Silence and the Word (27 page)

It was late April when Manda went to Teddy
again. The rain poured down outside her window, and she walked into
the closet and closed the door behind her. The dust on Teddy made
her sneeze when she put her arms around him and buried her face in
his fur.

“Wake up, Teddy.”

“Hello, Amanda.” The bear began to kiss
her.

“Stop, Teddy. No more sex stuff, Teddy.”
Manda was crying now. “Teddy, I’m going to give you a command. No
more kissing. No more kissing or telling me you love me.” The words
were low and angry. “No more sex. This is a command for ever and
ever. Just be a teddy bear. Just hug me.”

“Sexual functions disconnected, Amanda.”
Teddy’s arms wrapped around her, and Manda leaned against him.

“My name is Manda, Teddy. Call me Manda. I’m
not my mother, and I’m only twelve and a half, and I think I might
be pregnant.” She was shaking and crying so hard by then that she
would have fallen if Teddy hadn’t held her up.

“This unit is not designed for consumers
under eighteen,” he said softly. But his arms remained tightly
around her as Manda stood in the dark closet and cried.

Chicago is not in Chicago.

Chicago lies south, a little drive

down the lakeshore. South on

Lake Shore Drive, the water

shines so blue-gold to your left,

the tenements grey to your right.

The Museum rises, lost white relic

of fair days long gone, when

strippers danced the Midway,

those strips of grass just south

of Chicago. These buildings are

grey gothic. Gargoyles crouch

everywhere, disappearing into

the stone. It will take you four

years, at least, before you know them.

The heart lies in the quadrangle,

quartered lawns where in the

best of springs, mathematicians

juggle, balls and clubs in sharp

geometries. It is rarely warm enough

for that, but when the temperature

climbs above forty, we sit on the grass,

we spread out our books and

exclaim—how beautiful it is!

And when the brief spring

gives way to killing heat,

when the old ladies are suffocating

in the old grey tenement buildings,

the students scatter. Lawns

are almost deserted, and

those who stay live a lifetime

in three short months.

Love blooms and dies,

so gorgeously, in August.

We explain to the new

children that there is a law

of conservation at work here—

misery levels must be

maintained. Fewer inhabitants

means greater misery for those

who remain. In October,

they return—bright swarms

of eager minds. Enthusiasm

will not last long—winter’s

coming, and abstracted old

professors struggle to catch

us before we begin to forget

to remember. At Christmas,

it empties again. Briefly. My

first Christmas at Chicago,

I made love for the first time,

in the quiet dormitory

by the lake. He studied physics

then, and I knew little more

than poetry. He never

graduated—one of Chicago’s

many casualties—but

before he left, he showed me

how to climb across the grey

gothic roofs, how to shout

love words into the lake air

past midnight, how to talk

about Nietzsche, and the Bible,

and Wittgenstein, and Chaucer

till dawn rose above us, nakedly.

When a hot new dyke moves to Berkeley, you’ve
only got a tiny window of time in which to make your move. If you
don’t move quick, she’ll be snapped up by someone else, and you’ll
be left alone in your bed—wet fingers for company, waxing the
saddle and wishing for love.

It was late at the Calyx, past midnight, and
the floor was packed with couples, hip to hip, breast to breast.
But she was dancing alone, shimmying to the beat with a circle of
space around her, head thrown back and sweat dripping off her body.
She was so fine—skin like toasted coconut, lips dark and lush. A
tight white tank over huge breasts; god, each one looked bigger
than my head. Curving belly. Hips that moved in deep, wide circles,
like she was fucking the air. No one I’d seen before. I didn’t know
why no one was making a move on her, but I wasn’t going to wait to
find out.

I let my body move to the music, let it carry
me over to her. We were dancing alone, a foot or so apart, and then
a little closer, a little closer still. That’s when her eyes
opened—dark green. Yum—I’ve got a thing for green eyes. She smiled
at me, slow and lazy, and I slid closer, just an inch or two away
from those glorious breasts. Dancing hard, sweat flicking off me as
I shook my ass, arms up in the air, arching my back and hoping my
breasts looked bigger than they were. Our sweat mingling in the
air, falling to the floor, the whole place hot and damp with horny
cunts writhing to the music. She opened her mouth a little then,
and I almost just went for it, almost dove in for the kind of hot
wet kiss that could convince a girl that she wanted to go home with
me
tonight, that I could show her the best time she’d ever
seen. And that’s when she said it.

