Shut up youre pretty, p.2
Shut Up You're Pretty, page 2
“With tongue?”
“Of course with tongue. We were obviously just licking the screen, but something about it made us feel very connected.” Theresa brought two fingers to her mouth and stuck her tongue in between them.
“That’s really cool,” I said.
She moved her body so that my head slipped from its support.
That was the summer Theresa became obsessed with the word “cunt.” On any given night, she might come home and claim she had been followed. “He called me a cunt!” she’d shout, while changing into her nightgown. “Can you believe it? A cunt!”
Theresa would open her mouth wide, holding the flashlight like a gun. “What do you think snatch means?”
I didn’t know, and usually, whenever we hit a brick wall like this, we would move on to a new activity.
Later, in bed, she’d tell me, “I was just kidding about the men.” To which I’d say, “I know.”
Theresa was exactly who I wanted to be when I grew up. She had an answer for every question, an explanation for every argument, a how-to guide for every problem. We once saw a man at the intersection of Galloway and Lawrence with a small teardrop tattoo. It meant he had killed someone, Theresa told me, and lost the love of his life because of it. Detailed, I thought. Didn’t understand how she could get all of that from a tattoo.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sure you’ll find somebody else!”
The man surprised us both when he leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.
It was the first week of August. I liked this part of the summer. It was the limbo. We had exhausted our imaginations, had played every single street game, sport, and exercise. All we could do now was fill our days with repetition.
Every day, Theresa and I woke up to each other and wrote a list of things we needed to do. But on this day it was so hot Theresa declared we do only one thing. Usually our day involved a few hours at a swimming pool in the area. And if we couldn’t get access to a building, then Theresa would suggest we get creative. Either by running through sprinklers or shooting each other with hoses. But on this day Theresa suggested we fill the tub with water.
“It’s your parents,” she said. “They aren’t paying the bills again.”
She said “again” as if we’d known each other for years.
In the bathroom, I watched Theresa fill the tub to the brim. Her body seemed to shrink behind the fabric of her dress. She ran her arms through the water, occasionally looking back at me, as if this was the most radical idea and she the most radical person. She undressed, and I felt a strange sensation. A shiver. Like a cold wind had quickly passed through me.
I had never seen a real person fully naked, in the flesh. In pictures, yes. Often, my best friend Jolie and I might find magazines and flip through them to touch the women wherever we wanted. But I had never been this close. I took off my shirt, jumped out of my jeans, and walked over. Then, once I was before her, I took off my underwear.
“Shut up,” she said, pointing at my body. “You’ve got a bush.”
I stood there, not entirely sure whether to conceal myself or get in the tub.
“I can fix that for you,” she said. “I know this amazing wax recipe from the internet.”
“Wax what?”
“Your bush,” she said. “I can wax your bush. You won’t even feel a thing.”
Theresa caressed her body on the cold surface of the water. I could see her right nipple poking outside of her crossed arms.
We went downstairs. I was still naked, but Theresa was wrapped in a towel. Theresa arranged me on the kitchen floor. In my periphery, I watched her boil white glue, chicken broth, and a pinch of salt in a pot. That’s when she started to open up to me, as though stirring the recipe calmed her down. I didn’t even need to ask. All I had to do was lie still.
Theresa crouched down next to me and scooped the paste over my pubic hair, then pressed a piece of parchment paper over the wax. It was hot and thick and dried instantly. She talked and talked and talked throughout. She told me how her mother had lost all her beauty crying over the divorce. She offered this so casually, as though still referring to pubic hair, massaging the parchment paper and stopping only to blow air in between my legs. I don’t know when I stopped listening to her and started focusing on the sensation inside of me.
Then she gasped, “Fuck,” and my eyes blinked open.
“Shit, fuck, shit, fuck.” Her eyes looked directly into mine. “Do you feel anything?”
I looked down. The piece of parchment paper had attached itself to me like a second layer of skin.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“It’s not coming off?”
“You don’t feel it when I try to pull? I don’t know.”
“Try again!”
Theresa tried, but the paper stayed put. I waited for her to say that it wasn’t her fault, that the paper was cheap, that I had let the hair grow too long and there was no way around it.
“I’m gonna get a knife,” Theresa said instead.
She instructed me to cover my eyes, and I stupidly listened to her. I could feel a hard, cold, flat stick scraping along the edge of the paper. Theresa was going slowly, so slowly, I slipped away again, and focused only on the feeling.
Then, there was a stab inside of me. A long and piercing pain that seemed to follow a straight line. And then it felt good.
I could feel Theresa panic and the quick movement of her arms pivoting around me. And then, as I tried to sit up, the knife just glided right out of me.
There was a moment of silence. Theresa looked away. And then I looked away. And we sat there on the kitchen floor, a wet knife between us.
“Maybe you should go back in the tub,” she said after a while. “Maybe the water will loosen the paper.”
I didn’t object. I went up and sat in the tub alone. I rocked my body in a circular motion.
