How Pami Got Her Groove Back

Paramjit Kaur turned forty-four on the twelfth of September, and the number sat on her chest like a wet salwar.

She had never been the type to fuss over birthdays. Balwinder had died when she was thirty-four -- a heart attack at forty-seven, gone between one roti and the next -- and she had mourned him properly for a year, and then she had gone back to being exactly who she had always been. Which was, in the words of her own mother, "a girl with too much heat in her."

She'd been married at nineteen, a virgin, terrified. By twenty-four she had learned what her body was for. By thirty she was sleeping with the accountant who did Balwinder's trucking books, and the halwai's son, and once -- memorably -- both of Balwinder's cousins at a wedding in Jalandhar, on a roof, in the dark, while the dhol still thumped downstairs. She was known. In the tight, whispery, Brampton-Punjabi way, Pami Dhillon was known. The easy one. The one who'd let you. The one who'd blush and say "hai, what are you doing" while her hips said yes.

But at forty-four, the arithmetic had turned on her.

At the mandir, at the melas, at the weddings she still got invited to as a widow to sit on the sidelines and be fed: the men who approached her now were sixty. Grey at the temples, gold rings, breath like whisky and halwa. Good men. Comfortable men. Men whose backs clicked when they stood up.

And Pami wanted to know -- she needed to know -- whether she could still make a boy of eighteen nervous.

So she tested it. God help her, she tested it.

Jassi's friends had been coming to the house since they were fourteen, and they had always been boys. Then, sometime in the summer, they had quietly become men, and Pami had noticed it the way you notice a change in the weather.

Harpreet -- Harry -- was nineteen now, six foot two and shaving twice a week, with forearms that did something to her when he reached over her head for the pressure cooker. Dev had grown a beard and shoulders. Manny still had the soft cheeks but his hands were enormous, and Aiden, the white boy from the basketball team who ate her aloo paronthe like they were sacrament, had thighs like a sprinter's.

They came over after pickup games. They came over to study. They came over to sit in her kitchen and eat and argue about the Raptors and the Leafs and to call her "Pami Aunty" in a way that had started, this year, to sound less like an honorific and more like an interrogation.

She started wearing the yoga pants around the house.

Charcoal ones. Thin. She'd bought them in a moment of vanity and discovered they did something criminal to the back of her, and that the seam rode up between her legs in a way that made her check her reflection three times before answering the door.

She stopped wearing a bra with her tank tops. She started leaving the top two buttons of her kurta open when the boys came over. She began bending at the hip instead of the knees to get things from the bottom shelf of the fridge -- reaching, slow, letting her braid slip forward over one shoulder while her arse pushed back and the cotton of those pants stretched across her like a rumour.

Harry noticed first. She caught him. His eyes dropped from her face to her backside and stayed, long enough for her to count two heartbeats, and when he looked up he had the decency to look guilty.

She said nothing. She just smiled, slow, and handed him his plate.

It escalated the way these things do -- by inches, then by hands.

Saturday. Cricket on the TV, four boys sprawled on her couch, her in the kitchen rolling out dough with flour to her elbows. Aiden came in for water and stood too close, and she felt the heat coming off him, that young heat, like a radiator.

"Pami Aunty, you been working out?" he said. "You look -- I dunno. Different."

"Different good or different bad, puttar?"

"Different good." He was blushing. Eighteen years old and blushing, and something inside her went loose and warm.

She reached up to the top shelf for the sugar tin and let her arm pull the tank top up her ribs, and she felt his eyes on the strip of bare waist. She let it hang there a moment too long.

Then his hand was on her waist.

Just the palm, warm and dry and enormous, resting on the curve above her hip. "Sorry," he said, and didn't move it. "Just -- moving past."

"Mmm," said Pami. "You didn't move past."

"No," he agreed. "I didn't."

And she let him keep it there, and the roti on the tawa started to smoke

She flipped the roti with her fingers -- sss, the burn, familiar -- and Aiden's hand stayed exactly where it was, and neither of them said anything, and the flour was drying on her forearms, and somewhere in the other room the boys were shouting at the TV about a dropped catch.

"Your roti's burning," Aiden said.

"You're burning my roti," said Pami.

He laughed, and his thumb moved. Just once, a slow half-circle on the bare skin above her hip bone, and she felt it travel down through her belly and settle low, like a swallowed stone. She had to put both hands on the counter.

That was when the smoke alarm beeped.

Harry came in first, and then Dev, and then Manny, the whole kitchen suddenly full of young men and their smell -- sweat and deodorant and that faint sour boy smell underneath that she had, God forgive her, started to find delicious. Harry reached past her to shut the alarm off and his chest pressed into her back for a full second and a half, and she felt the shape of him through two layers of cloth.

