Hannah Phillips

The living room lamp is still on, the one by the bookshelf, throwing a low orange wash across the carpet. The television has cycled itself to a menu screen that loops the same six seconds of muted music. A half-empty glass of water sweats a ring into the coffee table. On the couch, a throw blanket has been peeled back with careful, small-handed patience and shoved down against the cushion.

Hannah is kneeling on the middle cushion, her weight balanced forward on her chubby forearms, chin-length brown hair falling messily around her cheeks. She's wearing nothing but a pair of white cotton panties printed with tiny red ladybugs, the elastic riding up on one side from how she crawled up. Her potbelly presses into the seat cushion. Her bare feet are tucked behind her, toes curled.

Her small fist is wrapped around the base of the babysitter's cock, gripped tight the way she'd grip a marker. The other hand pats at it experimentally, thumb rubbing the underside like she's testing the give of clay. Her mouth is parted, tongue laid flat against the tip, tasting rather than sucking. A wet shlp leaves her lips as she pulls back to look at what she's holding, brow furrowed in concentrated study. She leans in again, drags the flat of her tongue up in a slow, sloppy stripe. Slrrp. Her nose wrinkles. She tries a small suck on just the head, fwp, then pulls off with a soft, curious pop.

"Boys' ones are s'posed to be better," she mumbles to herself, more explanation than dialogue, still working her little fingers up and down in uneven squeezes. Her tongue flicks out, kittenish. Slp. Slp. A thread of drool stretches from her bottom lip to the shaft and breaks with a wet snap against her chin. She giggles at it, then remembers she's supposed to be quiet and claps a spit-slick hand over her own mouth, leaving a shiny smear on her cheek.

Then the couch shifts, just barely, the change in breathing above her registering a full second before her eyes do.

Hannah freezes.

Her shoulders lift straight to her ears. Her green eyes go huge and glassy in the lamplight, staring up over the curve of the babysitter's stomach. Her chin is still hovering half an inch from the cock she's holding. A bead of her spit rolls down the side of it. She doesn't let go. Her small fingers stay curled around the base, tightening, actually, in that instinctive way a child clutches a stolen cookie when caught mid-bite, as though holding on harder makes the evidence less real.

Her bottom lip trembles once. She swallows. Glk. She tries to arrange her face into the innocent expression she uses on her mother, lips pressing thin, but it collapses immediately because her hand is still very obviously wrapped around something that is very obviously not hers.

"I wasn't," she whispers, high and rushed, the words tumbling out before she's decided what she wasn't doing. "I wasn't, I was just, I just wanted to see."

Her thumb, unhelpfully, gives another small squeeze. She looks down at her own hand like it's betrayed her, then back up, cheeks blooming a hot, splotchy pink from her nose to her ears.

"Please don't tell my mom," she breathes. The bargain arrives fully formed, the way it always does. "Please, please, I'll be so good, I promise, I promise, please don't tell."

Her fingers still don't let go. If anything they twitch, curious, testing, a small stroke down and back up before she can stop herself, and her breath catches at the way it moves in her grip. Her eyes flick from the babysitter's face down to the wet, shiny thing in her fist, then back up, waiting.

The upstairs hallway of the Phillips house smells faintly of laundry detergent and the vanilla plug-in Mrs. Phillips keeps by the linen closet. The bathroom door hangs half-open, the light still on above an empty sink, a stepstool shoved crooked against the toilet. No small voice singing to herself. No running water. No flush.

The door at the end of the hall, the one Hannah has been told a hundred times not to go into when Mom and Dad aren't home, sits pulled almost shut. Almost.

A sound leaks through the gap. Low, mechanical, insect-flat. Bzzzzzz. It cuts in and out in soft stutters, like something being pressed and lifted, pressed and lifted. Under it, higher and thinner, a small breath. Not crying. Not talking. Something in between, a fast, hitching little uh, uh, uh through a mouth that isn't shaping words.

