Categories > Original > Mystery > The Allure of Virginity
Saying Goodbye to Lily
It was Wednesday lunchtime. I lied down by myself on a patch of grass on the soccer oval. School today was boring and I couldn’t wait to get home. Today had been a disaster. Since I stayed up so late last night I woke up half an hour late this morning. I managed to catch the bus only because I skipped breakfast. Throughout class I was hungry and tired, but I managed to pull through.
As I sat on the grass a girl about my age walked by and looked at me for a while, about four seconds. I hate it when girls stare at me because it confirms to me that I don’t look ordinary. If I were ordinary, I’d blend in with everyone and nobody would look at me. But because people often look at me, it meant that my appearance was extreme. The problem was that I didn’t know which extreme it was, whether I was extremely ugly or extremely attractive. And to be honest, I didn’t want to find out.
I lied down with my back on the grass. My feet were outstretched, my arms flat by my sides, and the back of my head cushioned against the soft dirt underneath the grass. My eyes looked up to the sky and I focused on the swirling clouds, the dynamic mixing of dark clouds with white clouds, creating a fluffy milkshake-coloured mass of clouds in the sky. As my eyes focused on the clouds, I started to admire how big they were.
I closed my eyes and started to see images. I stood on a large bed of clouds. The clouds beneath my feet felt soft and feathery. I was naked, but I wasn't the only one. Lily stood in front of me. It was windy up in the clouds. The little girl looked up at me and with her right hand pulled away hair covering her face, revealing to me her shimmering eyes. I looked around to make sure no one else was present. I knelt down and moved my face towards the girl until my mouth was only about five inches away from hers. When she exhaled, the air she breathed out touched my face, and it felt as if she was actually touching me. I wanted to be near her—so close to her that she was in me, so that the essence of her was flowing through my veins—her sweat, her blood, her urine, her whole body mixing with mine. Her moist red lips looked like ripe strawberries. Just by looking at them, I could imagine how sweet and tasty they would be. With her mouth opened while she breathed I could smell her sweet and sugary little-girl breaths. With one hand rested on the back of her neck, I pulled my face closer to hers and kissed the girl on the lips. At first, she hesitantly licked my tongue. My tongue lapped around with hers, sloshing her saliva around. It was a wet kiss. The surface of her tongue was soft, as was the internal lining of her cheeks. Her mouth was moist and refreshing. When I pulled away, she looked exhausted.
“You kissed me,” she said.
My fingers touched her chin and when they did, I could no longer breathe. I began to choke. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t breathe. It was like someone was strangling me. But there didn’t seem to be any pressure on my neck, and I couldn’t see any hands on me.
She looks at me, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
I looked at her and desperately choked out words. “I’m sorry! I’m…” I felt my face heating up. Lily suddenly disappeared.
The clouds, the sky, everything disappeared, and I was in a jungle, standing at the edge of a raging river. The brown river water was filled with syringes, condoms, and porn magazines. It was a river filled with filth, and in the middle of the river, I saw Lily, struggling to stay afloat. It was a horrific sight—such a clean and pure little girl swimming in so much filth. I tried to get to the girl, but before I reached the water, I fell to the ground breathless. I couldn’t breathe. Something invisible was choking me.
A little girl growing up is like a sparkling diamond floating in a river of filth. I don’t want the little girl to drown. But I know that as she grows up, eventually she will.
I woke up. My eyes opened and I saw Eddie’s smiling face. His hands were on my nose. No wonder I couldn’t breathe. For survival’s sake, I grabbed his wrists and pushed him away. He fell on his back. I sat up and took long, heavy breathes, and six seconds later my breathing rhythm was normal. It took me a few seconds to notice that I was in the real world now. Everything looked so crisp and hygienic. I sat at one end of the soccer oval. A group of students played soccer near me. Many other groups of students sat around on the oval in groups. Eddie lied on the ground near me, and as I looked at him, he continued to smile.
“You almost killed me.”
“You were sleeping,” said Eddie. “Had to wake you.”
“Aren’t you tired? You were up exercising last night.”
He shrugged. “Used to it. I always stay up late.”
“How come?”
“Dunno. At night, feels better.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think I know what you mean. Everything’s more peaceful.”
“Sort of.” Eddie sat up.
