Bodies in Motion (23 page)

Chaya's head was pounding by the time she stopped, her eyes aching with soreness. She had to breathe through her mouth; she couldn't seem to clear her nose. Daniel still held her tight, and she felt oddly safe, almost as if she were cradled in the limbs of a tree, so solid
and deeply rooted that it couldn't be shaken. When she was finally still, breathing slow and deep, his arms tightened around her. He said, “You're not…?”

“No.” His arms relaxed. Relief, plain and clear in the body whose language she had once spoken so intimately. That hurt too.

“So, you're engaged.” Daniel nodded, his chin against the top of her head. “Do you love her?”

He didn't hesitate. “Yes. I know it was fast, but yes. I love Laurie very much.”

Oddly, that wasn't as painful as Chaya might have expected. Did she still love him? Had she ever?

“We've got lots of talking to do,” Daniel said quietly.

Chaya took a deep breath. She pulled back a little—just enough to talk, but not enough to let go. Not yet.

 

THEY KEPT TALKING, MOSTLY ON THE PHONE. DANIEL MADE HER A
deal—for every story he told her about his life, his family, Chaya had to tell him one of hers. Laurie wasn't thrilled, but she apparently believed in being civilized about such things. The wedding was still on schedule. Chaya thought she was actually glad of that.

It was hard at first, getting the words out. She tried closing her eyes and pretending she was talking to herself, but the words still stuck in her throat. Finally she took to typing the words on her laptop, and then reading them back to him on the phone. It was ridiculous, she knew. But it worked, and after a few conversations, she didn't need the laptop anymore.

They talked for hours, until Chaya's ears were actually ringing, until her neck ached from holding the phone. Words came spilling out of her like waterfalls from the rocks, and she was giddy with the pleasure of it. She had never thought that talking could be so intoxicating.

Work improved—the time in Tucson went very well, and the analysis of the data went even better. She presented a preliminary talk
on it at a conference over the holiday break. In mid-January, Jenny called. The position at Davis was still open, very much so, and they were excited about her current line of work. Chaya told Jenny she'd think seriously about the job.

 

IT WAS EARLY FEBRUARY WHEN HER MOTHER CONFRONTED HER.

“So. You're going to California?” Her mother talked loudly over the whirring of the mixer; she was making caramel pudding.

“What?” Chaya flushed. Maybe she should pretend she hadn't heard that. She had almost decided to go, but she wasn't ready for this conversation, for her mother's threats and complaints—she hadn't prepared…

“It's warmer there,” her mother continued, relentlessly. “And you can keep an eye on your sister.”

“Davis isn't so close to Berkeley.” Chaya turned away from the stove, where she was toasting almonds.

“Not so far either. Don't burn the nuts. I'm worried about her—she isn't sensible, like you. Maybe if you settle down there, you'll find a husband. And with both you girls out of the house, I can finally take a vacation. I've never been to Sri Lanka myself, you know. Not in all these years.”

Her mother's voice was firm, calm. She didn't seem worried at all—and since when did she think Chaya was sensible? The impossible suddenly was becoming possible. Chaya turned back to flip the nuts. If her mother didn't need her now—had her mother ever needed her?

Maybe Chaya had just wanted to be needed, to have a clear place and purpose, even if it had meant going nowhere.

 

DANIEL THOUGHT SHE SHOULD GO TOO, THOUGH HE SAID HE WOULD
miss her. Chaya stopped trying to argue against it when she realized that three drafts of letters to Davis now sat on her computer, and that
she was already thinking about what to take with her, and what to leave behind.

It would be something new. Something strange, and different—a shift away from her fixed orbits, a chance to leave these endless circlings and chart her own unique path.

The morning of the day she was leaving, Chaya went to the cemetery where her father was buried. She still didn't know what had happened that day of the concert. She didn't know why her mother, her aunts, had always refused to talk about her father. There were secrets in her family, things unspoken; it was the way things were, the way they had always been. But as she bent to lay roses on her father's grave, Chaya made a silent promise to him—that she would do things differently from now on. That she would tell her own story, at least, without hesitation. And she swore that the next time someone trusted her with his body, his heart, she would trust him back. Before it was too late.

Chicago, 1999

All my letters to my aunt start like that, and never finish. I have written twenty or thirty of them in the last week. Words and lines and paragraphs of politeness, all true and all lies. I cannot write what I am really saying. I cannot write that I am in terrible trouble, and I don't know what to do. I cannot write that I want to leave here, leave school, leave Chicago and flee to her in Massachusetts, that I want to hide in her guest bed with the covers pulled up over my head until it all goes away. I cannot write and ask her to fix everything for me. I cannot do anything but write and write and write these letters that say nothing and that I crumple up and throw away before starting again.

