like two tiny red pinheads. She had goose bumps despite the heat.
‘You’ll see.’ Dora laughed, exposing her beige teeth. She had small, pointy teeth and thin pink lips.
Jerome took off his shirt. ‘So what all do you do here?’ he asked.
‘Just sit. Think.’
‘Think?’
‘Don’t you ever do that? I think all the time. And if I want it to slow down in my head, I come here.’ She threw back her head and looked up. Jerome followed her gaze. He saw the thick leafy crown of the trees, the branches and leaves waving gently in the wind. Through the canopy he could see snatches of deep blue and purple sky.
Dora leaned over and kissed Jerome on the lips. Then she held back and stared at him. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she snapped. ‘Where do you live?’
‘In the bottom.’
‘The what?’
‘The Elizabeth Park Projects.’
‘That’s only for niggers, isn’t it?’
Jerome didn’t answer.
‘My father hates niggers.’ She leaned over again. She pried his lips apart and proceeded to kiss him, pressing her tongue into his mouth and swirling it around in circles.
Jerome felt her hands glide down his chest. He started getting all hot inside.
‘You have to take off your pants,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
Jerome hesitated. He knew what sex was. What all hadn’t he seen down on Howard Street. He knew that white men were crazy about black pussies. But what did Dora want? She was so young. She reminded him of the elf from the fairy tales his mother read to him when he was little. An elf in a tree. You could blow her away with just a puff.
‘Come on,’ she said.
‘You gonna keep your panties on?’
‘You want me to?’
He shrugged. She started tugging at his belt. He pushed her away and undid his pants.
‘Why do you clean those guys’ shoes in the bar? They’re jerks.’
‘Why do you think?’
‘Do they pay a lot?’
He shrugged.
‘Don’t you go to school?’
‘Sure I do.’ His pants were down around his ankles. He cupped his hands in front of his penis. Dora looked straight into his eyes. Her irises were light green.
‘Here, let me.’ She pushed his hands aside. She kneeled down in the hollow and took his dick in her hands, caressed it. ‘It’s so dark.’
‘What?’
‘Your thing.’
‘Well, what’d you expect?’ He tried to resist the warm, tingling feeling in his belly. His dick began to stiffen. His balls tightened.
‘Now you have to close your eyes,’ she whispered.
He did what she said. Something about all this didn’t sit right. But Dora gave him a warm and tingly feeling he had never felt before. It shot through his entire body. It was different from when he played with himself. As though he was sinking into a soft, moist bed. He looked through half-closed eyes. Her small head was bobbing up and down. She licked and sucked on his dick and held his balls firmly in her hand. His thighs began to hurt; all his muscles cramped. The sky and the trees above him started spinning. He closed his eyes again. Dora stopped.
‘Like it?’ His body felt heavy and strange. He couldn’t think straight. He opened his eyes.
‘We’ll do this again, okay?’ Dora asked. She stood up and put on her dress. As if nothing special had happened. ‘I’m here every Saturday afternoon, and sometimes after school too. But don’t bring anybody with you, all right?’
Jerome hiked up his pants. ‘Why not?’
‘I picked you, now didn’t I?’
He nodded.
‘Next week?’
‘Okay.’
‘Deal,’ she said. She clambered out of the hollow and darted back across the bumpy field. Jerome saw how her long red braids floated behind her.
The next two Saturdays they went to Dora’s spot. Her parents were always too drunk to notice that they snuck off together. Dora taught him to French kiss, and the second time she sucked him off he came. She licked up and swallowed the white stuff. He almost threw up as he watched her. How could she do something like that? She said it tasted like mushrooms and that he should try it.
‘Are you crazy?’
She always took off her dress and sometimes her panties too. Her pussy was a thin straight stripe with no hair on it. Like it was glued shut. He didn’t dare touch it. She never asked him to. And he was secretly relieved he didn’t have to do anything.
The last Saturday he saw Dora, at the beginning of September, was overcast. Dora wore a blue knitted vest over her pink dress.
‘You want to go for a walk?’ she asked.
‘Where to?’
‘Doesn’t matter, just for a walk. I’m cold.’
He wanted to put his arm around her but was afraid someone might see them.
They walked across the field and past the hollow. The wind made the leaves rustle. The trees were already starting to turn red and yellow.
‘You wanna go into the woods?’ Dora asked.
‘Fine with me,’ Jerome said. He took her hand. There was no one around.
‘Will you always be my friend?’ Dora asked in a small voice.
Jerome nodded.
‘Really? I have to know for sure.’
‘’Course I will. I’m with you now, aren’t I?’
‘That doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Then what do I have to do?’
Dora stopped and looked at him. Her eyes were pallid and watery. ‘I don’t want to go back.’
‘We just got here.’
‘I mean: I don’t ever want to go back. To my house. It’s a pigsty. My mother never does anything. Can I go home with you?’
Jerome laughed. ‘What about your father?’
‘You have a father too, don’t you?’
It was like getting the wind knocked out of him. Whenever he was with Dora, he forgot all about home. And when he was home and thought of her, he felt himself drift off. He hadn’t told a soul about her. If he ever did, that fine feeling would disappear.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘I don’t know.’ He looked at the ground and dug the toe of his boot into the sand.
‘You want to sit down?’
‘My father’s not all there,’ Jerome whispered.
‘Not all there,’ Dora repeated.
‘He steals my money.’ He thought of his father. Daddy standing out back smoking a cigarette. Thinking he was alone—but Jerome saw him through the kitchen window, and heard him muttering to himself. Unintelligible gray words and sentences he immediately swallowed back. His tall body hunched forward, as though there was a kink in his spine. Daddy made a strange, high-pitched growling noise that he guessed came from the back of his throat. He sniffed