“So how are you?” I asked.
“Have they found Ella yet?”
“No, she’s still missing.”
“Remember the pornos Mark gave me last night…the CDs? On one of the CDs, there’s this strange video file.”
“What sort of video?”
“I don’t know,” said Eddie. “I’ll have to show it to you. I’m not really sure if it’s what I think it is.”
“Okay, let’s see it.”
“I don’t have it on me now. Come to my bedroom tonight after school and I’ll show it to you.”
About four hours later, when I came home from school, I spent two hours studying before coming downstairs for dinner. Mum cooked stir fry with duck while Dad waited for the food on the dining room table. Mum was yet to heat up the duck, so Dad and I sat on the table by ourselves. This gave my dad an opportunity to talk to me about issues he didn’t want Mum hearing.
“Nancy called about twenty minutes ago,” said Dad. “She wanted you to babysit again.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her you couldn’t babysit because you were busy studying.” He paused for a few seconds. “Keith, I want you to find another job.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know…work at a bank or something.”
“Doing what?”
“It’s up to you. Maybe you can be a teller.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“They’ll teach you. After being a teller, maybe they’ll promote you. You’ll be a big man.”
“I get lots of money babysitting.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Dad. “I don’t think that sort of job is right for you. Babysitting is the sort of thing women do.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a good reason why women do that sort of work. If I had a child I wouldn’t want some boy like you looking after her.”
I opened my mouth, about to say something before I forgot what it was.
“Okay then, Keith? I want you to find another job.”
“Fine, I’ll start looking for a job tonight after I finish dinner.”
“Good boy.” He patted me on the head as if I were a little kid.
After dinner I went back upstairs to my room and put on more comfortable clothes. I wore a black Nike jumper and hoped it wouldn’t to be too hot outside. It was the afternoon anyway. Earlier in the day I had agreed to meet Eddie in his room in the afternoon, but he didn’t specify a precise time, so I assumed he meant I could drop in anytime I wanted. Eddie told me that one of Mark’s pornographic CDs contained strange images or video files. I wondered what these strange files were.
To my mum and dad, I announced to them I was going job hunting before walking out. I had no intentions to go job hunting. I just wanted to see Eddie. Everyone stops work in the afternoon, so how in the world could I go job hunting anyway? My parents were a little dumb.
It was six o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was setting on the horizon, the air quickly cooled, and the sky near the sunset turned bright pink and red.
I walked passed Lily’s house and stopped to think. I was banned from ever babysitting the girl ever again, which made me sad in a way. From where I stood I noticed that Ella’s bedroom window was wide open, so maybe I could climb in and see Lily.
After climbing up the tree, I crawled onto a branch that headed to Ella’s bedroom window. When I climbed in, I noticed that Ella’s bedroom was the same as it was when I last went there, except now that the lights were not on, the room seemed darker. This darkness made the place seem less inviting. Without much light, Ella’s once big and bright room now looked small and dull. With Ella missing, the room seemed hollow and empty, as if walls, desks, and beds somehow lose their life when nobody uses them.
I peeked out from Ella’s room and looked into the corridor, where I saw Nancy walking out from Lily’s bedroom with a handful of Lily’s clothing, including her school uniform. Downstairs I could hear the washing machine on, so Nancy was doing the laundry, which was strange because I thought people only did the laundry on weekends. Today was Wednesday. Lily must have stained her clothes at school.
As Nancy arrived at the top of the stairs, Lily followed her. She grabbed her mother’s shirt from behind. “Mum…Mummy…”
“What is it?”
“Look at my fish pictures.”
Nancy shooed her away and walked downstairs with the clothes.
I quietly followed Lily as she walked back inside her room.
Lily was sitting on the carpet. She wore a pink frill singlet and a white skirt embroidered with flowers. She held in her right hand a plastic bag filled with three small green fish swimming in water. Near her was an empty fish tank. Her bedroom window was wide open. She was surprised to see me.
“What are the fish for?” I asked, speaking so quickly that the words came out sounding strange.
“From the pond at the park,” she said, holding up the plastic bag to her face. The water-filled bag magnified her facial features. “I think the fishes are hungry,” she said.
The fish were as green as grass and like grass when exposed to light from the light bulb they turned bright green.
