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  “This one look quiet, like she’s hiding an’ surprised to find herself in this late-night doing, and she’s wondering why has she been invited? I mean, this one definitely ain’t no party lady, so why she been invited here? Look to me as though she’s thinking that, hanging back there in the corner lookin’ all so quiet and so sweet.

  “Then up to me, comes the lady,” Cleo sang again. “The lady in the evening gown? She seen my glass is drunk down to its dregs. So then she start to po’ some mo’ of that plum wine, and then she lean down toward my ear, and then she sing to me:

  “ ‘Spill that wine, take that girl—’ ”

  “Oh, Cleo,” I play-slapped at her arm. “That is that song, Cleo.” That song I should have recognized, because it had been all over the radio a couple summers before.

  Cleo laughed, but then went on. “But you wan’ know how I decided which girl it was that I was gon’ take? I decided when that sweet girl been hiding in the back was brought up to me by the lady in the evening gown. That sweet young thang is looking giggly, like she likes me so she gots to cover it with silliness. And there she goes, giggling even harder when I lean in toward her to touch them thick soft lips with mines. And I know, soon as I am kissing her, I know it then fo’ sho’: this the one. This the girl that I been wanting, this dark-skinned soft and chubby one with the real sweet features and the cute print skirts and li’l red Keds and the oh-so-easy feelings I can see inside of, right this living minute. I can see that she the one, once I gits her in the bed, the one gon’ scream and cry more happier than she ever done in church. Because the facts is that she ain’t yet had real lovin’. Ain’t had my real lovin’.”

  I felt so naked, I felt X-rayed. Embarrassment had never before felt so exciting to me. Not before right now.

  “So now I’m thinking I’ma take that girl,” Cleo said, and then she took me. With my eyes closed and my head all weed-smoke dizzy, Cleo took and hugged and kissed my breath away. ’Cept for that tiny squeak I loosed.

  That was the real beginning, that first long tight and sliding full-tongue kiss that I gave back to her. That was the real beginning of my realizing how I was much more than someone else’s little sister. And in those rapturous high moments I couldn’t care at all about whatever people might think of to call me.

  All the ways and why of how we kissed: We kissed one time so deep, just because it felt so good, that afterward, still dizzy, as I was dazedly signing on a form, I looked down at my hand, and I saw that I had misspelt my own name. Badly, in two places. We kissed one time so sweet, just because it tasted good, sneaked little dabs of lip sugar back behind the gym bleachers, so sweet that I forgot to stop, and we almost got caught by watchdog Coach Alberta.

  “What y’all doin’ back up in there? Popping popcorn maybe?”

  We kissed so juicy, so flavor-full for days, sneaked inside the laundry room because the sneaking was so fun. I remember still the way her lips would feel. Luckily, because it is most likely I will never feel those lips on mine again.

  Sour

  Kathe Izzo

  Tonight I am everything

  and you are my first love

  curled now suckling

  yummy girl apple of my eye

  the girl I own like a mother owns her baby

  with her eyes and her shoulders and the dusk

  of her body the tongue with which she licks that baby awake

  inside the deep folds of neck traced with dinner crumbs

  and salty sweet blue powder beads of dreaming

  I rub my face in you deep like sugar

  like blankets left on some street corner

  in the box cut open like a door

  I have known you since the beginning

  I ate cereal from your hands

  It was 1969 and you were just being born

  I was big already I was eleven I was growing everyone-seemed to notice

  I let boy after boy touch my body underwater

  on the railroad tracks in stuffy living rooms

  on rainy afternoons five different ones telling me

  what they wanted to do my body black like butter in their hands

  curviness out of control lips pulled back

  Every once in a while there was a boy

  with a sour smell beneath the buzz

  a smell I could count on coming in from way ahead

  like it could be any boy but it was you

  that smell from inside behind the sweetness of your mouth

  like when I was almost twelve it was as if I was being pinned down by your breath

