“Leave me alone! You’re a dirty slut—you can go to hell.”
It was shocking to me, and thrilling, Felice Sipper’s eyes flashed at me in sudden hatred and defiance as a cornered animal’s might flash, in the instant before it sinks its teeth into your throat.
When I saw this, I relented and let her go. It was rare—it had never happened—that a smaller child, girl or boy, had confronted me in this way, or any friend of mine. For we never approached anyone who was of our sizes, or our ages, who might so defy us.
And Felice ran, and in running called back over her shoulder what sounded like, “Fuck you, asshole! I hate you—hope you die.”
Felice’s voice was high-pitched like a bird’s shriek. Her words were so surprising to me, I did not follow after her but watched her run away where I stood in the dripping smelly underpass.
I did not tell my friends about this encounter. I did not tell anyone and yet it seemed to be known, Luther Dunphy had a claim of some kind on Felice Sipper, other boys dared not interfere.
By the store at the depot I would see her, and if she was alone I would approach her. Of the girls Felice had a way of standing like a doe about to leap and run, one of her feet at an angle, toeing the pavement.
And I would stand a few feet away, as if not altogether aware of her. Or, I might go into the store and buy a bottle of Coke and return, and there was Felice Sipper sneering in my direction, wiping her nose on the edge of her hand. “You! What the hell do you want.”
If I held out the Coke for Felice to drink, Felice would shake her head No! with a look of contempt but if I offered another time or two, she might relent, and take the bottle from me, and drink from the bottle where my mouth had been, and seeing this—that Felice Sipper was putting her mouth to the very place where I had put my mouth—made me dizzy with excitement.
“What d’you say, F’lice?”—I would say; and Felice would say, curling her lip, “Thank you.” And I would say, “ ’Thank you, what” (meaning that Felice should say Thank you Luther), but Felice would say, sneering, “Thank you, asshole.”
Out back of the depot, in a part of the railroad yard where old freight cars were kept rusting amid tall grasses, Felice Sipper would allow the older boys to touch her, and to do things to her. They shared cigarettes, beer. They might give Felice loose change, taken from their mothers’ wallets. It was different for me, that I was never with other boys, but always alone, for there was the special understanding between Felice Sipper and me.
Sometimes, Felice did not want to do the things I wanted to do, but she could not say No! for fear of angering me. Her reaction of disgust was a high laughing shriek like a bird that has been outraged but unlike a bird, she did not take flight. She did not ever scream or fight, that I could recall.
Sometimes I “disciplined” her, as my parents used to “discipline” me when I was younger—my mother with the flat of her bare hand, my father with his belt looped and coiled like a snake. This would make the sensation stronger. I was excited by her tears, her running nose and smeared mouth. My hand on the nape of Felice’s neck shoved her head down, like a dog’s head down, in obedience to her master.
There was a sharp taste to Felice Sipper, like salt. I liked it that her fingernails were edged with dirt like my own, though they were smaller fingernails, and her hands were small with bones light as a sparrow’s that I could have crushed in my hand at any time, but did not, and Felice would know this, and (I thought) would like me for this. Her older sister Beverly would paint Felice’s nails, bright red, dark purple, which was exciting to me, even when the polish began to chip. There was a dark green plastic-looking cross Felice wore sometimes, she said was “jade,” and had belonged to her grandmother, but Felice and her family did not go to church, she said nobody in the family believed in God except if things went wrong it was God’s will.
I asked Felice weren’t they afraid, not to go to church, maybe God would be angry with them and punish them, and Felice said shrugging her shoulders that that had already happened.