Once he’s out of the building, I pull out my own black box and scan for bugs. He’s left a dozen between the front door and my dining room, including one on the pepper shaker. He’s good. I never saw him plant a single one of them. After grinding my teeth, I leave them all in place. He’s doing his job, keeping me safe.
Guess I’ll be playing with Cynnie upstairs until Tuesday.
Neither my professor nor my baby girl is happy when I break the news of my imminent departure.
“You’re really going to blow-off my first freaking exam?” Lindy grumbles.
“You be gone for ages and ages, Oppa?” Cynnie asks, her lower lip trembling.
I appease them each the best I can. I take Lindy out for nachos and promise to take whatever make-up test he decrees. I’m not worried about my other class—the mid-term is a project I’m almost finished with anyway, not an exam. But I really don’t want to fuck up things with Lindy, exam or no exam. He’s more than my professor; he’s a friend.
I take Cynnie out, too. Movies and dinners every night, cramming in as many dates as I can get before I have to leave. Rather than having to face Mary Lisa at playgroup now that I’m very firmly with Cynnie, I pitch an alternative to Miss Ginger. When she enthusiastically agrees, I book out a whole trampoline park on Staten Island. We make a day of it: bouncing, giggling, and tickling. I can’t remember when I’ve seen Logan smile so much. The other mommies and daddies are wreathed in smiles, too, and I know my expression mirrors theirs.
When I met Emily, I realized what was missing from my life. That effervescence. I knew I wanted it, but I had no idea how deeply it would affect me once I got it. How my little’s joy would lodge in my heart and lift it, making me feel more carefree than I ever have.
Therapy in the Navy made me aware that I missed out on important parts of being a kid. Kids with parents who care for them aren’t worried about when and where their next meal is coming from, or whether the babysitter is going to molest them. I carry a lot of anxiety from those experiences and therapy made me aware of how much it weighs me down.
What therapy never addressed was how much having a little in my life would lift me up.
Watching Cynnie as she sleeps in my bed after a long day of bouncing and giggling, her lips and cheeks glowing a soft pink in the low light from laughter and lovemaking, something in me opens. Something that closed a long time ago. When Ma left me alone with Greg again and again, even after I told her what he’d done to me. Something that was hammered shut when I granted Uncle Max’s last request.
Whenever it was, whenever the lid snapped shut, watching my baby girl sleep so sweetly, so serenely, in my arms, after a day filled with so much light and laughter, with a creak of very rusty hinges, the clamshell begins to open.
I try to tell her the next day, as we’re walking down East 9th Street with our frozen yogurts, on the way to a new vintage boutique she wanted to check out. Shopping is my second least favorite thing, after having dental work, but she gave me such a good day yesterday that I can endure a little torture by retail.
“I had a really great day yesterday,” I begin, fumbling from the outset. I know this isn’t going to go the way I want.
She looks up at me, a big lick of dark brown goo melting on her tongue before she draws it back into her mouth. Who likes Black Sesame, dairy-free, frozen yogurt, anyway? Evidently, my little girl.
She looks utterly relaxed as she strolls and licks. No lines around her eyes, as dark and sweet as her treat. No tension in the pink bow of her mouth. Her hair’s gently mussed from my hands and floats around her shoulders, held back from her face with a huge bow. She’s unselfconscious in her little-wear: a soft lavender, cropped tee with a gold outline of Tinkerbell, being spanked and flinging sparkles in every direction, over a flounced pastel blue skirt, polka-dotted tights, striped pastel socks, and sparkly silver sneakers.
The clamshell creaks open a little wider and I know I’m not going to be able to tell this woman how much I feel for her.
She slips her free hand into mine and grins. “Me, too, Oppa.”
We take a few more steps before I try again. “I love—I love seeing you wear your little clothes outside. I wish you could do it more often.”
She tips her head onto my biceps, a warm, soft weight. “I’z only safe when I’z with you or other littles. Aggie wore little clothes out shopping by herself and some boys threw milk on her and said if she was going to dress like a baby, she should drink her milk like a baby.”
I slide my hand out of hers so I can put my arm around her and tuck her into my side, where she’s safe.
“I’m sorry that happened to her, baby. Has anyone ever done anything like that to you?”
She shakes her head before resting it in the hollow of my shoulder. “I’z always careful when I’z alone. Some people pulled faces and whispered nasty things when I visited Daddy Tony and he took me out, but no one said anything to my face.”
“Still, those whispers have to hurt.”
“Little bit,” she admits.
“I’ll find places we can go where there won’t be any whispers. Logan and Emily will know places. It sounds like his club is safe. Have you ever been there?”
“No, Oppa.” She licks her yoghurt into a spiral before she continues, “Emmy said they’re making a nursery at the club, and we’d all be invited to the grand opening. Youz take me?”
“I’d love to take you. But I’ll find other places, too. I want you to be free to be little and wear your little clothes. I want you to feel free—as free as you make me feel, baby.”
I swallow hard but Cynnie just tips her head back on my shoulder and grins a yoghurt-y grin at me. I’m not sure she understands, but, at least for now, I’ve said enough.
Either shopping has gotten better since the last time I had to do it, or Cynnie makes even that fun. She buzzes around the vintage store, pulling out little flowered blouses and bell-bottom jeans and a top hat that looks straight out of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and posing for selfie after selfie with them. She begs and promises me all sorts of adorably outrageous sexual favors until I try on some pieces she picks out for me. A dark tweed jacket with those ridiculous leather elbow patches. A navy-blue waistcoat embroidered with tiny silver anchors that laces up the back. Black leather pants. A pair of two-tone dress shoes in deep brown and black. A fedora.
