A Guide to Being Born: Stories by Ramona Ausubel Read Free Book Online Page B

that was close enough to the dumpsters so no one else came, but far enough away that she didn’t smell anything except when there was a big gust or a bad bag.
    •   •   •
     
    JOHNNY WAS TO BE HER FIRST. He came out of the store on his lunch break, his uniform button-down untucked, planning to piss on the trash bins because they were cleaner than the toilets. He was clearly surprised to see a girl there, but he just said hello and paused for a second before going on with his plan anyway. Johnny stood with his back to her, a plastic bag in his left hand and his right hidden. She could hear two things: him whistling “Strangers in the Night,” and a delicate stream hitting the green metal of the dumpster. After, he sat down next to Hazel and took a large package of teriyaki beef jerky and a six-pack of Miller Lite out of his bag.
    He started right in about the horse races in Deerfield and the off-track betting down in Green Springs. He told her about Million Dollar Mama and Sweet Sixteen, both winners. But not Johnny, he’d lost fifty. “Just not my lucky day,” he said. When he said “lucky day,” he looked right into Hazel’s eyes and winked, and it looked as if he’d been practicing for years in his rearview. She sucked her lemon-lime fizzy and noticed his arms, skinny and brown like hungry snakes.
    Just a few feet behind where Hazel and Johnny had talked, they lay down on their young backs. There was a muddle of bushes there, hiding them from the road and the midday gassers and snackers. Johnny didn’t have a line, had just asked, “Wanna go lie down behind those bushes?”
    “OK,” Hazel said, because she did not have a better answer, and because, having decided the hour before to say yes to growing, she could hardly say no.
    He carried her soda for her, left his two empties where they were. When she sat, he said, “Nice hair.”
    “Thanks.”
    He leaned over and kissed her, putting his tongue right into the center of her mouth and moving it around in whirling circles. It tasted like beef jerky and beer. She decided she was supposed to do the same—two tongues spinning now. But then she wanted a rest, pulled her head back. Johnny took the pause to mean: OK, next step. He rolled on top. He moved his hips the same way he’d moved his mouth. She could feel him pressed into her bladder.
    Hazel had had one close call before, in eighth grade with a pimply boy named Derek who was the brother of the girl having the slumber party. Everyone else had fallen asleep and they had made out in the laundry room while the other girls slept to the sound of
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
. Screaming sounds masked the washing machine’s rattle as Hazel and Derek pressed themselves together on top of a pile of mateless socks.
    Johnny got the courage to grab her breasts. He sat up, straddling her, and put one big hand on each B-cup. Squeezed, pumped like udders. He did not softly caress and he did not pinch. Just squeezed and released, squeezed and released. She could tell this was making him happy because his closed eyes were squinting and his mouth was pursed up.
Mmmmmm
, he said.
Mmmmm,
she returned. Hazel thought they were like whales in the sea, searching for something over long, dark distances.
    Johnny took his shirt off and her shirt off. He had a few scratchy little hairs. Then pants and pants. He looked at her and said, “OK?” She didn’t know exactly what he meant, but she nodded. She found out right away that it meant underwear, and in a second they were both off—his first, then hers. He rolled on top, ungraceful and floppy, bit his lower lip and pushed. Hazel started out making her noise but then realized he didn’t notice either way, so she stopped and instead watched his big head lit up by the sun.
This is it?
she thought.
This is the whole entire thing?
    Hazel went home that night and ate salad with her mother on the screened-in porch while the mosquitoes tapped audibly to get in. Hazel lived alone