The Feminist Agenda of Jemima Kincaid

by Kate Hattemer

  He came in. “Where’s Andy?”

  “No clue,” said Gennifer. “He stomped out.”

  “Ol’ McCool stomped out? Let me guess, he couldn’t take another minute of you, Jemima? You were ball-busting as usual?”

  “Oh, shut up,” I muttered.

  “I need to get home,” Mack told Gennifer. “Like, now. I’ve got conditioning in Herndon at five. And my fucking brother’s run off with the car keys.”

  “I can take you,” said Gennifer. “I’m about ready. Just wait here a sec while I go to my locker. Jemima, we’re done, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, packing up as fast as I could. I didn’t want to be stuck alone with Mack. “I’ll go stop by the business office.”

  “Great,” said Gennifer, distracted. “See you.”

  The business office was closed, so I had to go after school the next day. It took so long to get the budget numbers from Mrs. Pfeiff that I was late to Quiz Team practice. I swarmed in all flustered, carrying a bazillion bags, everything half falling out because I’d stopped by my locker in such a rush. “Oh my God,” I said as I crashed through the door, “never be an accountant—”

  They were in the middle of a question. Mr. Peabody didn’t stop. “This man renounced interference in the ‘domestic conflicts’ of postcolonial African nations in the La Baule speech—”

  I shut up. The team, gripping buzzers, didn’t look at me. “His eventual successor, Jacques Chirac—”

  Jonah buzzed in. “Mitterrand.”

  “Correct for power,” said Mr. Peabody.

  “Sorry,” I said, sliding into the seat nearest the door. “I would have been on time, but I had a meeting with the business office.”

  “Of course,” Ashby whispered, just loud enough for me to hear.

  “What do you mean, of course?” I said.

  “Guys, we’re in the middle of a round,” said Mr. Peabody.

  “Of course you didn’t make our last practice a priority,” said Ashby.

  “It’s not like I would have chosen to have this dumb meeting,” I said. “I’d so much rather be here with you guys—”

  “In the middle of a question, in fact,” said Mr. Peabody.

  “Jem,” said Jiyoon. “Just, like, can we get into this later?”

  I shut my mouth. “Your bonuses, Team A,” said Mr. Peabody with some relief. There were only two more questions, one about cyclic compounds and one about hockey goalies, neither of which, obviously, was my thing. I sat there expectantly, thinking we’d do another round, but everyone else set down their buzzers with the half-sad, half-relaxed feeling of no longer being pummeled by trivia questions. “Let’s talk logistics for the tournament on Saturday,” said Mr. Peabody. “It’s at Thomas Jefferson High School. Let’s meet in the front circle here at ten.”

  “I’ll be sort of late,” I said. “I, er, have Powderpuff that morning.”

  Ashby rolled her eyes. “Yes?” I said, because why be normal when you can be super aggressive, says my brain when it’s tired. “Is there something you want to say to me, Ashby?”

  Jiyoon sighed, I didn’t know at who.

  “Just that I’m questioning your priorities,” said Ashby.

  Mr. Peabody shuffled papers, looking awkward. He’s so conflict-averse that if you’re wearing a non-dress-code sweatshirt, he’ll cover his eyes and shout, “LA-LA-LA, DIDN’T SEE THAT” until you tell him you’ve taken it off. “Guys,” he said.

  “You’re captain,” said Ashby. “And you can’t even get to our last tournament on time?”

  “Whoa!” said Greg. “Shots fired!”

  “I’ll get my own ride,” I said, “and I’ll be there long before actual play starts.”

  “I’m sure you will,” said Ashby.

  “It’s an active war zone!” yelped Greg.

  “God,” I said. “Everyone. I’m doing the best I can, okay?” Was I going to cry again? It was all too much. “I’ll see you,” I managed, and I shot out the door.

  * * *

  —

  My mom was supposed to pick me up at four-thirty, so I dawdled at my locker. But when I checked my phone, I saw she’d texted: Headache. Any chance you could get a ride?

  I stomped my foot. I actually did. Toddler-style. Who did she think I was, some queen everyone wanted to haul around in their litter?

  No, I typed. No chance. It’s either you or I’m sleeping at school.

