‘I’ll get him to do it then.’
Fuck. The hummingbird beak and the featureless face. I knew this would come back to haunt me, this cloudy piece filled with drugs. Barbra reached behind her, both hands, and spread herself open. I squinted at her asshole. A plunger. I plunged it inside.
‘Come on, guys, I’m waiting!’ Joel yelled from the playroom.
Barbra started laughing. She stood up, half-crooked, hand over her mouth. The beak fell on the floor. I knew I shouldn’t have done that. I helped her again to step over the line. I burned on the john, both my hands in one fist.
‘Whoa.’ Barbra smiled at me. ‘Hang on. Hang right on.’
Her dress was still up. She did not pull it down.
‘My feet are stuck to the tiles,’ she laughed.
Didn’t it take longer than a second to kick in?
Barbra smiled down at me. I reached for her waist. I wanted to bring all of her to my face. I strung both arms around her and linked up my thumbs. I heard Barbra laughing, ‘Move, feet, move on.’ Her belly smashed into me. I should not have done that. She lifted her leg. She stomped her foot onto the lid of the toilet. Split legs. She opened. I got a gust in close-up. It was everything I wanted, a flash of bright light. Her ring was a third tooth, the bell hit my nose. I stuck out my tongue and she let me lick her. Descending from sky, perfect height for my face. My tongue up her pussy, slipperiness. I thought of my mother’s last meal at home. Flickering candles. Pussy sea salt. Tears of white wax. Barbra’s five-petal cunt rubbed itself on my tongue, on my nose. I touched the ring, retracted folds in this airless opening.
My father cried at the kitchen table immediately after my mom and Abigail left. His face grimaced, cheeks tight, as if he were reeling in pain. ‘She’s going to come back,’ he kept saying. ‘Your mother’s going to change her mind.’
‘Peakin’, motherfuckers!’ Joel’s voice cut through the static.
Barbra sluiced off me too quickly and wiped her thighs clean. I felt like those girls in the porno flat on their backs – doing nothing, tongues stiff, just waiting. Barbra pulled her dress down and staggered out, leaving me.
I stayed in the powder room. All I’d needed was more time. I felt like a lump sitting on the lid of the john. I wanted to be her full pussy-licker, her disciple, her bruh. I wanted to learn Ge’ez, worship the Lion of Judah. I’d be the white Rasta man with the righteous Black wife.
The hummingbird beak rolled under the sink.
Standing in front of me: weighted feet, perfect height.
The real crime is when the helpers don’t help.
With my pussy-slick face, I thought about Gregor Samsa. When Gregor was a bug, did he want everyone to be bugs? Did he want to turn his own sister into a bug?
And all those messianic Jews who followed an unstable liar, scuttling. I was thinking, do bugs, in fact, take care of other living things?
Maybe, I don’t know, maybe I should not have been surprised.
In the playroom, Joel’s cock was out over her head. Barbra half sat there awkwardly, leaning back on straight arms. It’s true, his little purple dick had grown twice its size.
‘You okay with it, bro?’
Barbra crawled away from Joel on her hands and knees. Then she lay on the floor right under the TV.
‘My pussy’s so wet, bruh. Feels like a frog.’
Barbra’s dress was up, she was laughing and rolling side to side on her stomach. The lights had been dimmed but I saw Joel had put on a condom. He shuffled backwards now, hands up, and tripped on his jeans.
‘Nothing happened, bro. Condom’s dry. Check it. Fuck, dude. Come on. Don’t look at me like that.’
My father missed my mother. I would miss Abigail like a centipede.
‘Heart’s racing, Jew-boy,’ Barbra said to the floor.
‘I didn’t bang your girlfriend. Relax. Just change the channel, Jew-boy.’
‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever fucking call me that.’
I watched Barbra try to roll over. She kept trying to push up off the floor as if she did not remember her arms. Do frogs have arms? Do bugs help each other? I thought for a second she was going to suffocate like that.