He glanced up, then, an expression of lofty pity there to irritate me. "What Nancy is," he said.
My conversation with Mark came back to me. I had to try to be nicer to Will. "Thank you for caring," I told him softly. "It makes it a lot easier to ignore her."
He choked on the bite he was swallowing. "Huh? Thank you?"
"Well, nobody else cared enough to think about how nasty she was being!"
"I…" He looked confused and maybe a little upset, as if it screwed everything up for somebody to do something besides yell at him. "Well… nobody stops and thinks how rough it was for you and Mark to have both your ma and pa killed at once. I mean, they ain't lookin' at what it's like when you gotta support your kid brother. The establishment don't make no allowances for that kind of cases. You're on your own like everybody else. And if they c'n get their hooks into you, screw you!"
I didn't like all that talk about the establishment. It was like saying something bad about the flag, almost. "I don't know that I understand that part about the establishment. I mean, what have I got to do with that?" Maybe if I led him on a little I could show him where he was going wrong.
"When you got time someday, I'll explain." He was starting to sound superior again, like that type usually does when you pin them down.
"Why not this morning?" I asked. "I've got some time after breakfast."
"Aww… There would just be somebody interrupting and making a big noise and not knowing what they were talking about."
"No! Come visit me! We can sit on the sun porch and watch the people down below and talk without anybody bothering us!" He wasn't going to get away with any old excuse! If I could force him to talk sense just once he'd see what silly slogans he was mouthing.
He acted as if I'd trapped him. "Naw. Mark wouldn't understand me trying to make you see. And then he'd go around telling everybody all about it and laughing."
"He's going fishing with a couple of the kids down the street. He won't be there."
"Hmph." Will was as contemptuous of fishing for channel cats in the river as he was of the establishment. "Well… okay! I'll come up! Only you don't really want to know."
"You'll see." I knew he was preparing himself – making excuses ahead of time for the fact he didn't have anything to back up the meaningless phrases he'd learned.
But he did come up. When he rapped on the door and I opened it, I glanced up the hall to see if anybody was there to notice and breathed a sigh of relief nobody was. As nasty-minded as people were getting to be, no telling what they'd say if they saw him coming into my apartment. I let him in and closed the door fast. And just to be sure, after I motioned him through to the sun porch, I locked the door so nobody would come in without knocking.
For just a second or two, I stood there with my hand on the lock, a strange tingle going over me. There was something appealing about Will in spite of his disagreeable personality. He acted as if under all his bluster he was as naive and inexperienced as Mark. He was only a little older, and if everybody reacted to him the way we did at Ma's, there wouldn't have been much of a way for him to have any experiences. I let myself wonder for an instant if his foreskin would be as tight and unmanageable as Mark's had been if a girl were to try it, then shook off the notion and scolded myself. For Christ's sake get a hold of yourself! I thought. Just because he's a male and you've got him alone with you in your apartment doesn't mean you've got to teach him how to fuck! This isn't the Bijou! Don't be a slut!
So I went out and sat with Will and watched people going by below and listened to him. He didn't have any better idea what he was talking about than I'd expected. All he knew was the slogans and catch phrases.
But he did keep glancing at my boobies out of the comer of his eye, and for the first time I didn't feel dirty about his looking at me. It kept coming back to me that it was lack of love that made him such a mean, nasty kid. And I kept drifting back to the idea one person could wipe out all of that aloneness and hurt.
CHAPTER FOUR
Thinking about how close he was to Mark's age and how all alone he was and how Ma never did anything but pick on him, I got all motherly and tender toward him. He wasn't acting the way he usually did; not all smart-ass and know-it-all. He did try to explain the rebellious way he felt. And he did get uncomfortable when some of the things came out sounding pretty hollow. But most of his sincerity most likely was because I listened and didn't shoot him down every time he made a statement.
Pretty soon, when both of us knew he'd said everything he knew, he looked at me real solemn-like and shook his head. His voice was so low I could hardly hear what he said. "How come you're so different, Lee? You ain't a bit like anybody else I know." And then, his face kind of working, "Mark sure is lucky."
I didn't know what to say. I didn't say anything right away, but just looked into those black eyes of his and let the misery behind them soak into me. Then I realized he was going to embarrass himself by letting his lip quiver if I kept looking at him that way. A fifteen-year-old was terribly young and vulnerable, I reminded myself. He might be grown-up enough to screw, physically, but he was still a little boy mentally.
"You had something important to say," I replied as softly as he'd asked. "I wanted to understand. Besides, it's important what you believe."
That was the wrong thing to say, I guess. Suggesting he was important to anybody but himself cracked the shell he'd spent so long building around himself. His eyes glistened and I knew he had tears in them. On impulse, moving before I knew I was going to, I went to him and stood beside his chair cradling his head against my belly. He sat real rigid for a minute and then his shoulders started to shake. I didn't say anything or do anything, except my fingertips sort of rubbed the side of his head. And before long the shaking stopped and his arm slid around me at hip level. His arm was squeezing my ass-cheeks and his hand was on my thigh and sudden, jagged knives of desire were slashing through me.
He was still young enough to teach, I realized. He'd appreciate it like Marky did, I thought. He'd be all big-eyed and breathless. And he's got a young, tender, smooth-headed cock like Mark's. I rubbed my love mound on his shoulder and rubbed the side of his head harder with my fingers. And I bent so one boob rested against his forehead and hung in front of his eyes.
With the contact, everything in me turned on. Pleasure made my stomach flutter and sent hard tingles shooting into my nipples and brought an abrupt, twitching tautness to my pussy. My mouth watered at the thought of that sweet, uneducated young peter hiding in his pants. He was bitter and lonely, but he could melt the bitterness and wash away the loneliness in the delicious closeness I could teach him.
I rubbed my tit on his face, the soft, hot flesh scraping against the layers of cloth separating his flesh from mine. And I thrilled to his quick response as his hand dipped to the short hem of my skirt and slid up my thigh.
"Just rest, sweetie," I whispered. "There're ways of being not lonely."
"Gawddamn!" he exclaimed with an awed tone. "You for real?"
"You made love before?"
"Me? Uh… well…"
"Don't tell me, sweetie. I don't want to know that." He hadn't. His hesitation told me that. And it wasn't fair to make him say so. But he was a virgin, just as Mark had been. I was going to be the one who taught him.
I unbuttoned my blouse and pulled it free of my skirt. And I continued to bend over him while I reached behind my back to unfasten my bra, my hands under the blouse. I shrugged out of blouse and bra quickly and rubbed my bare tit in his face for a moment, then stepped back. I let him stare, knowing whatever he'd seen of boobies had either been in pictures kids had with them or through crevices where curtains hadn't quite cut off the view. He gawked. His tongue worked at his lips and his knuckles whitened as he clenched and unclenched his fists.