Silence and the Word

by MaryAnne Mohanraj

  WS: There are an awful lot of factors beyond a person’s control as to what they find attractive in others… .Does your attraction to my feature of paleness bother me, no… Not as long as we have, and have had something more, even if it grew out of such a desire. You don’t need to be concerned about my perceptions of you, or your fetish—I am and have been only concerned so far for you as your awareness of the workings of your mind/libido may end up disturbing you.

  I did desire my lovers’ white skin; I even fetishized their white bodies. But rather than seeing them only as caricatures of themselves, I claim that I did see them, as themselves, entire. That any racialized notions were an overlay, an occluding mask, perhaps, but one which never disguised the people I knew in all their desirable particularity, in the height of their bodies, the smell of their sweat, the fleshy curves of stomach and hip and thigh, all of these at least as vital, immediate, and imperative as the color of their skin, if less fraught with social consequence. All of these bodily markers, in the end, were far less significant than the words they said, the way they touched me, or asked to be touched, the truth of whom they were.

  The Light at Dawn

  Steve came to my dorm room in January, after we’d spent Christmas break together and pleasurably divested ourselves of our virginities. We’d been dating since September, had met standing in line at Orientation, exchanging the usual hellos and discovering that we’d be living on the same floor, a few doors down. We kissed over a calculus textbook in October, and spent much of November falling in love, fooling around, and getting yelled at by our respective roommates. Christmas, with the roommates gone, was pretty much perfect, as far as I was concerned, or as perfect as could be reasonably expected. Then he came to me in January and said, I’d like to see other people. I said okay.

  Maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to say. But I figured I might want to look around too; this way, I’d have the option. Besides, he was a tall, skinny geek, at a school full of the geekiest geeks. It’d been sheer luck that he and I had managed to hook up – what were the odds that he’d find somebody else? Someone willing to put up with him having a girlfriend? I didn’t have anything to worry about – and hey, I got to be the cool girlfriend, the mellow, relaxed, totally non-clingy chick. Which was a nice thing to be. For about a week.

  A week later, Steve was saying Shefali, listen – you know I love you, and I said Sure, all calm and casual though my stomach was twisting itself into a granny knot, and he said I don’t think this is working. Maybe we should take a break. There wasn’t much I could say to that. But he still loved me, so it was okay. He just needed a break, a breather, and I was going to be calm and sensible and rational about it – he was a physics major, a rational kind of guy, and he needed a calm, rational girl, not some hysterical English major with her head full of Shakespeare and sonnets. Love is not love which alters where it alteration finds… Besides, we were still having sex.

  Then it’s February, and Valentine’s Day coming up, and maybe it’s the pressure. ’Cause the bastard feels the need to roll his naked body away from me, which is not easy to do on the incredibly narrow crappy dorm beds, leaving me cold and shivering, just so he can say, I’m sorry, Shefali. I’ll always care about you as a friend. You know that. I just don’t love you anymore. And I can’t breathe.

  Friendship is more important than love. I tell him that, tell him, it’s okay. It is so not okay. We keep having sex, off and on, because even though he’s looking around, he isn’t actually finding anyone else looking at him – as I suspected, way back in January when all this started. So we’re friends who have sex and sometimes that doesn’t hurt at all.

  Later Steve will tell me that he doesn’t want to talk to me, doesn’t want to see me again, but that isn’t for months yet, and by that point, I can’t blame him.

  But now it’s mid-March and spring break in other parts of the world. My best friend comes to stay with me for a week. Sarah likes horses and science fiction and we became best friends in fifth grade and it turned into a habit – one of the ones where you’re not entirely sure it’s good for you, but it’s too comfortable to break. So she comes to visit, and I introduce her to Steve and they hit it off, and get this right, this is important – I set them up.