Lily started emptying the contents of the plastic bag into the fish tank. “I got this fish tank with your money.”
“I thought that money was for getting your hair cut.”
“Last night,” said Lily. “I saw Ella’s boyfriend.”
“Mark?”
She nodded and walked over to the bedroom window. “I saw him down there.” She pointed down to her backyard. “I also saw you.”
“You should stay away from Mark,” I said.
“Is he bad?”
“He’s very bad. If you don’t know if someone’s good or bad, you pretend they’re bad. It’s safer that way.”
She nodded. “Okay.” Her eyes were wide open and her mouth formed an oval shape that made her look a little like one of the fish in the tank.
“I came here to tell you something, Lily.”
Lily was reaching inside her schoolbag. She pulled out a piece of paper. “Look at my fish picture.” She handed me a letter-sized paper with three fish drawn on it with pencils, pens, and markers. The pictures were rather good. She could colour within the lines very well, but some of the features were out of proportion—for example, the eyes were too big. And her fish was smiling. Fish never smile.
“This is excellent,” I said. “You draw well for your age.”
She slowly pulled the sheet of paper from my hand. “You don’t like it.”
“I do. It belongs in an art gallery.”
“Really? You mean it?”
“Yeah.”
She placed the paper back in her schoolbag. “I’m gonna show the teacher tomorrow.” She looked at me and kept talking. “Eddie, that scary boy, said my pictures are silly.”
“You spoke to Eddie?”
“Eddie says he sees better pictures.”
I thought about his pornography collection and smiled.
“Look at this!” Lily searched through her schoolbag. While searching, it looked as if her schoolbag was so full that papers, pens, and markers were spilling out. She eventually found the piece of paper she was looking for and showed it to me.
I looked at the picture carefully, but all I saw was a black circle on a green background. “What’s that? What’s the green background?”
“That’s grass!” She pointed to the black circle in the middle. “This is a hole.”
“Like a rabbit hole?”
“Umm.” Her put a finger to her chin and looked up to the ceiling. “It’s…it’s a big hole.”
“How big? Could I fit in it?”
She looked at me for a while before nodding. “Yes.”
“So it’s like a tunnel?”
“You don’t like this picture, don’t you?”
“The fish picture’s better. Where did you find those fish anyway?”
“I already told you,” she said. “The pond at the park.”
“Dendy Park?”
She nodded. “I go there and draw things.”
“By yourself? Does your mum know?”
“No.”
“Well, next time you go, tell me, and I’ll go with you.”
“Are you babysitting me tonight?” she asked, sitting on her bed.
“That’s why I came here.” My voice lowered. “I just wanted to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t know how she would react. “I won’t be babysitting you anymore.”
Lily paused for six seconds, during which she only inhaled. “Why not?”
“My dad won’t let me.”
“How come?”
“Uh…he wants me to get another job…one that makes more money.”
“I won’t see you again?”
“We’re next door neighbours. Of course we’ll be seeing each other.” I pointed out from her bedroom window and towards my bedroom window across the fence. “I’m just over there.”
I didn’t know what to do now. We were both silent. Lily sat on her bed and stared ahead while I stood in front of her. When I looked down I saw Lily’s hair and wondered whether she’d mind if I touched it. Often adults did this to small children—they patted them on the head and ruffle their hair around. My dad always did that to me—and he still does it even now. But while boys usually had messy hair, girls normally had neat hair, and I certainly didn’t want to mess up Lily’s neat hair.
“Will someone else babysit me?” she asked. Her voice was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear it.
“Yes, your mum will find someone else.”
“You want me to write a poem?” She looked up at me. “When my dog went away, my mum said to me to write a poem.”
“What dog?”
“When I was in Sydney…he was run over by a car.”
My eyes widened. “Oh…”
“My daddy put the dog in a shoebox, and he put the box in a big hole in the garden. My poem is in the shoebox.”
“I don’t understand poetry,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
“Will you write to me?”
“I know. I’ll e-mail you.”
I picked up a pen as well as a piece of paper lying on the ground. After Lily told me her e-mail address, I folded the paper up and placed it in a pocket. There wasn’t any reason for us to send e-mails back and forth. Even though my dad didn’t allow me to babysit her, there was no way my dad could stop me from climbing into her bedroom and meeting her. I’m not sure if Lily fully understood this—she seemed a lot sadder than I was.
