by Fiona Zedde
“You want to try some of this tuna tataki, Sara?” Rille gestured to the mostly raw slices of tuna on her plate. The fish, arranged like the petals of a sunflower around a mound of shredded carrots and purple cabbage.
“I don’t think so.” Sara shook her head. “I don’t eat raw meat.”
“It’s just fish. And it’s not raw.” Rille pointed to the edges of the deep pink meat that were a pretty golden brown and dotted with white and black sesame seeds. “See, that part is cooked.”
Sara shook her head again. “Sorry, no.” But she wasn’t sorry. Usually, she’d take a bite just so she wouldn’t offend, but her parents taught her to only eat cooked food.
“I’ll just eat my fried rice.” The safe choice.
She felt Mrs. Thompson’s eyes on her again. “You can try anything you want, dear,” the woman said. We’re paying for it. Her unsaid words lingered contemptuously in the air.
“Thank you.” Sara forced a smile.
When the entrees came, the Thompsons dove in, also diving into the conversation, as if that was the signal they all had been waiting for to talk about things that mattered. Mrs. Thompson asked Rille about her prospects for graduate school and where she wanted to go. Her father nodded with approval when she mentioned Yale and Johns Hopkins as strong candidates. The discussion seemed like a familiar one to all three of them.
“But what about Emory back home in Atlanta?” her mother asked, swirling her chopsticks into a mixture of soy sauce and wasabi. “Or even Georgia State? There are plenty of good schools up there.” She sucked at the tips of the chopsticks.
But Rille looked like she’d rather press her face into the hibachi grill than go to any of the schools her mother mentioned.
“Momma, I told you I’m not going back to Georgia.”
Her father patted her hand. “Whatever you decide, Merille. As long as you go somewhere you like. You’ll excel at any school.” His smile was fond and proud, touching Rille a moment before going back to his wife.
“You’re absolutely right, darling,” Mrs. Thompson said. She turned to Sara. “What about you, dear? What are your plans after Vreeland?”
Surprised by the woman’s apparent interest, Sara glanced in panic at Rille before looking at Rille’s mother. She shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought much about after college. I just got here a few months ago.”
“But surely you have some idea of what you want to do with your life. You’ve been here for a few months and have been influenced somewhat by your studies. You have to know something about your desires.”
All I know is I want Rille.
Desire for Rille was the only thing that had become real for her since being at Vreeland. This desire was all that had flowered out of the pain of losing her brother, pushing her to experience life like she thought he would live it, with gritted teeth and fingers clinging hard to someone who pushed her beyond herself. But she didn’t think Beverly Thompson would like that answer.
“I want to enjoy my life, Mrs. Thompson. I don’t have to map it out to get the most out of it. Vreeland is fun.” Sara shrugged. “I’m enjoying learning new things about myself and about the world. I’m not in a rush to commit to one profession or school or whatever.”
Mrs. Thompson pursed her lips. “You don’t have much of a personality, do you?” She didn’t wait for Sara’s response. “That sounds like just the kind of crap that hippie school has in their brochure. Did you just read all about Vreeland from the brochure and absorb all their ideas and ideology as your own?”
“Beverly!” Mr. Thompson stared hard at his wife. His chopsticks, heavy with a slice of raw whitefish, pink ginger, and green wasabi, hovered inches from his mouth. “That’s uncalled for.”
“You don’t know me,” Sara said, feeling the tremors of impotent anger through her. An uncomfortable heat burned under her cheeks.
“I know enough.” Mrs. Thompson’s tone effectively dismissed her.
Sara clenched her hands in her lap. “Excuse me,” she said, getting up abruptly from the table without waiting for a response from any of them.
She stumbled blindly toward where she assumed the bathrooms were. But she blundered into the kitchen and into an annoyed waiter carrying a platter nearly overflowing with steaming bowls of rice and clear soup floating with white noodles. The black and white image of the waiter wavered in the steam from the bowls.
“The restroom is there.” He jerked his chin toward a door hidden in a dark corner of the restaurant.
