Authors: Tanwi Nandini Islam
“Right. Good night.”
“Good night. Good night? Turn off the stupid TV, Aman!” Hashi hissed. “And if my stupid husband would join me in bed.
Jai-hok
, Ella, see you tomorrow. In the morning, okay?”
Ella bid her good night and shut the door. She heard Aman chortle at something—it sounded like
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
—and tapped her fingers on Charu’s door. Charu opened the door, and let Maya out. She had painted Maya’s mouth a suggestive red and dressed her in a skintight black jumpsuit that made her look like a Muslim version of Spider-Woman.
They took off their high heels to tiptoe downstairs and out through the sliding glass door.
Once they were outside, Charu cried, “You’re the best, El!” and hugged her.
“You’re sure you won’t come? Please?” asked Maya.
“I’m sure.”
* * *
Ella watched them disappear around the corner of the house. She crumpled onto her hammock. Moonflowers had started to bloom. A hibiscus flower landed on her face. She plucked one of its petals. She slipped off her glasses and the petal took on shapes: a lazy-eyed halibut lumbering along the ocean floor, an ungraspable mermaid, a severed head.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see any more.
Overwhelmed, she decided to cool off in the seed vault. She opened the door to the vault, and found Anwar sitting there, his hands resting on his belly. His head lay slumped on his chest.
E
lla shook Anwar hard by the shoulders. He was breathing, but his skin felt dangerously cold. “What the hell are you doing in here?” asked Ella.
Anwar jerked his head up. “Hmmph?”
“Anwar, it’s freezing—it’s not safe to pass out here—what the hell were you thinking?” Ella bent down beside him to help him up.
“Same as you. Getting away from all
that
.” He fluttered his eyes wide awake. He waved his hand toward the house. “I can’t take it in there anymore. You know, your father was much more of a brother to me than my own brother.”
“I didn’t see you come outside. Do you want to be alone?”
“Do you want to be alone?” asked Anwar.
“No.”
“Same as you. Come. Sit down.”
Ella joined him. He patted her knee. “It’s your father’s birthday tomorrow, did you know that?” he said.
“I—I forgot.”
Anwar shook his head. “It’s a terrible thing I’ve let you forget. We should be having a party. We should be lighting those sparkler things. We should—”
“It’s okay.”
“Hmph. What can I say? The older we get, the dimmer these memories become. I know that Hashi will remember out of the blue that it’s her brother’s birthday. And then Charu will do something crazy or some hairy woman will come in for a treatment, and
Rezwan goes out of her mind. It’s hard to hold on to sadness.” Anwar gestured to the drawers of seed. “I call this ‘permanent winter.’ In this perpetual cold state we can preserve these little seeds, for hundreds of years. Heirlooms that no one else has. This is all yours, kid,” said Anwar.
“Really?”
“It’s not much. I have not much to give you, Ella, besides this house, and these seeds.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I like to think so.”
She felt her throat clump and squeezed her uncle’s shoulder.
Anwar squeezed her hand.
Ella wanted to feel a swelling in her chest, of longing, for her father and his memory, but she didn’t.
Maybe it’s too fucking cold in here
, she thought.
Too cold to think.
“I would like to get some herbstuffs from the garden. It is also freezing in here,” said Anwar.
“Yeah, seriously.” Ella stood up and propped the door open. Anwar followed her out, seeming as disoriented as a miner released from a cave. “Ah, wait, one minute,” he said, going back inside. He came out again, holding a handful of Ziploc bags. He squinted, as if deep in concentration, and counted off a list of inaudible ingredients. Ella locked the seed vault.
“Ahem.” Anwar cleared his throat. “I need to pull some herbs, some bark, some flowers. Here, hold these.” He handed her the Ziplocs and grabbed a shovel from beside the shed.
They stood in the center of the circle, appraising the garden, unsure of where to begin.
“Let’s start with herbs,” said Anwar.
They walked over to a hodgepodge of scented plants in the sunniest corner of the garden. Anwar got on his knees and brushed his fingers through the tangle of herbs. He ripped the tiny white petals of chamomile and sniffed them.
