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I had to keep imagining that I was los
ing my virginity so one day it would really happen.
GAYL: Dreams, yeah, are dreams. That there was no dream.
LEE: Everyone was once a virgin, you know.
GAYL: You mean a version of a virgin. You could be raped a thousand times and still be a virgin.
LEE: Who the hell gets raped a thousand times?
GAYL: I’ll leave that interrogative strand to the experts.
§
At the pool on the second day of our family vacation, my father said, ‘I like your bathing suit, Myra, is it new?’
I nodded and then I jumped in the water. My suit was fuchsia, a combination of a one-piece and a bikini. My dad used to give me and Jody and Jeff dolphin rides in the water when we were kids. His back had pimples and you had to hold on tight with your straight arms to stop your mouth from going under. It was awkward before I knew how to swim. That feeling of going deeper, bobbing down but trying to stay up, while the dolphin didn’t even know how close I was to staying under.
I wrapped my towel around me to cover myself. The sun smacked the surface of the pool.
‘I’m going to the beach,’ I said.
My dad had sunglasses on, his nose was bright red. Jeff was reading Astro Boy and Jody was tanning with baby oil. My mother pretended not to hear me. She was in the middle of her Korean book. It was called Testimonies of the Comfort Women. We hadn’t spoken since the night before. I was almost finished Cat’s Eye.
‘Be back for dinneroo,’ my dad said, his eyebrows going up and down.
I didn’t want to pass by my mother on her lounge chair after making such a no-drama escape. I knew she loathed my dad’s baby talk.
At the beach, college girls lay in groups on the sand around buckets of drinks, their bums curved up like fruits. Mine didn’t do that. I had to pee. Guys whipped Frisbees over volleyball nets, noses as red as my dad’s. I couldn’t look at their bodies, jumping like dogs. My towel was a cape. I heard them laughing when I passed. There was this one guy near a pool-hiding hedge watching the game, with a walking stick. He had muscular legs, bare feet and a stomach that I could see the sweat on. The guy stopped watching the game with the college boys when I passed. I thought he was maybe selling something even though he had nothing but that stick. This guy had short thick dreadlocks with beads on the bottom. He was black, flawless, shining. I walked for another few minutes on the beach until no one was around. I left my towel and book in a heap on the sand.
The sea was lukewarm; it didn’t seem clean. I crouched down low in the water so my whole bathing suit was covered but I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t pee.
When I lay down on my towel I went on my stomach like the college girls. My bum was a grape. I was going to buy motorcycle sunglasses like theirs.
‘Enjoying the sun?’
That black guy with the stick was suddenly beside me. He had on a rust-coloured bathing suit, two front strings hanging down untied. The walking stick was burnt and etched with triangle designs.
‘What’s your name?’ the guy asked. He had some kind of accent. Jamaican, I thought, because of the dreadlocks. But it wasn’t Jamaican, I knew that much too.
I thought that he was maybe going to ask me for money. I didn’t have any money with me. I was hoping he wasn’t going to ask me that.
‘What’s your name?’ the guy asked again. He crouched down at the level of my face. His bathing suit had been wet. It was rumpled and sort of bulged in the middle.
I didn’t feel the sun anymore. The hairs on his legs were little C’s and S’s. He smelled like toast right before it gets burnt. The hand on his thigh was bigger than my book.
‘It’s okay, girl. I am just asking your name.’
‘Myra,’ I said quickly.
This guy had a high, square forehead and a very big mouth. His eyes were moving, soft, the lids were kind of purple. He ran his huge hand through his dreadlocks, then over his mouth. I felt so tired. A man had never been this close to me.
‘Can I sit with you? That okay? If you let me, okay?’
I nodded yes. I really had to pee.
The guy laid his walking stick down right in between us. Then he took something out of a pocket in the back of his bathing suit. It was a little clay animal, a turtle, palm-sized, with a graph carved into its shell. The guy looked at me and put it up to his mouth. I crossed my ankles and uncrossed them. Then, with two fingers the guy covered the holes on top of the turtle’s shell and started playing. He made one high note for a really long time. I rolled over onto my back. The guy began to play faster in time with his rapid breathing. His stomach started jiggling, his fingers were moving up and down like a tarantula. I turned my head to the side. I could see the guy’s face from underneath. Then the song ended with one long note as if the turtle in his mouth was moaning: Here. Here. Heeeeeeear.
