Belt Buckles & Pajamas Read online

  “Your mom’s the greatest,” Jennifer says as we walk to the theater. “My mom never gives me anything.”

  I don’t say “Yeah, but she turns up the TV whenever Dad rapes me in the laundry room.” I don’t say that because I am fourteen and I am with my girlfriend and we are going to the movies just like any two girls in the world. Instead I say, “Yeah, she’s pretty cool,” and smile and we chew bubble gum and talk about who is the cutest boy in the ninth grade and I say Peter Wilkins and she says Justin Gore and I say “Ew, gross” and we laugh and giggle all the way to the theater.

  Peter and Justin are both at the movie. They sit behind us and pull on our hair and say stuff about us that we pretend we can’t hear even though they know we can. I think somebody must have told them we liked them. They are funny and obnoxious and the cutest boys in the ninth grade. And they are teasing us!

  Halfway through the movie they get up. Jennifer and I look at each other, wondering what we did to them, were we too funny or too serious or too ugly? Then they are sitting next to us one on each side of us, they didn’t leave they changed seats, oh my God, what do we do now?

  They are talking to us — not about us! — now, and it isn’t five minutes before they both do the fake yawn and it is so obvious but Jennifer and I sit there, afraid to move a muscle as their arms slowly descend to rest on the back of the seats. I see Jennifer snuggle in to rest her head on Justin’s shoulder but I am scared, I don’t know if I should. I sense Peter waiting for me to settle in against him and I take a deep breath and exhale and tell myself as soon as I finish exhaling I am going to do it, I am going to lean against him and before I can chicken out I do, oh my God, I am leaning against him now.

  I don’t know if it is Peter or me or both of us but somebody sure is trembling. We sit there, staring straight at the movie for at least ten minutes, not knowing what to do next. I guess Jennifer and Justin figured it out first because next thing you know they are making out like a couple of old pros. My heart starts pounding, I know Peter wants to make out and I see him turn his head and he leans down and he tilts to one side so I can lean up and tilt my head to the other side. I close my eyes as his lips descend toward my own.

  In my mind I hear a belt buckle hit the floor and I know what he wants to do to me and I shut it out I shut it all out and then it all goes dark. A powerful voice rings out into the theater and next thing I know I am sitting at home wrapped up in a blanket. A policeman is there and says that Peter needed thirteen stitches and then Dad says he is going to kill the little bastard for laying a hand on his little girl and I laugh hysterically and can’t stop and finally Mom shouts at him to get the hell out of the room. Then they took me away. Away from peeing my pants when I was walking down a dark hallway and heard footsteps behind me. Away from screaming in my pillow as he thrust over and over until his release shot into me. Away from morning newspapers and burnt bacon.

  It is morning once more. I struggle to remember what Peter Wilkins even looked like. He definitely wasn’t as cute as Shy Boy. Anyway, I’ve already kissed Shy Boy. It was a little scary but he is different, he hasn’t made me do anything except think about him and I enjoy thinking about him. Thinking about what it might be like. To be with him. To have him in me because I want him not because he forces it. Because I love him for how he really is and not who he is supposed to be. But I am still scared.

  I talk to Violet before breakfast. About Shy Boy. About Peter Wilkins. About being scared and never kissing a boy when I was fourteen. She understands all of it.

  “Daphne, dear, don’t you worry about a thing. Shy Boy will handle all the mechanics, you just need to lie back and enjoy the ride. You care enough about him that it shouldn’t be a rough one – I know he gets you going, I can see the look in your eyes when you’re watching him. It won’t be anything like it was with – him.”

  “But I liked Peter Wilkins, too. I really did. I don’t want to hurt Shy Boy. I’m terrified that we’re going to start, you know, doing it, and I’ll freak out.”

  Violet drew her hand across my lips. “Hush now, Daphne. It will be okay – Violet will take care of it for you. Leave everything to me. I’ll make sure you know what you’re doing. Trust me, I know how to make it enjoyable for everyone. Very enjoyable. Shy Boy will be – well, harder than putty in your hands, when we’re done with him.”

