Read Online Before My Life Began by Jay Neugeboren - Free Book Online Page A

Lillian laughed while my mother said what she always did whenever Sheila visited me—about how when I was a baby she used to put Sheila into the bathtub with me, and about how Sheila had liked to help bathe my ducky-wucky.
    â€œDo you wanna play Monopoly?” I asked.
    Sheila looked at the magazines on my bed.
    â€œIs all you guys ever think about sports?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou’ll be the same as all the rest. Sports, sports, sports—it’s the only thing that ever fills up your head.” Then she giggled. “Except for one other thing.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œYou’re too young.”
    â€œI’m past eleven,” I said. “I’ll be twelve next September.”
    She went to the window, turned around, leaned backwards and arched her back so that her breasts stood out inside her sweater. Her sweater was a pale yellow-pink, the color of peaches.
    â€œDo you think I’m pretty?”
    â€œI guess so,” I said. “I don’t know.”
    â€œPeople say I’m gonna look like my mother when I grow up, but I think I got my father’s eyes and smile more.” She came closer so that her breasts almost touched my chest. She wore the kind of brassiere that made me think of the nose cones on dive-bombers. “My mother was real pretty when my father married her. Not all fat the way she is now, with too much makeup.”
    I looked into her face quickly and saw that she was right, that she had Abe’s soft brown eyes.
    â€œYou wanna play something else?” she asked. “I got a new game.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œYou ever play ‘Radio’?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou wanna learn?”
    â€œI guess so.”
    â€œYou sit down on the bed,” she said, “and I sit next to you.”
    I sat on the bed and she sat next to me. Then she smiled—her gums showed above her teeth the way Abe’s did—and twisted herself around so that she was almost on top of me and I could smell her again, the way I could in the foyer. She closed her eyes. I waited. I heard my mother and Lillian laughing. Sheila opened her eyes and pushed her chest toward me.
    â€œHow you play radio is that you turn my knobs and your antenna goes up.”
    â€œI don’t get it,” I said. “What knobs?”
    But as soon as I said it, she jiggled herself from side to side so that her breasts rubbed against me, and then she started laughing, forcing herself at first, then lying back on the bed and covering her mouth and getting hysterical and pointing at me and making fun of how red my face was getting.
    â€œYou’re an idiot,” I said, standing. “I don’t gotta play with you. You’re crazy.”
    â€œOh yeah?” she said, and she clapped her hand over her mouth again, to keep from laughing too loud. “Wanna hear another game?”
    I stood by the window, looking out into the courtyard, wondering if Kate and Beau Jack were nice and warm together in their apartment. I heard Sheila come up behind me and when she touched my back I twisted away and shoved past her to the door.
    â€œYou leave off me, do you hear? Do you hear?”
    â€œWhat’re you scared of? Don’t you like girls?”
    â€œI don’t like you and your stupid games.”
    She came closer but she didn’t touch me.
    â€œSo here’s the other game,” she said. “It’s called ‘Crazy,’ and in this game I get to put my hands in your pockets, see, and then you ask me if I’m feeling crazy and when I say yes, you say, ‘Well, you put your hands in a little bit further and you’ll feel nuts!’”
    She lay down on my bed again, laughing and rolling from side to side and pointing at me. I wanted to smash her face in, but instead I just went back into the living room.
    â€œHey,” my mother said. “You two sound like you’re having one