You don’t stop kissing as you walk together back into the bedroom, you pushing forward, him stepping back, and then you are at the edge of your bed, and James sits. His face is at your stomach, and, slowly, gently, he pushes up your sweater and the T-shirt underneath to reveal the skin of your midsection. He kisses you there, and you feel warmth spreading downward.
You pull off your sweater and shirt, toss them to the side. Outside, the rain pounds down, clouds darken the sky, and a rumble of thunder sounds as urgent as your own hot desire.
The rest of your clothes come off, and James’s. You are together in your bed, and he is naked before you in a way you have never seen this clearly—his dark, flat chest, the tight black curls of his pubic hair surrounding his erection. It’s wet-tipped and urgent, and you stroke it with your fingers. James makes a sound, a moan, and he falls back against your pillows, giving his body up to you to explore.
You take your time. If James wishes you’d do something more, or faster, he doesn’t say. Instead he strokes your arms, gently, as you run your hands across and over him.
He doesn’t ask you to, but you want to, and you reach into James’s discarded pants and find his wallet, find the condom he’s tucked inside. He grins then, and he watches as you tear it open.
You’ve never used one of these before, but you’ve been told how, and anyway, it’s not hard to figure out; you roll it down James’s penis, all the way to the base of hair. James adjusts it, making sure it’s rolled completely down and pinching the tip a little, stretching it. He’s still lying on his back on the bed, and you kneel over him, letting your hair hide your face as you reach between your bodies, find his penis, and guide it toward the entrance of your vagina.
It feels thick there, sort of scary, and there is a moment when you wonder how on earth it will fit inside, but James doesn’t rush you, and you lower yourself onto him, his hands gentle on your hips, not trying to tell you what to do. His eyes are closed, his head is back, and you look at him through the soft curtain of your hair as you sink all the way down, as you feel a tear deep inside you, painful but not terrible, as you feel yourself full of him, of James.
And then you move, careful and slow, your hands on his chest, his on your hips, your thighs, and it’s not long before his face tightens up, he makes a low groan, and he shivers beneath you.
You stay there, above him, for a moment longer, and inside you, you feel his penis beginning to soften. James opens his eyes. He smiles. You smile, too.
Then he grasps the base of the condom while you move off him, and then you sort of look away, a little embarrassed, while he pulls off the condom, knots it.
He gets up and goes to your bathroom. You hear him pulling off a piece of toilet paper, and you see him tuck the wrapped-up condom into your trash can. You hear him running the water in the sink. You get under the covers, and when he comes back into the room, still naked, that’s where he finds you. He’s got a warm damp washcloth, which he hands to you, and it feels so good when you press it between your legs.
He climbs in next to you, pulls the covers up over your shoulder, pulls you close. You lie there together, listening to the rain, watching the occasional flash of lightning through the window. The sky has gone nearly completely dark since you and James came into the bedroom; days are getting shorter and shorter, and between the cloudy sky and the waning moon, the day is nearly done.
But James is not; he kisses you again, on the mouth, and then he readjusts the blankets and begins to move his mouth down your body, across your breasts, down your stomach. You clench your legs together, remembering last time, but James looks up at you and says, “Relax, Bisou, I’m not worried,” and so you let your legs fall apart, you let James kiss you there, and it is wonderful.
It is dark when you say goodbye with another long, slow kiss at the front door. He’s dressed again, flannel buttoned as if it had never come undone, but you are wrapped in a blanket from your bed, your hair tangled in the back, your lips swollen from kissing.
After he is gone, you run yourself a bath, feeling slow, feeling luxurious, and you lower yourself into its steaming embrace, all the way up to your chin. You close your eyes. Your arms float.
You don’t need to tell Mémé about James, about the sex. But, sitting together at the table that night for dinner, you find that you want to.
“Mémé,” you say, “I want to tell you something. About me and James.”
She puts down her soup spoon. She gives you all her attention.
You clear your throat. “You know that we’ve been dating for a while now . . .”
