At first we drove down a narrow mud path. Branches scraped the sides of the windows. We turned left onto an empty paved street before we got back, too soon, to the highway.
I opened my window to get some fresh air. Why the fuck was Gio acting like everything was okay?
‘Roll up your window, please.’
‘No. I need air.’
‘Roll up the window, I said.’
I did it so hard I though the crank would crank off.
‘Is this why Adi left you? She couldn’t take how you spoke?’
Gio cleared his throat. He was mad. I leaned my head into the glass.
‘When did you become a whore, Mira?’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Gio. I was twelve years old. On the cusp of womanhood.’
I started laughing. Then I stopped. It occurred to me, some girls really have to do this at twelve …
Gio looked at me like he could taste my guilt. It was the first time that I saw all his teeth. They gleamed like bluish pieces of snow.
‘All great whores become pure,’ Gio said. ‘Even the foam on her lips becomes pure.’
The air in the car was bacterial, unbearable.
‘Mira, do you know how a whore becomes pure?’
She swallows buckets of come? She fucks up the ass? I wanted to say that and burst out laughing again.
‘Mira, my God, in the name of our God, Adonai, for whose sake you have wasted your flesh this way – you can’t hide who you are or where you came from, or when and how you came to be in this place. You are a Jew like the great whore of Babylon. The woman is Sodom, she is Egypt, she is the River of Blood.’
‘I know! Oh my god! And you just fucked the Jewishest River of Blood on the way here at the side of the road, right? Am I not right? Jesus, Gio. What the fuck is your trip?’
Gio started to drive insanely fast.
‘Mary of Egypt was only twelve years old, like you, when she left her parents to travel with a man. And once she did this, she kept on travelling, alone, city after city, to let all the other men take her the same way. Mary did this out of insatiable desire. She wanted to wallow in the trough, Mira. That, to her, was life.’
‘I had sex the first time at fifteen with a scumbag named John,’ I said. ‘He and his uncle used to film me wallowing too … ’
‘One day, when Mary was walking at night, she saw a great crowd of men, Egyptians and Libyans, going down to the sea. She stopped one of them and asked where they were going. “We are all going to Jerusalem for the exaltation of the Holy Cross,” they told her. “Do you think they would take me, if I wanted to go?” Mary asked. “Anyone who has the fare can go,” the man replied. “Indeed, Brother,” Mary said, “I have neither the fare nor any food, but I will go and get into one of the ships and they will take me even if they do not want to. I have a body that will serve as both fare and food for me!” Mary wanted to go, you see, Mira, so that she might experience more lovers, so that crowds of men could watch her.’
‘Once a carload of guys drove by me. They were hooting at me, late at night on the street. All men think that a woman walking alone at night is a whore.’
‘Mira.’
I was silent.
‘Do you know how to repent?’
A grunt.
‘Tell me how you will repent.’
‘Fuck till I’m sore.’
Gio ground his teeth together like Adi used to grind her teeth together. ‘You must learn how to repent,’ he said.