Six Metres of Pavement

by Farzana Doctor

  “Oh, hello. You’re up early,” he said.

  “Yeah, I thought I’d better get up. I’ve got to call my roommate, see if she’s home and get the extra set of keys. Then I have to change before work.” She gestured at the short, red dress that clung to her plump body. She crossed her arms over her chest, modestly covering the deep cleavage bursting from her low neckline. Ismail remembered meditating on that cleavage while dancing with her the previous night. He forced himself to gaze down at the swirly patterns of sediment at the bottom of his teacup.

  “Want some tea? Coffee? Uh, I think I have some instant in the cupboard. Are you hungry?” he asked, feeling ill at ease with this young woman in his kitchen, the situation uncomfortably reminiscent of a Mary Pinter morning with its awkward conversation after a night of sloppy sex. Sometimes those women would leave at first light, embarrassed for their drunken promiscuity, worried about details they’d blacked out. Others happily stayed for a hot breakfast, making friendly chatter over an omelette if their stomachs weren’t too queasy.

  He guessed that Sonia, too, was self-conscious about being alone with him in the glow of his yellow kitchen.

  “No, that’s okay. I work at a coffee shop. I can get something there. But thanks. And thanks for letting us stay over, too. And … driving Ashton and DJ Billyboi home,” she added, smiling sweetly and clasping her hands together in front of her chest. “I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

  “That’s all right.” Ismail blushed and poured himself more tea.

  “No, really, you were a big help. You were really nice to do all of that for Fatima, for all of us.”

  Ismail blurted, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re the spitting image of Sonia Gandhi? Did your parents name you after her?”

  “Sonia Gandhi? Who’s she?” she asked, with slowly rising eyebrows. Ismail did his best to give her a summary of the Italian-born Indian politician’s biography without sounding like a boring historian. Of course she wouldn’t know who Sonia Gandhi was, you idiot!

  “Oh. Interesting,” she said unconvincingly, “I’m named after my Salvadoran grandmother.” He walked Sonia to the front door, and, feeling fatigued by the interaction, sat down at the kitchen table to finish his pot of tea.

  Half an hour later, Ismail heard stirring upstairs, and he started breakfast preparations. He took out a carton of eggs, an onion, bread, and some ham. Then he put the ham away, just in case Fatima followed Islamic prohibitions against eating pork. He replaced it with cheddar cheese and rooted around in the crisper, finding a slightly puckered red pepper. He chopped everything up, whisked the eggs, and poured the mixture into the hot pan. As he was flipping the omelette, Fatima appeared in the kitchen, looking tired in her crumpled birthday party clothes. She sat down at the table and watched him cook.

  “Hungry? Want some breakfast?” he asked.

  “Sure, that would be great. I’m starved,” she said. And then, with a nervous laugh, she added, “I eat all the time. My friends make fun of how much I can eat.”

  “And yet you remain so slim. That’s how it was for Rehana, my ex-wife, when she was younger. Loved to eat, but always thin as a stick,” he said, holding up his index finger to demonstrate. He reflected on how easy it was to speak so casually about Rehana.

  “I suppose it’s a lucky metabolism to have … so, when’d you get divorced?”

  “A long time ago … in a year or two it will be about two decades already.”

  “Huh … and what’s your daughter’s name? I don’t think you ever told me in class.”

  “Zubeida. Do you like eggs?”

  “Yeah, that smells good … Zubeida. I have an aunt named Zubeida,” she said, getting up and looking in the pan. There was a long silence, and Ismail braced himself. She retreated to the table again, but he sensed her silence would be brief.

  “You never got married again?” He shook his head, turned away from her. What should he tell her? Whenever faced with benign inquiry about his personal life, he could never fabricate something appropriately clichéd and chipper, like “I guess I’m meant to be bachelor” or “I’m still waiting for the right woman to come along.” No, these things never came to mind. Instead, the truth played itself like a movie in his head, images of Zubi flickering across his mental screen, or sometimes, it would pause in a freeze frame of Rehana’s disappointed expression. He pushed the images away and concentrated on the eggs.