In the bathroom, Sara locked herself in a stall and leaned back against the door, breathing deeply, trying to control tears of anger. That bitch! She gritted her teeth, while some part of her realized that Rille made her just as angry at times. Rille said things to her that were ridiculous and often made her want to throw something and walk away.
But she wasn’t fucking Beverly Thompson. The bathroom door opened with a faint squeak.
“Sara, are you in here?” Rille’s voice found her over the stall.
She swallowed. And swallowed again. “Yes, I’m peeing.” She flushed the toilet, took another quick breath, and pushed open the bathroom stall.
Sara washed her hands in the sink and splashed water on her face, all without looking at Rille. She sensed Rille’s impatient presence, her need to be acknowledged. But for the first time, she didn’t give Rille something she wanted, something Sara had in her power to provide. Only after she rinsed and wiped her hands did she glance at Rille.
Rille stood by the bathroom door, pouting in the flower-purple blouse and jeans they had picked together for her to wear. Her arms crossed her chest and she watched Sara for a moment before moving closer.
“I’m sorry about Momma,” Rille murmured, running her hands down Sara’s arms. Soy sauce and something spicy sat on her breath. “She can be a real hard-ass. I’m used to it.”
“I’m okay,” Sara said, shrugging to loosen the tightness in her chest. “It was no big deal. I’ve seen worse.” But she hadn’t. She’d never met someone who completely disdained her and had no reservations about letting her know it.
You’re not worth my daughter’s time. That’s what Beverly Thompson had said under all those words.
“I just had to pee,” Sara said, meeting Rille’s eyes in the mirror.
Sara stared at Rille in the mirror, at herself. How their bodies were an illusion of complement. Rille’s wild, pale curls. Her wispy but neat bob. Rille’s blouse and jeans. Her yellow dress with the small white flowers. Dark and darker. Lovers. Together but not.
From behind, Rille pressed her cheek against Sara’s, her body held in an attitude of concern. Why? Were her parents outside in the restaurant ignoring her again?
The bathroom door opened. Three women came in, each giving them a brief glance before rushing for the empty stalls. Their heels clicked against the tiled floor.
“Come on,” Rille said. “The parents are waiting.”
At their table, the parents weren’t waiting. They had pushed their chairs even closer and were having a very intimate conversation.
“Fletcher, that’s ridiculous!” Beverly Thompson bent her head into her husband’s throat, giggling like a teenager.
He laughed with her, his teeth like smooth white stones. In that moment, his hand moved to his wife’s shoulder, two fingers slipping under the thin linen to rest against her skin. A prelude to undressing.
Sara and Rille sat at the table and waited for Beverly and Fletcher Thompson to notice them.
The First Time
Sara/1994
Like clockwork, Shayna, the girl downstairs began her porn star wails to the dim rhythm of the bed knocking against their shared outer wall. Sara and Raven looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
“Do you think he’s really that good?” Raven asked. “Or is she giving him a really good show?”
“It could be a ‘her,’” Sara murmured. “We should ask next time we see Shayna.”
The first time they heard t
heir neighbor, it was the second month into school, a Friday night that Raven had decided to stay at Vreeland instead of driving up to see her boyfriend. This weekend was his turn to come down. Her brow furrowed over Franz Fanon, Sara blinked when a faint but insistent knocking broke her concentration. Her highlighter stopped moving over the page. Across the room, Raven sat at an identical desk, her chin propped up on one fist while light from the desk lamp illuminated the round cheeks and lower lip caught between her teeth.
“Do you hear that?” Sara asked.
And after a moment, listening in silence, Raven grinned. “Yup. That damn Shayna.”
When the wails began, startling and loud, they burst out laughing. Long minutes passed before they could get back to their homework without an attack of the giggles. Over the past few weeks, the downstairs performance had lost much of its humor, but Sara and Raven learned to adapt themselves, get all their homework done before Friday, or make the late night trip to the library or the student center across the quad to study.