For a week after, I felt exhausted and hot and locked myself in my bedroom. I was desperate to feel that way again. I would reach for a toothbrush or a hairbrush, a pencil, a pen, anything, really. I didn’t know what this meant, and I didn’t care. I loved the feeling. I loved the way my stomach did somersaults whenever I found myself alone. I would spend hours masturbating, never tiring. I wouldn’t answer if anyone came to the door. I wouldn’t go out anywhere with Theresa. And from my bedroom window, I could hear that Theresa had replaced me. I could hear Theresa and this new me playing in the backyard. And when they called for me, I would throw my pillow over my head and wait until the calling was over.
I didn’t get to say goodbye to Theresa before she left. She went the exact same way she came. In the middle of the night and without a word.
THE EVENT
My best friend Jolie and I spent every evening after school in the park. It was an abandoned soccer field behind our housing complex that nearly got turned into a cemetery. It was where gang members used to host meetings or throw parties—which looked exactly same. But the park was also a place of serenity. It sat across from the main road, tucked behind a row of mature trees. Green instead of salmon, like the brick of our units. A wall between us and them.
We were the kids of Galloway and they were anyone who judged us for it.
Jolie and I sat on the ground and held our breath, eyes closed, lips pressed together. The one who could hold off the longest won. But there was no prize and no other rules. In fact, there was barely a game. It didn’t have an end goal. There was just the two of us and the park. Somewhere to go. Somewhere to run away. We lay together.
“Do you know that people smoke cigarettes to cure anxiety?” Jolie said.
“Is what you have now?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Are you really going to get a job?” I asked.
“Don’t listen to that whore mouth Gigi.”
“Well, I have a plan.”
“Does it involve working to fulfil one of Gigi’s conspiracy theories?”
“That depends,” I said. “Would you say kissing is work?”
Jolie sat up straight. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You do realize that my mother, the woman you adore so much, is a druggie, right?”
It was true that I had a fascination with Gigi. She was a first edition of Jolie. More accessible. More easy. Her addiction gave her magnitude and charm, and a good base for redemption. But more than that, Gigi was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The heroin had only tired her out. Darkened her teeth and brightened her hair. She would hide the bruises on her skin, so in public it was easy to mistake her for someone who simply had a rough night out.
Jolie graced the contours of my knee with her fingers, and then stretched back down. The long drape of her hair meshed with the grass.
“Do you remember how Dylan paid us to kiss last week?”
“I remember his baby boner, yes.”
“What do you think?”
“He’s not my type.”
“He paid us.”
“Yes, he did, I remember.”
It took Jolie a moment to hear me out, but once she did, her face lit up.
It was getting late, and it was too cold to sleep outside. I took Jolie’s hand and led the way back to my house. Gigi had recently gotten back together with Steve, and Jolie couldn’t go home when he was around. He made it very clear he didn’t like children, though of course he’d never touch a hair on Jolie’s head. The beatings were reserved for Gigi, and we did our best not to be around to witness them. If we did, Gigi would laugh and change her scream to sound like a moan. Later, she’d declare, “Ladies, best advice I can give you, be wary of men who know what they’re doing in the bedroom. They’ll destroy every part of you, if you know what I mean.” Then Gigi would look for Advil, but that was part of the show. She was really looking for a baggie or a needle.
Now that Jolie was turning fourteen, Gigi had gotten it into her head that she needed to help with rent. We lived in a subsidized neighbourhood and rent was mostly reasonable. The ones who couldn’t afford it might have a two-month grace period before the locks were changed and police started coming around the entire block. We collectively tried to prevent the latter from happening. It wasn’t uncommon for Mrs Broomfield to go door to door with a basket asking for money to help somebody in need. But nobody looked after Gigi anymore. It was just Jolie. It was just Jolie and me.
Gigi had a friend with a catering company who had agreed to hire Jolie under the table. But we didn’t trust Gigi.
In the morning, we went out to find Dylan. We told him an event was taking place at the park. With a silent nod, we all knew what the event would be. Dylan had a very sober face, earnest and strong. And behind the dark circles under his eyes, I saw a little boy dreaming of a Jamaican waterfront. Dylan was sweet, sugar-coated.
In the evening, Jolie and I wore matching crop tops and sat facing each other at the park. There were three boys with Dylan, and we charged them each five dollars. The night went by quickly. Nobody asked for an encore. Nobody clapped or cheered or growled like we had expected. Everybody went on their own personal journey, and the intimacy was felt in a gaze. Jolie looking at me, me looking at Jolie, them looking at us.
The next day there were five of them. And on Friday there were six. That was a total of seventy-five dollars by the end our first week. I loved Jolie. I loved her so much I told her to keep the money.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked, bringing the money to her nostrils. “This is what Gigi does,” she said, sniffing the money.
I was sure.
Jolie gave some of the money to Gigi, but we used most of it to buy cigarettes, treats, cosmetics. The park still belonged to us. Even though we shared it. Outside of business hours people seemed to know that it belonged to us. There was peace there. Nothing else.
“We should flash them,” I said. “Charge five dollars for a kiss, and ten for anything more.”
“Fifteen for a kiss, a flash, and a three-way.”
“Like we kiss, and then we kiss them?”
“It has to be step by step. We kiss each other, then we flash them, and then they kiss us.”