  Forty-One: Feeding The Screech Owl

  Pet Shop asks everybody to get extra toast at breakfast. He wants to take it out to the cemetery before morning session and leave it for his friend the screech owl. Stuart eagerly grabs half a loaf’s worth. Always ready to assist in anything that bears resemblance to a plan. And stealing from “the man,” that’s just a bonus.

  Shy Boy takes my hand as we walk out to the cemetery. Not in a territorial, you “must” way, but more of a wouldn’t it be nice if we held hands way. The kind that allows me to let him hold on. Violet notices but doesn’t do anything to embarrass me. Sometimes she surprises me.

  “Walking on sunshine,” the hedgehog says, and even if it is a little cloudy it doesn’t look like it will rain – maybe I want it to rain and run naked through the woods chasing Shy Boy? – but it feels like sunshine. Shy Boy’s hand in mine is like a little miniature furnace, I feel his heat and it goes up my arm and into my chest and I hum snappy silly pop songs along with the hedgehog.

  We arrive at the cemetery and Violet kisses three seven dash four three three hello and Stuart smiles because he knows it won’t be long before there is more than a number and a date there. Pet Shop gathers everybody’s toast and starts spreading it around the cemetery.

  I sit at the base of the big tree and Shy Boy sits next to me and I lean over to him and he leans over to me. I tilt my head to the side and he does the same. I don’t close my eyes for fear the darkness will envelop me. I watch his lips descend and when they reach mine it is more than the kiss we had before but it doesn’t consume me and it doesn’t make me freak out and he keeps his hands to himself and I am fourteen again and being kissed for the first time.

  I lean back against the tree and look up in the branches where Pet Shop is hiding pieces of toast. Shy Boy just sits there not demanding not asking not needing anything and I wait and he doesn’t change. He still sits there and I hold his hand and I think it must have been wonderful to feel like this at fourteen. To think that this is what it was all about and not worry about what will happen tonight when the lights go out and the door creaks open and the footsteps cross the bedroom and the belt buckle hits the floor. This is how it should have been, I think, and I kiss Shy Boy again and he still doesn’t ask for anything more than what I offer.

  Pet Shop starts flapping his arms and screeching, no doubt broadcasting in owl speech the bounty of toast awaiting his feathered friend. We wait for a little while but the screech owl must not have heard. “He’ll find it, Pet Shop,” Stuart tells him. “It was a good plan.”

  We head back. Pet Shop keeps looking over his shoulder to see if the owl is flying by. I keep looking at Shy Boy.

  Forty-Two: Andie Tells Us Another Story

  We get to session and Andie is already there. She is sitting down, scribbling on her notepad. The box of cards and markers isn’t around so I guess we will do that in the afternoon.

  We sit down and Andie keeps scribbling on her notepad. I try to see what she is writing but the notepad is angled away from me so I can’t tell.

  So we sit and wait because we never start. Andie always starts with a “good morning.” Not us. Andie. But she doesn’t. She just sits there writing away and not showing us what she is writing and not greeting us good morning and acting like we aren’t even in the room.

  As expected, Violet breaks the silence. Too much time with too little attention paid to her, I knew she couldn’t stay quiet for much longer.

  “So, darling,” she says, “you writing me a love letter?”

  Andie pushes her glasses back up her nose and I forget all about whatever it was she was writing. A
simple movement, a flash of eyes, a hint of a smile, and I am hers even if Shy Boy is perfect today. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about him but there is something about Andie that draws me in, like she is a deep well of purity that I need to drink of to be whole.

  “Sorry, Violet, didn’t mean to keep you waiting. No, it’s not a love letter, to answer your question. I was just checking on some of my notes, had some thoughts I wanted to get down, before we began our session today.” She puts the notepad down, smiles and says, “Good morning, everyone.” And I know it isn’t going to be a weird world turned upside down session like I was worried it could have been.

