After dinner, once Lily has cleared our plates and Stacey has gone to her room, Babs tells me almost everything they do on those nights.
“Bettina,” she says, “what is going on between me and Mack is very educational. You need specifics, not that bland shit they’ll teach you at school.”
I really don’t want to know all the details, but Babs launches right into them anyway.
“When the time comes for you to have sex, I don’t want you sitting on your hands, fucking baffled. Oral sex, very important. First, the name. When a man sucks on your clitoris, you should call it admiring the centerfold. Much, much better than eating you out or going down on you. Giving a blowjob is also stupid. Refer to putting a dick in your mouth as raising the mast. Or something like that. Blowing has nothing to do with it.”
I wonder if I’m supposed to be taking notes.
She continues. “Remember that every man’s different. You can’t just get lazy and have a pat formula. Mack, for instance. He likes to be licked rather than sucked. Except at the very end, when he is close to coming. Then he wants his penis to be worked over like a pacifier.”
She reaches for a cigarette. I don’t like the idea of Mack’s penis in Babs’s mouth. I worry someday she’ll get mad and bite it off.
“You must pick a man who knows how to properly admire your centerfold. This is the easiest way for a woman to come. But a man who has even the slightest skill in this area is rarer than you think.
“Mack, thank God, knows exactly where the centerfold is and isn’t intimidated when he gets there. A lot of men make a quick pit stop at the centerfold because they think they have to but clearly would rather be elsewhere. Sucking on your breasts or grabbing your ass. Never waste time on a man who is afraid to put his mouth between your legs and fucking Wimbledon it like a true pro. Point, set, match. Mack admires my centerfold until I’ve had two or three orgasms. No self-respecting woman should settle for less. That’s just laziness on someone’s part.”
Another night, Babs continues with more of her sex life. Tells me they often leave the aparthouse and go to Hopse- quesca, Mack’s country club in Grass Woods.
“We have the place to ourselves,” Babs explains.
“Mack parks his golf cart in the woods by the sand trap on the eighth hole. I wear tennis outfits. My legs look fabulous, and Mack can quickly flip up the skirt. He just wears his boring preppy uniform. Khaki pants, needlepoint belt. A button-down shirt. Penny loafers. No socks.
“Then there are the damn pennies,” she continues, “those 1909-S VDB wheat-backs. His grandfather gave them to him on his fourteenth birthday. Before he left for Cardiss. He’s worn them in every pair of loafers since. Sentimentality in shoes. Stupid.”
I don’t like to hear any criticism of Mack. Especially about something so trivial as his shoes.
In the end, I don’t mind knowing what goes on at Hopsequesca. When you are eleven and your mother tells you things, you think these are things you should know.
But already at my age, sex doesn’t shock me. I’ve read Babs’s copy of The Joy of Sex cover to cover with all of those gross drawings of naked adults. Underarm and pubic hair everywhere. I’m also not one of those dumb kids who think grownups are hurting each other when they moan or who get scared when they hear them yell out as they come. In fact, I know all about orgasms. I masturbate every night in the bathtub before bed. It makes it easier for me to get to sleep.
Babs, for all her power, has yet to catch me at it, this thing I call chasing the smash. It’s not that she would disapprove; rather the opposite. She would think it was a much better afterschool activity than ballet or tap dancing. But I don’t want to tell her about it. It’s a secret I keep with myself.
My technique is, as far as I know, specific to me. I lie flat on my back in the bathtub with the tap running and let the water hit the small, hairless mound between my legs.
I know from my reading that my vagina is tucked inside my body and that the spot the water is hitting when I tilt my hips upward is my clitoris. But in the tub I use my own vocabulary, make my own rules. I just think of the whole area the water touches when I masturbate as my me.
The my-me bedtime ritual feels so, so good. A steady pressure of warm water starts with a small tingle, which grows and grows like a balloon until there is an enormous pop. But the pop has no punctuation. It just flows from my me up between my hips, like an enormous spill of water.
