Little Cat

That was the day he met me outside after I finished work. It was pretty warm out and he was sweating through his T-shirt. I could see the hairs on his chest stuck down in a line. He was shaking his head a bit, smiling at me. I was wearing a purple tank top and a purple skirt that came down to my knees. I wished that I was wearing something over my top.

John touched my arm again. This time he gave it a squeeze. ‘I bet you’d like something sweet to drink after work. You must be tired.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ I said quickly.

We started walking down the street and I could feel my thighs rubbing together under my skirt. It made me want to sit down and cross my legs.

John went into a variety store and got me a ginger ale. He bought himself cigarettes. I started drinking too fast straight from the can and I got the hiccups. We both laughed at the high-pitched sounds that were coming out of me.

‘I’m going to have to scare you, Mira!’

I couldn’t believe I was walking down the street laughing with this guy. I couldn’t believe that no one was really looking at us either. I didn’t know if John knew I was only fifteen. But I didn’t feel like doing anything to stop him when he put his arm all the way around me, or when his fingers started tickling my neck. He kept joking that it was to scare me out of my hiccups.

We turned down a street I’d never been on. There were a few old-looking houses beside this huge apartment building with foil on the windows. I saw two kids waving down at us from a balcony. I was going to wave back, but John shifted my shoulders to turn us off that street. I felt like a car he was steering.

I didn’t ask where we were going because John started asking me questions out of the blue, like: ‘Are your mother and father still married? Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘Yes,’ I said, then, ‘No.’

John was laughing at me. I kept swallowing instead of changing what I was saying.

‘But you probably remember who told you about sex the first time, don’t you?’

I shook my head.

John lit a cigarette and looked at me. We were walking pretty fast.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘The first person who told me about sex was my uncle. He wasn’t much older than me, six years or something, we were just kids, you know, but it pretty much scared the shit out of me. He said it like this: “A man gets on top of a woman and opens her up with his dick.” I swear that’s what he said. I didn’t know what he meant but I knew I wanted to, you know – who wouldn’t? A man opens a woman up with his dick? I’d never even seen a woman naked, not even my mother, and my uncle just goes: “Watch me. I’ll show you.” I wasn’t saying much back, so he started wrestling with me, the way we always did. I was on the floor, and I remember I was trying to look up at what he was doing but I couldn’t really see, you know – I think he was holding his crotch through his pants. Then he was kneeling between my legs and I heard him laughing, going, ‚ÄúOkay, Johnny-John, you’re the woman now,‚Äù and he started spreading my legs – really fucking wide. It felt weird, Mira. It felt all fucked up. I was just a kid who didn’t know what was what. So the next thing I know he’s pulling off his pants, they’re down to his knees and his cock is out, you know, sticking straight out, and the only thing I could think was: Man, that’s big! What did I know? Fuck, my first hard dick … And I guess it made me get one, too, or something, because I felt like reaching down and putting my hand in my shorts. My uncle was over me, right? He was almost lying on top of me and he started sticking his dick up the little space between my shorts. I could feel it rubbing on my leg. He was pushing it more and more up there and then it squirted – yeah, right up my shorts! I thought it was piss, that I pissed myself or something. But my uncle just jumped off me and I was lying there thinking I wet myself, fuck, why’d that feel so good … ’

John stopped. He was rubbing his face with his fingers.

‘It’s weird to tell you that. That’s fucked-up shit, huh, Mira?’

‘No.’

‘What? You don’t think that’s weird?’

‘No.’

But I felt weird, as if there was gas in my chest, trapped.

‘Wow. You’re the first one then. If I ever tell a woman that story, she just kind of freaks out and thinks I’m gay or something.’

‘No,’ I said again. Nadia would probably think John was gay and say so to his face. I just wanted to know more – like did it happen again? Did you and your uncle ever actually have sex?

John threw his cigarette on the ground in front of us and wrapped his arm tightly around my shoulders. We must’ve looked like a couple.

‘So what happened to you, baby?’

I laughed inside at him call

ing me that. Baby!

‘Nothing. Nothing really, my cousin told me something … ’

‘What? How’d she say it to you?’

‘It was nothing. I mean, it was just him and some of his friends in our basement … ’