That night after dinner, Sulk brushed and even flossed. She had to get decked enough so the Bees wouldn’t suspect nothing was going to happen, but not so much so that her parents thought something would. She settled for flared jeans and a fitted button-down lilac shirt. She butterfly-clipped her hair, carefully pulling a few waves out to twirl around her face. Bangles and, finally, boots. The girl in the mirror was glowing, she was startled to see. Eyes the shade of gingerroot and shine of night rain. She was all dressed up with someplace to go.
Her parents both drove her to Carmen’s. They climbed partially up the drive, but not too far, and even stopped the engine. Inside the den window, Sulk could see shadowy figures drifting about on a soft swell of music. She hoisted the duffel she’d packed and opened the back door.
—Now, don’t forget to phone as soon as you’re up so we can come get you, her father said.
—I won’t forget.
—And call if you change location, her mother added. —Even for a half hour.
—Mummy, Daddy, said Sulk, trying on a reassuring smile. —Nothing’s going to happen here.
She got out, slinging the sack on her shoulder as she headed off. Out of habit she turned back, and they were still there, the engine now running but the car most probably in park; nevertheless, her father gripped the wheel as if it were moving, and her mother remained belted down, looking squashed under the straps she never lengthened after Sulekha had last been in the passenger seat. Sulk was reminded of that first day of school in America and her mother’s split-end braid, the salwar pants that billowed like pajamas out from under her coat. Today her mother’s hair was layered short, based on a photo she’d clipped from Redbook. She was watching her daughter fearfully through the windshield. Sulekha couldn’t help but go back and lean in the unrolling window.
—Don’t worry, Aai, she whispered, laying her hand on her mother’s cheek. —It’s going to be all right.
This time when Sulekha walked away, she didn’t turn back. But she could feel their eyes all candle on her until Carmen’s front door opened and they knew she was safely inside, felt the swing of headlights scan her back as they reversed and left.
The first thing she noticed when she entered: Gem in braids and boots! This was an auspicious start.
—Facesucker!
—Liplocker!
—Tongue-twister!
Marisa and Poppy and Carmen seemed far more excited than Gemma, though, who stood back almost shyly as they group-hugged Sulk.
—Snogger, she finally, quietly, said when Sulekha was released.
The room was a lively mess of magazines and makeup boxes, CDs strewn in silver spinning heaps. Missy Elliott was playing, and juice spilled off a speaker top, a drop off the beat. Carmen nabbed the plastic cup and pressed it into Sulk’s hands.
—Bottoms up, honeybee.
It was a well-sweetened command, and the contents of the cup were much paler than calcium-enriched Tropicana OJ usually was. That’s when Sulk noted the unscrewed bottle of Absolut on the coffee table. She tipped the cup to make Carmen happy, and her dipped lip immediately hummed.
—Come on, Suzy! yelped Poppy, turning up the volume. She began to sing along. —You gotta work it, lemme work it . . .
—Now, we don’t have time to waste on prehistoric tunes, Carmen announced, slamming her hands together. —We gotta get on Project SMS.
—Project SMS? Sulk and Gem said at the same time. They looked at each other, and Gemma half-smiled.
—We are gonna doll, you, up, Suzy M. Shahane, Carmen proclaimed.
—What do you mean?
This is what she meant (Carmen gestured like an airline hostess): a facial (self-heating), a manicure (aqua), a pedicure (violet), straight-ironing Sulekha’s hair (old-Friends Rachel). A trio of eyeshadows (on the brow bone, lid, and rim), a trinity of lip products (liner, lipstick, and gloss, all the same shade-too-cherry for Sulk’s taste), and a stroke of blush up the cheeks. They went to it, Marisa reading aloud from the prom issue they were using as a guide.
