Susan Steinberg - Hydroplane - Fictions

In the cafeteria, the boy-looking girl watching me walk to return my tray, watching as the new kid grabs my tits, roughly, from behind and presses his cock against my ass, and yes in seventh grade, and yes his cock, though in seventh grade we call it a dick, and I don't have to say what it feels like, seventh grade or not, and I don't have to say again how he calls me ugly, how his dick is pressing hard enough to make me crumble, and this boy-looking girl running over as if to get me up off the floor after I crumble, as if to save me, but kicking me, instead, in the legs and trying to kick his legs, as well, before he walks away laughing, pushing through the crowd and disappearing.

Standing in the bedroom and the two friends walking back in to retrieve their coats which have been on the bottom of the coat heap all evening as they were the first to arrive, and the two friends finding, beneath their coats, the cat, small, curled beneath the coats, and finding, too, that their fucking on the already heavy weight of the drying coat heap has hurt the cat.

The boy-looking girl's mother calling my house on Friday evening, and my mother saying, No she's not, and, Yes she's home, and, Yes you can, and handing me the telephone with a look on her face as if to ask if I am in trouble, and taking the telephone and telling her mother, when she asks where the hell her girl is, that she's at school for a club I think, Which club, I don't know which, Well, what did she say, Nothing, Well, you said a club, A music club, She doesn't do music, Science then, Put your mother on the phone.

The hostess getting herself off in her bedroom in the evenings, and hearing from my bedroom the faint sounds of her and pressing my ear hard to my floor, singing softly all the while, yet pressing to my floor, her ceiling, to better hear her.

Realizing the crossing guard has given me one of the new kid's shirts, that there are no instructions on washing it and returning it, that she has most likely forgotten that she even lent out the shirt, and my mother trying to wash it to return it before I rescue it from the pile of laundry on the laundry room floor and hide it in my pillowcase, taking it out at night, reading the letters on the front of the shirt which spell something, the name of a school, not ours.

Hearing sirens from my house when cops go past in search of this boy-looking girl, and the cops, later, coming to my house and telling me and my mother that they have searched the girl's house where her mother is frantic, that they have searched the schoolyard, the classrooms, finding nothing, no one, except those who are truly in clubs for things like music and science and have not seen her, ever, and the cops questioning me about this girl's whereabouts, saying, Come on miss, trying to make me spill how this girl is going to kiss the new kid with her tongue and do other things in the woods, saying, Where is she miss, I don't know.

The two friends calling it an accident, calling it uncanny how the cat is hurt, blaming the noise, the crowd, saying that the cat had to hide somewhere, blaming the hostess, deciding that the cat could not take the crowd, the noise, and hid, and how uncanny as cats are not easily crushed but slide out from under piles with ease, saying that the hostess should have put the cat in a neighbor's place to sit with one of those pathetic always-home neighbors always doing nothing in the evenings, deciding that the hostess is to blame for the cat, that she is irresponsible as she hates her own life and cannot possibly care for the life of another, not even a cat, and the friends deciding to leave the cat where it is, suffering under their coats, until they know what to tell the hostess.

The cops telling my mother that they even have gone to the new kid's house to question his mother on whether or not the girl has crossed the street at the corner that day, not that we ever cross at the corner, and the cops telling my mother of a neighbor of the new kid noticing the cop car in front of the new kid's house and this neighbor coming outside of her own house to say, They're out of town, of the new kid and his mother, and me saying, That fucking liar, of the boy-looking girl, and my mother saying, What did you say, and me saying, Nothing, and the cops saying, Come on miss, and, as the girl, it turns out, is a liar, and is, therefore, nothing but talk, me telling the cops that perhaps the girl is in the woods, alone, that she often goes to the woods by the crossing guard's house to be alone, and the cops leaving and finding her there in the woods sitting under a tree by a fire, and the girl calling me from her bedroom late Friday, after being driven home in a cop car, after being yelled at by her mother, and whispering to me, You're dead.

Everyone leaving, except me, except the last guest, as the hostess is clinging to him, begging him not to leave just yet, and except the two friends who are somewhat frantic in the bedroom, the hostess gripping the elbow of the last guest with one hand and fanning smoke with the scorched dishcloth with the other, saying goodnight to the guests when they leave, fanning all the while toward the window where I, again, sit in a chair and breathe that smell of campfire in a circle of rocks, that smoke that stays on one's clothes for days, that scorched smell we can smell in each other's hair when we play CB radio, both of us Kitten and both Man of Steel, groping each other under the bed, and the hostess letting go of the last guest's elbow and sliding down the wall to kneel to pick up a crushed cigarette and staying there, slumped, looking as if she has forgotten something, like who she is, or where she is, the sky starting to lighten, despite the rain, the hostess slumped against the wall, looking faint by the last guest's feet.

In the cafeteria on Monday, sitting alone before the boy-looking girl comes over saying, You're dead, and me saying, You're a liar, and her saying, Fuck you, and me saying, Liar, and her saying, I'll kick you, and me saying, Fuck you, and her saying, I'll kick you I swear, before I get up to return my tray, before he, coming from somewhere, from I don't know where, grabs me from behind, saying, Ugly, in my ear, and, Stop calling me, before I crumble, before she kicks my legs and he walks off and my mother has to come get me.

The hostess fainting on the floor, her back against the wall, her legs out crooked like dolls' legs, her head crooked, too, hanging, mouth open, the last guest standing by her legs, unmoving, knowing he has decisions to make, at this point, as she faints, to wake her or not, to leave her or not, to fuck her or not, trying to see, one can tell, his near future, the late morning, the feeling of that.

The two friends trying to wake the hostess with a light tap on the arm, saying, Wake up, Wake up.

My mother laughing, saying, Boys will be boys, when she gets me at school the day I cannot pull my body off the dirty cafeteria floor after the new kid grabs my tits and calls me ugly and the girl kicks my legs and calls me lesbo and the crowd of kids is screaming, Lesbo lesbo, and the science teacher walking through and all the kids walking away and the science teacher leaning over me, saying, What is it, and, Can you get up, and then, when I do not get up, the science teacher calling down the hall to the school nurse, and the school nurse lifting me up from the floor as one would lift a heavy box and dragging me to her office and calling my mother and saying, Can you come up to school, saying, A boy teased her, then laughing at whatever it is my mother says and looking at me and laughing again, and my mother coming to get me from school, shaking her head, laughing, saying, Boys will be boys, trying to make me laugh on our walk past his house, past his mother stooped in her backyard garden, past the woods where I have rolled on the ground collecting dirt on my skin and hair, and my mother making faces to try to make me laugh, saying, Those dumb boys, and, I bet he likes you, and, I bet he's in love, patting me on the back, saying, Of course he's in love.