  I couldn’t send it. I knew the scene at home: the spring sun besieging the windows, the shades holding firm, and Mom so insubstantial she’d barely make a bump under the covers. The air purifier in the corner would be sucking all the scents from the room, one of the many, many no-good nostrums for the aches that never stopped aching no matter how much ginger tea she drank, how much fish oil she took, how many needles were painstakingly slipped into her energy centers. She’d have her eye mask on. Her phone would be next to her with Do Not Disturb turned on for everyone but Dad and Crispin and me.

  No problem, I wrote. Feel better!

  I pushed send, but the inner glow of filial piety lasted only a few steps, which was how long it took me to remember I didn’t have a ride. I stomped my foot again. Sure, I could get a Lyft, but—this was my interior monologue—what kind of unloved, unlicensed Chawton senior needed a Lyft to take her home from school?

  I wheeled around the corner into the stairwell.

  Jiyoon and Paul dropped each other like hot potatoes.

  “Oh my God,” said Jiyoon. “Hi.”

  I was blushing like a freaking milkmaid, but they were too. Now I knew what it meant to have an image seared onto your retinas. Seeing your best friend make out with your driving pal was clearly equivalent to, if not worse than, staring at the sun during a solar eclipse.

  “Er,” I said, “hi. Um, I’m just leaving! So, you know, carry on!”

  “We’re good,” said Paul. They fell into step with me, and the three of us walked silently from the school. I know what you’re thinking: You, Jemima Kincaid? Silently? ’Tis not an adverb that e’er applieth to thy fecund tongue! Well, it’s true. Most uncomfortable situations only make me talk more, but apparently there’s a level of awkwardness that can short-circuit even me.

  We were almost to the parking lot. I was following them because I wasn’t capable of the speech required to split away. “You got plans for tonight?” said Jiyoon, not meeting my eyes.

  “Not really. Homework. What are you two up to?” Great-Aunt Dorcas was out interacting with the youth.

  “It’s Official Date Number Two!” said Paul. He did this nerdy fist pump, and Jiyoon rolled her eyes and beamed. They were so cute I could barely keep my eyes open to watch it. “We’re going mini-golfing.”

  “Did you google ‘clichéd date ideas’ or something?” I asked him.

  “Don’t be mean,” said Jiyoon.

  “I’m not! Mini-golfing is a great idea!” In fact, I loved mini-golfing. It was like naming your baby Evelyn: so old-fashioned that it came full circle to cool. “I haven’t been mini-golfing in forever,” I said.

  Jiyoon shot me a worried look, like she thought I might be angling to tag along, just as Paul said, “You should come. The car has four seats.”

  “But it’s already got a third wheel, ha, ha,” I said. “Nope. Not a chance. You two have fun!” Great-Aunt Dorcas waves a wrinkled hand at the young sweethearts, recalling fondly the long-ago spring when her fancy too had lightly turned to thoughts of love!

  “If you say so,” said Paul, shrugging. “But we like company.”

  I had seen the look on Jiyoon’s face. “No, thanks,” I said firmly. They got in a car that was definitely not Paul’s old Civic. “Hey,” I said through the window, “where’s Prudence?”

  “She’s in the shop,” he said. “Her clutch went out.”

  I w
atched them drive away.

  Once, Crispin took me hiking. He wanted to scout out the Billy Goat Trail in Great Falls before he took a date there; he was trying to impress this guy who was outdoorsy. We stopped at a rock that hung over the Potomac, a hundred feet up, and we lay down and watched the clouds sail like ships overhead. From the path behind I heard a kid screaming with laughter as his mom chased him down. I had an overwhelming rush of feeling: a wave of tenderness for the world, the whole world and everyone in it, and the tenderness came with sadness, because it was fragile, this world. It could break.

  That’s what I felt as I watched Paul’s car make the turn onto the road.

  Well, that along with a load of loneliness and jealousy that could have curdled the freshest milk around.

  I opened Lyft, and then I opened the messages app instead. I started a new text to Andy Monroe. You still at school?

  * * *

  —

  The typing dots appeared, and disappeared, and appeared again. Yeah, at baseball game, what’s up?

