Like a Virgin
by Isabella Barber
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I maintain that the glass slipped because it was wet. Erin says it was the shock. Either way I made a fool of myself. A waitress came over to help me deal with the aftermath. She began mopping the table and I crouched down onto the floor, lifting thick shards of glass between my thumb and forefinger and nestling them carefully inside one another like I was entertaining the idea that someone might glue them back together. All the while Joseph stood watching me, watching the milky remnants of my virgin piña colada go drip, drip, drip off the side of the sticky mahogany table. Honestly, I could have used the Dutch courage.
Erin is my best friend from college. We’re at university now, and we talk about what happened while we’re walking home from the pub that night. ‘I still can’t believe we saw him,’ she says. I say very little. I notice that my finger is stinging. ‘I think I cut it,’ I say. Erin takes out her phone and shines the torch onto my finger. The cut is almost invisible, but when I squeeze it, I awaken tiny droplets of blood lurking beneath the surface. ‘Don’t do that,’ she says. I put my finger into my mouth to numb the pain. There are patches of ice on the pavement, but they’re difficult to see in the dark. It’s easy to slip and hurt yourself.
Before college and before Erin, I went to a school for girls. They liked to pretend it was secular, but we sang Christian hymns and said the Lord’s Prayer at the end of assembly. My favourite hymn was Lord of all Hopefulness and I hated Make Me a Channel of Your Peace because the lyrics don’t scan and everyone gets the rhythm wrong. There was a boys’ school next door, and whenever we drove past it on the school bus we would all look out of the window and giggle. During class, I drew hearts all over my exercise books containing the initials of the boys I fancied, but I was too old for that by the time I met Joseph.
When we get back to the flat, Erin makes me a cup of tea in a mug that says ‘bitch’ in big black letters. She bought it for me for Christmas. I bought her the Joint Rolling Handbook from Urban Outfitters, but usually we just smoke blunts. Our flat is in Brixton. There’s mould in the bedrooms and the landlord says we have to keep the windows cracked at all times to prevent this. We do as we’re told, but it’s cold and there is mould even so. Often, I sleep with my head under the duvet to shield me from the icy air.
It’s not all bad though. There’s one window at each end of the open plan kitchen-living room. From here we can watch the sun rise and set, or we can climb onto the roof outside Erin’s bedroom and take in the fluorescent skies while we smoke. There are white walls and beautiful hardwood floors running through the whole property. On New Year’s Eve, I knocked a bottle of red wine down the galley kitchen. There’s a stain there now.
***
Erin wants to know more about Joseph. ‘You can just say Joe,’ I say. She’s spooning sugar into her mug and looking at me expectantly. She has big brown eyes and red hair. Some religious people believe that red hair means you have been touched by the devil, but Erin is more like an angel or perhaps a disciple. Joe was a religious person, though I never asked his opinion on redheads.
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When I tell her the story, I start at the beginning. ‘So we met at a choir concert when I was fourteen,’ I say, ‘he went to the boys’ school.’
‘Yes yes, I know all that.’
‘But he was slightly older.’
‘What a prick.’ She gulps her tea. I don’t know how she can drink it with sugar. I tell her how he’d asked me to help him carry some sheet music downstairs, that he smelled of lemon shower gel and wore a real tie. ‘Of course he did,’ Erin rolls her eyes. I explain that when we texted, he used words I had never heard before like ‘self-aggrandising’ and ‘sensuous.’ He got me an audition in his choir and said it was because I sang like an angel, but really he liked my blue eyes and the silver cross that hung around my neck.
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After I was accepted into the choir, I saw Joe every week. At practice he’d catch my eye and leave his arms around me a second longer than he had to when he hugged me goodbye. Secrets can be fun. Afterwards he’d tell me how beautiful I was and say he wished he’d kissed me. I was younger than the rest and I still had a baby face. He had chosen me but I didn’t understand why.
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I got into trouble for all the texts I sent to him. One evening my mum slammed my phone bill onto the kitchen table and demanded to know whose number it was. ‘You’re thirty pounds over your limit,’ she said. I lied and said it was my friend Sarah from school even though Joe had told me lying is a sin.
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‘But aren’t we lying?’ I asked him. We were out in the courtyard behind the practice room. There was a tree covered in white blossom and I could hear the chattering of the birds. Instead of answering he put his hand on my face and kissed me for the first time. Something moved inside me that I had never felt before.