“
Manzanilla,
in Spanish, or, earth apple. I call it ‘the plant doctor.’ It helps increase the production of oils in our mints—spearmint, sage, oregano—stronger in scent and flavor. Bag, please.” Ella held open a Ziploc, and Anwar stuffed it with the fistful of the daisy-like chamomile flowers. He yanked the sweet pink-flowered valerian by
the base of its stem. He used the shovel to loosen it from the soil, then pulled the entire plant, roots and all. He gestured for her to help him up, and she felt her uncle heavy on her shoulder as she pulled him out of his squat.
“You know, I just got rid of an aphid infestation,” said Ella. “Used the neem oil.”
“Aphids are not a good sign.”
“They were on the morning glories; I think the pink roses, too. But they’re gone now.”
“It’s the first time, I think, that we’ve had pestilence in our garden.”
“It’s common, Anwar, especially after years of having a garden that’s been pest-free. They find a way to break that seal of luck.”
“Of course, you’re right, my Ella. And you’ve done a fantastic job. These midnight flowers have bloomed perfectly. All praises to jasmine.”
Ella rolled her eyes and followed him back into the house, through the sliding door, into the kitchen. He filled a kettle with water and placed it on the stove. He pulled out a pint-size mason jar from the cabinet under the sink. He opened the jar and crinkled his nose at the aroma. “The stuff smells like French onion soup, but it is a very effective fungicide, m’dear. It’s a thick oil, and becomes pasty when it’s not hot enough.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” asked Ella. “Didn’t you study geography in college?”
“Yes, I was a phytogeographer; my love of botany and history drew me to the subject. To understand nature, I wanted to study our beginnings. Buddhists Palas, Hindu Senas, conquered subjects of the Delhi sultanate. Were we shit collectors, gravediggers, and temple minions, cast under India like a putrid armpit? Our balmy monsoon and one hundred inches of rain was tantamount to exile for Brahmin priests. So, as I studied, I came to love geography and its great shifts. Since Sultan Muhammad Bakhtiyar’s invasion of the flooded delta plains in the thirteenth century, the Ganga’s diversion into the Padma-Meghna tributaries had not yet happened. With the arrival of the next band of Turkic emperors in the sixteen hundreds, the great Ganga rose higher, unable to sieve the silt in her waters. Eastward expansion dried up the old western banks. Once sites of
pilgrimage and holy Brahmin rites, the Adi Ganga’s vestiges became stagnant, diseased.
“In my westward hometown, Jessore, we grew up hearing about Mehr Ali, a Sufi mystic who taught the people to cut through dense sal forest and cultivate rice in the wet plains. Mehr Ali and other Sufis’ metaphysical, supernatural powers, coupled with an ability to feed us—that’s when we took their faith. Before long, Brahma, Vishnu, Adam, and Muhammad were a continual succession of holy prophets.
“But the hilly parts of our country—Sylhet and Chittagong—remained undiscovered territories for centuries, where pirates, pirs, and outcasts disappeared. Of course, some resisted. The Jumma tribes wanted no part of it, and continued to slash and burn from way up in the hills. Resin, betel leaves, honey, and oil were abundant and plentiful. For those matrilineal peoples, the Islamic practice of feminine confinement held no charm or purpose. Why should men work outside in the sun, reaping and transplanting the rice seedlings, while women remain chained to the domicile, winnowing, soaking, and parboiling the spoils?
“To them, the jungle—home, God, family—shouldn’t be flattened into a sacrilegious rice bowl.”
Anwar shut his eyes tight, as if trying to wince away a memory. He cleared his throat. “Your father was not caught up in the romance of bees and trees. Nor did he question his faith. He was a chemist who believed Allah had created atoms. But he did not see the world as a simple accumulation of atoms. You can draw elements out of a plant—oxygen, carbon—but nothing you do will create a plant out of these elements, the dead dust of life forms. He would freak out to know that scientists are devising ways to clone humans.” The kettle started to boil. Anwar lifted a finger and said, “I have an idea—I will make us some tea with the chamomile and valerian. It will help you sleep.”