MINAL BARELY NOTICES WHEN HER ROOMMATES COME BACK, WHEN
they ask her to join them for dinner, when she shakes her head no, when they leave again. The snow is falling outside their window, and she takes her unfinished letter to Rose's bed, to sit near the window and watch the snow fall on the highway and the lake, watch the waves crashing up and down, higher each time, the wind whipping them up until the white ice of them crashes up and over the thin strip of snow-covered park, reaching to the deserted highway. It is terrifying. The monsoons had been hard and fierce at times, had uprooted trees and drowned the fields—but they had never been so cold.

She has been cold for months.

She had arrived in September, fresh off the boat from Sri Lanka, with a full scholarship for the sciences and plans to be a doctor. Her mother had insisted Minal wear the warmest clothes she had, so she had sweltered in the layers of heavy sari and warm sweater on the long plane ride, and still, when she stepped out of the airport and into the brisk wind, she had instantly been cold, chilled through. Her mother's sister, Raji, had flown from Massachusetts to Chicago to get her settled, had taken her shopping for more appropriate clothes, had made sure that she drank hot tea and soup and even fried samosas for her in the dorm kitchen—and Minal was still cold, deep inside. The chill had deepened when her aunt left, leaving her alone with her roommates, who seemed nice enough but who were so terribly pale and alien.
She wore a turtleneck, shirt, heavier shirt, sweater, stiff new blue jeans, two pairs of socks, and a thick wool coat. She shivered in the unforgiving stone buildings that wore the artificial heat like a thin blanket over grave-cold bones. Calculus class, high on the third floor of a grey Gothic building, was the coldest. The first weeks she spent huddled in on herself at her desk, only raising her head long enough to copy down the equations on the board. Minal would practically race back to her dorm afterward, to strip off all the clothes, turning the water on with shaking hands and chattering teeth, waiting until the tiny bathroom was full of steam before taking off the last layers, stripping to the skin and climbing into the blessedly warm water.

The water covered her toes, her feet, her ankles, her calves—and then she sank down into it, so that it covered her stomach and ribs and small, pointed breasts, lay back in it, so that her hair was soaked in water, spreading out around her like a night-black fan, lay back until only her nose and mouth lay on the surface of the water, disembodied. Steam filled the room, her bones warmed, she was happy—but eventually, always, the hot water would run out, and she would have to climb out of the tub, dry off, wrap her thin body in a robe and step out into the chilly air that hit her face like a slap.

Sometimes she thinks that if it hadn't been for Diego, she would never have warmed at all, just slowly frozen into a thin icicle of a girl, so cold and hard that even when they shipped her back home, she would not melt, not even when her mother's tears rained down on the ice.

Sometimes she thinks that would have been better.

 

I don't get further than that. I can write the words that I know will frighten him, insert the place, the date—all it needs is the time and my signature before I slip it under his door, down the hall, just four doors down. He's waiting for it. Our notes have become something of a joke on the floor, but a friendly one. When I first admitted to my roommates how we'd gotten together, how I'd written him a note and slipped it under his door, like a schoolgirl, they'd laughed and laughed. But eventually Rose decided it was just too romantic, and Karly had agreed, and soon it seemed the entire floor had adopted us as their very own storybook romance.

Romance, hah! If they had seen how my hands were shaking all that night, how I tossed and turned, how little I slept, waiting, expecting him to sadly but firmly shake his head no, with a little hateful pity in those coriander-green eyes…well. They probably would think that romantic too. Idiots.

I admit, I had grown fond of the notes, these last three months.

Minal, meet me for breakfast?

Diego, I'll see you at 8:00.

Minal, do you have time to visit the museum on Saturday?

Diego, I'm skipping calculus this morning—join me?

We never wrote anything that seemed of importance in those notes—and yet I kept every one. I knew what they didn't say, what they didn't need to say. They didn't say, “I'll give you a dozen kisses if you get up early to eat with me.” They didn't say, “Let's skip the electricity exhibit and go neck in the statue garden.” They didn't say, “Rose and Karly are going to
their
classes, so we have an hour—join me in bed?” They didn't need to say any of that—we knew.

And if I send him this note, if I finish it with a time and sign it and slip it under his door, he will think he knows what it means. He will think it means that this is the end, that I have grown tired of him, or that I have decided this was a mistake after all. And he will be wrong, but he will also be right.

This is the end of something.

 

OCTOBER. MINAL SITS IN THE LOUNGE PAST MIDNIGHT, STRUGGLING
with equations. Tea water is heating on the stove, heating, boiling, boiling over, hissing, and she swears as she jumps up, grabs the pot handle and lets go again, grabs up some of her skirt to help her hold the handle as she lifts the pot off the range and clunks it down in the sink, spilling boiling water everywhere and just missing scalding herself again—“Goddammit!”

