I see grandma’s ghost is sitting by the window in the living room. Auntie is watching TV on the couch, sweating with her stomach hanging over her knees. Tucker must be around somewhere else. I don’t hear him like I usually do when I get home from school. Maybe he’s in the garage. Maybe he’s out with a girl.
It’s hot. Auntie has the fan blowing right on her face so no one else can get at it. The AC is broken, it has been since last summer, and all we have is one fan for the whole house. She hogs it all to herself. Except for the one that Tucker uses in the garage, but that one is built into the wall so we can’t move it anywhere else.
We don’t have any cereal left in the cupboard. I make myself a peanut butter sandwich instead. Food doesn’t last as long when it’s hot. If we leave the bread sitting on the counter for just a week it turns blue-green and moldy. That happened once and Auntie got so mad at me I thought she might beat me to death, even though it wasn’t my fault.
She said to me, If I put food on the table and you don’t want to eat it then I might as well not put any food on the table at all!
Even though it’s Tucker that puts food on the table. Not her. She collects checks from the courthouse, but they don’t amount to much. She spends them on TV subscriptions and nail polish for her toes that she can barely reach. It’s Tucker who makes money fixing cars in the garage. I usually hear him when I get home. Either he has music playing or the baseball game (he used to play in high school) with the fan going and it’s loud. Even though Auntie complains about the noise she knows we wouldn’t be able to live in this house if it weren’t for the money he makes.
I’ll get a job next year, a real job, and start making money so she won’t be able to say anything to me either. She can just sit with the fan in the living room painting her toenails and I’ll buy my own food and never say a word about it.
Hey! She calls to me. What are you doing in there?
I made something to eat.
She coughs for a second into her fist. A wet cough in her chest. Well bring me a lemonade from the fridge baby would you?
It’s cold when I open the refrigerator door and I stand there a second longer before I bring her a lemonade in the living room.
I see grandma’s ghost just sitting at the edge of the windowsill. Rocking back and forth like she would in her rocking chair when she was still alive. She watches me sleep. She’s watching me when I wake up. Sometimes that’s enough.
Gogo
Gogo is good friends with Millie. Millie and Dee Boy had been together for a long time. I ask Dee Boy to talk to Millie to talk to Gogo for me. Dee Boy laughs and asks why I don’t just talk to her myself. I give him a look like he should know why.
Fine, he says. I will.
At night I . I laid awake all night thinking about what Millie might say to Gogo. What Gogo might say back to Millie. What Dee Boy might say to me.
The next day Gogo wasn’t in school.
I guess she is home sick, Dee Boy said and shrugged when I talked to him.
Do you miss her? Millie asked in a voice that told me Dee Boy had, for a second time, betrayed my trust. He was supposed to go incognito: Ask Millie casually to ask Gogo how she felt about me.
I said, No, I don’t miss her. I’m just worried is all.
“Aw!” Millie said. “How cute.”
I didn’t pay attention in Chemistry that day.
A Dream During the Day
The next day. Gogo is wearing a shirt with an instant ramen logo that’s too big for her. It’s none of my business what she wants to wear. But it makes me want to look. I try not to. I look when I think that she can’t see me. She’s not beautiful the way Millie is, but she’s perfect to me. I know I’ll think about her later before I go to sleep.
I see you looking at me! She says to me, but she doesn’t sound upset.
I wasn’t.
She smiles. It’s okay if you were.
I’m getting nervous. Really?
You can touch me if you want to. I don’t mind.
Really?
Really.
I can feel her nipples get hard like pebbles from the playground through her shirt. There is a sound in her throat, a sort of mmmmmm like the sound microwave makes. Gogo is pillows and pebbles in the kitchen. She has her eyes closed and I’m looking at her chin. I’m getting dizzy. She’s leaning close to me.
Do you want to kiss me? She asks.
Okay.
But don’t use your tongue.
Why not?
Because I don’t like it.
I ask her, Can we…?
What?
You know.
No, she says and crosses her arms.
Why not?
Because I want to keep my virginity.
My lips are getting dry. It feels like sand on my mouth. I’m scared if I lick them Gogo will think I’m trying to use my tongue and make me stop. I don’t know when this will happen again or if this will happen again.
But she stops anyway and says, Your lips are really dry.
I know.
I don’t think I want to kiss anymore.
