Malentendido (Misunderstood)

by Mara White

  “You look fantastic in your scrubs.”

  I smile, look at the floor, then make eye contact with him. I’m not used to these overt compliments. He’s so direct and honest, he’s completely candid with me.

  “You look great in them too.” My finger finds its way to my mouth like it did when I was a kid. I absolutely, totally, really, really want his hands on me. I also feel this deep pull in my gut to explain my fetish, my sexual obsession, my whatever-you-call-it. But when he leans in and kisses me I think maybe I’ll let it go. His mouth is warm and inviting and I’m back to being a young girl in awe of masculinity, the scruff on his jaw, the strong grip of his fingers on my ribs. The musky, warm smell of his skin and the bulge in his pants that makes its presence known immediately. I feel so desperate for male attention, so lacking and needy. I crave his comfort, his strong arms, the safety he gives me.

  “We can take this as slow as you want, Belén, as slow as you need.”

  I kiss him back hard and slip my hand in his pants.

  Six weeks of frenzied sex later and we were already pregnant.

  Después

  “Are you thinking of sending Luke to public or private school?” my co-worker Valerie asks me as we scan our badges to get into the secure lab testing area at the hospital. We’re dealing with an Ebola scare in the city right now, so our usually strict lab safety procedure has become even more daunting in the past few weeks. We have to sign in at the registry where a guard sits just beyond the door.

  “I’m all for public. Or Catholic. Private school is outrageous in the city. I’d rather put the money in a fund and save it for college!”

  “We’re doing a bunch of lotteries for charter schools. You went to Catholic, right? Were you a good kid, Belén? I can’t imagine you weren’t.”

  I don’t know why the question feels like it’s pulling open old wounds. Why it tugs at the stitching of my carefully reconstructed heart. Deep down I don’t believe that I’m good.

  Was I a good kid? My mom would say “yes.” It’s painful because my childhood was overflowing with uncertainty. Much of Catholic school I spent wondering whether or not I was a hopeless sinner, if I was tainted and sick for harboring unnatural feelings toward my cousin. The simple question tears at the cheery flowered wallpaper I’ve so carefully put up to cover all of the peeling paint, the deep cracks and fissures in the wall of my consciousness.

  “I don’t know, Valerie. I guess I was. To some extent, at least. I always agonized over the idea. If I wasn’t pure in thought, I was certainly pure in action. With a couple of exceptions.”

  “Wow, sounds like you’ve thought about it a lot. I was just joking, Belén. Kids will be kids,” Valerie says laughing. She puts on her lab coat and slams her locker. “Want to ride the train together? You leaving at five?”

  “Yeah, sure. I was just going to get the keys to the supply room and bring down all the racks and specimen vials for that trial tomorrow.”

  “All right. See you later. Thanks for the lunch date.”

  I button my lab coat and stick my plastic goggles on my head. The closet in the hallway holds a moveable cart that I can take up to the storeroom and load with supplies. Sometimes transport takes care of it if it’s a heavy load, but I like to do it myself whenever I get the chance. It appeals to my sense of order. Labeling and organizing sometimes alleviates my anxiety. So does cleaning. Mindless meditation helps shoo away the what ifs that often run through my mind like a never-ending ticker tape, of having once, what feels like an eternity ago, fallen painfully in love with my cousin.

  Antes

  Yari is doodling boys’ names all over her notebook. I’m tapping my pen on my teeth, absorbing everything Mr. Ranesh is saying. I love this class and wish my whole day were as exciting.

  I copy all of his drawings; they help me to remember the story behind the notes when I’m studying. I’ve drawn how the cells usually cling in a cluster right after conception. Then another drawing right below it of how sometimes the mass gives way and the cells split, forming two separate beings. It looks beautiful to me. Twins. What was maybe meant to be one, somehow, by the force of God or the universe, splits into two. Then the individual sets of cells begin to split, going each on their own path, side by side, different, but with a nucleus that holds identical DNA.

