Sub Rosa, page 3
“I don’t know.” My voice sounded whinier than I wanted it to.
I followed his pointed gaze to the collection of photos. “I guess it’s hard to know with family, isn’t it?” he shrugged.
I pushed my chair out from the table and made my way to him very slowly. My bare toes touched his leather shoe and I leaned into him so I could feel the stiff cotton of his jeans against my leg. He put his arm around my waist and squeezed. “You can’t go through life being alone, you know?”
I squirmed a bit in his arms. Splashes of glistening pink plum sauce lined the rim of Arsen’s dinner plate. I wriggled an arm free of his embrace to place a paper napkin overtop the mess. I suspected Arsen wouldn’t like a dirty table.
“Three nights ago I was walking back to my car on Front Street, and I stopped in front of a bar. I stopped because I felt something. Something reached out and grabbed me. And as soon as I stepped into the place and saw you, I knew you were what gave me that feeling. I was meant to find you there. Do you believe me, little one?”
I believed him because believing made what was about to happen right. I followed him into his bedroom. We stood together at the foot of the bed for a long time. I watched his chest move with his breath. His height and size overwhelmed me then, and the longer we stood wordlessly together the bigger he became. I lurched my hand to his groin. I needed us to begin before what little confidence I had diminished altogether. When he removed my hand from his zipper, I snapped, “Are we doing this, or what?” My tone was more brat than seductress, like a toddler about to throw a tantrum.
“Relax,” he said. “Just lie down.” I lowered onto his bed; he remained standing. He reached for my foot, pulling me to the edge of the mattress. The dress slid up to my waist. He took up my other foot, propped both against his chest and inched closer. My legs started trembling against his torso, toes curled into his warm skin. He mouthed “shhh” without the sound: a mute comfort. Without actually touching me, his hands travelled down my legs. The heat from his palms tingled as he grabbed hold of my underwear, the daisy print underwear I’d been washing in the sink with hand soap, then wearing again. He stared at me, holding my underwear in his big hand. “Pretty girl,” he said as he tightened his grip around my feet, holding them apart. For a second I felt like a baby laid out on a change table. I had to fight the urge to cover myself with my hands. “So tiny and pretty.” Reaching down, he touched me between my legs and then my insides did unravel. I had touched myself before, not many times, but enough to know the drowsy flesh there. I opened my legs so slightly, hoping he wouldn’t notice. I bit the inside of mouth to keep in the noises I might have made.
“I’m not like other guys you’ve been with. I don’t mess around,” he said. “How do I know you’re not going to run off on me, like you did to the last guy?”
“I would never do that,” I said, tilting my hips up toward him. The truth is I did not run off on Nino; if it weren’t for Arsen, I wouldn’t have left. And I would never leave Arsen, I thought, because I couldn’t conceive of anyone better than him ever coming along. I was sure he was aware of this as he nodded to himself and unbuttoned his pants. They dropped to his ankles. He shoved his briefs down after them. I made fists with both my hands.
“We have to both want this,” he told me.
I believed I wanted him, but this I wasn’t sure about. I saw his erection bobbing between my knees and I knew it was too late for second-guessing. He took me by the ankles, holding my feet to his shoulder’s height, and hoisted me onto his dick. I remember the immediate pang that made my legs spasm, an expected pain that I had been warned of for years. My ass and lower back floated above the mattress. The dress fell around my breasts. I didn’t know if I was supposed to take it off so I just left it bunched up around me.
Everything about him was still. Barely a pelvic thrust or strained facial expression. Only his arms were flexed and moving as he pulled me up and down the length of him by my ankles. “You want a home?” he asked, abruptly. “I could give you a home.”
My reply came out like a gust of wind; I must have been holding my breath.
“You want a family?” he asked. The sure and even syllables of his speech copied his body’s movements. There was a second round of pain in my gut as I panicked, too late, over the forgotten condom. The photo of his pregnant mother flashed in my head. What had I gotten myself into? I told him “yes,” anyway, and he continued asking me these questions, offering me things I’d never been offered before, and I repeated “yes” and “yes” until he dropped my ankles and walked out of the bedroom. “You’re such a pretty girl,” he called from the bathroom. I heard the faucet running from where I still lay on the bed.
