Good at keeping secrets
past
“You’re pretty.”
Pretty.
I hear that a lot.
Sometimes it’s said nice, and makes me feel good. “Well, isn’t she a pretty, little thing,” or “Pretty girl, she looks just like her mama.”
Or sometimes, when my mama says it, even though she’s smiling real big, it makes me feel bad. “Being smart is only important if you’re not pretty, Jane,” or “Just smile pretty and don’t talk, Jane.”
My mama’s real pretty. Men tell her so all the time.
But when Dan says, “You’re pretty,” it makes me feel different. Like bees are buzzing in my chest, loud and tickley. And it makes my cheeks feel hot like I been outside on a summer day running around chasing dragonflies. I wanna tell him about the bees in my chest or chasing dragonflies, but I don’t. I smile instead, ‘cause that’s what Mama always tells me to do. And I add, “Thank you,” ‘cause Mama always says when someone says something nice that I should always say thank you. Just like on my birthday when I get a present, she says compliments are presents, too. I don’t really understand what that means, but I do like she says.
Dan smiles big. It makes the bees buzz again. I can see all his teeth. And I start counting ‘em in my head. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
But I stop when he starts talking ‘cause I can’t see number six, “When does your mom get home from work, Jane?”
“My mama works at the bank. She counts people’s money. She comes home at five o’clock.”
Dan smiles real big again, and I’m counting his teeth starting with six. Seven. Eight. “Wanna watch TV?”
We sit on the sofa. I sit on one end, and he sits on the other end.
We watch a movie that’s on. I seen it before. It’s funny.
Dan laughs a lot. I like watching him laugh. His eyes squeeze shut and his face looks like someone I wanna be friends with. I ain’t never had a friend, Mama said I couldn’t. But I want one. “Want a popsicle?”
He does.
I get a popsicle out of the freezer, a red one, ‘cause they’re my favorite. It has two sticks. Usually, I break it in two and eat ‘em both. But this time, when I break it, I give one to him.
We eat our popsicles, and he moves over and sits right next to me.
He holds my hand while we finish watching the movie.
I seen the way my mama smiles when men hold her hand. She looks extra happy and extra pretty when she smiles that way. I think I know why now. ‘Cause the bees aren’t just buzzing in my chest, they’re buzzing in my head, too, and I feel all funny and floaty. My cheeks hurt from smiling, but I can’t stop.
At four forty-five he says, “I better go.”
“Okay,” I say. The bees in my chest turned into a gorilla squeezing tight. It feels like when Grandma Tressa would leave every night when Mama came home from work, and I didn’t want her to. It makes me sad.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at school, Jane.”
“Okay.” This time when I say it, the gorilla ain’t squeezing tight no more. And I’m not sad ‘cause I’ll see him in the halls at school tomorrow.
*****
Wednesday is my favorite day of the week ‘cause Dan walks me home.
He asks me questions while we walk. “Did you just move here, Jane?”
“No. I lived here my whole life,” I tell him. “I just never went to real school before.” Grandma Tressa used to home school me, ‘cause Mama says the devil’s got his hand in the public school system and the lies and filth they teach, whatever that means. But Grandma died this summer, so now I go to real school, ‘cause Mama has to work at the bank during the day.
“Well, since you’ve only been going to real school for a few weeks now, do you like it?” he asks and the way he’s smiling at me makes me wanna say yes, even though I don’t like it.
“Yeah,” I say to his smile. But the kids are mean. They call me names like dummy. It makes me sad in my tummy when they say those things. But looking at Dan makes me happy, so I say, “I like you. You’re real nice to me.”
He smiles his big smile where I can count all his teeth.
When we get to my house, we sit on the sofa right next to each other again. But before I can turn the TV on, he kisses me. I don’t know what to do back, but when he says, “Just relax, Jane,” I do. And when he says, “Do what I do,” I do that, too. And the longer we kiss, the bees stop buzzing in my chest, and my head and my tummy starts twisting, but not like when I’m sick. It’s down by my privates, and it feels good like something flipping over inside my belly that makes me tingle.
We don’t have time for popsicles.
When he leaves, my lips feel puffy, and my tummy is still rumbling in a good way. I want him to kiss me again.