  Dude, are you hot for Mr. Mustache? Yari has scribbled on her notebook and slid it over in front of me. We sit four to a tall lab table with a stool on each side, sink in the middle. Yari looks at me and giggles and pretends to wipe drool from her lips.

  I guess I was staring. I lose myself in his lectures. Narrowing my eyes at her I flash her a dirty look. She sticks her tongue out to the side in an exaggerated imitation of my face.

  “Funny, Yari,” I say a little too loudly.

  “Belén, did you have a question?” Mr. Ranesh asks, stopping his lecture.

  “Um. No, keep going. Everything is fine,” I say, sliding the notebook back to Yari. The bell rings to save me from further humiliation. I draw a quick circle around the clusters of identical cells dividing to their own rhythm, destined for different paths, but essentially the same, indistinguishable from one another until birth and life set them apart.

  “Let’s get pizza and sit on the stairs where those boys from the Audubon houses hang out.”

  “You go. I’ll come find you. I want to ask Mr. Mustache some questions about the lecture.”

  Yari smiles a knowing smile and stacks her books, slamming them into a pile as obnoxiously as possible. Mr. Ranesh’s back is turned as he erases the blackboard. I take my notebook with me and tuck my pen behind my ear.

  “Bey!” Yari shouts and I turn back to look at her. She uses her tongue in her cheek and a loosely held fist to mimic the universal sign language for a blow job. Sometimes I can’t stand my own best friend. Other times, I wish I could be more like her.

  “Maybe you would, Yar. I’m . . . oh, just go!” I say, waving her away. All the boys are enraptured by her boldness. They laugh and one of them high-fives her.

  “Yeah, Belén, take one for the team!” he says as they leave the classroom together. What the heck does he even mean? Sometimes high school feels so immature. I’m an old soul, like Mami says. I’ve walked this path before.

  “Hey, Mr. Ranesh,” I say and tuck my stray hair behind my ear.

  “Oh, hello there, Belén. Sorry, I didn’t see you standing there.”

  “Could I ask you a couple of questions about the lecture?”

  “Of course, what’s on your mind?”

  “So you said that fraternal twins share around fifty percent of the same DNA and identical twins share one hundred percent. What about regular siblings?”

  “Good question, one I should have brought up in class. Despite being conceived and born at the exact same time, fraternal twins share roughly the same amount as regular siblings. Fraternal twins are two separate eggs, like other siblings, whereas identical twins are the same egg. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes.”

  “When the egg is fertilized, we have the totipotent zygote that is nothing but the potential of what will make up the human conceived. We don’t know what prompts the zygote to split and form identical twins, but we do know that most of what we will become is already written in those genes—fraternal or identical, the whole map is in there, just waiting to unfold. From the tips of their eyelashes down to their big toes, and not only that—some scientists theorize that they even determine how much milk you’ll want in your coffee or how late you’ll arrive to work.”

  I think of Lucky’s dark eyelashes and how they flitter as he falls asleep. His feet, which look identical to my feet, a fact we discovered while wading in the fountain one summer in Washington Square Park. But Lucky said mine were cuter than his because my toenails were painted pink. I can remember the smell of the water on his skin that day, how he grabbed my hand and dared me to jump into the fountain with him.

  “What about nurture or environment?”
<
br />   “Well, that’s psychology if you ask me, but still relevant, and yes, there’s a lot of data behind those arguments.” Mr. Ranesh pushes his glasses up to the top of his head, grabs a book off of his desk and starts flicking through the pages.

  I pull my pen out and tap it on my teeth.

  “We know that cells have already started to differentiate before an identical twin split occurs, but as to how much, it’s very hard to tell. To the casual eye, we’ll see something that appears very similar on the surface, but underneath we know that the gene expression is different. Identical twins’ personalities can be as different as regular siblings are.”

  He shows me an illustration in the biology textbook that looks similar to the one he drew on the board during class.

