Maidenhead

‘Yeah, yeah, he’s amazing. A rock star. You’d think so too. Next time your parents should let you come with me to Cabo. We’ll have a fucking blast! We’re old enough in Mexico to really drink. Tequila, baby. The good stuff.’

I don’t think my mother ever liked Jen. My mother had looked tiny with her backpack on, standing at the door to say goodbye. She looked like one of those Korean women on her book cover, dressed up and silent and stiff, against a wall of rock.

‘I’m gonna keep in touch with Ricardo, maybe he has a hot friend for you too.’

I knew at that moment in Jen’s room that I wouldn’t ever be with a guy like she was with a guy. It all seemed too obvious, too ordinary. I liked men who were older than me. I liked black men. I liked musicians. This was the kind of guy I wanted to be with. This was the kind of person I wanted to understand. I didn’t want to understand Jen or her tallied-up, shallow conquests.

‘Myra, is something wrong? You seem kind of sad or something, girlfriend.’

‘Nah, I’m okay. I just want more to drink.’

I hated my mother and father. I was bored with Jen. I wanted to watch porn. I’d found this website for free, it was a service or something that delivered these video clips to your inbox. They were a minute, sometimes more, of these girls getting fucked, like what I saw in Key West but even more extreme, with headings like: asschick, teenwhore, slutgettingcock. Jeff had bawled at the door when the taxi arrived for my mom. Jody gave my mom a massive hug. My father hid out in the basement alone. I let my mom kiss my forehead. Her lips were lukewarm. I watched her struggle into the taxi, that backpack was half of her height. I got a new porno teaser delivered every day.

‘My parents are getting a divorce,’ I said to Jen. I was hiccupping. It occurred to me that my mother had planned her escape.

‘Seriously, Myra? Oh god, I’m so sorry.’ Jen passed me the flask.

Those video clips made me really feel fucking. A cock going in and in and in. Girls’ mouths gagging and jacking wide.

‘Actually, I’m not sorry, Myra. Welcome to the club!’

Charlene was ringing the bell. Jen kissed me on the lips before she ran for the door. One long swig and I finished the flask. Elijah was coming here. My mother was gone. I wore all this makeup and saw all this porn. Me: on the edge of being free.

§

In the blue smoked-up backyard with Jen and Charlene, I ended up drinking five big plastic cups from the keg. I started crying, pretty uncontrolled, when Jen told me that my face looked orange.

‘You should let my dad’s girlfriend give you a lesson, My, it’s okay, it’s just too much powder, Ella’s so good, I swear, I use everything she taught me.’

Jen was right up in my face and I shoved her away with both hands.

‘I’m just trying to help you, Myra!’ Jen screamed.

I had to stop crying.

‘Oh god, I care about you!’ Jen moaned way too loud. ‘Your face looks weird, My, seriously, why’d you put all that crap on your face! I know what you’re going through, you don’t think that I know?’

‘Leave me alone, you fucking butch!’ I meant to say bitch and Charlene laughed that I said butch.

Charlene slung her arm around Jen’s shoulder, coaxing her away from me. Obviously Charlene thought I was totally disgusting. I stopped crying and smeared my face. Charlene and Jen looked like two sheep nuzzling each other. They moved towards the weeping willow at the end of the yard where a group of girls smoked. I watched Jen get swallowed up in the female herd. It was totally pathetic.

I stood at the side fence of the backyard connecting the groups of people into dots. Leaves from a tree in the yard next door scratched the top of my head. No one came and talked to me. After a while, I went back inside the house. There was a staircase at the back of the kitchen. I walked through where a couple of kids I didn’t know were smoking at a table. One of the girls stared at me as I passed her. I hadn’t seen her before at our school. She had frizzy brown hair, a long nose and she was strange in the eyes. They were brown but they had this bluish glow to them. She seemed calf-eyed, the colours streaking, as if the calf were being electrocuted.

‘That was me!’ Lee said later, proud. ‘I was backlit, watery, electroshocked.’

‘I didn’t know if you noticed me in the kitchen there, or if I was just noticing you.’

‘Of course I saw you, Myra. You were alien-like.’

‘God, yeah, you’re right. I was skimming the floor!’

‘Slimy, sucky and isolated.’

‘The Electrocuted and the Alienated ... ’

There was bubbling in my stomach. I felt sick from all the beer. The group at the table laughed as I walked up the back stairs. I didn’t know if they were laughing at me. The guy whose party it was, I knew he had an older brother. The older brother was the one who got us the keg. Jody once told me that stairs off a kitchen were for a maid because a maid was not supposed to be seen. This was when Faith worked for us, every single week. I remember Jody was pissed off because she’d asked my mother to not let Faith go in her room. Jeff was listening to us argue, pretending to read.

‘She’s a maid,’ I said to Jody. ‘She’s paid to clean and your room’s a mess.’