by Bif Naked
This was going quite well, until his mom found the notes and called my mom and the school principal and I was ordered to stay away from Dan. It was embarrassing, but mostly to my parents. His parents were extremely angry about the whole thing and demanded that my mom sit me down and ask me what Dan and I had done. I didn’t have to cover anything up, as it was all right there in the letters.
We had been meeting every day after school. We would hug and kiss each other on the neck, and I’d kiss him on the ear and whisper things. He’d do the same to me, and I’d scream and giggle. I had to devise ways to avoid this tickling, so we’d neck—for hours. I told no one. We were lovers of a sort, ten- and eleven-year-olds with secrets. It likely would have continued if we hadn’t got caught. He was careless with my explicit love poetry to him, and I got blamed for it all. But I wasn’t embarrassed by the things I had written; I knew it was just poetry and told his parents as much.
“It was just a poem,” I muttered in the principal’s office.
“What did you say?” The principal put on a great show for the parents.
“How can they not see its merit, the art in this writing?” I thought. They were simply unsophisticated, I guessed. They didn’t get it, and they definitely didn’t get me. And Dan and I never spoke again.
But Julie did. She loved my writing and wanted me to read it to her every day. Julie was a year older than me. She was a rich kid, a Southern belle, born and raised in Lexington, and she lived two blocks away. She was a firecracker. We read poetry to each other and lay on the Kentucky bluegrass to think and dream and watch the clouds go by, and we laughed and giggled long into the lazy afternoons.
Julie had a thick Southern drawl and dreamy eyes. Long cascades of curls in varying shades of blonde dripped down her back, and also covered half her face at any given time. She had all that Southern feminine lusciousness, but she had a mischievous side too. Julie was the other bad girl in my class. She wore tight sweaters and had real boyfriends, all of whom were already in junior high or even high school. I idolized her.
Her dad drove an Oldsmobile 442 with stripes painted down the front and sides, and seats that swivelled. It was like a race car to me. A Shriner, he seemed to always have a long cigarette dangling from his lips. The smoke would drift up to his eyes and he’d squint, or squint with one eye while closing the other. He had a dark tan. Julie’s mom had a tan too. It seemed like they were always just returned from vacation.
Julie was an only child and didn’t look like either of her parents. Her mother was tall and thin, with short blonde hair, and always wore dresses. She was never home, it seemed, but my mom wasn’t either after school. So we were left to our own devices.
Usually, Julie and I tried to figure out what the big kids at the end of the street were up to. They always talked about pot. They were ugly rocker boys who wore jean jackets and had fat stomachs. They didn’t even go to the roller rink, which is where all the other kids went. They just sat around on lawn chairs in the one fat kid’s yard smoking Mary Jane. It stunk, and we didn’t want anything to do with it; it never occurred to me or Julie to try drugs. We had Julie’s parents’ cigarettes instead, which were way better because you didn’t have to roll them yourself, and they didn’t stink as much. “Why in the world would anyone choose pot over a cigarette?” I’d ask. Julie always answered, “’Cauzz pea-pole awh stewwpid, honeeeybun.” And we’d laugh, me marvelling at the loveliness of her voice.
Her mother was pretty wonderful also, a Daughter of the Nile, and, as Julie said practically every time she talked about them, both her parents were in the Order of the Eastern Star. I loved the whole Shriner thing with Julie’s parents. It was a pretty big deal, and for me, surrounded by so much mysticism. They dressed in fancy ball gowns to go to their nighttime functions, and they laughed loudly (unlike my very quiet parents), and the best part was that both of them smoked cigarettes and were never home.
These two last facts were to our benefit, almost as much as her skinny mom’s padded-brassiere collection and long ball gowns. Most afternoons after school, I went to Julie’s house. We played Rod Stewart loudly on the stereo in Julie’s parents’ bedroom—Julie said we couldn’t break the speakers just by turning up the volume, so we did. We poured grape Kool-Aid into tall plastic tumblers and then dressed up in Julie’s mother’s clothing, found her parents’ cigarette stash—cartons of Tareyton 100’s menthols—and lit up. We smoked and danced in front of the mahogany three-way mirror in her parents’ bedroom.