“Yes,” Mémé says, “I like your James. He is a kind young man.”
“He is kind,” you say. “That’s one of my favorite things about him. Also, he is such a good listener, and he’s smart, and he’s . . . I don’t know, loyal, I guess.”
“Good qualities, all,” Mémé says.
You are stalling, and you don’t want to stall. There is nothing to be ashamed of here. There is nothing to hide. “Anyway,” you say, “I just wanted you to know that James and I—well, we started having sex. I didn’t want it to be a secret. That’s all.”
You take a sip of your soup.
“Ah,” Mémé says. Then she reaches across the table to take your hand. “I thought that might be on the horizon.” Her fingers squeeze yours. You squeeze back.
Then she pats your hand and goes back to eating her soup.
You clear your throat. There’s a lump there, and a stinging in your eyes, even though you’re not sad. It’s because you are so grateful that she’s taken the news like this—so respectfully, so unsurprised, like it’s the normal progression of events, which, to you, it is.
She says, “And you’ll promise to tell me if you need anything? Condoms, or anything like that?”
This does embarrass you, but you pretend that it doesn’t. Birth control is part of being responsible, and you want to have an adult conversation about this. “James has condoms,” you say. “We’re being careful.”
“Of course you are,” Mémé says approvingly. “Just making sure. Also, my darling, you do know, don’t you, that having sex in the past does not oblige you to have sex in the future. You never have to do anything that you don’t want to do. You don’t owe James—or anyone—access to your body. Not now. Not ever.”
“James isn’t like that,” you say. “He wouldn’t ever try to make me do anything.”
“That’s good,” Mémé says, “but sometimes boys become wolves, you know.”
After that first time, you want to try it again—sex with James—but even as cool as Mémé was when you told her, it’s not like you’re about to just take James into your room and close the door with her at home. And he’s got three little siblings at his house, all the time, two sisters in grade school and a new baby brother. And, though James once suggests it, the back of his car doesn’t feel like an option to you anymore. So you both count down the days until next Wednesday.
It’s Friday when Keisha comes up to you at lunchtime.
You’re sitting with James and a couple of the other basketball players, eating a veggie wrap with hummus, when you look up and there she is, staring down at you.
“Hey, Keisha,” you say. “What’s up?”
“We need to talk,” she says.
“Want to sit down?” You ask to be polite, but you really don’t have any interest in having a conversation with Keisha at all, let alone in front of James and his teammates.
“Alone,” Keisha answers.
Alone. You lose your taste for lunch, offer James the second half of your wrap. “I’ll see you later, okay?” you tell him, and then follow Keisha out of the lunch room.
She leads you to the library. It’s practically empty, just a couple of kids in the good chairs over by the fiction section, one reading a book, the other reading something on his phone. Keisha walks to the far end of the library, to a couple of wooden chairs at a small reading table, its lamp switched on. She
sits down; you stay standing. You don’t plan to be here long.
“What is it, Keisha?”
“Do you know what’s up with Maggie? She’s been out of school since Tuesday.”
Maggie? Honestly, you haven’t paid much attention to Maggie this week, doing your best to let the whole thing go away. Is that true, that she’s been out? You think back. You remember seeing Maggie in class . . . but that was Monday.
“Maybe she’s got the flu.”
“Maybe,” Keisha answers. “Maybe not. I’ve sent her like five texts and I’ve tried to call. But no response.”
“Why are you so interested in her?”
“I have my reasons,” Keisha says. “What I’m wondering is why you’re suddenly not interested. Since you’re, like, her friend and all, going to her house last week just to check up on her.” Keisha raises her eyebrow, as if to tell you that she’s still not buying that story.
You lower yourself into the chair across from Keisha. “Okay,” you say. “I’ll give her a call.”
“Go by her house,” Keisha says, standing up and fishing her phone out of her bag. “And tell her that I showed you this.” She flips through some texts, holds the phone out to you so that you can read it, but not close enough that you could take it from her hands.
