Chapter 6

Voices awoke me from a sound sleep, a sleep I was not ready to get up from. A sleep that was too brief. The night before, when I had gotten home from my date with Joey, I had been sent to my bedroom for having lied to my parents. I should have been sorry for lying to them—but I was sixteen—so what I regretted was getting caught. That hadn’t kept me up, though. What I had agonized over was losing my dating privileges. I had waited sixteen years to be allowed to date. And when I had stopped fuming about that, I fretted over what had happened in the car at Canarsie Pier. I knew what I had done with Joey was wrong, good girls didn’t do that, but the feelings were like no feelings I had ever felt before. Feelings that had kept me from stopping Joey. Feelings that had wanted Joey to keep doing what he was doing. Feelings that scared me. I had tossed and turned and cried until early in the morning when I finally fell asleep. Just a few hours ago.

My bedroom was on the second floor in the front of the house. The sole window was above the front door. I pulled the pillow over my head to block the voices. I wasn’t ready to get up. But then my eyes popped open. The voices were Debbie’s and Gina’s, and my mother’s.

I threw the pillow aside, leapt out of bed, and flew down the stairs in my bare feet and pajamas. With my ponytail undone and all the tossing from the restless sleep, my tangled hair flew in all directions, a lot of it in my face. I kept swiping it out of my eyes to see. The front door was open, my mother was inside the house, and my two friends were outside, standing on the porch facing her. I came to a skidding stop when I neared the bottom of the staircase.

“I’ll be ready soon,” I shouted out of breath. “Give me a couple of minutes.”

I spun around and started up the stairs two at a time when my mother shouted, “Julie, you’re not going anywhere.”

I stopped halfway up the staircase and turned. “I want to be with my friends,” I said. It came out as a whine.

“Well, you should have thought about that before you lied.”

“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”

My mother turned back to my friends. “Sorry, girls, but Julie isn’t going anywhere today.”

She shut the front door. Right in my friends’ faces.

“Mommy, that’s not fair!”

“Life’s not fair.”

I turned and stormed the rest of the way up the stairs and didn’t stop running until I was in my bedroom. I slammed the door shut. As soon as I heard the loud bang, I knew my mother had heard it too. Something else for her to yell at me about. I belly flopped onto my bed and cried into the pillow.

We had two telephones in the house, one in my parents’ bedroom and one in the kitchen. I had a burning need to talk to someone about my date and couldn’t even call my friends. At that thought, my sobbing abruptly subsided and my mind became sharp. How much could I tell Debbie and Gina anyway? I could tell them a boy held me, that we kissed—they’d be so jealous—but not the rest. They would think I was a tramp. Maybe I was a tramp. I couldn’t explain why I had done what I had done. I couldn’t explain what I didn’t understand. The secrets I was keeping from my two best friends were piling up.

“Come down and have breakfast,” my mother shouted from the first floor.

“I’m not hungry,” I shouted back.

“Suit yourself.”

I waited for more, but she remained silent. I guess she was fed up with me. I was hungry, but I wasn’t going to let her know that. I’d show her. I could be just as stubborn as her.

All of a sudden, I felt grubby. I hadn’t washed up before going to bed, not even brushing my teeth, so I went into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. It was only recently that I started locking the door. As I said, the bedrooms were on the second floor with the only full bathroom in the house. The tiny bathroom on the first floor near the kitchen only had a toilet and sink.

About four months ago, I had gotten up early, early for me on a Saturday, and really needed to pee. Afraid I was going to have an accident, I cupped and squeezed myself between my legs as I rushed from my bedroom to the bathroom at the other end of the hall. I hastily slung the door closed behind me, but it didn’t close all the way. I sat on the toilet with my knees spread and pajama bottoms and panties stretched around my ankles, sighing in relief as the stream splashed the water in the bowl.

My father pushed the door open and came in.

I screeched.

With my scream still bouncing off the bathroom walls, I snapped my knees together and folded forward so fast my breasts flattened on my thighs. Too embarrassed to even yell at him to get out, I tried to make myself as small as possible with my forehead pressed to my knees and my hands clutching my shins. My eyes were clamped shut. If I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me. Not rational, but I was so embarrassed I just wanted to die.

“Sorry,” my father had said, “you should have locked the door.” He had turned and left, pulling the door closed behind him.

Ever since then, I locked the bathroom door.

After washing my face and brushing my teeth, I stripped off my pajamas and panties. I didn’t sleep with a bra. Once again, I noticed the blood stain on the crotch of the panties. My mother would probably have thought I had an accident with my period, but I scrubbed it clean with soap and water in the sink anyway. I knew if she asked me about it I would burst into tears and she would know I was no longer a virgin. I wasn’t a good liar back then, especially to my mother.