He gets up, walks over to the counter of their kitchenette, where six onions sit waiting for dinner. Kili is a good cook, and he has been an eager student; after two years, he can make a curry almost as well as she can. Michael starts to chop onions, thin, the way she likes them. As the conversation continues, her voice growing more frantic, pleading, he chops harder, faster, turning the pile of chopped onions into mush. Before long, the onions are nothing more than a heap of white fiber and eye-stinging water, useless.
He turns then, to find her watching him with the phone pressed hard against her ear, her eyes wide, her face unusually pale. Guilt makes him put down the knife, walk over and brush the sweaty hair back from her forehead, bend down and drop a kiss there, reassuring. Michael wishes, though, that her father might hear it, the almost-sound of pink lips on dark flesh. And he wonders whether the onion juices on his fingers have left a residue on her skin, whether the fumes will make her cry.
“MARRY IN HASTE, REPENT AT LEISURE.” THAT’S WHAT HIS OWN father had said when Michael had called with the news that he had married a brown-skinned girl. His father had been polite to Kili’s face—Michael even thought he might approve of her slender frame, her swift medical mind. Michael’s own mother, who was rather enormously fat and spent her days weeping over romance novels, had been a sad disappointment, his father had once drunkenly confessed. Michael hadn’t told his father the reason for the hasty civil marriage, bereft of church or family—but it couldn’t be too hard to guess.
He and Kili had walked out to the Point that morning that April, had sat on the damp grass under a tree, watching the waters of the lake wash in and out. Michael hadn’t suspected anything—not until she took his hand, something she never did in public. Kili had pressed his hand so hard that pink imprints had risen to the surface of the white skin, had whispered her suspicions even though there was no one else in sight, as though the very wind and waves might betray her, might carry the words to her family. She had been so terrified that Michael had risen to one knee and proposed. It was the only thing to do.
Kili had said yes, had even smiled before kissing him, but she refused to tell her family—as she had refused to tell them they were dating, for the past two years. Michael had guiltily agreed, agreed to everything she wanted. It seemed easy enough to agree—soon enough Kili would be showing, would have to tell her parents, whether she wanted to or not. They had filled out the necessary paperwork and gotten married without ceremony a few days after his college graduation. Housing was harder, but after being turned down, once with veiled insults, by two apartment managers for places near the lake, they had managed to find a manager on Woodlawn who cared more about their money than about the color of their respective, different, skins. They settled there into an appearance of wedded bliss—but the baby, the threat and promise of it, had disappeared not long after that.
He was afraid to ask what had happened to it, afraid he knew what his wife had done. She had been so scared.
THE ONIONS ARE DECLARED A LOSS AND HE PICKS UP PIZZA INSTEAD. They can afford to buy pizza often; they are only paying the rent for a small studio, so that her parents believe she is living there, and paying for it, by herself. He picks up pizza often, since Kili is unwilling to go out to eat with him, unless they gather a crowd of friends to join them. Her father teaches on this campus, after all; her younger sisters are in school here. There are ten thousand students in Hyde Park, but according to Kili, spies are everywhere. None of their friends know that they’ve married—they have been so secret, so careful, that most didn’t even know that they were dating. Michael isn’t sure how his friends will react, but he wants to find out. She promises that they can tell them, soon. Kili has been saying soon, in her soft voice, since that first stolen kiss.
She has lit candles for their dinner; as they sit on the floor, cross-legged, sharing thick stuffed spinach slices, Michael finds himself entranced by the play of light across her face. Kili is not beautiful, according to her own report. She is too thin, too dark; her nose is sharp, and she has no breasts to speak of. But her skin is perfectly smooth, and nothing is as soft as the insides of her thighs. She eats pizza with both hands, smothers the slices in extra chili sauce before stuffing them into her small mouth. When Michael abandons his own pizza to taste a bite of hers, the chili burns his lips, his tongue, the inside of his cheeks. It hurts, but he cannot seem to stop. He presses forward, presses his burning lips to her mouth, bites down, gently, then less gently. Kili leans backward, and he presses forward, until she is trapped against the hardwood floor, her slight body entirely hidden beneath him. The pizza lies forgotten beside them.
IN THE WEEKS AFTER THAT FIRST KISS, MICHAEL PRESSED KILI FOR details about her family, her parents’ country, her culture. She steadfastly avoided any such discussion; talking of her family would only lead to grief, she claimed, and as for her country—she was born in England, raised entirely in America. She was as American as he was.
Michael took refuge in the library; he raided the card catalog for anything relating to Ceylon but only unearthed the driest of historical texts. He widened his search to include India, reasoning that it was surely close enough. First he found the National Geographics, with their photos of sari-clad women bathing under waterfalls; then he found the library’s many editions of the Kama Sutra, which more than satisfied his desires. Michael took them down to the subbasement, to the levels where once, when there had only been a football field instead of a library, physicists had split the atom. There, amid deserted, dimly lit stacks, his excitement would sometimes overwhelm him; it was only by retreating to a sudden focus on equations that he avoided embarrassing accidents.