He opened the Ziploc bag of chamomile flowers and took a luxurious sniff. Ella pulled out the tea strainer and two mugs: one from NYU that Charu had bought after her acceptance, and another in the style of the quintessential blue and white Grecian paper cup, inscribed with the message
We Are Happy to Serve You
. As soon as the kettle started to whistle, Anwar shut off the stove. He didn’t want to
wake Hashi or Charu. He opened the lid of the pot and stirred in the chamomile, then shaved a few pieces of valerian root into the kettle. He grabbed a tangerine from the fruit bowl and peeled it, offering Ella half, and eating the other in one bite. After throwing the peels into the mixture, he squirted plastic-bear honey liberally. “Let’s let this steep for a few minutes. Now, where was I?”
“Everywhere. My father, Sufis, atoms—” said Ella.
“Ah, right, of course.” Anwar scratched his chin and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Two people in particular, besides Mehr Ali, influenced me to follow my course of study. The renowned polymath Jogodish Chondro Boshu. As for Dr. Boshu, every person in Bangladesh grew up learning about him. While the West credits the Italian, Marconi, for transmitting the first electrical signal, Boshu beat him to it at a Kolkata town hall in 1895. Boshu’s wave fired off a faraway pistol and exploded a small mine.
“His book,
Plant Autographs and Their Revelations
, detailed his experimentations with his invention, the crescograph. The minutest motion of a plant could be recorded and drawn with this instrument. I became inspired by his tenets, that the invisible lines between all things, living and nonliving, were just that—invisible. He conducted marvelous experiments! Plants swayed like drunks when injected with whiskey. Spray it with chloroform, and you can transplant a giant oak tree, one that usually would die if uprooted. At death, plants spasm, much like a dying man.”
“We haven’t learned about him in anything I’ve studied,” admitted Ella.
“That’s America for you. I don’t know how you commit yourself to studying all those excruciatingly boring Latin names.”
“I like taxonomy. I like figuring out who named it, or what myth or character inspired the name.”
“I suppose. But be too busy learning that, and it becomes . . . unsexy, if I may say so. Now, I’m not sure where you stand on this . . . love business. . . .” He peered at her.
Ella avoided a response, and turned her gaze to the kettle. She busied herself with straining the tea into their mugs.
“Well?”
“What do you mean, where do I stand?”
“Have you ever—been in love?”
She handed him the NYU mug, trying to keep her hand steady. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Then you haven’t.”
Ella took a sip of the chamomile tea. It was supposed to calm nerves. She wanted him to stop looking at her. She stared into the petal bits that had escaped into her tea. “I guess not.”
“It will happen; you are an intelligent, compassionate girl. My first love, in the purely innocent, pre-Hashi sense, was Hawa, daughter of a village herbalist in the Northeast, near the India border. She lived in my hometown, Jessore, with some of her cousins. She worked for us as a housemaid for five years, just to send some money, until . . . unfortunate circumstances stole her away. But I fell in love again, just five years after that.”
“You never saw her again?”
“No.”
“And then you found Hashi.”
“Er . . . yes. Something like that,” said Anwar. “Anyway. The point is, I grew up with a modest farm, decent a yield as any: rice, dal, potatoes, tomatoes. Hawa was very young, but a consummate tiller of earth. As am I. As are you.” Anwar cleared his throat. “I have never forgotten those little moments—Hawa collecting pulses in her apron and storing them away for another year. Each seed tells this story: Everything that happens is already written.”
