Read Online Cherry Bites by Alison Preston - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alison Preston
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guess I didn’t do that great a job of disguising my voice.”
“Or you’re the only person she knows who would phone her and say such things.”
“She called me evil, said it’ll all come back to me one day.”
“It might,” I said. “I’m not sure if anyone is off the hook if they’re intentionally mean.”
Myrna looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language, Russian maybe, one of the hard ones.
She didn’t give a hoot about a lot of things and I think that’s what drew me to her. But she also scared me. What if she used one of her nasty ideas on me one day? What if it involved a dead person? After I began to understand the reverence she felt towards the dead I stopped worrying about that. But still, I kept my fascination with her family’s business to myself. I was afraid she would invite me over to look at corpses, to share the experience, and I knew I would take her up on it against my will.
Her cavalier talk about stiffs was all for show. She was like Nora in that way, careful about what she put out front. But she had cracks that you could slip through, unlike my mother, who lived behind a wall of stone.
One Saturday in the spring of 1967 Myrna came home from work with me. She backcombed my hair and put eye makeup on me and I looked like someone I had never met. We went to a dance in Windsor Park at Winakwa Community Club. We had to take a bus to get there. I knew as soon as we arrived that I was in over my head. Myrna got swept away soon after we arrived.
Joe Turner was there; he was the only person I recognized at first.
Boys approached me because they didn’t know who I was and because I didn’t look like me. l looked like someone who, at the very least, would give them a hand job.
I went to the restroom and washed the makeup off my face. Then I brushed my hair till the backcombing was out.
There were lewd messages written all over the walls in pen, in pencil, in lipstick. Some were carved into the old wood:
ROXIE SUCKS COCK
EAT ME NICKY, PLEEEESE!
Some weren’t so lewd:
PANTS VS TROUSERS VS SLACKS
Those last words cheered me up; I laughed out loud.
When I found Myrna she was dancing with a guy who had both hands on her bum. The song was “Somethin’ Stupid,” by Frank and Nancy Sinatra.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“Party pooper,” Myrna said. “What happened to your face?”
The boy turned around and I saw that it was Duane. He had a black eye.
“What did you do to your hair?” Myrna asked.
Duane looked through me; it was as though he’d taken lessons from Pete. Or maybe he genuinely didn’t recognize me: his least memorable sexual experience.
I was well over any feelings of desire for Duane, but I wasn’t over what he’d done to me. That stuck like rubber cement.
Last I heard, which wasn’t long ago, he was in prison in Quebec. Armed robbery, I think it was. So Duane’s not doing well.
Joe Turner gave me a ride home that night and he didn’t even ask me for a hand job. I guess he thought I was just a kid, without the big hair and eyeliner.
I didn’t hate Myrna after that night. But it took me quite a long time to want to hang around with her again. A person could disappear if left in her hands, fall into a hole somewhere when no one was looking, where no one even knew there was a hole.
She pursued me quite fervently; I still don’t know why. We never had much in common except that for some reason we liked each other.
Myrna and Nora liked each other too. That really got to me. It was one of the main things about Myrna that drove me crazy. It seemed peculiar to me that a kid would want to hang around with the mother of another kid. Not just peculiar. Wrong. One time she dropped in on me when I wasn’t home. She used to do that—drop in. I didn’t like it; I preferred some kind of plan.
It was late in the summer, the final week before university classes began. When I arrived I found her and Nora sitting on chairs in the backyard. Mr. Jones had
“Or you’re the only person she knows who would phone her and say such things.”
“She called me evil, said it’ll all come back to me one day.”
“It might,” I said. “I’m not sure if anyone is off the hook if they’re intentionally mean.”
Myrna looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language, Russian maybe, one of the hard ones.
She didn’t give a hoot about a lot of things and I think that’s what drew me to her. But she also scared me. What if she used one of her nasty ideas on me one day? What if it involved a dead person? After I began to understand the reverence she felt towards the dead I stopped worrying about that. But still, I kept my fascination with her family’s business to myself. I was afraid she would invite me over to look at corpses, to share the experience, and I knew I would take her up on it against my will.
Her cavalier talk about stiffs was all for show. She was like Nora in that way, careful about what she put out front. But she had cracks that you could slip through, unlike my mother, who lived behind a wall of stone.
One Saturday in the spring of 1967 Myrna came home from work with me. She backcombed my hair and put eye makeup on me and I looked like someone I had never met. We went to a dance in Windsor Park at Winakwa Community Club. We had to take a bus to get there. I knew as soon as we arrived that I was in over my head. Myrna got swept away soon after we arrived.
Joe Turner was there; he was the only person I recognized at first.
Boys approached me because they didn’t know who I was and because I didn’t look like me. l looked like someone who, at the very least, would give them a hand job.
I went to the restroom and washed the makeup off my face. Then I brushed my hair till the backcombing was out.
There were lewd messages written all over the walls in pen, in pencil, in lipstick. Some were carved into the old wood:
ROXIE SUCKS COCK
EAT ME NICKY, PLEEEESE!
Some weren’t so lewd:
PANTS VS TROUSERS VS SLACKS
Those last words cheered me up; I laughed out loud.
When I found Myrna she was dancing with a guy who had both hands on her bum. The song was “Somethin’ Stupid,” by Frank and Nancy Sinatra.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“Party pooper,” Myrna said. “What happened to your face?”
The boy turned around and I saw that it was Duane. He had a black eye.
“What did you do to your hair?” Myrna asked.
Duane looked through me; it was as though he’d taken lessons from Pete. Or maybe he genuinely didn’t recognize me: his least memorable sexual experience.
I was well over any feelings of desire for Duane, but I wasn’t over what he’d done to me. That stuck like rubber cement.
Last I heard, which wasn’t long ago, he was in prison in Quebec. Armed robbery, I think it was. So Duane’s not doing well.
Joe Turner gave me a ride home that night and he didn’t even ask me for a hand job. I guess he thought I was just a kid, without the big hair and eyeliner.
I didn’t hate Myrna after that night. But it took me quite a long time to want to hang around with her again. A person could disappear if left in her hands, fall into a hole somewhere when no one was looking, where no one even knew there was a hole.
She pursued me quite fervently; I still don’t know why. We never had much in common except that for some reason we liked each other.
Myrna and Nora liked each other too. That really got to me. It was one of the main things about Myrna that drove me crazy. It seemed peculiar to me that a kid would want to hang around with the mother of another kid. Not just peculiar. Wrong. One time she dropped in on me when I wasn’t home. She used to do that—drop in. I didn’t like it; I preferred some kind of plan.
It was late in the summer, the final week before university classes began. When I arrived I found her and Nora sitting on chairs in the backyard. Mr. Jones had
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