Julie’s bedroom was across the hall. It was all white eyelet curtains and four-poster canopy bed. It was the most inviting place I had ever seen. The bed was like a big fluffy white cloud, floating on air. Everything matched beautifully—the six pillows, four for sleeping and two the shape of Tootsie Rolls, even the white eyelet teddy bears. And I had never seen so much stuff before. My family lived an austere life, being simple church people. Julie’s family were not traditional churchgoers, and certainly not United Methodist ones. Julie and I spent a lot of time in her room—we generally retired to the boudoir after Donna Summer faded on the hi-fi and we were coughing from chain-smoking. (Somehow I never got caught smoking—my mother didn’t detect the smell of cigarettes on me when I returned home.) In fact, her bedroom was integral to our secretive doings. It was there that Julie taught me how to French kiss, with her expertise and demonstrations. (Purely educational, of course.) Now, I don’t know if Julie actually knew any French people (and she never busted me for my full-out lying in school about speaking fluent French) but, regardless, Julie seemed to know a lot about sex, and she was achingly sexy.
Julie was also extremely affectionate. She was a touchy girl, always putting her hand on my arm when she spoke, or on the small of my back. She did this to other kids and adults too—both men and women. And sometimes she ran her fingertips across the fuzzy blonde hair on my forearm and asked if it tickled. It always did, as I was terribly ticklish, but it was not the regular tickle with Julie. I always said it didn’t. I liked her attention too much to ask her to stop. Pretty soon that behaviour became a paradigm of our relationship.
We were inseparable, and mimicked each other the way friends do, dressing the same, walking the same, even saying the same things and enunciating the same way. Our individual idiosyncrasies began to morph into each other’s, and our friendship started to grow into a very different one. I thought Julie was breathtaking. A beautiful girl with a strong gait and a foul mouth, Julie commanded attention everywhere she went. The boys absolutely loved her, especially Rick, her boyfriend.
His family lived in a two-room house on a half country road dotted with suburban homes and farmland. I was great friends with Rick’s little sister, Evelyn. Her family was poor, the real kind of poor that usually ends with the family living out of their car or trailer. His mom was huge and usually taking a nap with Rick’s father. His older sister, Mavis, was pregnant. She was sixteen and seemed to be the only one there who cooked and cleaned. She would clean right around her sleeping parents, dusting around them in the darkened room while Evelyn and I watched. They had no covers over them—the sheets were hung over the windows.
Evelyn was a tomboy. She even looked like a boy and was mistaken for a boy all the time by teachers and bus drivers. She hated this and swore at anyone who dared mention it to her. She dressed like Rick and wore his hand-me-downs, which was half the problem. She had long, fire-engine-red hair, freckles all over her face, and broccoli-green eyes.
I should have been more afraid of Evelyn Poole. Evelyn was such an accomplished tomboy—she was so tough, if she was your friend, no kid in the whole school dared cross you. When Shireen and I fist fought the bigots, Evelyn was often there beside us. In fact, she was the one who taught me how to kick the boys as hard as I could, right in the balls. She said that all the bigot kids were in the Ku Klux Klan and that this justified our ball-kicking. I kicked in compliance. And she became the other half of my pair of best friends. No two girls could be more opposite
than those two, but with me as the common denominator, there was always harmony. It didn’t hurt that Julie and Rick were a couple. And I guess, in a way, so were Evie and I.
SIX
A Trip to the Ice Cream Parlour
MY LONG-WIDOWED GRANDMOTHER, SELENA, HAD AGREED to move into a nursing facility in her hometown in Minnesota. She had had a couple of heart attacks and her Alzheimer’s had worsened. The time for her to move had finally come. Just before school ended in June, my mom decided she needed to go to Minnesota, so Mom and I packed up the beige Chevette and off we drove. Fortunately, I didn’t have to stay to write end-of-year exams, as most every year I was exempt from them because of my high grades.