C
haru and Maya rode the G train to a converted factory in Williamsburg. The behemoth in the middle of an empty dead-end street didn’t look illustrious to Charu, but no one appeared to mind the wasteland. She noticed the plethora of prints—animal, plaid, floral, West African—and took internal haute hijabi notes. She pulled out her reserve (and stale) pack of cigarettes that she’d stolen from one of her father’s tweed fall coats. (Anwar had a habit of forgetting things in his pockets; over the years Charu had collected packs of gum, dollar bills, and cigarettes.) She offered Maya a cigarette, but she refused. Maya pulled the front zipper of her jumpsuit higher. Charu wished she’d dressed up a little more. She leaned on the brick wall, inhaling. There was so little summer left. She’d even gone to visit Malik at work, but Aman Uncle sent her home, saying it was a place for business, not pleasure. It had been awesome to see Malik at Maya’s birthday party yesterday. She hadn’t heard from him much because Aman Uncle lived with them now, he told her. Being Aman’s employee, sneaking up the tree was exponentially more risky.
She stuck her finger in her back pocket, where she’d stuffed her school schedule, to remind her of the freedom that waited for her around the corner. Her classes were interesting enough:
Then she saw him. But Malik did not see her. He stood with the radiant, blond-dreadlocked Aisha Ali-Marchand, lead singer of their renegade, avant-garde (according to the band’s Web site) jazz outfit Yesterday’s Future. Her chest clenched. Where’d he get the suit and skinny tie? Had he changed his nose ring?
“Let’s go inside,” hissed Charu. “Before he sees me.”
“Isn’t the point for him to see you?” said Maya.
“Not when he’s with her.”
The stairs leading up to the main venue were precarious, made of wrought iron, with wide gaps between each step. They found a spot next to a huge amp, hidden from the stage.
The crowd whistled and whooped as Aisha Ali-Marchand and her black-suited band made their way up to the stage. Last in line, Malik spotted Charu, and stopped. “Glad you could make it,” he said, planting a kiss on her cheek. He turned to Maya. “Nice to see you again. Happy birthday weekend.” He nodded once more at Charu, then joined his band onstage. He tuned his bass, unaware of the crowd. Charu caught sight of a girl standing next to her. She had hair so long it grazed her bottom. The girl raised her hand and waved like a mock pageant girl. Charu looked back onstage, and saw Malik mimicking the same idiotic gesture, both of them grinning.
“I need air!” Charu yelled to Maya. They pushed their way out of the mass of people, back onto the sidewalk with the smokers.
Maya took Charu’s hands in her own and said, “You’re better than this.”
“Who was she?”
“Who was who?”
“This bitch,” sneered Charu, waving her hand just as the girl had.
“It could be anyone—she could just be a friend.”
“I want to wait here. To talk.”
“I think that’s a terrible idea.”
“What the hell do you know?
“I know that waiting around for someone who makes you feel like you can’t breathe gets old real quick.”
“I want to stay.”
“I’m going to get on the train. It’s full of lunatics at this hour, which is way more interesting than this.” Maya hugged Charu good-bye. “Be safe.”
Charu smoked her pack of cigarettes outside for the duration of the show. She spoke to strangers, mirroring their drunkenness when they asked her for a smoke, and she wondered if this was what college was like. She felt desperate and immobile. She was trying to picture the moment when Malik would come outside, and regretted with each passing minute missing the show.
“Who are you, bitch?” As soon as she said it, a rush of people exited the warehouse entrance. She saw Malik. His bass was strapped to his back and his tie was unraveled. Horsehair Pageant Queen wasn’t next to him. No one was. She watched him scan the crowd until their eyes met.
“Where were you?” he called out, striding toward her.
“I started to overheat in there. But I heard you. You were great.”
“Thanks, girl.”
“What are you . . . thinking of getting into?”
“The guys want to smoke at Aisha’s house, but I don’t feel like being around people. Rashaud Persaud told me about this thing out in Flatbush, some fried chicken and waffles party, but that sounds messy.”
“Oh.”
Do I count as people?
Charu wondered. “Rashaud Persaud from Atlantic Avenue?”
“That’s the one.”
“Didn’t know you guys kicked it like that.”
“We do. He’s cool. What are you up to? Where’s your friend?”
“Wasn’t her scene. She went home. Where’s
your
friend?”
“What friend?”
