I could not move. I mean, not even a fraction. Not even in my mind.
Six feet. I’d smelled her since she’d been in our house: mushrooms, beef stock, cigarettes. She smoked. I felt my book getting droopy, a pain in my thumb. She just stood there and stared at the diamond-shaped fixture on my ceiling. Her nipples showed through the T-shirt like shadows. She wasn’t wearing pants. Her tits were vegetal, amorphous. Black pineneedle hairs stuck wet down both sides of her neck.
‘Are you okay?’ I said, trying to keep the book up in my hand.
Criss-cross thatches showed through the white T-shirt. What was she doing half-naked? I could see pubic hairs.
‘You can’t sleep?’ I squeaked. God, I had to get up. My father would be shocked if he knew she was here.
I had a single bed right under the window. Our house was two floors. Maybe the basement was cold. Maybe bleach was the problem, maybe that stench in the pipes. Maybe that was why she was up here in my room: it was technical. She did not look me in the eyes.
Barbra suddenly pitched herself forward, legs folding funny at the knees.
On my bed, she lay down.
I stood up quickly. I yawned.
‘Scratch my back, bruh,’ Barbra said.
She turned her back to me, facing the wall. Her T-shirt was long. Her bare tits stacked under there. Who was bruh? What was bruh? I kept yawning and yawning. I could not see the future of this summer. This orphan with no underwear took up my whole bed. Six feet, wooden legs. I didn’t know what to do. I watched, I just stood there, as she somehow lifted up her T-shirt and tucked it around both her shoulders like a drape. She exposed her whole back. It was curved and marked up with these bruiselike polka dots. What were those marks? She was wearing panties. They were nearly seethrough, like a window screen.
‘Scratch,’ Barbra said. Her voice was Hebrew, vibrating.
I dropped my book on the floor. Her shirt only covered her tits. She had ribs like a humpback, flesh rolls at her waist.
‘Scratch my back,’ she repeated.
Was she allergic to something? Was she allergic to us?
I’ll tear you apart like a fish, Kafka’s father said.
Bird’s-eye, my hands looked so measly and pink. Jews are threatened by threats, I read that somewhere. I finally sat back down on my own bed. Heat drummed off her back. Those were pockmarks, maybe burns. Vibrating itch.
‘If you don’t scratch,’ Barbra said, ‘I feel like I could scream.’
I used my cold nails. I did it.
‘Harder,’ said Barbra, arching, relieved.
I scratched the board of her back until white lines appeared. My nails were short. It felt good to scratch her. I felt it in my gut, in my cock, I felt scratching everywhere. The criss-crosses I made turned into red notches. I thought, I could never let her see my hard cock. I thought of a worm on the sidewalk in the rain. Sweat streaked down one side of my face. I scratched even harder between her shoulder blades.
Then Barbra suddenly rolled over, untucking her shirt and immediately re-covering herself down to her knees. She looked at me, smiling. I’d seen the bottoms of her tits.
Her hair formed a stiff open fan on my pillow. Her teeth were wine-stained.
‘Thanks, bruh,’ she said. ‘You’re good at that.’
I felt the pull of the street light outside. I knew that this person was asking something from me, this stranger in my room on my bed. Her tits were slack under her T-shirt. I wanted to touch them. I knew that I couldn’t. I had just scratched her back. Did she want a new family? A brother? Is that what bruh means?
‘Put your hand in my head,’ Barbra said.
I knew she meant hair, put your hand in my hair. Maybe she wanted me to scratch her there next? All of a sudden, it occurred to me: don’t. This person in your room is an actressin-training. An actress-in-training who has weird little teeth – like bird’s eggs, sort of speckled.
‘C’mon, do it,’ the actress whispered at me.
My heart sped up as if it was rigged. I didn’t know what she wanted. I wanted to touch her mushrooming tits but that was not what she just asked for. I reached out in slow motion. My fingers felt shrivelled. I would do what she asked for. I put my hand first at the side of her head. It felt starchy. I dug in. I didn’t think.
‘Lift up now,’ she said.