  lifting my ass when I was only fourteen to your baby girl lips

  hundreds of miles away lying in your cradle or no maybe a little bigger

  in your backyard mourning over chickens killed for dinner

  I have been smelling you everywhere

  face down in my own lap

  in the garden fingernails full of dirt

  Crazy how it turns now when the sour comes home

  my handful my darling

  all grown up face down in wet metal

  car in the lot sun still going down wrangly boy gone-haywire me

  I am up your ass ain’t no mama here now baby girl

  knows how to drive a car better get that butt home soon

  curve in my hand come on

  something like changing a diaper legs curled up in the air

  I will never leave you alone like cats curled up

  in tall summer grass with long tongue

  I will clean you up till you can clean yourself

  If there is some way I am separate from you

  you better prove it cause the way I see it I see it in you

  baby girl apple of my eye

  Touch Memory

  Meg Daly

  A few years after Alex’s death, she started coming to me in the night. At first I thought they were dreams, then hallucinations. Mostly she would stand and smile at me. It was as if a warm breeze had filled the room. Then she’d disappear, slowly, like she was evaporating. One night, after I’d graduated college and moved to New York, Alex actually reached out and touched me, and that’s when I knew it was her ghost, not my mind playing tricks. I’d started seeing a woman named Kirsten. I wasn’t in love. Not really. But Alex didn’t see it that way.

  Alex grew relentless, appearing several times a week and always when Kirsten and I were having sex. That last night, Kirsten had just pushed me on my back, gripping my thigh with hers. I opened my eyes as Kirst was kissing my neck and there was Alex, naked and grinning. Alex reached and stroked my hair. Then she started to tease Kirsten from behind. Kirst rocked harder on my leg and I could feel her getting close to coming. She never acknowledged feeling anyone on top of her, but I noticed how her pace quickened as soon as Alex showed up. Kirsten cried out and Alex rose up to the ceiling. She stayed there, watching while Kirst nuzzled closer to me. My eyes pleaded with Alex—begging her to leave or bury herself inside me, I wasn’t sure. The feeling of longing was the same. Then Alex blew a kiss and disappeared. I almost screamed after her. Kirsten must have felt my body straining because she reached between my legs. She just held her palm there at first. Desperately, I squeezed her hand.

  “Oh so that’s how you want it…” she said, and in one motion pinned my wrists over my head.

  Kirsten shifted her hips, searching out my clit with hers. I sucked in my breath when she found it, and she began to rock side to side, until we were one motion. My body became a steady pulse, words like “please” or “no” welling up in my throat. I couldn’t make a sound, though. I felt as if I was drowning. Parts of my body were breaking off and floating away. Kirsten was moving faster, pushing us both closer to climax. The solidity of her body pressing down on me left me nowhere to go but with her.

  Then there was Alex again. Standing above me, blood covering her face and she was crying. She had her arms around herself, trying to hold in her insides. She’d come to me before like that, as if waiting by th
e side of a road. She would mouth my name and then slowly extend an arm to me. She was in so much pain, I could see it, and there would be nothing she could do to escape. Then I’m screaming and Kirsten is holding me. I break into a cold sweat and Alex starts screaming too. The whirling cloud comes and wraps around Alex like a sheet. She’s spinning and all I see is blood. Then she’s yanked away like a puppet and I’ve lost her. I lost her.

  When I came to, Kirst had put a cold cloth on my face.

  “Sweetheart,” she said. Her eyes were a soft deep brown. “You’re okay now. I’m here. It’s safe.”

  And I wanted to say “I know.” I wanted to say “You’re right.” But I couldn’t form the words. Even if I could’ve made those sounds that translated into the absence of Alex, I didn’t believe they could be true. That I could make her disappear just by wanting it.

  I leaned into Kirsten and felt her soft breasts against me, and her thighs coming up under mine. I knew we would fall asleep like this, with her trying to shield me from my nightmares. But then that made me want to spit at her and shove her out of my bed. Couldn’t she see what a skeleton of a human being I was?