Poppy unbuttoned Sulekha’s top two buttons. Marisa undid the bottom four and knotted her shirt ends together just below the bra line. Carmen tugged the jeans a lick lower and lent her a double-looped rhinestone belt to create a sort of cowgirl-popstar midriff expose. A spritz of J Lo Glow hot off Carmen’s vanity table, and, at a little after 11:30 P.M. EST, Friday, May 21, Sulekha was ready to go.
—How do I look? she asked Gemma, who she saw then was sitting a small distance away, nursing her plastic cup.
—Who are you? said Gemma, barely looking up. The contents of her cup were translucent as a goldfish fin. —You’re hardly recognizable.
—Exactly! cried Carmen triumphantly. She unpeeled the bindi from her own forehead and stuck it on Sulekha’s.
—You might need this, she added with exaggerated mystery.
Sulk tried to look confused, as if she had no idea how the bindi could apply. Actually it wasn’t so hard with the way Gemma was acting—maybe she’d had a little too much? It seemed the same cup she turned slowly in her hands, but perhaps Sulekha had missed the transitional refill.
—Now, if he gets stuck on your bra straps, just undo them yourself, Marisa advised. —It is so cringeworthy watching a guy go through that. Kills all the atmosphere.
—Are your jeans button-fly or zip? Poppy interjected, chompingly cocking her head. She sucked in a snapped bubble. —Okay, cool thinking—zip’s easier.
—But that between-the-buttons move can be totally hot, too. . . .
—Keep your cell on in case, was Gemma’s only contribution to the conversation. She leaned her head against the wall as if it hurt and peered up at them from under a curtain of dirty-blond hair.
—Yeah, in case you don’t know what to do—
—Or he knows too much—
—Or you just can’t stop!
—I thought it was just a kiss, exclaimed Sulekha, mock-shocked; she was safe in her secret. She and Abhijit had shaken on it, after all. Maybe they were a great match.
—A kiss is never just a kiss, Poppy said, grinning, breath redolent of grape and turpentine this close. —Don’t believe those black-and-white movies.
The Bees seemed to be growing very fond of her the more they dispensed this advice, or at least of their own voices, clamoring in close, buzzing into her ears, making honey-honey.
—This is stupid, Gemma suddenly snapped. All heads swiveled. Sulk could see her trying to rein in her flexed brow and furrowed mouth. Gemma wasn’t looking at her, though, but at Carmen. —She doesn’t need your advice. She knows what she’s doing.
—Really? said Carmen coolly. —Since when?
—Since now. She’s sixteen, bloody hell. What is wrong with you all?
—What’s wrong with you? Carmen challenged. It felt funny seeing the words she’d used on Sulekha just yesterday doing a spin and shooting out Gemwards.
—I’m going home, said Gemma, rising in one swoop as if strings had jerked her up marionette-like. —I’ve got things to do.
She was at the door. The Bees stared, stunned.
—Whatever, Carmen said, rolling her eyes. —You’ve been acting weird all night.
—PMS, honey? slurred Poppy, gazing, fascinated, into her empty cup. But Gemma was already out the door.
—She’ll be back, Carmen said, nodding. —Got to buzz with the Bees.
She tapped her watch.
—You better go, too, Suzy. You don’t want to blitz all these hours of prepping.
Sulekha already had her hand on the latch.
She sped down the driveway, boots tock-tocking as she caught up to Gemma. Gemma glanced at her, then quickened her pace.
—I thought you wanted this, said Sulk, quietly breathless.
—I do want it.
—I’m doing it for you.
Gemma stopped short and her eyes were mesmerizing and cold as a doll’s.
—Why don’t you do something for yourself for a change? she hissed.
—Well, I will, then, said Sulekha, but her heart wasn’t in it.
She stood a moment watching Gemma go, turn into darkness, return in the lamplight, and vanish, as if someone were flicking on and off a switch.
Sulekha knew the Saloon so well she could find her way there even in the dark. True that new shoots had sprung, a few branches snapped down with the spring’s thunderstorms. But she read the forest with her fingers until she was securely in the star-mossed cove. She could feel it from the way her boot heels dug plushed as if on living-room carpet. She could tell from the angle of moon slipping between the branches and down.
She wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t know how long she’d have to wait to make it convincing, or if she even wanted to go back to Carmen’s—lying by withholding was doable, but without keyboard or pen and paper, how would she create a convincing tale of the passionate exchanges that would not take place this evening by the roots of the knottiest oak?
An owl’s persistent who.
Dropping to her haunches, she ran her fingers along the tangle of roots at the trunk’s base. What other secrets does this tree have to tell? she wondered. How many times had they lain here as kids, right here, talking cowgirls and indie boys? How many times had the others come, had skin transformed skin and frontiers been crossed? She was peering so closely at the rugged landscape of broken bark, at first she didn’t realize what she took for a variation in its layered texture was in fact someone separating from trunk, stepping out from behind as if from within it. She knew that silhouette, that wrangler stance, and rolled slowly up off her hips to stand face-to-face with Gemma.
—Hi, she said warily.
—Hey.
Gemma’s voice sounded disembodied in the woods: vulnerable. She was braidless now, and the dirty-blond hair wavier still, rippling to her waist, nearly. Sulekha could tell she was uncomfortable from the way she shifted from balls to heels of her fringed purple boots, rocking in a puddle of twig-latticed moon.
—What are you doing here?
—So he didn’t come.
It wasn’t an answer. Was it.
—How do you know?
—I know, Gemma said. She jolted to her toes and lingered a moment before coming down. —I called him.
—Why would you do that?
Sulk moved back a step, annoyed for some reason.
—I’m sorry, Suzy. I got a little worried when all that button-fly this and that came up just now.
—Great, Sulekha sighed, leaning against the oak. —And what do the Bees think of all this?
Gemma looked confused.
—How should I know? she said. —I just came straight here.
Gemma stepped farther out from behind the trunk and came to stand beside her.
—So . . . you’re not too disappointed?
—No, Sulk said, shrugging and turning away a little. She turned back again. —You know, I am curious, though. Who would pick a boy I would never kiss?
Gemma stood half in shadow, a stunningly melancholy half-moon; it took Sulekha’s breath away. Like that, both of them partly veiled, it could have been all those years ago, their nearly far childhood, right here and now.
—I would, she said. Her words swayed but held.
—Why? Sulekha said softly. But somehow she could taste Gemma’s words in her mouth, and in this childed darkness, was beginning to know where they came from.
—I don’t know. I couldn’t stand the thought of another Ryder in here with you—someone treating it like a game. I went along but then I was sorry. Someone doing that with my Damsel.
Sulekha’s heart start-and-stopped.
—What? Gemma said, the illuminated side of her face worrying the moon riven.
—I’m just surprised you called me that.
Gemma looked down and tested the moss with her boot toe as if searching for a weak floorboard.
—I didn’t want you to get your heart broken, she said.
—Only heartbreak I’ve ever had is you, Sulekha replied, and immediately regretted it until she saw Gemma’s sad smile.
—Sounds like a song, she said.
They both slid down to the base of the trunk and sat, knees up, arms wrapped around in separate self-hugs.
It was so quiet suddenly that Sulekha could hear loud and clear. She could hear the whiskey bottles glittering in the soil just a foot below their bottoms. She could hear crickets, distant traffic, the stitching hum of people far, far above, flying from one place to another.
—I . . . Gemma said softly, trailing off.
Childheart beating in womanchest.
The past, the present, the future all mixed up in this moment.
Sulekha can hear midnight come and go.
They are watching each other unspokenly now. Sulekha can see herself in Gemma’s pupils, wide as oceans from a night airplane, the all-those-years-ago night they left India behind to come here, now.
But Gemma keeps arriving.
And then she is so close Sulk can’t see her anymore. A faint scent of orange, and the world Sulekha knows begins to crumble away like dry earth.
Inside, something sparkles.
