Being Kalli

by Rebecca Berto

  “Cock?” I repeat. I settle further into his lap until we fit like two puzzle pieces, and then ask, “How do I just say that I sucked your cock last night without blushing as you are?”

  And he’s red, all right. I could pour water over his face and he’d sizzle.

  “It just gets even awkwarder. Kall,” he says, “what about those kids?”

  I don’t bother turning. Those kids have to be yelled at three times to come inside. They aren’t noticing anything. I tell him as much then add, “It could get awkward if I kiss you again.”

  This close, his Adam’s apple bobs up and down as if it’s too huge for his throat, and his breath seems to stagger. He dares a glance at me. Those pale eyes are captivating. Those eyes are framed by dark lashes, which make them irresistible. He raises his hands resembling boom gates holding me back and mumbles breathlessly, “No vibrato action, please.”

  His code for no funny business. Lucky for him I plan to mostly be all tease; he makes it so easy to do.

  “Click, click,” I reply.

  “Definitely click, click.”

  That’s code in our language to be still, stop. When he’s out taking photos, whether for pleasure or an assignment, his body is mostly still apart from his eyes moving through the viewfinder, his fingers clicking the shutter button. If the vibrato joke is a play on my wild side, click, click is Nate’s way of drawing a stop.

  “Wasn’t gonna kiss you anyway.”

  “Good,” he says, his hands around my hips, trying to lift me off him. “My mouth and member can’t handle your wild side anymore for the moment.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  I grip on to his T-shirt but accidentally hook my thumbs in the loops of his pants, further securing me to him as I rock down again. His body betrays his will to stop this as his fingers melt to my skin and caress the sides of my thighs tight around his.

  “I told you,” I repeat, “I won’t kiss you.”

  But I’ll make you wish I would.

  Jutting out my bottom lip, I graze it so close to his cheek a breeze couldn’t pass through. I feel the moment our skin almost touches and it drives me wild with need. I start again on his cheek but skim my lips along it carefully, down to his smile crease, and under the dip of his lower lip.

  Unconsciously I can feel him pressing himself tighter to me. He pulls back a little, saying, “What if we’re caught?”

  I reply, “What if we’re not?”

  Daring more, I bring my lip back and graze it over his bottom lip. He doesn’t protest.

  “That wasn’t a kiss,” I tell him, creating space between us with my palms to his hard chest. “When you get a real kiss from me, I won’t be barely touching you. I’ll be all your body can remember.”

  “Oh, Kall. Fuck.”

  He grunts, palming my ass and simultaneously squeezing and pushing me deeper onto the obvious sign of his want sticking under me.

  “You’re fine like this without the crowd,” he says. “See? All fine. Trust me.”

  Crowd.

  The crazy part in me flips. My jaw clenches from anger coursing through. What’s his problem? I’m not in need of fixing because fixing insinuates that I’m a helpless damsel in distress, and I’ve taken care of my family for years. In fact, when my extended family, mum, Chester, and my own biological father haven’t been there, I’ve been it. The head of the family. I’ve been the one in control, not the other way around.

  Who does Nate think he is, hinting at the ridiculousness of my fear of being alone with a guy?

  I bring back my leg up and over him, stand back.

  “Kall Bell,” Nate says, resting his hand on my shoulder.

  I throw it off, dart back inside, and cover with, “Aw, shit. It’s okay. I panicked, thinking I forgot my phone on the bench in the store.” I tap the front pocket on my skirt. “But it’s here.”

  I check the time and say I have to get back. Even if I’m sure he’ll see through it.

  “Oh,” I call, as he starts heading off, “why did you wake up and come here at this ungodly hour?”

  “Just wanted to talk to you.”

  And there, he leaves me with that. Wanted to talk in what way? About being cool with last night? About not being cool with it?

  I’ll never know as I climb the stairs and say, “Hi, Mrs Johnson. Roberta. Come on in.”