It’s a screenshot of a text from Maggie. It’s not clear who she was texting.
I hate Tucker soooo much. I wish he was dead. Maybe I’ll kill him myself.
You look up. The reading lamp shines up in Keisha’s face, making her glasses glare into unreadable shining discs. “Where did you get this?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Keisha says, shoving her phone back into her bag. “What matters is that I have it.” She turns to leave, then looks back. “Get Maggie to talk to you, Bisou. I don’t think she’s going to talk to me after the other day.”
Why should she? But you don’t say this. You don’t say anything. Tight-lipped, you nod.
No one answers that afternoon when you ring Maggie’s doorbell. You stand scrunched under the small overhang, curled in against the strong, cold wind.
You try knocking. Still nothing. You try the knob; the door is locked.
Keisha isn’t going to be satisfied unless you actually make contact with Maggie, so, sighing, you head around the side of the house.
The kitchen door is unlocked. “Hello?” you call as you push it open. It feels weird and awful to go into a house like this, uninvited, but you ignore that feeling and go in anyway. “Anybody home?”
Nothing. No response. The house feels totally empty, though there are a few dishes in the sink, and the coffeepot—cold—is half full.
Maggie’s bedroom is upstairs, at the end of the hallway, and that’s where you head, your steps soft on the carpeted stairs.
Her door is open, just a crack. You reach out and push it, slowly, and slowly it opens, revealing the side of her desk, a slowly turning ceiling fan, the foot of her bed, and, higher, underneath the covers, a shape.
A body.
iii
the first time
he kissed me
he bunched up my hair
pulled back my head
the first time
he hit me
it made sense
it answered a question
the first time
i kissed you
still warm, wet,
and salty from the womb
i made a promise
he made a promise
it wouldn’t happen again
i used to think
mothers left girls
because they deserved to be left
but maybe mothers leave
kicking
and screaming
and bleeding
trying to do anything
but leave
Blow Your House In
“Mama?”
She had been sitting in her place by the window that night, just as she always did, looking outside into the softly falling snow, her finger on the bridge of her nose. You had sat by the fire playing with your stuffed dog, making it snuff around under the stack of firewood, searching, you imagined, for a cat.
A soft table lamp and the fire gave the only light, and the room glowed warmly, just like the inside of a storybook, so safe and snug and tight.
But then a flash of light, bright and mean, passed across the room—headlights, you knew—and with the light came the sound of tires crunching on snow.
Mama turned to look at you, her eyes widened so you could see the white all around their dark blue hearts. “Bisou,” she said. “Run.”
You had made promises. If this moment were ever to come—which, you knew, suddenly and with certainty, was never a question of “if” but rather “when”—you were to run to the ghost room. You were to hide yourself in the skirts of ghosts. You were to close your eyes and plug your ears and stay put, no matter what you heard.
You ran. Up the stairs, past the sleeping room, down the hall, all the way to the end. And you turned the knob, you went inside, you pushed the door closed behind you, you let the ghosts hide you in their skirts, you filled your ears with your fists, you squeezed shut your eyes, and you waited for the world to end.
There were sounds, but you pretended that they were from a movie. At last there was a crash—a loud crash, a window breaking—and then there was nothing more.
Still you waited, shrouded in the skirts of ghosts. Until, at last, you slept.
When you woke, there were no ghosts in the room. Just furniture, draped in sheets, as Mama had told you. It was a boring, dusty bedroom, and you had slept the night underneath a boring, dusty, sheet-draped bed. That was all. Never before had you felt so pleased by the lack of magic in the world. You stood and stretched your arms, and opened the door, and headed to the sleeping room to tell Mama the good news, that the ghosts were gone, and that most likely they had never been there at all.
The door was open, just a crack. You reached out and pushed it, slowly, and slowly it opened, revealing the side of Mama’s desk, a slowly turning ceiling fan, the foot of the bed, and, higher, a shape underneath the covers, hair splayed across a white pillowcase, Mama’s slack face . . . and blood. So much blood.
