Paper leaves
Have I ever told you about my first kiss?
I was 8. He was 13. My mom knew his dad from church; his mom was studying for a cosmetician exam. She needed help on the English. My mom volunteered my dad, who brought me to their house on those weekend tutoring sessions and Jonathan, the poor teenager, was instructed to entertain the little kid who tagged along. They lived in a big, sprawling house that was perpetually in a state of remodel. His dad was a contractor, doing all sorts of projects in their gigantic yard, raw materials piled high on the open asphalt. They had countless fruit trees and always gifted us bags and bags of oranges. My dad would go off for his lesson, and I would sit down with the boy in the spare bedroom, chatting in Chinese. Jonathan's English was terrible. He told me he liked listening to me speak it, instead. He had an inviting face, wide expressive eyes, acne scars, a buzzcut. Tall, played basketball. Solid looking. I tried to talk about books; he didn't understand. He told me I was pretty; it made me blush. I thought he was handsome, though maybe a little dull. At school the boys never looked twice at me, twig of a girl I was. On the third or so visit we got bored of pretending to study English. He asked if I wanted to play a game. A toy ball, tossing it back and forth, getting it into a 'goal' as we sat on opposite sides of the room. If he won, he could kiss me. Timidly, I nodded. I lost on the first try. His turn. He won. He stared at me, long and hard. He crossed over to my side of the room where I sat. He kneeled before me. Slowly he placed his lips on my right cheek. It stung. My skin blazed where his lips had touched it; I felt feverish. I felt a burning, in the shape of those lips. I wondered if it was visible, this burning. He asked if that was ok. I nodded. We played again. I never won. He did, and again, he crossed the room. This time he kissed the other cheek. It was different, the shape that he left there. He touched my dimple, told me one was bigger than the other. He told me he liked them. My dad came to get me. Jonathan moved away hastily, before the door opened. We were both embarrassed, breathless. Dazed, I sat in the car afterwards, contemplating each cheek. I was afraid to touch my face. I was afraid to mess up the imprints that had been left there. My skin still tingled; it was like paper leaves had been pasted on, and only with the delicate turning of my head could I prevent them from falling off. I was trying to decide which kiss I liked better. The first. No, the second, when he had touched my dimple afterward. Did they mean something, these kisses? Did they mean anything if there weren't any words attached to them? The next weekend, something had changed. He had a serious look in his eyes. I asked him if he liked what I was wearing, a baby blue cotton tank top with a graphic of a cherubic child on it, a thin plastic choker necklace, a skirt of some kind. He said no. He said it showed too much skin. I felt chastised, unsure of myself. Still we went to our sides of the room and played the little game. He tried to lose on purpose a few times. He looked nervous. Eventually he won. I wasn't trying very hard to block my goal. He approached me. Sat down next to me. He leaned in very slowly, and kissed me on the lips. It was dry, papery. I felt next to nothing. I felt disappointed. It was tainted, somehow. By his opinion of my appearance, by how it failed to measure up to what was had been so magical the first time. He asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend. I nodded. I left. That was the last time I went to his house. I had a flip phone; I didn't have his phone number. My mom talked about his family constantly and I pretended not to care. For a year I carried around these memories vividly in my head. I sneered at the boys at school because I thought them juvenile. I thought about our age difference. Five years felt serendipitous, an auspicious number, I thought. I pictured him playing basketball with his friends, taking exams, helping his dad with work. When I was 13, he briefly came back into my life somehow, even though my mom had stopped going to that church that his dad still went to. By this time his dad had divorced. Jonathan needed help on his English essays; he was working on his college apps. My mom rallied a group of us, old family friends, for a dinner. She instructed me to tutor everyone with their essays. Everyone in the whole group was older than me. The other girl, three years my senior and very outgoing, was there with her cousin, an affable, shy guy who was her age also. She eyed Jonathan with keen interest. He pretended not to notice. While my parents cooked dinner, he and I were upstairs in my parents' bedroom at the family computer desk, working on his essay. The door to the room was open; voices and clattering pots and pans floated up through the staircase. We squinted at the screen together. The room was dark, the desk squeezed in a tight space in the corner, next to the bed. There was one chair, which he was sitting in. I stood next to him slightly bent over the desk, typing. Silently he touched my hand. I stopped. We had said nothing since he arrived, only shared furtive glances. Slowly, he pulled me into his lap. I continued working on the essay; it was poorly written, replete with mistakes. He wrapped his arms around my waist. My heart pounded. I was delirious, willing myself to focus on the words. He touched my cheek, laughing softly. At the strangeness of the situation, perhaps. I blushed. I chided him for distracting me. He laughed harder. His hands roamed. Faintly I could feel his erection pressing up against his jeans. He hugged me tightly and nuzzled his cheek against mine, watching me work on the edits. Footfalls on the stairs. I leapt out from where we were sitting. The other girl came to get us, to go have dinner. We nodded, left together to go downstairs. After dinner I finished editing the essay alone. All of us said goodbye. My mom asked if I had finished working on the essay. I told her I had. She thanked me. I watched our guests go. The next time I saw him again, he was in his last year of college. I was 17. His dad had remarried; we were meeting the new wife and her daughter, a bright young woman who was Jonathan's age, new to the States but a hard worker. Our parents wanted us to be friends, for me to teach her English. Jonathan politely stared at me from across the restaurant dinner table. We didn't talk, but at the end he asked me for my contact info – my aim screenname. That night I logged on after I got home. He sent me a long stream of messages about how I have a promising future ahead of me, how I should focus on school, nothing else matters except school. His English was still terrible. I sat on my hands to stop myself from correcting him. I was secretly glad he ended up in Accounting. I told him not to worry, that I enjoyed school, looked forward to college, had good grades, asked if he liked college, if he was looking forward to graduating, what he wanted to do after. I didn't tell him I was in the running for valedictorian. I didn't tell him I hadn't kissed anyone since he had kissed me, nine years ago.