  5

  He comes into my room as I’m slipping on my pyjama tank top. His footsteps are heavy and Mum’s are light. I don’t even like her seeing me naked but my tank is still around my head and so I just push it down and hope he didn’t see my nipples, because that’s weird. He’s so old!

  “You need to knock! You know Mum said for me to go to bed!”

  I’m so embarrassed. The feeling has my bones frozen as ice in, like, a second. Oh my God, I can’t believe Mum’s boyfriend just saw my flat-chested nipples!

  I refuse to look at him. I slide under my comforter, type a text to Scout, although she can’t reply because her Dad only gives her enough credit to call them in emergencies.

  “Want a bedtime story, Kallisto?”

  Who calls me Kallisto? What’s wrong with him?

  “I’m ten,” I say, thinking, no one should see my body yet. Never. It’s so embarrassing even holding hands with a boy.

  “Never too old for a bedtime story.”

  Mum hasn’t been good lately. All grumpy, and then lovey, and then jumping off the couch to cheer on a funny show on TV. She’s picked a boyfriend just as crazy.

  While he reads, he seems to get closer to where my head is, but it’s too dark to really tell. I couldn’t smell him before but now a musky odour is in every breath I take, and I want to puke.

  As I always do, I turn my head right over until I can see my violin.

  I look.

  I hum my latest song I have to practice for class.

  I imagine the shiny wood, so shiny that I can see the flecks in my eyes in my reflection.

  The shape under my fingers when I trace all around the edges, is smooth.

  As he always does, he leans down and kisses my lips goodbye, but today he puts his hand on my shoulder, except that slips and he touches one of my nipples.

  He must have slipped.

  6

  On Monday I wake up and remember exactly the undergrad uni student I am. I snooze eight times then run out the door with the first leggings, boots and sweater I can find.

  Everyone said the first year is like a recap of high school and today, I agree. Scout and I walk in to our Psych lecture and the topic is part one of three lectures on disorders. Today: mood, anxiety and psychotic disorders.

  With Mum, I should be an expert.

  We learn that some disorders have higher diagnosis rates because of social factors, others substance abuse. Then there are genetics.

  This I fear the most.

  Mum told me my grandma was a depressed alcoholic. She had a lovely set of parents, apparently, and a nice brother who always looked after her. No one knew why she was addicted to being in a constant state of stupor. She’d start to drink at noon every day and not stop until she’d passed out at night. My grandfather? He is a lovely man from what I remember and have been told, who deserved better than what his wife was like. In her late forties, she contracted liver cancer, and died at fifty.

  Mum must have sucked all her happiness because she’s a happy freak. She finds fun in anything, which is what’s concerning. She’ll stop watching Titanic as soon as Rose and Jack hop out of that sweaty coach. She’ll make cupcakes and bury random objects in there just to see what happens when they come out of the oven—this always garners a laughing fit when she scoops out the cupcake contents.

  People just aren’t that happy, yet she claims she is, which is like saying the sun will never set.

  The lecture reels me in every now and then. They mention three types of bipolar I never knew existed. I daze in and out.

  Scout is wordless today. She didn’t get much sleep on Saturday night, a
nd sleep catches up with you two days after. Dreary eyed, she stares at the projection screen, notes down stuff occasionally, and goes back to her I’m-looking-without-seeing gaze.

  Birthed by a mum with mental issues, and descended from a grandma who died from her fucked up habits, where does that leave me?

  By the end of class I’m left with a new thought about Mum. I’m not the type to get all dramatic and diagnose her from one lousy lecture, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know why it took a friggin’ psych class to make me think it, but maybe, there’s the tiniest possibility Mum does what she does with her irresponsible mothering, her crazy antics, the drugs and the grog because she needs attention. Maybe underneath she’s helpless and weak.

  Maybe everyone thinks they know her: the Party Girl; the Entertainer; the Crap Mum. Maybe underneath she hasn’t had the opportunity to ’fess up and admit she’s sinking in the act.