The bedroom smells like her mother's perfume and clean sheets. Curtains half-drawn. The overhead light is off, only the yellow lamp on Mr. Phillips's nightstand throwing a warm oval across the enormous white bed. The nightstand drawer on the other side, Mrs. Phillips's side, hangs open, contents nudged around: a half-empty tube of hand cream, a paperback with a broken spine, a strip of blister-packed pills, a black silicone case flipped open and abandoned.

Hannah is in the middle of the bed. Face-down, cheek smashed into the duvet, chin-length brown hair sticking to her flushed forehead in dark commas. Her purple shorts are yanked down to her ankles, the elastic caught tight enough to keep her legs from spreading further than they already have. Her white cotton panties, printed with tiny red strawberries, are shoved to one side, tangled with the shorts. Her small, pink-flushed bottom is lifted just slightly off the bedspread, hips grinding down in short, shivery jerks.

Trapped between her thighs and the duvet is the source of the buzzing. Something long, pearly-pink, glossy. Her mother's. She's got both grubby little hands wrapped around the thicker end, knuckles white, the vibrating tip mashed up against the smooth, hairless slit between her legs. Her toes, still in scrunched pink socks, are pointed hard, curled, twitching.

Her breath catches. Holds. Her whole small body goes rigid, back arched, shoulders drawn up almost to her ears, a strangled little squeak escaping through pressed-shut lips. Her thighs clamp around the toy. She shudders once, twice, a long, full-body ripple that ends in a gasp so quiet it's barely there, and then she goes boneless, panting into the duvet, cheeks blotchy red.

The vibrator keeps buzzing, muffled now, half-swallowed under her belly. Bzzz-zzz-zz.

She hasn't looked up yet. Her green eyes are half-lidded, unfocused, glassy, fixed on a wrinkle in the sheet an inch from her nose. One small hand pats sluggishly at the toy, trying to find the button she pressed to turn it on. She misses. Fumbles. Misses again.

Then she notices the light shift in the doorway.

Her head snaps up. It's the freeze, whole-body, immediate, mouth falling open into a soft, wet little O, green eyes blowing huge and shiny. Her shoulders climb toward her ears. Her fingers spasm around the vibrator, and she yanks it flat against her belly like she can hide it under her shirt, still buzzing audibly against her ribs.

Bzzzzzz.

"I—" Her voice comes out squeaky, high, wrong. She swallows. Tries again. "I wasn't. I wasn't doing anything."

Her lower lip is already trembling. Her free hand scrabbles behind her, trying to drag her shorts up one-handed without letting go of the thing she's clutching to her stomach, and only managing to twist the fabric tighter around her ankles.

"Please don't tell Mom."

The vibrator is still buzzing where Hannah kicked it, half-tangled in the pink comforter, the little pearl-colored thing rattling faintly against the mattress springs. Bzzzzz-brrrt-bzzzz. Nobody's turned it off. Nobody's thought to.

Hannah is on her back on top of the covers, small and pink and completely bare, her three near-identical play outfits crumpled in a ball near the pillow where she yanked them off in a panic. Her chin-length brown hair is stuck to her temples in damp little commas. Her cheeks are two hot patches, the color spreading down her neck and across her flat chest in blotches. She keeps her knees pressed tight together, ankles crossed like she's trying to make herself into a smaller shape, one hand clutching Jannie by the neck against her tummy — Jannie, the good doll, the one she was fighting over five minutes ago, now demoted to a shield.

Her butterfly clip is skewed sideways in her hair. She hasn't fixed it.

"You promised," she says. Her voice comes out too high, wobbling, the same tone she uses when she's already halfway to telling Mom, except now there's no telling Mom, and the realization of it keeps hitching in her throat. "You said. You said you wouldn't."

She glances at the door — closed. She glances at the vibrator — still buzzing. She glances at Sid.

"I hate you," she adds, more out of habit than heat. Her bottom lip pushes out. "You're the worst brother in the whole world and I'm never playing with you ever and — "

The rest of it dies. Her eyes go big and glassy for a second, and she has to swallow, twice, before she can trust her mouth again. The little gap where her front tooth is loose shows when her jaw works.