  “And what about cousins? What percentage of DNA do they share?”

  “First cousins?”

  “Yeah, first cousins.” I shift my feet and can’t help but glance down at the floor. Heat rises to my face and my heart plummets to my belly, where it flops like a fish in my stomach.

  “I mean, there are different scenarios—if the parent siblings were twins, for example–”

  “No, just sisters.”

  “If the sisters married two siblings from another family, creating double cousins, their DNA would be significantly more–”

  “They both married Puerto Ricans, but just regular first cousins,” I say and smile a little at my own joke.

  “Oh, you’re asking for yourself? About your own family?”

  “Yeah. Just curious.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. I believe I had one of your cousins in class, Luciano Cabrera. Bright boy if he could hold his attention for more than a minute.”

  “I only have one cousin in this school. That’s him. Lucky.”

  “Well, Belén, you and your cousin likely share anywhere from around seven point three to twelve point five percent similar DNA. Half Puerto Rican DNA, that is,” Mr. Ranesh says and smiles with a wink.

  “Seven to twelve and half, huh? Wow, you’re pretty quick with those numbers.”

  “I love your curiosity, Belén. It’s great to have you in class because I always know at least one person is listening to my lecture.”

  “Thanks for answering my questions!”

  “Whenever you’ve got questions, I’m more than happy to help. Did you see the sign-up sheet for AP Chemistry for juniors? There’s a spot for you in that class, Belén, I’m absolutely sure of it.”

  “I did. I was going to sign up. One other question, Mr. Ranesh,” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why do the science requirements go in the order they do? Biology, chemistry and then physics? Is there some sort of empirical reason for the order or is it just arbitrary?”

  “Another great question! Aren’t you missing your lunch?”

  “I’m not really hungry,” I say and shrug, tucking my books into my backpack.

  “Well, the easy and most straightforward answer is that it’s ordered that way because of the math. You’ve got to use algebra, calculus and even trig to work out some of the applied formulas you’re going to encounter in physics.”

  “And the other answer?”

  “You’ve got blue pen on your teeth.”

  “Huh? Oh, thanks,” I say, rubbing the back of my finger across my teeth.

  “Remember, you’re asking a biologist. But I’d say it’s because first, we must understand the organism before we begin to look at its interactions. Then, once we look at its interactions, we can move on to the laws that govern it. Does that make sense?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Let’s put it like this. We can first identify you and what makes you what you are. That’s the biology. Then we can see how you interact with other things. That’s the chemistry. Then we can look at how you and all of the other things are influenced by everything around you. That’s the physics.”

  “I get it. I asked my mom and guess what she told me?”

  “That biology was the easiest and physics was the hardest science to tackle? A lot of people believe that, Belén, but I’d have to say it’s wrong to assume. Biology can be just as complex as any other field.”

  “You don’t know my mom, Mr. Ranesh. She told me, ‘Biology is life, chemistry is living and physics is fate.’”

  “She’s a mystic then, your mother. I like how she’s thinking, but I’d suggest you save that for your literature class, or perhaps, church.”

  I walk down the empty, quiet hallway toward the steps where I promised Yari I’d meet her. The boys will be wrapped up in their usual loud jokes and constant, perverted teasing. I think about Lucky and wonder about the moment his first few cells starting splitting, deciding the design for the brown birthmark on his left calf. The quick wink he does to let you know he’s on your side. The swing in his step and the rough tone of his voice when he first wakes up in the morning.

  I love the living organism those early cells formed. I adore who he turned into, every piece, every single part of him. Whatever made Lucky, either God or biology, wrapped him so tightly around my heart that sometimes I’m suffocating. Lucky and me are made of too many similar parts. But our chemistry is like a meteor shower, raining bright sparks of light into the dark night. Biology causes our attraction and it’s also the reason we have to stay apart. But it’s the fate which worries me the most, and that I can’t get a handle on.