  I don’t just set them up. I throw them together; I sing their praises to each other; I leave them alone at strategic moments, until a day comes when I walk back into my dorm room and they’re kissing and pulling apart guiltily and I say, Hey, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. We pretend nothing happened. Later, Sarah asks, would you mind? And Steve asks, is it okay with you? He’s not as much of a bastard as he sometimes seems. I say, I’m happy for you guys. Really. Go for it. My skin is aching for his hands.

  I wrap virtue around me like a blanket, but it’s an old smelly holey blanket that just pulls the chill deeper into the bones. It’s not at all the comfort one would expect it to be. Not that you would necessarily expect it to be much comfort, not unless you too were a girl who grew up wanting to be one of King Arthur’s noble knights, or even better, King Arthur himself, watching Guinevere and Lancelot and pining away. (Or maybe it’s an ex-Catholic thing; salvation through mortification.)

  I want them both to be happy. I want to be calm, rational, unmoved. And maybe I secretly want to be self-sacrificing and noble and miserable and most importantly, make sure they know it, so that any happiness they find is poisoned by horrible guilt. That might explain what I do next.

  On Sarah’s last day she asks, Do you mind if I spend the night in Steve’s room, and I say, Of course not. They go off to dinner together; I eat in the dining hall and go to the library and try to study. It’s maybe eleven when I can’t study anymore. I go home, but I’ve forgotten my keys. I knock on the door a couple times but my roommates aren’t answering. Either not there or fast asleep. I contemplate sleeping on the couch in the lounge but instead I walk down to Steve’s room. I knock. No one answers. He never locks his door. I go in.

  I lie down on his empty bed and fall asleep.

  A couple of hours later, they come in and wake me. I explain the situation. I move to his couch, which is no more than three feet away from his bed. It’s a dorm room. I lie down on the couch and they lie down on the bed. They do not ask me to leave. Apparently, they can be noble too. We’ve all read King Arthur.

  I fall asleep immediately. I wake up again, maybe fifteen minutes later. They’re curled together under his blankets, not moving. I watch them for an hour. I get up and get a book from the hallway and sit on the tile floor in the bathroom with the door closed and light on, trying to read. I read the same page over and over until after about twenty minutes I give up. I lean my head against the toilet, try to decide if I need to throw up. Then I get up and put the book back. I go back to the couch and watch them sleep.

  They sleep with her curled against his back, both facing me. Once, they shift, so that I can see the planes of his face tilted above hers. I want to kiss the bones, to curl my body into the bed. A little before dawn I move from the couch to the hard desk chair. I stare out the window and think about the first and only time I stayed up all night and watched the dawn. It was with Steve.

  My face is dry by the time Sarah opens her eyes. I get up then and walk out the door and watch the rest of the dawn from the lounge. Then I bang on my own door and wake my own roommates and go to sleep.

  That’s the story. That’s all.

  And the sea is shaking

  Is this how the ocean feels

  at night, when the waves

  move through her, when they pound

  against the shore? The moon

  so far away; its light is

  silver-bright but cold, and the wind

  sings shivering down from the ice,

  from the place where the water

  lies trapped, held still in the cold

  (underneath it is shaking,

  underneath it is aching). So

  lonely, such broad and empty

>   places where only tiny fish

  shiver, slipping under the ocean’s

  skin, where a gull sweeping down

  will only remind her how empty

  is the still blackness of night,

  of sky. The sailors are all away,

  at home, asleep in the arms of patient,

  frightened wives, rocked safe and

  held tight against the day, against

  the moment when they slide out

  of those arms, that bed, that warm

  house, slip down to the water’s edge

  where the boats are waiting,

  waiting for the clear grey edge of

  dawn, when they will go dancing

  along the sea-skin, singing faithless

  love songs for her, during the brief day.

