“I’m really serious this time. I told my father I was going to your house to study after school. I even told him Kelli and her brother were joining us.”
“Really?” she said, permitting more credibility to slip in. She knew how I felt about lying to my father.
“Yes, so if he ever asks you about it, you know what to say, okay?”
“Absolutely,” she said, her eyelids fluttering like the wings of a bird waking up. Her whole face lit up with excitement. It was as if someone had turned on Christmas-tree lights. Actually, that annoyed me.
Sometimes I thought Chastity was more interested in my sister than I was. Never a day passed when she wouldn’t ask me about her. I knew she was more concerned about sex and boys, because she couldn’t go an hour when we were alone without bringing up some boy or talking about some sex scene she had seen in a movie. She would get upset with me if I didn’t show as much enthusiasm. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the same thoughts and feelings; it was just that I was reluctant to talk about it. She had no clue as to why I would have these inhibitions. She just thought I was very shy and needed her prodding to pry me out of my shell. In fact, whenever she got very graphic about sex, she thought she was doing me a big favor. If I made a face, she would get irritated.
“Like you don’t fantasize and masturbate,” she would say, and wait for me to admit that I did.
“We can study for our test while we wait around across from the hotel,” I said.
“While we wait around? Really, Emmie,” she said, taking on that superior I’m more sophisticated look, “I don’t think we’ll be studying much in the street.”
“As long as it’s something,” I said.
“You just want your lie to seem like less,” she muttered, and shook her head, holding on to that arrogant look of superiority.
However, if I were pressed to answer, I would have to admit she was right. I knew anyone would think it was crazy to be so nervous about going a little more uptown and watching the entrance of a hotel to catch a glimpse of my notorious sister. I wasn’t going off to some friend’s house to smoke pot or something, and I wasn’t going off to have sex with a boy. Anyone else would laugh at my anxiety, but once I had made up my mind and committed to going, I could barely listen to my teachers in my classes or even to the other girls when we broke for lunch.
I could feel Chastity’s eyes on me all day. She was anticipating me changing my mind, and I knew how much of a disappointment it would be. Every chance she got when we were alone, she brought up my sister. I had to admit that some of the questions she asked I often asked myself, like how do you make love with any man just because he pays you? How do you get past the ugly, smelly ones?
“Does she close her eyes and imagine she’s with someone else? Does she have to pretend she likes them, enjoys them, even appreciates them? How does she prevent diseases, and does she ever worry a man will hurt her? How can she like herself after doing all this? Could she ever fall in love and have a family? Just have a real romance? Or has this life made it impossible?”
On the other hand, both of us admitted to believing that there was something exotic about being in an escort service.
“Does she really make a lot of money? Where does she go? Do they take her on expensive trips all over the world? Who buys her clothes and pays for her apartment? How often does she have to work, if you can call that work?”
These and other questions circled my head like gnats. Sometimes I wanted to put my hands over my ears and shout, “Stop!”
When we were in school, we’d whisper these questions to each other. Usually, we’d even whisper them when we were talking on the telephone. It was as if we believed my father had our phones tapped.
At least Chastity had been true to her word and not told anyone else about Roxy, and if we were talking about her in the girls’ room or outside the school and someone else came near us, she would clam up. I didn’t think it was just because she was being loyal and faithful to me. I think she would be jealous of anyone else sharing our secret. It gave her a sense of superiority over some of the girls who looked down on her. She knew about someone who was really into sex, so she had a way of knowing things the other girls would never know.
Many of the things she said and the questions she asked often embarrassed me, however. She had a copy of the Kama Sutra that she had gotten down in the Village. It had all sorts of drawings and photographs in it. If Papa ever knew I even looked at it, he would be as enraged at me as he had been with Roxy. Every time Chastity showed me something, she asked if Roxy would do this or that.
“I have no idea,” I told her. “How would I? You know as much about her now as I do.”
“I tried practicing this,” she would tell me, pointing to a sexual position. “Your sister probably knows all about this.”
I always changed the subject when she became that graphic, but today I was determined that Roxy would be the subject no matter what. I could feel the determination harden up in me. No more excuses, no more procrastination. Today is really the day, I thought.
As soon as the final bell rang, we looked at each other with anticipation and then walked out of the building. I tried to appear as natural and as normal as ever, even though my heart threatened to pound a hole out of my chest. Some of the girls wanted us to join them in the park and then maybe walk down to Bergdorf Goodman to annoy saleswomen with our questions about new styles and clothes we weren’t ever going to buy. I had my excuses ready. Chastity and I were going to my house to study and help my mother prepare a French dish for dinner, Terrine de Saumon aux Epinards-Riz. I could pronounce it perfectly, of course, which gave my fib authority. The story was that my mother was teaching us how to cook French food and make French pastries.
“What for? I’m having a maid and a cook when I get married,” Carol Lee Benson said. She had a way of widening her nostrils when she wanted to show us how special she thought she was.
“Ditto that,” Dawn Miller added. Dawn had a perpetually bored look on her face, no matter what we discussed, but that was her way of appearing cool and superior.
“It’s very educational, and besides, it’s fun,” Chastity piped up.
“Fun? French food should be a controlled substance for you. If you don’t lose twenty pounds, you’ll be hired as a blimp to advertise dog food,” Cathy Starling said, and they all laughed. Cathy loved being sarcastic.
When Chastity’s face blanched, her lips nearly disappeared.
Dawn grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to whisper. “If you don’t stop hanging out with Chubs there, you’ll never have a boyfriend in this school,” she said. “She’s like a male repellent.”
I pulled my arm out of her grasp. “We’ve got to go,” I said as sharply as Papa could, and we marched out of the building to the background of their laughter.