“I have a girlfriend. She just doesn’t dance.
Sorry.”

Fuck. I kept dancing; there wasn’t much else
to do.

“I’m Janna,” she said.

“Susan. You been in town long?” I knew the
answer to that one, but I had to try, had to keep the conversation
going. I was still hoping it wasn’t serious, that I had a chance.
Not that I was the sort of girl who tried to break up
relationships…but if a couple was already on the rocks and you just
came along at the right time, that wasn’t really your fault. You
might even be doing them a favor.

“Just moved out. I’m teaching at the U.” She
paused there; I hoped that she was going to say something about
having just met her girlfriend, or say it wasn’t working out, or
that the woman was mean or just plain nuts. Instead, she said,
“Carla came with me. We’ve been together eight years.”

God damn it. That was it, then.

She disappeared into the crowd after the song
ended; I figured she was out of my life. But in the next few weeks,
I kept running into her. At the co-op, buying groceries, we’d be
picking out cucumbers and carrots side by side. At the
bookstore—not one of the regular bookstores, but the sf one, we
reached for the same copy of Delany’s latest. Across the counter at
Sushi-A-Float, I watched her slide sea urchin into her mouth,
watched it move down her throat. By the third encounter, I was
dying of unsatisfied lust. The worst time was Saturday night at the
hot tubs; she left just as I was walking in—we stopped and
exchanged a few words. And even though I was with a cute redhead, a
girl with sweet thick nipples and a fat ass just right for
grabbing, I fantasized about Janna the whole time I was fucking the
girl in the tub. I had three fingers in the redhead’s pussy and my
mouth on her nipple; I was dizzy with the heat and every curl of
steam rising from the water reminded me of the black curls of
Janna’s hair, made me wonder if it was just as curly down
below.

I got the redhead off, but only just, and she
never spoke to me again. Guess she could tell my mind wasn’t really
on her. That was when I lost it. I’d never tried to break a couple
up before, and I wasn’t going to try now, not really. I didn’t need
to date Janna—I just had to have her, had to fuck her. Just
once.

I signed up for one of her classes at the U.
She was teaching some feminist theory crap; I had never went for
that stuff, but I read up on it, just in case she called on me. Not
that I talked much in class. It was summer term, as hot as Berkeley
ever got—70s or 80s most days; cool crisp mornings followed by
brief heat. I wore the skimpiest clothes I had, and when I ran out
of those, I raided the used clothing stores, looking for more. Pale
mesh tops with dark push-up bras; short tight skirts and tall black
boots; thin white t-shirts with no bra at all; cut-offs and ankle
bracelets and bare feet with the toenails done in red…every sexy
look I could think of. I sat in the front of the class for weeks
and alternated crossing and uncrossing and recrossing my legs. No
panties, red silk bikinis, black lace thongs, damp white cotton. I
leaned forward in my chair, rested my elbows and breasts on the
table. I didn’t try to catch her eye; that would have made it just
that little bit too obvious. She would have had to confront the
fact that I was deliberately fucking with the teacher, and that the
teacher was enjoying it. Janna
was
enjoying it. I could
tell. I watched out of the corner of my eye, in quick glances. Her
face got flushed when I uncrossed my legs; she called on the
others, but she kept looking at me.

The day it climbed up to 90, I had a coke
with ice in front of me. I kept fishing ice cubes out of the cup,
sucking them slowly until they were half gone, then chewing the
rest. I wondered if she had heard what I had heard—that girls who
chewed ice were sexually frustrated. God knew it was true. Janna
was wearing a thin white dress that day—opaque, but thin enough
that it clung to her curving body, moving as she moved, damp with
her sweat. Little trickles of sweat slid from behind her ears, down
her neck and collarbone, into the V of her dress, disappearing
between those breasts. I was so thirsty, and hot enough that I
couldn’t think straight. So I pushed it further than I ever had
before—I fished out another ice cube and used it to trace the same
path on my own body, right there in class. Anyone could have seen
me. Started behind an ear, down my neck, across the collarbone,
shivering with pleasure. I was carefully looking at the chalkboard,
but I could feel her eyes on me—and then I dropped the ice down the
front of my shirt. It slid down between my breasts, coming to rest
for a moment in my belly button. It was fucking cold—too cold to
leave it there. So I shimmied a little and it slid down further,
coming to rest where my thighs met, melting against my clit,
creating a little wet puddle on the wooden seat underneath me.
Janna watched everything.