*****
I couldn’t wait for Wednesday to come.
Dan walks me home.
He asks if he can see my room.
I don’t wanna go to my room. I wanna sit on the sofa and kiss him.
But I show him my room, ‘cause mama always says, “Men like it when you don’t argue with ‘em.”
He wants to lay on my bed. It feels weird at first, but as soon as he starts kissing me I decide I like kissing on my bed just as much as I like kissing on the sofa.
He touches me under my shirt while he kisses me.
He touches me under my bra while he kisses me.
He touches me under my skirt while he kisses me.
And the good twisting in my tummy starts.
But when he touches me under my panties while he kisses me, it makes me squirm. I want him to touch me but it feels weird. A good weird, but weird. When his hand stops and ain’t touching me no more, I want the weird feeling again and I push my privates into his hand. He keeps kissing me and touching me and the more he does the harder it is for me to do nothing but lie there. The feeling low in my belly keeps tightening, it feels like putting one end of a rubber band around the tip of your finger and pinching the other end between your fingers and thumb and pulling it back and just when you think you can’t possibly pull it back any more ‘cause it’s stretched too tight, it slips through your fingers in a flash and shoots up in the air like a rocket. That’s how I feel. Like a rocket. I cry out, “Oh my God,” even though Mama says I shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain. I keep saying it over and over again. And when the rocket comes back down I feel like someone’s pouring maple syrup into a hole on the top of my head and it’s going down slow and coating my insides all the way to my toes.
Dan kisses me on the nose and tells me, “You’re so pretty,” before he leaves.
We didn’t have popsicles.
I forgot all about the popsicles.
*****
It’s Wednesday again.
The bees are buzzing in my chest and head before Dan even walks me home.
He walks straight to my room, and I follow him ‘cause I want kissing and touching on my bed again.
We kiss for a while and then he tells me I’d look prettier with all my clothes off. I don’t wanna take my clothes off, but I want him to think I’m pretty, so I do. And when I’m all the way naked he says, “You’re beautiful.” And my face gets hot like the sun’s glowing behind my cheeks, and its rays are shooting out through the rest of me. Beautiful is better than pretty. Mama says when I’m a grown up I’ll be beautiful and men won’t mind that I’m not smart like other girls.
We kiss some more, and he takes his shirt off. His chest has hair on it, but I like touching it. It feels soft and scratchy at the same time like the rug in the bathroom that I wipe my feet on when I get outta the shower.
We kiss some more, and he takes his pants and underwear off. He asks me to touch his privates. I don’t wanna look at it, but I touch it. And when I do he makes this sound like when you take your first bite of chocolate crème pie, and it’s the best chocolate crème pie you’ve ever tasted in your life. That’s what it sounds like, and I like hearing it. And now I wanna look. I’ve seen a penis before. One night Mama had a man friend over, only I didn’t know it, and I walked in her bedroom without knocking. I saw her friend’s penis. I always knock now.
Dan’s penis is bigger than Mama’s friend’s was. It’s real big, and it looks angry. I tell him so, and he smiles and says it’s not angry, it’s happy ‘cause of me.
Then we kiss some more, and he touches me a lot. And when he touches me between my legs I can’t help but wiggle against him. My tummy is turning in that good way again, and my privates are all tingly.
And then he lays on top of me and tells me to relax, but I don’t know why ‘cause I’m already relaxed.
But then there’s pain and burning and tearing between my legs, in my privates, and I scream out, “It hurts! It hurts! Make it stop!”
He talks real quiet in my ear. His voice still sounds like he’s eating the best chocolate crème pie he’s ever had. “Shh. It’s okay, Jane. Sex only hurts the first time for a few minutes and then it will feel really, really good. I promise.”
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.
“I can’t examine you unless you bend your legs and move closer to me.”
I didn’t want him to examine me. But when I look at Mama she’s telling me with her eyes how mad she is, I know I better just do like he says.
I try not to think about what’s happening and bend my knees and scoot down toward the doctor. When he pulls my knees apart, they’re shaking, and I can’t make ‘em stop.
“Stop shaking and just let him look,” Mama snaps at me. She says it like she does when she tells me to go to my room when she has a man friend come over.