“Good thing we’re done being nerds for the week.” Raven dropped a packet of M&M’s into the wicker picnic basket and closed it.
“Yeah.” Sara looked at her. “Thanks for coming with Rille and me. I know it’s a weird idea.”
“No, it should be fun. A late night picnic on the bay. Besides, maybe this is my chance to get to know Rille as more than just a parasite and heartless scab.” Raven flashed her teeth.
“Stop it. She’s not that bad.” Sara lightly poked her side. “In fact, she’s very, very good.”
“Oh gawd! Please, no more. If you say another word I’m going to shove a pen into my ears.”
“Ugh! Dramatic much?”
Raven glanced at her with a teasing smile. They hadn’t really talked about Sara’s visit with her parents. The little she revealed to Raven had broken her down into useless little pieces in the front seat of Raven’s car. Even now, almost a month later, Sara couldn’t believe what had happened. But she handled the pain like she did everything else: she tucked it away in a box, locked it, and lost the key.
“Come on, girl.” Raven grabbed the picnic basket. “Let’s not keep your chyk waiting.”
They left their room, locking the door behind them and, with Sara in front, headed to Rille’s dorm room.
“What are you and Bryan going to do down here anyway?”
“What else? Go to the beach, eat ice cream, and fuck like bunnies when you’ll let me have the room.” Raven stuck out her tongue.
“Oh, shut up.” Sara laughed in spite of herself, glad to have Raven with her for once on the weekend even if she would spend most of it with her boyfriend. She reached for Rille’s door, knocked once before pushing it open.
No. She reeled back across the threshold. Raven cursed as Sara stumbled back into her. The image of Rille on her knees, Dev with her gloved hand and wrist buried in Rille from behind. Rille’s face buried between Thalia’s thighs. All this, spread on the floor on blankets. On the blanket that Sara had brought over for their night-time picnic. She didn’t see any of that. She didn’t.
“What’s wrong?” Raven’s voice reached her from far away. Raven put a hand out to touch, then she poked her head past the half open door. “Oh, fuck!”
Sara knew then that her eyes had been right the first time.
“Um, let’s go back to our room and study,” she said, her face hot with anger. With humiliation. “Maybe we won’t do that picnic thing after all.”
“Yeah….” With the picnic basket in one hand, Raven grabbed Sara’s arm with the other and steered her away from the door. Sara tripped down the stairs behind Raven, half expecting Rille to rush from behind the door to chase her down and apologize, try to give her some kind of explanation. But she made it all the way down the stairs with no trace of Rille. No sign of the repentance she was sure to come after…after that.
In their room, Raven banged on the window, yelling “Shut up!” to the oblivious Shayna downstairs, then twisted on the radio to drown out her braying cries.
“That fucking girl is no good for you,” Raven said.
She kicked at the picnic basket by the door, as if it were the source of all Sara’s worries. But Sara sat on her bed, staring at the closed door to their room, the scene on Rille’s floor still playing like an amateur porn video behind her eyelids. That was her girlfriend.
Syrus was gone. Her parents had abandoned her. And now this. Now she really had no one. She was empty and alone.
Nausea abruptly swamped Sara’s senses. She slapped both hands over her mouth and ran for the bathroom, barely making it in time to clutch at the sides of the toilet as sour hunks of her breakfast gushed out of her mouth, splashing up in the toilet until the water turned a swimming, thick yellow. Her stomach heaved and she retched, jerking over the toilet. Her knees scraped against the cold tile. She clutched at her raw throat.
Raven’s hand came into her line of vision, holding a damp paper towel. Sara reached out gratefully for it, wiped off her mouth, and pushed up. Raven stood nearby, holding a wet rag against her face, deliberately looking away from the contents of the toilet. More than anything else, Raven hated the smell of vomit and had often told Sara that was one of the things she’d never help her with. But Raven stood in the bathroom, the dark blue washcloth held against her nose and mouth to keep out the smell, brown eyes soft with concern. Sara reached over and flushed away her embarrassment then leaned over the sink to rinse the taste of sickness from her mouth. This is pathetic.