  “Good morning,” she says, and we know that she cares, that the evil emperor is not there today, that we can tell her anything we want to and she won’t hate us or be scared of us or lock us away. “Who wants to start?”

  I stir on my chair and she looks my way and I am as surprised as she is that I want to be the first today. “Daphne?”

  “I was just wondering. Curious. Sort of. If you ever…”

  “Ever what?”

  “Jumped off the EiffelTower?” Stuart asks.

  “Joined the Mile High Club?”

  “Skated backwards?”

  “Ate ants alongside an aardvark?”

  “Appeared on Wheel of Fortune?”

  “Enough with the guesses,” Andie quiets them. “Daphne, go on, you can ask me anything you want.”

  I plunge in. “Did you ever love anyone? I mean, I know you were married and all, but he was a jerk and so I don’t think you really loved him if that was how he turned out. Did you ever love anyone else?”

  Andie sits back, removes her glasses, and takes a deep breath. “Wow. That’s a question, all right.”

  “You said anything,” Pet Shop reminds her.

  “I guess I did.” She puts her glasses back on, takes them off again and plays with them a little more. We sit patiently, waiting for her answer.

  “Yes – no – maybe…” Andie says, apparently having as hard a time answering the question as I did asking it.

  We wait but she just sits there, lost in thought.

  “Could you elaborate?” Violet asks. “Feel free to go into graphic details if that gets you in the mood.”

  “Behave, Violet,” I instruct her. “Andie, please tell us more.”

  Andie stops fidgeting with her glasses. “It happened a couple years ago. It was after I left my husband. I had taken another internship and there was a young man working at the same hospital. We were both so busy with work and classes that we hardly had time for each other. Maybe that’s why we called it love, because we managed to fall in it despite hardly ever seeing each other.”

  Andie takes a deep breath and continues. “He was handsome and sweet and would have been just the type to bring home to meet your parents, except of course I didn’t. I was scared they might like him and they were so far off on the last one I really didn’t want their approval. And neither of us were looking for marriage, we were both just looking for companionship, for someone to hold onto when we came home exhausted from another shift. Someone who understood what we were doing and didn’t need an explanation when we were too tired to make love or clean the carpets or talk about where to go to dinner.”

  “But when we weren’t too tired — Lord, we had fun then.” She gives a sad, bittersweet smile that reflected all the happiness that was and could have been. “Whether it was dancing in the moonlight, or walking in the park, or making love like it was the first time or might be the last time we ever had a chance to. It was everything I ever wanted and never had to fight for, it was all so easy. I guess in the end it was too easy.”

  “The end?” I ask, the sound barely audible, knowing that she was here so it had to end but trying to believe in it enough that maybe it was still there for her. Hoping maybe she would give a wink, letting me in on the big secret that this man was still living with her, that the fairy tale went on happily ever after.

  “Yes, it ended. And not badly or noisily or with hatred or anger. It ended as easily as it had begun. Our shifts changed, our internships were over, opportunities arose in different cities. And though we had been in love we were never committed and our routines developed without each other as quickly as they had been established in unison.”

  I reach for her to hold her and although I think it comforts me more than her I feel her hug me a little tighter than before. So I hug back harder, wanting her to know that this one is for her, that I am giving it not taking it. That she is still loved.

  Forty-Three: Finishing The Tags

  In the afternoon Andie and Kareem again lead us into the art room. She hands out more blank cards. I get another name from her to put on my card. It is Felix. Felix doesn’t have a last name, and I am torn between either giving him one or drawing an extra large cat on it. But then the people visiting the cemetery might think Felix really was a cat and that wouldn’t be fair to him.

  “Andie, I need a last name for Felix, can I give him one?”

  “Sure Daphne, I think he would like that. Whatever you want.” Andie looks at Violet, answering the question before it is asked. “Violet, no body parts for last names.”

  “Not even asshole?”

  “No.”

  Violet hmmphs. “Guess we aren’t making any for Doc Martin then.”

