Silence and the Word

by MaryAnne Mohanraj

  “Can you stay, or do you need to be in the city?”

  “The conference sessions don’t start until nine. I’d like to stay with you.”

  “That’s good. There’s coffee in the kitchen. The grinder’s in the—”

  “—bottom cupboard.”

  “Right.”

  We are on my bed, naked in the last light of the sun. I haven’t drawn the shades; I want the light on our bodies—I want to see my dark arms against his pale stomach. Maybe the neighbors are watching. A ripple of pleasure runs through me at the thought. Let them look. He looks down at me, looks to see what new marks time has etched on my body. Not so many, since the last time. A few lines here and there; a little less weight. I still love to cook, but eating often seems more effort than it’s worth. A taste of each dish, a moment savoring each flavor—that’s enough.

  After all these years, we stay essentially the same.

  He lowers his head and tastes me. I bite my lower lip, squeeze my eyes tightly shut. My hands move to his head, my fingers curl in his hair. I arch up to meet him, and he slides a finger inside me, then two. Sounds rise in my throat, until my lips slip open and they go free. Sometimes, I try to be silent; it can be good, that fierce concentration. Not today. Not this first day. Today I let him know what he does to me, still.

  “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  Then I am riding him, my hands on his thighs behind me, his hands on my breasts, his eyes watching me. His right hand slides down between my thighs, urging me on and up and over until I am dissolving in the light, into light, or rain, or stars. I collapse against his chest, and his arms hold me close, not too tight. He seems a little less solid each time, as if his bones are dissolving, the calcium leached from them into the air and blown away. A fragile harbor, and one where I can’t stay—but I rest there, just a little longer.

  “You won’t stay?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Okay.”

  We talk late into the night; I fall asleep before he does. In the morning I wake and watch him, tracing the lines of his face with my eyes, riffling through the memories of days and months and years. I wait as long as I can bear, and then I break, give in to desire and take him in my mouth, caressing him with lips and tongue, amazed once again by the pleasure and pain he brings me, still.

  At the Gates of the City

  The snow fell gently over the gravestones, piling thick and dense on tall crosses, rectangular stones, low Gothic iron fences. Anjali sat on one of the thicker stones, a heavy coat wrapped around her sturdy frame, her long hair loose and covered in snow. She could no longer read the inscriptions, not with the snow and the nighttime darkness. But she knew them by heart. Beneath her were Mark and Deborah Williams, united at last, a dove blessing their stone. Across the path were Matthew Olsen, beloved of God, and Elizabeth Olsen, faithful wife, married in 1831; both of them died in the 1880s. Two carved books on their stone—the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Next to Elizabeth was Jessica Olsen, also presumably a faithful wife, though her inscription was more discreet than that—only the marriage date of 1849 to tell you that she had been Matthew’s second wife. And a birth date of 1833, a death date of 1852. A fallen tree on the carved granite. That story told itself.

  There weren’t as many like that as she had expected. The carefully maintained ground reached upwards through the Avenues, from 3rd Avenue to 9th, and then up even further. Anjali had walked all around it in her three years in Salt Lake, but she still wasn’t sure she had covered every inch. There was a small Jewish enclave, halfway up the hill, but most of the stones in the graveyard were clearly Christian, and even more clearly Mormon. But still, mostly monogamous marriages. She wondered if in the other cities of Utah, you would see more stories like poor Jessica’s.

  “It wasn’t what you’re thinking, you know.”

  The voice startled her. Anjali had been coming to this cemetery at night for months now, walking, sitting, trying not to think; she had never seen another soul. Anjali twisted sharply around, to see a slender girl standing ankle-deep in the snow. She wore a thin blue skirt that reached to the ground, and a long-sleeved white blouse with a high buttoned collar and matching buttons at the sleeves. She was very pretty, with blonde hair piled high on her head and wide blue eyes. She looked like an angel, standing there in the gently falling snow.

