Sour Heart Page 7

  “That’s for you to know that you don’t disturb me when this”—he pointed at the flag—“is draped across my door. Got that?”

  “Is this house ever going to be just for us?” I moaned.

  He ignored me. “What did I just say? You do not ever come in when this is here. Understand?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m serious, Lucy. Come in and you’re fucking dead.”

  I said, “Come into my room, and I’ll freaking kill you too.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said before shutting the door and staying hours and hours in there with his new girlfriend who had tits the size of Kansas—no the whole Midwest, no the entire continent of North America, no make that the continent of Asia, no Asia plus Antarctica, no actually the whole Milky Way galaxy. Her tits were out of this world. Literally. Everyone I knew was living on a different planet from me and I was the only person left on earth, wandering around dumbly, and it was possible I would have to stay there forever. It wasn’t fair I had to be me for as long as I lived while other people got to be other people.

  I put my fingers in my vagina, wriggled them all the way in deep until it hurt, and then wiped my fingers on Eddie’s door.

  “Don’t worry, Eddie,” I said with my mouth pressed up against his door, “even if you don’t come in my room, I’ll still freaking kill you.” I walked back into my bedroom, locked the door, collapsed onto my carpet, put my fingers back in my vagina, and waited for my mother to get home.

  —

  The next day, Francine showed up to school with makeup on and I said, “You look very dumb,” before she even sat down in her desk.

  During art class, Francine told me that if you have big knockers you can come the second your boyfriend puts it in you.

  “I don’t care about that,” I told her.

  “About what?” she asked.

  “Coming.”

  “Ew,” she said. We made ourselves sick sometimes just by talking.

  “So has he yet?” she whispered into my ear.

  “Oh, totally, yeah.”

  “What?” she screamed.

  Our art teacher, Mrs. Feducci, walked up to our table. “Francine, do you want to go to the principal’s office for the second time today?”

  “No,” she said, head bent down.

  “Didn’t think so,” Mrs. Feducci said and then turned back around to help Susanna Lopez with her origami paper crane.

  Francine stuck her tongue at Mrs. Feducci, and I giggled into my shirtsleeve. We started to pass notes.

  [Francine] why haven’t u done it yet

  [Me] BUSIE n stuff

  [Francine] YEA RIGHT

  [Me] yeah! right! i’m right! you said i’m right!

  [Francine] I sooooo bet you didn’t

  [Me] no, you said, YEA RIGHT

  [Francine] um, you didn’t do it

  [Me] fine

  [Francine] HA! caught you!

  [Me] but I asked him to

  [Francine] and?

  [Me] he doesn’t know how

  [Francine] I’ll help you teach him

  [Me] ok

  [Francine] ok

  [Me] but Frangie is gonna be there

  [Francine] ew

  [Me] my mom said she has to be there

  [Francine] she always has to be there?

  [Me] always and never never has to be there

  [Francine] not fair

  [Me] like I don’t know

  —

  After school, the sky darkened and I didn’t know if day had become night or if night had become day, and then I decided that day had become night like in my nightmares that made me believe I was living in a world without day, and under the threat of thunderstorm, Francine, Frangie, and I ran all the way home holding hands, Frangie in the middle like she was our kid. I told Jason that he had to set his stopwatch for ten minutes and only start walking toward my house after it beeped because we had a secret in store for him, and because Frangie was awkward around boys so we had to escort her home first. The only boy I ever really saw her talking to was Eddie.

  When the doorbell rang, Eddie opened the door.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said, looking down at Jason, who was wearing a big green sweater with a leaf print and dragging his book bag and black down jacket behind him on our steps.

  “Get away from there,” I said, running down the stairs. “That’s my friend from school.”

  “Um, you mean boyfriend,” Francine shouted from a few feet behind me.

  My brother looked at me and then looked at Jason and then burst into laughter.

  “Is something funny to you?” I asked him and then turned to Jason. “C’mon, Jason, ignore him. He needs mental work.”