That’s when I start crying. I hold my breath ‘cause when I do that the sound don’t come out, only tears do.
The doctor’s gloves are cold and wet on my privates. I don’t like it at all, and it makes the tears feel hot in my eyes. So hot that I squeeze my eyes shut. And when I close my eyes it don’t hold in the tears, and more come.
“You may feel a pinch,” he says.
I don’t understand until there’s something sliding inside me. It feels like a spoon. The spoon’s cold, but it don’t pinch like he said. And then he does something, and it don’t pinch, it hurts. The doctor is a big, fat liar. It feels like he’s prying me open from the inside out.
I hold my breath through the pain that ain’t a pinch.
When he takes the spoon out, the pain stops. But then he sticks his fingers inside me. It makes me feel like throwing up. Only Dan’s supposed to touch me there. I keep swallowing, trying not to throw up.
“Everything seems normal. Does she have an OBGYN?” He says this to Mama like I ain’t in the room with ‘em.
“I’ll make her an appointment with mine,” Mama says.
And he leaves.
“Put your clothes on and meet me at the front desk. You have a lot of explaining to do.” My eyes are still closed, but I can see her anger. It’s bright red, like fire.
It’s hard to get dressed ‘cause I’m still crying hard and shaking harder.
Mama don’t talk to me the whole way home. I know she’s saving all her mean and mad for when we get home. Inside our house is the only place she lets mean and mad loose on me. And it always hurts when she does. She makes sure of it.
I don’t tell Mama I had sex with Dan. I promised him I would never tell no one, and I’m good at keeping secrets.
*****
The next Wednesday, when Dan walks me home, I tell him I’m pregnant. He looks surprised, and his face gets real pale, like Mama’s face last year when I told her I’d eaten four of her special brownies. We go in my room and we kiss for a few minutes, and then he stands up and tells me to get on my knees in front of him. I do. Then he tells me to open my mouth. I do. Then he puts his penis in my mouth. It makes me choke, but he just keeps saying, “Relax, Jane. This makes me feel good. You want me to feel good, don’t you?” I nod ‘cause I do. He tells me to suck and pretend he’s one of the popsicles I like so much. I do, but he don’t taste like a popsicle. He starts moving in and out of my mouth while I suck. Then he grabs my hair by my ears in his hands and moves faster. “That’s it, Jane. That’s perfect. Keep doing that.” I like that he’s using his chocolate crème pie voice. Until I feel something hot fill the back of my throat. It makes me cough and gag and when I do I feel something warm and wet on my chin and neck. I swallow back against what’s in my mouth, it tastes sticky and salty, and I don’t like it. Dan has his hand wrapped around his penis, and he’s jerkin’ it back and forth. It looks rough like it hurts, but stuff’s squirting out of it on my chest, and the look on his face makes me feel good. It’s the same look he wears when he does this inside my privates. “Good girl,” he says. “Very good. I want to try something else new before I go today.”
I don’t know what that means, but most things Dan does to me make me feel good, so I nod. “Okay.”
“Does your mama have any oil for cooking with?” he asks.
I nod.
“Get it, beautiful.”
I like it when he calls me beautiful.
When I come back with the vegetable oil, he takes it and sets it on the floor. Then he tells me to get down on my hands and knees.
I do. I don’t like to have sex this way, ‘cause he can’t kiss me. I like kissing him.
He touches me from behind, and it feels good. Then I hear him tear open the rubber package, and he puts his penis inside me. It feels good, but he’s holding my hips and crashing into me with his, a lot faster than he usually does.
“I’m gonna miss this,” he says. I don’t know what it means. He talks a lot when he’s inside me, and it usually don’t make a lot of sense. Mostly curse words, which I know is a sin, but when he says ‘em with his chocolate crème pie voice, they don’t sound like sinning.
I feel him pull out, and he picks up the vegetable oil bottle and takes off the cap. I don’t look back to see what he’s doing with it. And then I feel the hair on his chest sticky with sweat on my back, and he whispers in my ear, “Just relax, or this will hurt. I don’t want to hurt you, Jane. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
“Deep breaths if it hurts. Deep breaths until I’m done. You want me to feel good, right?”
