Sasha Masha

by Agnes Borinsky

  “Yes! Sasha Masha, yes … Stein. Gertrude Stein.”

  Green jumped in. “Marlon Riggs. Frank O’Hara. Alice James.” He was going in rows, in stretches, faces next to each other I wouldn’t have expected to be next to each other. “Keith Haring. Quentin Crisp. Constantine Cavafy.”

  And he started taking turns with Coco. The names came fast.

  “Leslie Feinberg.”

  “Essex Hemphill.”

  “Harry Hay.”

  “Divine.”

  “Ma Rainey.”

  “Audre Lorde.”

  “Charles Ludlam.”

  “Christine Jorgensen.”

  “Agnes Martin.”

  “Assotto Saint.”

  “Hibiscus and Sylvester.”

  “Tim Dlugos.”

  “Tituba.”

  “Félix González-Torres.”

  “Bayard Rustin.”

  “Alberta Hunter.”

  “Hervé Guibert.”

  “May Sarton.”

  “Reinaldo Arenas.”

  “Tom Joslin.”

  “Bambi Lake.”

  Then the hall turned a corner and there were more; it seemed like we might go forever. There were names and names and faces and raised open palms, and a part of me wanted to write them all down, but I started to see that the list was endless, really.*

  Andre caught my eye, then turned to Coco and said it might be time for us to head out.

  “Right in the middle like that? We’re just warming up.”

  “I know, I know,” Andre said. “But it’s late. Next time, okay?”

  “All right. If you insist.”

  “Let the children go, Coco,” Green said, and gave Coco’s shoulder a squeeze.

  “Just remember, dear,” Coco said to me. “People like us, we’ve been here forever.”

  They sent us out into the night with freezer bags full of biscuits.

  Chapter 18

  The next two days crawled by. Andre kept sending me text messages to make sure I was free on Saturday for Miss Thing.

  “u r obsessed with miss thing,” I texted him.

  “i am obsessed. no lie”

  “what do i need to know?”

  “nothing. just don’t make other plans”

  “what if i get an overwhelming craving to stay home and do sudoku?”

  “u don’t know what ur getting yrself into,” he wrote, “but ur getting yrself into something big. ok?”

  “ok:),” I replied.

  When Tracy and I had class together, I tried to smile at her, but she just gave me a somber little nod and turned away. Then I’d remember the smell of her car or that yellow couch on a rainy day and I’d get a stabby feeling in my chest. Thankfully, there were no group projects forcing us to deal with each other more than we had to.

  Soon Saturday came and it was time to head to Andre’s. I buckled myself into my dad’s car and turned the key. The heat came blasting on. My mind wouldn’t stay still. I pulled away from the curb and into the street, into the city. Inside the car it was warm and muffled, but outside the whole autumnal world seemed sharper, somehow; the city of Baltimore seemed more vivid and more strange. It was as if my eyes were registering a change that was about to happen—but hadn’t yet. I stopped at a light and noticed something bright in my peripheral vision: by the side of the road, a fox with black feet and black eyes staring out of the most gorgeous orange-red coat. For a second I thought it was looking at me. The person behind me honked. The fox ran off. It had to be a sign of something. A good omen. The city crackled with readiness for what Andre had insisted was going to be a big night.

  “Sasha Masha! Come in, come in. Sorry—it’s a bit of a disaster zone in here.”

  It was like a suitcase had exploded: there were jackets and shirts all over everything. A big dog jumped up on me and almost knocked me over. Andre told me this was Emmet and kept trying to get him to calm down.

  “Just push him off, you have to push him off,” he said. “Emmet! Emmet!”

  I think Emmet scratched me through my shirt, and he was smelly and had drool flying everywhere, but I didn’t mind. Andre grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hall. When we made it to his room, he closed the door behind us.

  “Sorry,” he said. “And welcome.”

  “Are your parents here?”

  “No, my mom works late on Saturdays. But she says hi.”

  “Hi back,” I said.