  I closed my eyes and slipped inside the river of myself. It was black and slick as oil. I shivered and Kirsten held me tighter. I was rushing to meet the ocean. Alex was there on her tiny boat with its splintering oars. She beckoned me and I’d spilled out into her ocean, like ink, I colored her waters, dissolving before she could reach me. Alex give me your hand. I’ve turned as dark as night for you. I am spilling towards you. Do you see me? Do you see what I have become?

  I woke before Kirsten and slipped out of bed. I turned the shower on as hot as I could bear it. I let the water untangle my matted hair; as rivulets of scalding water snaked down the backs of my thighs. I rubbed extra conditioner into my scalp and methodically shaved my legs and armpits. I scrubbed the sweat and sex and night off of me, working the lather until I was practically chafing.

  At breakfast, I downed two bowls of cereal, as we silently read the Sunday Times. After twenty minutes on the front page, Kirsten finally asked, “Beth. Aren’t we going to talk about last night?

  “I’m fine.”

  Kirsten raised her eyebrows and made as if to protest. “I’m just like this.” I said. “I get these nightmares and then they pass. I wake up the next morning, everything is still in its place, the world goes on as it always does. I feel fine. Really.” I folded the paper back into its original state, ironing it with my palms to make it look unopened.

  “Beth! The way you talk about Alex—you sound like you can see her. Like she’s in the room with us. I didn’t bargain on a ménage à trois when we started seeing one another. Maybe if you talked to me about her, it would help. Help make her go away.” Kirsten moved towards me, her robe opening at the breast.

  “I don’t want your help!” I felt the sting before I realized what happened—my hand on fire from slapping her. I felt like we were under water. I couldn’t make myself move. Kirsten leaned against the door frame sobbing and gasping for air. I stood there, stunned, hating her, hating myself.

  Kirsten stopped crying and glared at me. She kicked one of my old wood chairs out of her way, and bolted for the bedroom. The chair hit the linoleum with a crack. The echo settled around me the way a pond stills after a rainstorm. I heard her turning faucets angrily, then knocking things around the bedroom. She had to pass by the kitchen on her way out and I saw she was carrying her overnight bag and had a couple of sweatshirts I’d borrowed slung over her shoulder. She looked straight ahead, but I could feel her fury as if she’d shot me a final, nasty look. The door slammed and still I couldn’t move. I stood there with my gaze fixed on the lime green paint peeling up near the heat pipe, listening to the catch and wheeze of my breath. All of a sudden I couldn’t bear to look at anything. The stainless steel sink, the leaves outside, the blue pitcher full of peonies, the flyers stuck to the refrigerator—all of it shone with an unbearable intensity. My upstairs neighbor put on her Anita Baker album like she does every Sunday. I usually feel a sort of comfort in hearing her feet overhead and the muffled sweet voice from her stereo. But sounds of domesticity were excruciating in the wake of Kirsten’s departure.

  So I kept my eyes on the peeling paint. I started thinking about this game I played in junior high called Bloody Knuckles. A few of us, mostly girls, would sit on the crumbly sidewalk in back of the school. Someone would take a wide-toothed pink comb from her appliquéd back pocket and balance it carefully on top of her fist. Then somebody else would sit down opposite and put her fist against the first girl’s knuckles, as if making a secret pact. That girl would try to grab the comb and whip its teeth across the other girl’s knuckles before she had a chance to react. She’d shimmy her hand and give little false starts, but you couldn’t pull your hand away until she really went after you. At the end of lunch period, we’d return to homeroom class grinning nervously, trickles of blood hardening between our fingers.

  I looked down at my adult hands and noticed how like my mother’s they are. The shape, the veins that pop out near the knuckles, the curve of the fingers, even the way they rest on a table. I pictured my hand cupping the back of Kirsten’s head, her face pressed into my belly. I pictured my fingers undoing the buttons of her jeans. Then she was Alex and I was touching her for the first time, gingerly slipping my hand under her tank top, running my fingertips along the edge of her bra. Alex was sighing and I was moving my lips along her collarbone, searching out her nipple with my thumb. But these were my mother’s hands. Was this my mother’s touch? My mother who rarely touched me, not since I was small enough to lay on her lap for a backrub. I memorized the light breeze and strong grip of her fingers. I embedded those memories in my flesh.