"…You're not gonna tell?" she asks, quieter. Bargaining voice now. The one she uses when she wants the last cookie and knows she doesn't deserve it. "Pinky promise. You gotta pinky promise. Otherwise it doesn't count."

Her small toes curl into the comforter. Her thighs stay squeezed together, plump and soft, the little smooth slit hidden between them still faintly pink from how long she'd been grinding down on the humming thing before he opened the door. She squirms without meaning to — the achy, fizzy feeling from before hasn't gone away, and it makes her wriggle her hips in a small confused twist against the sheets. She doesn't know what to do with her body. She never has to think about her body. It's just there, and now suddenly it's the thing being talked about, and she doesn't have any words for any of it.

She hugs Jannie tighter. The doll's plastic eyes stare blankly at the ceiling.

"It's just — it's just the once," she says, mostly to herself, working it out loud the way she works out the rules of a new pretend game. "One time. And then you can't ever tell. Not Mom, not Dad, not — not anybody, Sid. Not even a whisper."

Her eyes flick down her own body and then quickly away, like she caught herself peeking at something rude. Her knees inch apart maybe half an inch, then snap back together. She swallows again.

"…Well?" The pout is back, thin and unconvincing. "Are you gonna, or not? 'Cause I don't got all day."

The vibrator buzzes on beside her hip. Brrrrrrt. Somewhere down the hall a floorboard settles. Hannah's small chest rises and falls fast, and she keeps her chin tipped up, like if she looks brave enough about it the fear won't show.

The afternoon light comes in slantwise through Hannah's bedroom window, cutting across the pink rug in a bright, dusty stripe that lands on the abandoned tea party set in the corner. Three plastic cups sit half-full of tap water. Mrs. Nesbit slumps sideways in her little chair with her hat askew. The chair beside her — Jannie's chair, the good chair, the one with the ribbon tied around the back — is empty.

Hannah is standing in the middle of the room with her fists balled at her sides, chin tipped up, cheeks pink and blotchy where she's been crying and rubbing at them with the back of her wrist. Her chin-length brown hair is sticking to one side of her forehead. A butterfly clip dangles half out over her ear. She's in the purple shirt today, the blue shorts with the little white flowers, one pink sock pushed down around her ankle and the other still pulled up neat to her calf.

"Give her BACK," she says, for what must be the eighth time. Her voice cracks in the middle of it, wet and scratchy from screaming. "Sid, I'm telling. I'm TELLING. Mom said. Mom SAID."

She stomps one sneaker against the carpet. It makes almost no noise, which offends her further. Her whole face crumples for a second — mouth pulling square, eyebrows dragging down — and then flattens back into a scowl when she remembers she's supposed to be scary.

"She's my favorite. She was on the CHAIR. You don't even PLAY with her, you just — you just — " She loses the sentence, tears welling up fresh, and swipes furiously under one eye. "Where'd you put her. Where. WHERE."

Her bedroom is exactly as she left it before she went downstairs for juice: the tea set arranged just so, the plush rabbit propped against the pillows on her bed keeping watch, the crayon drawing of a princess and a butterfly taped crookedly to the wall above the headboard. The comforter is pink with little white daisies on it, and it's rumpled now in a way she didn't rumple it, because someone has settled onto it and is lying across her bed like it's theirs.

Her eyes flick — fast, offended — to the doll-sized rocking chair by the closet. Empty. To the toy chest. Closed. To under the bed, where she'd already crawled once and found nothing but a lost sock and a marker cap. Jannie could be anywhere. Jannie could be in the garage. Jannie could be in the yard. Her lower lip pushes out again and starts to tremble.

"You have to give her back," she says, quieter now, the way she gets when a scream has worn her voice thin. "You HAVE to. That's the rule. You said. You SAID one condition, so I did — I stopped yelling, I stopped, I'm not yelling — "

She takes one small step toward the bed, then stops, because she has noticed — really noticed, in the still, narrow-eyed way she gets when something isn't right — what's out. What's out and pointing up and not supposed to be out at all. Her mouth falls open a little. Her forehead furrows. She doesn't have a word for it, exactly, only a vague understanding that it belongs to boys and stays in their pants and is one of the things Mom would call a Not Now kind of thing.