  “Hmm,” she replied to his silence.

  Ismail flipped the omelette again, let it sizzle a few moments, and then cut it in half. He served portions onto each of their plates. The toaster popped and Fatima jumped up to bring the slices to the table.

  “What about the widow across the street you told me about? Have you talked to her yet?”

  “Briefly, but I’m not really very good at that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, come on. I don’t believe that. Look what a good time you had with my friends last night. Dude … I mean, Ismail, you’re totally outgoing.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Why?” She buttered her toast with even strokes, colouring within the lines.

  “I don’t know, Fatima.” He stood up, took some juice out of the fridge, and shook it too vigorously. Changing the subject he said, “Sonia left about an hour ago.”

  “Yeah, she woke me to say she was going to work. She said she thought you were cool to let us stay over.” While Ismail lay in bed the night before, he’d strained to listen to the whispering from across the wall, catching slim fragments of words and laughter. He yearned for Daphne and their pillow talk right then, to be able to debrief the party with her, to share how free he was on the dance floor with all those youngsters, and how strange, yet wonderful it was to be inside the kids’ inner circle.

  “They’re nice, your friends. They really seem to care about you,” Ismail said.

  “Yeah, I don’t know what I’d do without Ashton and Sonia.”

  “It’s too bad you can’t stay with either of them. It would be much easier for you.”

  “Uh-huh. But even if things weren’t so stressy with Sonia’s roommate or Ashton’s girlfriend, I couldn’t live with either of them long-term, anyway. I love Sonia, but she’s kind of a slob. She’s always losing her stuff. I don’t know how many times she’s lost her keys. She needs a twelve-step group for disorganized people,” she laughed, and Ismail laughed along, too, but not as heartily — those sorts of jokes were never the same for him after Alcoholics Anonymous.

  “And Ashton’s girlfriend is super jealous of me,” she continued. “And, anyway, I wouldn’t want to live with an ex.”

  “So Ashton, um, is he, uh, he’s a guy, right? Er … sorry, that’s none of my business, I just wondered?”

  “He’s transgendered. Born female, but doesn’t really fit into the gender binary. He’s transitioning. So, he prefers a male pronoun,” she said earnestly, in a tone that reminded him of the educational diversity videos the City forced his department to watch each year.

  “I see,” Ismail said, although he didn’t. They ate their breakfasts in silence. Fatima stood up and cleared the dishes. Ismail watched as she filled one side of the sink with hot water, and squirted in some detergent. She popped a couple of bubbles with her finger and then turned off the water. She looked comfortable in his kitchen.

  “Leave the dishes. Why don’t you sit? I think we need to discuss the issue of me talking to your parents. I want to get a little more information before I decide.” She swivelled around, alarmed.

  “Oh, but I thought you’d already decided last night. You said you’d do it,” she said, the pitch of her voice rising like a little girl’s.

  “Fatima, if I’m going to get involved I need to know more about them, about your situation, about you,” he said firmly. She nodded, dried her hands, and slumped down in a k
itchen chair.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Just tell me about this problem with your parents. What they said, how you responded. I want to know how they see things.”

  Fatima rested her face in her hands to collect her thoughts and then began to tell him a longer history than he thought he needed to know. During the half hour, she matter-of-factly reviewed all of her relationships, starting at age thirteen. Shamila was her first girlfriend who her parents assumed was her best friend, and after her there was one girlfriend a year until she was sixteen. With the help of a fake ID, she went to gay bars and even worked in one as a go-go dancer the summer of her seventeenth birthday, while her parents thought she was working in a restaurant or spending time with her “study partner,” Monique. She dated two boys that summer. Ismail had an urge to get a pen and paper to keep the details clear in his mind.