  And Baby Makes Four

  Shefali struggled up from sleep, her body aching. The baby moved within her, restless. The gentle movement of the car, which had soothed her earlier, now provoked a quick wave of nausea. At four months, she had expected to be past the queasiness, and it was certainly better now than it had been; for the first three months she had done little else but try (and fail) to keep food down. She hadn’t got any of her work done, and it was just a good thing that the small start-up she worked for had a generous policy on maternity leave. Shefali would have been fine financially even if they’d laid her off; between Gabriel’s doctor’s salary and Roshan’s internist’s pay, they didn’t really need her programming money. But every little bit helped with a baby on the way, especially since they weren’t likely to be getting any help from her parents or Roshan’s. Though perhaps this trip would change that.

  Her back was sore, despite the pillows the guys had tenderly tucked around her when they settled her in the back of the car. Her back was sore and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton; the baby was kicking and the last thing she wanted to hear right now was what she was pretty sure she was hearing from the front seat. Her eyes were still closed, but she knew that sound, that slick slide of hand on cock, the quick rise and fall of Gabe’s breaths. She had heard that sound so many times in the last few months—she had watched, fascinated, as Roshan’s dark hand slid up and down the pale shaft. Sometimes he would add his mouth, the tongue slipping out to caress the bulbous head, the long curve of cock. She had taken mental notes. Everyone said that gay men gave the best blow jobs, and as a straight woman who was now fucking a bi guy, she figured she needed to study if she wanted to keep up. Though Gabriel always refused to comment when she asked him if Roshan was better. “Comparisons are odious.”

  She could smell the excitement rising from them both, the sweat in the small, closed car. Why didn’t they open the damn window? So what if it was icy cold outside? At this rate, they’d fog up the windows and then crash the car into a tree and they’d never make it to her parents, which would be a relief in many ways—her stomach clenched—but it would not be fair to the baby.

  “Hey, you fuckers. There’s a goddamned baby in the car, you know.”

  Shefali opened her eyes to see Gabe half-twisted in his seat, watching her, smiling. Roshan’s left hand was on the wheel, his eyes on the road—but his right arm was stretched across the gap between the seats, his right hand invisible, buried in Gabe’s crotch.

  “Well, technically,” Roshan said, “it’s not a baby yet.” His eyes flicked back and forth from glancing at Shefali in the rear view mirror, to watching the empty highway opening before them. “The clinical term is fetus.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Shefali said. “I didn’t know that. Thanks for that very helpful bit of information. Now will you two stop fucking already? All you ever think about is sex!”Roshan’s arm continued its slow motion, up and down. Gabriel grinned, his face flushed. “Well, technically, this isn’t fucking, you know. I can show you fucking later, if you want, Shef. I’d be happy to teach you… .”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up!” Shefali was hit by an almost overwhelming urge to cry; she squeezed her eyes tight, clenched her fists together.

  “Hey—hey.” Before she could catch her breath, Gabriel was climbing over the gearshift into the back seat, squeezing into the small space to the right of her, pressing one gentle hand on her knee. Shefali opened her eyes to find him watching her, concern sharp on his face. His pants were still undone, and a thick erection jutted out. It should have been funny.

  “What’s wrong, Shefali?” That was Roshan. “Should I pull over?”

  “No, no—we’re late already. My mom’s going to kill me. She hates it when dinner gets cold. She’ll have the samosas and vadai in the oven by now; she’s probably checking the clock. The drinks are made; my sister’s setting the table.” Shefali was babbling; she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “The rice will be ready in half an hour. The curries have been simmering for hours; they’ll be okay, but if the rice sits too long, it won’t taste as good, you know.” And now she was blubbering, tears welling up in her eyes, pooling there as she refused to give in and cry. Shefali hated crying. She almost never cried. She Roshan was pulling over, taking an exit she didn’t know, pulling into a small off-road station, an empty parking lot. They parked under the shade of a huge tree, its bare branches coated with last night’s heavy snow.

  “She’s not going to kill you,” Gabriel said.