At the moment of a smash, I press my hands against the sides of the tub as hard as I can. Steady myself to keep the enormous throbbing from propelling me out of the tub. A child gone overboard. I also brace myself to keep my me there for as long as possible, to see how much intensity I can withstand before pulling away. I learn that there’s no limit to the amount of smashes you can have. My record is four.
If I have enough smashes, I fall asleep easily, without the intrusion of dreams. Without smashing, I usually nightmare. In such dreams, I’m usually naked, hunched on the floor in the middle of a crowded black-tie-one-on (what Babs calls formal parties). I’m wearing some of Babs’s drop-dead jewelry, perhaps her pissed-off-at-Mack South Sea pearls. The pearls are always twisted tightly, in a chokehold around my neck. Then I realize I’m about to be trampled by the heavy dress shoes and pointed high-heeled stilettos the grownups wear. They don’t mean to hurt me; I just happen to be in the way. They walk on my body while I suffocate. I always feel vulnerable and half-me the days after these dreams. I need to smash, smash myself extra hard and good to make this horrible dream go away.
I am absolutely sure, however, that the idea of chasing the smash did not originate with me. I have the strong impression that when Babs was pregnant with me, she didn’t have sex, just masturbated. Since Babs and I were one body (or as close to it as two bodies can ever be, one body not merely penetrating but actually floating inside another), I was rocked to sleep by her smash. Now I do it alone. A kind of gentle womb-breaking, my own invented version of birth.
When all the water has drained, I pull myself over the side of the tub and rest on the bathmat on all fours. I’m usually too far gone to walk. I wait a little to dry so I don’t make a puddle and slip on the marble floor. Then I crawl to my bedroom, my bony knees relaxing when I make it there.
My bedroom has white wall-to-wall that approximates bunny fur: soft and vulnerable, like the down of a newborn’s head. My bed is a queen-size canopy, but it is about as far as you can get from the pretty-pink-princess version all girls my age are supposed to want. It has a hard green wrought-iron lattice with angry leaves sprouting from the posts. They twist themselves into threatening vines. The top of this mean bed is covered with white mosquito netting. In an animated version of my life, where I talked to mice or had singing dwarf friends, Babs might be a fairy godmother who sewed this net to protect me from hostile creatures. The sad thing is, as it stands, the netting is just a creative touch she can show off to friends.
When we are eating dinner, Lily always sneaks up and prepares my room. Stacey can’t be bothered. Lily turns down my bed. Leaves a fresh Lanz nightgown folded on the pillow. Babs forbids me to wear underwear to sleep. She thinks every vagina needs to air out after being cooped up all day.
Lily always leaves a Splush on top of my pillow. A Splush is a pebble-size bit of dark chocolate wrapped in purple tinfoil with a gold B stamped on it. It is my absolute all-time favorite Ballentyne product. It is one of the poshest chocolates in the whole line. A bag of them costs twelve dollars.
Despite the renowned ecstasy of this top-shelf chocolate, it’s not something I’m supposed to indulge in. Ever. Babs doesn’t let me eat chocolate or any sweets, no matter what. She refuses to have a fat daughter, and I don’t dare do anything to risk such a fate.
I always carefully unwrap the Splush Lily has left for me, but I never put it in my mouth. Just smell it. I don’t want to disappoint Lily, so I leave the tiny bits of purple-tinfoil wrapping on my bedside table so she can see it in the morning. As for the cho
colate itself, I wrench open my window and hurl it outside into the night.
I sometimes wonder what becomes of all of these discarded Splushes. Do they hit the people walking below on Walton Street on their way to Water Tower Place for a movie or dinner? If someone gets hit, does he think a bird has pooped on him or maybe that he has been assaulted by an angry pellet of air? But really, I couldn’t care less about the subsequent trajectory of the chocolate. I am smashed and Splush-less. I’ve earned another night’s sleep in my own bed.
5. Thrash
January 1980
I HAVE SWIMMING PRACTICE AFTER school. Leaves me physically spent. My body and hair are stripped of dirt by the chlorine, and I decide not to take a bath and smash. Read a book instead. Madame Bovary. In English. It’s a hard book, but I am picking away at it the best I can. I do know some French, but not enough to read MB in the original.