“I’d better be going now,” I said.
Lily stared at my face and stayed very quiet. I didn’t know what to do. Here was a girl I’d been babysitting for a while now. It would be rude for me to just walk away.
“Bye,” said Lily. She then spread her arms out.
I looked at her for a while before I finally understood what she wanted. I kneeled down. As my body came closer to hers, she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big hug.
“Ouch! Ouch!” I said. “Too tight.”
She readjusted and became gentler. I started to wonder whether it was her fault for grabbing on too tight or my fault for not tolerating her grip.
Lily had her arms around my neck and her face buried on my left chest, right next to my left armpit. I started to worry about whether I had applied enough roll-on deodorant this morning to my underarm region. As I kneeled near the girl’s bed, my knee caps started to hurt since I was kneeling. Lily was on her bed. I wrapped my arms around Lily’s body and moved my chin over her left shoulder until it almost touched the back of her neck. What caught my attention was how warm the little girl’s body was. It was like I was holding onto a big balloon filled with warm bath water. I felt Lily’s soft left cheeks rubbing against my face as she pulled her head up from my left chest. Perhaps the smell was too much for her down there. While she moved her head back, I moved my face down towards her neck.
I kissed Lily’s neck, where her Adam’s apple would be if she had one. It was such a stunning part of her body. Her smooth neck looked alive because of all the blood that pumped underneath it—blood needed for the brain. I noticed how her neck wriggled like a creature after my lips had planted there a wet aggregation of spit. I went in again and kissed her a second time on the neck, but this time I wanted to lick my tongue all over it.
When my mouth made contact with her neck again, Lily started giggling and laughing. The laughing was a high-pitched shrieking laughter, so full of happiness and youth.
“Keith, what are you doing here?”
I pulled my head out from Lily’s neck. Nancy was standing by the bedroom door. Her face revealed a look of shock. I stayed silent, uncertain of what to say.
“What are you doing here, Keith? Your dad told me you couldn’t babysit tonight because you were too busy finding a job.”
“Uh…um…” I hated it when I had to think quickly. “I…uh…I just came over to tell Lily that I won’t be able to babysit her anymore.”
“Oh, I see.” Nancy nodded.
I already told Lily that I wasn’t going to babysit her anymore, so what I just said was harmless to Nancy because if I didn’t say it, there was a good chance Lily would tell her mother later anyway.
I got up and prepared to leave. “Yeah, so I just came over to tell her in person. It’s better than, you know, doing it over the phone…or whatever.”
“Oh, well.” Nancy looked down at the floor. “I guess it’ll be a pity not having you around as a babysitter anymore, Keith.” She looked up at me and gave a brief smile.
“I’d better be going now,” I said, walking towards the bedroom door. “My dad says I’ve got to get a job.”
“Of course,” said Nancy. “I’ll walk you to the front door.”
I had to remind Nancy of one important fact. “Just because I can’t babysit Lily anymore it doesn’t mean I can’t see her, right?”
“Yeah, you can come over whenever you like. Although I would prefer it if you came in through the front door instead of climbing in through Ella’s bedroom window.”
“Ah, okay then.”
“Hold on a second.” Nancy interrupted before I could walk away. “You’re looking for a job, aren’t you?”
“Yeah…why?”
“I know a company that’s looking for young people like you. I’ll tell your father about it, alright? You’ll be a door-to-door interviewer.”
“What?”
“A door-to-door interviewer,” said Nancy. “You walk around the neighbourhood knocking on people’s doors and asking them to do surveys.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t decide now. I’ll tell your father and let you think about it.”
“Okay, well, thanks.”
I walked away from the Jenkins household feeling doubtful. Did Nancy think that my kissing her daughter’s neck was inappropriate? Nancy seemed really eager to get me out of the house and to get me another job, as if she thought I was a pest. But then why did she tell me I could come into her house anytime I wanted? Was she just being polite? Maybe she wanted me to get another job so I’d be so busy I wouldn’t have time to talk to Lily.
Instead of walking back to my house next door, I went in the opposite direction towards Eddie’s house. I didn’t want to meet with Eddie’s disabled father, so I went to the backyard and hoped Eddie’s bedroom window was open.