  “She will… she will.” Shefali was shaking now, her body shuddering. She couldn’t seem to stop it, even though this kind of emotional outburst couldn’t be good for the baby. Sometimes she hated having to think about what would be good for the baby. She wrapped her arms around herself, rocking against the smooth fabric of the back seat. Now Roshan was climbing out of the car, opening the door to her left, climbing into the back, somehow squeezing into the seat and pulling her into his arms. She was engulfed in the broad strength of him, his solid chest supporting her. Skinny Gabriel was squished into an even smaller corner of the backseat, gently rubbing her knee; the fabric of her loose skirt slid up and down against her bare leg. She could feel the weight of their concern, their love, wrapping around her like a blanket. But she was still shaking.

  “No, she won’t,” Roshan said firmly. His arms wrapped around her. “And if she looks like she wants to, we’ll climb right back in the car and drive back to Boston. They said they wanted to meet Gabriel; they wanted to talk to us all in person. Fine. But if they give you any grief at all, we’re going to leave. We can manage just fine without them.”

  “I know, I know… .” Shefali did know. They had talked about all this endlessly—when her parents first asked them to come out, while planning the trip, in the car over the last two days. This was a ridiculous time to get the shakes, when they were less than half an hour from her parents’ house. “… .I just don’t want to have to manage without them.” Roshan’s arms tightened around her body. “I want my Amma… .” And now she was sobbing, tears finally flowing down her cheeks.

  She knew she must look awful, but she couldn’t stop. There was just so much to cope with—they’d been doing pretty well working out their own problems, but there were her parents who still screamed at her over the phone, and Roshan’s, who barely spoke to him. Gabriel’s father had been quiet, but at least he wasn’t actively hostile. She wished Gabe’s mother were alive. She wanted a woman to talk to about this. She had never had close female friends, and now she wanted one desperately. The guys were terrific, and medically trained, so they gave her all the information she wanted about the baby. More than she wanted. What she really wanted was her mother—and Shefali didn’t know what her mother would do when she finally met the bisexual Jewish man her daughter had fallen in love with; when her mother was forced to confront the reality of the triad they had created. Shefali just didn’t know—and she hated it when she didn’t know what was going to happen.

  Roshan kept holding her, and when her sobs eased and she could see properly again, Gabriel was looking anxiously at her. She blinked the remaining water out of her eyes. He looked almost frightened—wel
l, that wasn’t surprising, really. Shefali couldn’t remember the last time she’d let herself cry in front of anyone. It had been years. Maybe this was the first time he’d seen it. She tried to smile, to reassure him. A quick smile answered her, though his eyes were still worried.

  “Shef—I can’t promise it’ll be okay with them. But I can promise that I’m here for you. And you know Roshan is too, right? You know how much we love you… .”

  She did know that. The last two years had been hard sometimes, but they’d worked through things, together. They’d gotten through a lot. Her body relaxed a little in Roshan’s arms, and his arms relaxed as well.

  “I’ll be all right. It was just everything piling up, you know? And then waking up, and not feeling well, and hearing you two going at it again, when I haven’t even wanted to have sex in months… .”

  That had really bothered her. She’d been so sick for a while, and then after that, the guys had still been solicitous of her; Gabriel had been careful not to press her for sex, had assumed that she wouldn’t want to be bothered. He and Roshan had discreetly kept their sex play for the study, and for when they assumed that she was fast asleep. Lately, though, she hadn’t been sleeping well, and she’d often woken to hear them—hear Gabe, at least. Roshan never made any noise at all.

  She looked at Gabriel—her eyes slid down, to where his penis still stuck out, not as hard as before, but not quite soft yet either. Her cunt shivered, a swift contraction sliding through her. Gabriel followed her eyes down, and then looked at her again.

  “Hey.” His voice was soft.

  She didn’t know what to say, but when his hand slid down from her knee, down along the fabric to its edge, resting on her bare ankle, she leaned back further in Roshan’s arms, sliding her foot towards him. And when he slid his hand back up, under her skirt, to gently begin caressing her thigh, Shefali bit her lip, and moaned softly in the back of her throat. It had been so long.