I have spent every June, July, and part of August since I was five in Cap d’Antibes living with Cécile, a cousin of Babs. I need the summers off, Babs says. It is the best present Babs has ever given me. I’m adding French to my skill set and can use it throughout my life. Even though Babs goes to France pretty often, she makes no effort to learn the language. The way she talks resists translation.
Cécile is from Babs’s mother’s side of the family. Like Babs’s mother, Eudy, Cécile is a great beauty, but she is middle class, which Babs considers the same as being poor. Poor might be interesting, but it is not fun.
I’m still reading when Babs comes to my room for a chat. Mack must have taken the night off. She saunters over to my bed, wearing only her bra and underwear. Carries a goblet of Perrier with a lime in one hand and a fistful of Duchess Golden Lights in the other. I take it Babs has a long conversation in mind. She would never pace her smoking to match the length of our exchange should it get interesting. She has a stack of mags tucked under her left arm, and she spreads them out on the end of my bed. Vogue. W. Harper’s Bazaar. She sits down next to me.
“I’ve been thinking. We haven’t been putting enough effort into your shoes. People always notice what you have on your feet. This might be the key to your popularity at school.”
I doubt it, but when Babs proposes a project, I always count myself in.
She continues. “I thought you and I could go through these, find ones that are downright fabulous. You and I can hit Saks or even I. Magnin tomorrow and buy them. This is worth missing school for. Finding your size shouldn’t be a problem. There are many women who have the bad taste to be short and have small feet. I’ve already marked a few pages I like.”
I pick up the Vogue, ignoring the models’ tiny bodies and concentrating on their feet. I flip through the pages and see green suede boots, red satin high heels, black lizard flats. Even if I don’t really like any of them and can’t imagine wearing them to Chicago Day, I’m still excited. Babs shops without a budget, and we could spend all day together amassing things. Babs is deep into W, circling her favorites.
I move my book away from where we are sitting. Try to hide it from Babs. She hates when she catches me reading. Says I’m showing off. Not working hard enough to make friends. I don’t even mark my place. I would trade Emma’s adventures for shoes with Babs any day. Unfortunately, Bovary slides off my bed into the space next to the wall where I’ve stashed a ginger ale. I hear the can thunk against the wall as it tips over. The sticky pop must now be pooling on the expensive bunny-fur carpet.
Babs has ears like a deer. She hears the can spill too. She crawls forward on my bed. Reaches down and pulls the can up slowly, as if she were fishing garbage from a dirty lake. She examines it for a moment, then hurls it at the wall.
I watch the can fly across the room. It leaves a stain on the silver-lamé wallpaper. More damage than I have done to the bunny-fur rug.
“What the fuck, Bettina. You know you are not supposed to have drinks or food in your room.”
She lights up a cigarette, rips the Vogue from my hands. Waits for a response.
I think if I handle this right, we can get back to the shoes. Surely more fun for both of us. Rarely, but sometimes, I can sway Babs by using the right tone.
I say, “I’m sorry, Babs. I just thought I’d be really careful, and there wouldn’t be a problem.”
No such luck. She is still staring at me with dull, flat eyes. I have ruined the shoe project. All for a ginger ale.
“The ginger ale is for Lily. Do you know how many calories are in a single fucking can? Not to mention the fact that you tried to sneak it. I fucking hate sneaks. I wonder what else you have hidden in here.”
I try to reach out and touch her wrist. Keep her from leaving the bed. Useless. The ship has sailed. I just have to hope that daybreak will come as fast as possible and provide a benevolent shore. Babs loves to stay up all night working on various projects, but she always calls it quits before Lily wakes me for breakfast. Her idea of being a civilized person.
“Take off your nightgown, Bettina, so I can see you have nothing hidden in there.”
I do as I’m told. Am now naked on my bed. This might be enough punishment to inflict for most people. Not Babs.
She stands up, walks over to the armoire where I keep my clothes. It has a The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe feel. Big enough for me to hide inside. Sometimes I do. Not tonight. There will be no hiding tonight.