  “You have a boyfriend?” my brother asked me.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Do you even know what a boyfriend is? I mean, obviously not,” he said, shaking his head. “Look, I have no desire to know anything about you and your weird little friends.” He went into the kitchen to heat up some frozen pizzas for him and his girlfriend, and Francine and I led Jason up the stairs into my room where Frangie was waiting.

  When we had gotten home ten minutes earlier, we’d ordered Frangie onto my bed and stripped off her clothes. I stashed them in my closet while Francine tied Frangie to my bed with my mother’s scarves.

  “We’re finally going to let you play with us,” Francine said. “Aren’t you glad? You don’t have to wait outside the door anymore.” Frangie didn’t say anything; she was probably imagining being a jellyfish for all I knew. When I saw how tightly Francine was tying the scarves around Frangie’s wrists, I told her to go easy.

  “I don’t feel anything,” Frangie said.

  “Really?” I said, inspecting the knots Francine had made and loosening one of them a little bit.

  “This is what you play in here?” Frangie asked.

  “Yup,” Francine said. “Every single day, and now you’ll get to.”

  When we brought Jason into my room, he immediately turned around and reached for the doorknob, but Francine and I were already on it. We blocked the exit with our bodies—me backed up against the door with my hands spread out like they were wings and Francine standing in front of me in the same posture.

  “Shrimpson,” Francine said, smiling. “You aren’t scared, are you?”

  “No,” Jason said. “Course not.”

  “Why’s your face all red then?” I said.

  “Shrimpy, you know you want it. If you didn’t, why did you have a wet dream?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why did ya? Huh?”

  Jason shrugged. “That’s just a rumor.”

  “Says you,” Francine said. “Didn’t they tell you in pre–sex ed sex ed that there’s nothing to be ashamed of?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling like Francine’s echo. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Guess so.”

  Francine clasped her hands together into a prayer, and I reached around her waist and did the same. “Please, Jason,” Francine said. “Promise you won’t try to leave, or we’ll tell everyone you’re scared to do it.”

  “Do what?” he said.

  “Just say you promise,” Francine said.

  “Please, Jason, just promise,” I said.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Say you promise,” Francine said.

  “Okay,” Jason said.

  “Say ‘I promise,’ ” Francine insisted.

  “He said okay,” Frangie said. The sound of her voice startled me.

  “This is kind of stupid,” I said.

  “You say that about everything,” Frangie said from the bed. I peeked over Francine’s shoulder to look at her. She had wriggled out of the one scarf I’d loosened and had placed that hand across her stomach. I wondered what it would be like if my mother had died like Frangie’s, if my father was as unfit as Frangie’s father was, and if Eddie moved out to live with his girlfriend. Where would I go after school? Who would take
care of me? I felt a deep disappointment in myself that when I looked at Frangie on my bed, I could only picture myself. For a brief moment, I felt like I was going to puke but then Francine was in charge again and things started happening quickly.

  “Sit.” Francine directed Jason to my chair. “You,” she said to me, “kneel down in front of him.” I got on my knees and unzipped his pants. “Take it out. He’s your boyfriend.”

  I couldn’t find it at first. I wasn’t sure what to look for.

  “Ugh,” Francine said, kneeling down next to me. “Do I have to do everything myself?”

  “Hey,” Jason said, slapping her hand away and zipping his pants back up. “Who said you could touch it?”

  I stood up and realized that everything that was new to me was yesterday’s meatloaf to Francine. The brief glimpse I had of Jason’s dick wasn’t so much shocking as it was unremarkable. It was this tiny flabby thing and I couldn’t imagine it was really capable of all the things we had discussed in pre–sex ed sex ed. “I’m his girlfriend, Francine.”

  “So act like it.” She stood head to head with me.

