Storms 01 - Family Storms

“When Kiera dresses you and gets you made up, you look at least eighteen, nineteen. That’s why all those college boys were looking at you that night in Westwood.”
    “You don’t have a mother or a father,” Marcia said, “but every girl here will tell you it’s easier for her to come to one of us than to go to her mother with questions. What mother would accept the VA club? Even though she probably lost her virginity when she was about our age, she’d make you feel terrible even thinking about it.”
    “Exactly,” Doris said.
    “Well, what do you think?” Kiera asked me. “Want to be with us, part of us, the sex sisters?”
    They all smiled.
    “Or do you want to be on your own out there?” she added.
    I looked at each of them. They were all anxious to hear my answer. “I thought that once you lost your virginity, you couldn’t get it back.”
    “No, not physically back,” Deidre said, “but you can become a mental virgin, which is just as stupid.”
    “I’m still not sure about what I have to do,” I said.
    Doris laughed the hardest.
    “First, you take the oath, and then you get the tattoo,”
    Deidre said.
    “What tattoo?”
    “Girls?”
    They all stood up. Doris and Marcia undid their jeans and lowered them as they turned to show me a tattoo of
VA
done in a fancy script just above the crack in their rears. Deidre and Margot lifted their skirts to reveal the same one in the same place, and then Kiera rose, lowered her jeans, and showed me hers.
    “We’ll take you to get yours on Friday after school,” she said. “I think Sasha should have hers done in calligraphy.Her mother used to do calligraphy, and she’s doing it in art class now. Anyone have any objections?”
    No one spoke.
    “Deidre, you schedule the tattoo, and tell him what we want him to do.”
    “First the oath,” Deidre reminded her.
    “Yes, the oath.”
    “And then?” I asked, my heart thumping.
    “And then we help you break out of physical and mental virginity,” Margot said.
    “She began her period yesterday,” Kiera told them.
    “No rush,” Doris said. “I trust her. She looks as innocent as I did.”
    “Hardly,” Marcia said. “When you were born and your father asked what you were, a boy or a girl, the doctor said, ‘Slut.’”
    They all laughed. Doris threw a pillow at her. Marcia threatened to throw her drink at her.
    “Watch the rug!” Deidre screamed.
    “There’s one major added benefit,” Margot told me when things quieted down again. She looked to Kiera.
    “She’s right. When we say we’ll help you break out, we’ll make sure you break out with the right boy.”
    “No one knows the boys at school better than we do,” Deidre said.
    “The oath!” Doris cried.
    “The oath,” everyone else chanted.
    Deidre reached under the chair and produced a diary. She brought it to me, and all of the girls stood up.
    I looked at Kiera. “What is this?”
    “This diary contains every member’s description of her first sexual experience,” Deidre said. “When you’ve had yours and you write it into the book, you can read the others. Place your right hand on the notebook.”
    Were they serious? Was this some sort of joke? There wasn’t a smile on anyone’s face, and no eyes betrayed any humor. No one was going to leap to cry “April fool” or anything. They couldn’t have looked more serious in church.
    I put my hand on the notebook.
    “Repeat after me. I, Sasha Porter, do solemnly swear to share my most secret sexual thoughts with my sisters and with no one else.”
    I repeated it.
    “I hereby renounce virginity, and I will never betray any sister’s trust or speak of the VA club with anyone who is not a member.”
    After I repeated that, all of the girls placed their right hands over mine. They all closed their eyes as if in silent prayer. I closed mine.
    Each one hugged me and returned to her seat.
    “Now, then,” Kiera said, smiling. “Let me tell you how I made love dangerously this week.”
    Like kindergarten students gathering around their teacher to hear a story, the girls leaned forward. Despite what Kiera was about to describe, I found myself lost in my own thoughts.
    More a single question.
    What had I just sworn to do and to be?

27
The Oath
    I was really proud of you in there,” Kiera said as we drove home. “A couple of the girls were worried you were too young. Of course, they don’t know your history. Growing up in the streets, seeing the things you’ve seen,