She opens the door and pulls at the top drawer. She grabs fistfuls of my socks and brings them over to the bed. Begins unballing them. She carefully reaches her hand inside each one where my feet normally go, checks that there is nothing tucked in there.
“I know how sneaks work, Bettina. They pick the places where most people would not think to look.”
I begin to wonder if I have indeed stashed something important in my socks. But no. The only thing I truly value, my autographed napkin from Brooke taped to her picture and framed, is on my desk. Not hidden but in clear view. Maybe this will add points to my honesty column. Maybe Babs will see it and be less mad after all.
But she is just getting started. After the socks, she goes through my underwear. It is all the same, white cotton bikini briefs. No Disney princesses, Pooh Bears, or Tinker Bells for me. She takes each one out and stretches the elastic and then smells the place where my crotch would be.
I’m still not old enough to have anything but immaculate underwear, even before it is washed. I always wipe carefully whenever I go to the bathroom. Am not yet burdened by all the messy emissions of a menstrual cycle.
Babs is so thin that she almost never juices or has a monthly period. She eats so little that she rarely has a bowel movement, and when she does, she takes long showers and scrubs her anal region clean of any traces of excrement. The only thing that taxes her panties is use. When the elastics start to give, Babs cuts up her underwear with a pair of kitchen scissors and buries them in the trash.
She does this to stop the freaks out there who want to whack off with the lingerie of chocolate-heiress pussy. Once, I dug a strip of her panty fabric out of the garbage. I made it into an anklet and wore it in the tub while I chased the smash. I was so worried she would find out that I threw it away two days later. I guess I am a sneak and a liar after all. Babs does have to be on her guard, protect herself from me.
I watch as she moves on to the pockets of my pants. It’s strangely comforting to see her take such an interest in my things. In me.
By three A.M., everything I own is in a huge heap in the middle of the floor. Babs seems happy with her work. Another opportunity to use her parenting skills to turn me into a decent human being.
She’s finished. Maybe we can get back to the mags. Wrong. She still has one thing left to do.
Babs walks over to my desk. Picks up the picture of Brooke.
“How stupid of me,” she says. “I almost overlooked Brookie.”
Babs undoes the frame. My picture of Brooke and the autographed cocktail napkin go tumbling to the ground.
I try to think of something I can
offer her in place of Brooke. But I’m naked. Have nothing. And Babs does not give options.
Don’t, Babs, don’t, Babs. Please don’t.
Babs throws my treasures on the bed by my feet.
“So, babe. An eye for an eye, I think.”
She turns back to my desk and picks up a pencil. I wish she would take the pencil to me. Poke me in the cheek with it, maybe. Write some obscenity on my forehead. But no. She goes right for the picture of Brooke and scribbles all over her face.
Babs gains momentum. Presses harder. Makes deep grooves in the picture. She keeps going until Brooke’s whole face is covered with marks. Brooke looks like she has really bad acne. I can always get another picture, I think. This isn’t so bad.
But Babs isn’t done. She picks up the cocktail napkin. Brooke has actually touched this. It’s irreplaceable. It’s the very best thing I have. She reaches down to the side of the bed where the ginger ale spilled. Pats the wet spot with the napkin. She holds it up. I can see that Brooke’s signature has run to the point of being illegible. I can live with this, I think. Brooke still took pen to this small napkin. It’s still worth something. But there are to be no consolation prizes tonight. Babs holds the napkin to my face. She rips it up until it is just white strips. Just like her old underwear.
“See! This is what it feels like to have someone fuck up your things. But now you can take inventory. Keep the things you want and throw the rest away. I will bring up a garbage can from the kitchen. When you are done, your closet will be neat as a pin, and getting dressed will be like shopping at Saks! Everything will be in its place with only the things you like to choose from.”
She leaves to get the garbage can. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to put my nightgown back on or if I’m supposed to tackle this project naked. I give myself a minute to consider this. I look at the magazines, which are still sitting on the end of my bed. I wonder if we’ll ever get back to the shoe project. Probably not. But I was so close.
The Chocolate Money Page 4