  “I’m going home.” Jason started to get up from the chair, but Francine held him down without much effort, her arms freakishly muscular from playing softball every weekend. She shook her head with a look in her eyes that had worked on me before too. It was this look that said, Only I know what comes next.

  “Not yet,” she said and then to me, “We have to make it hard. It’s easy. You just put your mouth on it or rub it like this.” She knelt back down and ran her finger across the zipper of his pants. Outside, it was almost completely pitch-dark. The lightning was stalled, but I knew it was coming soon.

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “What the hell? First you say you want to, and then you say he wants to, and then he says he doesn’t want to, and now you say you don’t want to either. What’s wrong with you people?” She rolled her eyes and, before any of us could react, she unzipped his pants, grabbed his penis, and put the entire soft, limp little thing into her mouth.

  “Mmmn,” she said.

  “Francine,” I said, feeling sick.

  “Mmmm mmn mnn.”

  “Francine,” I shouted. “No. Stop it!” I grabbed her by the shoulder and tried to pull her away, but she was so, so strong. She moved her mouth off Jason’s penis, which looked smaller than ever, but it was no longer something I could bring myself to laugh at—it was part of my nightmare now. Standing back up, she grabbed ahold of my wrists with one hand, and covered my mouth with the other. The lightning was here now, so was the rain.

  “Shhh,” she said. “Do you want your brother to hear?”

  I heard my brother take a few steps up the stairs, his every footstep sending vibrations through my heart. “Lucy, can you and your friends stop screaming? It annoys the crap out of me and honestly, I just can’t be bothered anymore. Do you realize I’m actually trying to study? With my actual girlfriend? Do you realize other people actually have lives? So listen, this is the last time I’ll ask you and your friends to shut the hell up. From this point forward, you don’t exist. Don’t bother me and I won’t bother you and everyone’s happy.”

  But I’m here, I said to him in my head. I’m here, Eddie. “What if I needed you to know I’m here?” I said in the smallest voice I had.

  “It’s time,” Francine said. “Jason, get on the bed.” She explained to me earlier that we needed to do this, and that there was only one way it could be done, and it had to be done that way because Jason needed to learn how to do it properly so that our first time could be perfect, and what better test case than Frangie? I needed to save myself for when Jason was more experienced so that it would feel good. She told me that I also needed to watch carefully because it wasn’t like everyone was born into this world knowing how to be good at sex—she certainly wasn’t, and I probably wasn’t either—some people had to work constantly at it, like math, like those algebra equations Francine and I got wrong every time, and so that was why everything was the way it was.

  Jason climbed onto my bed, one of his legs shaking uncontrollably. Francine tugged his pants down so they were bunched up by his knees. “Why do you wear such tight pants, Shrimpson? You’re not some kind of gaylord, are you?” He was trying to straddle Frangie’s knees, and Francine was telling him to move up higher, to get closer to her vagina. Frangie’s raccoon eyes looked up toward the ceiling. I kept waiting for her to blink, to make a sound, to say she wanted to go home, but she just laid there with one hand tied to my bedpost.

  “Frangie,” I said. “Frangie, my mom says you should stay for dinner.”

  “Jason,” Francine said. “Move up closer, you retard.”

  “Frangie,” I said. “I still want to be a jellyfish with you.”

  “Closer. You’re still too far.”

  “Frangie,” I said. “I saved an orange soda for you. I’ll get Eddie to put your name on it so that I don’t forget and drink it by accident.”

  “That’s good.” Francine leaned over the side of my bed and grabbed Jason’s penis, shiny and gross with her saliva but still tiny and soft. “Now you open her up,” Francine said to me. “Do it like we usually do.”

  “Frangie,” I said, putting my fingers on her vagina lips and parting them with my thumb and forefinger. “Frangie, my mom says she’ll take us shopping this weekend.”

  “Fuck, why isn’t it working?” Francine said, looking genuinely concerned for the first time all day. She bit down on her knuckles. “Your boyfriend might really be a gaylord.”

