So Much More(82)

I try not to think about the pain. Like that one time when Mama drank too much beer and held her hot curling iron against my arm. It burned for a real long time, but I tried not to think about it ‘cause I know she didn’t mean to hurt me. She told me so afterward.

And after a while, it doesn’t hurt as bad, just like Dan said. And then his hips start moving faster, and he keeps telling me that I’m beautiful in his chocolate crème pie voice. And then he’s grunting like an animal and his hips are pressing hard against mine, and my privates hurt way up inside my belly like it’s too much. And then he says, “Fuck,” and instead of feeling like too much, it feels kinda warm.

And then he pushes up off me, and I feel his penis pull out ‘cause it feels like my privates just shriveled back up to normal. “You should go to the bathroom. And clean yourself up.”

I don’t know why he said that until I stand up, and two things happen. I see spots of blood on my sheets, and when I start walking toward the bathroom in the hall, I feel something wet running down the inside of my thighs. They both scare me.

After I use the bathroom and get dressed Dan leaves. He says not to tell no one what we been doing. He says he could get in a lot of trouble ‘cause people wouldn’t understand how special I am to him.

I like it that he called me special.

I won’t tell.

I don’t talk to no one except Mama anyhow.





*****





Every Wednesday Dan walks me home.

Every Wednesday we kiss and have sex on my bed.

It don’t hurt no more.

Sometimes he puts this covering on his penis, he calls it a rubber. Sometimes he don’t, ‘cause he says it feels better without it.

He calls me his girlfriend.

It’s a secret.

Just like our special time together.





*****





I been real sick all week, throwing up a lot. Mama don’t make me go to school. She lets me stay home while she goes to work. I sleep on the bathroom floor, so I don’t have to keep coming in to get sick. I don’t feel like eating nothing.

Dan comes to my house Wednesday afternoon. He leaves when he sees I’m sick.





*****





Mama brought me to the doctor ‘cause I been so sick. They stick a needle in my arm and fill up a glass tube with my blood. I don’t like it. It hurts. They also make me pee in a plastic cup. I don’t like that either, too messy.

The nurse takes my temperature and asks me some questions, and then she leaves.

Mama and me wait for a long time for the doctor to come in. When he does, he don’t look nice, and I don’t like him.

He looks in my ears and throat and listens to my heartbeat and asks me the same questions the nurse asked me.

And then someone knocks on the door, and a lady hands him some papers. She looks nice, and I want her to stay and him to go. He looks at the papers, and there’s a lot of writing on ‘em, but he reads ‘em real fast.

That’s when he looks at my mama and says, “She’s pregnant.” And I wonder who he’s talking about. Only grownups get pregnant, Mama told me so when I asked where babies came from. She said, “When you grow up you’ll get married and have babies.” But I’m not a grown up yet. Or married.

Mama’s looking at me, and I see a lightning storm flashing in her eyes. It scares me. “You been having sex, Jane?” It’s loud and embarrassing. Sex is supposed to be my secret with Dan. She ain’t supposed to know, and now she’s telling the doctor about it too.

I shake my head real fast. I know I’m not supposed to lie. Lying is a sin, Mama always says so.

“Lying is a sin, Jane. Don’t lie, the Lord will strike you down.”

I just sit here quiet and don’t move. I’m waiting for the wrath of God or Mama, I don’t want either one.

The doctor says, “I’ll need to perform a vaginal exam. Would you prefer to stay or go?” He’s talking to Mama again.

“I’ll stay,” she says, but it don’t sound like she wants to. It sounds like she wants to hit me with the belt she keeps hanging on a nail in her closet.

The doctor tells me to take my underwear off from under my cloth gown and lie down on my back while he fiddles with some rods at the end of the table that look like they have a big ice cream scoop on the end. I do like he says, and he puts on gloves and gets some packages out of a drawer and tears ‘em open. I never saw what was inside, but I hear some clinking sounds when he puts ‘em on a little metal table next to him. I don’t like the sound they make. It’s too loud.

He lifts up each of my feet and puts my heels in the ice cream scoops. They fit perfect, and it makes me smile to think that my heels are like balls of ice cream.

I stop smiling and thinking about ice cream when he tells me to scoot my hips toward him and bend my legs. “No,” I say. He’ll be able to see under my gown, and I don’t want him looking.

I hear him and Mama both sigh. Hers sounds angry, like when she does it right before she punishes me and quotes the Bible, “I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins.” His sounds annoyed, like my least favorite teacher when I tell her I don’t understand her questions.