Something Will Grow

I have this little girl that I take care of now. Erika, and only today did she snag on me and make me think that my daughter would have been just her size by now. Big enough to fight and think an original thought. Six years old. I had Erika in the shower, she looked like she could use a wash, and while I'm soaping up her tight, flat belly she turns around and starts soaping mine and right there was the snag.

The plumbing was clogged with our hair so that soap bubbles caught in the drain. It looked like someone had poured caviar down it, little marbles with a mother-of-pearl gleam. That was how James Ho's sperm came into me, like streams of little bubbles, and my egg sucked them up until it burst out an embryo, a little girl. I don't like to think that it might have been a boy. A little replica of James Ho's body, that body he foisted on me like too many sweets. It was sweet, it was, and I wanted it. James's body was even sweeter than Erika's, which is still young enough for me to scrub, lather over like a seal baby, all brown and slim.

If it had been a boy James Ho's parents might have even been secretly pleased, and forgiven James for bringing home the girl who was not only white, but too young for them to know if he could beat her on the SAT's. "How old are you, Lanie?" I was young enough to scratch my little brothers with my nails and get punished for it. I was young enough for my mother to force me to drink a full glass of whole milk before bed. "Fourteen." I was hot under my arms. My heart tilting. I wanted them to like me.

"She's very mature for her age," James said to his parents, with scripted sarcasm. Then he took me upstairs and we had sex in his bedroom with the door locked. I screamed that day, with his parents downstairs, knowing I was mature for my age, wanting them to know. I understood pleasure. I attacked it at the throat and it fought back. I did know more than other girls.

I had to throw my stockings away because James had come all over them. "Just leave them in the garbage can," he told me. "But won't your mother see them?" I asked, and he told me not to worry about it, and because he told me not to I didn't. I walked barelegged out the door past Mrs. Ho, who looked right down where my blue tights had been, and I said "It was nice meeting you," with my sweet-girl smile.

"Your mother hated me," I said when we were outside.

James sputtered. "Probably. What did you expect, Lanie?"

He did have a body, James Ho. All sinewy muscles that flexed far beyond my expectations. He jammed into me like we were made for each other, but what did I know? I was only fourteen.

It's not Erika's size that matters so much. Not the number of years she has left before she turns into what I was when I knew James Ho, not the number of years she has been real flesh. It's that I love her. Those rubbery limbs that wrap around me, the blank brown skin blushed at the cheeks. How little it takes to love. The way she says my name, Lanie. How she tries to twist away from me but laughs as I dry her off with an old, soft towel and she runs, she screams. The Big Sister program would take her away from me if they knew I did this, but I've never been able to follow other people's rules when they deprive me of joy.

As I'm holding Erika she brings her hand to her mouth. "Look, Lanie," she says, and wiggles a tooth. It's loose. "Jiggle it," she says. I feel the heat of her...