  Then again, that’s probably me. There’s always the high chance she is mindless Mary Jane, and I’m just hoping that she’ll stop being so reckless.

  As class closes up, Scout chats, the general How are you? and That was soo boring stuff, and we head out. We have different classes in different rooms, so we part ways and I head to see Nate.

  • • •

  Our lecture finished early and Nate’s class must be finishing late since I’ve been waiting forever. So, I find a bench and scoop my legs up into my arms, my feet dangling over the edge. I sit with my chin propped on my knees and count the rocks in the pebble-mix path under me.

  I’ve always counted stuff. When I saw a path I used to count the lines in it and debate which cracks were big enough to be included. At times, I had to slow my pace to keep up with my deliberations. Sometimes it made it hard to listen out for my friends talking to me.

  At nineteen I’ve grown from that, or maybe not. I just listen in on people better. Suppose I’ve grown up how an adult is meant to, appearing like I think my childhood habits are silly. I’m not sure when this started but it’s still a habit I have.

  The very first time I fucked a guy I counted the patterns on the peeling wallpaper in front of me.

  Mum was pregnant with the twins, and between her and Chester’s happiness over starting their lives together I was in a permanent state of flux. I’ve never known who my dad is and I had no siblings at the time. I didn’t speak to any other family at the time, either. I had Scout and Nate and other random friends but it was at night when I had no one.

  That night I was staring at my phone again. I didn’t have enough credit to call Scout and Nate, and at ten-thirty I was thought to be in bed reading, left undisturbed. I couldn’t use the house phone because Chester was all over Mum, rubbing her tummy in the main living area where it was kept. So I opened my window and climbed down the side of the apartment using the lattice and piping since we were only on the first level up, and snuck in again to the hallways.

  I met a neighbour there in the dim hallway with one of the fluorescent lights buzzing and flashing on and off, and the scent of smoke lingering on the walls. His form hung long shadows, and something about that allured me, my heart hammering with fear.

  I didn’t know his name and I haven’t seen him since. I don’t know what it was about me, but he asked if I was okay, and I felt good for saying I needed space because my parents were being assholes. I even remember feeling good because I sounded so nonchalant using a word I wasn’t meant to say. My heart paid me back for the lie because he kept talking and all I could do was cope with the heavy feeling in my chest that made it hard to concentrate on what he was saying.

  I was mad at Mum for years of abandoning me, and now she’d just decided to ignore me while she made up this perfect life with her kind and rich husband.

  This stranger was talking about how much he hated year twelve back when he was in high school the year before, and I talked about how I was worried for that next year, though that was a lie. My final year wasn’t for a while yet. I also told him sorry that my nipples were poking out, and they were doing so because I had no bra on and it was cold.

  If he thought I was weird, he didn’t say anything. He kindly brought his hands under my tank top and warmed up my nipples, first with his rubbing fingers and hands, and then with his mouth after he pulled down the front of my top. As he did that, I undid his drawstring pants. He went along with the whole thing like we were intimate lovers.

  I wasn’t sure what to do after I undid his pants, but my action said what I was asking. He understood and flopped his dick out. His eyes told me what he wanted me to do and I pretended I was a slut who did this thing all the time.

  We were in the hallway when my first consenting time happened and unable to grasp onto anything real, this stranger was it. Not even being somewhere so exposed bothered me above my desolation.

  That’s when the counting began. The pain was raw and deep and made me spasm when he started teasing my entrance. I counted the swirls and repeating rectangles of shapes within my line of sight. My chin was over the back of his shoulder, my legs hiked up and wrapped around his hips and back.

  It happened so perfectly. My spasms of pain threatening to unleash the scream begging behind my lips timed with his movements, and this egged him on.

  That time I was fucked by a man, which should have been my first, set up the later times. Up against the wall with my legs wrapped around a stranger’s body, ordering the sex gave me a sense of power I hadn’t felt since I was a kid. I told him how fast to go, I told him to give me more and I told him when he could blow.