We stayed at my grandma’s house, which was now being packed up so it could be put on the market. Her nursing home was several miles away and we drove there every morning. Decorated in the typical yellow colours and floral patterns, it was bustling with nursing staff and volunteers, and full of weird smells. Many of the patients had irreversible and deteriorating states of dementia. I didn’t bat an eye, and always felt comfortable there. Being around sick, old, and dying people never bothered me.
They had their own society. Like any collection of institutionalized folks, I suppose. My grandmother’s nursing home was like a small town unto itself. We met all of my grandmother’s friends, including a young male nurse. His name was Jim, and my grandmother adored him. This ensured that my mother also adored him. I thought he was achingly beautiful. He had brown hair, feathered like that of the popular Teen Beat magazine stars of the day—David and Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett—short in the front and long at the back. His uniform consisted of white shoes, white pants, and white top. To me, he looked like an angel.
My mother was convinced Jim was nineteen. I think my grandmother told her that was his age. Perhaps she made it up, but more likely it was simply her Alzheimer’s at play. He was certainly older than nineteen. I was twelve years old, just shy of my thirteenth birthday, but I told him I was turning eighteen. Jim asked my grandmother if he could take me out for ice cream, and then she asked my mother on his behalf. I think my mother agreed to it because she didn’t want to disappoint her mother, who was so enthusiastic about it—she was a budding matchmaker, with a renewed sense of passion and joie de vivre. My grandmother even gave Jim twenty bucks to pay for my ice cream.
Jim picked me up later that day, after supper. It all seemed safe enough. It was only 6 p.m., and the sun was still quite high in the sky, lighting up the faces of the Minnesotans. They were nice people and polite to a fault, just like my mother, aunties, and grandmother. Why would this Minnesota boy be any different?
I waved goodbye to my mother as she watched us drive away, off to the ice cream parlour. As soon as we were out of my mother’s view, Jim did a brake stand, then promptly produced a marijuana joint from his pocket. My heart was pounding. A joint! I could not believe it. I had seen joints before at the house of the guy next door. I had never had the guts to smoke pot, nor really the interest, so I wasn’t about to try it now, in this Jim guy’s presence. I mean, what if I fell asleep?
“I’d love to, but I’m so allergic!” I said, then followed that with an encouraging “You go ahead!” I put my best smile forward, trying hard to be nonchalant. He lit up the joint and pulled down a side street. There was no ice cream parlour on that street. We weren’t going for ice cream at all, much to my great disappointment. No mint chocolate chip for me.
Jim pulled up outside what I guessed was his house. It had a yard of brown, dry grass, enclosed by a wire fence, long ago painted white. The house was desperate for fresh paint. From where we were parked, I could see motorcycle parts, including gas tanks, strewn all over the backyard. Jim collected car and bike stuff. He explained to me the history of the Birmingham Small Arms Company and told me about how it used to make “guns and bicycles.” I hung on his every word, dreaming of being on the back of a motorcycle with Jim the Nurse with the Hardy Boys hair, going for ice cream, then riding off into the sunset.
We went inside his house, and he asked me if I wanted to watch television. I just wanted to be cool and, obviously, cool people watched television. I sat on the couch and stared at the TV, which was playing a music video—the first I had ever seen. I was mesmerized by the images on the screen and even more so by the music. The video was by a Minnesota artist named Prince, the song was “Little Red Corvette,” and I had never heard anything like it before. I felt myself become aroused listening to the breathy singing and watching the body movements of the doe-eyed singer. I couldn’t look away, and Jim’s close presence intensified my arousal.
My parents’ Nat King Cole 78s and Glenn Miller Orchestra and Ravi Shankar could not have prepared me for this feeling, this reaction to the music and to the sexy singer’s delivery. My legs squirmed and my thighs pressed each other tight. I felt my face flush; I felt like I was going to faint. Jim handed me a bottle of beer. Too embarrassed to say no lest I offend him, I sipped the disgusting beverage, accidentally letting the cold bubbles foam out of my mouth.
“Don’t waste it, babe!” Jim said as he planted his lips around my whole mouth and sucked the beer off my face. I was shocked. His tongue was fast and strong. I improvised, keeping my mouth open, unmoving. I was out of my league and starting to worry about being found out. I didn’t want him to think I was inexperienced or, worse, a virgin. His hands were small but they snaked up the inside of my sweatshirt, found my ribs, and climbed from there. My breath was heavy and I felt an intensity, like a drowsiness, a strange sleepiness. I was done for, a goner.