It isn’t like rolling your tongue back on itself. No—rather, a slow unfurling, an unsuspected blossom, and a thrill deep as root insisting its way through earth. This dark push fills her.
This is me, I am doing this.
Sulekha’s belly gives; autumn between her legs already, an early turning. A sound of ink sliding from broken pen, seeping unnamed into the roots of the knottiest oak, sucking up into trunk and branch: red leaves, green sky, blue grass.
Gemma begins to laugh and cry at the same time, and she smells like a little girl.
—Sulekha, Gemma whispers.
—Gemma, Sulekha sighs.
The Mud and Fever Dialogues
M. T. Anderson
i
When Pyrrho had his fever the summer of our sixteenth year, something in him changed. His forehead grew hot. He lay in bed and watched the walls pimple and scar. He saw world-mothers as large and as sagging as elephants sitting on dirty benches. They held out a basin to him, but he would not take it, because he knew it was brimful of death. He struggled so much, his father and sister had to hold him down.
They poured water on his face to cool him.
The rest of us had already gotten over the fever, so we sat outside in the summer heat. We watched our goats wander through the fallen pillars on the hilltops. We sat in the atria of ruined villas, cross-legged on the broken tile, and argued about Truth, the Good, and Beauty. That month, I was going out with a discus-thrower who was missing an ear.
At sunset, we all would go up to the fallen temple and stand there in beautiful poses. People went by on the dirt road and looked up at us. A real victory for us was a day when one said, “Those can’t be real boys. Those must be boys of stone.”
One evening we were standing there motionless when we saw Pyrrho coming up the hill. We had not seen him for a week. He was still looking pale and greasy.
He came up to our side and said, “I guess I’m better.”
We did not move.
He poked Alex with his finger. “Hey,” he said.
Alex didn’t move. “I’m a statue,” said Alex, without moving his jaw.
Pyrrho punched him in the stomach. Alex fell off his mount.
“Ow!” said Alex. “Damn!”
Pyrrho said, “Thus I refute you.”
ii
We sat around the fire, eating mutton we had cooked on the flames. We watched gods and crustaceans in the stars; they circled Earth for a glimpse of its crevasses.
“We can’t trust what we see or hear,” said Pyrrho. “When I was sick, I saw the walls grow a scaly hide. I could hear people order me to run up and down stairs. All we have to judge the world are our senses, and them, we can’t trust.”
“I’m color-blind,” agreed Menalcus glumly. “People tell me something is green, and I have to believe them.”
“It’s all a big joke,” I whispered to Menalcus, hoping to confuse him. “There is no green. Your parents just told us to play along.”
“I saw the most amazing thing in my delirium,” said Pyrrho. “I saw all of time and space unwrapped. I was falling through it. I could feel my body covered with beetles. They were the seconds passing. I even saw all of you, standing by my bed, banging on cymbals.”
There was an awkward silence.
“That was us, actually,” I said. “We did stand by your bed, banging cymbals.”
“It was scientific,” said Menalcus. “We were frightening away the fever-spooks.”
“They ran away,” I said, “with their beards in their hands.”
iii
Pyrrho held his hand close to the flame and burned himself.
He would not grimace or move. We fought with him, pulling him back. We scrabbled in the cinders, holding him by the arms and shoulders.
He was yelling, “We do not know . . . whether the fire . . . is hot! Only . . . that I feel like . . . I’m burning!”
iv
His sister, Philista, came to see me the next day. I was playing my pan-pipes for the goats. It made them docile.
When she stepped around the ruins of a wall, I stopped playing. “The beautiful Philista,” I said.
She sat next to me and took my arm. She said, “I am worried about Pyrrho.”
“Pyrrho is better.”
“He’s trying to get wild dogs to bite him.”
“What?” I said, rising. “Where?”
“Don’t worry. They won’t attack. He frightened them. He’s running after them, covered with meat and goat’s blood.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He says he’s trying to lead a new, more beautiful life.”
“Fine. Where does the meat come in?”
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