It was Wednesday lunchtime. I lied down by myself on a patch of grass on the soccer oval. School today was boring and I couldn’t wait to get home. Today had been a disaster. Since I stayed up so late last night I woke up half an hour late this morning. I managed to catch the bus only because I skipped breakfast. Throughout class I was hungry and tired, but I managed to pull through.
As I sat on the grass a girl about my age walked by and looked at me for a while, about four seconds. I hate it when girls stare at me because it confirms to me that I don’t look ordinary. If I were ordinary, I’d blend in with everyone and nobody would look at me. But because people often look at me, it meant that my appearance was extreme. The problem was that I didn’t know which extreme it was, whether I was extremely ugly or extremely attractive. And to be honest, I didn’t want to find out.
I lied down with my back on the grass. My feet were outstretched, my arms flat by my sides, and the back of my head cushioned against the soft dirt underneath the grass. My eyes looked up to the sky and I focused on the swirling clouds, the dynamic mixing of dark clouds with white clouds, creating a fluffy milkshake-coloured mass of clouds in the sky. As my eyes focused on the clouds, I started to admire how big they were.
I closed my eyes and started to see images. I stood on a large bed of clouds. The clouds beneath my feet felt soft and feathery. I was naked, but I wasn't the only one. Lily stood in front of me. It was windy up in the clouds. The little girl looked up at me and with her right hand pulled away hair covering her face, revealing to me her shimmering eyes. I looked around to make sure no one else was present. I knelt down and moved my face towards the girl until my mouth was only about five inches away from hers. When she exhaled, the air she breathed out touched my face, and it felt as if she was actually touching me. I wanted to be near her—so close to her that she was in me, so that the essence of her was flowing through my veins—her sweat, her blood, her urine, her whole body mixing with mine. Her moist red lips looked like ripe strawberries. Just by looking at them, I could imagine how sweet and tasty they would be. With her mouth opened while she breathed I could smell her sweet and sugary little-girl breaths. With one hand rested on the back of her neck, I pulled my face closer to hers and kissed the girl on the lips. At first, she hesitantly licked my tongue. My tongue lapped around with hers, sloshing her saliva around. It was a wet kiss. The surface of her tongue was soft, as was the internal lining of her cheeks. Her mouth was moist and refreshing. When I pulled away, she looked exhausted.
“You kissed me,” she said.
My fingers touched her chin and when they did, I could no longer breathe. I began to choke. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t breathe. It was like someone was strangling me. But there didn’t seem to be any pressure on my neck, and I couldn’t see any hands on me.
She looks at me, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
I looked at her and desperately choked out words. “I’m sorry! I’m…” I felt my face heating up. Lily suddenly disappeared.
The clouds, the sky, everything disappeared, and I was in a jungle, standing at the edge of a raging river. The brown river water was filled with syringes, condoms, and porn magazines. It was a river filled with filth, and in the middle of the river, I saw Lily, struggling to stay afloat. It was a horrific sight—such a clean and pure little girl swimming in so much filth. I tried to get to the girl, but before I reached the water, I fell to the ground breathless. I couldn’t breathe. Something invisible was choking me.
A little girl growing up is like a sparkling diamond floating in a river of filth. I don’t want the little girl to drown. But I know that as she grows up, eventually she will.
I woke up. My eyes opened and I saw Eddie’s smiling face. His hands were on my nose. No wonder I couldn’t breathe. For survival’s sake, I grabbed his wrists and pushed him away. He fell on his back. I sat up and took long, heavy breathes, and six seconds later my breathing rhythm was normal. It took me a few seconds to notice that I was in the real world now. Everything looked so crisp and hygienic. I sat at one end of the soccer oval. A group of students played soccer near me. Many other groups of students sat around on the oval in groups. Eddie lied on the ground near me, and as I looked at him, he continued to smile.
“You almost killed me.”
“You were sleeping,” said Eddie. “Had to wake you.”
“Aren’t you tired? You were up exercising last night.”
He shrugged. “Used to it. I always stay up late.”
“How come?”
“Dunno. At night, feels better.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think I know what you mean. Everything’s more peaceful.”
“Sort of.” Eddie sat up.
“So how are you?” I asked.
