A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

Two incredibly large insects, with wingspans like small airplanes, buzz past Cheryl. They buzz back and forth within a foot of her head, and on their second pass-by they lock together belly to belly like Siamese twins. Their wings beat against each other with a faint clicking sound. They are mating; Cheryl knows that. She knows what they are doing, but she doesn’t know how. She doesn’t know what they are doing it with. She can’t see anything. The insects’ green eyes bulge out of the sockets, their front feelers claw at each other, and Cheryl feels sick. There are too many sensations, too many distractions. She is writhing in her lawn chair, shifting her limbs, her balance. The chair rocks and lifts into the air as if it might tip and dump Cheryl onto the grass. She grips the armrests, thinking that holding tight will make her safe.

“I’m gonna get you, I’m gonna get you.” Cheryl hears the voice of her next-door neighbor. “Oooh, I’m gonna get you now.” There is a high-pitched scream, a squeal of pleasure. Her next-door neighbor is chasing his daughter around in the backyard. She is six years old. “Bet you can’t get me. Bet you can’t,” she mimics and taunts her father.

“Oooh, I’m gonna.”

“Enough,” the mother screams and then there is silence.

Cheryl looks around the yard and back at the house. Everything is still and shadowless as if stunned by the heat, the light, and the peak of the day. The house appears flat, as if it’s been cut out from a magazine and glued back into another picture. Even with the fence around it and the ivy from the neighbors’ yard growing over, wrapping around like guy wires, it is as if at any moment the house might take off and disappear into the wild blue yonder. There are no anchors, no signs of life, no swing set, pool, barbecue, nothing except Cheryl in the backyard.

She looks at the house but focuses on the sensations of herself in the heat, of her clothing in the heat, against her body. Cheryl wears her clothing like the protective coating on a cold capsule. Clothing divides her body into reasonable sections, arms and legs that need to be kept apart from other arms and legs, safe from the possibility of skin touching skin and rubbing itself raw.

Outside, as she sweats, her clothing separates itself from her body and begins to slip slightly, working against her, moving independently. When she breathes in, her bra creeps up and sticks, like a rubber band around her ribs, biting her and then creeping up again, higher, when she exhales.

In a moment of extreme consciousness, she sits straight up, reaches her hand up the back of her shirt, and releases the bra, sending it snapping across her chest like a slingshot. She pulls it off under her shirt and drops it, lifeless, onto the grass.

In the hot air the surface of her skin becomes tacky and the tops of her thighs touch and stick together, gripping each other in a vaguely masturbatory manner. She moves her legs to separate them. This touching and pulling apart causes a soft lip-smacking sound. Her thighs rub together even in her thoughts.

There is the distant sound of a doorbell, a sound like the tone in a hearing test. When you hear the beep, raise your finger. She hears the doorbell and then a muffled voice.

“Chunky, Chunky, are you here?”

She hears the boy who lives next door, the boy who is three years younger than her, the boy she plays games with that they tell no one about. She does it because he wants to and she wants to and she can’t find anyone her own age to do it with, and besides she feels better doing it with him because she’s bigger than him, and he does what she tells him to. He doesn’t care that she’s fat because he’s getting to and he doesn’t know anyone else who is getting to, and he likes that she is older because even though he can’t talk about it anywhere, it gives him a new kind of credibility even if it’s only in his mind. She doesn’t let him see her actually naked; that’s one of her rules and part of what makes it all right. He just sees bits and pieces but it’s never too much, never overwhelming. He doesn’t try to kiss her and she likes that.

“Chunky, are you here?” His voice is higher than it should be. She doesn’t like it when he talks. “Chunky, I think you’re home.”

She hears him calling but doesn’t answer. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t want him, but she can’t bring herself to speak. She lies on the lawn chair and thinks of him coming around the house, into the backyard and finding her. She thinks of him topless, his shoulders looking new and too big for the rest of him. She sees him unzipping his shorts and pulling them down, his erection jutting forward like an extra limb, a birth defect. She spreads her legs and he comes toward her. She has to spread her legs very wide in order to make a space between her thighs. He kneels on the grass and pushes in.

He grabs her breasts and squeezes them again and again like they are the black rubber bulbs on bicycle horns. He pushes into her hard and quick and she can feel it everywhere. He slams in and the newest part of her, the freshest fat, the softest flesh, jiggles. Her hips, thighs, and butt jiggle. Her breasts jiggle each time and she loves it; she loves the jiggling.

This is the thing about being fat that no one mentions. Everything feels good, every square inch has incredible sensations, as if skin when stretched becomes hypersensitive, as if by stretching the skin to cover the fat the nerves become exposed or sharpened: it is not just her flesh rubbing against itself but the very sensation of its existence, hanging from her body, apart from her body, swaying, jiggling, touching things.

“Chunky, are you in there? If you don’t answer I’m leaving.”

She imagines him not on top of her but apart from her except in that one place, and every time he goes in she slides up on the sweaty vinyl so that when they finish her head is hanging off the end and he can barely reach her.

She imagines him and as she imagines him she slips her hand into her shorts. She imagines him and she pulls her shorts down to her knees. She digs her heels into the bottom of the chair and pushes up, raising her butt up off the chair. Her flesh pulls up and off the chair like adhesive tape being removed and it hurts a little but she likes the sting and repeats the thrusting until her skin is raw and sweat coats the chair like butter and she doesn’t stick anymore. She pulls her shirt up to her neck so her nipples can get the air.

When she finishes and realizes she is half naked, her pants caught at her knees, her shirt at her throat, the sensation of being outside, in the middle of the day where someone might see her — and suddenly she feels like someone, at least one person, is seeing her with her clothes all pushed up and pulled down — is too much and she has to do it again, this time more slowly, this time for an audience. This time, she pulls all her clothing off. She does it lying on her back, imagining someone seeing her doing it. All she’s thinking about is people watching and she’s not fat or thin, she’s sex, pure sex, and as they’re watching her she thinks they’re probably doing it too and she likes that.

She remembers when she was a little girl, maybe five, her mother walked into her room and Cheryl was on her bed with her pants pulled down and her butt poked up in the air. Even then she liked to get the air inside her, on her.

“What are you doing?” her mother asked.

Even then Cheryl didn’t answer.

She remembers feeling something more than embarrassed, but she can’t think of the word. Cheryl is getting too old for this. She is so old that it is embarrassing.

Cheryl is naked on her lounge chair. Her mother comes home. Cheryl hears the car in the driveway on the other side of the house. She hears the fan running, the AC still on, and then she hears the car turn off and the fan is still going. The car door opens and does not close, and suddenly everything is all wrong.