[Fiction]

From Chapter Five of Girl Walking Backwards

By Bett Williams

Hardly awake, I stumbled into the kitchen the next morning to find Mom sobbing into her hands. Her hair was matted at the base of her skull. She wore an oversize T-shirt with paint splatters, and satin underwear. Her eyes were swollen. When she saw me, she motioned for me to come closer. When I got within reach, she pulled me to her and held me tight, her body convulsing into mine. The smell of her tears stirred my sleeping stomach and turned it to acid.

"Sit down," she said and she started hard into my face at something that was making her eyes fill with deep despair.

"I got a call last night from Leslie. She was a friend of mine back when your father and I were together." She gathered herself and took a deep breath. "She said Robert was being arraigned for child molestation. Monster -- that goddamn monster! I could tear his throat out with my bare hands! He's got a little boy and a little girl. Monster! Do you remember Robert, honey?" She spat out her words, possessed by a demon.

"Dad's friend?"

"Yes. You remember him. Tell me, do you remember anything, did he do anything to you?"

"No."

"We were so blind. Drunk and sick. Our babies just ran around those party houses naked."

An image flashed into my mind of me and a naked little boy, running through a house screaming and laughing, then ending up in the living room where the adults lay on pillows and rugs listening to Abbey Road, smoke hovering in the air. Someone told us to stop and stand still. I saw my father's eyes, so stoned that they were not his anymore, looking at me. People started to say stuff about how beautiful my body was, how me and the little boy were like the Garden of Eden or something. Mom looked proud of me and told me to turn around and show everybody what a cute butt I had. Then I was allowed to go.

It was an environment ripe for sordid interludes of all kinds. Anything could happen at one of those parties. Sex floated in the air heavy as smoke, but like all children, I instinctively avoided hot stove tops and vicious dogs in the same way I avoided adults exuding the sickly heat of sex.

"He did something to you, didn't he?"

"No. I didn't spend any time with Robert."

"You were drugged."

"Yeah, but I still remember stuff."

"Oh God, oh God. I'm so sorry. I've been blaming it on you all this time. I'm so sorry. Oh, God forgive me."

"It's okay, nothing happened. People don't turn queer from that kind of stuff anyway. It's a different issue."

"Don't say 'queer,' honey. That bastard! That monster! I'm going to tear his eyes out for what he did to my baby."

"He didn't do anything."

"Oh God. We were so blind."

"Mom. Nothing happened."

Mom wailed and heaved. I was numb again. She stole all the emotion from the room. I couldn't let her go on thinking that anything happened to me. It would give her permission to take control over my whole life. Robert. Tall. Wore plaid shirts. Jeans. I didn't like him.

I walked to the school with an uneasy feeling deep in my gut. My body felt like damp cardboard. I didn't want to identify the feeling as shame. I was ashamed to be ashamed.

Mr. Tenasky wanted our outlines which I didn't have. I didn't remember him asking us to do them. At lunch hour, I explained to Mrs. Stanley, the Special Ed teacher, that I was quitting my community service with Planned Parenthood and I wanted to do normal Study Hall like everybody else.

"It isn't going to be that easy," she said, making a strange sound with her tongue and teeth: I was going to have to get things signed. "Is anything going on at home?" she asked with creepy concern.

"Yes, we have cable now."

"I don't want any cheese," I said to Riley as I zoned in front of the TV.

"Are you on a diet or something? You don't need to lose weight."

"No. I'm just tired of routine. Our life together is becoming so habitual. After school we just sit around and space."

This pissed him off. He put the cheese and tortillas back in the refrigerator with exaggerated fury.

"What!" he snapped. "What do you want? Just tell me what you want and I'll do it."

"That's not it."

"No. Just tell me. Make something up." He was almost begging. Something inside him was deeply, devastatingly tired. I had an idea.

"Go in the bedroom."

Riley got instantly perky, visions of blowjobs dancing in his head. Wishful thinking. I followed him in.

"I want to show you this breathing thing I did once."

"A breathing thing?"

"It's something I did in a workshop. It's no big deal, it's just breathing."