“Yes,” I say without thinking.
And then he spreads my butt cheeks with his hands, and I feel something slick and warm against my behind. And then he starts pushing his way in, but it ain’t my privates. It don’t feel right. “Relax,” he reminds me.
But I can’t relax. I don’t understand what’s happening.
He stops moving. “Breathe.” The way he says it makes me wanna please him. So, even though I can’t relax, I take a few deep breaths.
“That’s it,” he says it like my favorite teacher does when I answer a question right.
But then he starts pushing again, and all I wanna do is push him back out. He’s going slow, but it don’t stop the bad feelings. I feel yucky and like I need to go potty. “I don’t like it,” I blurt. I shouldn’t have said nothing, but I can’t keep it in.
“You’re doing just fine. You’ll be fine. Just keep breathing.” He pulls back a little bit, and it feels better, but then he pushes back in real fast. “I’m sorry, this feels too good. It will be over quick. Don’t think about it.”
And then it hurts. It hurts real bad. He’s holding my hips tight. I can’t get away. I can hear his skin slapping against mine, and he’s talking, but I don’t hear most of it ‘cause the pain’s making it hard for me to hear. It’s like I’m wrapped up in a blanket, only it ain’t my favorite blanket Grandma Tressa made me, this blanket’s made of hurt and pain.
I’m crying out, “Please stop, it hurts! It hurts! Please stop!”
But he don’t, not until I hear him yell, “Fuck me, your ass is so tight.”
When he pulls out, the pain’s still there. I don’t wanna look at him, ‘cause he hurt me.
He goes to the bathroom and cleans himself up, and when he comes back to me, I’m lying on the floor crying.
He pulls me into his lap and holds me. It’s real gentle, just like when I held a puppy from the neighbor’s dog’s litter when I was little. “Listen to me, Jane. You’re my special girlfriend. I’m sorry that hurt, but you made me feel so good, beautiful. And I needed our last time together to be special. When I leave today, you’ll never see me again.”
I look up at him. “What about school?”
He shakes his head. “I won’t be there. But we’ll always keep our secret. We won’t tell anyone about our special time together.”
“I’ll never tell no one,” I promise.
He smiles the smile where I can count all his teeth. “Good.”
And then he sets me on the floor, and he gets up and leaves.
And I wonder if he meant what he said and if he won’t be at school tomorrow.
*****
Dan wasn’t at school the next day.
I didn’t see him at lunch or in the hallways between classes.
It makes me sad that he’s gone, ‘cause he’s my only friend.
Just to be sure I stop by the office after school and ask Mrs. Peacock, the school secretary, ‘cause the first day of school she told me if I ever had questions I could always ask her. “Is Dan gone? Did he leave for good?”
She looks confused. “Dan? Dan who, sweetie? Do you know his last name?”
I don’t know his last name, so I shake my head and tell her what I do know. “Dan. He sweeps the cafeteria after we make it dirty at lunchtime.”
Her eyes change like she knows the Dan I’m talking about. “Oh, Dan Crestmoor, the custodian. I’m sorry, sweetie, he no longer works here. He called this morning and said he had a family emergency and his family needs him out of state. His elderly mother is sick. He was moving today.” She’s smiling when she says it, like she don’t know her words are making me sad.
Poor Dan. I’m sad his mama’s sick. I hope he can make it better when he gets there.
*****
Going to school is hard when you’re pregnant. The other kids tease me more than usual. They call me a slut and a whore. I try to ignore ‘em, but it hurts my feelings. I already hear those words enough at home from Mama.
*****
My belly’s getting real big. Mama says my baby girl’s gonna be born soon. Mama also says I’m too young and can’t handle a baby, especially since I ain’t married, so she found a family to be my baby’s new family when she’s born. Adoption she calls it. That makes me sad, but Mama says that’s how it’s gotta be. I haven’t met the new family, but they must be real nice, ‘cause they bought Mama a new car. She says it’s a Toyota Corolla. It’s light blue, her favorite color, and the air conditioning blows real cold. She smiles real big when she drives it. Only it’s the kind of smile that don’t make me happy, and I don’t know why.