“Have they found Ella yet?”
“No, she’s still missing.”
“Remember the pornos Mark gave me last night…the CDs? On one of the CDs, there’s this strange video file.”
“What sort of video?”
“I don’t know,” said Eddie. “I’ll have to show it to you. I’m not really sure if it’s what I think it is.”
“Okay, let’s see it.”
“I don’t have it on me now. Come to my bedroom tonight after school and I’ll show it to you.”
About four hours later, when I came home from school, I spent two hours studying before coming downstairs for dinner. Mum cooked stir fry with duck while Dad waited for the food on the dining room table. Mum was yet to heat up the duck, so Dad and I sat on the table by ourselves. This gave my dad an opportunity to talk to me about issues he didn’t want Mum hearing.
“Nancy called about twenty minutes ago,” said Dad. “She wanted you to babysit again.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her you couldn’t babysit because you were busy studying.” He paused for a few seconds. “Keith, I want you to find another job.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know…work at a bank or something.”
“Doing what?”
“It’s up to you. Maybe you can be a teller.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“They’ll teach you. After being a teller, maybe they’ll promote you. You’ll be a big man.”
“I get lots of money babysitting.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Dad. “I don’t think that sort of job is right for you. Babysitting is the sort of thing women do.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a good reason why women do that sort of work. If I had a child I wouldn’t want some boy like you looking after her.”
I opened my mouth, about to say something before I forgot what it was.
“Okay then, Keith? I want you to find another job.”
“Fine, I’ll start looking for a job tonight after I finish dinner.”
“Good boy.” He patted me on the head as if I were a little kid.
After dinner I went back upstairs to my room and put on more comfortable clothes. I wore a black Nike jumper and hoped it wouldn’t to be too hot outside. It was the afternoon anyway. Earlier in the day I had agreed to meet Eddie in his room in the afternoon, but he didn’t specify a precise time, so I assumed he meant I could drop in anytime I wanted. Eddie told me that one of Mark’s pornographic CDs contained strange images or video files. I wondered what these strange files were.
To my mum and dad, I announced to them I was going job hunting before walking out. I had no intentions to go job hunting. I just wanted to see Eddie. Everyone stops work in the afternoon, so how in the world could I go job hunting anyway? My parents were a little dumb.
It was six o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was setting on the horizon, the air quickly cooled, and the sky near the sunset turned bright pink and red.
I walked passed Lily’s house and stopped to think. I was banned from ever babysitting the girl ever again, which made me sad in a way. From where I stood I noticed that Ella’s bedroom window was wide open, so maybe I could climb in and see Lily.
After climbing up the tree, I crawled onto a branch that headed to Ella’s bedroom window. When I climbed in, I noticed that Ella’s bedroom was the same as it was when I last went there, except now that the lights were not on, the room seemed darker. This darkness made the place seem less inviting. Without much light, Ella’s once big and bright room now looked small and dull. With Ella missing, the room seemed hollow and empty, as if walls, desks, and beds somehow lose their life when nobody uses them.
I peeked out from Ella’s room and looked into the corridor, where I saw Nancy walking out from Lily’s bedroom with a handful of Lily’s clothing, including her school uniform. Downstairs I could hear the washing machine on, so Nancy was doing the laundry, which was strange because I thought people only did the laundry on weekends. Today was Wednesday. Lily must have stained her clothes at school.
As Nancy arrived at the top of the stairs, Lily followed her. She grabbed her mother’s shirt from behind. “Mum…Mummy…”
“What is it?”
“Look at my fish pictures.”
Nancy shooed her away and walked downstairs with the clothes.
I quietly followed Lily as she walked back inside her room.
Lily was sitting on the carpet. She wore a pink frill singlet and a white skirt embroidered with flowers. She held in her right hand a plastic bag filled with three small green fish swimming in water. Near her was an empty fish tank. Her bedroom window was wide open. She was surprised to see me.
“What are the fish for?” I asked, speaking so quickly that the words came out sounding strange.
“From the pond at the park,” she said, holding up the plastic bag to her face. The water-filled bag magnified her facial features. “I think the fishes are hungry,” she said.
The fish were as green as grass and like grass when exposed to light from the light bulb they turned bright green.
Lily started emptying the contents of the plastic bag into the fish tank. “I got this fish tank with your money.”