When he returned he was wringing water from his hands, his jeans done up, shirt tucked in. I hadn’t moved. He sat beside me on the bed. Some of my hair got trapped beneath him, forcing my head to turn toward him. “I have to go out for a little bit. Got some errands to take care of,” he said. I considered it a bad sign that he barely touched me during sex. I knew it was a bad sign that he was leaving. I wanted to pick a fight with him, so he would stay, but I couldn’t come up with an opening jab. “This is the first time we’ve been apart in days. I’m trusting you here. Don’t run. Give me your word on that.”
“Where would I go?” I said.
I didn’t move until the lock clicked shut. Suddenly, I regretted not walking him to the door, not smiling or saying something sweet like I had a nice time or I think I love you or whatever it was that should be said. I stood on wobbly legs. My left thigh was wet. Blood mixed with a thick glistening fluid, like the film on a newly opened jar of jam. The same glint of goo was beaded on the bed, where my ass would have been had I not been held up in the air the whole time. It stained Arsen’s silk sheets a darker shade of black.
III
“Open your eyes.”
I was having one of those dreams where your dream self begs you to stay. Where the alarm clock or the cat meowing becomes part of the dream rather than waking you from it. In the dream, there was a statuesque woman holding a piece of red string between her thumb and pointer finger; her middle, ring, and pinkie were outstretched in an okay gesture. Behind her a tornado of red wool raged. Yarn twisted into massive red towers, unravelled into red pools at her feet, a world created and undone, again and again.
“Wake up, you little gutternip!”
I sat upright with a start. A woman sat at the corner of the bed, sweeping her arms in wide, dramatic motions as she worked a comb through her hair. She was monstrous. As if someone had taken an average-sized woman and inflated her. The skin around her neck looked like it was straining to keep her body and head together; it clung to the underside of her jaw like damp cloth. Her breasts floated in front of her like balloons stuck to the wall by static electricity. Black cherry hair looped in large loose curls around her huge face. And her lips, already full, were drawn in even fuller by bronze lip-liner and filled in with shiny gold gloss. “Your eyes!” she blurted out. “They’re bloodshot awful. After a night with Arsen they shouldn’t be red like that.”
“Where …?” I started to say, but in Arsen’s bed, naked, I was in no position to question her. I quietly prepared for the worst.
“Arsen’s not here,” she answered the question I was too scared to ask. “He brought me ’round and dropped me off here, same as you.” Her big head rolled from side to side, her curls bouncing around her shoulders, as she looked around the room. “I keep tellin’ him to do something—anything—with this city apartment. What colour would you say these walls is?” Reaching over my head she rapped her knuckles against the wall above me. I could smell her then: incense, like the faint fragrance left on my black dress. I took little comfort knowing the dress was far too small to actually be hers. She had touched it, though, my nose told me that much. “What colour?” she asked again.
I could barely whisper the word “beige.”
“Arsen calls it sandstone. Him and his namin’ things,” she laughed at this, and then eyeballed me when she noticed I wasn’t laughing along with her. “You scared? Of me? Don’t upset yourself, girl, I’m not here to toss you out. We gonna get along, right?” She smiled big for me; her lips parted to show a row of square white teeth.
“Right,” I was quick to repeat.
“Good. Now, my name is Della O’Kande. Now you think, what kinda name is that?” she said, though that was not what I was thinking at all. I was thinking about how it was the very first morning I’d woken up naked, ever, and I was doomed. “It means the first girl child. Or was it the last girl child born after many boys?” She thought about this for a half second, taking up the comb again. Her hair unwound under the comb’s teeth, reaching well past her waist, then snapped back into its original coil. “Anyway, my whole life I been surrounded by nothin’ but men. Men and boys, boys and men, and me. I do get lonesome for girlfriends. But only the right kind of girl, if you know what I mean. Arsen, he thinks you may be the right kind. So what’s your name?”
