Kwarq

by Nikki Clarke

  I look back out the window to watch the darkened windows of stores pass by, but my mind is on the man sitting behind me. I wonder where he’s getting off. Even though I would deny it with one half of my brain, the other half secret hopes we have the same stop. Maybe I haven’t been forward enough. Maybe he doesn’t speak English. He seems foreign. Maybe he doesn’t like to sit next to people on the bus. I can understand that.

  “I do not really like them, but I enjoy being in the theater.”

  “Holy shit!”

  My hand slaps over my chest where my heart jackhammers against my ribcage. Movie Bae’s sitting right next to me. Like this dude just materialized out of nowhere. I never even felt him sit down, but he’s here, and he close. So close that it feels like he’s everywhere.

  It takes a moment for me to realize that the deep, breathy words came from him. The delicacy of his pronunciation is at complete odds with the ferity of his appearance. I can only stare at the full, sexy lips that peek from the low beard covering his face. The hair is strange. It’s both silky and thick. It looks soft. I imagine kissing him wouldn’t be prickly. His lips move, and again, I hear those soft, almost melodic sounds erupt from between them.

  “Do you also like movies?”

  He’s asking me a question. I should answer, but my brain is on pause. I press the mental play button and comprehend he’s continuing the conversation we never had in the movie theater.

  “Oh, I guess I like them.”

  He frowns and his head tilts. He seems surprised.

  “In the past two months, you have been to nearly a dozen movies. You laugh. You fold yourself into your chair when you are frightened. At times you cry. Why do that if you do not like them?”

  I stare at him, too caught off guard to speak.

  “Uh, how do you know that?”

  “I have seen you.”

  “You have?”

  “I have.”

  He has. My mind rewinds back to the week before when I saw a late showing of some B-rate romantic comedy. I cried like a baby when the heroine finally got her man. The closing scene when they met each other again years later, and the hero grabbed her and kissed her, turned me into a blubbering mess. Knowing Movie Bae has been watching me cry at stupid teenage love stories and hide under my shirt during corny horror films makes me feel kind of vulnerable. My face warms beneath my dark brown skin, and I’m glad I don’t actually blush.

  “I do like them. I just meant, it’s something to do. A way to pass the time, but I do like them.” My explanation doesn’t serve to alleviate his confusion. He’s still frowning at me. It makes me feel even sillier. “I know, it probably sounds weird that I like to sit in a theater and cry or scream or laugh my head off. I guess I’m kind of a weirdie.”

  I peek up from where my eyes are fixed on my lap to see him staring intently at me. He turns slightly in his seat, his large, muscular arm pressing into mine and sending a little shiver through me. He has so much presence. Even with the gentle, musical voice.

  “I’ve shamed you, again. I apologize.” He leans forward, and for a moment, it looks like he’s going to kiss me, and I don’t know why but I tilt my head back, both wanting this strange man to press his mouth to mine, and also knowing that’s completely crazy because he’s a stranger who has been watching me watch movies.

  He grips my arms, holding me still. It’s a gentle touch. It suggests he’s aware of how much power he could have over my smaller body. It’s a touch meant to comfort and protect.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt so reassured by a simple gesture, and I ease into his face as it gets closer. My mouth parts slightly when he’s close enough, but he doesn’t kiss me. He turns his head and presses his cheek to mine.

  I can’t help the little sigh that slips out with my next breath. The hair of his beard is as soft as I imagined it would be. Each thick strand cradles my face, but they don’t prickle. They’re as silky as baby hair. Still, I stiffen a bit. The gesture is so atypical, so intimate. He isn’t just touching me. There’s something intense in the contact. His deep, even breaths whisper along my neck.

  “Lehti, ma’h qitah.”