"Pami Aunty, you burning the house down?" Dev said.

"Aiden was distracting me."

"Aiden was distracting you," Harry repeated, and looked at Aiden, and Aiden turned pink and took his hand off her waist like he'd been caught stealing, which -- to be fair -- he had.

She fed them anyway. Six rotis, extra ghee, a bowl of yogurt, mango pickle she'd made herself in June. They ate standing up around the counter, elbows out, shoving each other, and she leaned back against the sink with her chai and watched them and felt thirty again, twenty-five again, felt that old specific hunger come back into her hands.

You're a widow, she told herself. Forty-four. You have a son in this room.

Then Harry licked ghee off his thumb and looked at her while he did it, and she thought: and?

It started properly two weeks later, on a Friday, when Jassi went out to a birthday thing and the other four came over anyway because the fridge was better here.

That was the thing they never said out loud but everybody knew: they came for her. For her food, yes. But also for her.

She had on the black yoga pants. The thin ones. The criminal ones. She had on the tank top, no bra, and a thin cotton dupatta she kept having to pull back up over her shoulders, and she had oiled her hair and put kohl in her eyes and told herself it meant nothing.

They watched a movie. She sat on the floor with her back against the sofa between Dev and Aiden's legs, and Manny and Harry sprawled behind her, and by the second half hour there were four sets of knees around her and the room had gone warm and close and stupid.

Dev's foot nudged her hip. Then his hand dropped onto her shoulder. Then it slid -- casual, oh, casual -- down her arm and back up and rested on the bare strip of her waist where the tank top had ridden up.

"You're cold, Aunty?" he said.

"I'm fine."

"You got goosebumps."

"That's your cold hands."

He rubbed her waist. Slow. Right there in front of everyone, in front of the TV light, like it was nothing. And Pami sat very still and let him, and felt every one of those four boys notice it -- felt the temperature of the room change like a door opening.

Harry's hand landed on her shoulder then. Then his thumb on the back of her neck, under her braid, where the skin is softest and nobody ever touches you. Manny, bolder than he'd ever been in his life, reached down and put his palm flat on her thigh.

And nobody said anything. Nobody said what are you doing. Nobody said Aunty. For about ten minutes there was only the movie and four hands on her body and her heart going like a dhol.

Then Aiden -- Aiden, who had started all of it -- slid off the sofa onto the floor behind her, and pulled her back against his chest, and put both hands on her stomach, and said, right into her ear, quiet enough that only she could hear:

"Pami."

Not Aunty. Just Pami.

She made a small sound. She couldn't help it. It came out of her like something falling.

And Harry heard it. Harry heard it, and something in him clicked over, and his hand on her neck turned into a grip, and he said, "Aunty, your hands are cold too, no? Feel her hands, Dev."

Dev took her hand. Aiden's hands moved up her stomach, up over her ribs, thumbs brushing the underside of her breasts through the tank top, and she arched back into him before she could stop herself, and Dev said, "Hai," very softly, like he'd seen a god.

"Should we stop?" Manny asked, terrified.

"No," said Pami, and it came out much rougher than she meant, and all four of them laughed, and the laughing broke something, and then there were hands everywhere.

Here is what Pami had not told anyone, ever, in her whole easy life:

She had a body built for this. She always had. Two children, a dead husband, four lovers she'd admit to and three she wouldn't, and none of it had worn her out the way it wore other women out. She was soft -- the kind of soft that gives and gives and then grips. Wide hips, thick thighs, a belly she'd stopped apologizing for at forty. And inside her, that place between her legs that men wrote poetry about and then got quiet about -- it was welcoming. Generous. It had never once in her life been described as tight, and she had spent twenty years thinking that was a flaw.

At forty-four, in a living room in Brampton, with four boys of eighteen and nineteen breathing hard around her, she found out what it was actually worth.

Dev got his hand between her thighs first. Over the yoga pants, over the seam, a big flat palm pressing the thin cotton up into the folds of her like he was testing fruit, and Pami's head fell back onto Aiden's shoulder and her hips rolled up into it, shameless, shameless, because the cotton was already wet and she knew he could feel it.

"She's wet," Dev said, to the room, like an announcement at a wedding.

"Obviously she's wet, you've been squeezing her for ten minutes," Harry said.

"Not like this. Like --" He pressed again, harder, and there was a small wet smack of fabric, and all four of them heard it, and Pami wanted to die and wanted to be touched more, at the same time, in equal measure.

