Would you rather listen to the story? (wav files)

Vanessa. Here she is at 3, up ahead in the laneway, thin hair shining down that back and I'm chasing her, in a line of children all trailing toys.  The fisher price phone slows me down.  But I was always faster than Vanessa and I could always always catch her.

At six she had an attractive, wandering hazel eye. I would brush the hair off her face, her earnest hands trying to stop me.
With Vanessa things happened. All sorts of lessons that left metal tastes in my mouth. In our mouths as we kissed. She was born in Canada, England on her lips, her accent strong against my tongue. We went to different schools. Her friends were not my friends.  And there was need, in her hunting pack, to keep pace.

Vanessa had always roamed shopping malls alone; quarries.  Secretly I harbored large fears in her adultless world, though not in my own sweet terrain  where I could run faster, confidently, could wrestle and hold and there was no child who could beat me, not older, not younger, not even my uncle's friends, boys in their teens who I would set upon like a feral child and they would hold back because I was a child and because they were weak.

 

At Vanessa's house our roles reversed and often I held back.  I just didn't get her mother sleeping in the bathroom, door shut (years later I would spot Evelyn in a London department store, recognizing that hand I saw between the hall and the bathroom: she is a dream, she has an English accent, and she sleeps and sleeps because she is tired and smart.  She forgets to make up good games for children to play at parties -- my grandmother always makes up good games -- instead, Evelyn makes us all pull those toys around and around the house and even at three I think "this stinks" but there is Vanessa up front with that hair.  And she's my friend.  And her mother is crying).
So. At ten.  With Vanessa. I am a quarry girl, a motherless girl, an English girl, a kissing girl.

The boy we are chasing is tearing away on foot, but we have bicycles and soon we've blocked the exit to the quarry.  He retreats to his bike.  Wary.  Two... Three....  He=s off.  I watch him... his thin calf, the back of that flying bicycle, his eye, scared, as he turns.  I feel all of our girl eyes, looking in that one direction, giddy, in pursuit.  We girls are a line of warmth, and when we see the flutter and swallow in that boy's face, the left foot slipping from the pedal, his skidding, the unforced errors, we are a burst of electricity.  We hold back, not wanting to catch him just yet. We move with our bikes, with his fear. and the weird thing is, we're silent, I think back and the only sound I hear are tires on gravel and a thin wheeze up front.

 

Boys don't frighten any of us. I know this though I don't know any of the other girls' names...  I've never seen these girls before but I do know that at all our different schools the girls are smarter and bigger and choose gangs and friends first and grab boys and kiss them and keep them corralled for the whole of recess.  It's always been like this.

At ten we press our girl bodies against them and our tongues into them. And yes, we scratch -- why not?-- we scratch and pull hair because all's fair and even if the boys turn, catch us in their small hands, and, running, push us, momentum, not them, sending us to the ground, they can't hold us.  And other boys might come running to see but never never in time because boys don't have weight, don't have the substance to keep us on the gravel, and by the time a crowd arrives our hands like hammers have forced the boys to release, our legs, strong, thick-kneed dangerous have twisted them underneath us, and sometimes they are crying out by the time other defeated boys arrive. 

 

This is what I learn as I ride... we girls, we are reading each other's minds. 

When I kiss Vanessa later, I wonder if those other girls taste me on their lips.
 

 

Where was I? Ten.  Summer. With Vanessa and her friends whose names I don't know. We find this boy.  Pursue. Slowly, in unison, not speaking, we circle and stop him. And make him take down his pants, because he doesn't want to.  And we pull away his bicycle and this sandpit is huge and there are no adults anywhere in the world and one girl kicks sand.  And then we are all kicking, kicking wild like every time you've been told not to kick sand has been stored up tight in our bodies waiting for this frenzy and, yes, the sand does get in our eyes and I can't even remember seeing us doing it just breathing and tearing. As the sand clears, he's crumbling and sobbing and we seem so much bigger than he is, there, like a shell-less thing, his penis coated with gravel. And he wasn't supposed to be that small.

 

He's turned his head and pressed his face right into the dirt.  Lets out a scream. Muffled. Crazy.   

 

Two  

 

three   

 

four   

 

five.  Then we're running scattered --scared, too, and I taste blood in my mouth as I get back on my bike, like one of the other girls has bitten her cheek.  We're off like bees but not before our hands dip and clutch knowingly, return to our bodies holding his clothes. I'm sorry, we say, silent, it's only to slow you down.

  

 

I never see those girls again. Heading back to Vanessa's, I worry what her mother will say to us so flushed, so tingling, panting into the garage, clutching a small boy's shirt. But Evelyn is sleeping -- again-- and Vanessa and I go upstairs, take off our own shirts.  It seems hours since I spoke.  Vanessa pulls the bottom drawer right out of her dresser and in duet I place the shirt to the very back.  She closes the door and I read her mind some more and put my fingers on her warm chest and slow her heart and she presses her lips against mine, sealing secrets.

 
   

Her body is warm, beauty-marked, her hair thin across that lazy olive eye. I swallow hard and I am  sorry, I would say something spell-breaking but I can't feel what running boys feel, only this wave of girls.
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