  “Wasn’t it?” Anjali asked softly, not wanting to question this moment, for fear that it would dissolve, disappear.

  “You can’t possibly understand,” the girl said, her voice throbbing with passion, with grief. Her eyes saw right through Anjali, fixed on Matthew’s stone, tall and impassive across the path.

  Anjali laughed briefly. “You’re right. I don’t understand anything.” And perhaps a hint of her own emotions colored that laugh, because the girl actually focused on her, those blue eyes narrowing.

  “Where are you from? Not from here.” That much was obvious.

  “Sri Lanka.” Clearly, that meant nothing to her. “It’s an island, near India.”

  “I’ve heard of India. My great-grandfather sailed there; he sent my grandmother this. That’s what my mother said.” The girl’s hand went up to her throat, to touch a slender gold chain that circled it.

  “It does look Indian.” And it did, the gold heavier, darker than American gold, with a rich luster even in the moonlight that suddenly made Anjali ache for home, for the noise and heat of the Colombo markets, the auto-rickshaws screaming past, the bullock-drivers trundling their carts along, patient and slow. She still hadn’t written back to her mother. She didn’t know what to say. “I’m Anjali.” She didn’t know what to say to this girl either, but at least it would be safe to talk to her.

  “Jessica. You knew that, didn’t you?” Jessica stared, curious, at Anjali.

  “Yes.” She had known, despite her rational scientific training. There are more things on heaven and earth… . She had always believed, always hoped that.

  “And you aren’t scared?” Jessica took a step closer, and another, so that her skirt was almost brushing the hem of Anjali’s coat. Even in the cold graveyard, a chill emanated from the slender girl.

  Anjali shrugged. “My grandmother talked to ghosts all the time. They don’t bother me.” Though maybe it was thanks to Neil that she could stay so calm right now. She had been feeling numb for months.

  “Good.” Jessica smiled, and took a step back. “It’s been a long time since I had a girlfriend.”

  Anjali’s PDA beeped at her, warning her that it was time to go home, shower, get ready for class. It was still dark, but the sun would be rising soon over the mountains, and her students would be waiting.

  “I have to go. Will I see you again? Do you have to stay in the cemetery, by your stone?” Anjali knew the usual rules for ghosts, but she wasn’t sure if any of them actually applied. Her grandmother had had a hundred rituals for dealing with them, ranging from leaving a dish of ghee outside the kitchen door to always putting a dash of homemade mustard on her wrists. She had never been able to explain why these things were important—and somehow, Anjali doubted that American ghosts followed the same rules.

  “I’ll find you, anywhere in the city. This is my city, you know. I helped build it.” Jessica smiled again, and with that smile she went from very pretty to just plain beautiful. There was a certain strained exhaustion on her nineteen-year-old face, but Anjali could understand why Matthew had wanted to marry this girl. At a nubile sixteen, she must have seemed like a spring morning, like water in the desert.

  “I’d like to hear that story.” Anjali stood, shaking her head to loosen the pile of accumulated snow on her long hair, stamping her feet to bring back the circulation. She had good boots on, but she had been sitting still for a long time. She turned downhill, and started walking towards home, leaving Jessica behind her, once again gazing at Matthew’s grave.

  “What are you doing?” Jessica asked.

  Anjali looked up from her pile of papers to see
the girl sitting across from her in the cafe, hands neatly folded on the table. Jessica seemed to fit there, in her white blouse with the long sleeves, not so dissimilar from what the missionary girls wore in Temple Square, right outside the cafe window. In late February, the snow had melted from the streets, and they were enjoying an early burst of spring weather—coats discarded, the girls strolled in sober pairs, pretty and friendly, ready to tell a visitor more than he would want to know about the LDS church.