Harry got down on the floor then. He put his hand flat over Dev's, then he pushed Dev's hand aside, and he slid his own down between her thighs -- over the pants, over the seam, into the seam, so the cotton rode up and split her, and then he rubbed. Slow circles with the heel of his hand. Right on her clit through the fabric.

Pami's knees came up. Her bangles clicked. She grabbed the leg of the sofa and made a noise like she was being robbed.

"Hai --" was all she could say. Hai. Hai. Over and over, which is what Punjabi women say for everything, for shock and grief and joy and God.

"Should we --" Manny was nearly whispering. "Should we take them off?"

"You take them off, puttar," Pami managed. "You'll find out."

They took them off. Peeled those black yoga pants down her legs like a thing they'd been dreaming about since summer, and under them she had on a thin grey cotton panty, and the panty had a wet patch on it the size of a chappati, and the boys all just looked at it, and Dev said, "Bhenchod," with real feeling, and Pami laughed and laughed with her knees up and her panty showing.

Then Harry hooked his finger in the waistband and pulled them down too, and her pussy was out in the TV light, and she heard the four of them go quiet.

Because she was open. Even before anyone touched her, she was open -- the lips of her dark and swollen and parted like a door left ajar, glistening, soft, the little bud of her clit standing up out of it. Nothing pinched. Nothing shy. An open, easy, hungry cunt, and she was so slick that it had run down between her cheeks and made a wet shine on the sofa.

Harry put two fingers on her, flat, and slid them down and then up -- up through the whole wet length of her, parting her, and her hole swallowed the tips of both fingers without any resistance at all, gluk, easy, to the second knuckle.

"Oh my God," Harry said.

"Mm," said Pami, smugly, from the floor.

"Are you -- is she always --"

"She's loose," said Dev, and then flinched, as if it might be an insult.

"It's not loose," Pami said. "It's friendly."

They laughed. And then they stopped laughing, because Harry pushed both fingers in to the knuckle and curled them and rubbed, and her pussy took them in with a soft wet squelch and gripped at him -- not tight, not clamping, just hugging -- and Pami closed her eyes and let her thighs fall open as far as they'd go.

Four boys, four hands, and they took her apart right there on the living room carpet like a cricket team at a water break. Manny's fingers on her clit, clumsy and fast. Aiden's mouth on her neck, on the soft bit under her ear where her kameez usually hid. Dev pulling her tank top up over her tits so her heavy brown nipples were out in the cold and being pinched by somebody's thumb. Harry's fingers in and out of her cunt, three now, working, and every time he pulled them out there was a shlick and a string of her wetness across his knuckles.

"Does it -- does it feel like anything?" Manny asked, genuinely anxious. Eighteen years old, and he'd only ever touched girls his own age, tight frightened little things that squeaked.

Pami lifted her head. She looked at all four of them, one by one, with her hair half out of the braid and flour still under one fingernail and her tits out, and she said the truest thing she knew.

"Put it in and find out."

Manny went first, because he was the youngest and nobody could stand his face.

He got his shorts down and his cock out and it was -- fine. A young man's cock, red and eager and thick enough, curved up at the belly, and Pami looked at it and felt her whole pussy clench with appetite. He knelt between her legs and lined up and pushed, and everyone in the room waited for the little grunt, the resistance, the ah -- the way it always goes with a woman.

There wasn't any.

He slid in. All the way. To the base. In one smooth, wet, easy stroke, like a knife into softened ghee, and Manny made a strangled sound and stopped dead with his whole length buried in her and his balls resting on her arse.

"Hai," said Manny.

"Keep going, puttar."

"Are you -- I'm all the way in."

"I know. Keep going."

He kept going. And that was the thing -- the thing that broke them. Because Manny started to fuck her properly, hard, the way a teenage boy fucks when he's finally allowed, all hips and no art, and Pami took it. Every inch. Every stroke. He'd pull out to the head and shove back in to the hilt and her pussy just -- received him, wet and warm and deep, squelching around him, her lips sucking in and out with every thrust, making a sound like someone eating a ripe mango. No flinching. No pushing back. No too deep, too deep. She lay there with her tits bouncing and her bangles clicking and let him rail her like she was built for it, and she was, she was, and after two minutes of that Manny's face went red and his mouth opened and he came inside her with a long shuddering groan, and pulled out, and a fat white rope of it followed him out of her hole.

She hadn't even clenched. She'd just let it happen, and her pussy stayed open behind him, wet and gleaming, dripping onto the carpet, and Dev said, "Oh, fuck," and got his shorts off.

