“Now you’ll go to hell and it’s my fault, because I’m dirty.”

“If I go to hell, it won’t be because of you.” I was definitely going to hell, but that wasn’t her fault. “And you’re not dirty.”

“You said.”

“I said it was dirty, not that you were dirty. You’re a good girl.” My knees were killing me, so I sat down cross-legged next to the bed, keeping her hand in mine.

“Why is it dirty? You liked it,” she said.

“Because you’re thirteen.” There were a lot of other reasons I shouldn’t have been fooling around with her, but that was the big one. “You’re not old enough.”

“I’m old enough to like it.”

She pulled more of my arm under the edge of the sheet and pressed her cold, bare little tit into my hand. I jerked it away without even thinking. For a while, she laid there quiet. Then she snaked her arm out of the covers and dropped something that clattered next to my knee.

I patted the floor and found her ring. I’d been so hell-fired against anybody turning it into something nasty, and then that’s what I did.

“Wavy, this is yours. I gave you this because I love you.”

She turned over, away from me, and sighed real heavy. She’d used up all her words. Maybe for months. I’d never heard her say so much. Holding that ring in my hand, I came up with three things I could do. One was really bad. One was too awful to even think about. That left me just the one option.

The radiator rattled and it got me moving. I pitched the wet towel on top of it and sat down on the bed. I held the ring on the tip of my pinky to keep track of it while I pulled off my boots and jacket. I shoved Wavy toward the wall and lifted up just the quilt, keeping the sheet between us. She was wound tight when I put my arm around her, her spine stiff against my chest.

“I love you, Wavy. I love you.” I said it until she relaxed. “Now put your ring back on.”

She didn’t move, but when I leaned up on my elbow and reached for her hand, she didn’t pull away. As I tugged on her arm to turn her towards me, I let the sheet fall back so her tits were naked in the moonlight. They were beautiful, and she trusted me enough that she’d let me touch them. She stared at the stars on the ceiling while I put the ring on her finger.

“It’s not dirty,” I said. “I was stupid to say that. It’s not dirty if you love me as much as I love you. And I love you all the way. But we gotta go slow. We went too fast tonight.”

She wiggled the ring on her finger, and I worried she was gonna take it off again.

“That night I first saw you, I was going too fast. There I was rubbernecking at you and dumped the bike. Wrecked me up. I don’t want to wreck us up like that. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She eased her hand up my arm to touch the scar. The ring was still on her finger and she looked at me, looked me in the eye. Real slow, like a striptease going in reverse, she pulled the sheet up to cover herself and nodded.

12

WAVY

March–June 1983

Kellen was unhappy. I could smell it on him.

I went with him when he got his hair cut, and the barber said, “Hey, this ain’t your daughter, is it, Junior?”

“No.” Kellen swallowed hard and said, “This is my girlfriend.”

I was happy to hear that I was his anything, but the ring was heavy on my finger and I wished he’d said, “This is my fiancée.”

The barber looked at me while he cut Kellen’s hair. The way Kellen looked at engines, to figure out what was wrong with them.

To see what the barber saw, I looked at myself in the mirror behind the barber chairs. Too young. I tried to be more like Sandy, but I still looked like a little girl.

Opening my jacket, I pushed my shoulders back against the chair and slid my hips forward. I crossed one leg over the other so that my foot dangled. Then I rested my forearms on the chair and let my hands hang from the wrists. Slowly, I leaned my head back and made my eyes soft. The look Mama used to make Liam come to her after they fought. The limp limbs that invited, the soft eyes that promised things.

The barber would have come to me, if the invitation had been for him, but Kellen blushed and looked away. I didn’t know what to do, because the things Mama and Sandy did when Liam was upset, I wasn’t allowed to do those things to Kellen.

Night after night, he sat next to me on the sofa, watching TV. Never on my bed or the recliner. He held my hand, but he didn’t put his arm around me or touch my hair or kiss me.

If he didn’t want to touch me, I could accept that, but I wanted to touch him. That was never against the rules before, but it was now. All of December he didn’t let me touch him, and then I spent winter break at Aunt Brenda’s without him. Now January and February were gone, and I still wasn’t allowed to touch him.

Even though he wouldn’t say it, I knew what he felt. I’d felt it enough to know. Dirty. Too dirty to touch. Too dirty to be touched.

If he wouldn’t touch me, that was bearable, but to have him look away from me wasn’t. I needed him to see me.

On the sofa that night, after the haircut, he reached for my hand. I looked down at his jeans, the ones he wore for his birthday that got ruined by bleach. Bright white spots already going threadbare. Because of me. I pulled my hand away and said, “I’m too dirty to touch.”

He jumped like a bee had stung him and leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees.