Maidenhead

Gayl slapped me across the head. Elijah shot it. I reached my hand up but she hit my other side hard.

‘Stop!’ I screamed.

Gayl didn’t stop. She looked back at Elijah and he circled in closer, climbing up on the bed. Gayl slapped my head for a third and fourth time.

‘I don’t like this,’ I was yelling. ‘Turn off that thing!’

‘It’s okay, Angel. Tell her, Gayl.’

Gayl concentrated. She didn’t speak. She was concentrating on performing, on pummelling me. I didn’t know why it was happening and I never stopped screaming, trying to grab at her hand before it smacked down.

‘Turn that off! Or I’m going to kill you!’

Gayl danced lighter on her feet. ‘Man, this is good. She’s going to kill me.’

Finally, I thought of something right to protect myself. I crouched down near the skirts of the bed, slid on my belly and hid my head in my arms. She couldn’t slap me like that. But Gayl kicked my sides in with her bare feet.

‘You getting this, ’Jah?’

Elijah grunted from up high.

‘Stop, please just stop it!’

‘You’re a little fucking baby who has been pampered all her life.’

Spit rained down on the back of my neck. She was winning the fight. It wasn’t a fight.

‘You listen to me, listen to this.’

‘Look up,’ Elijah ordered.

I would not look up. I would not fucking look up if they were going to do this to me. Slaves revolt. I remembered this.

‘Myra? Hey, Myra?’

I didn’t look up and the beating stopped.

‘Angel?’

‘Actress?’

‘Our beautiful bitch?’

Breathing, I slowly showed them an eye. Elijah hung over the edge of the bed with the camera. Gayl was a half-naked totem pole above me.

‘You’ve been living in a world of privilege and it’s made you crazy,’ Gayl said softly. ‘Look at her eye. Look at that innocent eye. You’re useless right now, baby. You need to grow up. You took a vacation on the backs of slaves. You and your family having fun like that. That is crazy. It is criminal. Stand up now. You can do it. Come on, stand up, baby. You’re strong, come on. You’re hurt, okay, but get up. Get this, Elijah. Come on, get her right now.’

I decided to obey. It would be easiest to obey her at this moment. It would be most useful to obey.

I felt my hands on the floor. I pushed up, then I stood there, exposed. Pounding rotated near my eyes. The camera beeped. Gayl was swaying, tall. Her fingers crunched and turned into a fist. The camera flashed. Gayl punched me in the jaw.

Oh god, Lee, please tell my father that I’m here! My family didn’t have fun on our vacation! My family split up on that vacation!

I focused on the bone in the middle of Gayl’s breasts to keep standing, to take it, her punch, her laugh. She saw where I was looking.

‘Check it out, Elijah. She’s different from the rest.’

I was starting to get it, even though I could barely see. I was being punched. I was equal with her now. I didn’t move my eyes from that bone in the middle of her body, her heart was somewhere under there. I was starting to get what was going on: I was being slapped and punched into being by a slapped and punched being. I needed to be cracked, the protection I was born with.