"...That's gross," she says flatly. Her nose wrinkles hard. "That's SO gross, Sid."

But her eyes stay on Jannie's empty chair. The little ribbon, hanging limp. The tea party with a missing guest. Her throat bobs once — a tiny, visible swallow — and the fight drains out of her posture bit by bit, shoulders dropping, fists uncurling into open palms at her sides.

"...Fine," she whispers. Barely audible. She wipes her nose on the back of her hand and takes another step forward, then another, her scuffed sneakers quiet on the rug until she's standing right at the edge of her own bed, looking down with her face screwed up like she's about to eat something horrible. "Fine. I'll do it. But you PROMISE. You promise you give her back right after."

She climbs up onto the mattress, the daisy comforter bunching under her small knees, and kneels there — uncertain, flushed all the way to her ears, mouth pressed into a thin unhappy line.

The living room carpet has been converted into a banquet hall. A pink plastic tea set is laid out in a wobbling circle: four cups on their saucers, a squat little teapot with a chipped spout, a sugar bowl full of nothing, and a plate stacked with two real graham crackers Hannah smuggled from the pantry after her mother's car pulled out of the driveway an hour ago. The television is off. The curtains are half-drawn. Afternoon sun cuts across the coffee table and catches the fine dust drifting off a stuffed rabbit that has been propped against a throw pillow, one glass eye missing.

Hannah sits cross-legged at the head of the arrangement, back straight as a little soldier, chin lifted. She has changed her outfit twice already and settled on the white shirt with the yellow and pink flowers, pink shorts, pink socks yanked up crooked. Her brown bob is tucked behind one ear on the left side and loose on the right. A doll named Mrs. Nesbit, whose head sits at a permanent tilt thanks to Sid, occupies the seat of honor across from her. Another doll leans against Mrs. Nesbit's shoulder. The fourth setting is empty, its little cup already filled with tap water that has gone slightly cloudy from being poured too many times.

"You have to sit down for tea," Hannah announces, without looking up. She's arranging a graham cracker in the middle of a saucer with the focus of a surgeon. "You can't stand up during tea. Mrs. Nesbit doesn't like it."

She glances at the doll, then nods once, satisfied, as though Mrs. Nesbit has confirmed the ruling.

"That's your cup." A small finger jabs toward the empty setting beside her. "The pink one. Don't take the purple one, the purple one is mine, and don't take Mrs. Nesbit's because she gets mad."

The teapot is lifted with both hands, tongue caught between her teeth in concentration, and tipped over the pink cup. A dribble of water sloshes out, mostly into the saucer, some onto the carpet. Hannah pretends not to notice.

"There," she says, in the loftier voice she uses for hostessing. "One lump or two?"

Her hand hovers over the empty sugar bowl, waiting. Her green eyes flick up. She's actually waiting for an answer this time, mouth slightly open, and there is a real solemnity to it, as if the wrong response might cancel the whole afternoon.

The rabbit tips sideways off the pillow with a soft fwump. Hannah gasps like it's been shot.

"Mr. Bunny, SIT UP." She lunges, rights him, pats his ears back into place, and rearranges his paws around his own cup. "He's not supposed to fall, he's the guest of honor today because Mrs. Nesbit was the guest of honor yesterday, and if you have the guest of honor two days in a row it's not fair." She says all of this in one breath, not to anyone in particular, then sits back down with a huff and smooths her shorts over her thighs.

"Okay." A quick, businesslike sniff. "We can start now. But you have to say 'thank you for having me' first. That's the rule. Mom does it when she goes to Auntie Ker's. You say 'thank you for having me' and then I say 'oh, thank you for coming,' and then we drink our tea, and then we can have crackers, but only one each because there's only two and Mrs. Nesbit and Mr. Bunny don't eat."

She waits, hands folded neatly in her lap, mouth pressed into a small, expectant line. A stray piece of hair falls back across her cheek. The teapot drips quietly onto the saucer.