“We should charge more for that. Twenty, at least.”
“Twenty-five with tongue.”
The Event was a hit. Our days suddenly felt anticlimactic, as every night we were putting on a show. Afterwards, Jolie and I would just read. And be together.
I got the best of Jolie in the afternoons. She’d be happy and singing, and I’d shape my body into a starfish, enjoying her happiness. She was a good dancer too. And she had a voice on her. She would sing a mix of popular love songs while I read, and then she would run her fingers down my back, and back up.
It was a weekend and it hadn’t snowed yet and we were enjoying the simplicity. The park would have been empty if not for us. But the shadows of the housing complex felt like company. We could see Mrs Broomfield behind the fence that led to the south block sweeping leaves in her backyard. Next door, Darnell’s silhouette seemed to be stroking guitar strings in the dimness of the kitchen light. And outside, though we couldn’t see them, we heard younger girls laughing.
Jolie pushed my braids behind my ear. “I like this look on you.” She was referring to my hair, but I got the feeling there was more to it. For the first time, she kissed me because she wanted to. Her real and unrehearsed lips were warm and soft and unlike anything I could have imagined.
Two months went by and we could expect ten to twelve boys per night. Jolie told me she gave a blow job to a college guy as a way to get close to him and others like him. Her plan worked. We were a hit with college boys.
But we found that working every day took away our credibility. Jolie argued that it made us seem too desperate and readily available. So, instead, the event was held only on Thursdays. We could expect fifteen to twenty guys on any given Thursday. Never any girls. They all stopped talking to us once the money really started coming in. But we were swimming in it, and we couldn’t stop.
One night, it was just Dylan and me.
“Do you want to touch me?” I asked. “You don’t have to pay me.”
“You’re a really sweet girl,” he began, and I could hear the etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, so I leaned forward and kissed him. Kissed him like I had been kissing Jolie but with less consciousness. It lasted a minute. Maybe even less than that.
Dylan pulled away. “You’re like a sister to me—you know that.”
I did. I also knew that the crowd wasn’t coming in to see two girls kissing but to see Jolie being kissed.
Dylan stopped coming to the event on Thursdays.
Jolie bought us matching winter jackets. Black with Baby Phat written in gold cursive on the right arm.
“So I guess Steve’s moving in for real for real.”
“Good old Stevie boy,” I said.
“I’ll basically have to fuck him to get rid of him now.”
“Yeah, basically.”
We had our largest crowd late in November, just before the snow took over. Twenty-two boys. None of whom I recognized. All of whom seemed to be familiar with Jolie.
Jolie and I faced each other. We kissed. Slow and steady.
“With tongue,” I heard someone say.
I turned to the crowd. “That’s an extra two dollars,” I insisted.
Somebody threw a toonie at us. I poked my tongue inside Jolie’s mouth and she giggled.
“Twenty dollars if you finger her!”
Jolie laughed, which was good. I hadn’t heard her laugh since Steve moved in. She pinned me to the ground and got on top of me. The last thing I remember: she grabbed a bouquet of her hair and tied it with her bracelet.
Then we smoked cigarettes on the damp grass. It hadn’t rained or anything. The earth was just getting ready for winter.
“We’re porn stars,” I said. “More than that.
We’re real stars,” Jolie said.
We went Christmas shopping at the Morningside Mall. Even though we had the money, we stole something from every store. For the thrill. We tried on wigs and cowboy hats and heard from the woman at guest services that the mall would be shutting down. We had a funeral: rest in peace sweet escalators, rest in peace Victoria’s Secret, rest in peace Hot Dog man.
Jolie turned fourteen in January. I left the window open in case she needed a place to sleep. Her fingers were burning hot when she got in bed. They wrapped around my waist and met at the centre of my stomach.
“Are you awake?”
“I’m dead. I’m dying.”
She was hot. And whispery. And sweating. “I did a thing.”
I waited to hear about the thing.
“I fucked Steve.”
Jolie kissed my neck. I kept my eyes closed. So I could wake up and decide which part happened and which part I imagined.
“Was it your first time?” I said.
“Well. Sort of. I mean, once with Dylan.”
I turned to face her. In her eyes, I saw that little boy again—drowning in the ocean. Dylan and Jolie. I couldn’t picture it.
DOWN THE LAKESHORE
It was true what they said about my father. He was a dreamer. He was a poet in his mannerisms. In his own personal torture. All intense and empty eyes. The contradictions could make you uncomfortable. But even when I first met him, after Mother, Junior, and I immigrated to Canada from Congo, I knew he was my father. I was six years old, but I knew. It was like hearing my own heartbeat.
My father was light brown. It was a commodity back in Congo. He looked like he might have had some white in him, and since his mother, the original woman, was accused of fucking around, people talked all they wanted. Junior and I were so dark, but people never questioned whether we were his children. People only talked about Mother. She was a purebred. Mbulas in every way. Ate spices and prayed twice a day. Hard-working. Strong features.
My father would typically be gone in the morning when I woke and wouldn’t make it home in time for dinner. The longest I went living underneath the same roof without once seeing him was two months. It was better in the summer. I would wake up extra early to send him off.