  There was as much chaos in Andre’s tiny room as I’d glimpsed in the living room. His bed was covered in clothes, and his closet was open with more clothes spilling out onto the floor. He had a stack of five or six books by a lamp on a table. There was an unplugged computer monitor by the door, with a bright green and orange stuffed snake draped over it. The walls were covered in band posters.

  Andre had done his nails in yellow and was padding around in big slippers. He said we should figure out our looks.

  “I like your nails,” I said.

  “Have you done yours before?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you want to do yours?” he asked. “Just to try?”

  “Oh—sure.” My heart was pounding in my chest.

  “Green? Or yellow?”

  “Green,” I said.

  He unscrewed the bottle and a sharp, acidic smell filled the room. I was already thinking about how I’d get the paint off before my parents could see. Probably there was nail polish remover in one of the drawers in our bathroom. I could just get up early Sunday morning and scrub them clean.

  I pinched the brush between two fingers, and went slow, but I couldn’t get the color to stay where I wanted it to. I looked at Andre’s perfect canary ovals. Already I had green polish everywhere. “How do you do yours so neatly?”

  “Practice. It all takes practice.”

  I sighed.

  “Now what are we thinking as far as looks go? You didn’t bring anything, did you?”

  I hadn’t. Looks? Was I supposed to have looks?

  “That’s okay.” Andre was a queer on fire. Focused and set on action. “We’ll find you something. I just want you to feel … good. Yourself. You know?”

  He looked at me. I nodded.

  “Now what would Sasha Masha wear?”

  Andre dug through piles of clothes as I finished my nails. At my Jewish school we used to talk about the hand of God, or God guiding someone’s hand toward something. Later, I was tempted to think that the universe guided Andre’s hand to this dress in particular, even though I knew that it was probably chance. Or maybe just good taste. But out of all the piles of clothes in the room, he reached down and pulled up something the color of the perfect sunset. The color just before dusk. The color of air that smelled like citrus and peace and a place you never wanted to leave.

  “How about this?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, my voice tiny in the back of my throat. “That’ll probably work.”

  As I waited for my nails to dry, Andre assessed his own options clothing-wise. He held things up and dropped them, half tried on vests and jackets, and checked himself in the mirror, running through theme and variations. I didn’t say anything, just watched him work.

  Finally I was ready to make my way to the bathroom to try on the dress. I folded my pants and my shirt—after carefully extracting my wallet, keys, and phone—and left them in a neat pile on the toilet seat. I held up the dress to make sense of what was front and what was back, and then I slipped it over my head. The fabric landed lightly on my shoulders, hung down over my chest. The elastic waist cinched gently above my belly button, and the folds of red-orange fabric tumbled down around my legs. I could feel the hem grazing the backs of my calves.

  I looked in the mirror and saw my face hovering awkwardly above the glowing ruddy neckline. I smiled at myself. I touched my arms and noticed there were goose bumps everywhere, but that was probably just because the bathroom was cold. I went back to Andre’s room to get his approval. Still—and I was starting
to know what it felt like to know things in your bones, your heart, your gut—in some deep part of my body I knew I looked good.

  “I approve!” he said. “But you feel good? That’s the most important thing, that it feels good. Does it feel good?”

  I nodded. Smiled a little, even.

  “What should I do with these?” I had my wallet, phone, and keys in my hand.

  “Here, I’m bringing this little backpack. You can put them in here.”

  Andre had landed on a bright orange mesh vest over purple-and-green quilted pants; the pant legs swung loose around his ankles. We pulled on our jackets, Andre hooked the small backpack over his shoulder, and soon we were locking the house and heading out. His canary fingernails glowed in the dusk. He told me to drive us north and east, and we bent around the harbor toward Patterson Park. Andre found the radio station that was playing the perfect song. There was a light tang of something floral that wafted off the dress I was wearing. It smelled like lilac, like late nights and sweat. An Andre smell. We drove in silence while the heat blasted and the beat of the song wrapped itself around us.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, and did a little dance in the driver’s seat.

  A few minutes later, we were pulling up to the Lavender Ladder. Andre insisted that I wasn’t going to pay for anything. “Next time we split it,” he said. “But Miss Thing is its own night. It’s an initiation.”