  What I had left of my mother’s touch was stored in the hands she gave me, and was given in turn to my lovers. First Alex, then Kirsten, I smoothed their hair and stroked their arms like pressing the color from petals into one’s palm. Touch was my mother’s gift to me, yet what I wanted was something to give that was mine alone, not a memory of something missed, nor a continuation of someone else.

  Now that Alex had invaded my body and my bed, driving my lovers away, I feared I’d never find my own touch in my hands. I wished I could sit down on the crumbly sidewalk again and have someone sting and slice the pale skin covering my bones, I wished I could read the gleaming beads of blood like tea leaves. I wished I could find buried beneath my skin the power to love with my own hands, to make myself felt, to reveal the secrets of another through my caress.

  I slipped my hand inside my robe and touched myself. I closed my eyes. It was quiet and dark and faintly humming there, and I was, briefly and at last, alone.

  Pumpkin Pie

  Sandra Lee Golvin

  The only consolation is the pumpkin pie.

  God knows Harry doesn’t give a damn. Even if pumpkin is his favorite. And I don’t give a damn either. So that makes us two people who don’t give a damn in a trailer park in the middle of the fucking desert. When you get to that point even doing the laundry loses its meaning. I mean, no satisfaction left even in small things like clean sheets or the smell of T-shirts dried on the line.

  Hotter than hell in the San Joaquin valley and the air’s been still for days. Harry’s gone with his Flick My Bic attitude and ask me if I care.

  Everything was in its place, the housework done and the dead day stretched ahead of me like the power lines down Highway 5 when I got the idea to bake the pie.

  Fight fire with fire, I thought. Actually, the pumpkin part came later, after I’d made that perfect white shell and had to find something to put in it. Pumpkin pie is always best because everything you need can be found in the pantry. Not a single fresh ingredient except the egg and that I could get from the Rhode Island Red that lives under the storage shed out back.

  Every morning before dawn I strap it on. Sleep with it under the pillow. She don’t believe in leaving nothing to the imagination. Wants her own sp
ace. That’s how it has to be she says. She’s got a great idea. Get me my own bed. There’s no room for a regular bed she says, she’s got a great idea. Get me a dog bed. Not those little foo foo jobs but a nice big wicker one like for a Rotweiller or a Great Dane. Before her I didn’t strap it on like that, every day come rain or come shine. But how can you be ready for the inevitable she asks. She don’t believe in wasting time. Hunting down things unnecessarily that you could just as easily have attached to your person. Don’t let me see you without it she says. It’s refreshing I can tell you. Most girls they don’t want to know what’s going in down there, don’t want to see nothing. Just close their eyes in the dark and wait for home delivery. Not her. She wants to inspect. You gotta be prepared to stand at attention under a two-hundred watt bulb so she can see what she’s getting.

  The Crisco in the big blue can reminded me of Harry’s dick and the time he’d greased it good and put it up my rear. Harry still had some good ideas back then.

  The remains of a sack of Pillsbury bleached white flour with the three X’s on the label drifted into the sifter, a fine clean powder like the stuff we’d snorted New Year’s Eve that made me want to leave my skin on the card table like a snake. That stuff was long gone, but the desert holds other potent medicines that’ll do the job. Harry likes his medicines.

  I added sixteen tablespoons of Crisco, white on white, and cut the mixture with two mismatched silver butter knives. The cutting rhythm cheered me up. I began to enjoy the feel of those knives slicing through that white pulp over and over like the way the oil well next door keeps slashing at the same place in the earth year after year. I’d mark those X’s like they were brands on old Harry’s sweet white ass. I liked the idea of roping him down and marking him good, letting the blood trickle down his cheeks and into the crack between his legs. If the pie doesn’t work, maybe he’ll go for it. I’ll tell him it’s for old times’ sake. Harry can be sentimental if you get him after a couple shots of rye. I checked the cupboard for Old Overholt and helped myself to a hit of Harry’s private stash.