The question caught me off guard; there was an awkward pause before I answered.
“Pretty name,” she remarked. “Might be Spanish, or Irish, or from the Far East. Might even be African. A name like that make everybody feel at home.” She looked at me like a man might, like she was trying to see my body through the covers. “You haven’t grown much, have you? You look like someone slapped a pair of melons on a nine-year-old child. God gave you melons and few bad memories to boot, eh?” She pinched the bedspread around my chest and peeked in at me. I froze. “This is a nice little chat we’re havin’. Like friends, tellin’ each other our birth names. Course, names aren’t much more than a pair of shoes. Somethin’ to wear. Most people call me Candy. And you’ll be callin’ me First.” She threw her meaty hand at me and I too eagerly retrieved my own from under the covers to shake hers. “Do you know who I am, now?”
“No. I’m sorry.” I could hear the fear in my voice. I’m sure she could too. I wished I was wearing at least some underwear.
“I’m Arsen’s first wife.” She lifted her hand again, streaking it in front of my face. A trail of gold went by before I flinched. There was a ring on her finger.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered.
“Oh. You’re just a lamb, you are,” she sighed. “Well, I can see we need to have a real big talk. I’ll put on the tea. You get dressed and come to breakfast.” She left the door open as she left the room.
I spent some time pondering the eight-storey drop from the window. There wasn’t even a patch of grass outside the bedroom window to land on, just parking lot. Arsen’s empty parking spot taunted me in a way I never knew asphalt could.
In front of the smoky-glass, full-length mirror, I got dressed in my unwashed clothes and smoothed the tangles from my hair with my fingers. I went, defeated, into the kitchen to meet her. “Oh, hi there,” she greeted me again as if it was our first time seeing each other. On the table sat a plate of apple slices smeared with peanut butter for my breakfast. She had the expression of someone who’d prepared a monologue, as if she were reciting words in her head, waiting for the right moment.
“Here it is,” she began. “We need our man back. He’s been on holiday with you for long enough. So it’s time for you to make your decision. Arsen likes you. There are plenty of girls who’d wanna turn out with Arsen. He wants you. He only has two Wifeys, me and Second, and he don’t care too much for Second, you know. Hasn’t touched her forever. I shouldn’t run my mouth like this, but the truth is you are worth more than Second. You oughta consider that, right?” Across the room the kettle hollered on the stove. She knew exactly where the mugs were, and the spoons and the honey. She banged down a large mug in front of me. The teabag bled chai into the steaming water. “Drink,” she commanded, and I lifted the too-hot tea to my lips. “I’ll spell it out for you. You can stick with us, and I promise you’ll have the best house and all the clothes and gifts you want. It’s a queen’s life, really. We take care of each other, like family. Some girls ain’t cut out for it. It don’t start out easy. I have this hunch you won’t have too hard a time. You gotta earn your keep. But soon enough you’ll figure it out and be as happy as me, and that is happy. Arsen is a good man, he don’t run his girls on smack or none of that kinda city business, he don’t work us around the clock, he don’t starve us. I mean, take a look at me.” First grabbed a handful of her hefty flesh. “I know your story, girl. You got nowhere to be, do you?”
“Not really,” I shrugged.
“You been sick? Your skin is a hint … beige.”
“Yeah, that’s the colour of my skin. That way I blend in with the walls,” I said, mustering up a shred of sarcasm. But I was fidgeting so much I had to tuck my hands behind my back.
“Well then, eat your breakfast, beige girl,” she told me. She didn’t take her eyes off me until I ate all four apple slices. The sound of my chewing filled the small space between us. She handed me a napkin when I was finished. “You been runnin’ yourself on drink and city men and whatever scraps you can get?”
She knew the answer already, like she knew the answer to her last couple questions. Without a doubt, she and Arsen were in on this together. He had told her everything about me. I suspected the only reason she was asking questions at all was so I would be further humiliated by answering them. There was no pride in figuring her out, no advantage. She was still bigger. She was still Arsen’s wife. I was still in a shitty spot.