Michael studied his favorite edition in the weeks when they were progressing from kisses to caresses, from above Kili’s blouse to underneath her bra. His limited experiences with Kate were overshadowed by his eager studies. By the time he had the virginal Kili entirely undressed, the contrast of his white hands sharp and exciting against her dark brown skin, he had read through the book at least three times.
Kili was unfamiliar with the poses, but proved willing, even eager, to be taught, though she raised an eyebrow at him when he referred to it as the lore of her country. Generally, she didn’t openly contradict him; she was willing to let him take the lead in making most decisions, in friendly arguments with their friends. It was only when he actually made a mistake, claimed something incorrect, that Kili would speak up and correct him—but she was surprisingly firm on those occasions. Michael found those rare challenges to his authority disconcerting—and that, in turn, left him feeling guilty.
KATE HAD BEEN A SCREAMER. SHE THREW PLATES AT HIM, AND THEN threw her promise ring, screeched sharp accusations before turning and storming from the room, slamming the door behind her. Michael was bewildered at the time, and only later theorized that Kate had been concealing her own infidelities in that last brutal scene. Even before that, the relationship was punctuated by frequent fights, passionate arguments; only her equivalent passion when pleased kept them together at all.
When Michael makes love to his wife, she is almost silent. He encourages Kili to make more noise—it is not as if the rather deaf downstairs neighbor will report them to her parents. But she remains obstinately quiet, and it is only by paying the closest attention that he can chart her response to his touch. At first Michael doesn’t mind. Her body does respond; Kili moves eagerly against him, whether below or in front or above. It was enough, for a long time. Lately, though, he has wanted more from his wife. Michael finds himself digging his fingers into her skin, biting at the flesh of her breasts, her stomach. Love bites, he could call them, but is it love that shoves her thighs apart, roughly, that grasps her wrists and pulls them high above her head? Her eyes are dark in the candlelight, and they gaze at him without reproach—and when he bites a nipple hard, Kili arches, twisting underneath him, whimpering slightly. Michael cannot tell whether she enjoys this, or whether she wants to get away. All he knows is that she wil
l not protest—that for as long as he wants to maul her frail body, she will allow it, will arch to meet his every move; there will be no surrender in her face, her body, until finally he must concede defeat, shuddering to a finish, exhausted.
Michael hates knowing that when they finish, Kili will rise, will shower, will wash away all trace of him. His wife’s body will be smooth, dark, and, despite his efforts, entirely unmarked. Perhaps this is the punishment for his guilty pleasure in her subservience, that despite all his efforts, all his fantasies, she remains inaccessible, inviolate. Or perhaps she wants this violence, wants more than he can give her. Michael wonders if Kili wants him to hurt her, if that is what excites her in the end. Michael is afraid to ask why she really married him. He will take what Kili allows him. He will try to convince himself that it is enough.
Pieces of the Heart
Chicago, 1966
I SAT IN HARPER LIBRARY, IN A SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT FROM ONE OF THE TALL, SLENDER WINDOWS IN THE HIGH HALL, WRITING IN MY notebook. A few hours before my final physiology exam, but the dutiful delineations of the chambers of the heart had slid into lines that swooped and scanned along the page.
“Poetry. You’re writing poetry again?” Sue’s eyes were fixed on my page, reading the writing upside down. Her eyes were clear blue, like Lake Michigan on a sunny June day. We could have studied at the lake that day instead of in the library; she’d wanted to. But then I would have gotten nothing done. “This is a sign, Leilani—God’s sneaking into your mind and telling us that we need to take a break.”
“God doesn’t work that way, Sue.” She’d been my roommate for two years now, and while she appeared a good Catholic on the surface—she even went to Mass with me on Sundays, which made my parents happy—Sue had an oddly irreverent streak in her. It made me uncomfortable, but it was exciting too. That’s what it was always like, being around Sue.
“How do you know how God works? Are you omniscient and omnipotent?” She grinned across the table at me.
I didn’t have an answer to that and just shook my head, smiling.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to show you. Meaning to for weeks and weeks, actually. C’mon.” She stood up, extending a hand toward me. I stood too, but my hand remained on the page, the pen cupped lightly in my fingers. The words were dancing across the paper.
WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, MAYBE THREE YEARS OLD, APPA TAUGHT me to read. He got me interested by reading to me; he’d read almost anything, but mostly I liked fairy tales. Adventure stories, where the prince would have three impossible tasks that he’d somehow manage to fulfill, if he were only strong enough, smart enough, fast enough. And then he’d win the crown, the gold, the princess’s undying love. Appa loved stories—mostly he read them to me, but every once in a while, he’d make them up. Those were the best ones—he’d steal bits out of the Ramayana, and while he told the story I would lie in his arms and close my eyes and become noble Prince Rama, who went into the dark forest with his beloved wife, Sita, and his loyal brother, Lakshman.
I have five sisters, but I was Appa’s favorite—I knew it, though I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. He told me so, though he didn’t tell me why. Maybe it was because I liked to read. He said that if he didn’t have six naughty little girls to feed and clothe and shelter, he might have just stayed at home and read books all day. He got to read at work sometimes too, but that was math, what he taught at the college, what he researched. There wasn’t so much time, with six daughters, for curling up in a comfortable chair and reading stories. Maybe he loved me best because I loved the stories too.
