Little Cat

‘Sounds interesting.’ John laughed. ‘Come on, tell me.’

‘No, they were just telling me that sex happened between a mother and a father … ’

‘Yeah? Go on, it’s all good.’

I’d never said this to anyone.

‘Go on, Mira, you can tell me.’ John started rubbing the back of my neck. ‘Remember what the fuck I just told you?’

‘Well, they told me about sex and it was weird because I’d never really heard anyone talk about it like that before, that’s all.’

I shrugged my shoulders. I’d never told anyone, not even Nadia, about this. I didn’t want John’s arm on me anymore. But he held me harder when I shrugged.

‘Yeah, Mira? Come on, how’d they say it?’

Ezrah had shown us pictures from a big softcover book of a mother and father kissing with their tongues. ‘The father’s tongue makes her take off her clothes,’ he’d said. ‘Then the father puts his penis in the mother’s vagina.’ Ezrah had started laughing the second he said vagina. ‘And when the baby comes out,’ he could barely finish his sentence, ‘there’s a hole in her body the size of a head!’ All the other guys had started cracking up too.

‘They all started asking me if I wanted a baby,’ I said to John.

‘And what did you say?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t want a baby?’

‘No! Not from them!’

John laughed and I laughed too. I think my voice finally sounded normal.

Then John turned my shoulders. We were standing in front of an old house with a cracked cement porch. The windows in the front were covered with sheets.

‘This is it,’ John said, unlocking the gate. ‘I want you to come in and see where I live.’

‘No, I can’t. It’s okay, I have to go.’

‘Come on, Mira. Just for a minute.’

I told him no again, that I had to go home, but he just kept saying, ‘It’s okay, we’re right here, just for a minute, just a minute.’

I really didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go inside that house.

John squeezed hard at the back of my neck. His hand felt so big, as if my whole head fit in it. I don’t know why I thought that I couldn’t just go home – run away from him even. I thought for a second that he might chase me if I ran. Or maybe he would’ve grabbed me around the neck so I couldn’t breathe.

‘One minute, come on. Just for a minute,’ John whispered. ‘I don’t say these kinds of things to everyone, you know.’ He was shaking me back and forth a little by the shoulders. It made me hiccup one last time.

It smelled like smoke right inside the front door. There was a narrow black staircase that we had to go up. John moved aside so I could go first. I thought he was watching how I walked. I felt my hips move from side to side, even though I didn’t usually walk that way.

He was going to touch me. As I climbed the stairs I knew what was going to happen. He was going to touch me.

‘Thanks,’ John said quietly to the back of my head. ‘For coming up.’

I thought again of running, but I was already at the top, waiting for his hands to come around and unlock the door.

It seemed as if the apartment was all in one room. There was a kitchen in one corner, a TV and a couch in another. There were videotapes all over the floor. It smelled as if someone had just been cooking.

I walked over to the window. There was a hole in the screen. I heard some kids screaming and I thought the noise was coming from the huge apartment building with the foil on the windows that we had passed. I could still see it far off, standing like a rock. The sun was orange, just about to disappear.

‘So this is where I live, baby.’