“I thought that money was for getting your hair cut.”
“Last night,” said Lily. “I saw Ella’s boyfriend.”
“Mark?”
She nodded and walked over to the bedroom window. “I saw him down there.” She pointed down to her backyard. “I also saw you.”
“You should stay away from Mark,” I said.
“Is he bad?”
“He’s very bad. If you don’t know if someone’s good or bad, you pretend they’re bad. It’s safer that way.”
She nodded. “Okay.” Her eyes were wide open and her mouth formed an oval shape that made her look a little like one of the fish in the tank.
“I came here to tell you something, Lily.”
Lily was reaching inside her schoolbag. She pulled out a piece of paper. “Look at my fish picture.” She handed me a letter-sized paper with three fish drawn on it with pencils, pens, and markers. The pictures were rather good. She could colour within the lines very well, but some of the features were out of proportion—for example, the eyes were too big. And her fish was smiling. Fish never smile.
“This is excellent,” I said. “You draw well for your age.”
She slowly pulled the sheet of paper from my hand. “You don’t like it.”
“I do. It belongs in an art gallery.”
“Really? You mean it?”
“Yeah.”
She placed the paper back in her schoolbag. “I’m gonna show the teacher tomorrow.” She looked at me and kept talking. “Eddie, that scary boy, said my pictures are silly.”
“You spoke to Eddie?”
“Eddie says he sees better pictures.”
I thought about his pornography collection and smiled.
“Look at this!” Lily searched through her schoolbag. While searching, it looked as if her schoolbag was so full that papers, pens, and markers were spilling out. She eventually found the piece of paper she was looking for and showed it to me.
I looked at the picture carefully, but all I saw was a black circle on a green background. “What’s that? What’s the green background?”
“That’s grass!” She pointed to the black circle in the middle. “This is a hole.”
“Like a rabbit hole?”
“Umm.” Her put a finger to her chin and looked up to the ceiling. “It’s…it’s a big hole.”
“How big? Could I fit in it?”
She looked at me for a while before nodding. “Yes.”
“So it’s like a tunnel?”
“You don’t like this picture, don’t you?”
“The fish picture’s better. Where did you find those fish anyway?”
“I already told you,” she said. “The pond at the park.”
“Dendy Park?”
She nodded. “I go there and draw things.”
“By yourself? Does your mum know?”
“No.”
“Well, next time you go, tell me, and I’ll go with you.”
“Are you babysitting me tonight?” she asked, sitting on her bed.
“That’s why I came here.” My voice lowered. “I just wanted to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t know how she would react. “I won’t be babysitting you anymore.”
Lily paused for six seconds, during which she only inhaled. “Why not?”
“My dad won’t let me.”
“How come?”
“Uh…he wants me to get another job…one that makes more money.”
“I won’t see you again?”
“We’re next door neighbours. Of course we’ll be seeing each other.” I pointed out from her bedroom window and towards my bedroom window across the fence. “I’m just over there.”
I didn’t know what to do now. We were both silent. Lily sat on her bed and stared ahead while I stood in front of her. When I looked down I saw Lily’s hair and wondered whether she’d mind if I touched it. Often adults did this to small children—they patted them on the head and ruffle their hair around. My dad always did that to me—and he still does it even now. But while boys usually had messy hair, girls normally had neat hair, and I certainly didn’t want to mess up Lily’s neat hair.
“Will someone else babysit me?” she asked. Her voice was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear it.
“Yes, your mum will find someone else.”
“You want me to write a poem?” She looked up at me. “When my dog went away, my mum said to me to write a poem.”
“What dog?”
“When I was in Sydney…he was run over by a car.”
My eyes widened. “Oh…”
“My daddy put the dog in a shoebox, and he put the box in a big hole in the garden. My poem is in the shoebox.”
“I don’t understand poetry,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
“Will you write to me?”
“I know. I’ll e-mail you.”
I picked up a pen as well as a piece of paper lying on the ground. After Lily told me her e-mail address, I folded the paper up and placed it in a pocket. There wasn’t any reason for us to send e-mails back and forth. Even though my dad didn’t allow me to babysit her, there was no way my dad could stop me from climbing into her bedroom and meeting her. I’m not sure if Lily fully understood this—she seemed a lot sadder than I was.