  Inside, the whole place had been transformed. None of the fluorescents were on; it was all twinkling, warm light with spots of color. Two round-faced teenagers with shaved heads were sitting behind a table at the entrance. Music with a heavy beat was coming from down the hall.

  “Welcome to Miss Thing,” said one of the teenagers behind the table. “This is a teens party, which means no alcohol, no drugs. Affirmative verbal consent is a must before any physical contact. That means anything less than ‘yes’ or ‘hell yes’ is a no. Anyone who can’t keep themselves together will be asked to leave. It’s five dollars to enter. Does that sound good to you, bbz?”

  We both nodded, and Andre fished in his wallet for cash.

  “Thank you,” I muttered, unsure how to stand in my dress. I tried crossing my right leg over my left and swaying a little. I was glad the lights were low.

  “I love your dress,” one of the teenagers said to me, winking as we offered our wrists to get them stamped. I lowered my eyes and mustered a slight nod of acknowledgment.

  The music got louder as we moved down the hall. Andre strode ahead of me. I felt the dress swishing madly against my legs as I tried to keep up. Other kids stood along the hallway in pairs and trios, drinking out of blue plastic cups. There were fishnets and platform shoes, gowns and purple velvet suits. Some people had their phones out, taking pictures of themselves in small groups; other people were taking pictures of each other. Barely anyone looked at me. The hairs on the sides of my neck were vibrating with the beat.

  We passed through the double doors into the room where I’d come with Mabel, brought Tracy to see Querelle, first met Andre, and first said my name to a roomful of strangers. I expected a dense and sweaty crowd, but the room was mostly empty. There were maybe twenty, twenty-five people there. They were sitting in chairs around the edges, standing by the drinks table; three brave souls were swirling and prancing to the music in the center of the room. The light was dim and purple, and there were strings of beads hanging from the ceiling. Still, the beat was all around us, pressing in on our skins, holding us. Andre, as if he was reading my mind, leaned in. “It’s early yet,” he said. I felt his nose graze my ear. “Come.”

  I followed him to a cluster of chairs. We had to lean in close to each other to be heard.

  “What would you like to drink? Coke? Ginger ale?”

  “Um … Coke?”

  I watched our jackets while Andre went to get us drinks. I asked someone the time. It was a little after eight. Was this going to go all night? And who were these people? I thought I recognized someone on the dance floor from the youth group meeting, but otherwise saw no one I knew. It was a weird feeling—here, in my city, the city where I’d lived for all of my seventeen years, to realize that there were whole universes of people I never knew existed.

  Andre returned with two blue cups and someone he wanted me to meet.

  “Sasha Masha, this is my friend Michelle. Michelle, this is Sasha Masha.”

  “Hi,” I said, and touched her hand. “Michelle?”

  “Hi Sasha Masha. I’ve heard about you.”

  Michelle was perched confidently on heels that were impressively tall. She dropped a purse on the table and lowered herself into a seat beside me.

  “So how did you and Andre meet again?” she asked. I could smell strawberry perfume when she leaned in to speak into my ear.

  “Oh, just sort of randomly,” I said back, into hers. “We were both at one of the movie screenings here…”

  “Cool.”

  “How about you?”

  “Yeah, from around. We go to school together.”

  “Cool.”

  We nodded at each other. I felt myself panic a bit for lack of anything else to say.

  “It’s so loud here,” she said. “It’s hard to talk.”

  “It is!” I replied.

  And then she started moving her mouth as if she were saying something complicated, and waving her hands around like she was talking, but no sound came out. I grinned and pumped my head up and down like I understood her perfectly. Then it was my turn, and I mouthed my own series of nonsense points, accompanied by gestures, while she made a very serious face of acknowledgment. Then we laughed and both stared out at the dance floor.

  Andre leaned in to me from the other side. “Michelle is one of my best friends at school. She literally saved my life when I was a sophomore and she was a freshman.”

  I nodded at that, too.

