Chapter 11

The silence in Mr. and Mrs. Russo’s bedroom was overwhelming. All I heard was the blood thumping in my temples and my heart pounding in my chest. With my eyes bored into the mattress, the uneasiness was killing me. I had to know what was going on. My eyes rose to see Mrs. Russo waiting for me.

“Did the K-Y help?” Mrs. Russo asked.

I nodded. I was afraid to speak. I wasn’t even sure that I could. It was like a dream, an out-of-body experience. Like looking down from the ceiling at my curled up, half-nude body, with two adults looking at me.

“Will you show me how you do it?” Mrs. Russo asked. “Maybe I can help. You know, make it better for you.”

Oh god! She wanted me to rub my pussy in front of her—with Mr. Russo in the room. No man had seen me naked since I was a baby. Other than Dr. Merlis, but he wasn’t a man, he was my doctor. And he was really, really old. I didn’t know how much Joey had seen in the dark car at Canarsie Pier. But no one had ever seen me touch myself down there. No one even knew I did it—until now.

I couldn’t answer. My whole body had lockjaw. Immobilized.

Mrs. Russo waited. It seemed like forever, but I couldn’t speak. I could hardly breathe. I wanted the bed to open like the Red Sea and swallow me.

Finally, Mrs. Russo said, “Would it help if I show you how I do it?”

My eyes got big and round. She would do that in front of me? Did I even want to see her naked and touching herself? A jolt ran through me and I clamped my thighs tighter as I shivered. Why did that arouse me? I wasn’t attracted to girls. If she had asked me if I wanted to see Mr. Russo play with his dick I would have been scared, but might have said yes.

“Maybe you want Don to do it to you,” Mrs. Russo said.

My heart skipped a beat. “He’s not a girl,” I said. “How would he even know how?”

Mrs. Russo chuckled. “Trust me, Don knows how.” She got dreamy-eyed and said, “You have no idea how good he does it.”

Joey had hurt me and made me bleed when he touched me down there. How could a man know how to do it?

Mrs. Russo looked up at her husband. “Don, turn around.”

I looked over my shoulder to see if Mr. Russo would do what his wife had asked him to do. He did. His back was to me now. Mrs. Russo shifted on the edge of the bed and turned so that she was facing the foot of the bed.

“Julie,” she said with her back to me, “I just realized we’re fully dressed and you’re half naked. Get under the cover and tell me when you are.”

I was still curled up on my side with one hand covering my crotch and the other my backside. I didn’t hesitate. I scrambled onto my hands and knees and, with my naked butt in the air, yanked the top of the bedcover down with one hard pull. I scampered underneath it and sat with my back to the headboard with the pillows cushioning my lower back and the bedcover pulled up to the underside of my breasts. I would have pulled it up to my chin if Mrs. Russo hadn’t been sitting on it, but since I was still wearing my blouse it didn’t matter. About to tell Mrs. Russo that I was covered, I spotted my panties lying on top of the bedcover and blushed. Even after what the two of them had seen, that embarrassed me. I leaned forward, snatched my panties, and shoved them underneath the bedcover out of sight.

“Okay,” I said.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Russo turned around.

“More comfortable?” Mrs. Russo asked.

I nodded.

“Maybe I was going too fast,” Mrs. Russo said. “Why don’t we talk first. Is there anything you would like to ask me?”

There was a burning question. “If you’re married, why do you masturbate? You have a husband.”

“Good question. Sometimes Don isn’t around. He’s at work or somewhere. Sometimes he is too tired to have sex.” Mrs. Russo smiled at her husband and then looked back at me. “Sometimes he likes watching me do it so I do it for him. It’s a kind of foreplay.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s what lovers do before they fuck.”

My jaw dropped and my mouth hung open. Mrs. Russo chuckled.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I guess you didn’t expect me to say that word. But when it comes to sex, I say and do what I want.”

“But what is it?”

“Foreplay?”

“Yeah.”

Do you get wet down there when you masturbate?”

I blushed and looked down. “Uh huh,” I said so softly it was barely audible.

“Foreplay is doing things to each other, or yourself, that gets you aroused and ready for fu— um, making love.”

“You can say fuck,” I said. My cheeks burned, but I got a chill saying the word. Not only was it a sex word, but I felt like a grown-up saying it.

“Well, foreplay gets the girl wet and the boy hard. You know about that, right? That a boy’s penis needs to be hard to put it into the girl.”

My cheeks were scorching. My mouth was dry. I was talking about sex.

I nodded.

“Sometimes the foreplay is so good,” Mrs. Russo said, “it ends up being the sex and we don’t fuck.”

My forehead creased. I was acting with more bravado than I had, but my curiosity gave me the courage to continue. “But you have sex to make babies.”

“My dear child, you fuck to make babies. There are other ways to have sex. So if you aren’t trying to have a baby, you still have sex for the pleasure it gives. Sometimes the foreplay is so good it is the sex.”

It upset me for her to call me a child. “But that’s not sex,” I said too forcefully, trying to regain my grown-up status with her.

“Things like kissing and touching and rubbing are having sex whether you do it with someone or do it to yourself.”

Oh my god, I had sex with Joey!

Mrs. Russo continued. “Yes, we have sex to make a baby, but we also have sex for pleasure. When we masturbate, we give ourselves pleasure. When someone else masturbates us, they give us pleasure. When someone kisses us, fondles us, licks us, or, yes, fucks us, they’re giving us pleasure, which is having sex. So people can fuck simply for the pleasure and not to make a baby.”