  I marched over to the diamond. Andy and a few other senior guys, Hype Club types, were in the bleachers. “Is this almost over?” I asked him. “I need a ride home.”

  His eyes flicked toward the guys beside him. “It’s the bottom of the sixth.”

  “No clue what that means,” I said, “but I’m not in a position to be picky.” I plopped down at his side. It surprised him. I caught him making a little shrug-grimace at Tyler. “Yeah,” I said, “don’t even pretend we’re not—”

  “Whoa!” he said. He cut me off fast. He must have sensed my recklessness. That’s what it was. The sense of the ending had come hard and fast. Everything was about to change. “Whoa!” he said again. “You don’t know what bottom of the sixth means?”

  “No.”

  “Take a guess.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Kincaid.” He poked me in the ribs. “You’ve spent years showing us all up. How about you let us be the experts for once?”

  “Enlighten me,” I said. “Does bottom of the sixth mean I’ll get a ride soon?”

  “Let’s start with the concept of innings,” said Andy. “Every inning has a top and a bottom.”

  “Like a bikini,” Mike said helpfully.

  “Now I get it,” I said. “Thanks for translating it into a language a woman can understand.”

  But I stopped being snarky when I realized they weren’t hearing a word I said. They tripped over each other in their earnest explanations. The information was not presented to be learned. It was presented to be presented. They argued about how much higher the pitcher’s mound used to be, or maybe how much lower, and I sat back and watched the game, guys in dirt-smeared, close-fitting white trousers. Every once in a while Andy pointed out a play to me, and I said, “Wow. Cool.”

  After the game was over—high school games, I was informed, have only seven innings—we tromped to the parking lot. I hopped into Andy’s Jeep without an invitation. He’d been talking about the Nationals with the guys and he just sort of continued the conversation all the way to my house. The whole situation made me remember something my mom had said about her pain meds. She said they made her feel like she’d been trekking along some jagged, wearisome terrain when suddenly she was yanked up by a little chain attached to her back, and she’d rise into the sky and fly over the flint, the rocks. Before, I never got why she didn’t like to take those pain meds. That was because I’d always focused on the flying part. But now I remembered there was also a chain.

  * * *

  —

  When he reached for me in my driveway, which I knew he would, I said, “Wait.” He stiffened, but I said, “My mom’s asleep and my dad’s not home. You want to come in?”

  I pointed him up the stairs and went down the first-floor hallway to the master bedroom, where Mom sleeps. (There’s a bed in Dad’s study that’s supposedly for guests, but usually for him.) Mom liked me to check in with her when I got home. I opened the door. Gray light, the weird odorlessness. She was flat on her back, hands crossed gently over her chest. She had her satin eye mask on, and without moving a thing but her lips she murmured, “That you, honey?”

  “It’s me,” I breathed.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t—”

  “Go back to sleep, Mom. Feel better.”

  I crept out. Andy was frozen halfway up the staircase. I led him to my bedroom, which was above the kitchen, thankfully nowhere near Mom’s room. We began to kiss.

  No, not kissing. We slammed our faces into each other. That’s how I’d put it. We were going for quantity over quality; force, not accuracy. He slid his hands up my back, and before I knew it, my shirt was on the floor. His was too. None of my bras were sexy—this one was practical and beige—but Andy didn’t care, not as long as it provided a convenient display case for my boobs. He said, “Damn. Damn, Kincaid.”

  He slid a hand down a cup and leaned in to kiss my neck. The feeling was intense. It was like falling asleep in class, when you feel your eyes rolling back, your eyelids thick and heavy. He unhooked my bra. My breasts flopped out, and he nabbed one like a shortstop with a grounder. (See? I’d learned something.) Stumbling, I pulled the Andy-Jemima unit onto the bed.

  “Wait a sec,” he said. He groped around in his pocket and dumped some stuff onto the bedside table, keys and shit. He unlocked his phone. “Seriously?” I said. “You’re checking your phone? Now?”