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The sex was painful, though I wanted him. We had planned it perfectly. Nobody was home, I wore a dress. We lay down in my bed and he put his hand between my legs. ‘I love touching you,’ he said. It happened quickly. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked. I nodded. He was shaking. ‘You’re so pure.’
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That’s the last time we were alone together. It was a divine ending to an illicit affair. He no longer hugged me goodbye or told me I was beautiful. His number stopped appearing on my phone bill and I cried every night until I was old enough to realise what a fool I had been.
‘It ended just like that,’ I say to Erin, clicking my fingers to demonstrate how easy it is to forget me. ‘Did he tell you why?’ she says.
‘He said I was too young.’
‘Fourteen is young,’ she says, ‘but he was young too.’ I shrug my shoulders. We’ve finished our tea and it’s nearly 2am. ‘We should sleep,’ I say. In my bedroom, I lie awake with my head under the duvet. I come up for air every so often until it’s light outside.
***
We’re going out again this evening. This time I’m drinking. I’m wearing denim hot pants and a red lace bodysuit. If you look hard enough, you can see my nipples through the material, but nobody will be looking. Erin tells me I need a coat, so I grab one to make her happy. We take the tube to Dalston to meet some friends in a karaoke bar where you get a free shot of jaeger if you sing. We put our names down for a song and order vodka lime sodas at the bar. A man puts his hand on my back and offers to pay. ‘No sir, this one’s on me,’ Erin says. She leans across me and taps her card on the machine.
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I’m drinking a lot tonight. There are more vodkas and some tequilas, and I’m gripping my glass hard so it doesn’t slip out of my hand. I close my eyes. One of our friends is singing American Pie, and we all wish he wasn’t because it’s long and repetitive. Now for ten years we’ve been on our own, and moss grows fat on a rollin’ stone. Erin shakes my shoulder and I open my eyes. ‘Hey, are you drunk?’ she says.
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‘They shouldn’t allow this song at karaoke.’ I stand up and stumble on my way to the bathroom. It smells like piss and body spray. When I return, I see Erin holding out a microphone and beckoning me towards her. ‘It’s our turn!’ she’s saying, but I don’t move. She calls my name and holds up her hands in confusion. Then there’s hurt in her eyes because she knows she’s been betrayed. The intro to ‘Like a Virgin’ starts playing. She starts to sing and I watch her for a while. It makes me feel calmer though I know I’m in trouble and I won’t get my shot of jaeger. Before the song ends, I slip out of the fire door and stand there in the cold, letting the wind carve a path around the contours of my body. Joe liked the shape of my body. I remember him telling me.
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I’m thinking of the thing I left out of the story. If you glue shards of glass back together in the wrong order, they won’t fit but they might cut your finger still. It’s a lie that it ended because I was too young, and lying is a sin. That’s why I told Joe about the man who came before him, the one who touched me and told me I was a good girl. I was alone in the house every day that summer. It was my job to let him in.
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And after it was over, like a good girl, I promised not to tell. 'I promise', I told the man as he slithered out of the front door. I think maybe breaking promises is a sin too, but they didn’t teach us about that in our secular school, so I don’t know for sure. At first Joe didn’t understand. We were still in bed and he was still all over me. There was nothing for a while, just the sound of his breath and mine. And then there were a lot of things all at once. There was a smashed set of red Russian dolls. There was a tear in the lilac canopy that hung above my bed. There were lots of words I understood, but they were cruel and I wished I didn’t. There was a slammed door, and a child shivering under her duvet with her knees tucked up to her chest.
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When I get back inside, Erin is cross with me. ‘Why did you just abandon me?’ she says. We don’t speak in the taxi home, but I know we’ll be okay. She really is an angel. She goes straight into the bathroom to get ready for bed, and I hang back in the kitchen and look at the wine stain on the wooden floor and wonder whether we’ll get our deposit back. I do some washing up – we don’t have a dishwasher – and when I hear Erin close her door, I brush my teeth and wash the glitter off my eyelids. In my room, there are clothes all over my duvet. I pick each garment up one by one and fold it neatly before putting it onto my chair. Then I slip off my clothes and climb into bed. It’s a cold night, but I leave my head out of the duvet so that the icy air can choke me.