  Stuart giggles, even Andie laughs. “Just keep them clean, please.”

  Shy Boy hands his first finished card to Andie and takes another one. She sits there, staring at it. I lean over to see if he has the stick girl grabbing onto something inappropriate and am taken aback. His drawing is detailed and the people look like people and he stayed in all the lines.

  “Gordon, this is wonderful,” Andie tells him. “You’ve been holding back on us. Samantha’s plate is going to be very special with this engraved on it.”

  He smiles and his face turns a little flushed from all the attention. He goes back to drawing on the next card and I see Andie sneak off to the other table and she is writing in her notepad again.

  I look at my card, try to think what I would be if I was Felix’s last name, and it comes to me: Potato. I write it on the card and draw some French fries and a potato with big eyes. I don’t show it to Stuart because he might think the eyes were looking at him.

  Violet has drawn another orgy scene on her card. When she finishes she proceeds to take the black marker and darken it out completely. “Poor little kids, the things they could learn if they would let me show them.” She grabs another card and repeats the process. When she is done, she has three very ornately drawn orgy scenes that you can’t see anything of because they are all blacked out.

  Shy Boy’s cards are definitely the featured attraction from our little art show. He only drew two but they look like they should be framed and hanging on the wall of a museum.

  Andie gathers them all up. She has a couple she drew but she didn’t show them to us – I am guessing she is probably a better artist than I am but not as good as Shy Boy.

  “When are we going to put these in the cemetery?” I ask Andie.

  “Kareem will take them to the engraver today. He should have the plates all done and the plaque ready in a couple days.”

  “Can he be trusted?”

  “Sure I can,” Kareem says, but he is smiling to show he didn’t take the remark personally.

  “Not you, Kareem,” I explain. “Stuart means the engraver.”

  Andie nods. “I’ve known the engraver for years – that’s why he is getting them finished for us so quickly. He displays no signs of governmental influence.”

  “I’m a believer,” says the hedgehog, instantly alleviating Stuart’s concern.

  “Guess that seals it,” Andie says. “We will trust the engraver.”

  Forty-Four: Spin That Wheel

  Couch time again. Shy Boy has his arm around me, and I am leaning into his shoulder, and I don’t have flashbacks of Peter Wilkins, I don’t curl my hand into a fist and knock out three
teeth and require him to have thirteen stitches. I just lean into him and smell him and he smells good, not coffee or leaves like Andie but not cigars and aftershave like him but just like Shy Boy should smell like. A lot less like cabbage than he used to.

  “LESBIAN LICKING IN SHOWER STALLS,” Violet shouts at the TV.

  I glance at the puzzle. “That’s only five words, there are supposed to be six.”

  “Fine. LESBIAN LICKING IN THE SHOWER STALLS.”

  Shy Boy pulls the blanket further up until it covers us both from the chest down. I don’t think much of it until his other arm, the one that isn’t curled behind my head, starts to slide under the blanket. I move my hand to intercept it, to hold hands like I think he wants. But that’s not what he wants. His hand glides over mine, giving it a gentle caress but continuing, moving past until it is aligned with my belly button. And I am not breathing, I am staring at the letters on the screen and I am scared.

  He keeps his hand flat, the palm presses against my belly, and it feels warm as it rests against my skin. And I keep my head nestled in the eave of his shoulder and I feel his moist exhale on my cheek and I hear his heart pounding unless that is my own so loud it must be echoing off of the walls.

  His hand inches higher, flesh on flesh. Soon it will be on my right breast, and then he will want the left one, too, and God only knows how long after that before he heads south. I like Shy Boy, I really do, but I am so scared and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be with a boy when I want to be with him, I don’t know what is supposed to feel good and what isn’t and when it is love and when it is rape.

  I grab his arm and pull it from under my shirt. I stand up, the blanket dropping on the floor. “I’m sorry, Shy Boy, I’m sorry,” I tell him before running off to my room.

  Kareem follows me. I am sobbing into my pillow when I hear him cross the room.