He picked me up into his arms as a firefighter might and, still necking with me, carried me up the narrow, creaking staircase. I giggled nervously. When we got to his bedroom, he practically threw me down onto the bed. I bounced, still nervously laughing. I felt self-conscious and was freaking out inside. Without warning, he expertly slinked his hand down inside my jeans and underpants. I grabbed his wrist to stop him. I felt dizzy, and wanted to go back to my grandmother’s house, but I also didn’t want to be rude.
Pretty soon we were both naked, Jim lying on top of me, his hands everywhere. His breathing was heavy with determination. I had to get myself out of this somehow; I had to act quickly. I knew I had to distract him from taking my virginity away, so I broke his kiss and asked if I could kiss him “on the wiener.”
He laughed. “Weiner? How old are you? Don’t call it a wiener, sweetheart.”
“Okay, I won’t.” I said. “Lie on your back.”
He laughed and flipped over onto his back, his intention staring me in the face. I let my instinct take over.
As soon as he had finished, the next words out of his mouth were “I’d better get you home.”
I was so relieved. I think half the blow jobs I have given in my life were so enthusiastic because of my sheer relief of avoiding penetration. “Yeah, it’s late,” I said.
We got dressed and made our way downstairs and to his truck. Without any awkwardness, we chatted all the way back to my grandmother’s house—about his motorcycles, his job, my school. It was practically jovial, and he seemed to be in a good frame of mind.
My mother was already sleeping, though I was home before my curfew of 10 p.m. It was as though nothing had happened, and in my mind, nothing had. I had simply found a solution, a way to avoid an unwelcome situation, an effective skill for squirming my way out of such jams. I was rather proud of myself for staying a virgin. To my twelve-year-old brain, anything else was fair game. I had started down my path of agreeability and coping, surviving whatever may come while staying true to my morals. This, of course, was self-delusional thinking. But I couldn’t help thinking, “It’s what Julie would have done.”
SEVEN
Dauphin
DAUPHIN, MANITOBA, WAS CANADA’S NATIONAL Ukrainian capital, a town of about ten thousand people, about half of them of Ukrainian background and the other half mostly First Nations or Metis. It also happened to be my father’s next destina
tion after his time at the University of Kentucky. The community college in Dauphin had a government-sponsored dental therapy and dental assistant training program, and this was right up my dad’s alley. My mom drove all the way from Lexington to Dauphin—over a thousand miles—the month before to find a house for our family. Once this was accomplished, she drove all the way back to Lexington to collect us and move us up to Canada in a big rented truck.
That summer, we said goodbye to the weeping willows, the bluegrass fields behind our house, the Kentucky horses, our best friends, our plum tree in the front yard, and the grits with butter.
It was a whole new world. Bitaemo means “welcome” in Ukrainian, and everyone in Dauphin said it to my family. We were welcomed in the community—on the street, at the new church, even at the grocery store. My mom had picked out a charming yellow house on a street teeming with kids, right across from a park. We watched the other kids’ moms make pickles out of little cucumbers, and we started growing dill in the backyard, and eating perogies and borscht.
I loved Ukrainian. Languages came so easily to me. The word for money was the first word I learned: our move to Dauphin happened to coincide with my now receiving an allowance, though it was constantly being withheld because of some bad behaviour—breaking curfew or sass-talking my parents. Ukrainian was offered at school as a language course, along with French. I took French and so did my sisters. Generally, only the Ukrainian kids took the Ukrainian-language course; it was sort of frowned upon by the other kids.
My first day at school in Dauphin, me starting seventh grade, was the best day of my life so far. My hair was feathered perfectly, I got to wear lip gloss, and I still had the Southern drawl I had acquired in Kentucky. Shireen and I were attending junior high; Heather, my little sister, elementary school. Life was pretty perfect that first year. I made friends at school, had great marks in my classes, and enrolled in dance classes taught by visiting Royal Winnipeg Ballet instructors.