  I was fifteen when I understood why the fuss about sex existed. Like it was for everyone else, it was my stress release and an erotic pleasure that gave me a powerful edge.

  I came back to my room, sweaty and freezing at the same time, and put my violin case under my sheets, threw my leg over the hard shell and woke up wrapped around it.

  That was the last time I slept with my violin in its case. I realised I didn’t need that as my go-to anymore.

  Now as Nate approaches I run up from behind and koala his back, arms secured over his shoulders and legs wrapped around his hips and linked between his legs.

  • • •

  We sit at the popular café on the grounds. It’s bustling with waitresses doing laps with desserts and drinks, and always has the hum of a radio station, and for me, the more crowd, the more noise, the easier it is to talk-talk. Quiet can be so loud. Nate, however, is quieter with the bustle of loud obnoxious students.

  “My shout for being an awesome friend, and for you putting up with my overwhelming vibration skills,” I say.

  “You are a good friend,” he agrees.

  I walk off, shaking my head at what that was meant to mean. He totally ignored my keep-it-cool joke at the end. He never ignores my vibrato jokes.

  I line up, and then remember I didn’t ask what size, so I mime out sizes and he confirms he wants the large.

  Nate: No funky business Kall Bell. Just a cap.

  Kalli: I’m surprising u.

  Nate: I like 2 know.

  Kalli: I know, but knowing is boring.

  I wait for his reply to that, all the while smirking to myself, and refusing to look at him other than over my shoulder from under my lashes. However, a pissed off middle-aged lady clears her throat and says I don’t have all day with that pissed off stare so I hurry up and close the gap.

  I actually don’t know what to order so I pick the first thing I see for me—a latte. For Nate, I scan until I see a vanilla chai latte and ask for extra cinnamon on top. The guy goes nuts for cinnamon, so this is my key to getting him to try this.

  When I sit down, he says, “This is why I like to know!” He points at the drink.

  I know he’s joking, I know we’re bantering, but I snap anyway.

  “Well sometimes knowing is fucking shit, okay?”

  He bites his lip, and I bet he doesn’t notice, but his muscles tense, too, and I feel guiltier for being a bitch because that just turned me on. He�
�s so close to saying something. It’s not only in the gap between his lips, but the concern in his eyes, and the cutthroat tension eating me up inside.

  But, after a whole minute’s silence in the bustle of this busy café, the first thing I say is, “I know it looks girly, but it’s that good, you’ll let your pride down just to drink it.”

  He is blank for a moment then snaps those gorgeous pale eyes to the drink. He must decide he’s better off shutting up and drinking, and when he puts the mug down I say, “Mind-blowing, huh?”

  “Is everything okay at home?”

  “What! Why?”

  Nate pushes aside the vanilla chai latte and rests his elbows on the table, clasping his hands in front. “You get edgy when your mum’s done something extra stupid, or when you’re worried about the twins.”

  “You’re astute.”

  He looks away. When he returns, he seems unsure. “But you’re not okay?”

  His concern stutters my heart, and I have to put a fist to my chest just to calm the sensation. I let out my breath, take a gulp of my latte for luck.

  “It was so bad Saturday, after the party,” I start.

  “Kall … I’m so sorry I was drunk. I never should have let—”

  I place my hands on his to reassure him. “No, I’m still happy I sucked your cock.”

  “Christ, fuck,” he says, bobbing his head down and visibly squirming from my bluntness. “That’s one way to lighten the mood.”

  I wink at him, but then return to my tone before. “She went out with Betsy again. I came home at three am. The sitter had to leave because Mary hadn’t left enough cash.”

  Nate starts to get it, and it’s like watching a car crash. The absolute horror of the scene unfolding—the one thing that makes you want to turn away and erase the awful memory is the exact thing that has you wanting to get closer, needing to watch the horrible conclusion.

  “Seth and Tristan were up still. The sitter was kind enough to leave the Toy Story trilogy on back-to-back, but I guessed she left ages before I got there. Shit, they’re my baby brothers, you know?”