“I’m okay,” she said stumbling back to the bedroom and to her bed.
Raven sat beside her. The washcloth lay twisted between them on the bed.
“Actually, you look like shit.” Raven folded her arms tight across her lap. “You deserve so much better than that slut.”
“She’s not—”
But Raven’s hard stare shut her up.
Rille was that and so much more. There was nothing that Raven was about to say that Sara hadn’t thought of herself. Or worse. A shudder quaked her insides. Then she realized it was a hard bang at the door.
“It’s me, Sara. Open the door, please.”
Raven looked at her, then back to the door. Whatever she saw on Sara’s face, forced a sigh, harsh as a slap, past her lips. Before Sara could say anything, Raven grabbed her backpack, flung the door open, and pushed past Rille without saying a word.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Rille said.
She closed the door. Sara imagined that she smelled the sex on Rille, the weed scent Devi wore like perfume, and Thalia’s sticky cum tangled in Rille’s hair.
Sara crumpled the damp paper towel in her fist. “But I did.”
“I won’t apologize.” Rille shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her jeans and walked further into the room. “I was like this before you met me. If you think a change is going to happen then you’re with the wrong girl.”
Had she thought that things would change? Rille hadn’t pretended to be more or less than she was. A seducer. A taker of things. A cold, selfish bitch who wanted what she wanted when she wanted it.
“Do you ever think about someone else’s feelings other than your own?” Sara asked the question as if it had no importance. But she held her breath.
“Do you want me to lie?”
Disappointment leaked from Sara’s lips. “No. I don’t want you to lie.”
Rille knelt in front of her, curved her hands around the solid weight of Sara’s thighs. “I like you,” she said. “I like you in my bed. I like you in my life. Don’t spoil this.”
Sara felt herself trembling and couldn’t stop. Was this what she wanted for herself? A relationship like this? She couldn’t focus on anything. Especially, not on her needs. Her head swam from Rille’s nearness. She closed her eyes.
“Can you at least promise me that you won’t…” She paused, thinking about what she was going to ask. “That you won’t sleep with any men?”
Rille nodded. “I can do that for
you.” She curved her palm around Sara’s neck and drew close. “Absolutely.” Her promise, the kiss, pushed away the last of Sara’s senses. She didn’t resist when Rille rose up and pressed her into the bed.
*
What would Syrus have said? The question plagued Sara through her reconciliation with Rille, through facing Devi in class without imagining her behind Rille, through the times in Rille’s bed when she hardly remembered her name and sweat was the only language she knew. What would Syrus have done?
Raven’s look was unforgiving and stayed that way long past the time when Sara thought Raven should get over it.
“I can’t get over that girl treating you like garbage, especially when everyone on campus knows what she’s doing.” Raven’s cold face stared at Sara across the room every evening for days. She gradually melted, but never wanted to see Rille in their shared room. Never even wanted to hear Sara say her name, if possible. It wasn’t, but they moved beyond that. Eventually.
Would Syrus have supported her choice?
Sara had wanted to tell him. Too many days, the words had hovered on her tongue. Words she eventually swallowed. With her mother reacting like this to the news that Sara was just a little different than she thought—some days Sara was glad she’d never told Syrus. But she still wondered. Still longed for her brother’s advice. She missed him. The dart games they played in the converted garage that was his bedroom. How he took her to get a fake ID then talked with her over beers—that he drank—about problems with the male gender that Sara should watch out for. “We all have tricks to make you believe every word we say,” he remarked once over a microbrew with a milkmaid on the bottle. “Don’t fall for them.”
Was that the advice to take now?
She wondered this as, in Rille’s room, the long vertical blinds rustled in the night breeze. Nothing else moved. And that was when it came to her, past the brush of Rille’s hair against her throat on their shared pillow. Through the quiet contentment of their post-coital spooning. Syrus would have had something to say about her enslavement. He was gone, but at that moment in Rille’s bed, she thought she could feel him lean down, hear him whisper urgently at her ear: “Run.”