“I've never heard you swear before.”

“What?” Minal swings around, her long black hair swinging with her, straight and smooth like a waterfall, and he bites his lip.

“I don't think I've ever heard you swear. Do you need help?” He is leaning in the doorway to the small kitchen, taking up space—taking up so much space. Minal loses his name for a moment, then finds it again—yes, Diego. A second-year from four doors down. She has a little trouble understanding him; he has an accent. And his eyes are very green.

“Why would you know, or care, whether I swear?” She turns back to the sink, lifts the pot, pours the hot water into the mug with the tea bag waiting. She puts the pot back on the stove and turns off the flame.

“I've been watching you.”

She is startled but will not look at him. The words could have sounded menacing, in another mouth, but from him they sound sweet, and slightly sheepish. She takes down sugar and pulls out a spoon, and milk, before answering.

“Really.” She does not know how she means that—challenging, inviting? But it must have come out wrong, because he is pulling away, stepping back out of the doorway so the light comes spilling back in, walking away.

“Sorry. I should really get to bed. Good night.”

And he's gone. Damn.

 

SHE WRITES HIM THE FIRST NOTE THAT NIGHT AND SLIPS IT UNDER
his door, and doesn't sleep until almost dawn.

When tomorrow night comes, they share a table, and she helps him with his calculus. His hand brushes hers. Her hair falls across his leg as she leans in over his papers. His breath quickens. She feels it on her cheek. She turns, or he does. He leans, or she does. Their lips meet and hold. Their tongues, tentatively, dance.

And kissing.

 

NOVEMBER. SHE RECITES POETRY TO DIEGO. IN SRI LANKA, SHE HAD
escaped the endless rounds of family gossip, the sisters tearing into
each other and the aunts nagging, by reading her books. English books too, of course, but also the ancient Indian poets. She tells him the
Ramayana,
in pieces, in between calculus problems. It is a reward when he solves a particularly difficult one. Minal recites translated poems until he knows them too and can recite them back to her.

 

I CANNOT COUNT THE CLASSES I HAVE MISSED FOR KISSING DIEGO.

He is from Puerto Rico. He whispers Spanish words to me while he kisses me. He starts at my toes,
mis dedos de los pies
, and works his way up, kissing and whispering, so soft I can barely hear it, barely feel it.
Te quiero; tus pies. Tus rodillas. Tus caderas
. Then he stops and moves to the top of my head, and starts working down.
Tu pelo, tu nariz, tus orejas
. The first time he licked my ear, I felt a shock run through me, not so different from the time I stuck my finger in an unshielded outlet as a little girl. But now I am greedy. I do not want him to stop at my ears. My hands are on his hips, on his back, on his shoulders, pushing him gently, urging him down.

Te quiero; tu garganta, tus brazos, tus muñecas. Tus uñas, tu estómago, tu cintura.
He would linger at my waist if I would let him, would play with my belly button, but I do not allow it. I urge him onward—quickly, hurry hurry! We have only twenty minutes left, fifteen, ten before Rose and Karly return. And they are lovely roommates, such nice girls, and if they come back before you finish, I will kill them, and then you. So hurry, hurry,
por favor
, my darling.

 

DECEMBER. THEY HAVE SETTLED DOWN A LITTLE. THEY HAVE STARTED
going to classes again, and her professors are relieved. The leaves have all fallen off the trees—Indian summer is long gone—but Minal is no longer cold.

She is blazing so brightly that she is amazed that others cannot see it. She is feverish with heat. She sits in class with her legs crossed and
her coat tightly closed. She has slipped an arm out of a sleeve and with it caresses a breast, squeezes a nipple. She pulses the muscles of her crossed thighs, there in the large lecture hall, with Rose to her right and a stranger to her left, taking notes with one hand, though her eyes are almost closed and her ears are filled with the thundering of her own pulse and she is on fire. She will blaze up like a goddess, she will strip off all her clothes and burst into flame and dance along the desktops, with a dozen arms spread wide and one on her breast and one between her thighs—she will roast all of these pale-skinned people with her heat until their clothes turn to ashes and their skin turns to burnished gold and then they will jump up with her on the desktops and dance!

She takes a deep breath. Minal releases her breast, smoothes down her sweater and shirt, with slight awkwardness slips her hand into a sleeve. She relaxes her thighs. The professor is making his closing comments.

Minal resolves, again, to pay more attention in class.

 

MAHADEVIYAKKA LIVED IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY AND LEFT AN
arranged marriage to become an ecstatic devotee of Shiva. Did she believe that the god came down to her, that he pierced through her, giving her the courage to abandon everything?