  The words swirl and caress the shell of my ear. I don’t know what the hell it means, but it’s said reverently. The sound washes over me, and along with it, the awkwardness I’m feeling shifts into a wonderful kind of contentment. I relax into the warmth of his skin against mine. His hand at my arm ignites a slight tremor which spreads like a vine up my arm, curling around my shoulders and beneath my breasts. My nipples tighten as the vine morphs into tendrils of desire. They curl down my belly, making my pussy tingle and my thighs spasm. I jerk back, a little stunned at my response. I mean, I’m human, and the man is gorgeous, but getting wet from a hug is not the thing. I shift from the cradle of his shoulder and try to think of something to say to fill the silence that follows.

  “Was that Amharic?”

  He doesn’t answer, forcing me to peek up at him. He’s expressionless, but I can just see the traces of a smile around his mouth.

  Kwarq

  She’s effected by me. Being this close to my lehti has afforded my heightened senses a host of new experiences. I sense her nervousness, it was tangy on the smooth skin of her cheek when it pressed to mine. The soft, fluffy strands of her hair as they haloed my face were fragrant with the sweet scent of fruit. I hear her heart. The fast, flutter beneath her breasts. But none of these new experiences compares to the moment I scent her arousal rise up from where she’s pressing her legs firmly together against the seat, and her quick intake of breath when she feels it, too.

  She gets embarrassed again, but this time it isn’t with shame. This new kind of embarrassment is laced with excitement, and I can’t help the smile that pulls at my mouth.

  “It is not Amharic, lehti,” I reply when she stops staring into her lap and looks at me. She has a good ear. Of all of the languages on Earth, Amharic most closely reflects the combination of breathy and sharp tones of my native tongue. I’m impressed at how agile her mind is, and I’m more pleased than I already was that the leht has bound me to her.

  I want to hold her again, but I think I may have already overstepped my bounds in offering her a traditional apology. I release her arm and settle back into my seat, keeping my body angled so that our sides still slightly touch. It’s only a small contact, but I relish in it and the flood of feeling it offers me.

  “Letty? Your language is called Letty? Hm, I’ve never heard it before. Where is it from? Sudan?”

  I smile again. She’s so curious. I like it. I like that she wants to know about me, and instead of reacting with aversion as many humans seem to do at the unfamiliar, she’s trying to understand. She wants to understand.

  “No, lehti is something else. I will tell you later. My language is—rare. Not many people speak it here. I come from a very isolated place.”

  It’s difficult to avoid answering her directly. Now that we are speaking, and I have her attention, I want to tell her everything about me, but I know that I must be careful.

  “Oh.” She seems to ponder something, and I sense her growing uncomfortable again. “I don’t want to be rude. I really hate when people ask questions like this, and I’m sure you get it all the time. I promise that I’m not as ignorant as this question is going to sound, but I’ve never really seen anyone who looks like you before. I can’t really place you, not that it matters, but, like—what are you?”

  My keen eyesight detects the faint cringe in her expression. Her scent tinges with shame. She is very bothered by asking me this question. Even though her skin is a dark brown, warmth rises beneath it. The tips of her ears brighten just slightly, but it’s enough that my eyes can detect the subtle shift in color.

  I don’t have to ask what she means. Through my little bit of research, I’ve come to understand this thing about race on Earth. I don’t like it. It’s strange and ridiculous, but I know for her what the history of it means. This need to place me has less to
do with what I am than it has to do with what she thinks I may believe her to be. It makes her nervous, and I don’t want her to be nervous.

  “I am a male.” I don’t say man because that would be a lie, and I can’t lie to her. I could never lie to her.

  “I know, but where do you come from. Where are your parents from? Like, what country? I mean, you have an accent, so what’s your ethnicity?”

  “What do you think I am?”

  She considers me carefully, her mouth twisted up to the side.

  “Um, Middle Eastern, maybe? East African? Black? A white dude with a tan? I really can’t tell.” She laughs and it’s shy and soft. It makes my skin twitch with its loveliness.

  “While I think I understand why you have asked me this, if I request that you allow me not to answer these questions just yet, will you accept it?”