Or maybe it was because I loved the adventure stories best. He and Amma had had an adventure themselves—they’d left Ceylon (the land of the demon Ravana in the stories) to travel all the way to England as math and physics students. They had met at Oxford, met and fallen in love, and had then gone on to America, to become teachers here, to leave everyone else behind. They had been young, and brave, and had been rewarded for their bravery. Appa loved America, and almost everything American. This was a good country, Appa said. Full of decent, hardworking people. And even if white Americans were a little distrustful of foreigners, that was to be expected. The other professors respected Appa, and that was what mattered.
I wanted to have adventures too, to travel to foreign countries, to take on impossible tasks. When I told him this, he never laughed at me. He just held me close, so close that I could feel his heart beating against my shoulder, and then started another story.
“I HAVE TO PASS THIS CLASS. MY PARENTS…” MY EYES SLID TO THE heart diagram, and then, treacherously, to the half-finished sonnet. I had my first two stanzas, but it was time for the turn, which was always tricky.
Sue’s eyebrows drew together; her forehead crinkled. “You’ll pass, you know you will—and if you only get a C, your parents will handle it. You’ve got plenty of time to pull your grades up; you can still get into med school if you really want to. It’s not like you ever do anything but study anyway…no drinking, no drugs…no sex.”
“Sue!” She talked this way in our room all the time, but in the middle of a library…My father could walk by at any minute. He probably wouldn’t, but he could. It had been wonderful growing up with a professor for a father and a teacher for a mother when I was younger—most of my friends’ mothers didn’t even work. I was so proud of them both. It hadn’t been so bad, going to the grammar school my mother taught at. But now that I was going to the same college my father taught at, it was not fun. It was not fun at all.
“Okay, okay.” She shrugged. “You could stand to have a good time, you know. Once in a while.”
Sue used to be a frat girl. She didn’t join a sorority—hardly anyone did at the U of C—but she did chase frat boys. She usually caught them too. This year had been different; these days, Sue’s idea of a good time was to go to a sit-in, a protest against the war. Maybe because those often turned into something else; after one of those, she generally didn’t come back to our room at night. She’d invited me to come along, but I could always hear my mother’s voice in my head.
Plenty of time for that sort of thing after you’re done with your education. Not that my mother really meant that sort of thing, not without the priest’s blessing.
“I’m sorry…” I was sorry, I really was.
Sue sighed. “I know, I know. You’re a nice Tamil girl.” When she said that, she sounded just like my mother. She’d really been a very patient roommate. Sue had quickly stopped trying to persuade me to have a drink with her; she never said a word as I knelt and said my rosary each night; she had taught me how to cook pot roast, and I had introduced her to chicken curry. The first time she tried it, Sue valiantly stuck it out through the whole meal without a single sip from her glass of water, though her face had gotten pinker and pinker until I had to squeeze my stomach muscles tight to keep from laughing.
She reached out her hand to me again. “Just this one time—trust me. You’ll love this! Please?” Her face was fey and sparkling, with her mass of blonde hair tightly curled around her curving cheeks and wicked grin.
I sighed and put my hand in hers, letting her draw me out of the room, down the hall, and into a dark stairwell.
WHEN I WAS TEN, I KISSED A BOY.
It was dark in the stairwell. All the other kids were out on the playground; we ate quickly, then ran outside to play four-square and jump rope. I usually ended up running with the boys, playing soccer in the far end of the blacktop. I ran fast, faster than all the girls and most of the boys. That was why they let me play. I was even faster than some of the sixth-graders who would sometimes come and play with us. It wasn’t real soccer—we didn’t have goals. But it was fast and fun, trying to get the ball and keep it, dribbling it hard with your feet down the blacktop, sometimes falling and scraping your knees badly, so the nurse had to paint them with iodine. Amma always got mad when that happened, but I didn’t care.
That day I wasn’t on the blacktop. I was in the stai
rwell, with Jesús Gonzalez. He had touched my arm at lunch, leaning over the table. He was tall—more than six feet, even though he was only twelve. He wasn’t too bright, either; he’d been held back twice, which was why he was in my grade. But he was nice, so when he asked me if he could talk to me after lunch, I said okay. My friends hung around at the table, but I sipped my milk so slowly that eventually they got bored and went out to play. He came back to the table then, and I threw out my trash and followed him up the stairs.
We were kissing in the stairwell, a long, dark length of concrete steps and walls. I was standing on the step above him, almost as tall as he was with the help of the step, and my lips were pressed against his, my hands were wrapped tight into the fabric of his leather jacket. I don’t remember what it felt like, kissing Jesús. We kissed for a long time, five minutes, or maybe ten. Just pressing our lips together. Then I remembered something I’d read about, and opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out. Jesús lost his balance and started falling backward down the stairs. I pulled harder at his jacket and tried to lean back, but I started falling too—I heard the awful sound of the jacket tearing. Then he grabbed the rail and straightened up, banging into me, knocking me backward again so I ended up letting go of his jacket and sitting down on the concrete step, banging my elbows hard behind me.
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