“I’d better be going now,” I said.
Lily stared at my face and stayed very quiet. I didn’t know what to do. Here was a girl I’d been babysitting for a while now. It would be rude for me to just walk away.
“Bye,” said Lily. She then spread her arms out.
I looked at her for a while before I finally understood what she wanted. I kneeled down. As my body came closer to hers, she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big hug.
“Ouch! Ouch!” I said. “Too tight.”
She readjusted and became gentler. I started to wonder whether it was her fault for grabbing on too tight or my fault for not tolerating her grip.
Lily had her arms around my neck and her face buried on my left chest, right next to my left armpit. I started to worry about whether I had applied enough roll-on deodorant this morning to my underarm region. As I kneeled near the girl’s bed, my knee caps started to hurt since I was kneeling. Lily was on her bed. I wrapped my arms around Lily’s body and moved my chin over her left shoulder until it almost touched the back of her neck. What caught my attention was how warm the little girl’s body was. It was like I was holding onto a big balloon filled with warm bath water. I felt Lily’s soft left cheeks rubbing against my face as she pulled her head up from my left chest. Perhaps the smell was too much for her down there. While she moved her head back, I moved my face down towards her neck.
I kissed Lily’s neck, where her Adam’s apple would be if she had one. It was such a stunning part of her body. Her smooth neck looked alive because of all the blood that pumped underneath it—blood needed for the brain. I noticed how her neck wriggled like a creature after my lips had planted there a wet aggregation of spit. I went in again and kissed her a second time on the neck, but this time I wanted to lick my tongue all over it.
When my mouth made contact with her neck again, Lily started giggling and laughing. The laughing was a high-pitched shrieking laughter, so full of happiness and youth.
“Keith, what are you doing here?”
I pulled my head out from Lily’s neck. Nancy was standing by the bedroom door. Her face revealed a look of shock. I stayed silent, uncertain of what to say.
“What are you doing here, Keith? Your dad told me you couldn’t babysit tonight because you were too busy finding a job.”
“Uh…um…” I hated it when I had to think quickly. “I…uh…I just came over to tell Lily that I won’t be able to babysit her anymore.”
“Oh, I see.” Nancy nodded.
I already told Lily that I wasn’t going to babysit her anymore, so what I just said was harmless to Nancy because if I didn’t say it, there was a good chance Lily would tell her mother later anyway.
I got up and prepared to leave. “Yeah, so I just came over to tell her in person. It’s better than, you know, doing it over the phone…or whatever.”
“Oh, well.” Nancy looked down at the floor. “I guess it’ll be a pity not having you around as a babysitter anymore, Keith.” She looked up at me and gave a brief smile.
“I’d better be going now,” I said, walking towards the bedroom door. “My dad says I’ve got to get a job.”
“Of course,” said Nancy. “I’ll walk you to the front door.”
I had to remind Nancy of one important fact. “Just because I can’t babysit Lily anymore it doesn’t mean I can’t see her, right?”
“Yeah, you can come over whenever you like. Although I would prefer it if you came in through the front door instead of climbing in through Ella’s bedroom window.”
“Ah, okay then.”
“Hold on a second.” Nancy interrupted before I could walk away. “You’re looking for a job, aren’t you?”
“Yeah…why?”
“I know a company that’s looking for young people like you. I’ll tell your father about it, alright? You’ll be a door-to-door interviewer.”
“What?”
“A door-to-door interviewer,” said Nancy. “You walk around the neighbourhood knocking on people’s doors and asking them to do surveys.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t decide now. I’ll tell your father and let you think about it.”
“Okay, well, thanks.”
I walked away from the Jenkins household feeling doubtful. Did Nancy think that my kissing her daughter’s neck was inappropriate? Nancy seemed really eager to get me out of the house and to get me another job, as if she thought I was a pest. But then why did she tell me I could come into her house anytime I wanted? Was she just being polite? Maybe she wanted me to get another job so I’d be so busy I wouldn’t have time to talk to Lily.
Instead of walking back to my house next door, I went in the opposite direction towards Eddie’s house. I didn’t want to meet with Eddie’s disabled father, so I went to the backyard and hoped Eddie’s bedroom window was open.
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