Billie Girl

Chapter Fifteen

My mother had this theory that at least once in every relationship, each lover does something bad to the other that is very hard to forgive. And my father was no exception. This evening we were lying side by side on her bed and she told me once again about how Dad once broke her heart when he came back late one night and confessed to having gone to what she called a "whore house." He said it wasn't his idea and that his friends had coerced him into doing it. They got him drunk first at a favorite watering hole and then practically (as he told it) carried him into the whore house.

Plastered as he was, he chose (or so he said) a woman that looked very much like my mother. Her name was Teresa and she had black hair, a strong build, and couldn't have been over twenty- four. Yes, he said weeping to my mother, he had fucked another woman. He had crossed the line.

And so she decided right on the spot to forgive my father, due to the fact that A, she had never known him to be a drinker and he said he was drunk when he did it, and B, because he had said that the woman he slept with resembled her and C, because this proved her theory that there is no such thing as a relationship without some pain. My father was so surprised by her angelic response that he never went out alone again without her. They became tethered together like they were escapees of a chain gang.

My father was so touched by that instant forgiveness that he once thought Mom should be christened a saint. It made him so grateful that he often said that should she ever leave him, he would undoubtedly kill himself.

My parents told me this story when I was only ten years old as if it were a Grimms' fairy tale. The moral to their story seemed to be that everybody really NEEDS everybody else. Dad told me that it's OK if I really NEEDED him. He said that if I wanted to, I could allow myself to rely on him for everything that he could give to me until the day he died.

At that time I was sure that he would live forever, but he died when I was fifteen years old. And then I was not sure what to do with all that NEEDING. I did not pass it on to my mother because she had become such a mess since Dad had died. So I guess I just placed it somewhere outside of myself. Like a book holder bracketing only empty space, it just stood on my shelf. And then when I met Blake, I at last found someone I could pass my NEED onto.

I think that men love it when girls NEED them. It's what Dad wanted, and it's what Blake wanted too.

"Are you listening to me?" My mother caught my attention again.

"I am telling you that Blake will betray you like Judas betrayed Jesus, like Brutus betrayed Caesar, like Dad betrayed me."

Whenever Mom got heavy like that, it totally put me off. It was as if she thought that her bedroom was an outdoor stage set of a Shakespearean play in the park.

"So if he fucks another girl I will kill him. Simple as that," I said rather frankly.

"But now you are just acting like I haven't said a damn thing. Haven't you heard a word I have said?"

"Yes, but just because you forgave Dad, it doesn't mean I have to do it too."

"If I had not forgiven him, you would never have existed. How 'bout them apples?"

She did have a point. I was speechless at first. Then I said, "Maybe I was never supposed to."

"Billie, you were meant to be born. Trust me on that one."

Now she had me wondering. What was I brought here for? Why was I given the opportunity to love my father so much and then lose him? Why did I have to live here in Grand Rapids when there was that killer out there somewhere? Why did I have to always keep my Mom company so much or she would get lonely? And why did I feel just terrible knowing someday soon I would have to leave home and live on my own?

"By the way," she said, "if you actually get hitched to Blake, does this mean you plan on leaving this house?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

"You know legally you have to live with me. I would have to approve of a legal guardian first for you to move. Honey, you are only seventeen years old. Really, you're just a baby. My baby."

I smiled, even though I didn't want to be her baby anymore. I wanted to be Blake's baby. I wanted to be a baby in a different way. I wanted to be the kind of baby in Pop songs. Everybody was always singing about, "you're my baby" and "be my baby" or "OOh... Baby, baby." And I have heard songs where they say, "let me be your Daddy." And that proves that us girls never ever got over the sweetness that our dads gave us... It's all the same kind of affection really you hold hands, you kiss. My Dad held my hand, and he kissed me on the lips. It was no big thing. My Mom kissed me on the lips, too. But then when the time comes, we instinctively know how to kiss our first lover differently. And even though I had yet to go all the way with Blake, it didn't mean he wasn't my lover. There were some things we had done.

One afternoon over the summer, Blake and I were lying around in bed with our clothing on. Mother was at the grocery store. And we were holding each other in a chaste way that I always insisted on, which I knew frustrated him, but he never let on. And then he convinced me to just hold it, just for a second. This is how he put it: "Billie, you could at least acknowledge the fact that I have a penis."

There he brought the issue out in the open by saying again and again, "penis, penis, penis, penis!" After he said that he unzipped his black jeans and let it pop out. I was used to feeling it hard under his pants. Like that album cover of my mother's by the Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers, with that Andy Warhol photo of a tight pair of jeans being worn by Mick Jagger. And there was a real zipper on the album.

And then there it was. Blake's penis curving upward, saluting the ceiling. I pretended I did not see it.

"At least you could look at it," he said.

But I refused, saying, "Certain things are better left to the imagination until the time is right."

"OK then, don't look at it, but at least you could hold it in your hand," he said. And somehow that made perfect sense to me. That was not too unreasonable a demand, and so I gently took hold of it. It felt like a banana that was warm from having been left in the sun. And then suddenly my hands got wet. I knew everything about the mechanics of that thing. I had done my research and had plenty of graphic discussions with Tova. But now it was as if I had just used one of those soap dispensers in a public restroom, and it had just shot out soap.

"Well, that's gross," I said, getting up. Embarrassed, he too hopped out of bed and began to put on his jeans. Truth was, I didn't really think it was gross at all. It was actually quite dynamic, in a way.

I looked at my hand and could have sworn I saw a million babies calling out to me in ultra high pitched voices. Not the "babies of a pop song. But the kind that one day might just come from the two of us.

For two days after that, we hardly spoke to each other. It was a little too much, too soon for me. And I was still confused about how far I was willing to go that would not be all the way. I knew girls who claimed to be virgins who would do every other sex act under the moon, except that one thing. In my opinion it all counts. It all means something, it is all important. And it all had to wait.

I know I was being a stickler and a prude and a cock tease, and I might even have qualified as a "frigid bitch" in some circles. But I didn't care. Like my mother told me, there was a reason why I was set barefoot on this earth. And I wanted to follow my own path.

I have always known that I would never be a late bloomer, and that my destiny was coming soon, very soon. So I just had to embark on this "one on one" adventure of marriage so that I could feel complete.

I did kind of see myself as a saint, but I didn't want to be the sort of saint that never gets hitched and consummate the union.

That just wasn't me.