“You’re free to go back to that life,” she said. “’Course, I have to beat you before you go loose. Seein’ as you fucked my man and all.” She moved her chair closer to me, it squeaked against the marble tile. My instinct was to move away, widen the gap between us again, but I held my ground. “It’s not my rule says I have to beat you. This is a mean city. I’d rather we stay friends, you treat me like family. Can you do that?”
“If I wanted to,” I had the guts to say. There was a tear in the corner of my eye that I was willing not to fall.
“You think you gonna fall in love with Arsen? ’Cause it’s easier if you got a man to love. And trust me, he’s the best.” She leaned toward me. Her tongue pushed out a tiny spit bubble between her lips. “Oh, you think you already are,” she said; the bubble popped. “Well that suits me just fine.”
“It’s none of your business.” I managed to look her square in the face, but as soon as I did the tear rolled down my cheek. I bowed my head, letting my hair hide me.
“You’re right, what do I know about your business? You could very well be a smart one. You got yourself here somehow. I doubt you landed here just to have me crack your teeth.”
First noticed my foot tapping. She pressed her own big foot on top of mine to keep it still, and I thought of Arsen’s hands on my ankles the night before—the memory sent a shiver up my body. She came in even closer; her breath smelled of spiced tea. Across the table a gold lip print was stamped on the rim of her mug. She wrapped both her arms around me and started to rock back and forth. “I don’t wanna hurt you, little one. It just how things work in the ugly city. You already been through enough trouble, I can tell. Poor Little, all alone. You think I don’t know. I know. I know very well ’cause I came from nothin’, just like you. I can fix that, if you only let me. I can see you never alone and hurtin’ again.” She spoke low and sweetly, and I began to cry. She took my arm and looped it around her neck; my arm was unexpectedly willing to hug her. The skin beneath her hair was cool; it was like putting my hand in a cave. “I got you,” she whispered. “You cry now, I got you.”
IV
When the towering flesh spectacle who had me calling her First let go of my hand to unlock the double dead-bolt on Arsen’s apartment door, my equilibrium fell out-of-kilter. As if, after spending only a few hours with her, I had forgotten how to stand on my own. Her touch was ever-present. From the moment she wiped her fleshy thumb over my tear-streaked cheeks, she had her hands on me. Rough at first, like I was a hostage being led from Arsen’s apartment to the street. Her body overflowed into my seat as we rode the subway, smothering me. Each and every man we passed stared at her, and at me. Her beauty was an eyesore. They probably would have stared at her sheer size anyway, but her hand clamped to the back of my neck didn’t help us be less noticeable.
She used this force so that she could take me shopping; it seemed absurd as she hauled me from one ladies’ boutique to another. I would have willingly gone with anyone offering me free stuff. When we were crammed into cheap lingerie store fitting rooms, her touch went gentle as she helped me in and out of the clothes. Each time she lifted a dress over my head, she tidied my hair. “You are a tiny thing,” she said, shaking her head at how low-cut necklines simply fell off me. “Soon you’ll have everythin’ tailored for you, but for now these city threads will have to do.” No matter how many outfits I tried, she never tired of touching me. I got used to her more quickly than I would have liked. A couple of times I caught myself turning around so she could zip me up. It wasn’t until we were done shopping and back on the subway that I figured out she was nervous. She squeezed my hand until it was throbbing. “It sure is stuffy in here,” she said. “It sure is noisy.” She complained about me too: “Uncross your arms,” and “Don’t slouch,” and “Quit hidin’ your pretty face behind that hair.”
Several other passengers—men, of course—started up conversations with her, and only then did she leave me be. She fanned her neck and cleavage with a subway map as they spoke. “I’m goin’ to the end of the line. You ever pass by No’s Smoke Shoppe? Cuban cigars,” she whispered. “I live near there. Me and a handful of my girlfriends. We just love visitors, if you’re ever nearby.”