“Is that why you have condoms?” I asked.

Mrs. Russo’s eyes darted to her husband and back to me. “So you found the condoms in Don’s end table. I guess that means you saw what I have in mine.”

My cheeks burned fiery red. I yanked on the bedcover to bury my face in it, but with Mrs. Russo sitting on it, it didn’t budge. Since I couldn’t drag the bedcover over my head, I ducked underneath it and shuffled further down the bed, curling up while holding the end of the bedcover around my head. Only the ends of my tightly gripping fingers clutching the end of the bedcover showed. I hid there praying I would die before I had to come out.

The mattress shifted. I felt a hand on my hip and then weight on my arm from outside the bedcover. Mrs. Russo whispered next to my covered head, “I told you, sometimes Don isn’t around and I get in the mood. That’s what the K-Y is for. Not only for my finger, but to lubricate the dildo, um, the fake cock that you saw. I put it inside me and move it. I fuck myself with it.”

Mrs. Russo giggled. I got angry thinking she was laughing at me until she said, “When someone tells you to go fuck yourself, that’s not what they mean.”

I still wouldn’t come out from underneath the bedcover. I couldn’t. She knew I had snooped. I was so embarrassed.

“It’s all right, Julie, I’m not mad,” Mrs. Russo said. “I was your age once and babysat. Not that long ago. We girls are curious. And you’re not a girl. You’re a young lady. I was only a year older than you when I got married.”

“You were?” I said from beneath the bedcover.

“Yes.”

“I’m still in high school.”

“So was I. Don had graduated and was learning to be a car mechanic. When he got his job, I was about to graduate. Maybe we should have waited. I could have lived at home and worked and we could have saved up money to buy a house instead of living in this little apartment. But we loved each other so much that nothing else mattered.”

Mrs. Russo tapped my shoulder. “Aren’t you going to come out from under there?”

I pulled the bedcover down to my shoulder and looked up at her. She was smiling. A warm smile. I looked behind me, over my shoulder. Mr. Russo hadn’t moved.

“Now back to the dildos,” Mrs. Russo said.

I blushed.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said. “Did you touch them?”

My eyes widened. “No! I swear!”

“I believe you. Do you have any questions about them?”

I shook my head and couldn’t make eye contact. It was all so embarrassing.

“They look like the real thing, don’t they?” she asked.

I shrugged. How would I know what a real penis looked like? Gina’s description of her little brother’s was rather vague. I wanted to bury my head under the bedcover again.

“But they’re no substitute for the real thing,” Mrs. Russo said. “It’s better when Don fucks me with his real dick. I’m not embarrassing you, am I, talking this way?”

I was way past embarrassed, but I wanted to learn about sex so I shook my head. My red cheeks probably gave me away, though.

“And since I’m already pregnant,” Mrs. Russo said, patting her bump, “we don’t need to use a condom. It feels better skin on skin when Don fucks me. And also when I fuck him.”

“Now you’re making fun of me,” I said. “A girl can’t fuck a boy.”

“Why not?”

“A girl doesn’t have a dick.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. But I didn’t mean that. Would you like me to show you how a woman fucks a man?”

My ears perked. “How can you show me?”

“I’m here. Don is here. We can show you.”

“You’ll do it in front of me?” I asked, incredulously.

“I’m extra horny when I’m pregnant and our talk got me even more excited. I don’t know if you’re wet down there, but I sure am. I was going to jump Don after you left and fuck him, but we can do it while you watch.” Mrs. Russo paused. “That is, only if you want to.”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, we’ll wait until you leave.” Mrs. Russo chuckled. “Although my panties are going to be soaked. So, is there anything else you want to ask me?”

I was quiet, chewing my lower lip. How would I ever learn what fucking was? No one else was going to tell me. What would happen when I married? How would I know what to do? Why wasn’t there a book on it? But I didn’t need a book. Mrs. Russo said she’d show me how it’s done. I looked over my shoulder at Mr. Russo. He gave me a warm smile. He didn’t think his wife was crazy. Maybe I was dreaming. This was weird.

“Would you really let me watch?” I asked.

“As long as you never tell anyone. Not even your friends.”

“I never would. I never even told them I masturbate.”

“Once we start, if you change your mind, go into the living room and wait for us to finish. Once I start I don’t want to have to stop. Okay?”

I nodded. Once again, my mouth was dry with a lump in my throat.

Mrs. Russo got off the bed and walked to her dresser where she slid open the top drawer. She took out a band which she used to tie her long black hair into a ponytail. While staring at my reflection in the mirror, Mrs. Russo unbuttoned her blouse and removed it, laying it on top of the dresser. Even though her long hair was pulled into a ponytail, it still reached her bra strap. My eyes were riveted on the reflection of Mrs. Russo’s chest in the mirror and then on her hands reaching behind her back, unfastening the bra. When she shrugged the bra off, my eyes darted back to the mirror, to Mrs. Russo’s naked breasts.

Mrs. Russo turned around to face me and hefted her breasts. “They get swollen when I’m pregnant. And they get bigger with each baby.”

“I wish mine were bigger,” I said.

“Don’t rush it. You have beautiful breasts.”

Mr. Russo jumped onto the middle of the bed, next to where my body was underneath the bedcover. I shrieked. But he bounced off the other side in a heartbeat. He rushed up to his wife and wrapped his arms around her.