  It is the physics of our love that disagrees with the universe.

  Antes

  She corners me in the stairwell as I’m escaping to the park. Backpack on her shoulder, hair pulled up in a messy bun, a pencil shoved in, barely holding it all together.

  “Lucky, get this, we share anywhere from seven to almost thirteen percent identical DNA. I’m actually surprised because I thought it would be higher than that.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I say, then look over my shoulder to hide my anxiety and the automatic smile that pops up on my face whenever I hear her voice. “Why’d you think it would be more?”

  “I don’t know. ’Cause siblings are fifty percent and—don’t you remember the unit? It was only last year. Double cousins are higher and–”

  “Wait, hold up. What the fuck are double cousins? What are you talking about, Belén?”

  I’m automatically worried she knows something. Somebody has been talking to her and she just figured it out about her mom and her uncle?

  “Double cousins. Like if our moms had married siblings, but they didn’t so we’re not.”

  “If they married their siblings? Who the fuck does that?”

  “Not their own, like if they’d married brothers. Forget it, Lucky. You obviously don’t remember. Go hang in the park with your friends.”

  My heart is thumping because I thought she was onto something. But Bey is just rambling about science class and I’m already expecting the worst that could happen from her knowing how related we are.

  “Shit, Bey. You crazy. You know that?”

  “I obviously got the genes for brains and you got the looks.”

  She smiles at me like she’s making a joke but I don’t laugh or think it’s funny. How come she doesn’t ever see how pretty she is? She has no idea how hard I can get from just staring at her lips.

  “What do you mean, Bey? You’re beautiful.”

  I can’t believe I said it. Our eyes connect for a second and so much moves between us that words aren’t necessary. A flash in her eye shows fear, but there’s more emotion there than that. I get the urge to grab her, slam her up against the wall and kiss the living fuck out of her. Oh God, Len, what you do to me with a look. Eye contact and I’m gone on fantasies of what I could do to her. She’s delicate and so young and better than my dirty thoughts.

  And sometimes I swear she’s the only person who really sees me. I can hide shit from everyone, my own mother included. But Bey’s got this crazy way of looking right through me. She can see the good parts and the bad parts, read
my feelings like a fortune teller and recognize my bullshit from a mile away before I even try to cover it up. She can hear the truth in my lies like nobody else.

  “Go study, little girl. I got stuff to do.”

  My feet start to jog away down the steps with a mind of their own. I can’t stick around or I will pull her into my arms. I only want to kiss her sweet little nose—but it would lead to something bigger, I’m definitely capable of worse. I don’t know what I’d do to her if we were alone and left to our own devices. But I got an idea and it makes me get the hell out of the situation.

  “Where are you going, Lucky?” she yells as she leans over the railing. I’m running away from her, I’m always fucking running away from her.

  “Out, Bey! Go finish your homework.” I stop and look up at her. My heart’s pounding, I feel dizzy. I don’t need drugs with Bey around, I get a high from just talking to her. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Flushed cheeks, need in her eyes and a body that is never far from my mind.

  “We’re thirteen percent the same, that leaves eighty-seven percent that we’re different,” she says and smiles down at me. Her smile is the key to unlock all that’s good in the universe. I grin back like a fool as happiness flows through me from basking in it. I’m love-drunk on Bey and stand and stare like an idiot. If anything ever happened to her, I think I’d die of loneliness. No way I could handle it. I want to protect her from corruption and at the same time, unleash my worst on her. It’s a fucked-up feeling and it’s got me tripping in circles. If I can’t have her, sure as hell I won’t ever let anyone else touch her.

  “You know what, Lucky? You’re weird,” she says and opens her notebook. She tears out a piece of paper and folds it up in front of me.

  “You know what, Bey?” I ask. I’m about to say something dumb. Something that will play over and over in my head and I’ll regret the moment it comes out my mouth.

  “What?” she says and drops the paper; the folds give it weight and it lands at my feet.