Shame

guided him into her, helped him get started. Caleb found her rhythm, and for once he forgot everything. He didn’t know who he was, didn’t remember his name and his roots, was just totally taken by the moment. His climax released him from gravity, from everything. He felt alive, felt as if his lifelong sentence had been commuted. The weight that was always with him, that forever seemed to be crushing his chest, was lifted.
    I love you, Caleb thought. And he would have told her that, but Earlene spoke first.
    “I used to see your daddy on the TV,” she said, “and in the magazines and papers. All the other girls had crushes on singers and actors, but your daddy was my first love.”
    Caleb thought he was going to be sick, but Earlene just kept talking. He wished he could run away. Caleb felt violated. Used. Earlene kept referring to Shame as his “daddy,” as if that were the most natural reference in the world. Caleb had never called him that. Never.
    “I used to dream about him. They were wild dreams. I was the only one who could tame the beast in him. That’s how I pictured us, beauty and the beautiful beast. But not the fairy-tale version.”
    Caleb reached for his pants. He wanted to cover himself, but Earlene collected his hands into hers.
    “You look like him, Cal.”
    “Do not.”
    “Oh, you surely do. You have his same hair and teeth, and you’re already growing into his build.”
    “We’re nothing alike.”
    Earlene scrutinized him, pinned him like a prize butterfly to some matting, and was satisfied with what she saw. “Only thing that’s different is your eyes. He had cat eyes. Wild.”
    “We better get back.”
    “Not yet.” She moved her hips in a soft roll and closed her eyes. “I want you,” she said.
    It’s not me you want. Caleb knew that. He wanted to just put on his pants, but Earlene reached for him and brought him atop her. He could have pulled away, but he didn’t. Caleb felt himself responding. He wanted that amnesia again and was willing to pay the price. All his father had ever brought him was pain. He deserved a few moments of pleasure, even if they weren’t real.
    Earlene started moaning. She kept saying, “Gray, Gray.” It was the name Caleb had been born with, but it was no longer his name. It was his father’s name. She was calling out to him.
    Their pushing into each other became more frenzied. The passion brought out her calls. Between gasps, Earlene kept saying, “Squeeze my neck.”
    Her words became rhythmic and demanding, exclamations offered between her moaning and thrashing.
    “Squeeze it! Squeeze it! Squeeze it!”
    Her command was ever more frantic.
    His hands rose. They traveled up her body but stopped at her shoulders. Earlene was bucking, crying.
    “My neck,” she said. “Squeeze it.” Between her pants she rhythmically repeated her command: “Squeeze it. Squeeze it.”
    He did squeeze, but only her shoulders. He gripped them with a fury, pressing his fingers into her flesh, letting his anger come out in his hands while he spent himself inside of her.
    Caleb found himself straining against his bonds. Squeezing his hands. The present intersected with the past. Earlene was on the television. She was heavier, but the extra weight added to her voluptuousness. Her eyes had lost none of their magic. Even through a camera’s lens, they beguiled.
    “I made the mistake of going on a date with Cal when I was in high school,” she said, “and I almost didn’t live to tell about it. I came home with black and blue marks all over my shoulders and neck.”
    Squeeze it
. For years Earlene’s cries had haunted him, had made Caleb even more afraid of himself. She had initiated him into the mysteries of sex but had tainted that experience by bringing his father into their lovemaking.
    By bringing his father back from the dead.
    That’s what had scared him most—that she had summoned Shame like some spirit and that he had been there with them.
    All the following week Earlene had worn sleeveless blouses to school, blouses showing her black-and-blue shoulders to maximum effect. They were her badges of honor, of her brush with death.
    Rumors of how she got the bruises were whispered around school. Earlene dropped a few details to friends, told them how she had fought off the son of Shame’s animal advances, how his fingers had come perilously close to her neck.
    Caleb was used to being the pariah. Earlene’s revelations made him that much more of an