Ramona Ausubel - A Guide to Being Born - Stories

Junior went downstairs and tried to watch television, explaining each segment of the show during the commercial break to his mother, as though she could hear him but not the TV, as though his voice alone could travel the distance. “She’s a nice girl, Mom,” he said to the urn. “What would you want me to say, if you were a girl? Would you want me to tell you I loved you? That I would love you until everything in the world was completely used up?” His mother did not answer him from above or from inside his head or from anywhere.

IN THE CAR, Reggie Lazzarino had everything laid out perfect. When he picked Kerralyn up at her house, there was a single red rose on the passenger seat.

He said, “Wow, you look like a dream,” and then later, “I can’t believe how beautiful you are.” When they ate burritos, he looked into her eyes the entire time and asked her about her wishes. Reggie said, “Kerralyn, what do you wish for?”

Kerralyn said, “I don’t know. I wish for money, I guess.” Reggie nodded soulfully, like she had said something profound. “What else is worth wishing for?” she asked him.

“You’re a really smart girl,” he answered.

They shared a cookie and he drove to the edge of the cliff, where the ocean looked like a terrible hole. He said, “Kerralyn, if you want to really know the truth, then you’ll have to know that I want to kiss your lips.”

She said, “You don’t have to sweety-sweet me anymore, Reggie. We have now come to the part of the evening where the bullshit stops.”

He said, “You’re a really smart girl,” and they smashed their mouths together, he smashing more than she, she actually having to pull away slowly because it felt like her face might break open, like he might unhinge her jaw and leave her with her chin hanging free, the dark passage into her throat permanently visible.

Once they had de-shirted and Reggie had his big hands on her breasts, Kerralyn asked him, “What are my boobs like?”

“Tits,” he answered, stupid.

“I mean what would you compare them to?”

“Why compare them to anything else? Tits are the best thing they could be.”

“Then what’s my stomach like?” she asked him, pulling her head away.

“The stomach of a pretty girl,” he said, touching it.

“A metaphor. Say, ‘Your stomach is like soft cream,’ or something.”

“It’s like a platter of buttery dinner rolls,” he said, squeezing.

After this, Kerralyn did not ask any questions. When Reggie put his hands beyond her dinner rolls, she sat there in the passenger seat, unmoved. He unbuttoned and unzipped and breathed onto her so close that her neck had rounds of moisture on it. “This is nice,” Reggie breathed. “You are a very smart girl,” he breathed. “Your legs are like…” but Kerralyn stopped him.

“Just be quiet,” she said. “Don’t talk to me anymore.” So Reggie stopped talking but did not stop maneuvering the vehicle of his hand over her, plowing roads through the wilderness.

When he finally crawled over, released the seat all the way back and wriggled his hips into place, Kerralyn was so quiet and still, her only presence in the car outside of the heft of her physical form was her heat mixing with his, making a bubble around them both. The windows were opaque with it. They were white with it. They were heavy and beginning to drip.

“I want you to call me Reginald,” Reggie said, “like my father.” Kerralyn did not call Reggie anything. “I mean right now,” he corrected her, “I want you to call me Reginald like my father right now.” Kerralyn still did not call Reggie anything, so presently he started to do it for her. At first it sounded like he was prompting her, like a baby, as if when she heard it again she would repeat. “Reginald, Reginald, Reginald,” he said. But soon he was not listening for her echo anymore; he had gotten used to her silence and filled the small space with his own voice and his own name. “Reginald, Reginald, Reginald, Reginald,” he chanted, his butt hitting up against the dashboard. Will this get me to Thursdays? she wondered. And what must you have to do to be a Saturday girl?

Kerralyn closed her eyes and watched the bright shapes behind her eyelids and listened to Reggie breathe and repeat his name like this was the last minute of his life and he wanted the universe to remember him, he wanted to prove that he was here, that in a world of Andrews and Marcuses and Tyrones, he was a Reginald in a line of great Reginalds and this moment was no different. This moment was a flag he was staking in the ground so that it might wave in all manner of future winds.

FROM THE UPSTAIRS WINDOW, Junior watched his sister exit the date car. Her hair was lit by the Christmas display, green and then red, glowing. He could not hear the sound of her footsteps as she walked toward her father, who pressed his button and snowed on her.

Kerralyn slammed the front door and Junior heard her yell, “I’m sorry, Mother!”

Their father paced while the last flakes landed and died on the sidewalk.

Junior watched his father walk out to the middle of the street and put his head back. The sky looked back at him, empty and snowless; the heavens were unpunctuated. Junior slid the window up and began to toss things down, one at a time, precipitation for his thirsty father. Pencils, pennies—which smelled like a fresh cut—the cotton balls Kerralyn used to remove her nail polish. Senior did not notice, lost in the night, in the street. Junior carried the sloshing pedicure pan to the sill and tossed the water out as hard and fast as he could. Still, his father saw nothing of the small storm.

Junior wondered what kind of weather it would take—what kind of hurricane he and his sister would have to make—for his father to finally come inside, gather his children in his arms and secure the windows. Leonard Junior was furious then that they lived in California, where the winds and clouds never conspired to close the roads, take out the phone lines and the electricity—Rudolph relieved of his constant red-and-green leap forward and back, and baby Jesus? For the first time in his holy little life, the bubble around him would tear open in a gust, and he would feel the weight of real water on his cheeks. The family would be confined to the house, where the cupboards would burst with supplies, and the warm, uneven light of candles would remake the room, soften everyone’s faces. They would sit silently holding hot cups and listening to the rain whip at the door but never manage to blow it open.

WHEN THE GIRL AND THE BOY moved in together, they had sex in the bed and everyone could probably hear it. Houses were pretty close together and there were a lot of open windows. Neighbors must have talked about such a carefree afternoon of loving all week, hushed whispery talk while taking the trash out and untangling the wind chimes. While hanging the Happy Thanksgiving, Pilgrim! flag out front. But what could the girl and the boy do? Their young bodies were young and bodies and they weren’t going to stop the rolling around or pushing together on account of proximity to other, older bodies. So they kept it up and they even walked around afterward naked, only closing the most obvious curtain. Whatever the air was doing that day, whatever water was or wasn’t falling, the sun and the crooked light—they wanted it inside.

Hands went all over the girl and boy’s raggedy hills. It didn’t feel like just two bodies in a bed. The girl saw everything in the history of the world in their love—dinosaurs munching the most delicious dinosaur grass, and the smell of cooking chicken and a mountain covered in something mossy and desperately soft and the wind was there, and the sun hit down on everyone’s various cheeks and the two of them, the girl and the boy, stood palm to palm in the middle of all of it.