contaminant

We lived next door to a gas station that had to send out notices about ground contamination. My mother threw it away. The blue paper and its big black block letters, visible through the flimsy off brand garbage bag, caught my new friend's attention.

"So you live in a contaminated zone, eh, Ruthie?" My new friend chuckled. "You sure it wasn't your house that did it?"

So my house is a little dirty. So my mother doesn't know how to turn on a vaccuum. So my brothers like to throw thier cigarette butts on the front porch. So sometimes there's catshit on the walls. I don't blame myself. My room is pristine and white-glove friendly. My little OCD sanctuary.

"It wasn't my house, Zach. It's the gas lines-- they leaked. So there." I'm a pouter; I did what I do best: pouted.

"Hey, Ruthie, I didn't mean it. C'mon, lighten up. You're cuter when you smile."

Zach, newly arrived in the little trailer park down the street, didn't have room to talk about dirty houses. I don't even think you could term his little shack as "house". But I was usually too polite to say anything.

"I'll forgive you. But look, what are we doing?" I dumped the trashbag into the community receptacle and folded my arms across my chest. That covered up the cleavage and I was trying to make an impression, so I shot my hands back down to my hips and straightened out my shoulders. Zach's little grin turned into a smile. The working wiles of a woman-- even one who's barely nineteen-- never fail.

"I don't know, sugar. What do you want to do?" He took a few steps closer to me and licked his lips. I liked his lips; they reminded me of icecream.

"What do you want to do?" I mimicked. We could have gone back and forth like that forever but I closed the gap and kissed him instead. He seemed surprised.

"What the--?" But he kissed me back.

"Now you know," I said.

"Now I know what?"

"What I want to do."

We looked at each other for a minute and I could tell he thought I was kidding.

I don't kid about sex.
So I told him.

"I've got an hour and twenty minutes before I have to be at work." I worked at the town's vet, pushing paper and clipping dognails and wiping up iguana shit. "Do you want to go back to your place or do you want to pick through the contamination zone and go to my room?"

"I just met you," he said. "Don't you think that's a little fast?"

"Little shy?" I asked. "Or just little?"

"Cheeky bitch," he replied, eyeing my chest. "You're not like other girls."

I kissed him again, grinding my hips into his frame just a little.

"No," I said, "I'm not. Not at all."

*****

My hair was a little ratted and my skirt was wrinkled and I broke a nail but when I came it made everything disappear-- the test results, the dirty house, the contaminated ground water, the gas station, the trailer park, the broken window in our front room, the cigarette butts on the porch, the cat shit on the walls, even that burnt and dirty smell trapped in my mother's room.

After it was over we sat on the bed and he smoked. I don't and didn't.

I'm used to using, and I'm used to being used. But I only go after the married ones without children. I only go after the ones who really want it.

I can tell-- they start lingering in doorways when they see me leaving, they sit on porches long after the cigarette has burned down to filter just to know when I get home. They borrow cups of sugar. In the three days since I started noticing Zach, he'd borrowed a bag of chocolate chips, brought over the newspaper to show me an article on the gas station, washed his car twice, and watered his little strip of astroturf seven times. I started wearing shorter skirts and brought out the cock slot shirts to show off the cock slot cleavage.

Zach found his jeans on the floor and pulled them over his shoes, which he hadn't taken off-- we'd been quick and desperate and pressed together like flowers in a book. His belt buckle made noise as he struggled to keep his balance.

"Stood up too fast," he said.

"Sure," I replied.

When he left I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and took out the paper the nurse had given me.

Positive.

Me and the ground-- contaminated.