  The temple itself rose high, beautifully white and gorgeously Gothic in its graceful steeples, a beauty marred only by the rather gaudy gold angel Moroni at the crown. Anjali had been enjoying the irony ever since she arrived in Salt Lake—that in this half-Mormon city, in this almost wholly Mormon state, a cafe selling caffeinated drinks sat overlooking Temple Square, the heart of their religion. When Neil had first moved to Salt Lake, and she had joined him, she’d been worried that she wouldn’t find cafes at all, that the Mormons wouldn’t allow them. But they were everywhere.

  “It’s math, mostly.” She had been working a lot this last year, doing some of the best work she’d ever done. Her advisors at the lab were pleased with her, but she couldn’t bring herself to actually care. It was just something to do, something to fill her mind and hands.

  Jessica reached out and touched the papers, her hand tracing over Greek symbols, leaving no mark on the page. “I was never much good at math. Mostly I liked to sing.”

  Anjali could imagine this girl, standing in the tabernacle across the street, her head tilted back and her throat open, sending songs up to her God. “I can’t stay on key, but I like to sing too.” It had been over a decade since she’d lived in Sri Lanka, but she could picture her mother and aunts, singing Tamil film songs as they left the movie theater, laughing.

  “You just need people to sing with.” Jessica spread her hands wide, gesturing to form a circle. “When you’re surrounded by your sister-wives and the spirit is moving through you all—you can’t help but sing.”

  “How many sister-wives did you have? There were only the two tombstones in the cemetery.”

  Jessica frowned a little, thinking. “There were only two of us, me and Elizabeth, that actually lived as wives to Matthew. But he was sealed to six women in all—Katharine and Sarah and Olga and Naomi.” She grinned, looking no more than twelve for a mischievous instant. “No one liked Naomi; she was just plain mean. But we didn’t have to see her much.”

  “Where did they live, if not with Matthew?” Anjali had always assumed that the Mormon wives all lived with their husband; she had imagined it sometimes, a dozen women in one big house, cooking and cleaning and chattering away, raising a horde of children. She had thought they must have been mostly happy, while the man was away—but how did they manage when he came home?

  “They lived with their first husbands. Well, Sarah’s husband died, but she didn’t want to move in with Matthew. She was a schoolteacher; she did all right living alone.”

  Anjali felt like she should be taking notes; if she were a sociologist, an ethnographer, she’d be in a fever of excitement at this chance to interview a primary source. But she felt a strangely proprietary emotion for Jessica. This was her ghost—she didn’t want to share her with anyone. There were plenty of journals and records from the early days of the Mormons, the Latter Day Saints—academia could get along just fine without knowing Jessica’s story. “So you didn’t have a first husband?”

  “I didn’t need one. I had Matthew. He was my life.” Jessica’s voice had been calm up until now, almost academic in tone. But with the mention of Matthew’s name, all the emotion and passion was back, trembling in her voice. “Are you married?”

  “No.” A single short word, forbidding. Unfortunately, the girl was too young to be tactful. Everyone in her department had been very good—when Neil had left Utah, and she hadn’t volunteered the story of why, they hadn’t asked. They had carefully talked to her about work instead. She hadn’t had to talk to anyone about him.

  “But you’re old! Aren’t you?” Jessica peered at Anjali, as if she were having trouble deciphering her dark skin, her thick black hair. Anjali’s mother had always said that brown skin aged better than white did, that it didn’t show the lines as fast.

  “I’m twenty-nine.” A terribly old maid in Jessica’s mind, no doubt, and in Anjali’s mother’s mind too, for that matter. It was easier, living in modern America. Somewhat.

  Jessica considered a moment, then nodded her head, decisively. “You’re pretty enough; you should get married. Isn’t there anyone?”

  “There was.” It was hard to say the words. She had successfully avoided talking about it, thinking about it, for so long. “It ended, almost a year ago.”

  “But you still love him.” It wasn’t a question, so Anjali didn’t bother to answer. Those who were heart-whole didn’t spend their nights in frozen graveyards. Instead she picked up her pen again, straightened the pile of papers. This conversation had gone on long enough.

