Her name was Mary, her mother said, like the Virgin, which Mary always hated. Not the Virgin. The reminder her mother felt compelled to say to keep Mary on the right path, although they weren’t Catholic, barely Protestant, and it had been a month of Sundays—however long that is—since they last went to church.
A fork in the path was reached one Christmas, when she was sixteen, and I, a year younger, met again, after five years—more like strangers than family—cousins on our mothers’ sides, seconds, thirds, or twice removed—never quite sure how we were related, only that we were.
Mistletoe hung in the archway between dining room and kitchen where she first kissed me, pulled my head to hers before I knew what happened or anyone saw. The feel of her soft lips lingered on mine through the evening, my not knowing what that kiss meant, as we ate dinner, sang carols as we had when we were younger, when hormones had not yet kicked our bodies into libidinous hell, where we knew what we wanted, but didn’t know how, only vaguely how, from locker room stories and a scrambled porn channel filled with barely discernible figures of intense negative colors, while listening for parents coming home so we could quickly switch channels, throw ourselves onto the couch as though we’d been there all night watching the Cartoon Network, or the Discovery Channel—Animals Gone Wild.
And that night, actually morning, while everyone slept, Mary woke me with her right hand, not her lips, on my mouth, whispered Shh and pulled my arm with her left. Hand in hand, we slipped through the dark house, she in cotton nightgown, me in flannel pants and tee, to the mistletoe archway where she kissed me with lips as hard as Aunt Grace’s sugar cookies no one would eat, until my lips felt bruised and swollen.
We might get caught, she said, and pulled me through the kitchen, down the basement stairs into the dark, blacker than the house above, except for a small light in the far corner by the washer, where she led me and turned quickly, pressed her lips against mine—gentler this time. I want you, she said, as she lifted her gown, bent over, forearms on the washer. The soft light illuminated her round cheeks like crescent moons. I wanted her, cousin or not, and wrestled my flannels off my hips, letting them pool at my knees. Hurry, she said, before I change my mind. And I did. But she was too low. I half crouched, but my knee hit the washer, a deep metallic sound we knew everyone heard. Shh, she said. We held our breath and listened. I need something to stand on. That wood block by the workbench.
I shuffled into the darkness where she pointed, my flannels pulled halfway up my legs, waistband clutched in left hand. I wrestled the block to the washer one-handed. A trickle of sweat slid down my right temple. Mary stepped up, bent over, forearms on the washer, while I let my pants drop. I stretched on tiptoe, but couldn’t reach. So she twisted on top of the machine, and lay, propped on elbows. Her legs, spread, dangled off the lip of the washer as I stepped on the block, leaned forward and the wood wiggled underfoot, sent my knee into the washer, and me onto the cold floor, the concrete hard against my left butt cheek.
Mary slid from the washer; her gown fell from her hips, cascaded down her legs. Her eyes glistened in the dim light as she looked at me on the cold concrete floor, exposed, and she turned away.
Ray Carns lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where he divides his time between writing, photography and film making. He has work has been previously published in the Journal of Microliterature, Bourbon Penn, this—a literary webzine, and Rose and Thorn Journal.
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