“This chick—” Charu did the pageant wave, once again.
“Ah . . . She’s Aisha’s friend from college. Cool chick.”
Charu nodded, as if she knew the girl was a cool chick.
“You want to drop off equipment with me?”
They drove to Malik’s rehearsal space in a musty black van reminiscent of a TV crime show kidnapping vehicle. In the back,
instruments and amps rattled. She rested her palm on his leg, and when he looked over at her, she pulled out of her seat belt to kiss his neck.
“Careful,” said Malik, but he didn’t stop her as she unzipped his pants. “I’m driving.”
She pressed her fingers against the stiffened inseam of his pants. It felt warm and sweaty.
“Pull over.”
He didn’t refuse, as she expected. He parked at the waterfront park on Grand Street, where she and Maya and Ella had often watched the sunset before Maya went MIA. The back sides of buildings looked like an illuminated checkerboard. In all of those tiny squares, Charu imagined some people slept, some people lay awake. The Williamsburg Bridge resembled an illuminated playground slide. There was another car parked in the lot, a red sports car. But the riders surprised her. They were a group of Hasidic men. The eldest looked old enough to be everyone’s father; the youngest, like a freshman in high school. They stared for a moment, but lost interest. The van had tinted windows.
Malik leaned over her to release her seat backward so that she was lying down. He pushed the seat back as far as it would go until it toppled a set of cymbals. The crash sent goose bumps down her bare legs. He squatted down in the space between the glove compartment and her legs.
“You look ridiculously comfortable.”
“Aw, shut up,” he said, grinning. “Let’s try this.” He climbed on top of her and she felt the cotton of his suit pants rub against her legs and arms.
“Shouldn’t we get naked or something?” she asked.
“Do you see a dressing room in here?”
Charu tried to push the seat back farther, but it didn’t budge. She unbuttoned his shirt and he pulled it off.
“Pants, really? You want to have sex with me with your pants on?”
“All right, all right. Help me, please,” said Malik, groaning.
She yanked his pants and briefs off and let them slip to the floor.
“You ready?”
“I’ve been ready.” She pulled out a condom from her bra, where she also kept her fake ID and a wad of bills.
“Good. The ones I got are stuck in the glove compartment.”
She felt something cool on her bottom and reached to pull it out—a quarter.
“So I’m not gonna even lose it in the backseat?”
“Front seat keeps my lady neat,” he said. He tore the condom wrapper with his teeth and slipped it on, one-handed. He tried to pull down her panties with his free hand, but his knuckles burrowed hard into her thigh, and he couldn’t pull his hand out from under her.
“Let me.” She wriggled her underwear down to her calves.
So much for wearing my nine-dollar Victoria’s Secrets
, she thought. They inhaled a deep breath together and she looked at him, wanting to
connect
, but he had his eyes closed and his mouth pursed into an O.
She clenched herself tight when he started to break into her skin. She reached over to tilt the air-conditioner vent downward. She let loose a bit more and, finally, Malik was all in her. His eyes popped open and they started to laugh. At the same time her eyes burned from the blast of cool air.
“Are you okay? Are you okay?”
“It’s the AC. I’m not crying. I’m okay.”
He thrust up and then down, and then again a little harder, just as she’d pictured it, and each time he pressed against her, she felt a little more skin tear away. It hurt, but not unbearably so. She realized that Malik’s penis might not be as large as penises could be. She giggled again. But this time, he didn’t join her. He scowled.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Minutes later, when he finished, he triple-checked to make sure the condom was intact. He climbed over to the driver’s seat, and released it back so he was lying next to her. He turned off the car’s ignition and rolled down his window. A tepid breeze from the waterfront filtered into the van.
“I think coming is easier for guys. We’re just doing what we need to do for the inevitable.”
“Mm.”
“It was good, though.”
“It’s so weird that I’m starting school in less than a month.”
“You’ll still be in Brooklyn, girl.”
“Will you come see me? You barely did this summer.”