  He chuckled. “Chill, Kincaid. Putting on some tunes.” Fine, but the break was weird. It was like when the lights come up for intermission at an emotional play and you don’t want to look anyone in the face. I felt suddenly self-conscious, my stomach rolling over my waistband, my boobs lolling all over the place. I thought, I don’t owe him anything. I can stop whenever I want. I could make him go.

  But I wanted this. An acoustic playlist twanged on. He pulled me on top of him to straddle him. I could feel a protuberance—the protuberance, egad—under my crotch. I inadvertently slipped forward, and he groaned, and I shifted back and he put his hands on my bare back and moved me back and forth. His eyes were closed, his forehead furrowed, a groan escaping every few breaths. I liked it too. He undid his fly. His pants came down a few inches. My hand was at his hip, and, curious, I moved it to the warm, taut hollow next to his hip bone.

  He tipped his head back onto the pillow. The segment scheduled for kissing was over, I guessed. I drifted my hand center, downward, under the elastic of his boxers—oh! Crap. I’d bumped it. I’d bumped it with the back of my hand. Which probably meant I needed to stop pretending it wasn’t there. I rotated my hand and tentatively wrapped my fingers around it.

  Now what?

  Based on vulgar gestures learned on the middle school field-trip bus, I knew there was a sliding motion. But how fast? How tight? Why hadn’t I googled this? What kind of negligent digital native was I?

  Andy squirmed upright, and I jerked my hand away before I accidentally wounded him or something. I knew guys were sensitive down there. Once, I’d basically immobilized Crispin with a four-square ball. Andy was wriggling his pants down. So much for a slow, erotic disrobing: I saw a flash of gray boxer briefs, but they came down with the pants, and then, suddenly, oh God, there it was, the whole hairy, fearsome, ridiculous apparatus. Balls and all. Andy swung his legs to the floor and sat on the bed as if—pardon me, there is no other comparison—he were taking a dump. We were kissing again, but I could totally imagine my face, like in a Lichtenstein painting where the hero kisses his lady love just as she realizes the bomb’s about to go off. That’s what I looked like. Lips attached, but eyes wide and skittering to take a look at the imminent danger.

  Slowly, but not subtly, he began to push my head down. I found myself kissing his neck, and his shoulders, and his…his vestigial boobs, I guess you could call them. The push downward might have bothered me if I hadn’t
been so relieved to be off the hook for taking the initiative. It was like a group project with a bossy partner, when you let their annoyingness go because they’re doing all the hard parts. Or at least I assume that’s what happens. I’m always the bossy one.

  All the while I was thinking these things, my head was being nudged toward the pale, hairless thing that protruded from the thicket of dark hair, like a pink grain silo that, improbably, had sprung from the wilderness.

  Can I talk about my spectrum idea again? Jemima Kincaid’s Spectrum of Sex (trademark pending)? I see it like a rainbow. You can point at a particular wavelength and say it’s blue, but how can you tell when blue shifts to violet? You can’t. It’s continuous. There are no bands.

  That’s how I’d teach sex ed. I wouldn’t even call it sex. Stuff you want to do with someone you like. Or someone you don’t like, not all the time, not even most of the time. Andy was groaning. I hadn’t googled this skill either, but it wasn’t hard. I seemed to be rather proficient, in fact, based on those noises. “Oh baby,” he kept crooning in this stupid low voice. Really? I think I speak for all teenage girls when I say a baby is the last thing we want to think about while doing anything at all sexual.

  Instead, as I gave Andy what is known in the vernacular as (awkward cough) a blow job, I thought about the spectrum. I thought of the markers we place on sex, the language we use. First base, second base. Making out vs. hooking up. How far would you go? and She’s a slut. But I’d tell girls: Look, this is holding hands, and look, this is their parts inside you, and look, look at the vast, unmarked space between. There are no divisions. There’s no border you cross between virgin and deflowered, Madonna and whore. The lines you set are in your own mind. The borders you cross, you mark yourself.

  “Carpe diem,” Mrs. Burke intoned. “ ‘Seize the day.’ Perhaps the most quoted Latin phrase, and no doubt the most inanely quoted. Used in its contemporary sense to affirm life, to encourage action, whereas in its odic context, it’s a memento mori.” She peered at us over her purple glasses. “Miss Kincaid, define memento mori.”