  Again she flushes a bit beneath her dark skin. It’s so charming, this slight embarrassment, that I have to stop myself from reaching out to feel the heat of her smooth cheek.

  “I’m sorry. I’m being rude. It shouldn’t matter. I was just curious about your accent. It’s lovely, anyway.”

  She looks away, back out of the window. Her posture is tense, and I’m again struck by how important categorization is in this place.

  “You are lovely.”

  Her head whips back to me. She looks caught off guard by my directness. Her eyes widen and her mouth parts in a little gasp of surprise. Maybe I’m too forward, but I can no longer keep from telling her how beautiful she is, and she is. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. I don’t have to wonder why my leht is with her. Even if my leht had not been with her, I still would have noticed a woman so beautiful.

  She’s what they call Black in this place. Her skin is a rich, reddish brown. Her eyes are wide and heavily lidded. They make her look innocent and shy. She has a small, round nose that scrunches up in the middle when she’s confused or thoughtful or finds something distasteful. It’s a gesture I’ve come to find extremely adorable.

  All of her features serve to make her appear disarmingly cute. That is, until you get to her mouth. There, the adorableness of her features changes into something sensual. Something that makes it hard for me not to want to kiss her.

  Her lips form a perfect bow, lusciously full and soft. Luscious. I like this word to describe her mouth. Her lips feature prominently on her face, both erotic and appealing. When she smiles, two little dimples appear at the lower corners of her lips. And right now, her beautiful mouth is opened so that I can just see the tips of her small, white teeth. I look at this space, wondering what she would taste like. How warm it would be in there.

  “Your hair is different.”

  The statement blurts from my mouth, and I have to clear my throat around the awkwardness of it. I had to say something, anything, to take my mind off the tightening in my pants.

  Her dark hair is an asymmetrical cloud around her head, parted and falling heavily over the left side of her face. The complex jumble of shapes and textures is a mixture of tight ringlets and parts that appear soft and frizzy. Around the hairline, little waves of hair frame her face. I love it.

  She reaches a hand up and pats at the cloud.

  “Oh, yeah. I change it a lot.”

  She does. In the two months I’ve been on this planet, my lehti has appeared with no less than a dozen different hairstyles, a grooming practice that served as a source of great fascination for me when I first began observing her. Sometimes she arranges her hair in little twists that fall down her back and around her shoulders. Other times, she pulls it high onto her head into a large, curly ball. Other times still, she does something to change the texture, and it hangs in thick, straight strands down her back.

  Mostly, she wears her hair the way it is now, loose and curly. She leaves her house in the morning while it’s still wet and dripping around her shoulders. My favorite thing to watch is the slow change as it dries and shrinks in on itself before forming a tight curly crown.

  Without thinking, I reach out and finger an errant curl that’s sticking out from the rest. The feel of it between my fingers is both soft and textured, a simple complexity I can’t help but find appealing.

  My lehti jerks her head back, her eyes flashing with anger. I pull my hand way, realizing my mistake.

  “I should not have touched you without your permission. I am sorry.”

  I automatically reach for her again to initiate my apology, but she angles her body fully away from me, her expression a hard scowl. I feel out to her, and though she looks it, she’s not angry. What she’s projecting is disappointment. I don’t know what I have done, but I immediately realize it is something very wrong.

  “I’m not a fucking dog.”

  Her words are laced with defense and insult. This declaration means nothing to me, however. Of course, she is not a dog.

  “You are not,” I return, but instead of placating her, my confirmation only seems to vex her further.

  “You can’t just touch my hair—pet me like I’m some animal. I’m a person. It’s hair like anyone else has hair. What did you think it would feel like?”

  She’s hurt, and I don’t know why, but I feel it is important to her, so I want to understand. I try to insert this sincerity into my voice when I respond.

  “I do not think you are an animal. I think you are a beautiful woman. I did not touch your hair because it is strange to me. I merely wanted to touch you. But this was also wrong of me to do without your permission. Ma’h qitah.”

