‘Yes,’ I said quickly, thinking about the fact that her coming here was punishment. I kept blinking. For what? She was being punished for what?
Barbra started laughing. ‘You’re funny,’ she said, rolling on to her back.
Maybe this trip, maybe staying with our family, was all just one big joke to her?
Suddenly, Barbra pulled up her T-shirt.
I got this cracking ice feeling inside my rib cage.
She was staring at me. I looked at her tits. They were oblong and swollen, with diamond-shaped eyes.
‘Jew-boy, come on. Stop being so scared.’
She rolled side to side so her tits jiggled a little. I had lockjaw. Jew-boy.
‘I know Kafka. Relax. I like Amerika.’
Barbra pushed her tits together. My head got increasingly heavy. It felt like she was thriving while I was lodged in the ice.
‘Kafka was a migrant. He knew about us.’
My forehead bobbed lower. Barbra read Kafka. Kafka was not a migrant. Who did she mean, us?
‘Come here,’ Barbra said.
I remembered the Queen of Sheba from Hebrew school. The Queen of Sheba was from Ethiopia. Barbra left Addis Ababa when she was five.
I felt my mouth dry, sort of snapping like a turtle’s. I felt myself pitching forward at the waist.
‘Closer,’ she said.
My mouth found one nipple, a marble. It filled my whole mouth, iridescent, swelling. Operation Solomon meant immigration. My forehead kept butting into her chest. I tasted sugar in the marble, iridescent juice. I had to read Amerika now. My mouth kept slipping off her nipple because she kept jiggling. Was she still laughing at me? I pushed her tits together. What was her real name? I got all the fat. I wanted both in my mouth. Was I racist? I gathered up the sides of her breasts.
‘Operation Solomon was a miracle,’ my father said.
Barbra held on to a lock of my hair at the forehead. She tried to move me like that, back and forth. It was like she was holding a leash, like my head was the dog.
In Israel, she’d said, they treat us like dogs.
Rabid, I clamped down. I slathered and sucked both her tits.
I remembered that the Queen of Sheba tried to trick the king, but King Solomon was smarter – he answered every one of her riddles. The king knew about women, my Hebrew teacher said.
Barbra bucked. My bed creaked. It was like we were fighting. I was on top of her, sweating, suctioned like a bat. Barbra started moaning. I kept kneading her fat, almost biting her nipples. I was good at this. My father gushed about Operation Solomon. He kept saying to Barbra it was a revelation for him. ‘If a modern-day country could manufacture a modern-day Exodus, if a modern-day country could solve a humanitarian crisis, save thousands and thousands, fourteen thousand Jews from a famine, well, that was really something, wasn’t it? The Jews did this, heroic, in forty-eight hours!’ My father’s voice cracked. Hallelujah, I said. What the fuck was Barbra supposed to say? Thank you, Father? Thank you, Uncle? Thank you for saving me? Good tits stuck in blouses. Hard purple nipples with juice. Barbra the orphan said nothing. No gushing. Not grateful. I sucked her the hardest. I kept making her moan. I pinned her arms down so that she could just take it, so that she was the one who was trembling now. She was burning up. I felt her hand creep to her shorts. I kept on sucking, tongue wagging. I wanted to yank the elastic. I wanted to grab her hot hand and replace it with mine. My father made Israel sound totally righteous. My father thought he was eliminating pain. The smell from her shorts was like milk on the verge. Her nipples touched the dome of my mouth.
‘You’re good at this,’ she moaned. ‘You make me feel good.’
The saviour fantasy was not eliminating pain.
My father never asked Barbra questions. Like, how on earth do you feel? You feel good. You feel good. How did you feel when you left your real home? My hand got raked over her heap of red coals. This is good. This is good. I wanted to slide my finger inside her.
The Queen of Sheba had sex with King Solomon. Joel said it was the first interracial love affair. Barbra, how did it feel to be lifted by soldiers? How did it feel to be sent to your uncle? Everyone in our Hebrew class laughed. I scratched her pubic hairs. Interracial. Barbra bucked. I kept sucking. I touched underneath her sheepskin lips. I felt sprouting. A suction. I put my fingertip down. No breathing. I slid in. The space fit my finger. I did a little C-stroke. I heard myself moaning. You feel good. You feel good. My knuckle got gripped. I used my second hand, too. One finger inside and one C-stroking thumb. Mushy, sinuous. A little bump. I was inside her. Perched over her. I never wanted it to change.
All of a sudden, her hand pushed my hands away.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What?’
It felt like a plug being pulled. I sat up and stared at one shiny spot on her shorts. I wiped my hands on the sheets. I felt weird, she looked weird. Barbra half-sat back up.