  Eventually Andre wanted to get up and dance. I said I’d join, but out in the middle of the room I felt stiff and exposed. I swayed and swirled the dress a little bit, but I didn’t know what else to do. Andre bounced and lifted his legs and he and Michelle looked at each other and made faces. The people around me all seemed to be having a good time. Why couldn’t I relax and have a good time, too?

  I slipped away to the bathroom. It felt a little funny going into the men’s room in a dress, but no one else was in there. I stood for a second in front of the mirror and looked at myself. What was I doing? What was this about? The door opened and someone came in. I jumped and fumbled as if to pretend that I hadn’t been standing there, staring at myself. But the boy who came in just laughed and said, “Live your life, girl! You look good!” before vanishing into one of the stalls and starting to pee loudly. So I did live my life, standing there and making myself look in the mirror, really look. There was something in what I saw that I couldn’t quite resolve. It was different from the look I had in the photograph with Mabel, but it went someplace equally deep. It was similar to the feeling you get when you know you know something but can’t remember it. Except I knew there was nothing I was supposed to remember. It was something I felt like I should see, but wasn’t seeing yet. A little tickle at the back of the eye, except it wasn’t in my eye, or even my brain; it was in my heart, somehow. I didn’t have a name for it. I just had “Sasha Masha.”

  When the boy in the stall flushed, I went into another stall myself, lifted the dress around my hips, and sat down to think. The bathroom was bright and the thudding music was a buzz that barely came through the walls. I closed my eyes and focused on the texture of the fabric against my shoulders, my back. I felt comfortable, safe. I tried to picture myself in the mirror again. “I look pretty,” I said to myself. I said it again: “I look pretty.” Did I look pretty? Maybe I just looked like a freak. The faucet ran and the person who’d come in to pee pumped the paper towel dispenser and ripped the paper. It got loud for a minute when he opened the door to leave, but then it closed and I was pretty sure
I was alone again. It felt good to be alone. No one I knew from school or my family could see me. Knowing none of them would appear, I felt something loosen in my chest.

  I figured I had come this far. I figured none of the people here would judge me, even if everyone in the rest of my life would. I figured I should probably get back out on the dance floor.

  The room was much less empty than it had been. There were lots of people dancing now, bouncing and twisting and making shapes with their arms. I scanned the crowd for Andre and Michelle, and soon I saw Andre’s blue hair floating above all the other heads.

  “Where’d you go!” Andre wanted to know.

  “I just went to the bathroom,” I told him.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, smiling, and I nodded.

  Michelle touched my arm. “We thought we’d lost you!”

  It was easier to dance in the crowd. I loosened my knees and let the beat into my hips. The room was warm from all the sweating bodies, and the smell of the dress, Andre’s smell, found its way to my nose. I kept my eyes down, but I could tell I was starting to vibrate with all the people around me. I watched Michelle’s feet and Andre’s feet step in and away, I watched the patterns of all the feet around us, stepping forward and back, side to side, always in pairs, first one, then the other. A smile was playing across my face, but maybe no one saw it. The music had made it into my body and my body was loose, even if I didn’t know what to do with my hands, my hands probably looked stupid, but at least my feet knew what to do, and the music was in my body and my body felt good. I watched the fabric sunset swish and wrap itself around my ankles, I watched my legs appear and disappear in the cloth.

  Andre went away for a bit and then came back with a bottle of water, which he shared with me and Michelle. We passed it around and made mute smiles at each other. The music wrapped around us like a knitted rug, slow ripples and rises and deep, dark folds. I liked being here. I raised my hands up to the ceiling and followed them with my gaze, I watched the light reflecting off all the beads suspended above us. I lowered my arms and my eyes and started to take in all the faces around me. There were soft faces and sharp faces, round faces and long ones, faces made up with dusky reds or powder blues, there was acne and flush throbbing dully under makeup and glitter. A few of the faces regarded mine and smiled at me. Andre’s face was a moon I wanted to keep close by; Michelle’s was another friendly planet. All around me, this galaxy, rotating and expanding. The music kept us all in orbit, kept us all breathing. I wondered how long we’d been here. It suddenly felt like forever.