  “Frangie,” I said. “You need anything? You want that orange soda? Cheez Doodles?”

  “Look at Jason’s face. Look at it, Lucy. He looks like he needs to poop.”

  “Frangie, close your eyes,” I said, trying to pull her eyelids down with my fingers, but they were stiffly open, like the lid to a tin of anchovies. “Frangie, please. Please close your eyes.” Downstairs, my brother was singing along to the radio, sprinkling little pepper flakes on his finger and licking it clean while his pizzas were spinning in the microwave, out there, my mother was telling someone how she had taken Frangie in as one of her own and no, she didn’t treat her any less than her blood children, and even farther somewhere, my father was riding his bike all around Manhattan with a plastic bag tied around his face, speeding past lights like he was light itself, accepting quarters for tips, forcing a smile after each delivery, and as for me, I was waiting for that first clap of thunder, the moment when I could detach from myself again, when I could hover in that space above reality where I sometimes saw myself for who I really was, only this time, I would let it happen, I wouldn’t struggle at all, instead, I would allow myself to see what was really there down below me.

  July 1966

  Schools had been indefinitely shut down for a month when the rain started and the children of Shanghai came out in packs to play. The first month of no schools and no responsibilities had spilled feral energy into the streets. Hardly anyone spoke of poetry anymore unless it was coded in another kind of poetry. It was dangerous to be precious about the lakes and the summer willows that had been fetishized by the old masters; now it either served the revolution or it was an act of sabotage. Beauty was a distraction, it was an indulgence, and all the things that carried it, all its vessels, were to be burned. Burn! It! Down! the kids shouted, flicking matches at anything during the hot, dry month of June.

  The sudden power reversal—the young and rash were now the enforcers, the ones who dealt punishment—made some kids despotic, some giddy, and some so terrified they went into hiding, though everyone had to come out eventually. The kids who liked breaking shit and the kids who regularly had shit broken across their bodies were the ones who formed packs and marched up and down the streets, carrying glass bottles beneath their arms to throw at any woman who still wore her hair loose and long (that was piggish bourgeois decadence!), or anyone who reeked of being an intellectual, which could have meant someone with squin
ty eyes from reading too many books or someone with overly relaxed eyes from a lifetime of being spared hard manual labor.

  Anyone could be named a counterrevolutionary, anyone could be made to crawl like a dog through the streets until their knees and palms were rubbed raw to the point of exposing cartilage. Faster, faster, faster, the kids cried. Enough, enough, the adults begged. In another month, some of the children would name their own parents over something as trifling as an expression—maybe someone’s mother had almost smiled when hearing a story about Mao stumbling on some steps, maybe someone’s father had said flippantly one night, Would be nice to go to bed full for once—anything was fodder and all gossip could turn into serious allegations that so-and-so wasn’t down for the struggle. The kids who were willing to turn in their own parents were rewarded, rose through the ranks fast. Everyone knew the fastest way to the top was to be someone no one wanted to cross. Some of the children started wearing their parents’ old green army uniforms, comically big and pocked with moth holes, redolent with black mold. The serious ones memorized every aphorism from Mao’s Little Red Book and went around quoting lines like, “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another,” at the slightest offense, like if someone licked their lips when walking past a stall selling hot salted soy out of plastic bags for four cents a bag. The desire to have a midafternoon treat was the desire to feast and the desire to feast was wasteful and self-indulgent, the opposite of resisting bourgeois greed and capitalist filth. The serious kids scrounged up scraps of red silk, inscribed the words 红卫兵 and wore them as armbands. The less serious drew elephantine balls hanging under a tiny penis, or a woman with big juicy tits squirting fat droplets of milk into her own mouth. They grouped themselves according to longtang, and Nanchang longtang had a reputation for being the most ruthless and the most creative. There was no injury too small, no grudge too petty for these children to avenge with the kind of energy that, in another world, at another time, they might have saved for birthday clowns and pony rides.