
I want, I need to die.
Except now. Now he’s with me.
And that’s the best drug ever.
I can’t have him not like me again. He pushes and it hurts and he pushes, he pushes, he pushes, and he falls and he goes, “GOD.” He’s breathing heavy on my neck. We’re not moving. No one’s moving. He’s panting. I’m holding my breath.
And.
And he pushes up and away. He doesn’t look at me. Now he’s pushing his boxers into his jeans. So I sit up. I press my legs straight. I pull my jeans up and curve toward the window, so he can’t see me put my boob back into its package.
When he turns around to me, I turn toward him, and he kisses me on the cheek. Then I say, “That’s it? That was sex?”
He laughs. “You sure you’re a virgin? You’re too good to be a virgin.”
I say, “Really. I’m a virgin.”
I don’t say, What does this mean? I don’t say, Will you keep me around now?
He says, “Well, I guess you better get home…”
I say, “Shit, I didn’t even… Fuck. What time is it? Eleven thirty’s my school-night curfew.”
He says, “Eleven thirty. You better go.”
I say, “Fuck. Okay.”
I don’t say, I love you.
And neither does he.
• • •
There’s no ringing doorbells at midnight, especially when you haven’t talked to your best friend in six weeks. So I stand under Deanna’s window and whisper-yell, “Dee!” When five tries of that don’t work, I switch to throwing little rocks, which makes her light come on. Thank God. I see a peachy blur at the window; then it slides up.
“What the fuck?” she whisper-yells down to me.
“I know, I’m sorry. But I had to come talk to you,” I whisper-yell back.
“I’m fucking grounded,” she says. “My dad caught me not going to your house on my way into the city.”
“Oh. Dee?”
“Yeah.”
“I—I think I just lost my virginity.”
The floodlights pour on and the front door thunks open, and there’s Dad Fazzini in a gray robe and maroon slippers.
“Go home, Cyndy,” he says. He’s not whispering.
“Okay, but could I talk to Deanna for a second?”
“Go home, Cyndy. Do you know what time it is? Go home.”
I look up at Deanna, but all I can see is the blinding bright-bright of the floodlight.
When I get to my house, the car clock says 12:30. I’m an hour past my curfew.
I tiptoe from the garage to the front door. My breath puffs out in front of me like an empty cartoon thought bubble. I hold the jangle of keys still as I slide the house key in the lock, and slowwwly, slowwwwwly, smooth—click. Gently, caaarefully, I press the thumb lever down. I push on the door and—KUNK. Blocked. She locked me out again. Because tough love.
A gust of hot smell puffs up from under my jacket as I crunch around the house through piled-up old snow. I smell like stale bread and dungeons.
The light is on in my mother’s bedroom window. She’s still awake, probably reading Tough Love, her favorite book. I start with the whisper-yell: “Mom!”
Nothing.
Talking voice: “Ma!” Three times. And nothing.
Almost-yelling voice: “Mom, can I talk to you?”
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Crying voice: “Mom! Please! Let me in!”
Her light goes out.
I sleep in the garage, in the backseat of her car. It’s like a trial run, practice for when I do it with the car actually running.
30
MARCH 1990
THREE YEARS OUT
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and here’s what I’ve figured out:
family
sponsor
friends
music
Of all the “support systems,” music is the only one that’s legit. It’s my fire escape, always ready to carry me to safety when life is going up in flames. The times I’ve felt truly bleak have been when family, friends, or a sponsor have disappeared into thin air. The times I’ve felt truly
high have been when I have disappeared into music.
That was maybe the worst part about being in Straight: they took away my music. All music. Except fucking nursery school songs. But in a way, it makes sense. Straight’s a drug rehab, right? And music is my drug. Like, I was addicted to Pink Floyd. If I were to listen to Floyd today? I can’t even imagine. My brain would melt. I would be fucked up.
Thank God for the escape hatch Mr. Littberger and Club 12 have given me. Since I didn’t listen to the Dead before Straight, and Top 40 songs didn’t even exist until last week, they’re not linked to anything dangerous from my druggie past. Only to school and sober dances. Totally safe. And the home economics teacher is so cool, she plays the Top 40 station during class. She turns it up pretty loud, so we can hear it over the sewing machines. Sometimes, sometimes, school can be okay.
I’m working on my first actual, wearable clothing project. It’s a skirt. A tiny black miniskirt, exactly like Deanna’s. If I can’t hang out with her and borrow hers, I definitely need my own, for when I go to Club 12 for my music fix.
I needed more fabric than I thought to cover the elastic band that holds it up, so the skirt part’s really pretty short. And tight. But whatever. I go to the bathroom to put it on, and when I’m sock-foot running back to the full-length mirror in class, I get hit by a bomb. Two kids turn a corner and head straight for me: Joanna Azore, my old best druggie friend, and Kyle McCaffrey, her new best cool-kid friend. Kyle, who could be George Michael’s twin, is wearing Levi’s with bleached handprints all over them, like invisible fans are grabbing his everything. Joanna is wearing a boss Levi’s denim with a sheepskin collar. And I’m wearing a hanky, with a hair elastic holding it up.
Jo and Kyle are walking so close they’re a single person, wrapped in a bubble of private jokes. I guess my name is one of those jokes, because Kyle says, “Look,” thumbing a thumb at me. And Jo does, and Jo smiles, and Jo laughs. And they float away in their bubble toward the smoking pit.
But when I see myself in the home economics mirror, I could pass for Deanna. So at least there’s that.