  By her last year of high school, she’d been in love four times, joined gay youth groups, marched in parades. She used words Ismail had never heard of and that she had to define for him, like “polyamorous” and “kiss-in.” He did write those words down, for by then, he was feeling rather out of his depth.

  He struggled to push aside his judgments, his Bombay Catholic school attitudes, and Islamic teachings. Not that he was a strong believer in any of that early religious dogma, but still, her ideas unnerved him. He assessed that Fatima, a girl less than half his age, had vastly more romantic experience than he ever would in his entire life. Not only that, she was so casual about it all. He understood why her parents were scandalized.

  Once she had sufficiently exposed all the baudy details of her love life, she described her relationship with her parents. Ismail listened, amazed, at the multitude of secrets she’d been keeping from them. He recognized that, like many daughters, she fibbed, omitted, and told outright lies to gain the freedoms she enjoyed. And her parents naively accepted them. He questioned what he would have done, in their position. Didn’t all parents want to believe the tales their children spun, the ones that fit best with their misguided notions of who they wanted their offspring to be?

  And then she recounted her parents’ discovery of her Varsity article. They were shocked to read that she was not as innocent as she seemed, and wanted to believe that she had been coerced, fooled, taken advantage of by “bad people.”

  “I could have let them think that, you know, but I didn’t. I was sick of lying to them all the time.”

  “What did you tell them?” Ismail asked. She scrunched up her face and formed an uneasy smile.

  “Everything.”

  “Everything? The go-go dancing? The political involvements? Your girlfriends?” Ismail drew his facial muscles into a poker face. She nodded.

  “I told them everything. I just wanted to be finally free from all of their old-fashioned beliefs and attitudes. I guess I got my wish, in a way.”

  “Oh my! Fatima, you really must have really thrown them.”

  “They said they’d take me back in if I would stop being queer. I’d have to have a ten o’clock curfew, drop my friends, and meet ‘good boys,’” she listed, numbering off their conditions on her fingers.

  Ismail knew it was foolish for her parents to try to control her in this way. Though, he did understand their motivation to restart her in the life they’d once planned for her: medical school; a marriage to a nice boy; and a couple of children when she was ready. A good life. They could set aside their public shame, paint it as a brief, youthful deviation caused by “bad influences.” Again, he put himself in their shoes and couldn’t blame them.

  “I know it isn’t ideal, Fatima, but what option do you have? Perhaps you should do what they ask, at least in the short term,” Ismail reasoned.

  “What are you saying? Live like a prisoner? Date people I don’t want to date?”

  “Surely that’s better than being without a home? And maybe after some time they will loosen their restrictions, and you will be able to do what you want again.”

  “I can’t do it,” she pouted. “Why can’t they just accept me for who I am?” she asked, her defiant tone wavering as she struggled to hold back tears.

  “Maybe they will, one day. But right now, you’ve just given them quite a shock. Give them time,” Ismail counselled.

  “I sometimes wish I could just go back in time. Why couldn’t I have used a pseudonym? I was so stupid. It was such a dumb mistake,” she said, covering her eyes with her hands. Just around the edges of her fingers, a couple of tears escaped, and trickled down her cheeks.

  “Maybe, but it’s impossible to go back in time. What’s done is done. Regrets will only eat at you,” he said, his own eyes moistening, his mind drifting.

  Why hadn’t I looked over my shoulder when I parked?… Why didn’t just one worrisome, sentimental, fatherly thought about my baby enter my thick skull at some point during that day?

  “I guess you’re right. No point wishing for something that’s impossible,” Fatima said quietly, drying her face. She pulled her feet up on her chair, and pressed her knees against her chest, resembling a turtle retreated into its shell. Ismail studied her posture, understanding that her story was one of an inadvertent mistake, a public one with big consequences. He understood that kind of mistake.

  “Fatima, what’s your last name?”

  “Geez, I never told you? You know a lot about me. I guess you need to know my surname.”

  “No it’s not that, it only just dawned on me that your parents and I might know one another.”