“Your mom had me stressed. And your uncle. Dude has this weird gripe about you, but also talks about how gorgeous you turned out. He couldn’t stop grillin’ me about dating you.”
“You serious?”
“I’m here now.”
“You want to sit outside by the water?”
He yawned. “Sugar, I’m tired as twilight.”
“Why are you talking like an old man?”
“Happens when I get sleepy. I think I need to take a lil’ nap so I can drive you home.” He closed his eyes and smiled once more before passing out.
She waited five minutes before letting herself out the passenger’s side.
Charu walked over to a large rock and sat down. She watched the water crash below her feet. The bridge’s lights made the ripples appear like streaks of lightning. Each ephemeral pattern in the tide gave way to a new one and then another new one; she wondered if this was how Ella saw the world. Being over here made Charu realize how landlocked her own neighborhood was. Something about being next to the water, even if it
was
the dirtiest water in the U.S., made shit seem—
bigger.
Malik slept in the van, while here she was bursting with energy, ready to try again, or go back to the warehouse and dance with hip kids who thought she was drunk. She skipped a stone in the black water and imagined it made a thousand ripples. So good ol’ Aman had scared Malik from coming near her. Bastard.
Warmth spread through her crotch, and she stood up, her bottom numb from the rock.
“Fuck,” she said.
Blood was running down her thighs.
“Hey, sweetheart, need a ride somewhere?” yelled the youngest Hasid boy, suddenly, as if by doing so he’d earn points with his posse. It worked. They were all staring at Charu. The boy took a step closer, and she shook her head and walked over to the car. She opened the door and found Malik sleeping still. She fiddled with the glove compartment for a tissue to blot the blood, and sure enough, there was no tissue, but a school nurse’s yearly allotment of
condoms. She looked around to see if anything else could be of use. Musical instruments and road maps and little scented tree fresheners. Malik’s clothes were crumpled on the floor of the passenger’s seat.
Take the pants or the jacket
, she thought. The jacket was fitted and he wasn’t much bigger than she. It wouldn’t even cover her ass.
She took the pants.
She knew it was safer to walk up to Bedford and hail a yellow cab, but she wanted to walk along the waterfront for as long as possible. She decided to risk the hour’s walk.
* * *
Ella heard a single pair of tapping heels before she could make out the figure walking toward the stoop. She checked her watch; it was two a.m.
Under the orange glow of the streetlamp, Maya’s silhouette had the ominous aura of a mugger. As she came closer, Ella saw that she wasn’t wearing a hijab.
“You’re back alone?”
“She wanted to stay. And wait,” said Maya.
“You came back without her?”
“She insisted on staying.”
“So she’s with Malik?”
“Yes, of course she is. She’s grown.”
“He doesn’t give a shit about her.”
“Does anyone give a shit about anybody but themselves?”
“I see you’re not wearing the scarf,” said Ella. It was better to change the subject, for there was no way Maya would understand.
“If I’m going to break one rule—then why not all of them? Charu was just so intent on me wearing it, so—”
“She has a way of getting what she wants. Are you tired?”
“I am,” said Maya. “But I know you aren’t. So . . . ‘Salma Hiyuk’ bought a little something on her way home.” She pulled out a travel-size bottle of Malibu rum. “A taste of the islands, maybe?”
They sat on the stoop and took minuscule sips. Ella took the last drop and passed the bottle to Maya.
“It’s empty,” giggled Maya. “Lightweight, I am. I am that I am.” She leaned in toward Ella, until they were nose-to-nose. “Ella
Anwar, you beautiful girl.” She pressed her lips against Ella’s, then let her tongue through. Ella gasped in Maya’s breath, a mix of rum and bubble gum.
She pushed Maya away. “I—I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is it, Ella?”
Ella said nothing. She just shook her head.
If she knew, she’d run the other way
.
“Let’s go inside.”
“You can sleep on the bed.”
A consolation.
“The floor is fine.”
* * *
111 Cambridge Place was dark and silent by the time Charu came home. She crept through the sliding glass door, unaware of her uncle awake in the living room.