When the class ended, she waited until the
other students had filed out. I sat in my chair, looking at
nothing, hot and wet and a little scared. She had a right to be
mad. She walked up to me, stopped in front of my desk.

“Drop the class,” she said. “You’re
distracting my students.”

I nodded.

Then she reached out and picked up another
piece of ice. She placed it on my shirt and held it there, just
above the nipple. Let it melt a second, dripping coke-sticky cold
water down onto my nipple, which popped straight up. She watched
me, watched my breath catch, watched me swallow. Then she dropped
the ice back in the cup, smiled sweetly, and spoke again.

“Just one rule. Carla gets to watch.”

Oh shit.

I’d done some group stuff in college;
everyone did, right? When dyke club meetings got late; when
everyone got drunk and giddy. You ended up sprawled over some
girl’s couch, feeling up someone’s breasts by candlelight while
someone else felt up yours. But none of those had ever gone all
that far; clothes had mostly stayed on—they just got pushed out of
the way. All the real screwing I’d done had been one-on-one. Still,
it didn’t sound like Carla would be doing anything—just watching.
Watching would be okay, right? I could just ignore her, and it
would be worth it—it would
so
be worth it to get my hands on
Janna’s breasts, on her belly and hips and ass. I wanted to grind
my pubic bone against her clit; I wanted my fingers fucking her, in
and out, fast and hard and sweet. I wanted her screaming, and I
wanted it bad. So I said yes.

We walked back to their house, not touching,
a foot of space between us, my body humming with desire.

Carla worked at home; she was there when we
walked in, leaning over a computer, long brown hair falling in
front of her face. She turned around when we walked in the door,
and I could tell right away that she knew; she knew exactly why we
were there, in the middle of the afternoon, when Janna should have
been holding office hours. Carla looked at us and knew. I was ready
for her to get mad, to get weepy, but instead she smiled. It was a
wicked grin, stretching her mouth wide and showing teeth. That grin
took her plain pale face—a face I wouldn’t have looked at twice in
a club—and turned it into something else again. Something maybe a
little dangerous.

Janna said, “This is Susan. She wants to
play.”

“You two go ahead and get started. I’ll be
there in a minute.” And she turned back to the computer and started
typing again.

Shit. I couldn’t believe she was so fucking
casual about the whole thing. Did Janna bring women home like this
all the time? What was going on with these two anyway? But then
Janna was taking my hand, leading me through the house to the
bedroom, pulling me onto the bed, and I didn’t give a damn anymore.
So Carla didn’t mind if Janna fucked other women—this was my
problem? Hell, no. Janna’s mouth was on mine, moving hot and wet,
and her fingers were unbuttoning my cut-offs, pulling them off; I
lifted my ass to help, and in a couple of minutes I was naked and
she was too, and we were writhing together like two fish on a wet
dock—fuck Carla!

I finally got my mouth on Janna’s breast—just
as gorgeous naked as I’d hoped it would be, and even bigger than
I’d thought—and sucked hard, pressing my face against it,
smothering myself eagerly in all that soft flesh. I couldn’t
breathe, and didn’t want to; she was on top of me, her body
crushing me into the bed. I liked it; I wanted more. I tried to
reach down to her cunt, but her hands grabbed my wrists and pulled
them up over my head, pinning me down. Her thigh pushed my legs
apart and pressed against my crotch; then her hip was grinding into
me, shoving me down hard against the mattress. She was pushing me,
pushing me up and over, and I was moaning. Usually it was me making
the other girl come,
me
making
her
scream, but Janna
had me down and begging for it, and when she bit my nipple I came
hard. I came once, then again, and it was when I was gearing up to
come for a third time that I noticed that somewhere in there, my
wrists had gotten tied to a bedpost. Fuck.