You scream. You scream, and scream, and the figure in bed sits bolt upright.
Your head is full of your pounding pulse; your eyes stream tears, and it is Maggie who jumps from her bed, who stumbles in her nightgown across her room.
“Bisou?” she says. “It’s okay. Calm down.”
But you can’t calm down, not for a long time. Your legs feel weak as pudding and you collapse, right there in the doorway to Maggie’s room. She goes down to the ground with you, wraps you in her arms, pulls you half into her lap and says, “Shh, shh, it’s okay,” again and again for as long as it takes you to believe it.
You are in Maggie’s house. You are in Maggie’s room. You are in Maggie’s arms. There is no Mama; there is no blood. There is no shattered window; there is no snow.
You take in a long, jagged breath. You let it out.
“Okay,” says Maggie.
You nod. “I’m so sorry,” you tell her. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“It is kinda weird,” she says.
You wipe your face on your sleeve. Maggie stands up and offers you her hand. You take it. Together you go to the bed and sit on its edge. You owe Maggie a couple of explanations; you start with the easier one. “Keisha asked me to come check on you. You haven’t been at school in a couple of days, and you’re not answering your phone.”
“Yeah,” Maggie says.
“Also,” you say, because you might as well tell her everything you know, “Keisha showed me a text you sent to someone. About Tucker.”
Maggie shakes her head. “Darcy is such a fucking bitch,” she says, more to herself than to you. Then she says, “I was trying to warn her.”
“Warn her?”
Maggie sighs. “Look, if I tell you something, will you promise not
to tell anyone else? And, you know, I hope you don’t think I’m gross or anything once I tell you.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” you say.
“Not even if the secret is that I did kill Tucker?” She smiles.
“I am one hundred percent certain that you didn’t.”
Maggie laughs wryly. “Well, you’re one person, I guess.” Then she looks at you, her face sort of shy, vulnerable. “Look,” she says, “I did tell Darcy that I wished Tucker were dead. I was trying to keep her from getting involved with him. Tucker was a really shitty guy. I didn’t want anyone else getting hurt by him.”
“What did he do?”
Maggie groans, covers her eyes, flops back on her bed. Eyes still covered, she says, “So Tucker told me when we started having sex that it would be totally okay to not use condoms because my mom got me on Norplant way before I was even ready to have sex, just in case, and Tucker said he was a virgin, too, so there was nothing to worry about. But then after we started having sex, I found like, these . . . sores . . . you know, down there? And it burned so bad when I had to pee, it was almost unbearable. And my mom took me to the doctor, and she told me—” Maggie breaks off for a moment, sits up, runs her fingers through her hair. “She told me it was herpes. Okay? There. Herpes.”
You reach over and take her hand.
She gives you a weak smile. “When I told Tucker, he was like, ‘Who else have you been fucking?’ and that was so awful. I hadn’t ever slept with anyone but him. And then he said that he couldn’t have given it to me, because he’d never had any of the symptoms I’d been describing. He said once he had, like, a rash, you know, on his dick, but that was it. And then I was all, “But I thought you said you were a virgin, and so why are you saying that the reason you couldn’t have given me herpes is because you’ve never had any sores, not because you’ve never had any sex before?” And then he grinned and said, like, that girls like it better when they think that boys are virgins, so he’d lied to me. He’d lied to me! And then I looked it up online and I found out that some people—guys, especially—they barely have any symptoms when they first get herpes, and sometimes it’s just like a rash, just like Tucker had described. But when I told him that, he totally denied ever even having a rash and called me a liar and a skank, and he told me if I told anyone that he’d given me an STI or whatever, that he’d make sure the whole school thought I was the liar, not him. And then he started hooking up with Darcy, you know, that sophomore . . . And that’s why I was in his car that night, after the dance. Trying to make him promise to tell Darcy himself about his STI, or at least to get him to promise to wear condoms if they ended up doing it, so she wouldn’t end up with herpes, too.”
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