Paula DeBoard - The Mourning Hours

“Jeez, Lemke. Let it go.”

There was the sound of metal coiling, and I realized they were on Johnny’s bed. My little hideout was situated between the linen closet and Johnny’s bedroom; I might as well have been perched in his closet. Listening to Stacy’s giggles, my hearing suddenly felt very sharp. I plugged my ears and counted to twenty, then unstopped them and listened to their quiet sucking sounds. This was kissing—real kissing, late-night TV kissing, not the short pecks my parents planted on each other’s cheeks on their way out the door or the dry forehead smacks Mom gave us when we professed to have fevers, kisses that were more thermometer than affection. Once, Emilie had shown me how to practice kissing, and we had sucked on the insides of our arms until they were covered with purplish hickeys. It had taken a full week for mine to disappear, and Mom had frowned, noticing my arm as I got ready for bed. “You must be playing too hard in the barn,” she said. “You’re all bruised up.”

Now I imagined Johnny and Stacy burying each other’s bodies in hickeys, a more private version of what Mom termed their “make-out sessions” when Johnny walked Stacy to her car. I wondered if her pink lip gloss, which she reapplied constantly from a little tube that bulged in her back pocket like a strange tumor, had transferred onto Johnny’s mouth, his neck, leaving sweet raspberries on his skin.

I’ve got to say something now, I thought, make some noise, get myself out of here. I had a basic idea of what was happening—anything from necking to going all the way, which I’d learned about from Katie and Kari Schultz, twins in my grade whose college-aged babysitter had filled them in on everything from periods to where babies came from.

Then I heard something else—a zipper?

“What are you doing?” Johnny groaned, loud and low.

Stacy laughed again. “I thought you might like that,” she whispered, a throaty sound that didn’t sound like Stacy at all, but more like an actress in a love scene the moment before Mom changed the channel.

What would happen if someone came in now, like Grandpa with one of his shirts to be mended, or Mom, released from her shift early?

“You are such a tease,” Johnny moaned, and Stacy laughed again.

“Good?” she asked.

“Mmm...”

I started to count in my head again, just wanting this to be over. One, two, three... Something soft like a sweater smacked against the wall, and then there were more sounds, like someone tugging off a pair of jeans. Were these, I wondered, the pale blue jeans with heart-shaped appliqués on the back pockets?

All of a sudden, the sounds stopped, and Johnny said, clear as anything: “I don’t know about this.”

Fifteen...sixteen...seventeen...

“I told you, I’m ready,” Stacy whispered.

“But I just—I don’t want you to think you have to—”

“I don’t think I have to. I know I want to.”

“You’re sure about this? I mean, really sure?” Johnny’s voice was husky, too. All of a sudden I realized it was a man’s voice, not a boy’s.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine.

“I told you, yeah. I’m sure. What can I do to get you to believe me?” She laughed then, and Johnny groaned.

“But what about...?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll be careful.” She gave him a light smack, her voice teasing.

“Everyone always thinks they’re being careful.”

“I never thought I’d be the one who had to convince you,” she said, sounding almost annoyed for a second. Then she switched back to her throaty, teasing voice. “I mean, most guys wouldn’t mind...”

Johnny’s voice then was husky. “All right, you’ve convinced me.”

There were more kissing sounds, the bedsprings creaking. Even if I wasn’t hiding in the linen closet, I would have heard this. I started again. Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty... My cheeks burned. The bed frame rattled against the wall.

Katie and Kari had illustrated the process for me in a notebook, behind pages of multiplication tables. It didn’t make much sense until I equated her drawing with bulls and heifers. “So the man puts this—” a crude mushroom-shaped object “—into this—” a petal-shaped fissure I only vaguely equated with my own body “—and the woman gets pregnant,” Katie had told me.

“And then her breasts get really big because they’ve filled up with milk,” Kari added. I suspected they were missing a few steps in between, but still, I was unnerved to realize that this scene from the animal world in our barn translated so closely to human life. It shocked me to think that this happened all around me, to my parents, to my married cousins, even to people from church.

Johnny and Stacy were panting now, and it was as if they were breathing directly into my ear. I got stuck for a second: Seventy-one, seventy-one, seventy-one...

“Ouch!” Johnny’s voice. “Did you just bite me?”

Stacy laughed. “Go ahead, bite me back.”

Eighty-six... There was a rhythm to the bed creaking, the groans. I could hear—or was I imagining it?—two pairs of lungs, breath heavy, in sync. I hit one hundred and started working my way down. Ninety-six, ninety-five...

“Oh, Stace, Stace, Stace,” Johnny said, his voice high-pitched and rapid.

What if I stood up, announcing my presence right then? I wondered if I could sneak out of the closet, down the stairs, out the screen door and then in again with a slam, the world’s smallest superhero, here to save the day. I’d come charging up the steps and bang on Johnny’s door, yelling, “Stop—or you’ll have a baby!”

Seventy-five, seventy-four...

It was suddenly quiet, their bodies still. I felt as if I was going to suffocate in my hideout, I was so warm. If I moved, they would hear me. I had no choice but to stay still, breathing in the stale closet air until there was no more oxygen and I passed out. They would find my body there days later, and Johnny and Stacy would feel horribly guilty for what they’d done. I counted all the way down to zero and sat, listening to their silence. I imagined them together on Johnny’s bed, skin against skin, and felt a warm flush on my neck.

“Shit,” Johnny said suddenly, his voice startlingly close. “Look at the clock—it’s after five. We’ve gotta get moving.”

Stacy giggled. “Nah, I think I’ll stay here.”

Johnny was getting up—the bedsprings protesting, his voice moving farther away. “I don’t think so.”

“Why? Because your mom wouldn’t approve?” Stacy laughed her lilting laugh. “Come on, Johnny. I’ll be really quiet. I could camp here for a few days, and no one would even notice.”

“Very funny.”

I could hear Johnny moving around the room, dressing.

Stacy continued, her voice wistful, “If you want, I’ll explain it all to them. I’ll say, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Hammarstrom, I know you don’t really like me, but I’m moving in with your son.’ I’ll tell them that we love each other and that I’m already physically your wife.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Johnny said, annoyance creeping into his voice. “Put your clothes on. Let’s go.”

Stacy’s voice was smug. “Nope—I told you. I’m not leaving. I’m going to have a little talk with your parents when they come home, mister.”

She seemed pretty pleased with herself for coming up with this bizarre plan. I tried, and failed, to imagine a world where my parents would let Stacy Lemke live in my brother’s bedroom.

“Stacy, come on.” There was an edge to his voice now, something I’d heard often enough as his sister. I remembered how angry he’d been when Stacy interrupted the wrestling night, that breathless moment when I couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking, when it could have gone either way. Stacy had won that match, but I knew she wasn’t going to win this one.