  I take her arm again and lean forward, repeating my earlier gesture of pressing our cheeks together.

  Some of the tension leaves her body. She releases that little sigh again, and I feel better knowing she is no longer displeased. I don’t like that I upset her. I will have to find out why my touch offended her.

  “You know you’re still touching me without my permission, right?” There is a hint of teasing to her comment. I pull away, realizing she is correct.

  “I am sorry, again. It is a gesture of apology in my culture.”

  Her eyebrows pinch in the middle of her forehead, and she tilts her head the tide as she often does. “In your culture, you apologize by touching each other?”

  “You apologize by showing you are sorry and correcting the mistake. When you wrong another, you throw off their energy and displace their happiness. We touch to give that energy back. It is not enough just to say you are sorry, you must correct it. By feeling my remorse, you can calm your troubles and right your energy. Every ma’h qitah is personalized to the receiver. It shows sincerity and respect. I will only ever offer this precise gesture to you.”

  She stares at me for a moment, blinking slowly. “Wow, that’s pretty intense for a simple apology.”

  “Wronging another is a serious matter where I come from. I see that I have hurt you, although I am not exactly sure how. Still, I would offer you a proper apology. I want you to know that I am aware that I have caused you discomfort. Unfortunately, my custom seems to clash with an apology for having touched a person without their consent.”

  I smile at the irony of the situation, and after a moment, she does too. Those dimples flash, and I feel like everything inside of me comes to life. Her smile is a calming stroke to my soul. She may not like being touched, but I would welcome her hands anywhere she wanted to put them on me.

  “That’s actually kind of cool.” She nods her head as if she likes the idea. “Most people here just kind of say sorry because they think they have to, you know? People don’t really mean it. Anyway, I’m sorry I got so mad about it. You actually did it the right way, so I wasn’t super mad. It was just kind of a knee jerk reaction.”

  “There is a right or wrong way to touch another’s hair?”

  Does human anatomy include some kind of nerve in the hair follicle? Did I hurt her?

  “Well, you know, sometimes, most times, when people touch a black girl’s hair it’s in a weird way. They touch it l
ike I’m some kind of strange being. Like I’m not human. Like my hair wouldn’t feel like hair, like it would feel like fur or something. They pet me like a dog. It’s offensive. But you,” she tilts her head, peering at me closely, “did it right. Like you just wanted to touch me, like you said. I didn’t feel like a strange thing.”

  “You are not a strange thing. You are perfect.”

  She laughs. It’s the same laugh she does at the comedy movies. It’s loud and full. She throws her head back, and I marvel at the arched line of her neck. It’s a wonder to me that so much sound can come from such a small woman.

  “I’m hardly perfect, but that’s a nice thing to say.”

  “I’m glad. I want to make you feel nice.”

  Her eyes shift to the side, her nose doing its little scrunch. Her face transforms in a split second. She’s wary again, and I feel a slight frustration that I continue to make her uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, you probably don’t want to go around saying that to other women.”

  I wouldn’t. I would only ever say that to her. While I wish happiness on every living being, I am only concerned with how happy she is from now on.

  I don’t say this out loud, however. I want to understand her so that the next time I touch her hair, she welcomes it. So instead, I ask, “Why?”

  “Well, it’s kind of weird. It sounds weird. Like a little stalkerish, you know?”

  I don’t know. “What is stalker-ish?”

  She chuckles a little and rolls her eyes in a way that makes me think she finds my ignorance appealing. I’m glad. I will ask all of the question if it will help me get closer to her.

  “A stalker—it’s a noun—is a person who’s obsessed with another person and follows them around and watches them. Sometimes they try to hurt them because they’re psycho. Sometimes they think they’re in love and want the other person to love them back, but mostly it just ends in them trying to hurt them because they’re psycho. So stalkerish means when you say stuff like that, it sounds like you may be the kind of person who follows someone around because you might want to hurt them.”