Lemon Reef by Robin Silverman Page B

but she did move closer to the wall to make room for me beside her.
    I was lying on my side staring at her pinup of Robert Plant when Del finally started talking to me.
    â€œIt wasn’t always like this,” she said softly. “My mother has a kind of amazing history. Did you know that Pascale is part Canadian Indian? Her tribe was Cree. Crazy Horse is her great-grandfather.”
    â€œWhat?” I turned over and looked at her. “Was she drinking when she told you that?”
    Del laughed. “She didn’t tell me. Abuela did.” She was referring to her grandmother on her father’s side. Del seemed relieved to be looking at me, as if she’d missed me. Her tone was soft and intimate and comfortable. “My dad said it’s true. Crazy Horse went into Canada for a while, and he met up with the Cree tribe. My aunt told my dad their great-grandmother had this affair with him when she was sixteen years old and got pregnant with their grandmother. So my mother and her siblings are his great-grandchildren.” Del paused, reconsidered the generational math, laughed a little at how confusing it was. “Things changed for them when my grandmother married this man who turned out to be really brutal with her and with his kids. He broke my grandmother’s spirit and, you know, then she couldn’t protect her kids.”
    Del was talking about Pascale’s history of having been beaten when she was a girl, several of her bones broken, some of which had never healed properly. Del thought Pascale couldn’t help herself when she got so out of control, she needed the release. Getting moral about it, Del said, didn’t help. In her mind, they were all doing the best they could to stay together as a family.
    The anger was gone. Del’s attention was adoringly honed on me. Her gold eyes shimmied, then fixed on my face. She swallowed as if working toward a courageous next step and admitted, “I didn’t really want you to leave before. I never want to be away from you. I need you, Jen.” She had never been so candid or so clear in expressing feelings for me before. Del raised her finger to her lip and felt the place where I could see a wide crack that was crusting with dried blood. The skin under her eye was bluish and swelling. Some skin on her nose and her forehead had been scraped, leaving deep gouges that were pink and raw. She went on. “I didn’t know what it meant to be close to someone until now.” Del watched for my reaction, her words now flowing easily and confidently. “Please don’t be mad at me, Jenna. I can’t handle the feeling that I let you down.” Del smiled sadly, leaned her forehead against mine. She touched my hair, wrapped her finger in a ringlet, kissed me, forgetting and then sharply remembering her cut lip. I tasted blood.
    I’d like to say that I matched Del in dignity and depth, that I met her where she deserved to be received in that moment. I wish I had apologized for abandoning her earlier that evening when she looked for me. I wish I had held her, stroked her hair, told her I needed her, too. I didn’t do any of those things. All I could think about as she spoke, her heart obviously broken, was the scant T-shirt and panties between her skin and mine. By that time in December, we’d made out, touched each other, mostly over our panties. I wanted more but felt too shy to do anything about it.
    It was with Del in this wounded and vulnerable state that I rolled on top of her, stripped her T-shirt up and off, bit at her nipples until she winced and withdrew. I yanked her panties down, felt her insides for the first time, pushed my fingers into her without concern for her comfort, her privacy, or her pride. Del neither participated nor resisted but made of herself a line to be crossed. I began pushing her legs apart and bringing my mouth to her. I guess that was the line.
    Del sat upright and yell-whispered,