  “I need to get back to work, Jessica.”

  The girl hesitated for a moment, as if she were about to say something else. But then she just nodded, and disappeared. One moment there, the next, gone. People could disappear so quickly.

  She was walking in to campus the next time Jessica showed up, walking east along the Avenues, from 2nd and Q up through R, S, T, to U and University, then turning right, wending through a curvy mess of old streets, big houses that stood out from the city’s appallingly regular grid and the mass of neat little three-bedroom homes. This part of town reminded her of New England, where she had gone to college; it comforted her, a little. A strange, late snowfall the previous night had given way to bright sunshine, melting and refreezing, coating the trees in crystal, the grass in glittering light.

  “I met Matthew in the springtime,” Jessica said. She kept pace beside Anjali, her footsteps leaving no imprint in the pristine snow. Appropriate, Anjali couldn’t help thinking; her own footsteps broke a battered, muddy trail.

  “My parents and I had just moved here; we were excited. Brother Brigham had such plans for the city—he even laid out the streets, wide enough for four oxen to walk abreast.”

  “They’re pretty wide.” It did make for an attractive city, Anjali had to admit. Salt Lake was orderly, clean, well-laid-out. Lots of white buildings, no trash on the streets. Did the missionary boys walk the streets in the early morning, picking up the trash? And what did they do with the homeless here? Only in the heart of downtown did you ever see them at all. It was morbidly amusing, imagining dark scenarios where they were rounded up like cattle, exterminated to maintain the image of the clean city of God. A science fiction horror story. But undoubtedly they were only taken to shelters, forced to listen to a little preaching in exchange for a warm meal and a place to sleep. Not a bad deal.

  Jessica smiled, her eyes sparkling. “I met Matthew at a church social; he couldn’t dance with me, of course, but he brought me punch, and we talked. I wanted to dance with him so badly that night…”

  It made her chest ache, listening to the girl chatter. She didn’t want to remember how she met Neil, when she was still in college and he was in grad school. He was talking to her roommate, flirting with her, trying to make her laugh, and succeeding. Anjali had just listened to him, enjoying the sound of his voice, the hair falling across his face. She had wanted to reach up and brush it back, uncovering blue eyes. She took a deep breath, banishing the memory. “Neil doesn’t like to dance.”

  “Well, that doesn’t really matter, does it?” Jessica paused, eyes speculative on Anjali’s face. “As long as he likes dancing in bed… .”

  “Jessica!” Anjali was actually shocked—the girl looked so sweet, so innocent and virginal.

  She laughed. “I was married, you know. For three years. I was going to have a baby… .” Jessica’s voice trailed off, and then she was gone again, just disappeared, before Anjali could ask anything more.

  She kept walking, one fo
ot in front of another through the shining snow, trying not to remember what it had felt like, dancing in bed with Neil. After he left her, she had gone months without, lying alone in her bed with the small stuffed bear he’d given her. Sometimes she wore his old green flannel shirt, even in the sweltering summer heat, even though the scent of him had long since disappeared. She sweated in his shirt, tried not to think, and stared out her window at the mountains, waiting for the sunrise.

  There had been one man, six months after. She had met him at that same cafe overlooking the Temple—it seemed like a good place to meet men, since the Latter-Day Saints weren’t supposed to drink coffee. One of her classmates had started dating a Mormon guy, but it had brought her nothing but trouble; he wanted her to convert and didn’t believe in sex before marriage; it just about drove the poor girl crazy. Anjali didn’t want to deal with that—but she didn’t do much better. The cafe guy had eaten potato chips in her bed, had tried to talk her into leaving off the condom, and even after she’d gotten the condom on him, he hadn’t been any good. She could barely remember his name, and when she told Neil about it, on the phone, she couldn’t even manage to sound enthusiastic enough to try to make him jealous. It was just no good. Neil knew it had been nothing, worse than nothing, and he’d sounded impossibly sympathetic.