I thought it would wake him up, make him more emotional. I couldn't believe I was stooping so low as to use some New Age trick from Mastery II, but I wasn't good at blowjobs anyway, I only tried once and Riley lost his hard-on. I was glad he did because I really didn't want to do it. He lay down on the bed.

"Start breathing in and out with no separation from the in-breath and the out-breath, like you just ran up a hill."

"What is this about?"

"Just do it."

Riley obeyed me, his eyes resting on my cleavage. The breathing exercise often makes people slightly dizzy. Their arms and legs tingle and the hands can become temporarily paralyzed as they clench up into fists. After an extended amount of time, euphoria kicks in. It's glorified hyperventilation.

"Take off your shirt," he said.

"Keep breathing."

"This is making me horny."

I took off my shirt to appease him so he could focus. His breath turned into a lecherous pant. I lost him. So much for my plan. His brain faded into something reptilian, and mine was soon to follow.

"I want to watch you touch yourself, over there," he pointed to the wall covered with posters and his artwork. He was already starting to massage his dick. So much for my rebirth breathing plan for Riley's spiritual awakening. I did what he asked. I was happy to please him, there was so little I did for him sexually. I was merciless. I took off my jeans, sat against the wall and touched myself while Riley watched him from up in his bed. I never watched him from that angle before. His dick looked bigger. What a waste, I thought, and smiled. He'll find someone soon enough. We both will.

I considered the possible fantasies. Jessica was still too scared. Lorri was like my good friend so I couldn't think about her on the kayak in a wet T-shirt. The imaginary sweater girl would do but when I went inside my mind to think of her she was nowhere. All I could think of was Mom talking about Robert. I thought about being nine years old, standing naked in a roomful of adults. The thought turned me on a little, all those eyes on me.

This was the fantasy I had: I am in a punk club that Riley and I went to once. It's dark, smoke-filled, and crowded. The music is loud. I wait for the bathroom and a tough Skinhead type pushes me against the wall.

"Touch yourself for me."

"No."

"Yes, you will."

"Not here, please don't make me."

"Come for me or I'll fuck you." He threatens to take out his dick.

I'm wearing a miniskirt and my underwear is crawling up my butt. There are people around already starting to watch. He probably has a gun or a knife or something. I do it. I touch myself in the hallway of the sticky, smoky punk club while he leers at me, his dick bulging in his black jeans.

Riley was grunting on the bed with his eyes closed. He opened them to watch me and I looked back at him but he was somewhere else, lost. We came at the same time without planning to. We lay there, silent and heavy, like sediment sinking to the bottom.

"What were you thinking?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"That's wild. I always have to think about something."

There are two kinds of fantasies, seedy fantasies and love fantasies. Sometimes seedy fantasies are hotter but after you come they leave you drained and feeling greasy.

"Can we order out for pizza or something?" I said, lying against the wall with my T-shirt on and pants off.

"Sure, you got money? I'm out."

"I don't really want to pay twenty bucks for pizza."

"Come here for a minute," Riley said. I got up and crawled into his bed. "You're so beautiful. You're going to make a great lover to some woman someday. You're too sexy. I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you too."

"No, you won't."

"Maybe not, huh."

I said a silent prayer that Riley would find all the love in the world. He would have denied it, but he had a sadness that ran deeper than any I'd ever seen. I always thought something horrible must have happened to him as a kid, there were giant chunks of him that seemed to be missing.

"You know when I was on acid and stuff?" I said. "As a kid?"

"Uh-huh."

"Maybe stuff happened that I can't remember."

"Like what?"

"Maybe someone did something. Like, sometimes I feel like maybe someone did something sexual. Like at a party."

Riley got tight all of a sudden. I felt the cogs in his brain move faster. "But you would remember. If something happened like that, you would know. It would make you feel weird."

"I do feel weird."

"I mean weirder than you already are, like gross-weird."

"Yeah. I'm not sure if I feel that. Maybe way deep down I might feel that but I feel a lot of other things, too."

"Like what?"

"Mostly just wanting things. Desire. That's mostly what I feel."

From Chapter Five of Girl Walking Backwards

By Bett Williams

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