Dev lasted longer. Dev got down and pushed her knees up to her chest and pounded, angry almost, and Pami's whole body rocked with it and her mouth fell open and she started saying hai, hai, hai in time with him, and still, still, there was no resistance -- he bottomed out inside her over and over, that wet thump against her cervix, and her cunt squished and swallowed and made room for him every single time. He came with his thumb in her mouth and her arse hanging off the edge of the sofa, and when he pulled out he looked down at her spread open and said, quietly, almost reverent:

"How are you taking it like that?"

"Practice," said Pami.

Harry was next, and Harry was the biggest of the four -- nineteen, six-two, and hung like the boys in his own locker room had clearly been talking about for years. He rolled her onto her front, got her up on her knees, spread her cheeks with both thumbs and just looked at her open, used, cream-dripping hole in the TV light.

"That's not going in," he said.

"Harry," said Pami, "I have pushed two children out of there. Put your cock in."

He put his cock in. Or rather -- he put the head of his cock against her, and then he leaned, and her pussy, that generous, giving, treacherous thing, opened for him like a purse and let him sink. Inch after inch after inch, and Pami pushed back to meet him, and she felt him stretch her, felt that good deep ache, and she moaned -- a real one, from the belly -- and Harry grabbed her hips and bottomed out and stayed there, buried to his balls, breathing like he'd run a race.

"Bhenchod," he whispered. "You're taking my whole cock."

"Mm-hmm."

"No, like -- whole. Like nothing."

"Mm-hmm." And then, because she was forty-four and mean and delighted, "Harder, puttar."

He fucked her harder. The sofa squeaked. Her bangles went chink chink chink. Sweat ran down between her shoulder blades and Harry licked it off her spine. Aiden was jerking himself watching, and Manny was hard again already -- nineteen years old, of course he was hard again already -- and Dev had his hand under her, fingers rubbing her clit while Harry fucked her from behind, and Pami came like that, on all fours on her own living room floor, with four boys' hands on her, wet down to her knees, wailing into the carpet in Punjabi while her cunt squeezed and squirted a little shine down her own thighs.

Harry lasted four minutes. Aiden lasted two, because he'd been ready for forty minutes and because Pami sat up and pulled him into her lap and rode him -- rode him, a forty-four-year-old widow bouncing on a nineteen-year-old basketball player, her tits in his face and her braid undone and her hips doing what thirty years of practice had taught them -- and he came with his hands full of her arse and his mouth open on her nipple.

And then Manny went again, and Dev went again, and somewhere in there Pami stopped counting.

It went on until nearly two in the morning.

At some point she got up to drink water and found she had to hold the counter, and Harry came up behind her in the kitchen, hard again, and bent her over the same counter she'd burned the roti on, and fucked her standing while she drank from the bottle. At some point Aiden ate her out on the sofa with his tongue flat and slow and unbelievably good, and she came on his face and he looked like a boy who'd won something. At some point she had one of them in her mouth and one in her hand and one in her cunt, and lost track of which, and didn't care.

And through all of it -- the whole night -- that was the thing that stunned them. Not that she was willing. Not that she was wet. That she was easy in the truest sense: that these boys who had spent two years terrified of hurting girls their own age, of the awkward push, of the "wait, wait", of the tightness that made them finish in ninety seconds and apologize after -- found in this soft warm forty-four-year-old woman a body that just took them. All of them. One after another, fat young cock after fat young cock, and her pussy opened for every single one and squished and swallowed and squeezed and never once said enough.

By the end, she was sprawled on her back on the carpet, thighs slick to the knee, arse wet, a pool of four different boys' spend slowly leaking out of her, and it just -- stayed open. Still parted. Still soft. Still hungry. Dev knelt down and put two fingers in her, just to feel, and they went in to the knuckle with a wet little squelch and he laughed out loud, delighted, disbelieving.

"Nothing," he said. "It's like -- there's nothing stopping it."

"That's the point, puttar," said Pami, eyes closed, on her own carpet, at two in the morning, at forty-four years old. "That's the whole point."

They slept in a pile in the living room. All five of them, blankets and limbs and somebody's foot in somebody's face. And in the morning, at ten past nine, Jassi let himself in with his key and found his mother making chai in a thin nightie, with four of his best friends asleep on his sofa in their boxers, and stopped in the doorway with his mouth open.

"Ma," he said slowly. "What happened."

Pami stirred the sugar in. She didn't turn around.

"Nothing," she said. "Eat something."

And she looked at herself in the dark glass of the microwave -- forty-four, September over, kohl smudged, hair a disaster, hips wide, thighs soft, still standing -- and thought, with enormous satisfaction:

Still got it. God help these boys.