  “Really?” Her dark eyes brightened. “That would be even better, right? It’s Khan.” Ismail knew many Khans.

  “And your parents’ first names?” She told him, but he didn’t think he knew them. Might it be possible that they wouldn’t recognize his name? Beyond some small, infrequent gatherings at his brother’s house, he hadn’t mixed with other Muslims for a long time. And Fatima’s family and his were from different communities, which had each swelled over the years with new members from India, Pakistan, and elsewhere. With this growth, each community had become more insular and less likely to socialize outside of itself. Ismail told himself that Zubi had died a long time ago, and hardly anyone would remember anymore.

  Fatima called her parents from a phone in the living room while Ismail washed the dishes. After a few minutes she was back, grabbed a dish towel, and stood beside him at the sink. Her good manners impressed him. After dinner, Nabil’s boys usually left their plates on the table, took off to their rooms, or out with friends, not giving a second glance to the sink full of dirty plates and pans that awaited their mother.

  “So?”

  “My dad was out, thankfully. I spoke to my mother and she agreed to tomorrow. She tends to be more reasonable than my father … I guess she misses me.”

  “Of course she does. How could she not miss her only daughter? It must be terrible for her,” he said. She shrugged.

  “Do you miss your daughter?”

  “Yes,” he answered, avoiding her eyes. “Do you miss your parents?” he held his breath, hoping he’d effectively diverted her attention back to herself.

  “Yes and no. Sometimes.” She wiped a plate in slow circles, from the outside in. “I would miss them more if we got along better. Like we used to when I lied to them all the time.” She became quiet then, only breaking the silence to ask where to put the frying pan and glasses.

  She gathered her things and left a half hour later, with plans to spend the day with Ashton. She told Ismail that she hoped to crash at Sonia’s despite her roommate’s discontent. He walked her to the door and they stood on the porch, confirming the details for the trip to Mississauga the next afternoon. The widow stepped out her door at the same time, smiled their way, and dropped a plastic bag into her garbage bin.

  “Ismail, is that her?” Fatima asked, too loudly
. “Is that the widow you told me about?”

  “Shhh. She’ll hear you.”

  “It is her! Wow, look at her! How old is she? I never thought she’d be all in black,” she whispered.

  “Well, she is a widow.”

  “It’s just that her clothes seem to weigh her down. I think traditions like that are shackles for women. I read about that in one of my Women’s Studies classes last year. It forces women into an oppressed role of being married to God or something like that. It makes them asexual,” Fatima frowned, trying to remember the words from her textbook.

  “Maybe it’s comforting to conform to traditions. I mean, it allows everyone to know that she is grieving her husband, right?” Ismail ventured, feeling unsure of his words. Was it true that Celia was now married to God? He watched as she re-entered her house, leaving the door ajar.

  “Well, go talk to her. Looks like she’s coming back out. Here’s your chance. Ask her out,” she advised, nudging him with a sharp elbow. Pest, he thought. It had already been a long morning, followed by a short night, and Ismail was glad Fatima would soon be leaving. He looked forward to a quiet house and an unread newspaper.

  “Fatima, it’s not like I want to date the woman. I’m just, sort of, interested in her, you know, curious about who she is, that’s all. And she is in mourning, anyhow.”

  “Yeah, right. So why are you so nervous, then?” She picked up her backpack, walked a few steps and then turned to wave. She smirked at him in a way Ismail judged unattractive on young people. “See you tomorrow. And thanks for helping me with my family.” Ismail didn’t answer her, but lifted his arm in a wave. A knot of dread troubled his stomach.

  She ambled along like a girl without a care, pausing to pull an MP3 player out of her pocket. Ismail watched her for a few moments and then turned back to look at the widow, who had come outside with another bag. She waved from across the street and called out, “Not too cold today, eh?” She unwound a bungee cord from around her compost bin’s latch, a defence against the raccoons. She deposited the bag and reattached the cord.