I’ll be really nice.
Gogo giggles. You are. She says.
I am?
Really nice. It’s a good thing. You can tough my legs if you want to.
Your legs?
By my shorts.
She’s wearing short shorts that show off her skin. By now my mouth is so dry that even when I lick my lips it still feels like dust from the street. My heart is beating fast in my chest. It hurts like someone punched me between my legs. I move my hands from her chest to her thigh though, pretty close to her hip. She makes the microwave mmmmm sound again with her eyes closed.
After a little while she says to me, You can touch me there if you want.
Where? I ask.
Under my shorts.
Really?
She nods her head. Take off my shorts first.
We looked at pictures of the human anatomy in Biology class. I could name all of the parts of the human body on the test. We learned about the way the body works, what happens when we eat and drink and sleep and… We have sex education class, too, they showed us the right way to put on condoms and what happens when you don’t. It didn’t teach us what to do in situations like this.
Gogo is nodding her head at me, looking at me right in the eye. She has pretty eyes. Dark but they change colors when the lights move. I look around the park for a second. Hiding behind the bush. The playground on the other side. I don’t see anyone and they wouldn’t see us anyway. People don’t come to this park very much. Only homeless people, people who do drugs, and people who want to do the things we’re doing.
I try to unbutton her shorts. It takes a little while because they’re tight around her hips. She helps me take them off. She’s wearing underwear that has pink flowers on it. It looks like the underwear that Lala used to wear, and I would find them when she would forget to take her wash out of the dryer. It made me uncomfortable.
Gogo says to me, Well?
Well what?
Aren’t you going to touch me?
I put my hand on the little flowers, the way you would pick an apple from the tree. Gogo laughs and says, No, not like that.
I’m embarrassed but I don’t want her to know. I know my cheeks are red. That happens a lot. My mouth is dry and I think I might explode. I want to touch myself but I’m supposed to touch her instead. We learned about spontaneous combustion in Chemistry: There was a man in Utah who burst into flames sitting in his armchair and all that was left of him was a pile of ashes on the carpet. His cat used them for a litter box in front of the TV. That might happen to me now and I’ll just blow away in the wind and disappear forever. And – maybe that’s okay.
Gogo takes my hand. I can feel her skin softer than anything I’ve ever felt before. It’s hard to breathe. I move my fingers the way Lala played the piano. But then after a little while Gogo giggles again and says, You’re tickling!
I’m sorry.
She kisses my cheek. It’s okay.
Can I…
What?
Can I tell you something?
She looks at me. My hand still between her legs. I take it out quickly and wipe it on my shirt because my fingers are wet. She says to me, You can tell me something. It’s okay.
I don’t really know what to do.
Gogo smiles, but it’s not a mean smile. She says to me, I know.
I do think I could make you feel good if…
It’s okay.
If I could practice.
Gogo smiles at me again, and she asks, You want to practice with me?
She helps me take off my shorts, and then she takes off her underwear and puts them on the side of the blanket. We are hidden by the bush and the blanket Gogo says she took from her cousin but I’m still worried someone might see. She’s almost all the way naked, wearing her instant ramen shirt and nothing else. I only have my socks on. She touches me there and it feels so good it hurts and she slowly pulls me closer to her. I can smell perfume and she smells so good it hurts and I know it doesn’t make any sense, but none of this makes any sense, the world doesn’t make any sense, but I never want it to end.
And then suddenly Officer Melon walks up with his flashlight and says, Hey! What are you kids doing down there?
Gogo gets up so fast she kicks me between the legs. It hurts so bad that I fall to the side and lay like a baby holding my stomach with my arms. There are tears in my eyes. The water drips into the dirt with the snot coming out of my nose. But I’m not really crying. It just hurts so bad I can’t remember anything hurting as bad as this. I can’t move or breathe or anything.
Officer Melon is standing over us. I don’t know what Gogo is doing because my eyes are closed. I can hear her trying to put her clothes back on. All I can do is lay on the ground, holding my stomach until the pain goes away.
Auntie calls me a miscreant, breathing heavy and drinking her lemonade by the fan. I have to look it up in the dictionary to see what that word means. Tucker just laughs at me. He tells me not to worry. We all learn eventually. No one ever teaches us what to do with feelings like these. He says, Good for you, and touches my shoulder which makes me feel better.